okay um I'm GNA call this uh joint meeting of the planning board and MBTA task force to order um the planning board I'll take a roll call Laura Henny here Mary Foley here bber here Sarah kraton um I'm Sarah Hammond kraton I'm the vice chair of the planning board um and before we start I just want to our first meeting um since the passing of our chair Ron Master Jack Mo and I just want to acknowledge that uh he served on the planning board for 14 years wow and chair as five and he was an engineer so by my calculations he spent more than 1200 hours in this room uh doing the business of the town and he that he cared very deeply about um so we miss his uh Gentle Spirit his good manners his extraordinary preparation and his commitment to uh the best interests of Manchester then if Chris wanted to also say something sure so uh as a member of the playing board we have to recognize Ron for his uh many contributions to what the board was doing for those of you who may have attended those meetings he felt very strongly about the U NBTA um law and wanted to make sure that the town complied with it of course being an engineer he wanted it to be neat and tidy and on the schedule uh unfortunately we can't do the neat and tidy our schedule but we can honor him by uh fulfilling his desire that we reach the best solution we can for the town thank you I was gonna say now you need to tell so on that note now the guard is here I can call the task force to uh to order uh so I'll start with a roll call only on the chair sarahah and Denny Hall s BB [Music] and car Morris Mike Mike and an Harrison is not here yet but maybe she'll arrive shortly okay um great we were um we're this is going to be a joint um meeting tonight but before we start I have three quick planning board announcements um the first is that uh Ron's Position will be filled by an appointment um um by the select board and the planning board which is how uh vacancies are filled and it will be for the year um the deadline for applications is will be in the Crickets shortly and um people who are interested should follow the instructions in the Cricut uh or end on the website which I assume is a letter to the um select board testing um the second oh Richard is here yes Richard welcome second be here the second announcement for the planning board is that the task force meetings we will be joint with task force going forward so um that seems to be more uh efficient we hope as long as we can sign in and then the third um announcement that some of you may be wondering about is that the cell signaling technology special permit is being um postponed um with their agreement um their cooperation to uh May begin May 28th when we have a full board so that we H uh Mark has received correspondence from them that they are willing to um postpone that any other we will Ren notice it as a new public hearing so that the two newly appointed FL elected officials May participate in the entire proceedings and all seven members at least initially will be eligible to vote great thank you okay now I'll turn it over to Chris okay you want to start the could I just interrupt for a moment um you didn't ask if anybody else wanted to say anything about Ron so I also wanted to say um I worked with him for all seven years that I've been on the board and he was um wonderful work with very kind man and um a good sense of humor and he will be very missed um I also wanted to acknowledge that um a very good friend a planning board member um is um Christine deliso is diagnosed with a brain tumor and she will be going through surgery and treatment um and so as a planning board member I want to acknowledge that and um hope that the town and everybody prays for her thank you Mary certainly we wish Christine the best um any other comments on okay okay so we start the slideshow so we're going to U move into the public forum a little bit ear early and talk about two different aspects of the MBTA Z the first is uh discussion of the NBTA zoning districts which will be overlay districts and when we're done with that we're going to talk about design guidelines and we have a group of Architects here who have been working very hard to uh come up with some drafts guidelines that the town can use in uh reviewing any development projects that come along under the terms of the npta Z and so uh way we're going to start off with the the districts and I'm going to talk a little bit about how we came up with the guiding principles and how we selected these districts and then I'm uh Mark resck the town planner is going to describe each of them and after each description uh I'm going to open it up for questions and comments from the public and from the board of from both comms let get this all straight here uh so we'll go through each district and have questions and answers after each one and then we'll go to the design guidelines and after that we'll again have questions and comments so the NBTA task force in trying to figure out how to do this decided right away that we wanted to follow certain principles and how we were going to select districts the first most important to us was minimizing potential changes to the town's historic character and to the current zoning in place the second is to preserve the town's businesses and restaurants the third was to maintain the small scale and a variety of architectural style that makes up the town's character and the fourth was to reduce the number of new incremental residential units that could be allowed now this one is is a this is a tricky this last point is a tricky one a lot of people ask how many existing residential units will count towards the new uh requirement and the answer is well none of them count because none of them are allowed currently by zoning exactly the way the MBTA zoning law Works anyway but they do count in a funny way which is uh whatever new units get built they're they're either going to include what's already there as residential units or replace them so the incremental number of new units may be much smaller than if it were just a a open piece of land and we could just build the units by right so um so if we fumble around with trying to answer this question that's why it's a it's a tricky thing that the existing units are important to the town and they will remain what we're really interested in is reducing the number of incremental new ones that would get built and one final point about this is that these things don't all necessarily correlate perfectly together so there's some balancing when we try to reduce the number of units or minimize potential changes that may mean doing something uh that doesn't comply with both of them and we have to judge which is most important so let's get to the next slide so our goals are first to give you an update second to provide you the background on how we did this third get input and direction from about each of these districts and then four hear about the design guidelines um the future meetings will actually provide some actual zoning language and actual zoning limitations that we're talking about and then have an opportunity for further revisions as we go along we are planning a community for big Community Forum on the 27th of April hopefully at the high school uh where there'll be a sort of Hands-On thing where people can come um talk to us individually L look at the maps on tables and provide more input as well is isn't aside okay we'll consider that as well thank you Sarah so we may try that at the memorial school as well so the state has given us some rules on how we can do this and it's very important that we all understand what these rules are and the first first thing is that we have to uh provide go backward oh sorry we have to provide a district or districts a total 37 Acres the second is that the minimum acres for one single contiguous zoning district is 18.5 Acres we can have more than one district and in fact we're proposing four the total Acres that need to be within a half mile of the train station are 14 acres so 14 acres out of the downtown area have to be included in this District the minimum size of a of a district is five acres the total housing capacity of all required districts is 559 which theoretically would be derived by taking 37 and multiplying that times 15 that's 555 we're not quite sure why the state says 559 we guess it's because it's actually 3712 Acres or something it's a rounding area but we're going to get to the bottom of that so the average required minimum density of housing units is 15 units per acre but every District doesn't have to be 15 some can be more dense and others less dense as long as the average over all the districts is 15 so we're talking about not creating new zoning districts we want to create an over a series of overlay districts overlay districts are superimposed on existent current zoning and so they don't replace it they simply are on top of it they allow certain uses as long as specific conditions or limitations are followed as a result Property Owners can create multif family multif family residential uses in accordance with the specific rules and limitations property owners are not obligated to do anything they can just they can just keep the property just the way it is or do whatever is allowed under their current zoning and not worry about this multif family housing at all the town is allowed to create design guidelines and we'll discuss that a little bit later and the underlying district and its regulations will remain unchanged so they'll there are still going to be hike and setback and parking requirements so here are the districts and one big map just to show you roughly where they are three of them are uh more or less in the downtown we're showing uh one of the districts has got four subdistricts and they're called out here also we'll get into that shortly as well then there's one that we're proposing in the LCD and uh that would be outside the one half mile radius the others are all within a half mile of the downtown so let's get into each one we'll start off with Newport Park Pine Street mors Court sill Circle Elm Street and pous Lane Mark than you so um so this District starts uh at the U kind of the North End of Pine Street where um Newport Park development is uh which um has a fair number of units runs down Pine Street uh down to the corner of uh where the gas station is and then runs behind the commercial properties um over toward um powder house um apartments and um includes all of that property um that commercial property the historic district properties and that as well commercial there's nothing commercial Okay but well if you turn to the next slide you turn to the next slide you will see how we arrived at this District so at the very top we targeted the uh Newport um uh uh Park development uh it's already has a large number of units and um there's been discussion about adding some more housing there and rehabing that that facility um as you go down to the other red at the end of Pine Street there that's where the gas station is um that was thought of as uh being um perhaps someday uh redeveloped um and then along Pine Street there's another set of condos and those condos are already um existing there's fair I don't know the total number of units I think it's like 12 11 um and so we didn't expect those to get redeveloped so that's a good arsel to include in an overlay District as are the new uh two family units I don't know what the name of that Circle and then the powder house um Apartments so we targeted those as areas to zone for high density so in order to connect those we included the blue other blue areas that way we meet the requirement of getting at least the 18 point something Acres that's