Planning Board - Planning Board Meeting

Mary, we are all set with the recording. I think we are all set with the live stream as well. Hold on for a quick second.

Yes, we are all set. So we can proceed with opening the meeting. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the May 6th, 2025 meeting of the Cambridge Planning Board. My name is Mary Flynn and I am the chair. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, adopted by the Massachusetts General Court and approved by the governor, the city is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge Planning Board. All board members, applicants, and members of the public will state their name before speaking, and all votes will be taken by roll call. Members of the public will be kept on mute until it is time for public comment. I will give instructions for public comment at that time, and you can also find instructions on the city's webpage for remote planning board meetings. This meeting is being video and audio recorded and is being streamed live in the city of Cambridge online meeting portal and on cable television channel 22 within Cambridge. There will also be a transcript of the proceedings. I'll start by asking staff to take board member attendance and verify that all members are audible. For that, I'm going to turn to Evan Spatrini who will help us through that tonight.

Thanks. H. Theodore Cohen, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Mary Leydecker, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Mary. Diego Macias, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you. Tom Sieniewicz, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you? Tom is absent. Ashley Tan, are you present? And is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Ashley. And the associate members, Dan Anderson, are you present? And is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Yes, Evan, present, visible, and audible.

Thank you. Joy Jackson, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Joy is absent. And the chair, Mary Flynn, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Yes, I'm all three.

Great. That is five regular members present and one associate member present.

Great. Thank you, Evan. First item this evening is an update from the Community Development Department. Please also introduce any staff who are with you this evening. And for that, we're going to go back to Evan.

Thanks, Mary Evans vitrine I'm the senior manager for zoning and development. We are joined tonight from or from the zoning and development division swathi Joseph and Jeff Roberts. We are also joined by Eric Thorkelson from Community Planning and Design Division of CDD and Christina D'Alessio from the Economic Opportunity and Development Division of CDD. And I believe that is it for city staff. Tonight we have two public hearings. The first is on a floodplain special permit for improvements to Jerry's Pond in the Alewife neighborhood. And the other public hearing is on a zoning petition by the city council to remove the prohibition on packaging and repackaging of cannabis products in a cannabis retail store. Looking ahead tomorrow, we have, there's a public hearing at the ordinance committee meeting on the cannabis zoning petition that's being discussed tonight. Next week, next Tuesday, we have another planning board meeting Meeting, which will be a continuation of last week's discussion of the multifamily design guidelines in a couple weeks on May 20 there will be two. Public hearings at the planning board one is a project review special permit. Excuse me, 350 Mass Ave to convert existing office space to lab space and there will be another public hearing on a zoning petition by a group of 10 or more residents to amend certain dimensional requirements for religious uses. Also on May 20th earlier that day, there will be two public hearings at the Ordinance Committee. One is on the East Cambridge Community Enhancement Zoning District that the uh the zoning petition that the planning board discussed at last week's meeting um and the other public hearing that day is on the uh religious uses petition that the planning board will will discuss later um that evening and with that i will stop there and pass it back to the chair uh thanks evan uh do any of the board members have questions about the update

Seeing none, then we'll just move on to our first public hearing this evening, which is on case PB408, a special permit application by IQHQ Alewife LLC to improve the area around Jerry's Pond with pedestrian paths, boardwalks, pavilion, and landscaping. We're going to begin this evening with CDD staff explaining why this is before us. Then we'll have a presentation from the developer followed by public comment. Then the board will have an opportunity to ask questions. And finally, we'll deliberate and decide how we want to proceed on this case. Before we begin, I'd like to note for the record that there are only six planning board members present to hear this case and five votes are required to approve. Does the applicant agree to proceed with this public hearing with the six members present?

Yes, Madam Chair.

Could you just identify yourself? Oh, I'm sorry.

Good evening, Madam Chair. I'm Anthony Galluccio, a partner with Galluccio and Watson. And yes, we're okay with that, with six members. Right. Terrific. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jeff Roberts, who is going to explain why this is before us.

Great. Thank you, Mary and the board. This is Jeff Roberts, Director of Zoning and Development. I'm only here to intro this case quickly today. So this is a new special permit application. It is for a floodplain special permit and only the floodplain special permit. This is a fairly rare example at the planning board where there's no project review and there's really no significant development proposed here. It's just, it's only for activity in the floodplain. And the board's, with all special permits, the board's role is to decide on whether to grant or deny that special permit. The there are a couple of interesting things about this case. One is that this what is being proposed is part of the sort of community benefits component of a development proposal that was subject to project review in which the planning board approved. That's the IQ HQ commercial development that's just to the north, but technically on a separate site. And that did also receive a floodplain special permit. But since this is a separate site, technically this needs an additional floodplain special permit. So that's one thing. Kind of interesting context is some of you might remember if you were here last week, you might be asking, well, didn't we get rid of the floodplain special permit? And just to remind you on that, so the planning, there is a zoning petition to change the floodplain requirements. And it does two things. It would eliminate the floodplain special permit and change it to administrative review, but it also incorporates revised flood maps and data which are effective starting July 8th, 2025. And so that's really when the switch gets flipped and everything turns from the old system to the new system. So since this has been progressing under the current FEMA standards, we thought it was important to try to make sure that this could get done before the zoning changes. So that's part of the context for this proposal and why it is still coming to the planning board, even though the board will likely not see any more floodplain special permit cases. So that's the intro. I can turn it back over from there unless there's any questions about those bits of context.

All right. Then just quickly, do board members have any questions for Jeff? Okay, seeing none, let us move then on to our presentation. And tonight that is going to be done by Danny Frias, who is representing the applicant. Mr. Frias, you'll have up to 30 minutes for your presentation, though please be as concise as possible. And if you would begin by introducing your project team, you may proceed.

chair i'll jump in and start and then uh danny will come we'll come back in and just just for purposes of time i'll let the members introduce themselves as we uh transition to those speakers um i want to thank the board pretty exciting intro that we may be the the last floodplain special permit so that's exciting i'm also It's kind of cool to be here without a big commercial building before you. That we're here to talk about a public access plan that I think the community has worked on and deserved for a long time and IQ HQ has been willing to deliver. I want to stay on this slide quickly because it just illustrates we've been out in the community since 2021. Interacting, want to thank Owl Wife Study Group, Friends of Jerry's Pond, Ocean Institute, the list goes on forever of folks who weighed in on the plan. Even though we did have a large project review on the commercial side, I'd say about half of the meetings were focused on Jerry's Pond even before we got to this floodplain special permit process. So I just wanted to show those because it's been awesome interacting with the North Cambridge community, which is really made up of three different neighborhoods. And we made it a point to make sure all three were involved. Next slide. So this just gets to the permitting process. And again, we started back in 2021 with a real real intentionality around connecting both the ridge ave community which is on the jerry's pond side um the neighborhood street side uh which which runs along uh uh the russell field and then the whittemore ave community and all three were included and part of the process um we started with big um community meetings we actually mailed the entire neighborhood surrounding the community. And we had at least two of those. And then ASG was also having their own meetings and Friends of Jerry's Pond as well. As part of the large project special permit, we had a condition to deliver substantially the same plan that you're gonna see tonight. Although some of the details have been modified with additional public process and through comment by staff. But this plan was part of the planning board approval. And now we bring it back before you because as Jeff indicated under current regulation and zoning, we need a floodplain special permit. The special permit was approved in 2022. um we continued i give a lot of credit to chrissy and danny who've been continuously interacting with the community chrissy particularly working through some of the technical issues with howard from vhb and danielle and jen sweet uh who are all on tonight um and and uh more recently getting approval from the conservation commission uh and getting an order of conditions for the jerry spawn piece Next slide. This just goes again into some of the community outreach. And I like to talk about it because I feel like it's sort of a gold standard. We actually had interns from the Rinjab community, young adults who were able to interact with all of our consultants. um to learn more about architecture landscape architecture environmental issues and we also asked them to weigh in on the plan um i want to give special thanks to anusha alum who did a big survey of fringe towers before we even started our process when she was working with the Ocean Institute, which gave us a big checklist of all the things the community wanted as part of a public access plan for Jerry's Pawn. And Chrissy has said a few times in public meetings, I think the one thing that we weren't able to deliver was ice skating. So all the other issues, items that the community wanted for Jerry's Pond, we're delivering upon. Also wanna give a big thanks to Mass Auto Bond, because they've been a partner and so has Green Cambridge on different aspects of the plan. And you'll hear more about that. And along with Site Walks, which is informed The plan you're going to see tonight where the community went out and we walked Jerry's Pawn at least two times in Earth Day celebrations and other community events. So just to give you, because I know there's planning board members that were not here for the original special permit approval. Go to the next slide. It's a huge property. The Jerry's Pond side obviously has never been intended for development. We split it up into two components, the commitment area and the development area. although in the development area there's also uh incredibly large swaths of um open space natural that has been naturalized uh via protection and and those are awesome too and those are are going to be um kept that way but the jerry's pond side is the the green and blue area um and the development areas to the north chrissy will give some updates on the development area just because it's it's good that we're here and we thought the board would be interested in that. Just for point of clarification, the zoning allowed for the transfer of development rights with the intention of keeping development away from Jerry's Pond. And the zoning was worked on extensively and came from a community process. Mary, I'm sure you will remember, it started with a moratorium and followed with zoning. And the idea was to really concentrate the development in that corner to protect the rest of the site. And that's why you see that density up to the north and the community deserves a lot of credit for that. When transferring the development rights, we kept just a little bit of square footage on Jerry's Pond only for purposes of storage or issues related to the eco-pavilion. So essentially, there's no opportunity for development at Jerry's Pond, which was the intention of the community and our intention all along. So that just gives you sort of a high-level picture. And I'll turn it over to Chrissy Gabriel, who's worked tirelessly with the community on so many issues throughout the process.

