Planning Board Meeting

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, but 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's online meeting portal and on cable television channel 22 within Cambridge. There will also be a transcript of the proceeding. I'll start by asking the staff to take board and member attendance and verify that all members are audible.

Thank you, Tom. This is Jeff Roberts, Community Development Department. H. Theodore Cohen, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you, Ted. Mary Flynn, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Yes, present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Mary. Mary Lydecker, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Mary. Diego Macias, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Diego appears to be 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. Dan Anderson, associate member, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

I, Jeff, present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Dan. And Thompson-Avich, can you confirm that you're present and the meeting is visible and audible to you? Present, Visible, and Audible. Great, thank you, Tom. So that means there are six planning board members and one associate member present.

Great, thank you very much, Jeff. So the first item is an update from the Community Development Department. So please also introduce any staff that might be present at tonight's meeting, Jeff.

Thank you. Once again, I'm Jeff Roberts. I'm the director of zoning and development for my team. Not with us this evening is Swathi Joseph. I don't remember the last time that's happened, but Evans Petrini is here and we're covering for the zoning team tonight. Eric Thorpilton from the urban design team is here and I believe we may be expecting Drew Kane also from the community planning and design A fairly small group tonight. I'll just do some quick updates looking ahead to what's coming up. We have tonight's meeting. We have scheduled two public hearings, both sort of related to one another. A little bit of a deja vu because it has to do with some zoning efforts, the follow up from some zoning efforts that the board heard last year. So we'll be getting right into that at the start of the meeting.

We also have one general business item, an extension of time on a special permit, so we'll get to that at the end. Our next meeting is scheduled for June 16th, and we have one public hearing scheduled. A case at 8 Winter Street seeking some modifications to the Cambridge Street design standards. So that is the main item for June 16th. We have one other general business item that we're still looking to confirm that we'd want to have scheduled that night. Since it's not confirmed, I won't put it up now, but it'll be posted on the agenda when we get it up and we'll let everybody know. and finally to close out the month on June 30th we have our annual utility report this is I want to say the third year we've done this I might maybe it's for um

This is kind of similar to the town gown reports or kind of inspired by the town gown reports. This is an opportunity for the planning board to hear from Utility, public utility providers in the city. So the city's Department of Public Works and Water Department will be presenting Vicinity Energy, which operates a power supplier in Cambridge, and Eversource, the electrical and gas utility in the city, will be giving reports on just the state of of the infrastructure in the city and future plans. So that takes us to the end of the month. We anticipate a lot more coming up as we get into the summer. Actually two items of interest at the City Council. The Ordinance Committee will be holding its hearing on the zoning petitions that the Planning Board is hearing tonight.

That will be June 16th, just before the next planning board meeting at 3 p.m. So that will be hearings on the Mass Ave and Cambridge Street active use zoning petitions. and just posted on June 25th there will be a discussion jointly held by the City Council's Housing Committee and Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee. This is a follow-up to A couple of meetings that have been held throughout the season on the housing development following the 2025 multifamily zoning amendment. So we have had discussions on Daniel Housing Report, which we talked about, and some follow-up discussion with invited guests on that topic. And we'll be talking a little bit more about the multifamily zoning. at that time.

So June 25th in the afternoon. That's I think it for updates. I'll turn it back over to the chair.

Great, thank you, Jeff. Are there questions for Jeff from any board members at this time? No one seems to indicate such, so I think we'll move directly to our first agenda item. The next item on the agenda is a public hearing on a zoning petition by the City Council to amend the Cambridge zoning map and ordinance in Article 17, the intent of strengthening active use requirements on North Massachusetts Avenue. First, city staff will begin by presenting this petition. Then we will take public comment on the Mass Ave petition. And after that, the planning board will discuss. When discussion is concluded, will proceed to the presentation on the Cambridge Street petition. Take public comment and discuss. Now, since the Mass Ave and the Cambridge Street active use zoning petitions cover very similar content,

We're going to save the final votes on the recommendations for both petitions until the end of the second discussion. i.e. the Cambridge Street discussion might inform some of our thinking on the Mass Ave discussion and vice versa. So we'll reserve the final vote for the conclusion of both presentations. So CDT staff will summarize and present. This is a new zoning petition from the city council and the board's role is to hold a hearing and make a recommendation to that city council. Evan?

Thank you. And thanks to the board for having us tonight. As Jeff said, a little bit of deja vu, we're back. talking about Mass Ave and Cambridge Street, this time focused on active uses on both corridors. So just a quick history lesson, recent history lesson. The new Mass Ave zoning was adopted back in December. The board heard the public hearing on this petition last fall. The intention of that zoning petition was to implement the recommendations of the Mass Ab Planning Study. and there are two main features of the zoning that are related to today's conversation. One, the petition allowed or The amendment as it was adopted, so the new zoning allows for

12 stories of housing throughout Mass Ave, 18 stories in Porter Square with a PUD special permit. And it incentivizes active ground floor uses by allowing additional residential height. In the Mass 12 district, active uses are required above eight stories. And in the Mass 12A district, active uses are required above four stories. We'll talk a lot more about that later. So during the hearing process for the initial Mass Ave zoning, Council discussed potentially implementing stronger active use requirements on both Mass Ave and Cambridge Street. But we're kind of limited by the legal limits on how much a zoning petition can change.

So we were able to create the mass 12a district which is mapped just south of porter square that as I just said requires active uses above four stories instead of eight which is The requirement for the rest of the corridor. And the reason we were able to do that is because Mass Ave already had an active use requirement. So we were able to strengthen it there, but not other parts of the corridor and on Cambridge Street as well. So during that process, before even the either zoning petition was adopted, council passed a policy order here directing staff to develop a subsequent zoning petition to strengthen those active use requirements.

So this petition that we're going to talk about tonight has already gone through some public process with council. Instead of jumping right into a new petition, after we completed the last one. We wanted to have a more detailed discussion to weigh the pros and cons of some alternative approaches. At a high level, the conversation about active use requirements is about trade-offs. Stronger active use requirements will make Thank you for joining us today. So the council with the planning board's guidance will need to weigh those two priorities, which were the top priorities in both the Mass Ave and Cambridge Street planning and zoning.

They'll need to weigh those two priorities to strike the right balance. So the ordinance committee held two public hearings, one on March 11th and one on April 6th. There was general consensus around the Mass Ave approach from the first committee meeting. A little bit more debate on Cambridge Street, which I'll talk about in the next presentation. After that, the council passed a series of policy orders directing CDD to draft zoning petitions to implement the approach coming out of the committee discussion. So that's what we're looking at tonight. Tonight's the Planning Board hearing. As Jeff mentioned earlier, the Ordinance Committee hearing on these two petitions will be in a couple weeks, June 16th at 3 p.m. Okay, so there are

Three main components to the zoning petition. The first is requiring ground story active uses above four stories from Cambridge Common to Linear Park. The petition does that in two ways. One is an expansion of the Mass 12a district. And the second is amending the Mass 18 district which is mapped just in Porter Square to require active uses above four stories. The second component is establishing a planning board special permit to allow minor modifications to the active use requirements. We'll talk about that. And then the third component is just a clarification that these requirements, these active use requirements only apply to lots abutting a primary street. So not...

Aside Street, really just focusing on Mass Ave and Somerville Ave in this zoning district. So before jumping right into the first component, I want to just give another quick recap of the existing standards. In the new Mass Ave zoning, active uses are required to enable the tallest residential heights allowed. So as I said, South of Porter Square in that Mass 12A district, Active uses are required above four stories. So the diagrams here illustrate the MAS 12A standards. You can build up to four stories of just residential, anything above that. So from five to 12 stories require active uses. So that's in the Mass 12A district. Everywhere else, active uses are required above eight stories.

And we do think that this is the right approach, requiring active uses only above a certain height or only for kind of larger projects. Requiring active uses for all developments, which was the case on Mass Ave before this new zoning, hasn't worked out well in our experience for many projects, so we We think this is the right approach. We do think most developments will provide active uses to unlock those taller heights, but it allows for flexibility for some unique sites and projects where height really isn't the priority. For example, a historic preservation project might not want to take advantage of those height limits, but still providing an active use might not make sense in that project.

This approach also prevents creating new nonconformities for existing residential buildings that maybe exceed the height at which those active requirements would kick in. That can create a lot of problems when property owners want to make some improvements for their properties and they have a pre-existing nonconformity. And just generally, we think Forcing commercial space and projects where it doesn't make sense is going to result in substandard space that remains vacant or worst case scenario kills the project altogether. So the first component of the zoning petition, require active uses in buildings greater than four stories from Cambridge Common to Linear Park. As I mentioned, this is done in two different ways. The first, very simply, expanding the Mass 12a district.

So the areas shaded are what would be all Mass 12A if the zoning petition is adopted. The areas outlined in red are the newly rezoned areas to that MAS 12A. So in all of those areas right now, active uses are required above eight stories. and under the zoning petition those areas would have a requirement above four stories for active uses. And then the second piece is amending the Mass 18 district, which is just in Porter Square to require active uses above four stories. So sort of rounding out every part of Mass Ave from Cambridge Common up to Linear Park would require active uses greater than four stories.