required to be a contiguous District so this area of town had the largest number of of uh of of areas that we we wanted to Target um the other thing is to know is um Sarah had mentioned the local historic district local historic district is in green at the bottom none of the local historic district properties are within the um this Zone that we've created nor are they in any of the other zones so we purposely stayed away from those properties um and I think that's so comments from board questions comments the only thing is we said earlier there were no commercial properties but there are on Elm Street there are some on Elm Street and the gas station and the gas [Music] station I just have a question can you explain so the Newport Park is Housing Authority that's cor um so deed restricted for age how could multifam housing go on that well it is multif family housing certainly age restricted housing is allowed in a in a district it can't be required we're not requiring it and in fact the renovation plan that the affordable housing trust is looking at presumes that it would parts of it would not be age restricted anymore okay so they would if they did that that would go under the current zoning not the overlay it would go under the overlay of course because we don't allow multi family housing in any District the tax structure change on that land tax structure no I don't think we get taxes it would depend we do not currently get taxes it would depend on how that property redeveloped if a private developer came in put up some market rate units as part of that project then there would be some taxable income okay the idea is to work with the mha in order to come up with a viable development if if it's redeveloped yeah and I understand that and I think that's a good idea I just don't know how I just don't quite get it yet but I'll keep looking so so the uh zoning cannot require something to be age restricted or other types of restrictions on the housing has to be um un unrestricted but if something already exists in the district or a developer wants to propose that a development he's going to build is age restricted or senior housing he can do that because he's still building multif family units but and that's just a form of ownership but we as a community cannot make that a requirement of the district so I think that's what's confusing some people the task force at first when I got here was still going back and forth and trying to get an opinion from our consultant on that so that's been the determination that as long as we don't require it it's okay if it exists or someone comes in and builds it later the the the state is blind to the existing no I understand all that I just know with deed restriction and who owns the land it gets a little tricky because it's the way the housing authorities are adopted throughout the state so in fact the state tells us what land is excluded and can't be zoned and Newport Park is not excluded so we could certainly Zone it any questions oh yes just a couple of clarifying questions I I think I broadly understand why the test Force got here it seems like it's there's a logical reason for you're doing what you're doing um my two questions are there's a sort of a tail on the um Apartments toward past the fire station area and is that is that all one parcel that kind of shape yes in fact Lauren that's an interesting question because one of the tricky things about this project is the way the state looks at it is parcel by parcel we can't Zone half a parcel yeah we can't say five acres in the LCD is going to be reson we can't do that it's going to be ace parcel of land it has nothing to do with Frontage or anything like that it's just parcel boundaries okay so that's part of the same parcel um thank you and then the red and blue I know you're going to be talking about different subdistricts are these indicating different subdistricts or is this more like the target is we picked these Parcels because they made sense and the blue sort of stitches it all together that's the lad so the this subd would beport park would be one subdistrict powderhouse Apartments would be another subdistrict along Pine Street would be a third subdistrict and then mors court and Sawmill Circle would be final subd District okay and you're talking about that later in the a little bit later okay that's fine can I ask a follow-up question yes in those subdistricts do you do is it strategic to have different densities in different portions or does the district have to have a uniform set of uh zoning requirements for the overlay so uh the former we definitely want to vary the densities in these different subdistricts we don't want to see a whole lot of units necessarily built along Pine Street for example uh so that might be a lower density but we'd like higher density at Newport Park and at outer housee Lane because those are affordable properties and that would help us to get more affordable units built so so we may be able to keep the density a little lower along Pine Street because we have the density a little higher at those two existing developments and then and then that would kind of Target where units would might be devel and the other interesting thing is subdistricts aren't required to be any type of minimum SS as long as they within the district that meets the size requirements your subd districts can be different sizes Y and and in fact this whole District wouldn't have to be necessarily 15 unes breaker it's across all of the districts okay and one other question clarifying question any um multif family family housing um would have a requirement for on-site parking is that correct yes yeah absolutely just because we require it doesn't need it to be built the state doesn't P right right and so just to follow up on that Chris had said uh earlier the units that get built this is really the units that get zoned that's right that's what we're right we're not actually how many get allowed get allowed right I was just going to say and people need to remember for the last 50 years in the General District we've allowed three units by right in existing structures if you look around town there's not a whole bunch of those so the loaning doesn't necessarily mean developers will come in can you just go over what the parking require IR Ms are and if a lot does not meet that then it can't be built I I assume um and then just clarifying if you're going to go over what the densities are in the subdistricts later or now we haven't G to that we don't we don't know what the density this is a very complicated math problem that we have to solve okay so this is just high level high level at the moment it's a b it's a boundary discussion what are the boundaries of the our next meeting next week we will discuss data the actual yeah how how playing working with the model which I will send to the plane I believe you have got it um and U Can it can work and adjust the densities so that we can have higher densities in some areas and lower others so we will um discuss that in Greater detail at next week's meeting and as for parking we can require whatever parking we think is reasonable the underlying zoning is one and a half spaces per unit like the rest of the town I suspect that's a logical place to begin but we might adjust through and that's what was assumed in the calculations that were performed have fre so though it doesn't go through a special permit we could as a town say no you can't build if they don't have adequate parking correct the way the overlay District works is it sets the requirements there's no special permit no variance from those those special requirements in the overlay District so if we say you have to have one and a half parking spaces per unit you can only build the number of units that can handle the one and a half parking space per unit if you want to go outside the parameters of the overlay District now you go back to the original zoning and you're under what's ever in that underlying zoning which is when you could have a special permit or a variance but that's under the existing zoning not MTI not the over very complicated you want take public anyone from the public oh Mary can you Gail and Mary maybe you're both on if you see raised hands to see where I to ask people in the room yes yeah oh sure people in the room and people I don't see any raised hands but oh there's one um you said the minimum can you st your name Gary Gilbert 11 magnol you said the minimum contiguous District you could make was 38 acres or so I think right 18 18 my memories but then it said five acres was the minimum siiz District why are those so you can have you can have a number of districts one of them has to be 18.5 Acres but the others can be as small as five acres and and the 18.5 is actually 50% of your total area so if you were to add a lot of acreage in the LCD like if you use 20 acres out there plus what's in town then your your single continuous zoning District would increase in size which is one reason why we've done what we did is to to not have that grow exponentially was that clear yeah did you get that well we I understand it's a range from five to 18.5 the way it stands five is a minimum 18.5 one one of them has to be at least that and we have to do at least 37 Al together each district has to be I'm sure you're doing a fun job I just clarifying question I may so the minimum ACR for a single contous zoning District that has to be within the half mile radius of the station area it can be anywhere 14.2 no 14.8 acres oh you've got it right there underneath okay thank you and and we deliberately did not take 14.8 acres in the LCD because that would all be new construction new new units um where is keeping it in here um that we have reduce the number of new unit that can be built that first district within the half oh wait a minute maybe that's your half mile yes it is it's all within the half that first district is all within a half mile all of it and all of the other part part of Newport Park is outside but it's on the boundary it's close enough and and the the whole of the um 18.5 doesn't have to be within within the circle as long as we got 14 and something inside the circle which we certainly do should we go to the next District gu there anybody do you see anybody no I no hands up at the moment all right let's move on to the next District uh the next district is um as you can see in red is the Summer Street to C Street Valentine mover properties um now we're talking about the 5 acre districts and um as um Ann just mentioned um this and the next District were added because what we're trying to do is try and limit the total number of units that would be built in the LCD because every unit built there is a new unit in the community so this area is just over the 5 acre minimum um it does include the um Summer Street departments Direct in condo directly across the street from the train station which I believe is about 43 units that's 39 39 3 okay the accessors it was 40 two or 43 um uh so it includes that and few single family homes so it already has a large number of EX of uh units on there close close to 50 in total uh 45 or so um if this was zoned at 15 units an acre uh um the most that could be put on here would be 75 units so the difference is not a large number um if we go to the next uh slide you will see that um the target Parcels is the uh Housing Development across from the train station uh down to include the uh the gas station um on the corner and convenience store in the corner um the uh Parcels across the street on either side of the railroad tracks the uh committee felt it was important to retain those commercial uses it's a large area that has no residential units there