Good evening, everyone. Chrissy Gabriel, Senior Director with IQHQ, overseeing all things Alewife Park. So that's the development area as well as the commitment area. Been with the team since 2020. So we definitely have had a long road to get us here and we're incredibly excited to be here at the tail end of the permadeath from Jerry's Pawn Improvements. So just reiterating Anthony's point a bit about the incredible robust process, public process, and also city engagement and that ongoing dialogue that we had throughout the last over four years. and how that's really contributed to some of the most successful design components of the project. And so without listing all of them here, I don't think we have enough slides to really showcase the amount of discussions that we had. A lot of the themes that you could see over the years throughout the meetings were minimizing bike conflicts on paths and really understanding how the paths are worked, the system of them, not only on our site, but how they communicate to the paths that are adjacent to the site. whether it's the DCR property in the western side, the city property on the eastern side, or the Ridge Ave community on the southern side. Maximizing the usable area along Ridge Ave, which has resulted in an additional 33 feet of width and usable space from the existing curb line, which was a success. This next one, there's a lot of kind of minor components in it, but really creative solutions that we were able to work through with a lot of the community feedback in order to maintain and protect existing trees, maintain and protect existing contiguous habitat while avoiding soil disruption wherever possible. And so this also included, as Anthony mentioned, an on-site kind of all hands meeting where we walk the site to really get a true feeling as to where this eco center that we're proposing should be located. By using all senses. So it's not just a plan review. It's actually a physical experience when you're out there on the sites. We're very proud of where we ended up with that. Ensuring that that eco center location is optimal to the plan. Abundance seating and congregation areas. Ensuring that safety is always put forth throughout the design process. And maintaining that activation area that we have on the eastern side, connecting to Russell Field, the Russell Field playground, Como Field, very important attributes to the city that's often used with the community. And then also commitment areas beyond the Jerry's Pond footprint. So this would include restructuring the Como Field curb that we completed, I want to say, over a year and a half ago now. Improvements to the MBTA head house, DCR paths, collaboration with the city's linear park plan. I'm really just going kind of above and beyond to ensure that it's not just what's happening on our site, but it's how it connects to the surrounding areas that it's best for all. Next slide, Danielle. So this next slide here just goes over a high level schedule as to where we are in the development site. There are conditions that are applicable to the delivery of the Jerry's Pond improvements and how that translates to what's happening on the northern side of the development side. And essentially, it's just about a finish finish to the last building that we have on the development side. And so we are happy to be here tonight and announce that we're actually ahead of the game when it comes to the Jerry's Pond improvements. We're looking at delivering the first three certificates of occupancy for those buildings on the north side that are bubbled there this summer. And so with getting the Jerry's Pond project moving, we're actually going to be delivering Jerry's Pond ahead of that last building on our development site. So something that we're very proud of, that we're really sticking to the plan and giving back to the community as we have committed. And with that, I am going to hand it over to Howard Mojer. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Chrissy and thank you, members of the planning board city staff and members of the public i'm Howard Mosier with vhb and like Chrissy been involved in the project for quite a long time. Very briefly, a little bit about why we're here and what you're going to hear further we're here as Jeff mentioned, because of the we triggered the floodplain special permit overlay and i'll show you those boundaries next. But we wanted to give you a fulsome overview of the entirety of the project. And later in the presentation, you can see numbered dots that go around the pond. We have some wonderful illustrations showing what we're trying to accomplish with this project as a means to improve pedestrian access, circulation, get people to go behind the fence, get closer to the pond, which has been cut off for a long time. We have a number of features as we go along that are very exciting for all of us. In addition, as we go through this part of the project, we're also going to be talking a little bit about bike parking. Next slide, please. Which was also an item which we want to discuss tonight. But this is a detailed plan and perhaps too busy for everyone to look at the finer points. But I wanted to point out the blue dashed line which goes around Jerry's Pond. That is the limit of the existing 100 year floodplain and we have a few elements of the project that are within that under your floodplain, which is why we are here. And exciting to me, maybe part of the last planning board floodplain special permit, but we have a floating wetland, we have the improvements along range. And we have some boardwalks which traverse the boundary into the 100-year floodplain. Those boardwalks have minor piles that are supporting the boardwalk. So it's a very light touch within the 100-year floodplain with a huge amount of public benefits. Next slide. Please um that one of the things we heard early and the project and and some of you have heard it a long time is is just. there's a lot of activity along the linear path so on the left side, you see purple multi use pass buried with the pathways. And and and those get used by high speed cyclists low speed cyclists pedestrians people with strollers. And we've heard that people want to get from Ridge Avenue up to the head house and along the Como field in a calmer way that gets a little closer to Jerry's Pond. So on the right side, you can see the expansion of the boardwalk areas that the, I think it's orange for most people, with a number of easily accessed connections at Ridge Avenue. And then kind of as you go by the community pool and up around the corner, we're providing additional bike parking. Bike parking is something that is being provided with bike racks that provide for bike storage that's above and beyond what's out there now. We think this is consistent with zoning, but we want you to agree with us during this meeting. And what we think we have provided here on the lower right, on the right-hand image in the blue, is an excellent gateway from Ridge Avenue into the boardwalks, and then trying to stay away from the very busy Como Field turnaround with the very busy parking area, and then connect once again to the linear path, which you're going to see some wonderful illustrations. So that's a bit of an overview of what we're trying to accomplish and provide additional pathway connectivity we'll get on the left side of the right image, you'll see a blue pathway. You'll get a little more view on that, but we're excited to be here. And thank you for your time. I'm going to turn it over to Danny Frias for the next slides.

Thank you, Howard and good evening members of the planning board and members of the public. My name is Danny Frias project manager at IQ HQ on the Jerry's pond project. So here we're highlighting the major improvement along Ridge Avenue. A 300-foot, 10-foot wide universally accessible boardwalk. This feature runs parallel to the street and includes a planting buffer for safety and separation. We've added street trees, a floating wetland for ecological interest, an ADA ramp, and preserved the existing ash tree to maintain canopy and character. This portion is a key connector to the site and frames the entire southern experience of Jerry's Pond. Bicyclists must stay on the sidewalk, not the boardwalk. There will be clear pedestrian-only signs along the railings. Because the boardwalk absorbs foot traffic, the 10-foot-wide sidewalk easily accommodates bikes and walkers side by side without conflicts. Next slide, please. This slide shows commitment to enhancing the landscape while six trees will be removed we're planting 51 new trees, resulting in a net gain of 45 trees and over 130 caliber inches. we've also included 3600 square feet of understory all planting is designed for long term ecological health we've integrated perennials grasses for native and grasses for native habitat restoration. water filtration and aesthetic enhancement along the floodplain. On the west end of Ridge Avenue, we're creating a flexible shaded gathering area with seating and overlooks. This is another example of how we're pulling people off the roadway into the green space. Mixed seating, clear sight lines for safety, and two connections to the boardwalk give people choices without crowding the sidewalk. Next slide, please. This image captures the boardwalk slope towards the pond. The vegetative buffer, newly planted shade trees, and the ground cover enhance the gentle transition and strengthen the floodplain edges. The boardwalk follows the existing slope at a maximum grade of four and a half percent, ensuring a full ADA compliance and includes an accessible ramp from the sidewalk to the boardwalk. The eight foot overlook bump out to the left there serves as a spot for enjoying pond views. This is a view from the boardwalk looking towards range avenue it really showcases the scale and vibe of the whole area is designed to feel like a natural part of the neighborhood making it a great spot to walk bike or just simply relax. Also notice how the boardwalk is near the ground level. This allows flood water to flow underneath and provides pedestrians with a more immersive experience along the pond's edge. Next slide, please. The Ridge Avenue entry is framed with a widened 10-foot sidewalk and a two-foot utility corridor. It includes signage, gateway features, and overhead canopy for welcoming for a welcoming public entrance. The space was designed to accommodate both pedestrian flow and safety near the busy street. The project's ecological features is this floating wetland here, providing habitat support and water filtration. It's both a habitat enhancement and an educational feature for visitors who can view it from the overlook. This was an idea that came directly from the community and advocacy groups. Coming to the eastern edge, this path leads from Ringe Ave to the east side of the pond to Jerry's Deck. Again, it's a universally accessible 10-foot wide boardwalk that connects visitors to the linear path. Here we're arriving at Jerry's Deck, a large open space with flexible seating, views of the pond, and access to the linear path. It's designed to be a hub, calm, inclusive, and well integrated with the rest of the site. This area was a top priority in community feedback and represents the heart of the project's public realm. The Eco Pavilion complements Jerry's Deck. It's a covered structure for community program. The pavilion will be operated by Mass Autobahn and serves as a venue for seasonal learning, outdoor events, small group engagements, tying the recreational and ecological missions of the project together. In the southeast corner we've dedicated a portion of the site for compensatory flood storage this decision was critical to minimize tree loss on the development parcel. And to meet all regulatory standards to protect both the project, it also protects both the project and the surrounding neighborhood while allowing allowing access to the Southwest overlook and gathering space. So we've structured site operations to balance both public access with the care of sensitive areas around the site. Gates protect the habitat zones and limit access to the boardwalk to certain hours from dawn to dusk. The communal garden will be staffed and supported by Green Cambridge. Our team will oversee daily maintenance, safety, and inspections of the entire site. Next slide there. So the public walkways outside the gates in the green there are open 24-7 while the dark blue areas are open from dawn to dusk as mentioned. The gates are those light blue areas. The lighting in this area is going to be timed with the sunset which is in sync with the city lighting. Programming at the Eagle Center will include nature-based education, zero waste activities, and curated events by Mass Audubon. All programs will take place strictly on the boardwalk and pavilion areas to preserve surrounding habitat, and the grill and furniture use will be requested through an online reservation system to ensure controlled access. Now I'll hand it over to Anthony and Chrissy to jump into, well, I'll hand it over to Anthony to talk about our special permit conditions.