So quick reminder on active uses. So active uses cover a wide range, but fundamentally they're those uses that encourage pedestrian activity like restaurants, retail. some public facing offices. Where those active uses are required, so to achieve those taller heights, active uses also need to meet minimum floor area and location standards. specifically 60% of the interior floor area within 50 feet of the street. That's the standard. It's intended to be flexible, but concentrates those active uses along the primary street. The diagram on the right of this slide is 1740 Mass Ave. You'll be familiar with that project. And it's really helpful to illustrate this concept.

So that outlined area in red is the interior floor area within 50 feet of the street. and they've shaded at least 60% of that area in blue and that represents the area for active uses. So active use modifications. The planning board can approve modifications to the active use standards if the intent of the requirement is being met. Of course, the intent being to encourage active ground floors. There's currently a special permit option to consider other non-residential uses, active uses, so they could qualify. They're not In the list of active uses in the zoning, but the planning board can grant a special permit to say this use we're going to say is active and that can cover your active use requirement.

if that active use would create some street activity, if that use would create some street activity. But this petition, which is the second component of the petition, includes a new special permit that would allow for some minor changes to the amount or location of the active uses. The one that exists is about allowing different uses. This is about kind of changing how much floor area and where it's located on the site. And for both of those special permits, the intent is not to allow projects to avoid the requirement altogether, but to give the planning board an opportunity to consider other ways of achieving those goals given the unique characteristics of a site or a project. But we do think special permits should be the exception, not the norm. So this petition includes specific criteria for that new special permit.

Modifications meet the intent of the requirement. Floor area cannot be substantially reduced from what would normally be required and modifications directly, modifications must directly respond to some unique condition of the site. So looking back at that diagram on the right, the special permit would allow for perhaps a slight reduction of that blue area if there was some specific challenge with the site or building, or it could allow for the same amount of floor area that would normally be required, but have it provided outside of that red border if that for some reason worked better for the project.

Again, all of this is really just about creating flexibility where projects differ from project to project. and as long as the intent is being met, we want to be able to provide for alternative ways to achieve compliance. And then the final component of this petition is just clarifying that active use requirements only apply to lots abutting the primary streets. So active use requirements are intended to reinforce the mixed use character of the main streets, not The side streets. This was always the intent, but especially as we've been considering stronger active use requirements, we wanted to changed some language to make that extra clear.

You can see on the map there are Several lots that fall entirely or partially within the district with no frontage on Mass Ave. Those lots, they might not be able to build to 12 stories on those lots, but we don't think it makes sense for the standards to be more restrictive and those lots than it would be just outside the district where the height limit is likely six stories. And from a planning perspective, think we really want to be incentivizing active uses on those side streets anyway. So that's a... Overview of the petition. We wanted to end this presentation with some additional considerations for the planning board to weigh

The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority is proposing a six-story, 16-unit, all-residential building on North Mass Ave. This proposed petition would impose a new active use requirement on this project, which could be challenging to meet. This project came up after we had the ordinance committee meetings, actually when council was referring the petition to to the planning board and ordinance committee for public hearings. And during that discussion, the council asked CDD staff to meet with the CRA and discuss this case to get a little bit more information and come up with some ideas that might address some of the challenges that they're facing.

So this really is, it's a real life example of the tensions between housing development and active use requirements. And it could illustrate the trade-offs that other projects of this scale and in this area might. So we did meet with the CRA a few times since the petition was filed and we discussed the challenges that they're looking at. From those conversations, we developed a few potential modifications to the current zoning petition that might apply to a project like this or a similar So the first approach is just keeping North Mass Ave in the Mass 12 district, requiring active uses above eight stories instead of four.

The second approach would allow smaller projects under a certain square footage to exceed four stories, but not greater than six. or the final approach could delay the effective date so that projects already in the works could proceed as they're currently proposed. The first option is the simplest option, just make no change. North of Porter would remain in Mass 12 and active uses would be required above eight stories. In that scenario, active uses would be more heavily prioritized in Porter Square and south of Porter, while allowing more flexibility for housing north of Porter Square. The second option would create an exemption for smaller projects that don't hit a certain GFA threshold from those active use requirements.

Conceptually, this works the same way as requiring active uses for buildings only above a certain height, providing some flexibility for projects where active uses might not be supportable. And the third option would just delay the effective date of the zoning change. So this would allow projects currently in the pipeline to move forward as is, but future development would have to conform to the stronger standards. And that's where I'm going to end. So I will turn it back to the chair.

Great. Thank you, Evan. Now we'll, this is a public hearing, so we're going to turn our attention to see if we've got any of our fellow committee members here tonight that want to speak, any members of the public who wish to speak. should now click the button that says raise hand if you're calling in by phone you can raise your hand by pressing star 9 and as of 5 p.m yesterday the board had received comments from Tom Evans and from Ethan Frank on this petition and written communications that have been received after 5 p.m. yesterday will be entered into the record. So now I'll ask staff to unmute any speakers one at a time. And I'm actually not looking at that. participants. We have at least three people raising their hand.

Yes, 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. And after that, You'll have up to three minutes to speak before I'll ask you to wrap it up. So staff's going to manage the comment. Go ahead, Evan.

Thank you. This is Jeff. So we have a few speakers. I'll just go through them one at a time. Please raise your hand as soon as possible if you'd like to speak to give us a sense of who's in the queue so we can keep things moving for the sake of everyone. So the first speaker is Tess Hoffman. who's followed by Kevin McGuire, Tess Hoffman. You can unmute yourself and begin with your name and address.

Tess Hoffman, 67 Washburn Ave. But speaking tonight on behalf of the CRA.

Thank you. You can go ahead.

Good evening. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority following up on our written comment. First, I want to thank CDD staff for highlighting our project in the presentation tonight. We really appreciate the consideration they have given to CRA's site at 2326 Mass Ave. This is a site that the CRA purchased with the goal of partially subsidizing a mixed income home ownership project. We currently have a designated developer for the site, Ascent Dev LLC, working with PCA Architecture, who proposed the building shown. Small sites on North Mass Ave do not receive the bulk of the attention in this conversation, but they should be considered. For the CRA, given our level of resources as an agency, developing a small site was a more approachable project to get off the ground on a shorter timeline without spending years corralling financing sources. We are very excited to contribute high quality housing to this corridor hopefully in the near future.

The product we're aiming to offer is six stories all two and three bedroom condo units located an eight minute walk from the red line at Davis and has no parking. We believe it leans into many of the city's housing goals, densifying the corridor and offering family-sized units close to many great transit options. As our letter details, this zoning petition really imperils the project as it's currently envisioned. The planned ground floor residential unit with yard access would go away as with the lobby. We're not sure whether the building systems and elevator circulation would fit, possibly necessitating a variance from the 60% requirement. Additionally, a retail condo is not a desirable feature in a condo building of this size with only 16 owners. It creates a lot of risk for the development as a whole. The unit may not be sold and would become a permanent rental for the condo association to manage in a soft retail market.

Lastly, this is an issue for revenues as the ground floor retail space is worth approximately half of the residential space in this location. It's unfortunately not an option for us to increase the project height both in terms of the overall costs and the aesthetic form of the building which would become too tall and skinny for this small footprint. We ask you to consider not only the impacts to this CRA project, but to other projects like ours, which may not happen given cash flow considerations. We think the Mass Ave corridor north of Porter Square has a unique transitional character. It does have sparser retail than nearby shopping hubs. While Porter Square is a strong anchor at one end, the retail tapers off toward the Arlington line without another strong neighborhood anchor at the other end. It's still a great neighborhood, but its market will struggle to support ground floor retail in new developments on small sites. The CRA would support any of the alternatives proposed by CDD this evening.

possibly with a preference for approach number two. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Kevin McGuire who's followed by Justin Safe.

Can everybody hear me okay? Yes. Okay, fantastic. So my name is Kevin McGuire, and I too am affiliated with 2326 Mass Avenue, the development that was rendered. I am a member of Ascent Development LLC and we have really focused our energy on affordable and mid-tier ownership. And I just want to highlight specifically when we're talking about ownership and oftentimes what we try to call community scale ownership. We spent a lot of time thinking about 20 years. What is the life cycle of the building and the residents and essentially the way that the building functions. In some ways, the best Public Benefit is a well maintained and active building.

and the introduction of the commercial or the retail as Tess was saying really does add a lot of complications and it's pretty simple as opposed to having a single building owner as you would in a rental building You have a collection of homeowners who have other professional lives and really don't have the time to be true asset managers. and you're just introducing another complicated element or another Another user within their space that makes all decisions, makes communication, makes determination of condominium fees, resolution of just kind of small space issues It really becomes a challenge. And so I'm just hearing the voice. you know active streets, active front ground floor usage is important and Cambridge is an amazing place.

I just hope that particularly in an ownership situation less than 20 units or less than 25 units People are really being thoughtful about long-term functionality or probability of success because when retail is added to a small ownership condominium, the challenges are probably exponentially increased as opposed to just added on to other challenges so thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next speaker is Justin Safe, who's followed by Tom Evans.