and so any if that was zoned at 15 units an acre all those units would be new units in the community um also as you can see in blue it's directly adjacent to the currently mapped flood zone which could be expanded when new flood maps are ever released so again we tried to stay away from that um so in order to obtain five acres oh also above that on the on the map uh the green is the local historic district so it kind of put pushed us up Summer Street and around SE Street to get the 5 Acres so um that's how the uh additional uh land that's uh in the uh blue uh came to be I think the other interesting thing of note is the fact that it includes the electrical substation which is unlike and that's not exempt no no for some reason not Municipal may may end up being exed uhuh that's actually listed in the guidelines that it would be exempt electrical well again it's not it's not a piece of excluded land so the state has list or Maps there's different categories but yeah it so that's interesting that the the mapping is different than the guidance any other questions comments from the board [Music] members from the audience so in in the ACT today in that blue additional Parcels on the right side there really are only a couple of homes um and the the old mover property so again if you think about it I guess some of those could be built but but that somebody would be I guess in order for somebody to for the property to be built to number thing that's currently a single family home somebody has to a be willing to sell it then somebody has to be willing to buy it and develop it for that purpose so um if if so it's not those things have to happen for it to and I think that if you're talking smaller size slots I think Denny can chime in as to what's financially feasible but in a lot of the downtown area you'd have to purchase a lot of individually owned Lots Which is less likely than it's like large on yeah I mean I think the intent of of the committee is to make it as hard as where somebody might develop make it as difficult as possible so as an example if if a developer has to come in and assemble five Lots it's five times harder than buying one lot and the smaller and this and we've also tried to focus on small Lots uh with the same intent thereby making it much more difficult for a developer to to actually put put in effect a development but that's not to say that we're not encouraging for example family preservation of a one family to a three family by an individual owner so what we want to see is development that is overtime and peace wield because that's what the character of the town is this Zone does have one area that's moderate size which is thect the the seaside convenience store and gas station and yes that that be nice to have that redeveloped in having sorry I'm anti gas station having a gas station as a centerpiece of our downtown is not very attractive I think the architex would agree yes Laura so um so the gas station is the smaller blue parcel is that right gas station okay we may want to consider it's the gas station plus Stanley's garage that whole Corner how big is that lot not half an AC so that could seven seven which would be fit in with the other condos that are already there and what is the moving parcel where is that track am I correct yes right there because it was once a moving company or something Moving storage yeah originally it was grain storage no okay it's kind of GRE storage uhuh okay they transported it on the Railroad and up the creek Chuck yeah Chuck wi near 16 Highland Avenue um given that the whole the umbrella of the state thing is to encourage multif family housing right um The Balancing Act you're doing here of creating lots that are difficult to build is sort of like contradictory to the overall umbrella will the state sort of read into that or will they have a on that I think yeah they will they have to approve this eventually and we're going to submit it to them in advance of town meeting so they have a chance to comment but I think the state has got a bunch of they're balancing things also they don't want to destroy the downtown either so I think they're leaving it up to us to figure out how best to accommodate the need for new housing and take care and taking care of the character of the and and I think I might correct your statement to say we don't want big developments downtown we don't want any large thing but what Chris was just saying about encouraging three family four family you know yes absolutely that's that's the way the town has had infill happen incrementally over time and I I think the state model is a mathematical exercise and that they can't really go outside of that when they've Got7 communities to deal with so they're not looking at the current use for the underlying part they won't see dive into how hopefully not they don't have the data to do that they can't tell that some these lots are full of rocks and ledge and can't be built on Erica I have a question about the um going back to Stanley's garage that parcel um why do you have a logic that you think it's automatic that if it is included then it um it can't be mixed use I I don't understand that and I I think that that particular lot would really take away from the downtown if it were converted into only residences I I we we can't require excuse yeah I know that I'm wondering what logic leads you to believe that if you Z be built with only res we can give incentives no I'm still asking the same question what is the logic that makes you say that somehow it's going to be 100% residential no it's it's not required to be 100% residential okay so therefore why the logic of removing commercial we just cannot require that the first floor be commercial yes we can't require that then but if they choose commercial that's my question yes if they if they choose to they they could like the next building up that has um some commercial on the first floor and parking some stairs yeah which would wonderful they could yeah exactly it's a beautiful building they could do the same thing on that corner comply with the the MBTA density for housing and and still put commercial because that's allowed in the underlying District so joh hello my hands up the last two people who spoke I do not I did not get their names I'm sorry sorry Gail Erica Brown of 57 Brook Street oh thank you Erica and who the other gentl oh Chuck wizner 16 Highland Avenue thank you John yeah if I might just make a comment on can you identify yourself John Harden 54 School Street um I think the fear is that some of our commercial area that we enjoy yes could be bought by someone else and made 100% residential because that would be the most profitable thing for a developer to do and that is a risk that we would take if we identified one of those areas as part of the Zone I think that's the logic but by the way I think that is the best spot for quty family housing Beach Street building but maybe someone will do it one day so to take Erica's or this thread a little bit further it seems to me that what we concurrently or subsequently might want to do is to change the underlying zoning so that we uh require or encourage um uh commercial on the first floor with housing above it um in the areas um so that we continue to have a commercial part of downtown so that's an example of where underlying zoning would um encourage or uh uh require depending on how it's framed that use and that in that particular parcel multif would be allowed by right but only to a point if you have the certain requirements and then if not um the underlying zoning would Yeah we actually entertain the idea of a multif family District sorry mixed use District but the complication of getting that drafted in time to meet our schedule we just said let's get this done and then yeah then do that second next year we can start talking about something more complicated the problem was is there were too many restrictions in the MBTA zoning law and it seemed like if you're really want to accomplish what you wanted you need to do it outside of the NBTA zing and at a later time because we're running out of time if I'm remembering right Sarah the way the MBTA zoning looks at requiring mixed use is if you require it it is then not a MBTA District you can count the units but not the acreage Laur two questions if that red parcel is zone for multif family housing it seems to me that we're going to need some um possibly design standards for where that constrain where parking happens because you could imagine I mean the historic buildings that are left on that parcel are quite a close relationship with the street and their scale and how they address the street and you could put number of multif family housing which might be a desirable use for that parcel as a use but if that means the parking is up against the street and then you've got parking lots lining down downtown that is not a desirable outcome to me so if there's so I have that question about the red parcel in general so hopefully the design standards committee are thinking about those kind of urbanistic moves yes they hear about those my other question is this a lot of um it's a it's a very close granular look at the downtown which is great doesn't seem to me we're going in the other direction in the half mile there's a big part we're not looking at so could you just talk about that when you the big part there's a sort of I guess to the southeast if we back up to the map kind of headed are you headed down there to talk about that down toward the beach towards the beach yeah so that's all within the half mile so could you talk about why you're not okay so so here we go the reason that we're not picking places like in zone e is because the uh minimum lot size in those districts is two acres and two acres at 15 units there Time by a pretty good size project all of a sudden out of scale with the rest of the tent so we are trying tols that be purply H so everything within a half mile we're looking at very Graw scale yes there are a couple of pretty good siiz Parcels so it's not it's not all grandular yeah and historically some of the larger Parcels I think were hotels or other I mean going way back but there could could well be interestingly enough though some of the densest development in town which is way over 15 units per acres for example one to three uh School Street there are 13 units on a tiny piece of land and the density is I don't know 80 units an acre or something so I ask um and then there Liz has a her hand Liz doesn't say last name but Liz has her hand up um so I guess the same topic but jumping back to the prior area um there's commercial on Elm Street yes are we not concerned about protecting that uh we're we're a little concerned uh yes but um it doesn't have the character of some of the other commercial they're not historic buildings it's a bicycle shop and some architect's offices so so the only ones you're protecting in town are within the historic district no no there are others too okay so like Crosby's for example we're protecting Crosby we don't want that fall down and turned into condos but I'm just trying to get what the argument is and be able to do it across the board like is is or are you doing it scenario by scenario I said in the beginning we're trying to balance things it's not going to be you know we can't we don't have these strict rules we have to do this and do that we're trying to do the best we can to accommodate these different often competing um constraints on what on how how we want the town to to to accommodate these things and in the Elm Street area you have Sawmill Circle which nobody's going to come in and redevelop that you have a bunch of condos along the left side of Elm