Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening everybody. This is the August 6th, 2026 meeting of the Summerfall Planning Board at 6.01 PM. I'm Mike Capuano. I'm the Chairman of the Planning Board. With me tonight is our Vice Chair Amelia Aboff and our Members Coralie Cooper and Luke Schuster, we have four members of the planning board present tonight. We have a quorum pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025. This meeting with the planning board is being conducted via remote participation. A video recording of the proceedings will be available on the city's website's meetings and events page or by emailing planningboard at SomervilleMA.gov. This meeting is being recorded. We have a number of items on our agenda tonight. several of which have either been continued or will be continued. And so we have meeting minutes that we will take up for the public hearings. 222 Broadway has previously been continued to August 20th. 120 Middlesex Avenue has requested a continuance to August 20th as well. The chair moves to continue that agenda item to the 20th of August, seconded by Amelia. Can we have a roll call, please? Mr. Hi.

Carly Cooper.

Hi.

Amelia Aiba.

Hi.

Michael Capuan.

Hi.

The agenda item is continued. We also have a new case, 6 Wheatland Street, which has requested to be continued to August 20th. Um, Jim moves, continue that agenda item actually, you know, what do we need to read that into the into the record? Can we open it on the 20th person to there? You can open it on the 20th. Okay, let's do that. Then Jim, which continues 6 week on the street to August 20th. 2nd, by Amelia roll call, please.

Luke Schuster. Hi. Carly Cooper.

Hi.

Hi.

Michael I, the agenda items continued. We will hear, but when taking agenda items out of order, as is the discretion of the chair, we will take up 32 to 40 white street, which has been. Um. before this board a number of times for different reasons over the last couple of weeks. We also have two matters of other business. One is a discussion of potential adoption of the Arts and Innovation District Urban Design Framework, which is something the Planning Board had a joint meeting on with the Urban Design Commission a few weeks ago. And so Sarah Lewis will be here to talk to us about the changes to that framework that was a result of the joint meeting between us and UDC. And we will also have 32 Webster design recommendation for people who might not know when the planning board approved that application. One of the conditions was that staff could elect to choose 1 of the different design options that the applicant had presented subject to approval by the planning board. So we'll take that up because. Staff has come up with a proposed design. So let's do this. Let's bring Sarah Lewis on first so we can talk about the urban design framework for the Austin Innovation District and see if we can speed this one along.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. That sounds extremely positive to me. Um, as you know, this has been going on a while, so I don't have a presentation, but I did want to point out, um, in your packet, you received the edited version that took into consideration all the, um, both the planning board and the urban design comments. Um, The most noticeable thing is probably going to be the format tweaks as a lot of the edits were in the text and none of us had any objections to those. A lot of it, what we had done is sort of add some spacing and breathing room for legibility as well. So things like making sure that there were all the images had captions to them. There was a comment about making sure that all the reference documents had links in them. So those are included just to make ease of use easier. We reviewed it obviously for any duplications or conflicts with the zoning ordinance as as written. And then The two big items that I wanted to point out were we removed the forward that was the overview of the plan types because we thought it was duplicative with the introduction page. And that page was a very busy plan types overview anyway. So we've removed that. And then the other piece was one of the urban design Commission had requested a graphic showing potential massing so not knowing what any proposals might be on page 23 we added a. a diagram showing the maximum envelope that's permitted under zoning, knowing that the, you know, sort of architecturally when a master plan comes in, there'll be a lot of articulation within those, that maximum envelope, but we wanted to make sure that that was pointed out that had been included as well. And I think that's, that's about it for an overview of the changes. Okay.

Does anybody have any comments or questions of Sarah, any discussion points that they would like to raise about this framework that we were entertaining for a little while? Okay. Thank you, Sarah, very much. The role of the planning board as it relates to that document is to vote on approval. Is that right?

That is correct.

Okay. Seeing no further discussion by members of the planning board, I want to thank you for all the hard work that you put into this and putting us together with UDC. And that was fun. Nice folks. And hopefully we can get this to the next step. for your department. So chair moves to adopt the framework as proposed and amended. Second by Amelia. Roll call, please.

Luke Schuster. Aye. Coralie Cooper.

Aye.

Amelia Aiboff.

Aye.

Michael Capuano. Aye. Thanks, Sarah.

Good luck with that.

Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Have a good evening.

Okay. The next one I'm going to take up is 32 Webster design recommendations. So who is the case planner on that one? And can we make it? Can we have a little on what the design is that you all thought was the best.