Thank you, Danny. And I want to give a special thanks to Danny because he gave us a new energy for the second leg of this and actually helped lead the more recent meetings just on these specific issues. And we were up at Fresh Pond Apartments when they had their family day. We had a table and then we did another community meeting. This was all late summer, early fall at the new Justice Start space on the corner of Rinjav. And I think Danny would agree that the one consistent comment was, when are you gonna start and when are you gonna get this done? So we are in full agreement with the six permit conditions as suggested by the memo. So I won't drag you through those. there were some urban design memo comments and I just, these were related to ongoing review, but I thought it was important to just address these and for purposes of the board's discussion. So one of the comments was to think about an additional connection to the pond And as you'll see, I know Danny has a picture so we can pull that up. But the land area between where the parking lot is, which is, I would describe the parking lot as a little bit of a free for all because it's open parking. And there's a bus loop, which actually one of the first things we did was give a little spatial relief so the buses weren't going up on the curve. Shout out to James Williamson who was relentless on that, but we did that right away. But there's a little sliver of land between the parking lot and the pond. But we have two open locations at the corner of Rinjav and also where Jerry's Deck and the Eco Pavilion open up. I'll let Chrissy or Danielle give the actual spatial connection But it's really not that far away from either the entrance or where the Jerry's Deck proposed connection is going to be. We have real concerns aside from other folks' property. City and we, we have concerns about having folks try to go through podcast. And navigate the bus turn around to get into the pond at that location. Eric has a great idea in vision. I just, you know, that that's a safety concern for us and we just don't think there's a lot. Of space there, and Jen has reminded us Jen sweet. From Haley and Aldridge throughout the process that the areas that are not boardwalk. I really are protected by site limitation. agreement and and really are intended to be protected so we get the idea but probably not something that um we we could deliver upon um and would need a lot of input from the city uh and probably mbta as well so danny if you go back to the um special permit condition slide excuse me there was the urban design the next um The next question was just about chain link fences. And the reason those are there are actually to create a barrier. Because we have the openings where we have them and folks are directed specifically to boardwalks, which are above grade to protect soil impact. we really are trying to keep folks out of those areas. So we can certainly work with staff on something more attractive, et cetera. But the intention there is really to use fencing that will keep folks from entering the pond or interacting with the water at locations that we're not prescribing. And there's no interaction with the water anywhere. Number three is really around adjusting the design ramp at the multi-use path. I'll let Chrissy talk more about that, but we've devoted a lot of time to improving the condition where the multi-use path, the linear path, interacts with the path that goes to the mbta head house um joel nordrick and others really pushed us on that because that was really a blind corner so we were able to open up that corner to just give a lot more um site um site line of sites for all the different users there and we're happy to look at that we just would need a little more understanding of what is trying to be achieved. And again, we have limitations just in terms of soil disturbance that we have to be really careful on. Floating wetlands, we love it. Came out of our conversations with the community, happy to work with more naturalistic shapes on that. So totally, totally cool with that. And signage. So, Madam Chair and members, we had a lot of fun with this topic because there's so much history at this site. You know, from the bricklaying history and the quarry to the, you know, McCree and pool gets open to replace the swimming. And all the different sort of immigrant and industrial history of the entire site is amazing, with a little bit of Bobbo's Hamburger Place from my generation or before. But we have agreed to having both wayfinding and historical sites. signage throughout the site. That would also include how to use the public access points, how to access information about the eco pavilion and the educational opportunities that Mass Audubon will provide. And of course, how to sign up if you wanna use the grills and how to manage all that. So we're excited about the sign and way finding issues. We did, Madam Chair, have a memo from the bike committee. We'll let you go through that and ask questions related. We had a great meeting with those folks and we're happy to respond to those comments as well. And that concludes the presentation and we appreciate your attention.

Thank you very much. We appreciate the time and effort you put into the project over these many years. Before we get into planning board questions and discussion, we are going to take public comment. As I mentioned, this is a public hearing. Any members of the public who wish to speak should now click the button that says raise hand. If you're calling in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star nine. As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the board had received written comments on this case from Michael DeMello and Maria Flanagan. Written communications received after 5 p.m. will be entered into the record. So I see one hand up at the moment. Please, anybody who's interested in speaking, raise your hand now, please, so we can get a sense of how many speakers we're gonna have in total, just for the purposes of time management this evening. I see a few more hands going up. All right, any others? Okay, it looks like we have about five speakers. Great. Okay, so we're now going to have staff unmute the speakers one at a time. You should begin by saying your name and address, and we'll confirm that we can hear you. After that, you will have up to three minutes to speak before I ask you to wrap up. And for this, I'm going to go to Evan to assist in managing the public comment.

