Planning Board Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the March 10th, 2026 meeting of the Cambridge Planning Board. My name is Tom Sieniewicz 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. So all 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's time for public comment. I will give instructions for public comment at that time. And you can also find instructions on the city's web page for remote planning board meetings. This meeting is being video and audio recorded and is being streamed live on the City of Cambridge online meeting portal and on cable television channel 22 within Cambridge.

There will also be a transcript made of the proceedings. I'll start tonight by asking SCAF to take board member attendance and verify that all members are audible.

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

I am present and it's visible and audible.

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

Present, visible, and audible.

Carolyn Zern, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you. For the associate members, Dan Anderson, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Hi, Evan. Yes, it is. Thank you. And Joy Jackson, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Joy. And finally, the chair, Tom Sieniewicz, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you. That's six regular members present and two associate members present.

Great. Thank you, Evan. The next item is an approval of meeting minutes. The board has received certified transcripts for the meeting held on February 10th, 2026. If there are any questions from board members, please state your name. Swathi, I see you have your hand raised.

Just making a quick note that planning board member Mary Lydecker has joined us.

Great. You want to put that on the transcript, Evan, if you would?

Thank you. Can I just, I'll just call the roll just to... formalize it. Mary Lydecker, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you. Great. Thank you, Evan. Okay. Meeting minutes. Any questions on the meeting minutes? Seeing none, only four full board members will act on this particular item. Is there a motion to accept the transcripts as the meeting minutes? Please remember to say your name.

This is Carolyn, so moved.

Thank you, Carolyn. A second?

This is Diego, second.

Thank you, Diego. Roll call on that motion, please.

Apologies. Sorry, I lost the button. H. Theodore Cohen? Yes. Mary Flynn?

Yes.

Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias. Yes. Ashley Tan. Yes. Carolyn Zern.

Yes.

And Tom Sieniewicz. Yes. Great. Thank you, Evan. Agenda item number one. The next item on the agenda is an advisory consultation of case number A-H-O. Evan, you have your hand raised.

We skipped over the CDD update. I am sorry I'm in such a rush this evening. Okay. Well, then I will be brief. My name is... Evan Spatrini, I'm the senior manager for zoning and development. Also from the zoning and development team tonight, we have Swati Joseph and Becca Mpuri. and also from CDD on our urban design team, Eric Thorkeldsen and Susanna Bigelin are here. and from housing, the housing department, we have Cassie Arnault, Christine Yu and Alexis Turgeon. And I see also from our zoning team, we have Sophia Defoe. That's all staff present. We have no scheduled planning board meetings coming up as of now.

We do have some city council committee meetings. I mentioned last week, tomorrow, there's a meeting of the ordinance committee to discuss A possible zoning petition around active uses on Mass Ave and Cambridge Street, a follow-up item from the zoning that was recently passed for those corridors. So that's That's tomorrow. And then later in the month there's a housing committee meeting on Central Square. That'll be an update on the planning that's been done. in Central, and a discussion on what's to come. And the next day on March 25th, at a joint meeting of the neighborhood, Long-Term Planning Committee and Housing Committee. There will be the annual housing review, which is a

A review that was established in the multifamily zoning reform that happened last year. So this is the first annual housing review that will... take place March 25th, and then shortly after we'll do a similar presentation for the planning board. So expect that late March, early April. and I will stop there and pass it back to the chair.

Thank you, Evan, and I apologize for skipping over that. I even had it marked in red here on my notes. All right, so now we will move. to agenda item number one. And that next agenda item is the advisory consultation of case number AHO 10. and affordable housing overlay project proposed for Corcoran Park Phase 1 LLC to construct a four-story building and a three-story building to create 67 affordable rental units and amenities. 33 off-street parking spaces and 42 long-term and 12 short-term bicycle parking spaces with a gross floor area of 82,407 square feet. at 8 through 12 May Street and at 53 Lawn Street. We will begin with CDD staff explaining why this is before us.

And then we will have a presentation from the developer followed by public comment. And then the board will ask questions and finally discuss the proposed design. Becca, I believe, will be introducing this.

Thank you. Good evening. I'm Becca Mapudi, Associate Zoning Planner with the CDD Z&D team. So this is the second of two required planning board advisory consultation sessions for this AHU project. As a reminder, the affordable housing overlay creates an alternative set of development standards that apply as of rightful housing developments in which all units are made permanently affordable. The intent of this design review is not for the planning board to grant or deny a permit, But to provide advisory comments on the design and its overall conformance with the city's urban design objectives and guidelines, which are summarized in the CDD memo. The Planning Board reviewed this proposal on December 16th of last year and issued a preliminary report on January 5th that was sent to the developer.

The developer has submitted a set of updated plans and CDD's zoning and urban design team have provided reports on those to the board and staff members are present here tonight to answer any questions. Tonight, the board will review the updated proposal and decide what comments to include in the final report.

Great. Thank you very much, Becca. The presenter is Matt Zajac, and he will have up to 30 minutes for his presentation. Though we hope, as usual, you can be as concise as possible. So good evening.

Thank you, everyone. My name is Matt Zajac. I am Cambridge Housing Authority's Deputy Director for Planning. are grateful for the comments that we have received from the planning board and city staff since our December planning board meeting. Over the past month, we have sought to incorporate those comments to the maximum extent possible while maintaining fidelity to the robust community and resident engagement process that we've done as well as respecting some of the cost constraints of developing deeply affordable housing. We are very excited to present to you some significant enhancements around the design of the central courtyard for the community. as well as screening and configuration of the parking lot. Next slide please. Today, after providing a brief recap of the development team,

We will overview the changes that were made to the site plan. Our designers, the Studio G architects, will then provide a brief look at several studies that are either in process or we were unable to incorporate. Next, our design team will review changes to the landscape architecture and the facades leading up to a revised walkthrough of our 3D digital model. Next slide, please. Stepping back for a moment, CHA have been proud to serve the community for 90 years. serves approximately 7,700 households or 7% of the population of Cambridge. We also have a robust waiting list with over 14,000 unique households on it.

and we, through our redevelopment projects like Corcoran Park, seek to serve both our existing households and those families in need on our wait list. We are proud to collaborate on this project with Studio G Architects and I will turn it over to them to introduce themselves at this point.

Thanks, Matt. Good evening, everyone. I'm Gabriela Shelburne, principal and head of housing studio at Studio G Architects. We're a woman-owned architecture firm with 33 years of experience designing places of purpose. Today, I'm joined by staff architect Sam Maloney, but there are other members of our team helping this project come to fruition. We've assembled an experienced team of collaborators. With us tonight is landscape architect Mark Klopper of KMDG. Today we will present the site design of Corcoran Park Phase One. which has been refined based on the advisory comments received from the planning board and city staff. Corcoran Park consists of two lots separated by Long Street. It is currently composed of 153 units in 25 buildings and 92 parking spaces over two parcels. Tonight we're focusing on Lot 1, which is the northern parcel of land outlined on this slide.

Lot 1 is bounded by May and Long Streets to the east and south and the Belmont Cemetery to the north. In this lot, there are currently 29 dwelling units in four two-story buildings, 14 parking spaces, and 25 existing trees. The proposed redevelopment of Phase 1 will replace the four existing buildings with two buildings, increasing the unit count from 29 to 67. Changes to the proposed site design metrics can be seen in bold text on this slide. Based on advisory feedback, the total number of trees has been increased from 75 to 81. The on-site parking has been reduced from 36 to 33 spaces and the short-term bicycle parking has been increased from 8 to 12 spaces. All other design metrics remain the same from our last mission. Looking into the proposed development summary, Building A has 46 units while Building B has 21.

Between the two buildings, we propose 13 one bedrooms, 39 two bedrooms, and 15 three-bedroom units. On the following slides, you'll see numbers in purple. These correspond with the advisory feedback and development responses found in Volume 1 of the final submission materials. Here is the previously submitted site plan. Planning board members and city staff asked that the development team consider several improvements, like continuing to explore the central courtyard designed to improve its functionality, reducing the size and visibility of on-site parking and coordinate with city staff on the curb cut location and design. Improving the pedestrian experience, particularly at the entrance of Building A, optimizing access to bicycle parking, and reconsidering shared balconies at the inside corners of Building B.

To improve pedestrian connectivity, we've redesigned the main entrance to Building A facing Main Street. Three parking spaces have been removed, making room for an enlarged entry plaza with multiple connections to the public sidewalk for improved access, visibility, and pedestrian activity. This includes a front porch with fixed seating that faces Main Street. Between buildings A and B, we've added a side stair to increase the central courier's connection to Main Street. The community room terrace has been enlarged for greater community engagement. Additionally, we've added four short-term bicycle parking spaces at the corner of May and Long Street. This evenly distributes short-term bike racks at the three public facing corners of the site. As a reminder, long-term bike parking is located in the basement of Building A in the highlighted area.

To reduce the size and visual presence of the surface parking lot, we've reoriented the Eversource enclosure in the top left corner of the site, which allows parking to shift away from Main Street. where the parking lot is close to the sidewalk with located public art, fencing, and additional plantings to better mask the parking from public view under a visual focus to the entry plaza. We have also been coordinating the design of the curb cut with Cambridge DPW and DOT. Although this graphic currently shows a 20-foot wide curb cut, we intend to match the existing curb cut, which is 14 feet wide, and here it is shown in purple. A narrower curb cut will reduce the amount of pavement visible from the public realm and further prioritize pedestrians by shortening their path across the drive aisle.