Sure. Give me one second to pull that up. Hold on one second. But we went with design number five, and I think we chose this based on the meeting from the original board meeting. We thought that that complemented the existing neighborhood and some of the other surrounding buildings, like the US 2 building. Hold on. I had it up and it's escaped me, but let me pull up their original plans. Oh, thank you, Alvaro. Okay, we selected design option five. We felt like it articulated the facade nicely and compliments of the existing neighborhood.

Yeah.

Yeah, the really... cool balcony points out front that I think we all thought was an interesting architectural feature. So does anybody have any comments, questions, concerns about the design option that staff has proposed?

Okay.

I like that one too. Oh, you took it away. It was so pretty. Chair moves to adopt option five as satisfactory of the condition that was imposed when we initially approved the application, seconded by Amelia. Roll call vote, please. Luke Schuster?

Aye. Carly Cooper?

Aye.

Amelia Ivo?

Aye.

Michael Capuano?

Aye.

We have a design. Okay, last one up. Oh, you know what? I actually completely forgot to do meeting minutes. Let's do that real fast. June 18, 2026. Anybody have any comments, questions, revisions? Okay. Jambu is to adopt June 18, 2026 draft meeting minutes as the final meeting minutes, seconded by Amelia. We'll call it.

Luke Schuster. Aye. Carly Cooper.

Aye.

Amelia Ibov. Michael Kaplan.

Amelia was muted. Michael Kaplan. We have meeting minutes. I was going to say, Amelia, you're not going to throw off that meeting minutes.

I would be horrified.

The second time your microphone caused a massive issue. Awesome. Let's bring up 32 White Street folks.

Okay.

Who else?

Okay.

Hello.

Good evening, everyone.

We have Philip Seymour and David Swanson. I'm just hoping you guys can all just introduce yourselves one more time for the record before we get into kind of where we're at this evening. Okay.

Sure. Philip Sima, I'm part of the architectural team. I'm joined by Akshit Sethi as part of the team as well. And Kinvara Capital can introduce themselves.

Everybody, David Swanson with Kinvara Capital and the development team for 32 to 40 White Street. We are waiting on Ryan Wittig. He should be popping on momentarily. He's going to be leading the charge here. He was supposed to be on. So if we wouldn't mind waiting a minute or two, if that's all right with everybody.

Let's do this. Let's do this. Planning board is going to be in recess until 620. Perfect. Okay, so we don't just sit here looking at each other. Nobody wants to look at me longer than they have to.

I've got a screaming one-year-old back here as well, so nobody wants to listen to that.

See you all in five minutes. Hey, everybody. Let's just wait until the board is reconstituted after the brief recess. Then we can go back on the record. Just waiting for Luke so we can reconstitute quorum. Okay, at 621, the planning board is back in session. Um, my cap you want to channel planning board, uh, the vice chair of the planning board. We also have our members, Carly Cooper and Luke Schuster. We have reconstituted with quorum. and we are taking up the last agenda item that we have this evening which is 32 to 40 white street uh the applicant has come back to us with some uh proposed revisions uh based on discussions by the board over the last several weeks um and so hopefully we can um see more at this evening and and uh Have a good rest of our early August. So if the applicant can please and their team, we had some introductions first. Ryan, I know you came in a minute ago. If you can just introduce yourself again for the record, please.

Hello, Ryan Whittag representing the ownership team of 32-40 White Street. Great.

Thank you. Let's talk about where... where we've come from the last time we had a chance to speak.