Thank you, Mary. The first speaker will be Renata Pomponi, followed by Mackie Buck. Renata, you should be able to unmute yourself. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Good evening, everyone. This is Renata Pomponi, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives for Mass Audubon, operating in Cambridge from the Magazine Beach Park Nature Center at 668 Memorial Drive. Mass Audubon has been very excited to be part of the project. I think almost exactly four years from... from right now in May 2021, and we've been part of the extensive community engagement and collaborative planning process. We've been especially appreciative of our involvement of two aspects of the project, the first being providing ecological recommendations that resulted in increased depaving in the property, additional tree planting, and continued invasives monitoring and management. The second is the design of the eco-pavilion, where IQHQ has indicated their commitment to permit Mass Audubon to operate a seasonal nature center to the benefit of the community. This work included discussions of the layout, the storage requirements, security, and furnishings that are really going to make this a beautiful little jewel of a place for the community to connect to nature. We've already begun some great discussions around the kinds of environmental education programming that Mass. Audubon can bring to children, families, and adults in Cambridge, including nature observation and learning, live animal programs, and walks and explorations along the boardwalks and the surrounding walking paths, and even farther afield with the great connections that this property offers to the Alewife Brook Reservation and beyond. I think this project has really responded to extensive community input and demonstrates the significant ecological improvements and the long-stated guiding principles of the project of increasing public access to the pond while preserving existing wildlife habitat. For these reasons, Mass Audubons offers our support of the IQHQ application. Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker will be Mackie Buck followed by Lisa Burke. Mackie, you should be able to unmute yourself and please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Okay, I think I'm unmuted. My name is Mackie Buck. I live at 18 Gold Star Road in Cambridge. So first of all, I'm a member of Friends of Jerry's Pond and have been involved for a long time in... kind of seeing this thing birthed. And so it's really exciting to see all that is planned. The slides are beautiful. The memories of some of the things that I maybe had forgotten about are really great. I'm glad to see that the community gardens are back. It seemed like for a while they were gone, but now they're back. um i think the two floating wetlands are a fantastic idea i think that they will be absolutely stunning for people to see and i like that they're going to be a more naturalistic look to them um i like the bike paths i like the everything about it is fantastic um i have a couple of concerns though which people who've heard me talk about them before will probably be annoyed to hear them again, but they're still here. One is that there's a lot of bittersweet in that site that needs to be attended to or trees are going to die. And I don't know who's, I mean, obviously IQHQ is going to be the ones responsible for it, but I've not really been able to do that yet. even though you've owned the property for X number of years. And then the last thing that I want to mention is that even though there has been some deep paving done, there's a tremendous amount of paving that is still all over the site in the woods and all of the green areas, which you can't see when you're looking down on your slides. We're at a place where with larger storms and with our understanding that soil and the plants that grow in the soil, but in particular, the soil itself is a major holder of carbon, which we need to be bringing back down into the earth, into the soil from the sky. It cannot do that if it is covered with blacktop. And I just want to state again, because I can't not say it again, that paving should come out. But anyway, that's all I have to say. Thank you very much, IQHQ, for all that you are doing. And that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker will be Lisa Burke, followed by Eric Grunenbaum. Lisa, you should be able to unmute yourself. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Hi, thanks so much for opening this up to public comment. My name is Lisa Burke. I live at 20 Castle Park, about four houses from this site. June 14th, 2025 will be the 30th anniversary of the founding of Alewife Study Group. I am one of the co-founders. We have bird-dogged this site to the nth degree. We have studied it, down-zoned it, submitted all kinds of things that failed. I never dreamed when we started, and we had so many... I'll be polite and say resistances and sort of obfuscations with WR Grace and a mess on our hands that we would land in the exact opposite hands with IQ HQ. Truly, it's night and day. The community process has been exceptional. The number of meetings, I believe it was more than 100 over two years, pretty much once a week with about six of their IQ HQs, experts, consultants, etc. Meeting with six to 12 neighbors from various groups, including groups that are Cambridge wide like Green Cambridge and groups like Audubon. Fresh Pond Residence Associations, the internship program was amazing. It's just, it's been astonishing, gobsmacking, jaw dropping. And then the results, the results that were put together by Mackie Buck, by her compatriots at Friends of Jerry's Pond, by Alewife Study Group, by Green Cambridge, by Audubon, and IQHQ's engineers, landscapers, architects, all kinds of people I don't even know about, I'm sure, project managers, are astonishing what you see before you is miraculous. It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be inviting. It's going to build community in this area that is already a crossroads. I don't think of it as three neighborhoods. I think of it as one neighborhood with 27 acres where we all connect and cross over to the T, to the kids playing fields, etc. It's been done sensitively with all the asbestos protections intact. It's miraculous. I really hope you pass this. That said, I totally get Mackie's concern about the paving. And as we go forward, I really hope that we will be able to depave further. But I really appreciate what is going on now. And of course, the bittersweet coming down. I hope that the maintenance plan you all have stated will take care of that. And I also just want to give a shout out to the ongoing contact that is weekly from IQ HQ with us weekly, weekly, four years into this project, five years into this project. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lisa. The next speaker will be Eric Grunbaum, followed by Joel Nojick. And those are the last two speakers signed up for public comment. So if you do want to give public comment, please raise your hand now and we'll get you in the queue. Eric, you should be able to unmute yourself. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Hi, I'm Eric Grunenbaum of 98 Montgomery Street. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Excellent. I am a co-founder of Friends of Jerry's Pond, which started in 2015. And I just want to say an enormous thank you to Anthony, Chrissy, Howard, Jen, Danny, and the IQ HQ team. I'm really excited. It looks great. It's really outstanding. I can't wait to see it be built. And I'm really glad to hear that it's on schedule. I'm super proud that Friends of Jerry's Pond started reimagining this site in 2015, 10 years ago, of imagining that this long-neglected part of Cambridge could really be something to reconnect those communities, as Lisa said. and and really holding up the ideals of accessibility sustainability and environmental education especially for the local community folks who may not be able to go out to the countryside as easily as some of us can I'm also incredibly happy that this site has been adopted by Mass Audubon and to have brought them in. Their Nature in the City program turned out to be a perfect fit for Jerry's Pond, and I think that's amazing, and I look forward to seeing it be pulled together over the next few years. So only sugar tonight. And I'll just finish with a question, which is when will IQHQ organize the next Earth Day Haunt Fest event? And you don't need to answer it tonight, but I think that's out there. So thanks a lot, everybody, and for your presentations tonight and for the planning board. I hope you'll approve it.

Thank you. Our final speaker that has signed up is Joel Nojick. If you do want to speak, please use the raise hand function. Joel, you should be able to unmute yourself. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Thank you. Joel Nodrick. I live at 94 Clifton Street, just across Russell Field from Jerry's Pond and the IQ HQ site. And like Lisa, I'm a founding member of the Elway Study Group back in 1995. And I just echo and reinforce all of the immense appreciation for the excellent, outstanding process that we've had between IQHQ and a variety of community groups and engaging with city staff and so on and so forth. It's a fantastic project and it's been a, you know, not always, you know, we've had our challenges in the process, but we've worked together in all the different really good features that the planning board sees in what was presented by iqhq came from lots of ideas from community members residents you know engineers and really good process so i just really echo that In terms of what's really being under review here, I definitely support the planning board passing the floodplain overlay. The need for additional flood compensatory storage is for very good causes. Based on sustained community advocacy, IQAQ increased the planting area along Ridge Avenue. to better to allow the inclusion of more planting of more trees and plants and also to have them have a better chance of surviving and thriving. And then the other area for compensatory storage is for the piers, the supports for all of the decks and and platforms and everything, boardwalks and everything. So and I know that IQ HQ's compensatory storage far exceeds what is need to cover that. The other area under review is the extended bicycle parking and I do appreciate that IQ HQ has increased the parking. I do think that the Cambridge Bicycle Committee suggestion that look at the opportunities for to do two things. One is to have bicycle parking that can accommodate the bigger and larger bikes that are being used more and more, you know, with trailers on the back or on the front, you know, for families and cargo. So I think that would be something that would be good for the community and IQHQ to look at together. and also to see whether it's possible to have even more bicycle parking locations, because this is going to be very attractive. And if we can really have enough bicycle parking, secure parking, that will be a very good thing for the environment, the climate and everything else. I think there are a couple of other suggestions in the bicycle committee memo. that are outside of the jurisdiction of this meeting, but I think would be good to have some further conversation. I think that, I know it's DCR property, but it's very important that the very uneven sidewalk along Elway Parkway that will become like a bicycle path really needs to be paved and made as wide as possible without hurting any of the trees or taking down any of the trees. So I think leaving it that that's going to be a sidewalk, existing sidewalk needs further collaboration with the neighborhood IQ HQ and DCR to have something much better that will really entice people to use their bikes there to help keep them off of Russell Field thank you very much thank you uh Mary it looks like that includes the list of speakers signed up for public comment

Great. All right. Well, that will bring us to the end of public comment then. I do see that there is one member of the project team who has a hand up, Jen Sweet. Do you have a question or a comment?

I just had a follow-up to address a few of the comments I heard. I don't know if this is the time to do that.

Let's first hear from the planning board and they may have some similar ones and we'll have a chance to get in responses to both. Thank you. Planning board members, let's first start with questions that you might have either for the project team or for CDD staff. Mary, let's begin with you, Mary Leydecker.

Thank you. So just a couple of questions. One, I saw some conflicting information about the decking material. It sounds like it is a composite material ultimately for the decking with pressure treated for the rail. Is that correct? So that's one question. And maybe we'll start there. If you could just articulate what the decking approach was.

Why don't you take a shot at that? Chrissy, whoever jumped in.

I'll start with Danielle. So this was another thing. I mean, we have evaluated so many design impacts for this. And the materiality of the decking was certainly one of them. One of the challenges that we had was we were evaluating using an EPA decking and then EPA popped up on the endangered species list. So then we had to pivot again and we really wanted to make some sort of sustainable effort here. And so that's where we ended up with the composite decking. This was also a result from us evaluating the challenges as to how we would treat a pressure treated wood option and seal it every year in order to maintain it. And with the fact that we're working with some ecological sensitivities and the areas being a pond and not really having access to the underside of the boardwalk, we decided on going with a composite decking as the best solution for the materiality of it. And then Danielle, do you want to speak to the railings and just the continuous design elements? Okay, to the... Yep.

Yeah, so the design of... Sorry, Danielle Dusseletz with Kyle Zick Landscape Architecture, the landscape architect for the project. So the design of the boardwalk and the railings was essentially intended to be consistent with the Elle Wife Brook Reservation boardwalk. So the overall, the aesthetic will be the same with the one change of the composite material. The other change would be that I think that boardwalk has a little over five feet clear and we've got a, it's a six foot boardwalk with railings. We've got a 10 foot boardwalk with railings. So otherwise, but it's intended because we know that that Elwife Brook reservation boardwalk is very popular with the community. So the intent is to keep consistent with that.

And did you guys consider or look at thermally modified options like Kebene's or domestic hardwoods thermally modified?

We looked at some of the other options that are out there, but for sustainability reasons and some other reasons, the composite was the best material for the project.

Okay. And then my second question is, the floating wetlands are on Ridge Avenue, but the Eco Pavilion is further north. And just wondering about the community process about that siting, thinking that the Eco Pavilion would probably have ultimately through Mass Audubon a relationship with that? What went into the siting of the floating wetland separate from the eco-pavilion?