Updated graphics will follow for future coordination with the city staff and to be used when applying for a building permit. We've removed the shared patios and decks from the inside corners of Building B, which were a bit problematic. To improve the open space design, internal pathways have been revised to prioritize contiguous open space rather than fragmented clusters of smaller lawn areas. Along the western side of building B, pathways to entry porches have been consolidated. and the pathway connecting the courtyard to Longstreet has been shifted east towards the building, giving way to a larger shared yard. and less fragmented front-year zones for the units on this side of the building. In the courtyard perimeter, paths have been pushed closer to the building, making way for a larger flexible lawn area.

You can see that the play area has been removed from the central courtyard, given that this lot is well served by existing public playgrounds. Play areas will be included in Lot 2, which offers greater flexibility to accommodate them. Here you see the Hagerty School and the Glackenfield Playgrounds within a quarter mile walk from the site. In the previous meeting with this board, there was great discussion about the amount of surface parking included in the site design. It was suggested that the development team shift some or all parking below the building and extend Building A along Main Street into an L-shaped footprint. The development team studied a variety of options and found that the pros did not outweigh the cons.

CHA analysis has found that podium parking below a building comes at an additional cost of $50,000 per unit, which would push the project budget out of alignment with available funding sources. and while an extension of building A would increase the project density, it would also compound the existing parking issues in this neighborhood, which throughout the years of community engagement, we have consistently heard from residents and neighbors that parking is in high demand. CHA conducted a parking census which informed the 0.75 cars per unit ratio the site will offer when all phases of construction are completed. This target ratio has also been informed by the fact that the Corcoran Park is not well served by rapid transit and residents have jobs with hours and locations beyond the MBTA service schedule.

Another topic of discussion at our December meeting was a vehicular, bicycle, or pedestrian connection from the parking lot to Fairview Avenue. CHA's community outreach confirmed that this path is not desired by residents and neighbors as they have advocated against it. Turning your attention to the southeast corner of the site, we've begun coordinating with Cambridge DOT and DPW on the atypical large curve radius at the corner of Long and May. They have confirmed that this intersection was rebuilt within the past 10 years. There is preliminary indication that the existing condition can remain as is. but we will continue to coordinate with them any potential improvements to this intersection. I would like to shift to Mark now to respond to feedback about trees and plantings.

Thanks, Gabby. My name is Mark Kluffer. I'm a partner at Kluffer Martin Design Group and we're the landscape architects for this project. Good evening, everyone. The Planning Board asks for the clear articulation of existing trees to remain and those which are planned to be removed as classified by their health. 17 of the 25 existing trees are intended to remain. As you can see, these are along the perimeter of the site where they have the greatest likelihood of surviving demolition and construction process. It's shown here on the left of the plan. Trees highlighted in red are the eight existing trees to be removed. Five are in good health and three are in fair health. Trees have been proposed for removal. either because they are directly conflicting with new building location or the grade is incompatible with the grades required by the new FFE requirements. We investigated options to relocate trees to be removed. However, the trees are not suitable candidates for the relocation due to their health and their sizes. The next one.

Looking at the proposed condition, the design intends to add 64 new trees of various size and species. In our previous meeting with the planning board, we were asked to quantify the existing and proposed tree coverage on the site. We've used the diameter of breast height as our unit of measurement for this exercise and found that the proposed conditions will provide 23 additional tree caliper inches than the site's current conditions. You can find our full materials and plantings in volume two, page 36 of the final submission materials, which include diverse selection of both native and non-native species. Plant selection and location will be based on species suitability for the various conditions found on site. And I think I'll turn it over to you now, Sam.

Thank you, Mark, and good evening, everyone. My name is Sam Maloney. I'm an architect at Studio G Architects and a Cambridge resident. We'll now shift to the rendered perspective views to outline advisory comments received and the corresponding design revisions as seen from the public realm. The remainder of the slides will feature perspective images with a key plan in the bottom right corner for reference. In this aerial, we're looking at the southwest corner of Lot 1 with Lawn Street in the foreground and Fresh Pond beyond. As a reminder, Building A and B flank the central courtyard. Building B is seen in the foreground at three stories with a pitched roof. Building A, the taller red building, is four stories over a walkout basement. On the next slide we'll come down to street level at the top right corner of the site looking southwest towards the parking lot. Here we see the existing conditions at the corner of May and Vineyard Street. preventing neighborly relationship to May Street.

and on screen now is the previously proposed design of Building A. As Gabriella discussed previously, advisory feedback requested that the parking lot be screened more from public view to minimize its impact on the public street experience. Board members requested that the building be made to look more residential and welcoming, particularly at the main entrance. The development team responded to these comments in the following ways. As Gabriella shared on the site plan slides, three parking spaces were removed to make way for an entry plaza that extends out from the building's front door to May Street. This plaza includes fixed seating, visitor bicycle parking, and multiple connections to May Street sidewalk to prioritize pedestrians. At the back of the public sidewalk, just behind the dog walker in this rendering, a planting zone with low shrubs and a shade tree define the while adhering to the zoning requirements for vehicular sight lines at a curb cut. The plaza is bookended by a more densely planted area seen behind the bicycle and seated woman in this view.

The low and medium height plantings combined with a public art installation help to separate and screen the parking from the pedestrian environment. To improve the welcoming and residential character of the buildings, the entry canopy has been redesigned with columns and more traditional details in reference to porches found throughout Strawberry Hill. The lobby windows have been revised to look less like a commercial storefront and more like large picture windows. In fact, many windows throughout the building now feature a horizontal mullion to look more like a traditional double-hung window. The development team also made small adjustments to building colors and material types, resulting in a more vibrant and harmonious color palette that establishes a distinguished base, middle and top to each townhouse-like bay of the building. Stepping back to the existing conditions for a moment, we can see that there is minimal screening of the parking lot from the public realm.

To reiterate, the development team has recently met with city staff from DPW and DOT and intends to maintain this existing size and location of the curb cut. The development team proposes a fence behind low, medium and tall plantings to ensure that the parking is screened from view in all seasons. The fence is designed to maintain the character of the entry plaza, creating a coordinated edge condition on both sides of the curb cut. This view still shows the previously proposed 20 foot wide curb cut. Once that is reduced to 14 feet to maintain the existing conditions, the aperture in the street wall will be even narrower. To recap our screening strategies, the development team proposes a combination of plantings that build off of the palette you see here. We're particularly excited by the opportunity for public art to be implemented as a beautiful and functional screening device with a precedent designed by Forlano serving as our placeholder.

Moving down May Street to the middle of the block, the existing condition includes a retaining wall at the northern end of 8 May Street. As seen on the key plan, this is where an opening between buildings A and B will lead to the central courtyard. Members of the planning board noted that the previously presented design for the courtyard was overly fragmented by pathways and could be redesigned for improved engagement. The shared balconies at the inside corners of Building B were questioned, and city staff asked the development team revisit how the southern facade of Building A relates to the courtyard. Reinforcing what you saw earlier on the site plans, the revised design maximizes the flexible lawn areas by pushing pathways more towards the perimeter of the courtyard and removing the play equipment from this block. The grill and picnic table are central to the courtyard and additional benches can be found throughout the landscape.

architecturally building B was revised to relocate balconies away from its inside corners decks and patios that were previously shared by multiple units are now exclusively accessed by a single unit 10 of the 21 units in Building B have access to private outdoor space, as do 8 of the 46 units in Building A. On the right side of this image, Building A's angled bays have been mirrored so that their return walls now face east rather than west. This reinforces the townhouse-like rhythm as seen from the eastern May Street approach. Continuing south to the corner on the right, and the 20-story Parkside Place beyond. At this corner of Lawn and May, advisory feedback questioned the front yard setbacks and the delineation of public and private space. It was suggested that the architecture be more residential in scale and character with the porches, roofs, and rhythm of the massing being areas of focus.

The planning board also suggested that building B take on a more have been presented for Building A. The front yard setbacks have been optimized to keep the building close to the street while providing the necessary space for accessible pathways. As a reminder, the first floor of this building is elevated almost five feet above the existing intersection to comply with the city's There are various conditions across the frontage that define the boundary between public and private realms. Along Long Street to the left, sloped verges between site stairs are mulched and planted. At the accessible ramp in the center of this image, low walls are foregrounded by plantings. and along May Street, the sloped verge features medium height plantings behind the line of street trees. To more equitably distribute visitor bicycle parking, two additional bicycle racks have been located at this corner of the site.

Architecturally, the building corners have been redesigned to include bay windows and a more contextual roofline. There's also an additional gable at the center of the Longstreet facade to break up the roofline and establish an ABC rhythm of housing modules. In response to advisory feedback about the porches, entry doors have been grouped together and fronted by more prominent porches with roof forms that vary from shed to gable and material finishes that are more visually striking. Across the building, more vibrant colors have been deployed and the windows have been updated with wood-look frames and horizontal mullions to match the welcoming and residential character established on Building A. To round out the presentation, we'll now fly you through the site model. Please note that this animation does not include all plantings represented in the renderings and site plan slides. We're going to begin at the northwest corner

looking south towards Building A's northern facade and the parking lot in the foreground there. We'll then drop down to the May and Vineyard entrance screening for the parking lot on the right and the enlarged residential entry plaza as we approach where there is fixed seating and a front porch that faces May Street sidewalk. As we continue down the slope of May Street, we'll turn in at the mid-block community terrace where the community room is behind and now into the central courtyard with the central picnic and grilling area. Continuing between buildings A and B here, we will then find ourselves on the west side of the site plan where the side yard has been enlarged and the pathway moved towards the building.