Good evening, Justin Safe, 724 9th Street. I want to say that we need new housing in Cambridge to allow kids to find apartments after high school or college, to allow new households to form, and to allow residents... to move to or within Cambridge without driving up housing costs and causing displacement. Our Envision Cambridge goal set in 2018 was to build 12,500 new housing units by 2030 in an annual amount that would increase the vacancy rate and help to lower rents. Sadly, we've fallen so far short, we've thrown in the towel and given up on achieving our 2030 goal and we've built less than 10% of our annual goal over the past few years. Housing affordability is far and away the most important issue to Cambridge residents as seen in the annual scientific survey and we are failing on it. Adding this expensive, unfunded, first floor active use mandate

will result in getting the worst of all worlds where we will get no retail, we will get no housing, we will be stuck in amber. Thank you so much for joining us. zoning, you know, to the extent that Cambridge Street and Mass Ave are going to be a pattern for future other corridor zoning, which is highly likely. We've also heard from another building, the Former Dunkin Donuts, the third in the graph, that this mandate would also kill their inclusionary project. And the units you're going to lose are going to be the inclusionary units. Those are the ones that will go first. So you'll get only The market rate units and you'll get smaller buildings because they will avoid this.

You know, there's no free lunch. We have to provide either additional height, which at least Mass App does, Cambridge Street does not. and you know either tax abatement incentives or else relief from other zoning requirements like setbacks or setbacks or Whatever open space, whatever it is that we can do in order to encourage these projects. But if they're not economically feasible, they won't happen. And this makes them less economically feasible. It's sad that it took the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority coming forward to inform the city of this when it's been obvious and people have been saying it from the outset. and the city has done very little in terms of trying to square the circle and make both Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next speaker is Tom Evans, who's the last hand raised at this time.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Chair and planning board members. I'm Tom Evans, Executive Director of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority. Our office is at 255 Main Street. And I just want to follow up on the comments from Tess and Kevin specific to The project that was described. I was looking back on the policy order from December and it did ask for a review of active uses on Cambridge Street and The Porter Square PUD Subdistricts. At that time, it didn't specifically mention North Mass Ave, which is one of the reasons why we went ahead with our procurement and did not pay as close attention to these ongoing active use So we came in a little later into the conversation at City Council because of the addition of the North Mass Ave section.

I just would want to point out that it's We are fully expected that you might zone different parts of the city differently. We think North Mass Ave is different than Cambridge Street. And we think some thoughtful treatment of smaller projects, smaller parcels, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. create the kind of active use I think we envision happening on the corridor instead might end up with uses that are maybe even less active than a residential lobby. So we appreciate all the work that staff has done to

look at some alternatives as Tess mentioned I think any of those approaches would work for us and we look forward to the ongoing conversation. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We do have some more hands raised just in that last one. The next speaker is Todd Chapin, who's followed by Heather Hoffman.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes, you can go ahead and begin with your name and address, please. Great, yes.

My name is Todd Chapin. I live at 462 Cambridge Street. I'm wondering if it was considered to offer instead of making a mandate offer a benefit to of some kind to buildings which would add an active use of offering on their first floor. As I walk around predominantly East Cambridge, I see a lot of empty retail and commercial space on the first floor. So I just wanted to ask that.

Thank you.

Thank you. And the next speaker is Heather Hoffman, who is the last hand raised at this time. Can you unmute yourself and begin?

Hello, Heather Hoffman, 213 Hurley Street. I was going to wait for Cambridge Street to speak, but I could not let the The outright falsity that Mr. Safe felt compelled to add towards the end of his statement to sit here and confuse people. The project on 3rd Street at the O'Brien Highway is currently under construction, i.e. it already has a building permit. So any zoning change that We were to make now would not affect that project. I would have thought that my brother at the bar knew better than that, but I appear to have been wrong. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I believe that is the last speaker. So I'll turn it back over to the chair.

Okay, great. Thank you, Jeff. We'll now move from public comment to board discussion, and any additional comments will be submitted for the written comments will be submitted for the records. First of all, do board members have any specific questions for CDD staff on the petition? Ted.

Thank you. I have a question about the chart that was shown on the presentation. What was presented, what was sent to us had a zoning chart that was changed. Is it possible to put that up?

Sure. I... Sorry, give me a minute to pull that back up. Can you remind me the...

It's the table 17.804.3.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure where that was in the presentation.

It was in the materials that were presented.

Oh, was it in the cover memo to the...

Page 9 of the petition. I guess it was in the memo.

OK. Here I will. Sorry, apologies.

Okay.

Yeah, that's it. So where it says residential uses, which had been moved from two spots above, For MAS 12 and 12A and 18, they all say 145 feet and 12 stories above grade. Is that accurate?

Yes, so this is sort of just a restructuring of how the zoning was, or this table was set up. So before we had A residential uses and then the second line was residential uses with active ground floor. So it was the tallest heights was residential, they were both residential uses. What we've done is we took out the residential only line and we put it earlier in these changes that basically, yeah, these bullets now say above a certain height, those buildings are required to have active uses. So we're sort of just reframing it as...

Residential uses are allowed up to the tallest heights, that 12 stories in all of those districts, except for the mass six district. which is six stories so it's allowed up to 12 stories but above four or eight stories you're required to provide those active uses. So it was sort of just restructuring things around. We thought this was a little clearer than having that in the table.

Okay, but the 145 feet and 12 stories for the three. Thank you. That's my only question right now. Thank you, Ted.

Ashley, you were next.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question. So if I understand the proposed changes correctly, does that mean if someone is proposing a non residential another non-residential use that's not in the list of active uses they can come to the planning board for a special permit but you know say for example in this case to CRA or anyone else to proposing a residential use on The ground floor then, they would, would they still use a special permit or is it like a variance from the zoning board and is that a concern?

So yeah, thank you for the question. The special permit allows for for minor modifications to the size and location of the active use or considering another non-residential use as an active use. Those are the two special permits. One, the latter is already in the zoning. It wouldn't allow for just a waiving of the requirements. So I think in that case, you would probably need to get a variance. Then that was the intent that the special permit wouldn't be a way to just waive the requirement entirely. It's just... It's just to kind of modify it a little bit on the edges.

Yeah.

Okay, great, Ashley. Carolyn.

Thank you. I was thinking about the project that we reviewed not long ago, the AHO project, I think at 2072 Mass Ave, the eight-story CLT project, which I think under, if I'm understanding this right, under this provision would require ground floor retail and I I'm trying to remember if ground floor retail is in his plans, in the Capstone team's plans. I don't think it is. And I'm curious if you talked to that team at all about whether or not ground floor retail would have killed... So I think we're all pretty excited about that project and its impact.

It's a good question. So it's an affordable housing overlay project. So it's actually under a different set of rules. So it doesn't need to adhere to any of the Mass Ave zoning for the most part. So this wouldn't apply to that project.

Okay, good reminder.

Thank you. Interestingly, they did in an earlier version have active ground floors or an active use on the ground floor. but I think they also found it challenging to make that work. And it's sort of hard to compare Those projects too much because affordable projects have complicated financing structures that can impact different what uses make sense and those sorts of things. But yeah, so this zoning petition wouldn't impact that project.

Yep, great reminder. You would think I would have that one down by now. Thank you for that.

Okay, zoning is complicated.

Yes, and thank you all. Second question, if you'll forgive me. And related to the CRA example, and given building code and the kind of six story stick built kind of prototype that is probably likely for most residential building on Mass Ave at this point, except for the super tall stuff that will have active ground floor retail. I'm curious if you considered anything six stories and above as opposed to four stories and above. and thought and kind of allowed for that possibility as one of the possibilities for addressing that.

Yeah, I think we did. Talk about this a little bit. I'm trying to remember exactly where we sort of landed on that. Jeff, help me out.

Yeah, we did talk about this. So yeah, the results of this are the outcome of a lot of conversations where we did a lot of what if-ing and looking at different scenarios. And I think the idea was exactly as you said you know the city council was concerned about seeing you know mostly six-story development but not having ground floor use and so the current zoning only would only have that and this is all it's kind of it's always hard to describe whether this is a requirement or an incentive because it's really just saying where's that sort of cut off where you can go higher or not. and in the the original proposal from last year it was eight stories and the council was concerned about that you know six stories being more the norm and so we looked at how do we get to that six stories with

with the active ground floor and we thought that if we really wanted to be an incentive we would want that gap to be either you know four stories without the active use or Thank you for joining us. that was the thinking and that's why and as Evan described that's the zoning that's currently in place in the south of Porter Square part of Mass Ave and you know the board has you know recently looked at a project that is like six stories with the and so that was the logic behind the four stories being the cutoff to then get up to six stories. You could also do it

Starting at six stories, but it's not as much of an incentive from five stories without the active use to six stories with the active use.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is actually a follow-on. Carolyn asked my question about the six stories. And so thank you for that answer. I guess the follow on is a little bit more about your thinking about extending, I guess, MA12A to linear part. I think that we're all aware that retail tapers off for a variety of reasons north of Porter Square. and so maybe just a little bit of thinking on that extension of M812.