Street um and we wanted to include out of House Lane because that's lots of density and there's room to put more um yeah my my question was strictly for the commercial aspect of the discussion that we were just having it' be great if we could be totally consistent with every argument we I don't think we'd be able to do this if weent strictly ourselves we have a question online from Liz Liz hello Liz Colbert 22c Street I have a two-part question so if um C Street's being grouped with um Summer Street which does have commercial is there any circumstance where we could put potentially have commercial on SE street is my first question and the second is the two properties at the end of SE Street if you um if a developer bought both of them they'd be just under five acres so just wondering how many potential units could go there and how many potential units on the tapen street warehouse um just you know this is a single family res resid area I was just curious how many units the neighborhood could potentially see if it was um redeveloped thank you very much okay the first question uh there is the underlying Zoning for SE street is for residential so there is no way anyone can do any commercial on SE Street uh the second question actually the entire district is five acres so uh I think the I'm not sure what a reasonable assembly of parcels might somebody might be able come up with it looks like the Valentine parcel is about a little under a half an acre and the two residential Parcels um a long sea it's a little hard Tre but they look like they're maybe H twoth thirds of an acre together okay so if somebody were to combine all those together of course it'd be a railroad track between them um and again the density may not be 50 units an acre we may find that we can have have less density there by increasing the density somewhere else has hand yes put it down I thought sorry down mine's down okay any other public comments all right Mark okay again well we looked at um several other areas um but this is an area tried to find another 5 acre area that had a fair number of units on it um to Target uh for um uh to in order to limit uh the total number of new units that would have to be developed in the LCD um this particular District runs from the um from uh the corner of Allen and Summer Street where there's a commercial Condo building um to include the condos along U the end of Brook Street running up Summer um all the way to the uh other gas station at the corner of Lincoln Street so if we go to the next slide you will see how we um targeted the uh existing condo properties which are the first one at the beginning of uh Allen Street and the ones along Brook Street and then we targeted the other uh properties uh one being the gas station and then three other properties are two families on very small Lots so they're not likely to be um be uh redeveloped and um and then we the connecting Parcels are the ones in between uh which gives us that minimum of five acres um so that is how we arrived at that also on this map I put a different uh overlay which is the Water Resource protection districts which you can see in um green and red at the very top of the screen and um and blue at the bottom and um I think the ACT zones got cut off but uh uh I think it's Zone one two and three and so the gas station what green is two is two so the gas station is in two you know and and um if this every got I mean so that's a bit of a concern having the gas station there you never know when there might be you know an accidental release so if that got redeveloped at some point in the future that was deemed as a desirable thing for uh Watershed protection so that's uh how we arrived at this okay questions question since we've already talked about two gas stations that entally could get redeveloped I would assume but correct me if I'm wrong that nothing that any zoning changes waves any kind of State Environmental rules are log right AB still have to be applied any other questions how many unit sorry how many units are in this uh book Street uh development don't know that answer okay um tell you actually in a second is it two I'm just curious and then the other uh comment following up on Laura's comment um I think is really a good one about parking behind and you can see that that that's a really nice example where they put the parking behind same with 10 to 12 Summer Street where the parking is behind and um you can see the real if you if you were to in your mind flip it with along the street it really um it's a nice both are nice examples of why that should be a design standard yes so those are two two per unit um two per building so that's 12 units there um the uh the building that's on the corner of uh Summer Street and a commercial building is a commercial condo building is that the old Cricket yes and it includ the original Cricket yeah origal the old Cricket is next to the 1669 cemetery and we deliberately excluded that because it's a large parcel 61 I think there's also residential on that I think there's a res well there are six six units yeah there might be but there are six units in that that first building on the corner there so and then um those other three little red ones are two families actually one has three sorry first one uh where the arrow next under the blue arrow has three other gu one also op opposite the gas station has three so so there are out of those just right there 12 6 18 20 plus the six is 26 okay in that District already questions from the public has her hand up but I don't know if it's is your hand up and Sarah Pier Sarah Pierce has just raised hand okay Sarah no my hand's not up okay Sarah sah is hi thank you very much for taking my question I just wonder in the downtown area everything outside of the LCD have you decided on a height cap or height limitation we haven't finalized it but we know it's not going to be more than three stories um three and a half I'm sorry three and a half stories three and a half stories in the downtown and it might be different in different subdistricts so we all to even have stories on powderhouse Lane for example oh okay so when will you be coming out with the information on where those will be the next couple of weeks we're going to have to come up with um so let me explain why this is important every story that you put on a building adds residential units and increases the density and means that we don't have to Zone someplace else with a lower density oh I understand that I just think that it it definitely does not keep within preserving the town for the way it's built and the historical character the small cide town three and a half stories is pretty tall well believe it or not there are some three and a half story buildings in the down yeah there there are a couple I just think if we start I mean again it would be nice to see one they'll be so I'll stay tuned to see where you're gonna put those that would be great thank you okay Laura yes there's a kind of similar spatial question about what you know the density of the lot and whether you need to go up or out and parking is a is a gigantic Eater of real estate so if the task force is thinking about the requirements for the number of parking spaces for these multif family units it would behoove us to think about something less than what the underlying zoning would require for a couple of reasons one is we try not to overpay right we're in Water Resource districts we're in a dense downtown that has a historical character that was developed before there were cars and so that's part of what creates our very tight-knit downtown community um and service parking is the antithesis of what that feels like also the more parking that you're requiring and if you need to meet these sensory requirements that's going to send you up because you got to be on the smaller footprint so you got to go higher so there's some balance there that has to be looked at and I think the intent of multif family housing within a transit district is that people have different kinds of families single parent families older families there might be all kinds of Reason a single person family there might be all kinds of reasons why someone living in a unit like that would not want or need two cars and so I think just kind of being open to those kinds of discussion would help us actually realize some of these units and keep that granular scale that we're really I can see we're trying very hard to do and I understand that I get that we want to keep that fabric at the town but it' be also nice to actually provide some more housing and some more diversity of choice of Housing and I just think parking is a a real um for ecological and environmental and urban scale um issues it's you know we should try to minimize it to a reasonable number that's not more than what a unit would require so it's a very good point interestingly enough the way the computer model works that's going to grade us it assigns a th000 square feet per unit and then it kind of automatically says if it's a three story height limit you can put three units on a th square foot footprint uh and then our setback requirements and our lot coverage requirements generally is bigger than what the parking would require anyway so as we toy with the model we find that adding parking doesn't really change anything to the density that we're talking about it's more about or taking it away doesn't but it does have an impact on the landscape but it would be covered I think in our design guidelines yeah the The Architects are going to have something to say about that yeah but it's a zoning question too right it is a zoning question that's number of spaces per unit more questions okay let's move on to the final District okay so the final District um so one of the reasons why we besides doing our required large 18 acre piece along Hine Street um and doing the additional two 5 acre pieces was to limit the size of the um area in the LCD because every new unit that get created in the LCD is a new unit in the community so by adding two 5 acre pieces we're now at a total of close to um 30 Acres or maybe even um so we only need an additional 7 Acres I think we're like at 31 so we only need an additional 7 Acres so the uh called it's called the uh cin K kelin to make it so people understand storage yes yes it's the storage property um yeah um so uh this is the area it's remember we have to Zone an entire parcel we can Zone A Part piece of a property so this property is accessors has it at 6.8 Acres other things have it at 7 slightly over seven um so this parcel kind of fits the requirement um it is already developed with the storage facility on there um it is um not in the wetlands it's not in the flood plane uh although it does border the property um as you can see uh to the uh West and North a little bit um that's all a kind of a Swampy Marsh it would be subject to filing with the Conservation Commission because it's ajacent to Wetlands but uh it is not excluded from development obviously it's quite fully developed today um so somebody said Disturbed yes it is very disturbed and so um this is the uh the property that uh um we decided would kind of be fit the bill um and um again depending on the final uh numbers of units that would the other districts would get zoned for the balance of our 500 this would get zoned for the balance of our 550 units um so that uh we do comply with the the the law so okay I noticed are people chatting yeah Jonathan ke has his handr but maybe come ask so uh just just for the record we're not accepting chats under the public meeting well we can't really it was just to see how he wanted to identify that his hand was raised oh okay fine and that so we start