Turning to the front of Building B on the Longstreet side, you can see the resilient slope required to meet the long-term flood elevation due to the lower grading for the existing street. requiring a ramp here in this corner for accessible access. And we'll finish by rotating around at aerial level again to see the full scope of the project.

Thank you, Sam. And thank you to the rest of the team for the presentation. We're grateful for the time and look forward to public comment as well as planning board questions.

Right. Thank you very much. So at this point, we will turn to public comment. So according to the zoning, we take public comment at these design review sessions. I would like to remind speakers that the board's action is not to approve or deny an application, but to provide advisory comments on the design that was presented tonight. So any members of the public who wish to speak should click the button that says raise hand. And if you're calling in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star nine. As of 5 p.m. yesterday the board received written comments from Barrett Brown and Ethan Frank. Written communications received after 5 p.m. yesterday will be entered into our record. I'll now ask staff to unmute speakers one at a time. You should begin by saying your name and address and staff can confirm that we can hear you.

After that, you'll have up to three minutes to speak before I ask you to wrap up.

It doesn't look like we have any raised hands so far, so I would ask again, if you do wish to speak, please push the raised hand button to get... in the queue.

Okay, it appears that no one is raising their hand. I hope that's not a broken technology, but it's well tried here. It looks like we do have one person that just...

Raise their hands. So, Christine Kuta, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. You should be able to unmute yourself. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. My name is Christine Kuta, and I live at 7 Fairview Avenue. which is not quite next door but pretty much an abutter to this project. and I can attest to the parking shortage in this neighborhood which is being further enhanced by the changes on Huron Avenue where they're taking away a lot of parking spaces to make way for bike lanes. So I implore you, please, to put at least those three parking spaces back. It doesn't take much to ruin the feel of a neighborhood when you cannot have your friends over, you cannot have service people because there's literally no place to park. It is a big problem. And it's one thing to take away the nice village look of Corcoran Park, which it has now. And I understand we need more housing. but it is not an attractive site. I know you all think it's wonderful, but I don't.

I like the village look and I think the residents like it too. and you know to make it to to give that extra pressure on the rest of its neighborhood is really not fair. It really, really isn't. You know, we have been living in happy proximity for many years. I've lived in my house for 30 years and I am really thinking of moving because I just can't stand the parking problems. Thank you.

Thank you.

So we do not have any more hands raised.

Great, okay. All right, thank you, Evan. We will now move from public comment to board discussion. Any additional comments may be submitted for the record. So, do board members at this point have questions for the project team or staff? that the board would like answered tonight. Great, Diego, thank you.

Sure, a short question. I was kind of bummed to see the playground get lost in the courtyard. I was wondering if there was any thought on placing it maybe on like the west side Building B, where the blue bikes are kind of north of there, like a small play element, or I don't know, just anywhere else.

Do you want me to respond to this? So this is the first sort of The second phase is a much larger area and one of the comments that we got in the last advisory meeting was that we had kind of subdivided the space up quite a bit. So in addition to moving the circulation sort of closer to the building, We also decided to have that space be a much larger lawn space that allowed play to be multifunctional as had been requested by this group as well. We thought that made sense and we're going to have a much more robust sort of play structure, play area in the larger section that's now being designed that you're going to see probably shortly in a few months. So that's the plan.

We haven't like done away with it, but we heard the idea of having that lawn be a more sort of multifunctional area, increasing its size so that it allows more different activities to happen. and then actually take the structured play and have it in areas that are sort of more accommodating for it. So that's how we decided to do that.

I just really want to add to what Mark said that this is also kind of in response to our observations of what play means in Corcoran Park. If you're there on a summer night, you'll see that the kids are running through the blocks. They're running across the streets. The lawn areas are the play areas as they exist now. And we do think that the current design helps to maintain Thank you all so much.

Thank you. And that, by the way, was Mr. Klopfer was answering about the landscape. If I could just remind people to identify themselves so that the transcript is complete and accurate before they speak. Carolyn.

Thank you. I just had a question on the... The surface parking and whether or not it's permeable. I was looking through the materials and it looked like in the narrative it's called out as permeable but on the materials plan and maybe on the permeable surface calculation it's not included. So I just wanted to get some clarity on that.

That's Asia from CHA. Sam, can you confirm?

I'm looking for the particular slide from Volume 2 that I could point you towards, Carolyn. Let's see, so it would be slide 47 of our volume two submission, and I'll share the screen momentarily here. So the parking lot, as highlighted in yellow, is entirely porous asphalt. and this in addition to the infiltration system is how we are capturing 15,000 cubic feet of below-grade storage.

Okay, great. Thank you. This is Carolyn, just to clarify. It was, I think on the materials plan, it's not shown as porous, but I'm happy to see this confirmation. I appreciate it.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions from the board at this point? If not, we'll move to comments and discussion impressions of what we represented tonight. Who wants to start? Mary. Mary Lydecker. I'm sorry.

Great. So thank you, thank you for walking through with such detail how the plan, the open space in the building responded to comments. we shared last year and I went first too because Diego I would say I think part of it was one of my comments had been I felt like the play at the center of that lawn had broken up that space in a way that made it Not usable as long, but also, you know, in my experience, a play element like that, because it's so constrained, it's going to serve one purpose. Sobrinho-Wheeler Thank you so much.

develop elsewhere and you know I think throughout that you've kind of tightened the paving to the edges to maximize that and to me it feels simplified but in kind of the best way. It doesn't have to be complex to see how useful it would be on a hot summer day. I also very much like the western side of the project, tightening that pathway against the building. also as you articulated about the trees that are going to be remain on site that's where a lot of them are and so the root zones will say thank you but from that fly-through you did I think it really showed that it feels more consolidated the green spaces. So overall, I would say the open space It feels really densely planted. It feels like it's leaning on trees and woody shrubs, which are long-term, I think, easier to maintain for a site like this.

And so that's all looking really good to me. I think in reflecting on the first time we reviewed this and I think my colleagues Dan and Ted really spoke to this the most, but questions about the density and the parking. I think the parking has improved. In some ways, I don't exactly have comments on that. I would say it looks like it has not really changed. And maybe it's more of a reflection on I think maybe the first time we saw this, it was too late. to make comments that could affect change because it sounds like you're being responsive to the community Thank you so much for joining us today. here about three to four, right, for building B in a way that it sounds like we're past that point. And so this is maybe more of a comment to my other board members too.

I'm curious what your thoughts are relative to The careful study that's been done about potential to increase density or address the parking. Do you feel like I don't know if I'm framing this. I'm just kind of curious about how you all think about that. If it feels like maybe the first review was a little bit too late to have an impact on those decisions. Thank you.

Who wants to address that particular meta question?

Or maybe you want to remain moot. I don't know. Tom, this is Dan. I appreciate Mary bringing this up. There is a conversation here that I'd love to have some input from staff on as well, as well as hearing from other board members. I think the presentation is lovely. I think the design looks great. Highly deferential. Maybe we say maybe too deferential to the neighborhood given the demand for housing. I made the comment previously that you know I mean and I guess To be circumspect about it, we have a very high housing demand. I think our presenters said 15,000 on the waiting list. I don't know where we are in terms of meeting our 12,500 at the moment, but we have a lot of competing interests.

We've had parking removed as a requirement for sites in order to make room for more units. which we're not seeing on the site, we're seeing surface parking. We've had an AHO which allows exemption from baseline zoning. We have a project here that's lovely, but is below by-right zoning. So there's some pieces that really we should address from a planning standpoint when we have the Cambridge Housing Authority, which is our foremost housing producer, public agency in the city, building low density housing. Let's call it moderate density housing. Are there ways to, Do we affordably provide parking? Is it a necessity? Do we want people driving to other cities to work? to have jobs and be an employee here in the city.

So there's a bunch of competing interests, certainly for a We have a mix of mostly one, two, and three unit buildings, but we have zoning, which is saying now increased density. So I guess breaking it down, I'd love to hear from other board members, but particularly to hear back from planning about How does the push for more housing get filtered to the AHO? It's great we've got just a start here and so they can absolutely join into this conversation. But I just, I find some, Challenges just with the basic planning and programming of this. Nothing to do with the design and the quality of the presentation. It's really planning and development principles that...

seem to be falling short of the city's goals at the moment.

Does anybody else want to join this particular question? And then I think I want to move it back to the specific proposal. I mean, it's a very interesting discussion. Mary, you had your hand up next. Do you want to comment on this particular thread? You're muted.

Thank you. I think I want to... Comment on this thread and then also on the design.

Okay, let's do it that way.

I agree with... with my colleagues that the zoning does allow for a lot more and that the city clearly does need housing. But it also set up a public process that in this particular case was very robust with lots of back and forth with the neighborhood. And I think, I think this goes to Dan's comment on sort of the process and politics of it. You know, if we're not going to pay attention to public comment and try to adjust, I mean, the zoning doesn't say you have to build this high. It just says you can, right? and I understand that we want the maximum that we can get but I think if that is going to be the direction the city wants to take that we need to be clearer about what the boundaries of public process are.