Sure. Yes, obviously the main takeaway we took from our last meeting, which overall we felt the design of the building was well received. I think we've worked past the bike room, accessibility, accessible units, mentioned that we've provided, upgraded all of our accessible units, the tier two units. we now have three tier two accessible units in our plans as opposed to the minimum requirement of tier one we've upgraded those all to tier two based on the feedback that we got from the board at the last meeting it was mentioned that there's a high desire for us to explore incorporating three bedroom units into our plan so We went back to the drawing board with Phil and his team at Balance with Akshat as well. And we looked at how would we go about that? And we looked at it a number of different ways. We looked at combining a number of different units and due to the demising walls, that we have in the building, it looked like the only way to accomplish or the most optimal way to accomplish that would be to merge two of our one bedroom units together to create a three bedroom unit, which would take our unit count down from 29 units down to 28 units to as an experiment to see how we could incorporate three bedroom, excuse me, something in my throat, three bedroom units into our plants. So after doing that, we looked at, you know, what does that do to our project? And obviously we're taking, eliminating one unit to combine it into a three bedroom unit. And essentially what that does is putting everything aside, keeping all, affordable constants in place for the inclusionary program. It takes two of our, what we consider to be highly marketable units and condenses that down into a less marketable unit, a three bedroom unit that's roughly 1,250 square feet. It's checking the box of creating a three-bedroom house or a three-bedroom unit, I should say. But it's not something that we feel is... It's definitely not something that we would view as desirable for families. And based on our experience, it's not something that... We feel would be highly appealing to the market and looking at the market of sold units. It would sell for a considerable discount to the other two one bedroom units. So we had some discussions with the mayor's office, with the city to understand, you know, what are the options in front of us to offset this, I guess, I don't know what you want to call it, an unwritten mandate as it's not in the ordinance to include three bedroom units and projects under 30 units. So we're asking the city, you know, what tools... are in the toolbox to help us offset this loss in marketable units. When we compare the two bedroom, one bedroom units to the three bedroom unit, we see a loss in value in our projects anywhere from 350,000 to $400,000. so on its own that tips the project for us into the territory of being not viable we asked the mayor's office you know what what what are the options we've heard discussions about reducing the inclusionary requirement to you know potentially incorporate these types of requests and they said although that's not something that's um unpalatable it's not something that can be done at the planning board level or i don't really i don't know if that's at the zoning board or which level it would need to go to but it's not something that could be approved here so absent that that level of approval that level of discussion we're kind of back to square one for for us as a project where incorporating A single three-bedroom unit to kind of check the box, if you will, makes this not a feasible project. We would love to work in collaboration with the board and with the city to find a way to do this, but combining those two units is a significant financial impact to our project. which we believe steers us into the unviable realm. We've heard Boston, their inclusionary requirements, 13%. There's some discussions in Cambridge about potentially reducing the inclusionary requirement for 20% down to 20%. something in the tent, a tiered, a tiered, you know, starting with smaller projects with a tiered approach for smaller projects and getting maybe up to the 24, the larger 50 plus unit projects. But that's not where we're at here. And that's not the discussion. I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong, the board's, willing and able to have tonight. So with that being said, we'd be totally open to discussing anything else related to the project in terms of design, accessibility, bike units. But all that being said, We'd like the board to consider the project that we presented previously, 29 units, and the benefits that that brings to the community as it stands, which is five true affordable units, 0.8% fractional payment towards the affordable housing trust, 24 market rate transit-oriented units, and three tier two fully accessible units. And that's pretty much where we're at.

So, okay. As it sits, I'm currently calling in from a 1300 square foot three bedroom house. So I think the, Assertion that that's not something that's, you know, a sizable or desirable thing is not exactly akin to my experience. Part one. Part two, what I don't want is to foreclose all opportunities for you to be able to make something work. What I would be willing to entertain if my board members agree is to continue this for another couple of weeks so that you might be able to explore other options through different divisions within the city to try to figure out where some of the relief that you said the planning board might not be able to grant might live to see if that's something that you might be able to pursue. Because I'll tell you right now, Ryan, you don't have the votes to go forward as you currently exist. And a no vote from this planning board forecloses your opportunity to reapply for a number of years. And I don't want to do that either. So I want to give you another opportunity to try to figure out some relief valves for you because we're pretty pretty set on this. This is something that's not the first time that we've expected an applicant to comply with a reasonable request and a reasonable condition like this. I don't recall if I brought this up the last time we spoke, but the one that I'm thinking of is in Union Square, actually, we conditioned them to reduce almost an entire story of their project in order to comply with the residential concerns as well as concerns of the planning board. So this is certainly something that this board has done repeatedly for your project and for many, many others that came before you and something that we will undoubtedly continue to do over the next period of time. So I don't want to put you on a place where this is not going to go in your favor for a very long number of years. What I want to do is give you some more time to try to figure it out on your end and where your relief might come from if it's not from this board and if that's something that you want to pursue. As you know, this is the second time that this particular site has come before this board in one particular iteration. And as a lab building, that application was withdrawn. And then it came to us with your application. So, I mean, this site has been this way since I've been alive. You know, another period of time is not going to impact how this works. polar square area operates. So I want to make sure that we have the best project that we can for this site in this neighborhood. And I don't want to put you in a position where you can't ask and you can't move forward. So what I'd like to do, if my colleagues agree, is continue this for another couple of weeks. You guys try to figure out where and if you can seek further relief to be able to make this project feasible for you. And if the answer is there is, there is, you're completely foreclosed from that, then this board will take that up kind of as, as we need to. That's, that's where I'm, I'm at. If, if you want to move forward as is tonight and just, you know, go barrel down the gun. That's up to you and your team. But I don't want to be the roadblock to making this potentially doable if there is an alternative way to do it. If there is another board that can potentially give you relief need to explore that that's that's kind of where i'm at on this but i'm also happy um to move forward on this application tonight if if that's where you're at i see amelia's hand raised so i'd like to recognize her and i also see but i'm going to take amelia first thank you mr chair we're both muted amelia

