Planning Board - Planning Board Meeting

So we are all set with the recording and live streaming. So meeting can be opened at 6.30. Good. Thank you, Swati.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the December 9th, 2025 meeting of the Cambridge Planning Board. My name is Mary Flynn and I am the chair. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, adopted by the Massachusetts General Court and approved by the Governor, the City is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge Planning Board. All board members, applicants, and members of the public will state their name before speaking. All votes will be taken by roll call. Members of the public will be kept on mute until it is time for public comment. I will give instructions for public comment at that time. And you can also find instructions on the city's webpage for remote planning board meetings.

This meeting is being video and audio recorded and is being streamed live on the City of Cambridge online meeting portal and on cable television channel 22 within Cambridge. There will also be a transcript of the proceedings. We'll start by asking staff to take board member attendance and verify that all members are audible. With that, I'm going to turn to Jeff.

Thank you, Mary. This is Jeff. Ace, Theodore, Cohen, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you. Ted, Mary Lydecker, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

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

Present, visible, and audible.

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

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Carolyn. Associate members, Dan Anderson, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Hi, Jeff. Yes, I can see and hear you. Thank you, Dan. And Joy Jackson, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Thank you Joy.

Mary Flynn, can you confirm that you're present and the meeting is visible and audible to you?

Yes, I am present and I can hear and see you.

Thank you, Mary. So that means we have six planning board members present and two associate members.

Excellent. Thank you, Jeff. The first item this evening is an update from the Community Development Department. For that, I'm going to go back to Jeff. And Jeff, if you would also introduce any other staff who were with you at the meeting, please.

Absolutely. So I'm Jeff Roberts. I'm the Director of Zoning and Development in the Community Development Department. With us on my team is Swathi Joseph. and that's all for city staff this evening. It's a fairly light agenda. Just to talk about tonight for a second. And I hope the word got out about this. We had one item scheduled, an advisory review, which was requested to be postponed to January 13th. So the first item on the agenda related to 16 to 28 Porter Street will be on January 13th, and we'll talk about that again. when we get into the agenda. And so we'll get right into the second case, which is a use determination on Child Street. That January 13th case may likely be the first meeting of the new year.

So just for people who are looking ahead to that, although it's possible we might end up with something for January 6th. Maybe not as likely at this point. But we do have one more meeting left this year, December 16th, and we have Two or maybe one and maybe a second item of general business. One is an advisory review session for an affordable housing overlay development at 8 to 12 May Street and 53 Long Street. That's a A CHA property known as Corcoran Park. So this will be the first of two advisory review sessions for that and I believe.

Do we have other items, Swathi, confirmed at this point?

It's not yet confirmed, Jeff.

Okay, so... Probably tomorrow. Right, so stay tuned in the next day or two, we may have some other items on the agenda, but we're still trying to nail those down. So that'll be 2025 and we'll be back with the planning board in 2026. The only final update I'll make is, well, I'll make an update on a couple of things that have been going on at City Council. The council has been considering the Mass Ave and Cambridge Street corridor rezoning petitions. The board heard those back. in October and made positive recommendations to the city council. The city council has been having a few meetings on those and some ordinance committee hearings, and it came back to the full council. at last night's city council meeting.

There have been some amendments, some sort of dealing with some cleanup issues, some dealing with some of the issues that the planning board members have raised around accessibility of open space. Some having to do with stronger active use provisions, which we under the sort of limitation of the petition review process, we can't sort of We can't do anything that's more restrictive in the current zoning, but there are some areas where we can put additional standards in place. And we were also asked in a policy order to look in the future as part of a separate petition, look at ways that we could strengthen some of those active use provisions. So that's been a lot of the discussion at council. They did pass both petitions to a second reading, which means that they could be voted on ordination on or after December 22nd. So we'll see where that goes from there.

It could also move into the new year because there is some time before expiration. There was also an item that we referred, that staff referred to the city council, which has been talked about before, amending some of our institutional use provisions to align with provisions in state law. That was referred as a zoning petition, so the planning board will be having a hearing and we'll talk about that a little bit more in the future. That's just a little bit of a preview that we'll be talking about our institutional use regulations. Those are my updates. I'll turn it back over to the chair.

Thank you, Jeff. Do board members have any questions on the update from Jeff before we move on? All right, seeing no hands, we will move on then to the next item, which is approval of meeting minutes. The board has received certified transcripts for the meetings held on July 22nd. October 7th, October 21st, and October 28th of 2025. Do board members have any questions or comments on the minutes as submitted? So I'm going to need a motion. This motion will be for full board members. So would someone please make a motion to accept the transcript? as the meeting transcripts, as the meeting minutes.

Diego, so moved.

Thank you. Diego, is there a second, please? Carolyn, you get in just under the wire. So we'll go with you as the second. And Jeff may have a roll call vote, please.