I think the housing authority has been very respectful of the neighborhood in this case. And personally, I'm very happy to see that. I think the city's going through a lot of change right now, and it's troublesome to some people. And I think we have to provide some level of confidence that since the zoning doesn't provide the restrictions anymore that we once had that A process, if we allowed for a public process, that we are going to listen to what people have to say. So in this case, I feel like that has been accomplished. perhaps as Mary said had this come to us sooner in the process we could have expressed our opinion that maybe more units would have

was desirable and perhaps there would have been a way then for there to be dialogue with the neighborhood as to what that form could look like and what its impacts would be. So I think that's just something for the future. I think based on what I've seen tonight, I think it's a much nicer project. I really like The landscaping, I think, as Mary pointed out, is very dense. I think it does a lot to block the parking from Screen the parking from the neighbors. I like the new plaza entrance at building A. I particularly like the new direction for building B in terms of making it less institutional looking and more like it fits into the fabric of the neighborhood. So I think the team has done a really nice job

I would ask, because you know me, I'm always pushing for parking because I do believe that people in the city need cars. So I know three spaces probably doesn't seem like a lot, but in a tight neighborhood, it can be. So I guess my suggestion would be just as you're developing the second site, if there's any way of picking up Some additional parking there to offset the loss on this site. I think that would be helpful, but I really feel as though losing the three on this site really makes that whole entryway work. So anyway, those are my comments.

Great. Thank you. And I'll take them in order. Ashley, you raise your hand next.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was actually going to, this might actually be a question, but I was hoping it would provide us a little bit of context as to why this density. So I know this may have been brought up in the first meeting, I just don't remember, but I can't recall if phase two of the project was going to be, you know, a larger tower or if it was going to be smaller townhouses, but I think that kind of context would be helpful and kind of to Mary's point about the parking lot. I know the proponent probably doesn't want to commit themselves saying it again concretely right now, but it'll also be helpful. I feel like my memory was that phase two was actually going to be parking in this parking. but I don't remember so I don't know if anyone from CHA can just kind of refresh us on how this fits into the bigger project.

Matt Sajak from CHA. Thank you. So I appreciate the question. The goals around density and parking, The intent is to calibrate them across both phases, sort of similar to how we're thinking about the play structure in play two. After looking at the overall need for units, We set a goal of 290 plus or minus units for Corcoran Park as a whole as a redevelopment from 153 now. At a broad level that density would make the redevelopment of Corcoran Park the medium density development among our family communities. So it's a significant increase in density for this The site, as well as being in line with our other housing and our redevelopment at Jefferson Park.

The goal for parking overall is to have a 0.75 to 0.8 ratio throughout the entire site. That was informed by Our survey of parking needs among our current residents as well as study of parking demand in general for affordable housing communities. Whether we will be ultimately able to achieve that parking ratio is TBD. As board members may recall, we are currently undergoing A redesigned process for the Phase 2-3 area in response to updated flood elevations. That redesign effort will also likely impact the heights that we're seeing in the lower part of the site.

And I think a very real potential outcome is that the heights of those buildings will be

All right, Ted.

Thank you. So in response to what Dan said, he has a very good point that we have I think what we've come up against in the past in some of the AHO projects is that by the time we even get to the first advisory hearing, Things have been set in stone by the developers so that it's really difficult for us to be able to go back to the beginning and indicate what we think might be better in terms of planning. I don't really know how that gets resolved and I think it is worthy of a discussion with staff one evening. But if there were some informal meeting early on, very early on in the process, which probably does not rise to the level of

An advisory opinion, but just a chance to know where the developers are going and what they're thinking about. that we might be able to push them in one direction or another so that by the time we get an advisory hearing, It hopefully is more in keeping with what we think is the proper thing. Were that to have happened here, I don't know that there would have been any changes. Obviously, we need developers to listen to the community, but almost everywhere in the community say we don't want more density. And so the city has decided, well, we need more density because we have this housing crisis and we have to deal with it.

As someone who has advocated for taller buildings all the time, I actually thought that the village aspect of this particular neighborhood was very lovely. and if it could have been kept in some way while increasing density, I think that would have been great. How that could have been done, I'm not sure. you know maybe one or two large towers and a lot of low housing might have been a solution it's just something that If we were involved earlier in the process, maybe we could have gotten something we liked better. If people don't want A lot of density. Is this the best solution for the city that has decided it needs more housing?

So that's where we are and I think it would be a good discussion to have some time. With regard to this particular project, I appreciate the changes have been made I understand about the loss of the parking I'm not wild about the fact that we have A street level open parking lot for 30 some vehicles. We've been trying to avoid that everywhere else in the city. I think the loss of the three, while maybe causes a hardship for some people, makes a much better entryway for the building. and is definitely preferable from my point of view. I also think the changes in the roof lines of the building is interesting and helpful and looks good.

tries to bring Building A back more into the sort of little village townhouse aspect. You know, the colors are nice. It's, you know, it is what it is at this point. I do agree with Mary Lydecker that I think the open area is much improved by the relocation, let's say, of the Thank you, Ted.

Carolyn.

I think Diego was ahead of me. OK, I'll be quick. I'll be curious to see how the conversation plays out regarding density or the kind of where in the process the planning board gets involved as an advisory group or not. as I'm the newest member here. I will follow along with that with great interest. you know even if if we had met them or the team early on I you know there are financing sources to contend with and there's there's a lot including the fact that if there is an area of Cambridge that isn't TOD this is it right so I struggle to push too much on density when there's limited other options. And to the public comment point, It's a tough area to kind of get to if you don't have a car.

With regard to the resubmission, Similarly to my colleagues, I really appreciate the redesign of Building B or the added kind of changes to Building B. I will look forward to seeing the play space come back in phase two. I actually liked it and I was bought in on that. And... Yeah, I really appreciate the added lobby space at Building A and the porch-like look. I do think it depends on mature trees around there, so I encourage you to get as... as mature trees as you can in there. I know that's easier said than done, but thank you. That's it.

Great. Thank you, Carolyn, Diego.

I guess at this point I disagree with a lot of the things that my colleagues have said. I will second or third or fourth, whatever, The comment on the surface parking in this specific area. I live nearby, so it's kind of tricky in that surface spot where we are. If you consider walking to public transit, it's not easy to get to. So it kind of makes sense. And it's tricky because for phase two, I wish we had the option to look at options whether or not you could have something like underground parking with higher buildings. because I think seeing that with surface parking right and you see how tall buildings need to get would be interesting because I think we've heard from other projects that it's not feasible to add underground parking So it would be nice to see that just sort of as a proposal. The current design I think is a big improvement.

I'll just say that my favorite part is the Vineyard-May Street sort of intersection with that fence. I think it makes a huge impact. And then that outdoor space near the lobby for Building A is really well done. I think it's going to be such a dynamic space. I think it's going to be a really big benefit to the community. I'm okay with the lawn space. I think it's good to have that. I like the diversity of play and I think it would be good to have some pockets of play elements. and Open Lawn. And I think this is a perfect spot to have such an open lawn space that we can find other moments to have small moments of play. But yeah, I'll stop there.

Thank you. Thank you, Diego. Ashley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, the parking is tough, but I also agree this is a neighborhood that's hard to get to. I've recently heard that in parts of the city like even doing under below grade parking would be like 75 to 100 thousand dollars per space and it's just You know, there's no way to just to be able to finance that or justify that. And so I sympathize with that. The developers trying to do what they can here. So I think I agree with the rest of my colleagues. was going to say definitely for the team to take a look at the memo, which I'm sure they will. I think there's some great comments and further suggestions.

I appreciate all the changes made and I think the one thing I was still trying to figure out which is Even though Building B is definitely more residential, there's still an institutional feel about it. It kind of reminds me of a schoolhouse from 100 years ago, and I was trying to... figure out why and I think my conclusion may be that the pitched roofs right now are very symmetrical you know just like kind of three and so I don't know if that can be changed but I do appreciate that and there are now bay windows making it look Sobrinho-Wheeler. But yeah, so any changes there that can be made would be appreciated, but otherwise, yeah, appreciate all the changes that have been made.

Great. Thank you, Ashley. It looks like Matt has raised his hand. Do you have something you need to respond to, Mr. Seijia?

Thank you. Matt Zajac, CHA. I just really wanted to very quickly, a really interesting point raised by the two board members was about underground parking and podium parking. I just wanted to let you know we're definitely going to be studying podium parking as part of the phase two area. We do think in this particular area, underground parking would be really challenging to do, not necessarily the cost, but because of the really Thank you.

Well, to the thread of the discussion here. Obviously in Cambridge, we deploy a participatory planning process, right? Both with the community, with the zoning, in fact, that we draft, The planning board is part of that participatory planning process. And I so much appreciate the comments tonight about when is it appropriate? When is the right moment for us to participate in that discourse, right, in that discussion. When is it most effective for this board to be involved? And I don't have an answer for that tonight, but I understand points that are really well taken tonight saying, you know, maybe a little earlier or maybe a master planning kind of level of Oversight, Massing and Master Planning level of oversight could be really helpful, both to understand potentially why some decisions are being made, but also to suggest Ways in which planning movements within the city would inform the site planning and maybe a different way.

So something for, yes, discussion at a staff level and I thank the proponents for listening to the kind of general discussion about our process in the midst of their advisory review so appreciate your patience with us tonight but thank you a very very good discussion, I'm proud of us once again. So I am at a disadvantage because I did not see the first or hear the first hearing, but I I appreciated the 20, by the way, 21 minute presentation which compared both the first submission to the second submission and how the process had informed the changes. I think that the buildings are much better. I believe. Maybe I disagree with Ashley with the porches, the emphasis of the porches as a detail, a common theme. That makes it domestic to me. I know the neighborhood extremely well. My children, all three of my children went to the Hagerty School. That was a long time ago.

They're all finished college now, but that's how good Haggerty is. And I have dear friends who live in the neighborhood, so I'm there frequently. I understand the congestion there. and I understand that Cambridge Housing Authority plays the long game. They're housing 7% of our neighbors. They own a large property owner here. And so, yeah, I'm sure they're well aware that they could build denser buildings, but they also are respecting the fact that They need to be mindful of the community in which they exist. So that's the balance that they're striking. So yeah, I think there should be more housing, but also very much appreciate the bonafide I think with that, unless there are other comments, Final comments from anybody.