with the board and John will come to you shortly anyone any comments on this okay John go ahead John Keef are you muted um I got two can you hear me on one of these I got two things unmuted now no you're fine we can hear you fine okay great yeah um so thank you um so thanks for all the hard work you guys are doing I think there some good really good thought here um I would I guess the question I had you know because there's a lot of um oh that'll never you know that probably won't happen that probably won't happen sort of conversation and and I don't disagree probably a lot of things you know will probably pretty much stay the same um but I'm wondering is there some intention to do some Financial analytics around the the zones and then the sort of if you will some probabilistic methods to think about okay what is a property worth you know what's the you know what's it cost to demo what's it cost to build and you know it's to start to say more more than likely or not um for example you talked about um st's garage and and and I'm not say it's likely but as an example you know people think well that one might become one I'm so for example I'm looking at um a couple of properties out on Pine Street um there it's uh let's see 30 Pine Street and uh 34 Pine Street they're owned by somebody called Tom Ford LLC those two lots are 1.4 acres and the lot next to it is about over half an acre so there's like two acres plus with only three houses on it to me it feels like that's an area where someone would could scrape scrape the house houses and put up you know 20 some odd units on Pine Street so I'm just curious if you're looking at that sort of probabilistic method of construction cost versus you know acquisition cost and sort of sort of heat mapping where these developments are most likely to take place again knowing that in many cases you know it wouldn't make a lot of a lot of sense to assemble a bunch of lots to to add for you know a couple of units so the answer to your question is yes in fact rkg which is part of the partner a partner of the a consultant specializes in doing this kind of analysis and we are hoping to get a proposal from them to do exactly what you suggested which is to look at every parcel and come up with a likelihood of development on it based on costs and size and all the factors that go into developer decision another question from DF yes hi thank you so much this is um Donna fur from AP Blossom Lane thank you guys very much um just a quick question on So currently right now in the LCD we do not have Zoning for residential and I think mark thank goodness like he explained something earlier which made more sense to me um the question I sorry the question I have is so if it's right now zon for 6.8 potentially 6.8 to Seven Acres which roughly if it was 15 units per acre would come out to about 105 multif family units in your description Mark that you put out which all these districts it was really really great thank you very much um we were talking a little bit about Workforce housing for employees of sell signaling potential for senior housing assisted living facilities so my question would be like right now nothing is zoned for residential but if we Zone it as an overlay for the 40a would that mean the 105 would have to the multif family and then they can add more on of the other stuff if they wanted to do it or it doesn't have to be 105 multifam it can be 50 multif family and then it can be senior housing and affordable housing I was just trying to see like if it's really 105 multif family and then they would just expand on that which would mean that there would actually be more units but just different I I just wanted some clarification if that's possible thank you very much uh okay so there are two answers to that the the first is no it's just the you can't add more units and what are allowed under the under the zoning so whether they're Assisted Living units or their Workforce housing units or Mansions you're only going to be allowed a certain number the second part of this is that we're going to use this uh District as uh what you call it name the catch all catch all so we're going to try to to do the zoning to get the best deal for the downtown we can that everybody's going to agree to and then whatever is left we're going to say that's the density that's the number of units that can go on the Calin property it might be 105 it might be 72 it might be 137 we don't know until we do all the balancing and figure out what the rest of the downtown's going to be able to accommodate oh I understand that Chris thank you very very much but in the description that I think this was Mr Resnik who had written he said that the district was selected as it could become a possible location for senior housing or even assisted living facilities so I guess my those are all multif family uses so but but you can't you can't have senior housing as a multif family use right that's yeah yeah of course you can have senior housing you can't require it but it could certainly be done okay okay so I just again just saying that is really important I think for people to understand I mean I I'm on a lot of these meetings and I'm still asking these questions so making sure that that's known is really important that when you think of multif family I don't think senior housing you know what I'm saying so I think that's really important to mention thank you okay thank you for asking the question yes Mary could you clarify senior housing um so I assume there couldn't be an age limit so how is it senior housing so the developer can put any age can put any limits on he wants to we can't so so if somebody comes in and wants to build senior housing they can do it they can do it we're not going to require them to do senior housing but if they want to do senior housing they certainly are capable of doing it so and as a planning board we've gone round and round on this senior housing or senior facility either one yeah there the definition our definition in Zoning for example says assisted living is a res resdential use and so is senior housing in our current zoning I think it's for um in the definitions okay so so I think that's important so senior housing so it could be senior housing or senior facility with the overlay that backs and Heights and okay y yes s oh sorry I Laura had her hand up first so I'm thinking about the lscd parcel and our goals about affordable housing which I know we can't require as a zoning overlay but there is a percentage requirement right with affordable housing so have we looked at just doing the modeling of if you were to max out that and so you're going to get to some number of units depending on what you want the downtown to do but if you were all to look at sort of the minimum and the maximum how many affordable units could we realize as part of that multif family housing and it would be great to know how close that gets us to our goal of meeting the affordable housing there it's not going to doesn't get where where is it though um we're at 5.4% so um we can by by the law require 10 we don't have to but we can require 10% right the affort yeah we can get a feas study done that says 20% yeah so the's got theirs approved so I'm sure we probably can too yeah so we can require 20% yeah so for every unit that's built today we have to create every 10 units we have to create an affordable unit right if we're doing 20% Then we're actually going to gain a little bit except that we're targeting small developments and the rest we are but here how many can we get how many can we get here how many let's say we did 100 reset or 100 Ines so you could get 20 20 and would that Rel the pressure on I mean the 40b is its own thing I know there you know we're we got this issue right where we can get unfriendly developments coming and how far does that get us towards not very far but it's a start it could be a 40b and we could get a 40b anywhere and and a friendly 40b the way 12 10 and 12 subm Street is difference being this is a disturb parcel is a more appropriate place for develop House Lane is already affordable so any additions there are going to be affordable probably Newport Park some of it will certainly be affordable so right on that same vein um Can the this particular District have a bonus so if you made it 30% affordable you get an extra some number of units yeah we could potentially we could do that so that would be the place to do that and and and sort of to Mary's prior question uh I assume that the multif family zoning could also say tow houses for uh the general public with unrestricted residents and um you know an apartment building type thing if it was senior housing so uses that that incre that incentivize certain kinds of uses maybe get a different style of architecture we could certainly in our we could we could certainly have guidelines designed for different uses for sure yeah say m first yeah just um give me some latitude if I'm not getting the the vernacular right but with the rkg study are they going to do what I would call an economic impact analysis you know in other words you know X new units produces X Dollar in incremental property tax revenue but on the flip side it has X we've asked them for a proposal on that as well yes I think that's hugely important uh yeah I guess it is I'm not sure how it guides us necessarily but um it's not even about guiding it's just making everybody aware I think for for that reason it's probably a good idea yes because I've done my own modeling and it's it's big numbers not the good one yes you ready y have 28 M Street and I just want to Echo what Mike is saying basically I think that's useful data and I know I've asked you know for some of that myself it's just useful to know if we're going to do this what's the impact on the CH I think that's reasonable and the second is um I do concur with um Sarah um if we're going to do this we need to get something from it and of course as you know Chris I'm very interested in development of uh we're calling it senior housing um we shouldn't say age restricted in this case but with um the rest of the team on the design guidelines and also whoever may be involved I think a multitude of different types of housing if we're going to do this in the LCD um seems very rational and I think that as T we need to Advocate that if we're going to do this we need to get something back so um I think they're asking us to do an awful lot here I see what all of you have done it is a mathematical calculation that's the bottom line but we're we're taxpayers and also we're residents so um let's get something out of it and let's also provide um when you're ready to go forward forward with this to uh Town meetings let's provide some other data that says look you know we're going to do this but don't be afraid or maybe be afraid I don't know yet here's here's with me impact so um that that's my contribution scary Gary gber 11 magell have um I was going to end our presentation with this but I think it's a good point to mention the LCD we've only just started as a team to start focusing on what it would look like at 15 units an acre but um it's a perfect opportunity where you could allow through the design guidelines and we've been towing with different variables there but the classic way is to allow an extra for Building height if we get some of the things we want like workers housing 20% affordable housing uh or well downtown you could provide perks if you get mixed ju commercial on the first floor but you could allow perhaps greater loot coverage you could allow an extra story and height where it's where we think we can digest that and through so through that sort of up zoning they call it you you can this