Yeah, I can speak to that and There's maybe some added color to going all the way back to the planning on this. Some of the recommendations from the Mass Ave Planning Study talked about creating these neighborhood centers where there would be stronger active use requirements throughout Mass Ave. and it included, you know, like Trolley Square and some other areas on North Mass Ave that weren't in the initial petition. and the reason that they weren't in the initial petition is when we started trying to draw the boundaries of those kind of neighborhood centers, it became really difficult to say, well, why here and why not here when you're looking just a block over? So

So we weren't able to be as nuanced as we kind of thought maybe in the planning that would make sense. In this go-around, we looked again at North Mass Ave, and one of the reasons why It might make sense to be a little stronger on active use requirements is that there are a lot more of those larger redevelopment sites on this part of Mass Ave where you really would want to see active uses. So I think that was part of the concern was you look at these large sites and maybe the worry was that you're going to get a whole

bunch of six-story or eight-story would be allowed under the existing zoning of just residential and not have those active uses. So it's kind of a combination of We thought it was kind of really difficult to try to be nuanced and get in there with a scalpel and say, well, this is going to have above four stories and this is going to have above eight stories. and, you know, having those larger redevelopment sites made us think maybe it makes sense just to bring that all the way up to Linear Park being, you know, a something of a more concrete boundary that we can cling to.

Mary Lydecker.

Thank you. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to the at the end of the presentation the second consideration of what would it look like to exempt smaller projects from the active use requirements so for example the way the petition reads it really is all about Height, is it something where you would consider the frontage length, say, or the lot size? Maybe speak to that idea a little bit more.

Yeah, and that idea is still sort of a work in progress, I think. But we discussed a couple different, scenarios, those were two of them, frontage, lot size. What we sort of landed on was a GFA threshold. made the most sense to us. You could think about it from a frontage standpoint, make sense from a planning perspective where you don't want You know, a long facade without any activity. But it's harder to work through the sort of economic impacts on a project. because lots could be wider or deeper or that could have very different impacts.

So we kind of landed on having a GFA threshold, and that would be in addition to the height threshold. So basically... And I think that the exact square footage we probably need to think about a little bit more if that's the way that we end up going with any modification, if there is a modification to the petition. um could be around you know 25,000 square feet or something something in that range um So we have to figure out what that is a little bit more, but it made more sense to us as a more predictable sort of measurement of the I think economic impact. Oh, that's what I was going to say.

How it would function is a project could exceed the four stories up to six stories if it's less than say 25,000 square feet. So it becomes a little bit more complicated, but it still functions in the same Conceptually, the same way of smaller projects aren't required to provide these active uses.

Would that CRA project fall within that in that case as an example?

I believe so. Again, we're still thinking what the right square footage might be, certainly on the height limit that makes sense. So yeah, there's still... some pieces to work out with that second option.

Thank you.

Right. Mary Flynn.

Thank you. So I find this all a little bit confusing in terms of, you know, what height you get and then You know, what special permits can do. I understand it's very, very narrow, but It seems to me that we want more housing and we're also uncertain about the retail climate. We know it's not great at the moment. We're not sure what it's going to be later on. And so I'm just wondering if maybe If you have further discussions about special permitting and whether or not there should be the opportunity for the planning board to waive the requirement completely for retail so that a project could can do all housing and make the case. I mean, if we're going to see empty storefronts on Mass Ave, there's no point in having that requirement in there.

And I think that point that some of the members of the public mentioned about where you have home ownership opportunities, the ground floor retail is really going to be and very negative. I mean, I'm part of a condominium association up in Maine and I can tell you it's hard enough just managing the The owners, but we have to rent out too. So we have a business on the side and it makes it very, very, very difficult. But we have like 200 some odd units. So it is easier when you get down to 16. I just can't imagine how you could handle that burden. So I guess, yeah, whatever discussions you had, you could maybe... help inform us and maybe we can think a little bit more about the special permit.

I can start and Jeff, maybe you can jump in. I think when we were thinking about this special permit. And I've mentioned in the presentation, creating this new special permit option and all the special permit options that are in there are intended to provide some flexibility. I think when we... When we're thinking about a special permit to waive the requirement altogether, the concern was how do we write the criteria for which you need to meet to get that special permit in a way that it doesn't become the default that every project then seeks a special permit to waive the requirement because then the requirement just become sort of meaningless. And that's really hard, I think, to do.

If... if the council wanted us to or if that's the planning board's recommendation we could we could think a little bit harder about what that criteria would might need to be, and certainly if the planning board has suggestions on what those circumstances would be, that would be of help to us. But yeah, so I mean, just thinking about that, It became pretty difficult to figure out what are the circumstances that we would say it's fine to build at any height without active

I would add just because some of this has to do with the higher level thinking that we're doing around zoning and zoning for housing in particular where we're trying to lean a little less heavily on the special permit and you know because as we've heard you know this This element of a project can be a pretty significant factor in sort of the economics of it, sort of having that rest sort of on the planning board and having to look at Thank you for joining us. Where do we sort of draw the line? Does it just become that if you do it once, is everyone just going to say, well, now we just know we have to go to the planning board and get a special permit and we don't have to worry about this? It can be hard.

It can be kind of a burden on the planning board. And we're also trying to be mindful of We're trying to promote housing development and a big piece of that, what we're always hearing from developers is a more predictable process is really key, especially for smaller development. They don't want to have to come Not to speak on behalf of anybody, but I'm sure any developer would like to have it be clear what the rules are in the zoning before they proceed and not have to think for a project or a case like the one that we saw. and heard about, you know, having to move forward and say, well, this depends on whether we can get the approval from the planning board or not in order to go forward. So I think, you know, we can do the plain plain word review is really helpful. And I think when it comes to figuring out like, well, is, you know, The 60% requirement, could it, you know, in some cases, might it work just as well if it was 55%?

Like, those are things that we could investigate through a special permit process, but I think, you know, The key determinant of whether it's a mixed-use project or a residential-only project we think should be as clear as we can make it up front.

So I have two questions, just building on Jeff's description and Evan's answer to the question about Mary. suggesting that the planning board be given some discretion around a special permit. I was thinking back to my time on the zoning board where we used to entertain 40 bees and there was a criteria, a threshold are all criteria that allowed developers to take advantage of 4DB, which was if there was public funding, public dollars involved. And I'm wondering if we might consider that threshold in light of the CRA proposal, for instance, Those public dollars are obviously flowing to affordable housing, whether that's the threshold in which the planning board might be given some discretion around whether active use was allowed on the first floor. I don't know what you feel about that, Jeff or Evan.

Off the top of my head, I'd have to say it's Probably something, I mean, something we can look into with, probably need to consult the law department on this. I'm not really, it might be stretching the bounds of what can be considered within a zoning special permit. You know, 40B is a whole different piece of legislation. Special permits are a little bit different, so I'm not sure if special permits can really consider the funding of the project or the financial aspects of the project in order to make a determination. Some of the lawyers, I see some of the lawyers on the board nodding. Maybe I'm onto something. So we can definitely look into that, but I'm not sure what the answer would be.

It seems so easy at the zoning board. You just said, do you have public funding? Yes. Okay. Click. Now we can go into 40B and they would provide some document that suggested they were doing that. Okay, so here's another question now, not to active use, but to urban form. It's the dimension of Mass Ave. And the dimension from Mass Ave, the width of Mass Ave, at least the way I perceive it, between Harvard Square and Porter Square seems narrower than the dimension north of Porter Square. Certainly, once you get beyond the carriage building over Pemberton Market and north, it seems much wider. Now that, I don't know, I guess that's a question. Is it wider?

I believe the answer is no. I think you probably have more buildings that are pushed further from The Street, North.

Greater setback.

Drew's on the call. I don't know if he's able to speak to that. And maybe I'm completely wrong.

No, I can speak to it and you're not completely wrong, Evan. No, that 100 feet is fairly consistent up and down the stretch. Waterhouse all the way up to Arlington. There might be some variety there. I think at occasions the sidewalks might be a little bit narrower, but in general it's fairly consistent. You know, I think one of the big differences is might be that you have more buildings along that stretch of mass side that meet the back of the sidewalk, to Evan's point. And not only that, but a more consistent building fabric, which I think does make a difference there.

Well, I would, it's a trick question.

Oh, great. Let's hear it.

I suspected it was the same dimension, but others were nodding. Yes, it feels wider, right? So it is the setback, probably. There's more front yard setbacks on some of those lots as we get beyond Pemberton, even Pemberton market setback. but it's height, right? The buildings closer to the common are six stories, some even higher. And so you get a sense of enclosure and you do sense streets narrower. Until we get the horse-drawn streets Carriage, which is the horse-drawn trolley, which I think we should try to get back because it's not fossil fuels driving it and it would be lovely. It would really... One, use the right dimension of the street and make it be awfully lovely to just go from Harvard to Porter Square on a horse-drawn trolley. But probably the The animal rights people will be writing me emails tomorrow.

But Mass Ave is made for some trolley to go down the middle. That's why it's so... So big, and it's not the kind of street that I think about ambling down because its size is more akin to a New York street than a Cambridge street. But it leads me to this question, which is its height. I believe that it's height that we need, right? And especially north of Porter Square and to trip up development with maybe something that makes proposals on economic so we wouldn't get the height and you'd start developing at four stories because it's allowed. I think would be a missed opportunity. So from a planning perspective, I think that the city, and I'm beginning to get into the opinion side of this rather than the question, I think that we Some discussion around height.

I think we need to figure out that's the balance here that you stated right at the outset. We've got to figure that out because I think we do want the height north of Porter Square. and I don't want to put up a barrier either to the housing or to the height because it's bad urban form and it's not what this city needs, which is more housing. Maybe others feel differently about the hike question north of Mass Ave. I know Ted and others, that's your neighborhood. Dan, saving me, thank you. Yeah, thank you for moving us into comments.