I would entertain a motion to conclude the design consultations. Thank you very much. Thank you.

This is Carolyn, so moved.

Thank you. Somebody to second that motion?

I second it.

I think that was Ted that jumped in first, Mary. Ted seconds. I'll have a roll call vote on that, Evan, please. Ted Cohen?

Yes. Mary Flynn?

No.

Yes.

Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias? Yes. Ashley Tan?

Yes.

Carolyn Zern?

Yes.

and Tom Sieniewicz.

Yes. Thank you. And I only full bet board members were voting on that motion tonight because of our Stellar attendance here tonight. Thank you. And thank you, associate members, for your input. And with that, good luck.

Thank you all.

Okay. We'll move on to agenda item number two. Next item is an advisory consultation on case AHO 11. and affordable housing overlay project proposed by Justice Start to construct a six-story building to create 16 affordable rental units and amenities and 17 long-term bicycle parking spaces with a gross floor area of 24,278 square feet at 240 Broadway. We'll begin with CDD staff explaining why this is before us. Then we'll have a presentation from the developer followed by public comment and then the board will ask questions and ultimately discuss the proposed design. Thank you. Mason, I believe you will cue this up for us.

I'm actually going to fill in for Mason. This is Evan Spatrini again, senior manager for zoning and development. Thanks. Yeah, so this AHO development is subject to one required planning board advisory consultation. It's a little bit of... of an unusual case. Typically an AHO project of this size wouldn't go through a planning board review process. that normally kicks in for projects above 50,000 square feet. But because this project exceeds the height limit, of the underlying base zoning, it is subject to one consultation session with the planning board. So this is sort of the first and final planning board advisory consultation.

and just you know as as a reminder we just went through this but the the purpose of this design review is is not for the planning board to grant or deny a to provide advisory comments on the design and its overall conformance with the city's urban design objectives and guidelines The board's action is to submit a report with advisory comments to the developer and to the superintendent of buildings to complete the advisory consultation procedure.

Great. Thank you, Evan. So the presenter tonight is Noah Sawyer, who will have 30 minutes for the presentation that we hope you can be as concise as possible. So please introduce to any on your project team that may also be contributing tonight.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Noah Sawyer. I'm the director of real estate with Justice Start Corporation. I'm joined tonight by Yolanda Gilibert, who's the project manager for the team. along with Ira Grex and Anna Waston from Davis Square Architects.

So... Great. You can go to the next slide.

So as I mentioned, we're representing Justice Start. Yola, can you go to slide two for me, please? Representing Justice Start Corporation, we are a nonprofit based here in Cambridge, nearly 60 years old. We are a multi-service organization, but our main functions are stable housing through the development and ownership of income restricted housing. We have over, at this point, 700 affordable homes that we've developed and own here in Cambridge. We also have a focus on economic opportunity through several different job training programs. And let's go to the next slide. I'll let Eirik and Anna introduce themselves briefly as well.

Hi, I'm Iric Rex, principal and president of Davis Square Architects. We focus primarily on affordable housing as well as community spaces located right in Davis Square. Happy to be helping just to start with this project. Anna?

I'm a job captain at Davis Square Architects.

So a little bit about the site context. So the site is a parking lot at the corner of Broadway and Windsor across the street from the George Close Building and the Fletcher Maynard School. Justastart has owned the parking lot since the late 70s. and in recent years we've looked at parking utilization at our sites and particularly the parking utilization of this particular parking lot and been looking at ways where we can use this to forward to move forward our affordable housing mission. Next slide. So the proposal that you're going to see today is for 16 affordable rental units in a six-story building on the parcel. The units will be restricted at below 60% and 30% of it to a very median income with 100% of the apartments that we're proposing for the project to be income restricted.

Of those units, the majority of them are family sized units. So we have two and three bedroom apartments, which is a focus for just to start and also tends to be reflected in the waiting list that we see for affordable housing at our and I reckon Anna will talk a little more about this. Justice Start is designing the project to meet the Passive House environmental standard, which is that we'll be looking to design a building that is focused on energy usage and particularly around sort of minimizing the need for sort of operational energy usage at the property. McFadden. So we hosted, I think that just following up on the conversation that you had earlier, what you're seeing tonight is an updated design that's reflective of our community process. You can go to the next slide, please. So we've hosted four community meetings across 2025 from January through November.

And I think we're not showing the iterations of the project. I wanted to talk through some of the issues that were raised. by the community throughout the four meetings and then talk a little bit about sort of how we adjusted the proposal to match. I think the first thing we heard from our community process was about scope. The original building had too many units and many committee members also thought that we were targeting the wrong population. So the Unit count of the project is smaller than our initial iteration and been redesigned to include more family units, particularly more three-bedroom apartments. A lot of comments on the design. There are concerns about the building height. but also pieces around the massing and colors and materials chosen for the building and there have been significant changes to both the colors and materiality of the project as it's developed. Lots of concern about parking and then also just with the corner currently being open about pedestrian safety and traffic.

And so how can we keep the intersection safe, especially with the school and being on a busy thoroughfare. A lot around open space and trees, around the existing street trees and bordering an existing city park. and then some other issues around the amount of affordability at the site and then also some pieces around the utility infrastructure and construction impacts. Next slide. So just, again, this will be reflected in some of the drawings you see, but one of the main changes as we discussed is that the building has fewer apartments than when we started. We reduced the unit count. increased the number of family sized units. Davis Square did some really impressive work to figure out three bedroom apartments in the site that meet the city's standards for affordable housing and for families in three bedrooms. We've also made some significant changes to the building design.

Originally, we had gone with a fairly bright color palette for the building, different materials, adjusted that as we went on to a more muted palette, incorporated brick to reflect the other projects around us. In visibility and safety, the first floor has been recessed, so to increase the depth of our sidewalk, the corner is chamfered, and to improve visibility around the intersections. A lot has been raised around we have some very mature street trees. We've been working directly with Public Works and particularly with the Tree Warden and our own arborist on ways to ensure street tree protection during construction. So thinking about that. And then finally, you know, the infrastructure and its effects on neighbors. The transformer in particular is located on the first floor of this building. We relocated the transformer away from the sort of more residential side of the building onto Broadway.

And at this point, we're obviously available for questions, so I'll turn it over to Eirik and Anna to introduce the project and walk you through the project design.

Thank you. I'm Eric Rex once again. I'll walk you through the slides and give you an overview of the project. This view shows you the site at the corner of Broadway and Windsor, diagonally across from the George Close building. and across this across Windsor Street from the Fletcher Maynard School. A parking lot is on the corner across Broadway, making that the fourth part of the corner there. The site is also adjacent to the Greenrose Heritage Park, which is a nice open space right next door. Through the community input process, we've worked with Cambridge Tree Warden, an arborist,

and Ann Arborist to strategize how to protect adjacent trees and to add setbacks around our building to make the space for pergolas and planters around the building, which you'll see as I move on with the detail. Next, please. The site location is served by a couple bus lines. It's within a quarter mile of several schools and parks. The map shows how the surrounding neighborhoods have low rise and small scale housing. but the density is much greater along Broadway and increases as Broadway heads south from here, which you'll see in an aerial photo later. Next please. We paid a lot of attention to context as we were designing it. The design of the building borrows from Cambridge context in several ways. This was encouraged through the community input process. I'll point out four ways. One is the building heightened volume is consistent with the other two buildings at this corner.

The other building, George Close building, being six stories and the Fletcher Manor School being four stories, but of similar height. and both of those other buildings have little or no setbacks from their property lines. So we're kind of mostly filling up the site with a building of about the same bulk. Second, The proposed design divides the building into bottom, middle, and top, with the bottom having a greater detail to relate to the pedestrian level. The middle being fairly neutral and regular metered by vertical divisions much like the George Close building is with pilasters. and the top being separated by a cornice line to de-emphasize slightly and the top is de-emphasized slightly with a different color and texture.

Third, the corner of the building is chamfered and slightly emphasized, modeled after the historic corner entrances to the George Close Factory building. There's not a corner entrance there, as you see, but there was originally in the building. As well as the highly decorative corner entry at the Fletcher Maynard School, which you see in the lower left there. Fourth, we're using clay brick surfaces and wood pergolas to emphasize the street level and to offer warmer colors and smaller scale, a little bit more detail at the pedestrian level. Next please. The first floor plan is largely filled with amenities and technical necessities, including a front and back lobby for the entries, a bike room, trash room, and a common laundry. Also in the upper right is a transformer room.

The transformer room was originally designed to be in the lower left corner and based on community input and comments, We found we were able to move it over to the other corner to be farther away from adjacent smaller-scale residential. Cambridge floor requirements, Cambridge flood requirements mean that we need to, we need both the front and the back, an elevator at the front and a wheelchair lift at the back. to get up to the habitable level where we can have most of these functions plus one dwelling unit. So those take up space too on the first floor. I'll note that the transformer room up in the upper right there is a story and a half, so that kind of bumps into the second floor. Next, please.

The second through the sixth floors are essentially all residential with three or four units per floor for a total of 16 units as Noah pointed out and Just to point out that the units, as Noah pointed out, the units are on the large size side. We were encouraged to make them larger, to make them family size, two bedrooms and three bedrooms, so that they're a little bit more Next, please. and that's the typical upper floor. Next. We have here a couple rendered perspectives. We have included rendered perspectives to show how the proposed design looks in context.