I think I might be the board member most willing to compromise on this item in light of a slightly closer understanding of sort of the marketability and the forces at play there. And I just want to bring you the lens that as the person who I think is perhaps most closely aligned with you, I do take issue a little bit with your idea that this is like new information coming to you and that this is a surprise because I pride myself on trying to stick to sort of the letter of the law of the ordinance. And what I'm seeing is you are in an MR4. You are applying for a special permit for an all-residential building, which is an apartment building type. The intent of the MR4 zone is, and I quote, to create dwelling unit type sizes and bedroom counts ideal for larger households in apartment buildings and to create dwelling unit type sizes and bedroom counts ideal for smaller households in general buildings. So, like, if you were doing a commercial ground floor, I would feel ready to go to bat for you in discussion with my board members to say this is a general building. We're going back to the intent of the MR4 district. We should have small unit mixes. But you have, in fact, selected a building type where there's, like, explicitly language suggesting that a larger unit mix would be appropriate. So, I... I want to be responsive to us discussing sort of what is and was not feasible in the market. And I hear you loud and clear on your concerns about the demand for a condo of a three-bedroom in this location. But I can't sort of sit quietly while you're like, this is a shock, just going by the written document that we are all working from today.

Fair enough. Yeah. So we were prepared to come present the three bedroom plan and ask for approval with the, I don't know where we heard it or where we got it, but we thought this board had some latitude in adjusting the inclusion requirement. We don't do a lot in Somerville, frankly. We've done three or four projects and we're not super versed and we didn't hire a zoning attorney. I guess we should have spent a couple thousand more, $10,000, $20,000 more hiring a zoning attorney. I'd like to imagine a world where I don't need an attorney to present a housing concept and need a Sherpa who knows all the paths to take you down. Maybe we're penny wise and pound foolish here. I wish we had done that to be better advised on that so we could come in here with a better approach. And like I said, we've tried to engage the city to understand where the levers are that we can pull. And we've yet to see the lever. So that's why we're here tonight, coming back to where we are. So that's... that's that's our explanation for why we are where we are and i appreciate your explanation of the mr4 uh zoning intent um you know we we just we felt that given the the the proximity to the the porter square t stop and the high um transit oriented nature of this that it's going to appeal to the the bedroom sizes that we've put and understand the intent of the mr4 may be to include

um more larger housing size units like we're talking about the three bedroom units and i i don't mean to penalize i just i i and i'm here with mike saying let's work towards a creative solution and see because i think we all want to see housing get built and it's not this board's intention to uh you know stand in the way of that arbitrarily um but i just wanted to clarify that it's not completely out of the blue that this is coming up so thank you for understanding

Thank you. Thank you for explaining that. That, you know, without understanding, without hearing those sentences, I would think that we're, you know, that we're not. But we also try to color in the lines like we're trying to comply with the ordinance, which is why we've done that, at least on every other dimension that you can talk about. We're complying dimensionally and height and. all other all their shapes and forms it's this one thing of the the bedroom count um so with that being said we understand the conversation and uh definitely would like to hear other other voices that would have other other input or any other thoughts you have amelia did you have anything else you wanted to add right now no thank you so much mr chair um

I will say as the lawyer on the board, always high on, especially when it comes to municipal boards. We are all amenable to arguments by counsel who know how we operate and understand the regulations and the ordinances thoroughly. I do see that Alvaro's got his hand raised. So what's up? What's up, my friend?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to make a point of clarification for the public and for the applicants that for administrative permits, the quorum is three members of the planning board, and that's the same amount of votes that have to have for site plan approvals. For discretionary permits as special permits, the quorum is four members, and there will have to be four votes. So I just wanted to give that as a clarification for both the applicant and the public. Thank you.