is a commonly used mechanism that does work it is effective so you some of these goals we have the best place to obtain some of them is in that small little parcel I would almost rather see be bigger but um a bit bigger but because it's the place where this kind of um these kind of uses we could more realistically see them actually curve do you want to jump to I guess is that the segue to the design guidelines yeah before we fall asleep do you have a presentation yeah I have a brief sh that do I need to give you permission are you online I'm online if I hit share screen uh wait a minute I think I have to do something I know click on three button at the top of his name oh is it I change my name it should be me oh there we are all right that should work okay so can I introduce you all what I think you go here yeah G so let me introduce Gary Gilbert Chuck Wisner and John Harden all our residents of the town all three have got backgrounds in architecture and all three have been working on trying to create design guidelines that you can apply to our overlay districts so Gary why don't you start off with your slideshow um okay uh this is a work in progress we were asked to do just a brief presentation of it you don't have the we have a r a a written text of design guidelines themselves with the language and such but that's not being distributed today we're just going to show some slides and talk about some of our Concepts um uh at the very beginning of this we started with something that um had never been actually written up before which was the town character statement and it made it clear to us um what we love about the town um it's got an intimate feel to it it's charm the buildings are Charming there's a lot of historic structures and it has a lot of classic New England um features like a Commons couple beautiful churches and our town town center and then then there's the ocean um so it what do we benefit from is um the topography that were wrapped around the ocean and um The Hills that sort of force the buildings to be more intimate and close together um we have mixed historical buildings so we have a heterogeneous architectural Styles Federal Craftsman Victorian Etc but they all there is a certain homogeneity to that and we benefit from those historic building styles because they have architectural elements to them that make them human scale and pleasant like they have a base middle and top they all have different versions of of covered entries recess entries Dormers pitched Roes Etc and these are the kind of elements we're focusing on in the design guidelines that we will as best we can require so even a more modern building have elements like this that modulates the mass of the building and provides these features to break down the scale of the building we end up with successful um Build architecture um another thing we benefit from is the buildings happen to be close to the street again I think that's because of the hills and topography which creates a street walls that give you a sense of intimacy and enclosure um uh one of my professors used to use the term missing teeth we don't have too many missing teeth downtown there's a few places like the Browns uh building with the bank that's perpendicular to the street and there's a large parking lot exposed that would be like a missing teeth you're lacking a street wall but in other parts of town um it's quite Pleasant um so uh so the then we went and did sort of an analysis of what do we have and what do we like about it and why do we like those things about it and we'll start with the Summer Street Building and what's what we thought was rather Pleasant about it is it's relatively close to the street and the massing of the building is broken up by this really huge Dormer can you see my there you can um this big D um Bay sticking out towards the street and then dormers on the roof pitch SCS and the ground floor retail is articulated differently than the residential above um how do I get to the next SL okay um here's a building that is pretty unfortunate um it's it was originally a real slab of brick that I guess they did a partial renovation to later and put a some Bay into it some entry bays and uh porches out front which help somewhat but it's a good example of why you don't want want to have continuous building walls that are not modulated that are not broken up or popping out or or recess um some of the buildings uh there's a number of buildings downtown that used to be I think three or even four stories tall historically but a number but they're now single story and we have a mix there's there's there's other ones taller but there were more that were taller in the past um and the ground floor retail T typically is articulated differently than the residential above this uh Street intersection is is is a good uh example of a part of town that would benefit by having a second or third story on those buildings would give a greater sense of enclosure to the street and here's a building that's three and a half stories uh not we don't particularly like the ground floor brick like that in the windows but um but it's a relatively Pleasant building it has a shed roof Dormer and pitched Roes and it fits in and here's a big anomaly but I don't hear anybody saying it's the most ugly thing in the world it it's it's fine to have an anomaly here and there and this is quite tall this is about four and a half stories um but again it has dormers it has um P it has a couple different types of Dormers it has a a Dutch camell roof and it kind of works it's unfortunate the building across the street is just a single family with um front and rear yards so that sort of breaks up the the sense of Street enclosure um this is an interesting building that um thankfully someone's putting a lot of money into to make it handsome but it actually has quite a bit of density and it's a good example of how you can get a lot of density in a building and you can tolerate this the 15 units per acre can be done and be pleasant and these are extremely um we're really fortunate that these were ever built I believe these I keep let's see they're two three unit buildings am I correct yes yes two three units and a two unit in the back and unit in the back now you can't force somebody to spend a lot of money on trim and corner boards but you certainly can suggest it and we'll talk about what we're going to do in the design guidelines to try to encourage better architecture but this is really handsome and they deserve credit um this building up on Pleasant Street I think is a really good example how uh these buildings were originally proposed I was on the zoning board when this was when this was reviewed it was originally proposed as two as two two unit buildings with 90 foot long rooms that were not broken up at all and because we have one sentence in our district d u uh zoning bylaw description we we were allowed with that one sentence to basically force him to to break it up and make it fit into the neighborhood and I think in the end I've had Neighbors come up to me and say they felt it was a really successful project but not only not only reads as as four separate buildings but there's two different architectural styles to used so I consider that a success without a heavy lift so it's possible to have design guidelines that work um this is um these are some examples of things we don't want to see um a on Desmond AB there's big parking lot in front of a building that we could out and out prohibit um in the lower left is uh the uh that building that's perpendicular to the street and a large large parking lot which is the kind of thing you don't want to see and on the right we have um driveway entrances that are to the side of the building which is an appropriate way to do it and the parking is in through here um so um so as far as design guidelines go um they're not new they've been in place in many many towns throughout the country and they can be quite effective and we we broke those down into two parts one would be some mandatory regulations like you can't be taller than a certain height um and there's other dimensions in there that we can we're all free to discuss it's going to be discussed I'm sure quite a bit um but someone asked well what can you do to prevent the ugly I me John was asked that question it was a really good question um so just saying no you can't have a seven-story building downtown and the state is going to prove that for sure because you're allowed to say some things you can do and can't do and then there's the desired or encouraged portions of the design guidelines so we're recommending setting up a design Review Committee of five people um from the design professions ideally and um they'll have to meet our our criteria satis satisfactorily enough that they would approve of it or provide recommendations to the planning board to approve the project um what this kind of approach has already been submitted by a similar approach by North by Nu I believe and I don't know what how the states responded to them so it's not like we're inventing Reinventing the wheel um the there's a two and a half story Norm that everyone's used to but that is a appropriate for residential neighborhoods urban sprawl residential neighborhoods downtown it's I think it's reasonable to allow say three and a half stories and we say half story because that typically implies a pitched roof if you do um and you wouldn't be able to do a full fourth story a three-story flat roof stru structure could could successfully be built downtown is if as long as its massing is modulated and they conform to our other design guidelines and and setbacks um one of the things about setbacks downtown is some people think well you want set back so actually they're detrimental I think to we feel to uh the look and feel of town so we want to scrutinize that number and modify slightly from our existing bylaws uh the length we would regulate the length of unbroken roofs you can't have more than say 50 feet without having some sort of an offset either either or perpendicular roof coming in or the ridge being raised or lowered um and then let's see um and then I mentioned earlier you can build into these incentives such as Building height and lot coverage even just an extra 10% of lot coverage could be enough to really get what you want out of a developer and what I what we there's in the suggested areas where you can maybe best do it since we're under crunch for time we don't have a huge budget to hire Consultants to do drawings we may show a number of photos as part of the document showing a developer what we want to see and generally speaking if you show developers what you want they want to get their stuff approved and six to nine months not a year and a half so they tend to want to give you what you want to some extent as long as the numbers work for them so uh it would be nice to show some there are examples of how you can design two or three story buildings that look like a single family home there's plenty of examples of that and I'd like to try to get some images of that in our text um when we went to the LCD which we still have more work to do there but we first tried to see we took two basic approaches or paradigms as to how how to build there one would be the more massive blocks that's a place where maybe we could tolerate um a blocky multif family building so uh one approach is that we' have maybe parking either on Surface parking or parking um on the first floor and then three stories above it another approach uh which I really like I should preface this by saying I feel personally very strongly that the town is always considered that their back their backyard where they sort of