These show how the height of the building fits in well in this particular location with the taller buildings on either side of it. and how the proposed building uses the contextual qualities to reflect its surroundings. Here's the more highly detailed and warmer colored lower floor. and the for instance and the vertical divisions of the body of the building much with a you know what we think was somewhat subtle We were still trying to be a little bit neutral in the middle section. Next, please. Here's our second rendered perspective that shows, you know, when we're standing farther up Broadway with the Fletcher Maynard School on the right and the George Close building on the left.

One of the comments that we got, we got a list of great comments from the CDD staff. One of the comments happened to be about the window size, about potentially our windows could be larger. Our windows are actually about 3-6 by 5-6. for each typical windows are three six by five six so while they are quite a bit smaller than the Fletcher Maynard and George Close Really enormous windows. We still think that they're generous size windows for an apartment. and appropriate. And so I guess we're trying to get a balance between fitting in and having a good workable floor plan with appropriately sized windows for the apartments. Next please.

The aerial perspective once again shows how building density and context is increased as you go up Broadway to the upper corner there. This is a built-up corner. um even though there are there are smaller scale residential neighborhoods around there are also parks there's the park next door to us and then there's a park behind us so there is kind of relief from the fabric and open space for everybody to enjoy. Next, please. We have a digital model which we are able to load and show you through. Anna is the I'm an expert in that, and I wouldn't touch it myself. So if you want, we can show you it and then field any questions.

We don't have, I have, this is our model with the housing surrounding that is from the Cambridge website. So just as a pan around, we don't have any landscape that we've shown some of our drawings in it, but this is our model. showing what our current design looks like. As Ira had said, in this left corner, this is where our, this is Broadway, this is Windsor, and this is our transformer room access, which we've moved, and then this is our strong corner. But we can... move through it later as well if needed.

Actually, Anna, while you have it up, I'd very much appreciate some focus on the elevations adjacent to the context. up next to the house and next to the park. Yes. The other two sides. Can you just flip it around? Let's have a look at the other two sides.

Oh, boy. Sorry, I was just moving. Oh, okay. The beauty of technology. I can try and move it, sorry.

There you go.

Instead of, there you go. This is from the parks of the George, sorry, the Green Park. And then...

The other side, yeah, can you zoom in on that?

Yes, sorry.

Yeah, okay. Are you done?

That's all. We have some backup slides on other issues if there are particular questions that came up. We are mostly here to hear from the board.

Thank you Mr. Sawyer. At this point, We will move to public comment. So according to the zoning, we will take public comment at these design review sessions. I would like to remind speakers that the board's action tonight is not to approve or deny this application, but to provide advisory comments on the design that was presented. 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 dialing star nine. So as of 5 p.m. yesterday, the board had received written comments from Ethan Frank, written comments received after 5 p.m. yesterday will be entered into the board's records. We have at least one hand raised, Evan, so I'll have you administer this now if you would. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, we have one hand raised so far. If you do want to speak, please push the raised hand button to get in the queue. So our speaker, David DeCelis, you should be able to unmute yourself. Please begin by stating your name and address for the record. Good evening, everyone.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Great. Thank you for this meeting. My name is David DeCelis. I am attending the Zoom with my wife, Emily Mueller DeCelis. We own the home immediately adjacent It's an 1880s Queen Anne. And those elevations, Tom, that you asked Anna to zoom in on hover right onto our house just for context there. I did submit a letter to the board, but it was submitted at around 9.14 last night. So for the record and to help you understand our perspective on this, I thought I'd read a part of it. My wife and I and many of our neighbors have raised serious concerns about this project that have not yet adequately been addressed. While my family and I support the overall mission of Justice Start and the work of Noah and his architectural team.

We cannot support this project in its current form and scale for a number of reasons that I'll list as quickly as I can. Contextuality issues. We are of the belief that six floors is simply too high for this site. This site's square footage is very different than the projects referenced by Davis Square Architects. This would be taller than any wood frame residential building along Broadway currently. In fact, this proposed scheme would result in the tallest residential specific non-adaptive reuse project between Quincy Street and Kendall Square. As such, it would establish an unfortunate precedent So far to date, no light shadow studies have been provided and we've asked on how the massing of this project will affect the amount of natural light for the homes across the street on Broadway, especially in the winter months.

The lower units on those townhouses will lose about an hour, hour and a half of daylight based on my on-site observations walking our dog in the afternoons. We still think there's a lack of sufficient setbacks, and we thank you, Noah and David Square, for taking that into consideration, but we don't think you've done enough. We still think the project is way too dense and shoehorning 16 units into this site is, from our perspective, arguably too much. While the scheme is certainly an infill project, something that The architectural and urbanist professions have been espousing for decades. It does not preserve sufficient open space in relation to its immediate neighbors. Keep in mind that the open space referred to has a Milwaukee forest, which is very dense. So it's not quite as open as the site plan suggests. This intersection is very hazardous.

If you've been to the intersection, you understand it's already too dense and this just makes it worse. Thanks for your attention. And we hope you can encourage us to start to look at less dense option or consider an alternative site a little closer to mass transit. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Evan, have we got anybody else queued up?

There are no other hands raised.

Okay, great. All right. We'll move from public comment to board discussion. Do members of the board have questions for the project team or the staff that the board would like answered this evening? Ted.

Yeah, I have a simple question. What is the proposed color for... The siding of the middle in almost all the renderings it appears to be beige. Yet on one of the sheets where it was talking about the materials, it showed as gray. And I'm wondering what is accurate.

This is Anna Watson with Davis Square. I think in, are you talking about our vertical pieces that are on the side of the building?

No, the main body of the middle portion. is showing most of the renderings as beige, but yet I believe, unless I'm... Reading it incorrectly in one of the other sheets, it showed it as a gray material.

Yes, our intent is that it's currently shown as a light gray, so it might be from, I know there's been the printing to the visual screen of some discrepancy, but our intent right now is light gray.

Thank you. Thank you, Ted. Dan.

Yeah, thank you. So I understood from staff that this was coming in front of us because of an increase of height. I didn't see any mention of what the height is. I'm just sort of curious. It goes a little bit to some of the proportions of the building, but it also goes a little bit to comments from our public.

This is Anna Lawson again. Our current height is that it's 66 feet tall.

Just as a quick follow-up, this is a C1 district, correct?

Correct. I can jump in on that because there's some nuance to it. Basically, so as I said earlier, The kind of trigger for this planning board advisory consultation is because it exceeds the height limit in the underlying base zoning district. You're right, in the Residence C1 district, you can go up to six stories, but that's only under certain circumstances. So normally the height limit is four stories, but if you are meeting the inclusionary requirements and you're on a lot of 5,000 square feet or greater, you can go up to six. So because this lot is less than 5,000 square feet, the fact that they're going up to six stories is exceeding the four-story height limit that would be for a lot of this size.

On its face, it's a little confusing because the C1 district does allow up to six stories, but in this particular case, that's kind of the trigger here.

Thank you, Evan. But as an AHO project, does that not allow even significantly higher height Correct. That's the one district.

Yes, under the AHO it can go higher than six stories. But the trigger for the planning board advisory review is based on the base zoning height. The idea there was... If there's a project that doesn't quite meet the square footage threshold for the planning board advisory consultation, but it exceeds the height limit that would normally be allowed under base zoning, which is allowed in the AHO, then There should be a planning board review, but not as intense as the normal two-session planning board review.

I appreciate that again. But just to the public comments... obviously there's issues of shadow impact and scale and a number of the things that we have to take into address but it's not considerably higher than what A six-story affordable housing project would typically be in, potentially be in a C1 district. or is the limitation, sorry, just wrote this to make sure I understood, it would not be able to go to six stories because of the lot size? That's correct.

Under base zoning, it wouldn't be able to go to six stories.

Great. Okay. Tan, that answers your question for now. Mary?

Thank you. So I had two questions. One is the commenter at the public comment mentioned they hadn't seen Sunshade Studies, and we did see them in the materials shared. So I was wondering if the applicant wanted to walk through those to share with everyone what they observed relative to that topic. and then my second comment is I appreciate the tree plan showing from the arborist report not just the tree but the canopy and I was wondering if the applicant could talk through A little bit from that report. What is the proposal? It looks like they're recommendations for how you would prune back because the building itself is within quite a substantial portion of the canopy including from the abutter to the south property how do they how do they prune it what's the recommendation there

So let me take those in reverse order. And I'm happy if we pull up the shadow studies. They are in the report. I'm happy to walk through those as well. So the existing street trees have been pruned from the street side by the city over the years. Just, you know, with the existence as a parking lot, we have not been hurting back the trees on our side. The rough recommendation from our arborists is that the scale of the pruning is too much for one season. So we were hoping to do this over a two season period. As the board may know with affordable housing projects, our next stop is to request funding from the state. So we are spending an application in a few weeks to the state with a hopeful event that we're starting construction on this building. perhaps a year from now.

So the goal is that we are looking to do sort of one initial set of pruning this spring and a second set of pruning the following spring before construction begins. There was also trying to figure out sort of the extent of the root system of these buildings and trying to find a time when the city pre-warden and our arborist could be outside at the same time. That's been foiled by extreme cold and then snowstorms, so we have not had that particular meeting yet, but we are looking at those pieces and trying to make sure that we can sort of, you know, either do root printing or see what we can do about root protection as we get into construction. I don't think we have the shadow studies in our presentation.

Anna, do you have the ability to pull them up from our AHL package?

Oh, great. Thank you.

So on the top three are the spring solstice. The bottom three are the summer solstice. This is our proposed building in the Alma Center. and then this is the top three are the fall solstice and the bottom three are the winter solstice.