Are we into comment now?

I think I have that habit because I always go last, Ted, and so then... and I don't have questions, I usually have strong opinions about what I think we should do.

Dan, let's move into, we'll move into editorializing now. I'm not shy on comments.

I would second I'm really torn on this because active street fronts are what we know and love. But we can't have active street fronts without density. and I think I was really pleased to see 1740 put up as an example because that developer was very candid about why he wouldn't build to 12 stories. It was for him economically infeasible. and that's a location that has a lot of retail and he was able to work that into a six-story building so now Does that work as you march further towards Arlington? I don't know. But there are some real impediments to getting density above six stories. If it's overly burdened.

So I am torn on this, but I think that there's an argument that says, Let's not burden it more. Let's get more density. And further down the road, if we've planned it correctly and having a mandated 15-foot high ground story height, would allow for the future transformation if economics change. So there's some things that I think are baked in there. Maybe exempting some smaller projects might make sense, but ultimately, The conversation for me is how do we get that housing density? Because without the housing density, we won't get the active streets.

And I'm going to just... back you up on that having just attended an APA presentation where an urban designer by the name of David Dixon cited this statistic that for active retail you need for an active street, you need 2,000 units within a quarter mile. So Central Square approaches that, right? And portions of Mass Ave, whether or not we have that kind of density north of Portage Square, I doubt it, right? And so you're absolutely right, Dan, that that's it. Oh, you want the active storefronts? You need a pretty high density of housing to make that work. Okay, Ted.

All right, thank you. I thought I'd be an outlier in this discussion because my thoughts are very different from the City Council's apparent thoughts. First of all, we have such a need for housing that I think that overrides virtually everything else we're discussing. Tied to that is retail is in the toilet. I don't foresee people changing their habits dramatically in the near future or in the distant future. and so the active uses seem to me really minimal. There are so many empty spaces

on Mass Ave, on Cambridge Street, throughout all of Cambridge, in Harvard Square, that mandating that there have to be active uses taking up a large portion of the first floor that could be housing. or could be a nice lobby for the people who live there or could be an elevator bank just seems to me wrong. When I interviewed for the planning board many, many years ago, I said I thought Mass Ave should be a minimum of six stories from one end to the other. I still think we need that. And so I think the four story is just wrong. And that as a minimum, you should be at six stories everywhere. and that occasionally you will have the larger building over it.

I mean, if you're looking at North Cambridge and it's, you know, I've walked that strip for 45 years on an almost daily basis. So if you look at the tallest building at 2353, there are dental offices in there. You don't see people coming and going. Next to that is Trolley Square, which is a lovely development. It's three, maybe four stories. It has no active use except a small restaurant at one end. Other than that, it's purely residential. The remains as you walk up and down, you know, yeah, Pemberton Market is great. That draws a lot of people, but it's not a residential use. Most of your residential uses don't have active uses, and I think mandating them is not a good idea. I think we should not give up.

The possibility of more housing units for an active use that's likely to end up with an empty space. Some sort of more expansive special permit that would allow the planning board to just exempt almost any kind of development if it found a rationale for it. I can understand that's difficult. I think one of the public's comments about making it more of a benefit than a mandate, maybe that's something that could be I agree with what Tom and Dan have been saying. You need the density

In order to find that people are going to want to have the active uses and we just don't have that density yet. And I think it's just necessary to build taller and bigger. and have more people there. And those people walking up and down the streets are going to provide your active use. The concept of mixed use is great. 20 years ago, I probably would have come out on the other side of this debate, but that was before the internet and before Amazon and before people ordering everything online. and the number of empty spaces just appalls me all the time. And mandating that there be more empty spaces rather than housing, I just think is wrong. Great. Thank you, Ted.

Ashley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I had the benefit of having my I had a washing machine breakdown a few months ago and I live not too far from this area and so I had to walk down this portion of Mass Ave to the laundromat which is at the corner of Lanier Park, you know, every week. I just want to first dispel the notion that retail tapers out on this area and actually there's actually I would say maybe other than five The rest is actually, according to our definition, active use. There may be 10 massage parlors. There may be 10. they all salons and um but there's actually been a lot of spaces avenues for pop-up stores there's like record stores there's plenty of cafes a lot of ethnic grocery or not a lot there's like three ethnic grocery stores it's actually a very

A lot of dental offices, as I said, point out, which is, you know, in this definition, it falls under active use. So that's another discussion to have whether it is truly active because the dental offices. I understand where the city council is coming from because I see why they want to maintain I don't know what the best balance is. Maybe it is requiring active uses for larger projects above a certain GFA or At least more than six stories.

But I do see value in what City Council is trying to do, at least in bigger projects. There definitely are. You know, smaller lots right now that it just wouldn't make sense for. And so I think I would be comfortable with the proposal if it was for larger projects or above. Thank you.

I think like, We do have a lot of North Cambridge folks on this between Ted and Ashley. So I would really reiterate, I think what Ashley touches on is there is a lot of retail. It's like Joe sent me Greek Corner. I walk my kids to Peabody and the Dominican bodega guy knows my kids, right? It's like there's a lot of activity all the way down. you know everyone knows Pemberton right it's you know and and part of it it's the gaps between it right when there's like a gas station or something like Like that. And so I think I'm kind of falling as Dan kind of started with it. It's a density that I think it needs to really amplify that. I think that's kind of where I'm falling on it is I would be very wary of Overburdening projects, especially at the smaller size.

And I think to Ted's point, I think that taller heights along Mass Ave in this area would be entirely appropriate. And I love Tom thinking about that, that it is it's like the perceptual narrowing. If there was some sort of requirement, Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Who cares how deep and big it is? If it's like 20 square, 20 linear feet, you're fine, right? So to me, it almost feels like it's linear frontage that might be the thing you look at if you keep looking at that.

And truly, I don't know if we're at the point where it feels like residential and housing is developing enough where the city council or the city feels like adding more. I think generally I'm kind of following with others here that I don't see an overwhelming need to add or change the way it is currently outlined in the zoning. I will also though make a pitch that when we looked at the original planning study, and I'll say it again here, is it feels like the city's approach generally to the treatment of Mass Ave is very reactionary and depends on developers to do something. is not an open space.

What is Mass Ave? What is its vision, right? and that also ties into in addition to say restaurants or you know active uses churches we also go by that church uh right near Pemberton, and there's the big sculpture, the big guy in the sky. That's what we call him, right? So these are kind of these iconic things along here. There are playgrounds. There's the Clarendon Avenue playground. That's kind of an active pocket off of it. So in some ways I would Aside from this or in balance with this, I would really hope that the city considers exploring what is your vision for North Mass Ave, right, that is not dependent on private investment and development to make it happen. So that's essentially where I'm falling on this one.

Great. Okay. Mary Flynn.

So I'm generally in support of the direction the conversation is going. I think putting more requirements on developers is important. In a time where, again, retail is in flux and many people are going to want to stay away from it. I mean, the existing ones that are there are fabulous. I don't know how easy it would be at this point in time to replace some of them, particularly if it's a new construction building and Rents are going to go up. So I'd rather have some flexibility, which I think that current zoning, as it's adopted, gives us more than the other proposals. I agree. I think the density issue is... is the piece of it that's needed because particularly as we get further and further into restricting parking and so we're able to provide really

Top of the line first class public transportation. Everybody's going to depend on the density around them, the retailers, to be their community of support. So I would say that where we are right now is probably where we should be, and that over time, as economics change and the situation changes, You know, we could look at it again if, you know, if suddenly there's, you know, Amazon goes belly up and we have a, you know, new retail boom, you know, things might change. But I wouldn't, I think what I like about The current zoning is that it gives you the smaller projects that flexibility up to the eight stories and doesn't put that additional burden on them.

And to me, I think, you know, Ted's point is, you know, we need the housing and I certainly don't want to do anything that's going to deter a smaller developer from wanting to and being able to do that. That's it for me.

Barry, Lydecker, second turn at the plate.

Just one more comment. This is the thing I remembered. All these businesses, I love them. I care about them. I've also seen that development we looked at right across from, I call it the friendly corner, the one with the laundromat that Ashley uses. Thank you. We saw that development. It was a great development. And then it hasn't happened. It hasn't been able to get the financing to work for whatever reason. And the Chabra Bridal, right? And Monkey Kids, I think, was already closed. But that one had to move down by monotony down in Arlington. and so we've had an empty storefront. So I think the other thing that I would hope council thinks about and cities through this process is how do you, how do you, How do you support the businesses that are already in this area? So that when new developments happen, what are the mechanisms? And I realize this is a question beyond just zoning, but how do we support those businesses?

are, or find a new place within this community. So that's just another kind of layer to be thinking about.

Okay. Thank you, Mary. Dan. Yeah, just one piece I'd I really appreciate Ashley and Mary mentioning the kind of retail that is there that has been gradually eroded. partly due to transit, bus lanes and bike lanes and other things which just make it harder. I kind of come back a little bit to the How do we incentivize to go beyond six stories? Because, again, as our developer for even 1740 Mass Ave said, you know, which is in a A much more dense neighborhood, or let's just say closer to transit between Harvard and Porter. It is tough when you get over that 70 feet of height and are into high-rise code, all of the things and cost increases that come with that. I'm with...