throw their Refuge perhaps and I think we should if we're going to allow development there encourage it we want to make it a place we're proud of I firmly believe that so if we break up clusters if we did like um stacked tow houses three and a half stories there in clusters around quads or common spaces um and we're we we can't design it for them but we can we should we're going to try to give you guys a couple of images of how these two different approaches might look and then we got to talk with work with the town planner to figure out how we can craft um zoning bylaws that'll encourage what we want to see and we could have sort of clustered semi-attached semi- detached structures there in a little neighborhood and I think the town will be quite happy in the end so there's more work to be done I hope that's is that enough guys is it what the only thing I want to add is is the overall AR the arching sort of deriv of the decisions that we made and the design guidelines was that we aren't an an Tucket we don't want to be an an Tucket and Ona Lexington where we have a main street that just you know goes on for eight blocks um we have this unique townscape and when I say townscape what it means is you you can drive through Manchester and you go around a corner and then there's a surprise well you go around a corner and a building stops your eye and that's what defines that's where really the character makes the character of the Town including the topography so we want to encourage that we don't want to Minish that we want to say how do we take care of those special opportunities and yeah can I just add one more thing one of the purposes for why we were doing this and why we were asked to do it is to provide the town with some tools so that if if there's a design review board that they could have something that they could look at that they can also distribute to the people who want to work in our town but more importantly that people on that committee can look at it point to it and say you know this is what we're expecting this is what we what we want and it gives it a little bit of teeth so that we can hopefully um get some some projects in town that are reflective of of our character um thank you all sounds like a great start I have a couple of uh thoughts I think the LCD agree with what you said Gary about there could be different couple of models for it if we can put in a hundred and some units there we're really talking about creating a new neighborhood in town which I think is you know it shouldn't just be let's push as much as we can there or you know it's not just a math question really if this area does get developed let's make it a neighborhood might have a different field than the Town Center does but how do we optimize that through um through the urban um you know uh guidelines that you're talking about the massing and the height and so forth and I think that three and a half stories is a human scale still depends again on the context around it but certainly the LCD downtown could accommodate that uh you know three stories plus a gable roof and certainly the LCD given the kind of it's just wrapped in Green Space it's a highly Disturbed site but it is kind of wrapped in green could also accommodate some of the um you know potentially higher higher buildings uh tighter footprint but um I I also want to see I think that street front that you talked about is important but but one thing that our town does allow to is it's very green so you've got these kind of a little bit of our articulation in that street wall so that you've got room to plant a tree we don't have much room for Street trees in the right away but if you leave a little Jagged Edge in that street wall you can get some Greenery behind the street right away so you think of the Stanley's garage site and it's kind of this Remnant piece of green but it's really special to the downtown right it's got a few Honey Locust trees it's got this kind of lovely pastoral feeling to it and anchors that town uh intersection so there's a way to think about that in your Urban Design well be uh as well because I think um that also helps with scales trees help a lot with human scales obviously we want to be thinking about climate change and storm water management and cooling our public corridors so I would just encourage you to think about ways that you can articulate the massing in the street wall to allow for some of that kind of green finger to come through can I respond to that please um yeah I think about cambridges zoning which really has very extensive um language about requiring a certain amount of usable Green Space Green Space globally and then usable Green Space is a subgroup and I think that we could probably put explicit mandatory rules in the zoning District to require a certain amount of Green Space there's certain things we could do in that direction and then by having the buildings modulated so that the we're encouraging the facades to not be these Relentless walls that inherently will give you a setback area between the sidewalk in the building where you can do space question yes sir um mine's a processed question and that is um first of all I think this is great I really learn something and um I'm excited about seeing your the guidelines um we have zoning and then the design guidelines I think Emily said that they are can be adopted by the planning board rather than being uh required in zoning is that is that true you can have some of each some of each um and then Strate is it strategic to for the planning board to adopt those before we adopt the zoning or or have we thought about that I don't think it matters I think the state is going to want to see to make sure they're not discretionary discretionary and then the uh multi follow up the multif family uh zoning overlays these the guidelines will be they won't be um requirements unless and so how does that work do we know how how it's going to work is we're going to require site plan review by the planning board for every one of these overlay districts oh okay over a certain size right well that's hey family so yeah um so then have to meet every Monday and Thursday they're not GNA be that okay okay the second thing is is that we're going to include the the archit design guidelines as one of the performance stand all right I like that and and I think the other thing to remember is is that homeowner say in the general that you can do three units by right within an existing building they don't want to go through a site plan review they w't don't want to do the design guidelines that they go to the underlying Zone yeah right everyone always have the right to go to the underlying zone right yes Erica I'm G to go back to what I asked before Erica Brown Gil uh 57 Brook Street um I'm wondering with the design guidelines a lot of communities are adopting form-based zoning which is a fundamentally mixed use and the strategy there is that downtown needs to be vibrant with mixed use and with something to go to and and it speaks to what you're talking about this kind of um so I I guess because I think of things like you know we used to have Zachs we don't have Zachs anymore and we can't have Zachs anymore so we need to we're depleting rather than and and this is an opportunity I'm wondering if the logic for this multif family residential mandate I know I understand that it's a multif family mandate is there an opportunity are you thinking that if we allow or encourage commercial downstairs with residential upstairs then we're adding something and we don't want to because we want to add as little as possible because that's definitely the theme I'm feeling um but that definitely is the theme I'm feeling that's the throughput here but is form based or something that is more mixed use that invigorates downtown and the businesses that are downtown that really need help and support we couldn't agree more okay the three of us but but I think the issue is what's what's Allowed by what they can allow yeah okay by the state requirements sorry okay I thought I'd ask one more time I would add the most fertile of the incentives that we could use the most a reasonable the one reasonable or the most practical one to use downtown would be to allow greater height so if you just give somebody let them do a four and a half story building if it if it passes design review also and if we get commercial mixed juice on the first floor those are the kind of things we should consider one can say is that we could allow a special permit under the overlay district for a first floor commercial space and the same number of residential floors that would be allowed otherwise which would do the same thing but guarantee that but still satisfies the state yeah but still would satisfied so there are some things we can do John sorry uh John Harden 54 School Street there was something said before about being able to count the units but not the land what was that can can someone explain that you yeah if in fact the town the zoning mandated Mi Chiefs as opposed to just allowing it um if it mandated it would not be considered to be an MBTA zoning District however the acre the units that would the model would figure out could be counted the residential units would count toward the 559 total but the acerage would not and it doesn't go against the density calculation so it's a no win so the the the law is really doesn't really Foster uh misuse kind of doesn't help it doesn't help but I'm not sure we shouldn't do it right absolutely I think we would all agree we should do it but I'm be outside the nbga Z I think that's well attention but I don't I don't imagine happening I'm sorry I think it may be worth the town to mandate an excuse maybe at the price of not counting the the land I I understand but there's overall sense I I am also getting I'm be very honest looking at at those images and the land and and and whatnot that we've done you guys have worked on we look like the town that doesn't want housing yeah and that might be true but it looks like that to me and and the state might also think that has his hand up Richard yes Richard uh I would just going to point out that I think it was the consensus in our meetings that the downtown probably does need some serious rezoning but we just can't do it with the MBTA zoning tools so much of the issue of mixed use and required mixed use is a really good one for the town to be considering and that's why we stayed away we did from all but a very few units downtown this is something that should be done but if you do it under MBTA you're going to be uh you're going to be hitting with a hammer something that needs a much more delicate touch Jonathan Keith has his hand up Jonathan yeah hi Dr Victoria Road um I just you know Gary you got some great thoughts but I'm I just want to cautious caution us about going high in our downtown um we have very narrow streets so you pointed out like the by the books uh location where next to um uh the roast beef place in that building oh we could go a lot higher here if that one Higher we we'd have a dark corner on our on our on Union Street there so I I think you know Steve Coyle from the BR was very was very Artful at at wedding cing terracing buildings so they didn't come right to the street at a with a three-story wall um so I think I again I just want to caution us about raising Heights in our downtown because we have narrow streets and it's going to take away a lot of sunlight and make it to me a little claustrophobic just is my opinion thank you okay thank you but we are talking about the design guidelines we're talking about the the districts you create not any of the historic that's right these designed guidelines are only for