thank you alvaro that's also uh very meaningful information thank you i'd also say even if the board had the the discretion to be able to waive certain inclusionary um requirements i i would i would be deeply surprised if the if the board currently constituted would entertain something like that um but just just keep that keep that in mind i see uh lucent who was raised before

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair. I don't have much to add. Part of what Amelia raised earlier was really helpful and helped clarify one question I had. And also, Amelia, just so appreciate the clarity of the broader context for why this has shifted into special permit land. And anyhow, so just thank you. This may be tough to do, but I would find it helpful to... What are the other sorts of relief, just even conceptually, that might be considered here? I'm just trying to picture... what the possible paths are at future meetings. Are you asking me? Anybody who wants to speculate, you know, cause I mean, the context I'm coming from is like similar to Amelia actually feeling like this is a tough one. Want the housing to get built. I feel, I see both sides of the argument that we want to move on a project like this with some, um, urgency. On the other hand, to the chair's point, you know, this is a parcel that's had some potential for a long time. We also want to get it right. But just my sense of like how much adding a few more weeks or months or whatever to this would be shaped a little bit by knowing what the realm of the possible alternatives really would be. I

My suggestion remains that in the next couple of weeks, maybe you speak with zoning attorney on what options might look like for you in order to get some sort of a permittable and approvable project. They may be able to provide some guidance that I, as the Chairman of the Planning Board, can't give and it's not our role to give necessarily.

Sure. I mean, if we were if we were in Boston and this was the same landscape, we're not in Boston. I'm just saying if we were 13 percent affordable, we could do the three bedroom and we could give that three bedroom to the inclusionary program. And the numbers would still work. But we're we're not in Boston. And that's not the that's not we could we could land in the same place that we were with our original 29 unit plan. Other than any other reliefs, it's really I mean. you know we're we're not going to change the setbacks obviously so it only the only other beliefs could be additional additional uh you know floors of housing which i don't know once again not your place to advise on but i don't know how palatable that is um to the board or to the zoning it would probably that would be a zoning board um discussion and i don't know if that's palatable so i don't know what other areas of relief there are except except for moving the inclusionary let's do this let's give you another couple of weeks and then on august 20th maybe you can give us some clearer guidance on where you want this project to go okay We'd appreciate that. We'd also like to avoid this going into months, just in terms of process and procedures. And if we have to go to two or three other boards or have months and months of meetings, we do own this property. We have paid for it and we do have a mortgage on it. And not that that's the board's problem, but if we had a zoning contingency to where we could just walk away right now and Carter losses at 100 grand, 150 grand. We might consider that, but we don't have that option right now. We own it, we're pregnant, and we want to deliver this baby and have it be beautiful. So I hope that's not a bad analogy. So we appreciate the board's guidance here. And if we can come back in two weeks and we will continue to have all the conversations we can with planning and city staff to see if there's any way that we can kind of re-envision, re-imagine this project to still make it something that we believe we'll be able to get financing for to actually make it come to fruition. We'll be ready to have that conversation.

Okay. So let's kick this to the 20th then and see where we're landing. Chair moves to continue this agenda item to August 20th, seconded by Amelia. Roll call, please. Luke Schuster.

Aye.

Carly Cooper.

Aye.

Amelia Eboff.

Aye.

Michael Capuano.

Aye.

Okay. See you in a couple of weeks. And if you need more time, if you know you're going to need more time, talk to Alvaro and we can work on it as need be.

Perfect. Thank you all. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.

Great night. Thanks. Good night. Thank you.

No other business before the planning board at 645 PM. The chair moves to up Carly.

Apologies for the late comment. I just want to go back to about a month ago. We had a conversation about. you know, the need for larger units in the city. And then, so we had that discussion. Now I'm forgetting the woman's name who joined us. She gave us an overview of her report. And then I did listen to the recording from the last meeting. I wasn't on it. But the developer did say there was an insatiable need for truly.

Can I stop you? We're not discussing this particular agenda item right now that's been continued.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. No, I just wanted to bring up a related item that we talked about a month ago in our Previous conversation. So I just wanted to know if we might bring up this conversation about the need for larger units in a further discussion with the planning board.

And I know that, you know. I think that is coming our way in the near future.

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Chair moves to adjourn at 646, seconded by Amelia Wilcox.

Luke Schuster? Aye. Carly Cooper?

Aye.

Amelia Iboff?

Aye.

Michael Capuan?

Aye.

Planning Board's adjourned. See you all in a couple of weeks.

Everybody have a good couple weeks.