Ted and saying, hey, you know, it would be great at least to get six stories. But if the kind of density they were talking about, the kind of 2000 people per quarter mile metric, Tom, that you mentioned. The 12 stories is an aspiration that's tough to get to right now. So I do see the desire to have ground floor retail and active streets. But I think that it's not only requiring it as potentially a disincentive, and so forth. It can be low rent because it's cash flow.

So I'd kind of put it out there again to say how can there be an incentive to get to the higher height rather than necessarily an impediment to just hitting a basic six story. So that's my last piece of opinion.

Great. Well, thank you. And Ted, I'm not surprised that there's fairly close alignment, not complete here, not unanimous agreement with your point of view. I'm with you. Dan, as I've stated, the density is what we need. But I think Mary's got the... The solution in what she was talking about, which is to say it's not about height, it's about lot size, right? It's about frontage. And could CDD quickly between now and the 16th when the hearing is at the... with the city councilors suggest some rules by which it's actually the frontage. They're already starting down that avenue, I think wisely suggesting, you know, where lots that front on the abutting streets, not on Mass Ave, get exempted from this.

also narrowness on the street right so that may also free up the CRA proposal in front of us because that's a fairly small lot that that development is sitting on and I think that's the way to look at it. I don't think we give up entirely on for retail. If you've got a full block that you redevelop, you're able to assemble large amounts of parcels. But I'm really... worried about two things tripping up our ability to produce housing, as everybody I think has said, and Ted so eloquently started this with. by putting in a provision here and ending up with vacant lots, vacant storefronts, which isn't good either.

but if the zoning sits as it stands, right, I think we're still looking at fairly low Well, you know, not over what exists today, but lower height than what we could tolerate there. So I think we could go to 12 stories. So, I don't know, I just would now turn to staff and say, okay, we're about to, I think my sense is we should move on to the next street, but... Do you have questions for the board? I know you take careful notes on the wisdom that we impart here, but have you got a sense of where we are?

I think I have a sense of where we are. I think it makes sense to move on to the Cambridge Street petition. and talk about that one and then come back to recommendations for both at this point and and we can and maybe Jeff can supplement my notes as well when we get back there. We'll try to summarize maybe where the direction was going on Mass Ave and see if anything... Changes for Cambridge Street or how you think about both of those are the same or differently?

Yeah, I didn't notice that I had much support for my horse-drawn trolley, so I don't think that's going to make it. to the recommendations. I'll keep trying. So let's move to Cambridge Street. And with that, let's see, I have a little bit of text here. Okay, so we'll move to agenda item number two. We'll leave that one open. The next item on the agenda is a public hearing on zoning petition by the City Council to amend the Cambridge zoning map and ordinance in Article 17 with the intent to of strengthening active use requirements on Cambridge Street and requiring a special permit for formula businesses. City staff will begin by presenting the petition. Then we'll take public comment on the Cambridge Street petition. After that, the planning board will discuss the petition and decide whether to transmit recommendations for both zoning petitions to the city council. So with that, I'll turn it over to Evan who will summarize and present what's before us.

Thank you. A lot of the things in this petition are the same or similar to Mass Ave, so I'll skip through a lot of the slides and try to focus on the Cambridge Street specific items so we can get back to public comments and questions and discussion. So again, starting with just some quick background, the Cambridge Street zoning was adopted back in January, implementing the Our Cambridge Street Study which was conducted 2021-2022, completed in 2023. The new zoning allows for six stories of housing throughout Cambridge Street and 10 stories in Lechmere and 12 stories in the Webster-Windsor area.

Again, also incentivizes active ground floor uses by allowing for additional residential height above six stories. That's only in Lechmere and Webster-Windsor. The rest of the corridor, you're allowed to go up to six stories with no active use requirement. As I talked through this before, Council wanted to implement stronger active use requirements on Cambridge Street, maybe more so than their discussion on Mass Ave. We couldn't do that in the initial petition because there wasn't an existing active use requirement. So the policy order directing us to develop that subsequent zoning petition to strengthen active use requirements. Both of these quarters have been talked about through the two ordinance committee meetings.

I just mentioned there's More debate on the Cambridge Street approach than on Mass Ave. The central question was at what height Should active uses be required? So the conversation was between active uses required above three stories or four stories, four stories being the same as Mass Ave, three being... A little bit stronger. And so, again, this is, it's about trade-offs between housing development and active use requirements. Stronger Active use requirements make housing development more difficult. And on the other hand, there is concern about the loss of active use space, especially on Cambridge Street.

But after their discussion, ordinance committee voted to move forward directing city staff to develop a petition that would require active uses above three stories in all Cambridge Street District. So that's the petition that we're talking about tonight. So this petition, a little bit more in here than on Mass Ave. It's got five components instead of three. Requiring active, as I just said, requiring active uses above three stories in all Cambridge Street districts. Two and three, establishing a planning board special permit for minor modifications and clarifying requirements only apply on primary streets are the same as on Mass Ave.

Then we get into this petition has one zoning change, rezoning a portion of O'Brien Highway back to a Business A district, so out of the I'll talk a little bit more about that. And the petition would require a special permit to allow formula businesses in all Cambridge Street districts. So very quickly, the Cambridge Street zoning works the same as Mass Ave. Active uses are required to enable the tallest residential heights allowed. Again, this is only applicable in Lechmere. and in the Webster-Windsor area that allow buildings taller than six stories and there's no active use requirement on the rest of Cambridge Street. You're allowed to go up to six stories, residential, without any active uses.

So again, I won't go into this again, but basically we want mixed use to be the norm, but we think it's important to have an alternative pathway for cases where active uses are not feasible or preferred. For example, an unusual site, historic preservation project, small addition to existing building, etc. So that's where the active use requirements only above a certain height came from. So the first component, very simple zoning petition would change requirements. So any new building above three stories would need to provide an active use. I think that's very clear. This is The same floor area and location standards as Mass Ave apply on Cambridge Street.

60% of the interior floor area within 50 feet of the street needs to be active use in those areas where or for those projects that exceed six stories and need that act of use. Again, apologies, looking at the wrong slide here. This petition includes the same special permit for floor area location, floor area and location modifications, the same language as Mass Ave. So that piece is the same and also the same These requirements would not apply to lots not on the primary street.

So that's pretty straightforward as well. The fourth component of this petition is a map change. When we were working on this and discussing with the city council, looking at stronger active use requirements on Cambridge Street, We wanted to take a closer look at some of the outlying areas of the district to see if stronger requirements would still make sense. in those parts of the district. Specifically, we looked at this area of O'Brien Highway West of Lechmere, and also the Warren Street spur that's sort of right in the middle of the corridor. on O'Brien Highway. So this area wasn't really a big focus of the Our Cambridge Street plan.

It was included in the initial rezoning primarily to to allow for more height for housing, which if you recall, the initial Cambridge Street petition had a So that was kind of the intent that got amended down to six so sort of ended up at the same height. in a lot of the district that we had before. So really the idea behind including that area was to allow for more height for housing. O'Brien Highway is a very different place than Cambridge Street and probably deserves its own planning study focused on on both sides of the highway there. And so we don't really think active uses are a high priority here.

We still want to allow for a mix of uses, so the petition rezones this area back to the Business A zoning, which it was before the Cambridge Street zoning was adopted. The other kind of small change that it makes over on O'Brien Highway or that sort of area is this new BA district incorporates the corner of Gore Street and 3rd Street. that's currently a resident C1. There's an existing retail space there in sort of the only part of that block that's zoned residential. So we think it makes sense to pull the business district down to that corner and make that existing retail use conforming. So that's another kind of minor map change there.

On Warren Street, we considered rezoning this area as well, but after Discussing with Council, the Ordinance Committee voted to keep this within The Cambridge Street Six District. Warren Street does share many, I think, built form characteristics with Cambridge Street and some mix of housing and More commercial uses. It could potentially develop into a connector between Cambridge Street and some of the recent mixed-use development across the border in Somerville. The petition, by keeping Warren Street within the CAM 6, it maintains the same design standards and setback requirements as the rest of Cambridge Street, but

because of this other clarification that we're making, active uses would only be required on those lots abutting Cambridge Street. So not all of Warren Street. Most of the lots would be able to go up to six stories without those active uses. So this area could develop into a more active street in the future, but we don't think the rules should be too heavy-handed in this area. So that's not part of the petition. keeps Warren Street within the Cambridge Street districts. And finally, so the last piece of the Cambridge Street zoning petition is

requiring a, it establishes language that would require a special permit for formula businesses in all of the Cambridge Street districts. So this came out of discussion with the ordinance committee. There was a desire really about limiting chains and supporting Small businesses. The board is probably familiar with this concept. These are the same rules that apply in the central square overlay district. The pictures on this slide are examples. of recent examples of formula businesses that received a planning board special permit. Zoning can't directly regulate ownership structures or business practices.

So the definition of a formula business really centers on exterior architecture, design, signage. Those kinds of things having logos in common with other establishments. So really what the special permit is about is reviewing and placing conditions on how the design of the space and the facade and signage fits within the character of the district. From what we've seen, the formula business special permit is not an effective way to limit chains or to support small businesses. Chains, larger corporations are willing to go through the planning board process despite the added costs.