the district right everything else falls into the normal zoning which is the next opportunity next year I just wanted to kind of circle back on this commercial first floor and I think uh Richard said it well is that we this process has identified that as a as a need for us to take a hard look at it but need to get this MBTA zoning done first with a um reconstituted we're bring all the task force people back for some more Thursday night meetings to help us get that done um it's or something so um you know there's lot there's that there is important work to do that that this has pointed out and um I think has helped us to realize that it's a need or an opportunity or or both so yeah I think the design guidelines help us to also think through what that looks like and how do we that we have an opportunity to frame it um in a in a intentional way yeah and that those changes in zoning would also be driven by the design guidelines well there's a hole in the street here there's an opportunity there's a corner that we could develop that could be mixed use yeah with commercial and residential above because there's a few of those opportunities around town that have to be rezoned to make them make happen Richard I may still have his hand up Richard do you have another point okay no I'm just having a hard time lowering my hand well nothing stage he's on vacation but still there was some question about the order of um the the overlay dist defining the overlay districts and the densities and um putting Forward Design guidelines and I think the town would be a lot more comfortable if the design guidelines even if they weren't completely approved were publicized to to so that people can imagine that the new developments would not look like right so they go hand in hand yeah not only go hand in hand but the design guidelines maybe go a little bit first first first well we can put the draft on the on the posted on the website and people can look at it that's a good they need to go through the plan board and get a t approval you know an intentional yeah yeah well what's what we have unless you guys are did we get a little bit of budget here I mean so images will go a long way and a lot of towns do have have hired Consultants to develop a few images can really make the point well I'll tell you what we'll pull all of our salar donut money well it's an important enough thing and there is there are funds town and when is this supposed to be done we don't even know yesterday yeah well we we'd like to be able to submit all this to the state in June early June okay so we should talk more after have a question have you guys looked at so I know you can do in four four story buildings elevated buildings you can do 105 units which would be um 15 per acre on that site uh but have you looked at doing whether you can fit 105 units with other Design Concepts we've done 150 and 125 units there with two different approaches okay and we have to work out the the parking some more M um we wish we had I'll say but we wish we had that one more parcel that that other storage building there would would be would let the place breathe a bit and because it parking is a big parking is a big veloc yes and the more unit you have the more land you're building on parking so it's there's there's I think we'll come up with three or four options at least give you an idea I have two more on my sleeve hopefully in in in the next meeting or two we'll be able to kind of hammer out some of the densities so that you'll have a a much narrower window it won't be a 50 unit window it'll be let's say 10 hopefully um could we go back to the map mind sharing that and while you're doing that so if the design um guidelines team is studying the LCD and they're saying we need a little more breathing room to model the ideal neighborhood it would be nice to look at what that parcel is and have them study it from that point not just trying to solve for the mass but trying to solve for the neighborhood i' love to see that then we have to decide whether we have to increase the size of the contiguous area downtown that's so that that's my other question about the downtown is um can we go back to the way out map not the LCD so we're talking about the downtown like we're trying to limit anything you know we're trying to put the housing in the LCD because we have to but in the downtown we want to keep it small and grain I get that but it does feel like we're not going to actually achieve housing down there except for maybe onesies twoes did we you know in thinking about the Stanley's parcel and whether in a different world you might want to Zone that for mixed use and require commercial because it is right in the center did you look at the parcels around the capan Savings Bank did you look at could the design team look at some of the two acre a a two acre parcel so we say what is a low density neighborhood scale development look like on that so we would have some choice about not trying to squeeze it all right into the downtown and actually build housing um if we have lower density in the LCD we have to have higher density in the downtown right so could you look at a different parcel that you haven't looked at yet where downtown not well within the half mile radius so you're saying you're staying away from the two acre Parcels I don't have a parcel of mind I'm just saying is there another way that you can but look at this to the problem is to get the total acreage you need that almost seven acres additional in the LCD total somewhere somewhere somewhere somewhere um so and then you also need half of it to be contiguous right so it's a very careful juggling of numbers that if you start increasing the size in the LCD now you may have to increase the size downtown of that con area and the more acreage you have then the more total units you need so like the capan Savings Bank where there's a gap and the you know the missing tooth and you can't use that part because that's not contigous it buts up against Municipal land excluded right and and okay that that cap and more historic so give you size right originally we looked at Harbor's point and that keep in savings and we looked at bringing it back behind town hall right because that seems like an opportunity to actually mend the street fabric yeah it doesn't work and so then you have the historic um it's the green I see that was trying to stay away from another and then behind it floods so yeah sorry your points are really great and I think that we have to slide them into the the next zoning look what can we do to make downtown more more easily to develop yeah yeah the trouble is we're given a hammer I get it so used to try to I think the task force is doing a great job of solving for the math and I and I'm understanding better what some of like why the cap band Savings Bank doesn't work because it's not continuous but now maybe let the math sit for a minute so it turn it over to the design guidelines team and let them actually study the um how to build a neighborhood in these different parcels and you know see what the density ought to be and see how to um encourage commercial where we want commercial and just it's tough to do that and get it I well I it's really important it's really important double their salary if you give us a number it would me to do studies in the LCD we really if you could give us a number of what you need well I think it would help tremendous I think hopefully we'll be able to start naring that down by our during our next Mee so um could I just give a hug for for Urban Design there are a lot of what on a phase two effort by the town there are some ills in downtown we could cure there are mechanisms to do it Tax Grants matching grants there's there's things that towns have been able to do to sort of fill in those voids of the downtown and make the streetscapes much more pleasant and more enclosed um or whatever our goal is there's stuff we could do once this is all finished okay any more questions from anybody Sarah Pi still has her Sarah hi yes thank you so much um I just want to say honestly being a lifelong resident of Manchester by the Sea it is super disheartening to hear that we would even consider putting four and a half story buildings in the downtown so I want to just confirm is that something that Gary Gilbert is honestly considering this is a group effort for sure there was five or six of us to begin with we're down to about three or four um but we've been talking about three and a half story as a base height um and only higher if the town's going to get something they really want this our our little um list of things we want to see the the only way to get those is to encourage the market use the market forces to give you the 20% affordable housing or the workers housing or whatever or mixed use you've got to offer something to somebody if you want to get that well I just think it would be a very big m AK to put four and a half story buildings in the downtown of Manchester it in addition we keep we keep referring to our town is urban our town is not Urban it's just not I don't think the task force is assuming four and a half stories downtown okay well that's that's kind of reassuring because we've been going with this theory that we're not building ranol street but four and a half story buildings that is ranol Street no ranal Street six and seven stories well in some yeah but if you I would love to see if Gary if you have a a design you could do of like even three and a half stories do a model of that it's going to create I agree with a lot of shadowing possib you know it's it's a whole different concept you're changing the whole town right I don't want to get into a back and forth here I think you made your point sir we take it into consideration thanks so much Chris Rich Richard have one more thing you want to say I just want want to point out maybe to add on to that that the height is going to be a zoning issue it's not a design review issue it's going to be part of the zoning reels am I am I not right about that okay thank you for that are we done here move we adjourn we' got minutes wish what other [Music] minutes what what minutes do the task force have I think um I think the planning board does not have minutes so I think the planning board can take a motion to adjourn inor there is a meeting next Thursday the 18 um and that uh that we'll have a 6m planning board meeting to review the uh articles for town meeting that has the procurement of land that doesn't give us the seven days that we need to provide for the town before town meeting Greg is that gonna be sufficient I'm sorry the question is if we um act on the T articles on the warrant um on Thursday is that going to be sufficient time um I I would encourage you to go ahead and do that and if yeah there's not an objection it'll be fine okay I'm just saying our bylaw says it has to be seven days so I I'm fully aware of that and you were scheduled to do that last week and because of the untimely death of a of a board member we have some unusual circumstances so give those unusual circumstances I am pretty confident that the electorate would be okay with that thank you yeah and I understand but we were supposed to do it tonight as well so I just we always creep time and not good thank you Sarah are you saying six o'clock for the plan planning Bo yeah we may try to get two problems okay is that okay with everybody all right you have further business we can sneak out okay do we have a motion to approve the minutes for the task force so move second in favor Michael and okay done all right guard you're on move weour second second in favor everybody can I get a ride home anybody else who want to ride it rain raining I