That's a great question, and I'll answer part of it. One of the reasons the eco-pavilion was sited where it was was to take views across the pond to where some large birds had kind of occupied the tree canopy, and it was a great place to observe the birds across, also get away from the traffic on Ridge Avenue. The floating wetlands were a way to kind of introduce some green along that that that abrupt bank that exists on range avenue and kind of connected to a. concept that the Community had shared over these hundreds of meetings and when the conservation agents and maternal suggested, it was a great way. To get views of green as well as create some habitat underneath the floating wetlands, as well as to take a look and see if it has any water quality benefits. They are tethered on a chain to an anchor so if they're not successful there as a view, they could be you could lift the anchor and. float the floating wetlands somewhere else. So it's not permanently affixed there. But it was really to create that ridge corridor that Danny described and let people connect down from that boardwalk and see something there. There might be some ducks or something that climb atop it and birds. And the eco-pavilion gets those views across the shorter dimension of the pond to where great blue herons have been seen, for example, and things like that.

Howard, can I just jump in? Mary, that was a great question. And I I'd like to admit when I was wrong, I was possessed to have the Eco Center across from Ridge Towers, because I thought, you know, proximity to all the housing on Ridge Ave, and that was probably the moment when A lot of folks who weren't in agreement about everything realized how important it was to work together because everyone stood on the corner of Route 16 and we couldn't even hear each other. And we, and you know, Anusha, Lou, Eric, who all were like, yeah, this probably isn't the spot. And to Howard's point, all you're doing is looking over at that parking lot outside of Como Field. So we realized the most pristine view was from the other side looking over and that was a big consensus move, which was kind of awesome when we realized the more we walked the site, the more we experienced it. The other thing I'll just say, and I wanna bear you, I was just above a D student in earth science. That's when I really realized and had the aha moment how much work had gone into renaturalizing. Because when you see the growth over what used to be the retail spaces on that side, which was like drive-in retail, hamburger place, and it was incredible to see the trees and all kinds of natural habitat had grown over the asphalt. Not to diminish Mary's comment, Mackie's comment about depaving, because we're doing a lot of that. But it was amazing to see how tough nature is and how resilient it was all along that old area, which we knew as retail and some industrial. So it was pretty cool.

Great. Thank you. Very good. All right. Diego, you have a question?

Yeah, I was hoping we could hear a little bit more about the memo from the Cambridge Bicycle Committee. If we want to cut it short, I'm probably more concerned about the amount of parking for bicycles and that DCR path that's alongside Elwhaife. wife wrote there. That's a pretty tight spot to walk currently. So I'm actually kind of happy that you're adding something there. But yeah, just give you an opportunity to speak more on that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll let I'll let Chrissy start and appreciate it, Diego. We had a great meeting. Some of these areas are not on our property and some of it had to do with tree protection. And I think there is, out of these conversations, there's room for improvement and certainly on some of the city properties as well. But Chrissy, do you wanna walk through the parking memo?

I could address the bike parking a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

So in regards to the bike parking, we took a look at the requirements according to the Article 6.1 Zoning Ordinance. And in there, there's specific standards requirements for bike parking. And they have dimensions and the details for the bike parking. And we have about 18 spaces that exceeds the amount that is required for the dimensional form that was submitted in this application. And then we also have about the dimensions are three feet from the center of each bike rack. And there's about four feet. in the front of each bike rack, giving the bikes enough space. I know there's concerns on the length of bikes. The front of those bike racks, there's no wall obstructing those bike racks, so you'll be able to fit longer bikes there as well. We do meet the city requirements, but we do hear the public and the committee with the concern of needing more bike racks due to the amount of activation this area will receive. And we're open to exploring it.

And then just to go to the sidewalk, existing sidewalk on DCR land along L.A. Brook Parkway, We did examine the potential impacts to trees that would occur if it was to be widened on private property. Again, we're outside the floodplain here, but just to answer the question, we would have had, I think it was 16 trees, Danielle's nodding, over six inch diameter that would have been required to just even provide like a foot extra. There's a curb on the property side, IQHQ's property side, then right behind them, trees have established themselves. Again, remarkable how quickly it's restored from cleared conditions. But what we did say at the Joint Transportation Committee meeting is the project does interface with DCR, and I think we're willing to just raise the maintenance concerns about maybe some heave on that sidewalk to them and just re-amplify, because we've heard this before, how if DCR is planning any improvements along that overpass and the bridge, that a widened sidewalk would be much appreciated. We've done that in the past as a team, and I think we'll do it again just to highlight how important it is to the community. So we did take a hard look at that, but there was just a lot of trees that would have been impacted for only a very nominal increase in width. Then the number went up more and more

Diego, does that answer your concerns or do you want them to address any other points in the committee memo?

No, that's good. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you. Dan Anderson, let's go to you next.

Madam Chair, so generally extraordinarily supportive of this. So thanks. I see an enormous amount of work and I've not followed this closely, but again, I just wanted to put that out there. As far as a comment, I really saw some concerns about maybe and there really wasn't any points addressed at the moment. Clearly, the maintenance and improvements and sustained pieces within the boardwalk and all these pieces is within IHQ HQs. But there's some concerns raised about communication between the city and also nbta in terms of making those pieces a little bit more seamless so i'm wondering if there's some way either in our deliberations to make that a little bit more codified that there should be shared communication and ownership of this and it's a very important piece and And we've seen deterioration over time. So I was hoping there would be a little bit of comments and conversation about that. I do have some other pieces that the designer and me can't help but address, but just leaving those for the moment, I'd like to hear about how maybe there might be some joint conversations about overall maintenance, security, and upkeep.

Yeah, I can. Thank you. Great question. Something that... I always wondered when IQ HQ would fire me for creating a public asset that was open all the time to the community as part of the development commitment. They've embraced both the maintenance and security piece. That's one of the reasons why, you know, the range outside that's connected to the public way is open all the time. And it was designed with that in mind. But then the other parts are really, because we did hear from the community that certain areas are their safety concerns. And just to make sure that if they're open, folks are safe. But we will take on, and I think Public Works is happy about this, we will take on maintenance, snow removal, keeping these things up and running and including security. So that's wholly on us. As you know, it's a complicated area because, you know, When we were growing up, folks would call because there was issues up there, and they'd say, call the MBTA because it's MBTA, or if it's at the pool, it's DCR. So I think folks are really excited to have a private management sort of security apparatus in there at that location to just make sure that there is safety. We've embraced it. We did come up with an operations plan that we've submitted. I also want to note, and thanks to Renata for calling in, All the issues of whether it's pruning or depaving, any kind of soil impact, we really just have to be very careful with. And we've gone through this with ConCon. It's going to be great to have Mass Auto Bond permanently involved. They're going to have a... a restriction um on the on the site to just make sure we as i said there's no there's no possibility for us for developing the site but the community wanted to make sure there were even additional layers to restrict any um impact or development on the site so mass audubon um is going to be a permanent um permanent partner in this and so any work that happens or that is intended they would they would sign off on and be involved in which is pretty awesome

Okay. Dan, did you have other questions? You're muted.

I raised my hand instead of demuting. Apologies. So, yeah, no, that was super, super helpful, Mr. Gluccio, to understand that. I think if there's some more formalized relationship between these disparate entities, that would be really helpful. I have no doubt that IQHQ will provide that information. that maintenance and oversight. There are a few pieces as this sort of gets more into detail. I think we're at 50% DD if I read the drawings correctly. Certainly lighting goes a long way to helping security as that's developed. Lighting that's both helpful in terms of lighting the boardwalk, but also non-obtrusive. I've got some night sky issues, so I'd encourage the team to really think hard about that. I really, really follow Mary's suggestion about thermally modified wood as opposed to composites. If there's any chance of that, I'd encourage you just to take a little look at it again. There's a lot of really good options out there that are not artificial materials. But again, I leave that to the discretion of the team. Other, I'd just like to follow up on Jeff and Urban Design's comments and a little bit of designer in me. One, I think there's a real opportunity at the bus turnarounds. I'd like to see if the city might and IQHQ might think about the location of that fencing. I heard, you know, strong reasons for security not to enter into that point but it's the one area where the boardwalk kind of enters into jerry's pond and you've got a view of the shoreline so there's some real opportunity there for natural planting for that walk or the boardwalk to actually look at not just at the pond, but at the shoreline. I don't know whether the design team looked at maybe pushing that area of the boardwalk even a little bit further into the pond to be able to have a view of that area. If the fencing was modified, that could be really actually a pretty fantastic moment along the edge. And then the final piece in You guys have done a great job along the Ridge Ave side. It's a really tough transition, and I think that you've handled how you get down to it fairly well. I would ask that you maybe think about the edge of the boardwalk as it meets land instead of keeping that as a hard line, thinking about how that boardwalk might actually follow. into the edges of the grade as it passes down. I think there's an opportunity for that edge to be more landscaped and softer and potentially have places for benches to sit back against it. There's something really nice about sitting at a bench and having a boardwalk and people in front of you then the rail and pond beyond. I think that softening that edge would go a long way towards helping that. So apologies for thinking a little bit design-wise as you guys have obviously put huge amounts of thought in it, but I'd encourage you to maybe think a little bit of those and maybe engage more with Eric and urban design staff about the opportunities along the turnaround edge.