Yes, on that motion, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias? Yes. Ashley Tan?

Yes.

Carolyn Zern?

Yes.

Mary Flynn?

Yes.

That's all six members present voting in favor. Thank you.

So for the record, the next item on the agenda, as Jeff mentioned previously, was scheduled to be an advisory consultation on case PBAC1 at 16 to 18 Porter Street. We received a request from the applicant last week to postpone this advisory consultation to January 13th, 2026. and CDD staff have confirmed that this project discussion can be rescheduled to that date. So the advisory review of PBAC 1 is postponed this evening and will be rescheduled to January 13th, 2026. Moving on then, the next item on the agenda is a determination of a proposed use at 20 Child Street. which is part of PB 179, a previously approved planned unit development known as Cambridge Crossing.

CDD staff will begin by explaining why this is before us. Jeff?

Thank you all. I'll do that. So this is a type of case that we've seen a number of times before. It's a proposal that would locate a quick service food establishment in The ground floor of this building, which is known as Parcel Inn in the The North Point or Cambridge Crossing PUD. And this is a district that permits a broad range of uses, but the specific PUD zoning and the PUD special permit don't explicitly authorize a quick service food establishment in this location. The zoning and the special permit does allow the planning board to make a written determination.

to allow the proposed use if it is found to be compatible with and advances the policy objectives of the Eastern Cambridge Plan and that is necessary to support the predominant residential use in the PUD in the North Point Residence District. So we didn't provide a memo on this request. We have discussed this with the prospective retailer. and we don't see any particular issues with this. The board's made many determinations like this in the past for this kind of use. We do have Adam Weisenberg present representing the applicant in case there are any questions. That's all.

Thank you, Jeff. Are there questions from board members for either the proponent or for staff on this request?

No? Ashley. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have a quick question, mostly just out of curiosity because I'm not familiar with this. Sure. Attorney Weisenberg, can you just quickly tell us about this quick service restaurant use? What type of food do they have? Is it bowls? Is it rolls? I don't really know.

Actually, I'm going to hand that That question off to Sam Singh, who is actually the tenant and who is available on the panel. Sam, if you can answer that.

Yep. Hello, everyone. This is Sam. Apologies, my video is off. I'm still stuck in traffic going back from work. But this concept is DonorShack, which is authentic Turkish kebabs. introduced in Germany in the 1970s and 80s, quickly became a German street food favorite. I lived in Berlin for about two years, 2021 and 2022. was introduced to Doner Kebabs over there. Loved it. Always thought that, you know, something like that was missing on the straight side. What separates this from Eros or, you know, the Greek version that we see here are two things. One is authentic Turkish bread. This franchisee has been able to have that recipe being replicated in the U.S. Second is they have automatically

Those vertical doner kebabs that we see, those automatic doner, those vertical rotisseries of kebabs that we see, they figured out a robotic way to shave meat off at the right intervals. So that is the unique value prop this particular franchisee offers. So we on the menu offer kebabs that are in Turkish bread. So think of those as, you know, bows or sandwiches. Second, we offer bowls. Third on the menu is fried chicken. And fourth on the menu is shakes.

Thank you for that, appreciate it. Are there any other questions from members of the board? Okay, seeing none, then are there any objections to making a determination that the proposed use is compatible with and advances the policy objectives of the Eastern Cambridge plan? and that it is necessary to support the predominant residential use in the PUD in the North Point Residence District. Are there any objections? Okay, seeing none, could I please have a motion to make such determination?

This is Ted. I make such a motion. I think that it is a benefit to the residents and the non-residential workers in North Point and this adjacent area. And I think it would be a good thing for them to have.

Thank you, Ted. Is there a second for the motion, please? This is Mary, second. Thank you, Mary. Jeffman, we have a roll call, but... We can do that.

Just as a reminder on this, I don't know if we put it in here. This is a special permit case, so I believe we can... Not sure how important it is, but we can assign an associate member to sit on this case.

Oh, okay. I kind of lost track of who was assigned to the last one, but... Let's see, why don't we go with joy this evening.

Okay, so with Joy Jackson appointed as a member to act on this case and on that motion to make the determination, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Lydecker? Diego Macias, Ashley Tan, Carolyn Zern, Joy Jackson, and Mary Flynn. That's all members voting in favor. Terrific.

So thank you to the proponent, both Attorney Weisenberg and Mr. Singh for attending and we wish you the best of luck.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

You're welcome. So in record time, that concludes the business on our agenda for this evening. Are there additional comments from staff?

I think I'm a little hungry after that, Pais.

I know, it sounded wonderful, didn't it? Yeah, exactly. I think it's going to be a big hit. All right, planning board members, anything to add? No? All right, so our next meeting is next week. And so I'll see you all then. Our meeting is adjourned. Good night, everyone.