So maybe a summary, it looks like the predominant shadow is casting onto Broadway and it looks like the impact on adjacent buildings is primarily around midday. in the winter across the street. Does that sound right?

Yes.

Can you go back to the equinox and solstice, right?

Thank you.

Thank you. So I think that's helpful to be able to see that one more time.

Thank you for bringing that up. Diego.

I appreciate your comment on the windows that belong to the units above the ground floor. And I was wondering if you could have a similar sort of explanation or just talk through one of the CDD memos. comments on the ground floor. I did feel like it looks a little squashed and I know it's tricky because the windows to that program spaces are like trash rooms and bike rooms. I was just wondering if you all had thought about that comment from the CDD memo.

Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about this. And we're very happy to get this memo with a lot of comments, and we're still working our way through it because it was very recent. But one of the things that affects the ground floor windows is the... is the fact that most of the spaces on the ground floor as I pointed out were transformer room, bike room, laundry room, Things like that. And so we kind of purposely don't want giant windows onto the bike room where people are going to be... We have a lot of glass at the front lobby entry, which we want to be nice and bright and also transparent for Security and Safety. And there are the same, they're the typical size apartment windows on the first floor apartment.

But the transformer room, some of these rooms are purely utilitarian. And so we were trying to not have it a blank facade. but we're also trying not to have it a window that's you know that goes too far down where somebody you know would where it might be a security concern at ByteGroom, for instance. So that was the thinking that has led us here.

Okay, Tan, do you have some more questions?

Yeah, I guess if it's, I guess the last question is that I couldn't quite tell. It looks like there's a parapet, but perhaps at the cornice level, at the roof height. The question is, is there a parapet? How tall is it?

Yeah, I saw the comments once again in the memo about how the top of the building appears So, those are adjustments that we're going to be looking at. But directly, in direct response to your question, we are showing a 30-inch parapet. We have rooftop equipment. I mean, the rooftop in this building is going to be full. between Green Roof Mechanical Equipment, ERVs, Head House, and maybe some solar if we can find some space. And so we have a 30-inch parapet which keeps down the visibility of any of that equipment within a reasonable distance.

and also we um the parapet helps for security I mean with with all that equipment up on the rooftop there are going to be people up there on a The proportions of the the proportion height of the cornice and the sixth floor wall and the parapet are things that we want to take a little closer look at given the comments.

I have a few questions, some of which oddly will relate to internal planning, which really isn't the purview necessarily of the planning board. I did note that the trash room opens directly into the lobby. That seemed like an odd choice that you would feature that as one of the thresholds in the lobby. I do also note that the The streets obviously, as you've referenced, are fronted by a utility room and a transformer vault on one side and a bike room on the other side. A bike room has the advantage of being active. There are ways to deal with the issue of security and vision into that bike room. Did you consider moving the laundry, for instance, to the perimeter? That's another function of that ground floor that would activate that edge and give it some sense of life rather than whatever utility room is.

It seems like there's some fairly basic planning moves, you know, in another detail that the janitor closet door opens in, which is not, The way janitor closets work, you'll knock the bucket over, you got to have the door open out. So there's some basic plan revisions on that first floor that I think could go a long way to making it a lot better. both for the city and for your tenants.

We'd like to take a look at those. I think the trash room is situated to be as close to... People are basically going to be bringing down their trash from their apartment. and putting it in a tote in the trash room. So we're looking for as short a distance as possible for A, the residents to deposit their trash, you know you know conveniently without walking down too many corridors or hallways to get there. And two, for the totes to be able to be wheeled out to the curb as directly as possible. but maybe that's you know there's a logic there but maybe it's not the right logic having the laundry room is along the exterior and is

is on a part of the building which is adjacent to another residential property. I take your point that the laundry room is a human-occupied space where people are coming and going, and having a couple windows on the street for that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Yeah, Eric, I don't expect you to come up with a solution real time here, but it just, it seemed there were some basic ways in which that work could be bigger. My other question is, you referred to the pilasters or engaged columns that are, is that just a different color panel? What is that?

Trim. It's a trim that is in relief from the rest of the wall. And we're so it's not really a pilaster like it is on the brick building on George Close building. but it's it's just it's trying to do a similar thing and metering them all and with a vertical with vertical lines regular vertical lines I know we're not going to spend too much time talking about trash, but... Almost anywhere else on that floor, if the trash were there, the trash would have to be brought down from the habitable level to the street level. That would mean it would need an extra ramp or an extra lift or an extra something. So just throwing that in too. Yeah, okay.

I'll add just to jump in here. I think that... I don't think these constraints are necessarily excuses. I think these are good questions to look at whether there's a different configuration. You know, one of, Eric mentioned briefly that we are looking to comply with the city's resiliency zoning around flood elevations and that affects a lot of the choices that we're making on the first floor where we have step ups and steps down to the street level. We have far deeper constraints on other sites, thankfully, but there's a lot to figure out here between Eversource requirements, flood requirements, and the needs of the first floor. It's been a bit of a... It's a bit of a Swiss watch, but I think that trying to make the active uses more active at a busy intersection is a point we'll take and we'll take a look and see what we can do.

Right.

Thank you. Can you tell me what the finished ceiling height is in your building for the units?

I believe it's... Either 8-6 or 8-9. I apologize. I don't remember it off the top of my head.

Okay. All right. And that's also true on the first floor in the lobby areas? Yes.

We enter on the occupiable level so that like our front entry with the double door the trash room and the bike room is set about a foot and 11 inches lower than our first floor height. So that it'll be closer to like over 10.

Okay, 10. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You actually anticipated a couple of my questions, partly because we mentioned... A little bit the proportion of the attic story, but the base also feels squished, and I know that you're losing head height for the transformer room, and you're losing that square footage from the first floor unit. Any consideration of increasing the height of the first floor again to give more presence to that ground level? to potentially regain apartment space on the first floor. I know you're dealing with flood resiliency issues. I appreciate Tom's questioning about the programming, but again, that those floor to floor heights

you know even if you maybe decrease to you know I appreciate 86 ceilings but you know even if you snuck the floor to ceiling heights down to and so forth. helped their proportion of the base. And to my sense, a little bit of More detail to the body of the building and maybe a little bit more quiet base might go a long way. I think in general, even some of the comments from staff about window sizes could be addressed with a side panel or a change of material that either increases height or width in terms of an apparent opening.

So there's some architectural tricks that you can pull out to maybe address some of those pieces. But fundamentally on the scale side, It would be great to see a little bit more height. I don't know if you're going to be able to get to 15 clear. I don't know how much you might are going down currently. at all into the transformer room. Obviously there's some complexities and logistics to meeting Eversource's requirements, but definitely something that I'd suggest you think about.

Right, further questions from the board at this point? Diego.

Sure, I have one last question to be quick. The bike room, we've seen other projects sort of have access to the exterior and it looks like it might be easy to do that for your site. Was there like a security concern for not doing that or?

I think is something we can look at adding from like the rear but with it needing to be accessible to all residents and having the different height floors we had to make sure it was It will be accessed in that main lobby by the elevator and not having people have to walk all the way around. But that's something we can look at if there's a direct outdoor access to.

All right, great. So at this point, if there are no further questions, let's move to comments and discussion on the proposal before us tonight. Who wants to go first, Ted?

Well, thank you. So let me start out saying that I like the entryway and the way the building is located on the lot. I really appreciate the number of two and especially three bedroom units you have. I think that's great. Personally I would not have been opposed to a taller building on this site. I understand you're trying to mimic the school and the other residents, but I don't necessarily see why that needs to limit you in this particular location. You might want to take a look at the hearing we had a couple weeks ago on 2072 Mass Ave, where you've got a 12-story building on a probably very similar sized lot.

Those are the things I like. I like the massing. I really dislike the beige color of the middle part of the building. If it is indeed gray, I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. As beige, in my mind, it did not go along with the blue and red accent colors you were putting around the windows. Perhaps if it's gray, it makes more sense. If it's gray, I'm not sure how it really fits with the colors and the design of the street level. I'm sorry for being blunt at this point, but what I really dislike is the top floor.

To my eyes, the building looks like you had an old five-story building and you added a six-story on the top. It makes no sense to me in terms of it fitting with the rest of the building. The color is just totally off from the other colors. The fenestration makes no sense to my eyes with the windows in the rest of the building. If you are trying to mimic the school or the other building across the way, take a look at them again. The top floor is part of an overall composition with the rest of the building. Here it just seems to me just something totally different.

Thank you very much. Point that out too, maybe in a little more polite language than I'm using. But I really think you really ought to rethink The top floor and how it fits with the entire rest of the building. My comments are mostly about how the exterior looks. I do applaud the units you have inside, but I question some of the choices that have been made.

Thank you Ted.

Diego. Yeah, I don't have an issue with the height either. It's always interesting to hear other board members say they want more height and I kind of agree with them. But, you know, what we have now is good. I think... I sort of agree with a lot of what Ted just said. I didn't know how to articulate it. I think for me it was like the trim vertical pieces sort of make your eyes go up. Whereas like when you have a corner lot, it kind of your eyes want to go up. down the streets and then the top part doesn't have that and it goes my eyes do do what a corner lot kind of wants me to do um You know, but at the same time, I'm okay with it. I do think you should investigate it. I second Ted on that. And then...

I think my biggest probably opportunity is the Transformer door. I feel like that color is a little bit overwhelming for me. I like the idea of having some sort of art or something more subtle there. But yeah, that's all I have. Thanks.

Thank you, Diego. Ted, did you have a quick follow-up? No, I just had to lower. Okay.