Yeah, thank you, Dan. You know, obviously, a lot of thought and years of work have gone into this, but it is still subject to, you know, ongoing design review and things like that. So I would say given the... the willingness of the team so far to have discussions. I'm sure, you know, there'll still be refinements as we go forward, which is not to say that everything that's suggested will happen, but I think it's good to just get the items out on the table. Let's see, any other questions from board members? No, all right. Let me go, before we get into discussion, let me go to Jen Sweet, who had, she wanted to make some clarifying points, and that would be helpful, I think, before we make our comments. Hi, Mary.

Thank you. Yeah. Hi, I'm Jen Spie. I'm a licensed site professional with Haley and Aldridge and have a lot of historical knowledge on the site. My main priority is being protective of human health in the environment. And I just wanted to go back to I know that both Mackie and Lisa mentioned the depaving efforts. And the majority of the pavement that was on the site was in the area where the compensatory flood storage area on the west side of Jerry's Pond was created. And so that pavement, the reason why we cited the compensatory flood storage was the fact that there were not very many trees growing there because of that pavement. And that has all been removed already. And that work is complete. In the process of that, we did some sort of test batches around some trees before... constructing that to see if it was viable to remove pavement around some of those trees and see if it would damage the bark of the trees. And we were successful at removing in some locations. So I know IQHU is committed to continuing to do that in other areas, including on the east side of Jerry's Pond. So long as it one doesn't damage the tree right because we don't want to rip bark off the tree and kill the tree and as so long as it doesn't. affect the protective covers which are a requirement of the activity and use limitation so. During construction of the boardwalks and other features on the east side, we will be looking at that. And as much as is feasible, we'll be removing pavement as we can. But I'm going to be monitoring that to make sure that it doesn't damage protective covers or damage the trees in the process. So I know they're committed to it as much as it's feasible.

Great. Thank you. That was very helpful. I appreciate the clarifications. Howard, did you want to add anything? You had your hands up, but now it's down.

No, I was going to talk about the depaving. And even in addition to what Jennifer just described, based on community impact from people like Mackie and Lisa and others, the IQHQ went and removed even more than we needed to do to accomplish the work. So there was definitely a will there to do that. And just kind of going back to we're here for the floodplain overlay, we're creating more capacity for storage. The project in its entirety is doing great things for stormwater. You know kind of reduction of infiltration of info there's so many benefits of this project and daniel's comments just kind of made us a little bit. smirk because we've kind of walked down the path, a million times of what we're doing, but one thing that we were talking about the ECO Center and the sighting of the ECO Center The other thing that came up in Community concerns was. just the emissions from tailpipes along Ridge Avenue and trying to get the seating and things as far away as we could. So we tried to balance that just as a consideration. If you look at this, we did, because that boardwalk's down and you would be face at tailpipe level. So we're trying to avoid that a little bit, but it's just kind of made me chuckle a little bit on all the discussions we've had in the 200 plus meetings on the project. So thank you for bringing that up. So I just want to say thank you. Sure. Great.

I did have one question about the Eco Center. So I believe you said that Mass Audubon is going to be sort of managing what the programming in that area. Could someone describe a little bit more about what this the sign-up procedure is for the grill? It seems to me like one grill for an area like that is is almost it's almost kind of foolish. I mean, you're going to have grills or you're not. But I thought then, well, maybe you're planning that it would be for a single event where you would have somebody coordinating the cooking. So how has all of that been at work?

Mary, I can help with that. So we were trying to check every box that Anusha presented to us other than the ice skating. And... that was important, right? For families in the area that, you know, we can't have open flame. It can't be remnants of the old, you may remember, remember the old hibachis down on MDC property when we were, I don't know if you remember, that was my mother's, that was our cheap out when we had birthday parties back then, but we couldn't go quite there. So what we did envision, you know, Folks grilling hot dogs and having small gatherings. It's not a huge area area. So I want to diffuse. You know, it wasn't intended to be a large structure because that's not the point. It was really and it's really open. It's really a, um, a defined deck. Where mass Audubon could bring a class of kids over from. you know rinjav upper or or haggardy school and do an educational class to you know talk about renaturalization and all that we then said by by reservation if a specific group wanted to do something and use the grills we would we will hold on to that reservation piece so we'll have You know, we could do Earth Day and have a component at the deck. The educational programming will be posted so folks know that, you know, Mass Audubon is going to be there doing classes certain hours. The rest of the time, we think we can make it somewhat open so it's just another amenity. I think that's going to be the safest way to do it because if it's closed up, people will get in. And so I think it's going to end up being just as Howard said, it's the most pristine view. And we think it's going to end up sort of melding into the whole site other than when Mass Audubon is doing classes and in particular times when we have groups come in that we think can manage and be responsible to use the space. But just to say, a number of folks in the community and council has pushed us to add seating early on. Some of the other seating areas are probably just as big or bigger that I think will end up being impromptu picnic areas beyond the Eco Pavilion, even though a lot of attention has gone on the Eco Pavilion.

Got it. Okay. And just in terms of maintenance, I don't know if you've worked out the specifics of a maintenance plan, but is there going to be, you mentioned the property manager for the development is going to be doing it. Are they going to be there on site daily? Do we know how many times a day? Has any of that been worked out yet?

Or is that still in the process? I don't know if Chrissy's Wi-Fi is great. We consider it part of our property. So it is part of our property. and our property management folks who are there 24 7 are going to be are going to be part of it hopefully we'll be able to look to hire from from the local area but yeah we're it's going to be considered part of iqhq's um property so yes okay thank you that was helpful um

Our site's going to be managed by CBRE. And so all security rounds and whatnot that not only include the development site, but they'll also track down the southern areas as well.

Yep.

Correct. That's great. All right. So board members, then if there are no other questions, let's move to discussion. So just any comments you have on the project. And our purpose tonight is to either take action on on the permit or request additional information or whatever. You know, from the positive comments I've heard both from board members and from the public, it would seem to me as though denying it is not something that we're considering. So anyway, your thoughts, who would like to begin?

Okay, Mary. I can kick us off. Yes. I think my first overall comment is you know, commending, I think, everyone on the extensive community public process that has clearly led to where we are today. I did not, I was not on the board when the broader development was previously reviewed. But, you know, I think it says a lot, the folks who come, wrote comments and spoke publicly. And so I'm not going to pretend to know all the little details, right, that went into your design and those details. So the questions I ask, say, about the floating wetland are really, you know, me just kind of I don't have a problem with the siting. I think it is great that the Charles River Conservancy has recently done one. And so it feels like they're starting to be maybe a local community that I'm sure you guys are in touch with and Mass Audubon to kind of understand what's working and not working about those. Obviously, that's a very different context than what yours is, but I think it's kind of cool. One in a river. managed river, one here. And so obviously we heard some comments, a desire for more naturalistic, whether that is actually the form or if maybe it's just the way that you orient and locate them to get a little bit less of a symmetry against range, that might help as well. I'd also like to commend Renge Avenue. I really appreciate that the work extends across the street. And so on your side, you have the Zelkovas and the lilacs because there's a transmission line, but on the other side, there's no transmission line and it looks like you have Nissa. So it just looks like a very thoughtful appreciation that your site is over there, but if you can get canopy trees on the other side of the street, I think it just speaks a lot to how thoughtful the design is to what the context is. So I really appreciated seeing that. the there were some comments from um the city and i know you guys are looking at the fencing as well so i think anything you can continue to do to make the you know the the vinyl coated fencing that's black it kind of disappears um as integrated when you get to the public moments as possible i think that's a design development piece that you'll keep looking at and i think you're in a great area places like fresh pond or like master classes and the way to make beautiful fencing and block off public access to resources or areas that people shouldn't go. So I would just encourage you in the city to keep looking at those details and developing those. The decking, again, if you keep exploring, is composite the direction you want to go, you know, I think composites have gotten better. They're still a plastic-based product. They have different issues than woods. So again, collectively, I don't think I know of an example within this region that has done, say, kebne or thermally modified extensive boardwalks, but they exist other places in New England. So I think just keep looking at those to make sure that you feel comfortable about that. I have the same question as Mary about the grills. It seemed like because it was coming as a public desire, it's going to be really popular. And I might just push this as something maybe for the city to consider in Russell Field area. Is there anywhere over there where more grills could be accommodated? Because if you guys were hearing about it for this site, maybe the demand could be kind of higher. expand it a bit and find places over there to add that. Let's see. Ah, okay. And then my final is essentially what everyone else has been mentioning is kind of a question mark about long-term maintenance. I understand it's CBRE, which is is a little bit more of like a commercial maintenance group. And I think what I'm kind of wondering about is really the establishment period, especially as so much of this is going to be about invasive species management and ecological restoration at the edges. It's really the landscape management that feels like that's a I know that they might get third party. contractors to work on it. So I think more information about that would be really helpful as you continue developing your plan. And I will also just commend that having Green Cambridge and Mass Audubon involved gives a lot of assurance that you are looking for partnerships and transparency and a kind of potential evolution of the process as the site comes underway. So I'll just put that as kind of a, you know, reiterating what the board has said is more information about that maintenance approach would be really great because it's gonna be incredible to open up this area to the public. It's gonna be such a huge improvement for this neighborhood, but the city generally. I know this has been a long time.

Great, thank you. Diego, let's go to you next.