They're willing to make changes to their signage and their facade design to be in the location that they want to be in. However, there's not no value to this. We have seen positive changes to facades and signage in Central Square. So we think it doesn't really accomplish Maybe the goal of sort of supporting small businesses or limiting chains, but it can have a positive aesthetic effect. And that's... The end of this so we can turn it back to the chair.

Great. Okay, so we're going to now take public comment. This is a public hearing, so any members of the public who wish to speak should now click the button that says raise hand. If you're calling in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star nine. As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the board had received comments from Ethan Frank on this petition and written communications received after 5 p.m. yesterday will be entered into the record. Let's see. I don't see other than my hand. I see a couple of people wishing to speak, so terrific. So at this point I'll ask Evan or Jeff to manage the public comment.

Thank you. So we have a couple of hands raised. The first is Heather Hoffman, who's followed by Jason Alves.

Hello, Heather Hoffman, 213 Hurley Street. I want you to think long and hard about the The idea that you want density of people in order to support businesses, but you don't want to have a place for businesses to be. We have this concept that occasionally we tout The 15-minute city that you should be able to walk to all of the stuff that you need within 15 minutes. And I understand that I am an outlier. I don't have stuff delivered to me. I mail order very, very little and it's very specific things. So I go to stores. But that does not mean

that stores that are something other than cookie cutters can't attract customers. But we do a lot of things to make it hard for them. To the extent that they have to have inventory delivered, we don't provide good loading areas anywhere near and in a safe place for them to actually get deliveries made. To the extent that they're getting stuff delivered to people, We also don't have loading areas for the people picking up. So if you want to have all of this immense density in giant warehouses,

that turn over people on a regular basis because that's their business model. And I've asked them plenty of times. Every last developer I've talked to of big apartment buildings says that they expect 50 to 100% turnover annually. Those are not homes. And we should aspire to better because we keep saying that people need homes and I totally agree with that. So perhaps we need to think about what creates homes. And part of what creates homes is neighborhoods and places that people can gather. That includes parks. includes coffee shops and all sorts of places where people can go and get to know the other people in their neighborhood. So it's not simple. and we shouldn't try to think that it is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Heather.

Thank you. The next speaker is Jason Alves. and who is followed by Justin Saif. Jason Alves, you can go ahead and begin with your name and address.

Hi, Jason Alves. I'm the executive director of the East Cambridge Business Association 544 Cambridge Street. Thanks for hearing this. I want to start off by saying that my fear and concern with this entire process continues here tonight because Cambridge Street keeps getting lumped in with Mass Ave. We are very, very unique from Mass Ave. We are not the same. So all the questions that you asked about Mass Ave and the answers you got, I guess I'm just going to ask that you throw those out the window because we are very, very different place. Cambridge Street Purr, any studies that have been done An amazing amount of things need to happen on Cambridge Street. One of that is being one of maybe six total miles in the city where commercial space for small businesses can be made. That's very, very important.

I think that's what we're trying to respond to here is it's not about building a building and requiring ground floor It's the risk that we're heading into of removing successful retail. For instance, I sent a letter today. I hope you got a chance to read it. Inman Square, if we think about the block with the post office, Albertine Press. We Thieves, FitLab, Pilates, Christina's. There are seven small businesses in that one story building. Prime time for redevelopment. If we are not trying to find ways to make sure that we're not losing those spaces, we're going to have a problem. I also have to dispel this notion that there's a vacancy problem on Cambridge Street. By my count, there's about seven true vacancies on the street right now. There are seven businesses or spaces that are under development or contract to be filled. That is great news.

The CRA themselves are about to infuse the street with five small businesses that are graduating out of a place like Bow Market, right? There is still a need for retail. We should not dismiss that. So these are the things that we're trying to solve here with this. Another example, the places where there are vacancies are surrounded by places where the streetscape has been interrupted. 959, what's the address? The VinFen building. That is a dead spot on the street. Our vacancies are around that. That's problematic. These are the things that we're trying to do to prevent it. I'm sorry I'm racing here, but three minutes. I have a lot to say about this. I'm not going to get to all of it. I would love to take any of you around Cambridge Street and have a further conversation about this. It sounds like everybody's from North Cambridge here. I don't know if that's true or not. We, you know, this again, we're trying to respond to the needs of how do we help the small businesses here as we've changed the rules and incentivized teardowns.

Throw out everything that you just heard about Mass Ave and consider it from that particular angle. And if it's not this, I am open to suggestions. Always interested in finding out how we can help support the small business community the best that we can. So hoping you take all this into consideration. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next speaker is Justin Safe.

Hi, Justin Safe, 72 Thorndike Street, which is in East Cambridge, two blocks from Cambridge Street. Cambridge Street is a great place. It's a great place to encourage both housing and active use. It's got nearby key stops, including the new Union Square stop, frequent bus service. It also has Housing pressures coming from the Boynton Yards development, which is just a few blocks from Cambridge Street in Somerville. that's currently not filled but you know as the market returns for labs it will eventually refill and as it does Put more pressure on the nearby housing market. I hope we can work to maximize both retail and housing here, but I think the current petition misses the mark.

I think we will not get additional housing, not get additional new ground floor uses, and we will not get additional customers for the businesses on Cambridge Street. nor additional tax revenue for the city that the council could use. CDD testified in a prior hearing that they spoke to the builders of the inclusionary building on 3rd Street and CDD recorded that these builders said it would not be viable with the first floor I'm sure CDD staff would be happy to give more details on those conversations as they did just touch on the zoning and the planning board. really needs and deserves to hear that information to have a better informed discussion tonight. The petition will give Cambridge Street the zoning that will be least conducive to housing in the entire city of Cambridge. The planning board should tell the council and CDD, again, that they need to figure out a way to have both.

They need to incentivize retail and housing, whether it's by tax abatements, zoning relief, what have you there are many different creative forms it could take but nothing which is the current form it takes just an unfunded mandate is not the optimal way to get The best outcome for everyone here I think and I just add that the inclusion of Warren Street makes little sense given its lack of foot traffic and should be removed. It's got essentially no prospect for active ground floor use. and CDD was correct in my opinion to propose removing it originally. Thank you.

Thank you. It appears from my desktop in a way that we might have exhausted public speakers maybe. Jeff, you can make one more call.

I'll just give a second in case anyone was still looking for the raise hand button. I believe that's all the speakers.

Right. Thank you. Okay. We will now move from public comment to board discussion. And as I said, any additional written... Comments will be submitted for the record. So discussion from the board or questions. We'll start with questions for staff around this particular petition. Obviously, the street is Very different from Mass Ave. Mechanisms might be the same.

Ted. I just have a quick question for either Jeff or Evan. Are you aware of any company that would have needed a formula special permit that refused to go forward because of the requirement for the special permit.

Jeff's been around longer than I have, but I haven't.

I'm not aware of anything, but I don't know that I would be able to put much into that because I think that if a business were looking... at an area that had a formula business requirement and didn't want to pursue it for that reason, we probably wouldn't be hearing from them at all. So it's hard to say, but I can say that and the planning board knows this, that cases where Formula businesses have been proposed in Central Square. You know, they've gone through the special permit process and it's usually been a pretty productive kind of design review process and not necessarily a Major impediment.

Yeah, I don't recall the board ever turning down one. We would negotiate conditions, but I was just curious if that was an impediment to somebody actually opening.

Any other questions for Evan or Jeff or Drew? Well, let's move to discussion around this one. Obviously, we're familiar with the mechanisms because that's what we described and were educated about. This is different, obviously, in terms of the height. Comments, discussion. What should we do? What should we recommend? How can we be helpful to the City Council? Perhaps by remaining mute. It's a lot to digest and it's getting late, so forgive me. The two Marys, and I believe Mary Flynn hit the button first.

This is a tough one because I think Cambridge Street really is a different animal, even though, you know, you're saying that they're similar to me, you know, Cambridge Street. is the retail, you know, that's the neighborhood. That's where, you know, people congregate, they get to know each other, yes, and then there's, you know, obviously the neighborhood around it. But I worry that... That we're trying to change this too quickly without really thinking about sort of what the potential impacts are of some of the changes that are recommended. I mean, for example, if we were to switch with having three stories only residential, Is that ever going to happen?

And, you know, I mean, to me, it seems like probably most of the residential that we have on Cambridge Street is in three-story buildings. with retail underneath. I mean, I know there were some apartment buildings and things like that, and obviously public housing. But as I think about that stretch, It seems to me like, you know, if we were to say three stories residential only, a lot of it is just going to stay the same. Or it's going to get torn down. And then we're going to be at least into this six story. Thank you very much. along the street and even along Mass Ave. They're not the formula businesses. They're the more local ones.

And I just worry that when you start ripping those down to build higher buildings, the rents are going to go up. I don't know if that's good or that's bad, but I think a lot of people really like Cambridge Street the way it is today. So I'm just very, very torn. I think the three-story residential only doesn't do much to achieve objectives for housing and it really doesn't help the retail. but I also am just, and maybe it goes to like comments that Mary and Daniel have made before about how maybe the city needs to step in more. and you know think about incentives for having the existing businesses stay or or you know or other reasons why to build more housing but still try to maintain

So I don't know that that's very helpful to anybody, but it's just kind of where I am at the moment. Not really sure where I am on this.

That was helpful. It was a love letter to Cambridge Street. Mary Lydecker.