Dan, you're next. Yeah, thank you. So not to pile on at all, but I know that design often can be a bit subjective, but it does feel like this is in need of more articulation. Quite honestly, when I saw the first second slide with a much more contemporary rendition of the building, I'd hope that that was it. But that may be my bias towards a more contemporary move. I'm understanding you're responding to other corner sites and trying to fit in in that context. But that more contemporary vocabulary gives a lot more flexibility in terms of adjustments to and either facade Color Material Treatment changes in depth.

So I know you're fully into it. Sometimes I worry about too many cooks in the kitchen, but given that we're giving advice and it's cheap, you know, I just challenge you to really work that vocabulary. I worry that a trim plaster applied vertically on a fairly flat surface will not be as successful as you might hope it to be. Again, my comments around the proportions, I think some of those could be solved without necessarily a tripart, very kind of neoclassical approach. But again, I made some of my comments in the form of questions early on, so I really don't want to pile on, but I really would like to see more design exploration and something that is really Something with a little more vision. So thank you.

Thank you, Daniel. Okay, here I am again, Carolyn. I don't know whether you were next or Mary was next, and you were watching potentially more keenly than I. My indication is that you're next to speak.

I want to do when it's merry, but I'll take it. Thank you. I'll be quick. And I also don't want to pile on. My concern is less of the top floor than with the bottom floor. And I think you've gotten the message fairly clearly that we're looking for a better pedestrian experience around the building. I think Tom's comments about programming are really astute and adding some adding pulling some more active uses to the to the exterior and adding some transparency there and some more window would make a huge difference. adding that you know the transformer door that Diego was just talking about and adding some color there whether it's the pops of color that you have around the windows pulling that down something but making that pedestrian experience feel better. I was very curious to hear that the color of the building, the exteriors, is based on community feedback because I was originally going to say, why do you want this building to disappear?

um it looks like you're trying to hide it especially given the context of the neighborhood buildings the neighboring buildings um but but I also I applaud like everyone else I applaud the unit mix and the count and um I love just to start so um I look forward to seeing this as it goes on. Thank you.

Okay, Mary, out of odor, I apologize.

Thank you, no worries. So I'm also, you know, I think everyone has described, you know, the bulk of what my thought is, is it really feels like the facades, the materiality, and how you're developing that frontage works and maybe like Carolyn building on that it's really the ground floor that most I think could use improvement. And so I'm gonna say this is, it feels like you framed very much your massing and approach relative to the buildings across the street, the George Close and the Fletcher Maynard. And those are brick buildings and they're gorgeous. They're historic, windows much bigger. and I don't see a lot of clarity about how does this relate to the buildings next to you which are pink and purple and I get the feeling that your comments on color the comments and responsiveness to color are based on somewhat on that

and I feel like in terms of this materiality in addition to massing relative to what's happening at the corner now maybe turn back to those buildings and think about the materiality of those buildings and I think you actually have part of the answer in your materials which is you cited that Norfolk Street 432 Norfolk Street which was the impetus for this kind of trellis treatment at the base and that's I think that's a beautiful example of building and never be above stealing a color palette or material palette if it's working. That actually has a very neutral palette, but it has that blue against this kind of gray... Green. It's just kind of as you test out. It sounds like you'll probably be in a testing mode. Now, the other thing that building does is it holds that trellis really close to the building and it creates a planting bed contiguous along. continuous along the building and what you guys are showing are I understand probably kind of like off-the-shelf planters and I think that the base of the building and now I'm going to borrow Ashley's and this is

Not meant to be offensive, but you know how last time you said it reminded you of a school building? This one reminds me of the bar at a base of a residential building. And I say that not as, you know, if it was a bar. I'd say great. It's an active ground floor use. This makes sense to me. But it's not active in that public way. You have a public lobby. In that way, it's much more like Norfolk. which doesn't try to treat that ground floor as though you need an inside outside. It lets the planting do the job. That one, the images you have in your report also show how fantastic trees can be. I think those are lilacs. They'll just come out from under it, right? And they create this beautiful kind of awning. Arbor Experience on the sidewalk that's very unique. And you have these gorgeous existing trees that I really appreciated, Noah, you walking us through kind of the approach because totally it's going to take a couple seasons to properly pull those back.

and I think especially for the context of the residential neighborhood tying into that, really take advantage of that mature and I would say build up along the building to do something more like Norfolk Street. Norfolk Street and I think the other example you have also has more kind of horizontal breaks in the building. that might help with some of my colleagues' comments about how to kind of break up that massing going up to again let the massing be driven by the buildings across the street. but now maybe let your materiality and approach to tying into the neighborhood be more residential in approach. I also want to say I really appreciate the feedback you got relative to family sized units. I really like seeing that and I know the community will appreciate that, the two to three family that seemed incredibly responsive in the Passive House standard.

Happy to see that that's something that you all are pursuing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary Ashley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I definitely agree with the comments my colleagues gave, so I'm not going to repeat them, but I hope team We'll go back and listen to them and see what can be done and especially on the memo from CDD as well. I just wanted to, on the topic of grant for use, This part of Broadway is a very... It's an underutilized but with a lot of potential part of Broadway. You know, there's some fun restaurants. There's all these... Right Colored Buildings, there's Lamplighter, there's Garment District. There's a lot of fun uses and so I hope there's you know just as much thought given to the facade and uses on Broadway and so whether that's the transformer room or just overall transparency or use of windows or

Even more openings and even the park next door I think would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Okay, I start with just to start, which is thank you for your partnership over the years with the planning board and with the community and building community. Top Shelf Affordable Housing Developer and appreciate your mission more than you might know. But you guys also played a long game. This isn't going to be your first or last project. So take my comments within that context. I think the unit mixed and type is also laudable to move to family units as best we can. but I'll start with the community development memo which contained and I'll quote from it. the following statement that the elevations were heavy and uninviting in appearance across all elevations. That's a pretty damning critique. from the Community Development Department who usually pulls their punches. They usually aren't.

I think we've got a lot of suggestions tonight. to make it a better citizen in the city. Thank you so much for the precedence. One of my fellow board members said, take another look at them, take another look at them again. The building in no way takes the precedence to heart, in my opinion. So I would say there's really, There are some keen observations there about what the architecture could be. borrow, steal as Mary suggested more flagrantly from those precedents. And I think you might be able to counter the critique of the Community Development Department.

The transformer door is the highest door and it breaks the corners at the base, right? It looks squat. You don't have to change the section. You don't have to make the building higher within a butter that is that close and sensitive to that, but you can move the material up higher to include that doorway. give a sense of a lot deeper and higher base, but also don't call out the transformer vault as the most important threshold on the whole elevation, right? I think, speaking of thresholds, I had a friend at what used to be called the BRA, now the Boston Planning Agency, of the Boston Planning Agency. He used to gauge the quality of a street by mapping the number of doors. He would lay out a Boston map and then put little Arrows wherever there was a door. And the streets with more doors were better streets. So why don't we put a door to the street from the trash room

which actually would be open at least once a week when the trash was serviced. So I think that would help also with activity on that elevation. I would say, We just came from a hearing from the CHA where they added a mullion to the windows. I was interested in the choice. It's awning windows in a family, in units for families, awning windows, beg curiosity by children and that's something I would I'm sure you've looked at that section pretty carefully. You could give this building more of a domestic character if it had a domestic window rather than a plate glass window that hinges from the top.

So I think there are a lot of ways in which you very easily with not much more money, I know that that's absolutely the most critical part of the burden that you guys are There's a lot of ways to do this with not very much more money to make it a building that is a better citizen. And you've got a lot of comments here tonight. And as you say, just to start, you play the long game. So I was surprised at the quality of what we were presented with tonight. So I know you've got skilled architects and I think that they give them a little more time and they're going to be able to make a lot better building and I hope they do. So that's where I am. So at this point, are there any other final comments from fellow board members?

Hearing none, only full board members will act on this item because we have a full house tonight. So I'm looking for a motion to conclude the design consultation for tonight and submit a report with our comments. to the Superintendent of Buildings. So please remember to say your name when you make that motion, if I have someone. Is Ted so moved? Thank you, Ted. A second on that motion?

This is Mary Flynn, second.

Thank you, Mary. Evan, can we have a roll call on that motion, please?

On that motion, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Flynn?

Yes.

Mary Lydecker.

Yes.

Diego Macias. Yes. Ashley Tam. Yes. Carolyn Zern.

Yes.

And Thompson Avage. Yes.

Okay, great. I guess that concludes the business on our agenda for tonight. Are there any additional comments from staff? Do board members have anything to add at this point? Dan.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just as a general continuation of a conversation conversation with planning staff about AHO either process about when it comes to us about General planning concerns as it comes to AHL projects. I certainly, if I wasn't construed as suggesting, that we needed to go to the absolute envelope of the zoning allowance. But it does strike me when something is below what just the basic The zoning threshold is, there's a conversation about density, conversation about parking, about planning principles and our housing production agenda. that I think would be well worth a further discussion. So I didn't want to have that lost and hoping that we might open up that conversation at some point.

I think we're free to have that conversation. I think the point that was well taken earlier, as I understand it, is that it should happen earlier, right? That's the frustration for us. Why are these decisions being made? We don't feel included and we think we probably can contribute and represent Citi. The city in a way that is somewhat unique, not blowing our own tour much, but it's something that this group of individuals focus on from time to time. Thank you, Dan. I'll work with staff and figure out what follow-up would be on that item. Anything else? If there's nothing else, we're adjourned. Good night and thank you everybody for the contributions tonight.