Yeah, I just want to say that this is awesome. I think it's a great project. The community outreach process has been really impressive and the public comments that we heard tonight, I think were inspiring for any project that we see that we have such support and constructive comments for the team that's applying. So yeah, thank you. I was a little concerned about the bicycles at first, but I feel like with the discussion that's happened and just with how you've answered a lot of the CDD's comments and the bicycle safety committee comments, you're gonna progress that path on the west side and address a lot of the concerns. So thanks again. Thank you.

Dan, let's come back to you.

Madam Chair, thank you. So I think just in terms of the conditions and special permits that are in front of us, I've given my design comments already, so hopefully they take them for what they are. Mary's comments are obviously always thoughtful. The compensatory storage and the use helical pile seems entirely a reasonable and well thought out solution. Minimal impact, thinking about, you know, just sort of light pole rail docks and other, you know, New England tradition of very light touch on the land. So I really applaud the team at a really sophisticated and simple way of addressing that. And on the bike parking, as Danny put forward, yeah, I think it meets our conditions. Hopefully there'll be other bike pieces put into place, either blue bikes or maybe MBTA or the city are thinking about those. But it definitely is both a commuter and kind of recreational biking area. Hopefully no biking on the decks, don't need boardwalks being traversed by bikes, but that's maybe a little bit more of a policing issue. But anyway, I just wanted to say that both special permits seem entirely reasonable and just wanted to support that.

Great, thank you. Ted, what are your thoughts?

Well, thank you. Well, first I want to congratulate IQHQ and all the community involvement because I think they have come up with a really tremendous plan. As my colleague said, it really is awesome. I think all the design issues that have been raised today are great and things for them all to consider and staff to be considering. But bringing it back to what is before us tonight is really the floodplain special permit, which I acknowledge I have very little knowledge about and rely upon the fact that the conservation commission has already issued an order of conditions covering all the the plan today and that if at some point it gets way beyond what the Conservation Commission has done. My understanding is it would have to go back to them and delay everything. And so while I hope the proponent and staff can work things out, quickly and without necessity of it going back to the Conservation Commission and then perhaps having to come back to us. I think this is an excellent example of what we did a couple of weeks ago to suggest or support amending out the floodplain special permit because it really requires special knowledge, which I certainly don't have, and I don't know if other members of this particular board do have either. So I think we comply with all the requirements. The proponents comply with all the requirements for the special permit. With regard to the biking, I think that's an issue to be resolved between the proponent and the building department to reach a clear interpretation of what is required, but it certainly seems to me that the proponent has provided more than uh the ordinance requires at this point so i i uh would you know strongly in favor of uh granting the requested special permits great thank you um ashley did you want to add anything

Thank you, Madam Chair. Nothing particular to add. I just wanted to say thank you for the proponent. I know, I recall, was it three, four or five years ago, the project team, you know, came and talked about their actual project and I know you guys worked hard with Friends of Jerry Pond to improve this area because this is the neighbor's biggest concern. And so, yeah, it's great to see this come through. I can't wait to bird watch from this area. And I think as others mentioned, as long as there's welcoming signage, helpful signage, lighting that's both

know conservative doesn't cause glare but is also safe i think this is a great idea and thank you for putting so much effort into it excellent thank you um yeah i mean i can work with my colleagues and and others i i think you guys have done just a phenomenal job um you know anthony's talking about the little hibachis down down by the river I remember when the watering hole, the swimming hole there was called Jerry's Pit. It wasn't even Jerry's Pond, right? So to have gone from a pit to this beautiful area that is going to restore the natural habitat and that, you know, the neighborhood that's abutting it will see the benefits daily as they walk to and from. But it's also, I think as Mary and others pointed out, it's just a tremendous resource for the city as a whole. So I think you've all done just a fantastic And so I too am in favor of granting the permit. I think, so there are three permits that we're looking at and we need to make findings for each of them. So let me just say, so when we grant the special permit, we do it based on the fact that the proponent has met these findings. And we're also going to be adding in the conditions that Anthony referred to at the beginning of the presentation, which are in the CDD memo from the zoning perspective. And also just reference the urban design requirements comments and items for follow-up um i think you know this group has a very good record of discussing things back and forth and i think all of those items can be worked out um at the staff level moving forward so uh so first let me go through conditions and uh And I'm going to see if I can take a shortcut on reading all of this. And Jeff or Evan, if you think I need to go through it all, just let me know. But in terms of the floodplain special permit, I did note... in the order of conditions from the conservation commission which is ted noted they really are the specialists in this area and know more than i think any of us on the planning board they determined that the project is consistent with the objectives of the floodplain overlay district that's referred to in the zoning so i think the proponent has more than demonstrated that they meet the findings that the board needs to make In terms of modification of bicycle parking requirements, that's special permit 6.108. We need to find that where an alternative design or layout of bike parking spaces is proposed, the planning board shall determine that such a design or layout shall be durable and convenient for the users who it's intended to serve. and where modifications to the location or quantity of bicycle parking is proposed, the planning board shall determine that the bike parking will satisfactorily serve the needs of all expected users. As was pointed out by the proponent, they are proposing more spaces than are actually required by the zoning and that will be determined, the final number will be determined by the building department prior to issuing a permit. And then the last permit is the general special permit, which is section 10.43. And I won't go through those findings because we're all familiar with them. And I think we know that they have been met based on what we've seen. Does anybody disagree that we've met the, or not we, but the proponent has met the findings? Okay, we're fine there. Jeff and Evan, do you have anything else that I need to think about before I go ahead and ask for a motion? No, okay, all right. So could I then have a motion to grant the specimen with the conditions that I've noted, both in the zoning and urban design memo, and let's see, and after making the findings that we have, that the proposal conforms to the applicable criteria in the zoning ordinance. So grant the special permit with conditions after making the findings which we have just made. Is there someone who would make that motion, please?

This is Ted. I'm happy to make the motion, but is this for just one special permit or for all three of them?

It would be for all three.

Okay. I'm happy to make special permits. Special permits. Happy to make the, that we've made the findings, necessary findings for granting the three special permits and just move them. Okay.

Okay. Is there a second on that motion as stated by Ted? This is Mary, second. Thank you, Mary. Evan, could we have a roll call vote freeze? Yes. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Before you do that, I need to say that I'm appointing Dan as a voting member for this evening.

Evan, back to you.

Sorry.

Thank you. No worries. H. Theodore Cohen. Yes. Mary Leydecker.

Yes.

Diego Macias. Yes. Ashley Tan.

Yes.

Dan Anderson. Yes. And Mary Flynn.

Yes.

That is everyone voting in favor.

Wonderful. Well, congratulations to the project team. Keep up the good work. And I look forward to being there on groundbreaking day. Or ribbon cutting day, I probably should say. Yeah. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you all. Thank you very much.

Thanks, everyone who has contributed to this. We appreciate you all. You're very welcome.

Okay, so now we're going to move on to our next public hearing, which is on a zoning petition by the City Council to amend a subsection of the Cannabis Use Standards, Section 11.8 of the Cambridge Zoning Ordinance with the intent to remove the provision that prohibits the packaging or repackaging of cannabis products on the premises of a cannabis retail store. So first we're gonna have an overview and then we're going to move to public comment and then board questions and discussion and determine whether or not we will make a recommendation to the city council on this proposed zoning change. So I'm gonna turn it over to Evan. to summarize and then I believe that Christina is going to be doing the presentation.

That's right. Thank you, Mary. I will be very brief. The actual zoning change here is very simple. It's removing one provision that prohibits the packaging and repackaging of cannabis products in a cannabis retail store. This is one part of a larger kind of modernization effort of our cannabis business regulations. So I will just turn it over to Christina to kind of put it in the larger context and talk a little bit more about the change and why it's being proposed now.

Thank you so much. Can folks hear me okay? Yes. Great. Thank you, Christina. Yeah, thank you. Nice to be here. I've got a presentation set up, so let me get that going for us all. All right. So as Evan mentioned, I'm Christina. I'm in the Economic Opportunity and Development Division of CDD. And in my role, I've been working in cannabis since 2018 when the retail cannabis was adopted and in November of 2022. I was asked to be the city's cannabis point person, which means that I serve many of our existing retailers and help our prospective ones with every aspect of the permitting process. And it's in that capacity tonight that I'm excited to share the proposal for consideration. So in addition to the details of the proposal, I'll just quickly be reviewing some local cannabis history, context for why we are proposing this change now, and how staff review can be conducted going forward. Regarding our timeline wanted to just highlight a couple things so Cambridge has been regulating cannabis for over 10 years, starting with medical marijuana. And then, not long after that retail cannabis sometimes also called adult use in 2022 we saw our first retailer open and in 2023 we took the step to remove the special permit from our local review process. And even with the special permit removal, the process for opening a cannabis business remains complex with many local and state requirements. For those unfamiliar or for those who might be grateful for a refresher, all cannabis uses in the state of Massachusetts require a marijuana license issued by the Cannabis Control Commission. Before the issuance of that license, a business must prove to the Commission that they've met all of the local regulations of the city that they wish to operate in. For most municipalities in Massachusetts, that means providing a copy of a local host community agreement. Throughout this presentation, you'll probably hear me call that the HCA. And in Cambridge, we do require an HCA, but we also require a cannabis business permit, which is issued by ISD. Just a little gentle reminder of where cannabis is kind of loud and what we have current so far cannabis is allowed in many places, but it's not exactly allowed everywhere so many business and many industrial zones. And for our discussion tonight it's helpful to see where we do have existing or prospective retail cannabis stores located. Many existing operators have already expressed a desire to repackage on site. it's an attractive option for customers, it can be affordable for the business and can further branding efforts, since owners can relabel product with their own logo. quickly to talk about some of the historical backing of this particular zoning language. So this is the specific language that Evan mentioned that we are looking to strike. It is short, but it does read all products offered to consumers shall be prepackaged off site and no packaging or repackaging of cannabis or marijuana products shall take place on the premises of a cannabis retail store unless it also meets the requirements of a cannabis production facility. And I had thought tonight that I might be joined by my friend Sam Lipson, the Senior Director of the Environmental Health at the Cambridge Public Health Department. He might not be here, but Sam and his team have been very gracious in giving me a lot of education about what kind of prompted some of this early on. There were concerns about odor nuisance and about public health impacts, especially on small children in mixed-use buildings. And additionally when this language was being considered staff did feel comfortable, including the restriction in our zoning, even though it conflicted with state regulations. Because at that time the campus control Commission was exercising a high degree of deference to municipalities and to local control. As I mentioned the proposed changes to strike all of 1183 one see entirely. And we want to just quickly mention why we're asking for this now. The earlier things that I had mentioned about how operators are already asking for this change because it's impacting their business is of course something that really compels us to ask for this change now, but it isn't really the only thing that's compelling us to ask for this now. One thing that we want to highlight is that things at the Cannabis Control Commission have really changed. In August of 2023, the state passed an act relative to equity in the cannabis industry. Among other things, the act granted the commission the power to review and reject host community agreements found to be in violation of the state codes for adult use cannabis. The Commission has alerted us that our restriction on repackaging goes against state code and that it now must be remedied. Related, we are performing other regulatory updates, including a big adjustment to our cannabis business permitting ordinance. This is set for discussion tomorrow at the Ordinance Committee. Our next slide will go into just a tiny bit more detail about that change. And lastly, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that since 2022, when our first retailer opened, we have noticed some trends. One is that cannabis retail operators are really not setting up in the kinds of buildings that this zoning code restriction had in mind. Cannabis retailers are limited in where they can open. Locally, we have an 1800 foot buffer restriction, but it can also be difficult to rent a space with any federally backed mortgages. For these reasons, we're seeing that many of our operators are in very old commercial buildings that are often standalone buildings or single story or in a full commercial building in our dense commercial corridors. I mentioned earlier that many municipalities have just a host community agreement requirement that businesses secure before getting the state marijuana license, but that in Cambridge we have both an HCA and a cannabis business permit. One thing that we're aware of is that the Cannabis Control Commission has just made an HCA waiver form available, which frees up the city to consider additional regulatory changes that will streamline our local review process even further. But before utilizing a waiver form city staff want to preserve some of the HCA criteria that really helped us to understand the complete picture of a prospective business operations. At the ordinance committee meeting tomorrow city staff will be sharing a plan for taking the criteria that are listed here and moving them to the cannabis business permitting ordinance where staff can continue to monitor them. So how do we sort of see all this fitting together? Since our ordinance is currently under review, it is an ideal time to draft and add language for something like an odor nuisance plan requirement. Criteria in the cannabis business permitting ordinance have a corresponding question that can be found in the online application for a cannabis business permit. Moving this zoning code restriction to an application question allows us to be considerate of the original intent while giving us some flexibility as the industry continues to grow. We can set expectations that the odor nuisance plan aligns with state codes and industry best practices. And we can also consider the odor nuisance plan within the full context that it would operate within, including but not limited to the type of building that a business is interested in occupying. So with that, I thank you very, very much for your time and would be happy to address any questions or help with discussion.

Great. Thank you, Christina. That was very, very helpful. Before we go to questions, we're going to go to public comment. This is a public hearing. So any members of the public who wish to speak should now click the button that says raise hand. If you're calling in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star 9. As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the board had received no written communications or comments on this petition. Written communications received after 5 p.m. yesterday will be entered into the record. Let's see. So if anyone is interested in speaking, please raise your hand now. I see that we have one person. There are a few other people on the line, so we might have another one or two. Let me turn it over to Evan, who will unmute speakers one at a time. You should begin by saying your name and address, and staff will confirm that we can hear you. And after that, you'll have up to three minutes before I ask you to wrap up. So Evan, let me turn it over to you. Right at the moment, I see two speakers.

Thank you, Mary. Yeah, it looks like we have two speakers. The first speaker will be Saba Moses, followed by Stephen DeMarco. Excuse me, Saba, you should be able to unmute yourself now. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record. Baba, I see you've unmuted yourself, but we are not hearing you if you're speaking.

I'm so sorry. Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can hear you now.

Hi, everyone. This is Saba Moses. I am here on behalf of Green Soul. We are operating a dispensary operating in Central Square. And I'm just here to say that we agree with the recommendation that is being proposed. And, you know, it will really help our business thrive. We have a lot of customers who this is something they've experienced in other dispensaries. And we've just seen how this is just something that has helped other people. And in a market that's super competitive, we wanna be able to keep up with the market and put our best foot forward. And this is something that the state has allowed and it would be very helpful if Cambridge could align.

Thank you. The next speaker and the last speaker that signed up so far is Steven DeMarco. If you do want to sign up for comment, please raise your hand now and we will get to you after this next speaker. Steven, you should be able to unmute yourself now. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Hi, my name's Steve DeMarco. I'm at 86 Kirkland Street. We have a dispensary opening hopefully sometime this year. And... I am in favor of amending the ordinance so that we can repackage. I think there's some innovation we can all take advantage of, and the end result of that will definitely be beneficial for our customers. So bundling or white labeling our own product to expand and grow our individual brands, I think would definitely... be a welcome change. It kind of puts everybody on a level playing field and allows us to offer more tailored bundles or packages for people with relevant cost savings. So it's a pro-business, pro-growth adjustment, and I'm totally in favor of that. And thank you guys for taking this up.

Thank you, Steven. That looks to be the end of the list of speakers signed up.

Okay. Thank you, Evan. And thanks to the members of the public for commenting. With public comment closed, let's move on to board questions and discussion. Before discussion, do board members have any questions either for the zoning staff or for Christina about the proposed changes? All right, I'm not seeing any questions. It seems pretty straightforward based on the guidance from the state and the explanation that Christina has given. Board members, what are your thoughts? Our actions tonight can be to recommend that the petition be adopted, not adopted, or we could just provide comments to the city council.

Ted. Ted, you're muted.

sorry uh i'm all in favor of making a recommendation uh in support of this proposal i think it would put us in line with what the state is doing now and uh for board members newer board members who don't know we this board has spent untold hours uh hearing special permit applications for cannabis facilities in the city, and it was delightful when this obligation was taken away from the planning board and given to the building department. and the cannabis facilities department. I mean, I think historically, I think the state and the city were concerned about issues of traffic and parking and pedestrians blocking the sidewalks and odor and other issues, which to my observations, none of which have come to fruition in Cambridge. and i don't think they have elsewhere i mean it was all mostly based on when there was only one facility in the boston brookline cambridge area where there were enormous lines and enormous traffic issues i think if you look at the various facilities in cambridge now they're no busier than any other store in the city and so i think if this is going to help a business in the city and is in a line with what the state is now recommending or requiring, then I think it makes perfect sense for the city to make a similar change.

Great. Thank you, Ted. Does anyone else want to comment on this? Ashley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree. And, you know, the state has really strict labeling, really strict anti-tampering requirements for all these repackaging and packaging requirements. And so if the state is okay with it and the operators are being regulated through that, I don't think there's a need for us to be more restrictive than that. And we should conform to it.

Thank you, Ashley. Anyone else want to comment? So based on what I've heard so far, we've been making a positive recommendation for adoption to the City Council for the reasons that have been outlined by Ted. and Ashley, and based on the information in Christina's presentation. Is there any other board members who disagree? No, okay. Very good. So on this particular vote, this will just be full board members voting. And so could I have someone make a comment? Yes, I'll state a motion to make the recommendation that the petition be adopted.

Is Ted so moved?

Thank you, Ted. Is there a second, please?

Diego, second.

Thanks, Diego. Evan, may we have a roll call vote, please?

Yes. H. Theodore Cohen. Yes. Mary Leydecker.

Yes.

Diego Macias. Yes. Ashley Tan. Yes. And Mary Flynn.

Yes.

That is five regular members voting in favor.

Great, thank you. All right, so that concludes the business on our agenda. Are there any additional comments from staff this evening? Any other questions or comments from the board? No? All right. So we'll meet again next Tuesday evening where the discussion will be the design review guidelines on multifamily housing. So I look forward to all of that. And so with that, the meeting is adjourned. Good evening, everyone. See you next week.