Yeah, I might follow that trend a little bit. So not to worry. Before living in North Cambridge, I did live for 10 years by Inman Square. So it is also my other kind of And I would reiterate, I think, what some of the commenters and Mary Flynn has described is it is very different. It is really challenging to think of these two in the same bucket because they are two different animals. For Cambridge Street, that kind of ground floor retail and thinking of Tom's kind of perspective on the narrowness of the street, that's the identity and character and placemaking of that corridor. It is... that retail and so I have a harder time figuring out where I might come So I think maybe one thing to think about maybe for everybody is part of what we're sending to council, I would imagine, is our thoughts, right? No solutions exactly, but thoughts.

It's like, this is an extremely different thing where Even the thing like the formula business, I have less of a problem with if it feels important to this community to have that as a piece of this. That seems reasonable, right? Because I think just like Central Square, it's just as viable as, you know, your identity is grounded in this place. If that seems important, I would be okay with that sort of commitment, see what happens with that. Something that a commenter brought up that I think is important relative to this and North Mass Ave is that risk of displacing successful retail or retail. I think we spoke a lot in the last one about there is retail. That doesn't mean it will be there if certain things change, right? And so I think that's something that's really relevant to both of these is what are the ways to create incentives or strategies to keep

or to support the existing retails or create space for entry opportunities into retail or small business, right? That seems like something that for Cambridge, Street especially is a real priority. So I just want to kind of highlight that again, kind of for council to be thinking about And then I think a few times people have spoken about, are there ways to create benefits or incentives versus mandates? What does that look like? So those are my thoughts.

Great. Thank you, Mary. Dan, you were next.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. So, yeah, I was particularly struck by, you know, the appeal not to lose existing retail. And, you know, this is and has been a very active... neighborhood with neighborhood retail would be envisioning these kinds of changes and saying, hey, what would this look like with with no active ground floor would be a real shame. But it's very hard to say how do you incentivize this and keep some of that neighborhood character. But I'm struck by Mary's first comment just on If it's three stories, residential only, then it's going to stay that way. There's no incentive for building more housing.

I think thinking about the street as you know four stories to six stories with residential ground floor and reviewing you know Franchises or chain stores with a special permit seems reasonable. But again, it's a particularly Thank you very much. I guess I'm coming around to say this one. This one doesn't sit anywhere near for me in the same category as Mass Ave. And I'm in a general sense more comfortable with the proposal as it is, although I think that it sort of straddles not hitting either objective.

So I'm at a quandary about it.

That's okay. Ashley.

Thank you. And Mary Lydecker before living in North Cambridge. I also lived in East Cambridge, though. I miss going to the fish market. And I think what makes Cambridge Streets are unique as all the very unique businesses and have been there a long time. And I don't know if the city council has the ability at this point to pick Thank you. Thank you. require a special permit for formula businesses. I think that has shown to be not too much of a harm in Central Square, so I'm comfortable with that rezoning. The highway or at least one or two of those parcels seems to make sense as well. And the other cleanup changes also seem to make sense.

The one I struggle with is, as others have said about, is limiting to three stories. And so It's kind of what I'm thinking, but I also don't know if it's something City Council is able to, you know, pick apart. So, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Ashley. Ted?

Yes, so I too lived in Inman Square for many years before moving to other parts of Cambridge. And so, yeah, Cambridge Street is different. I guess my concern is the limitation to three stories. It does not seem it's going to do much of anything to promote the development of more housing, which I think for those of you who may not have grown children, This is now a very hot area because of the extension of the Green Line and certainly the Union Square Station. The Webster Street area is very hot for, you know, are children who are in their late 20s and 30s. It's a great area to live in now. So I think there is going to be a lot of pressure to build more housing.

How this fits in with the mandate. I'm afraid that even with the mandate, if they tear down existing retail and mandate new retail, It's going to end up being very different and much more expensive and more gentrified and it's going to be different from the existing I think Cambridge is a much more difficult issue to deal with. You know, I think as Dan said, you know, it doesn't seem to address either of the desires of more housing and to preserve retail.

Carolyn.

Thank you. I hesitate to ask this question. I'm going back to the question period for a minute here, but in the spirit of kind of throwing things against the wall and playing on the other side of Mary Lydecker's thought for Mass Ave about giving an exemption to smaller frontages. Is there anywhere in Cambridge that has a limit on retail frontages, so no more than 50 feet in certain neighborhoods? Is there anything? I think we shouldn't be adding more requirements, right? Like to the point about Mass Ave, I mean, we need to kind of to some degree have the market do what the market is going to do. Let's get density and then more retail. But Is there anywhere in Cambridge, Evan, that you know of, or Jeff, that has any limit on the retail frontage?

I do think the VinFan building breaks up the feel of walking down Cambridge. I'm just curious if that were to get taken out and a giant you know someone else were to build in that block and have some massive retail space take up the whole block is there anything to exempt to limit that?

Yeah so there are certain areas that have limits on frontage for specific uses like I believe it's Harvard Square has a limit on frontage for banks. That exists. I'm not sure if there's sort of a limit on frontage for sort of all kind of retail uses. On Mass Ave, in the old Mass Ave zoning, There was a limit on GFA for active non-residential uses on the ground floor. And we talked about that when we were working on the new zoning before.

And the advice that we got from our colleagues in the Economic Opportunity and Development Division of CDD they sort of steered us away from having those sort of limits on retail size because it creates a lot more challenges and and it limits you you know in finding the right kinds of use like you can't you know you wouldn't be able to have a grocery store even if it was like a small one or you know things like that so we left That sort of thing out. I don't know, Jeff, you have anything to add to that?

No, I think that explains it. We went through a phase, I think, and there are some places typically where we have It's like a PUD district where we have more kind of mandates for mixed use where we try to limit size of retail to try to create smaller storefronts, but that can... We also know we need to have flexibility. And again, given we've all talked a lot about the state of retail and needing to be more creative about how Thank you for joining us. Allow and enable, you know, retail and businesses having, you know, trying to load additional limitations on that is counterproductive.

Yeah, that all makes sense and I appreciate that you all at least thought about it prior to this and are trying to come up with something. I know you're right. It's just... useful to kind of go through that exercise. So thank you for your patience and walking through that with me.

Okay, well, inspired by Caroline, and I guess I can be accused of thinking three-dimensionally, I would go the dimension in the other direction. So I do recall back, there were some very detailed zoning discussions about trying to control development on Mass Ave. And there was a city councilor who was a former architect who said, we need to mandate a certain height on the first floor of buildings on Mass Ave to accommodate retail and I was thinking this is a perfect place for it if we don't have the market now for for Retail Establishments. And we're waiting for that to come back once Ted and my children move into the Boynton Yards. Why would we preclude the future of conversion of these first floor dwelling units, if they're not condominiums, to retail by saying, okay, the ceiling's got to be 11 feet high. certain amount of windows. I know this is more rules and we're in a spirit now where we're kind of trying to get rid of those in the zoning code.

But here's a way in which I think we could have our cake and eat it too. are the first floors convertible to retail, make that as part of the mandate. And I think the section and potentially the glazing are the ways in which You make those retail. I live in a neighborhood where a laundromat has been converted to a luxury home for an architecture faculty member from MIT down the street here. Virtually no change to the outside other than blinds. You can't see Inside, and I think she has only one washer and dryer now rather than 40. So I had that idea. as a way to do this. I am absolutely with Dan and also with Jason Alves, a displacement of retail as vital as Cambridge Street is.

Wouldn't that be a shame to lose that? And if there's some way to figure out a way, say, if you're displacing retail, We have to disincentivize that somehow, displacing the story that Ashley or Mary was talking about on Mass Ave, a similarity where a business was displaced for a potential development that never happened. None of us wants to see that because some of these retail establishments are fragile and Jason knows that more than anybody. I don't know how you write that into the zoning exactly. So I'm looking for a way to, for the wisdom of Solomon, can we have it both ways here? Can we have the retail for a future that will hopefully exist where it's Fully. They're continuous all the way from the courthouse to Inman Square and in the meantime have housing. So those were my thoughts.

I agree to the formula business thing. I'm actually proud of that section of our zoning. It keeps Cambridge weird and it's a great, great thing. And all of these retailers are delighted to come in and change their Their signage, I like that. So I think Cambridge Street warrants that kind of care in terms of the character and the signage and shouldn't be overrun by national brands. So I think that's a good thing. I too have a lot of experience on Cambridge Street. I've coached hockey for 30 years and I've been on Gore Street every single Saturday for 30 years. So I shop a lot on Cambridge Street. I think we're running out of steam here, but I think we've got really, really good thoughts around both streets, but especially now concluding Cambridge Street, I think some I think we've had some helpful thoughts, maybe some confusing ones.

If I could just get an echo back from Jeff or Evan saying that we're not completely crazy. I don't think you're completely crazy.

Good. I'm trying to sort of distill what I've heard on Cambridge Street. I think it's a little bit less... clear cut the recommendations on Cambridge Street and we can talk about that and summarize the discussion. That's what I'm hearing. It sounds like most Members are okay with the Formula Business Special Permit. Taking the O'Brien Highway section out of Cambridge Street, that didn't The things you know the the making sure it only the requirements only apply on the on the primary streets and providing the creating the new special permit for variations. That's all sort of in line with providing flexibility.

It seems like there's consent or some support for that on both corridors. So really what it comes down to is the height itself at which the active use requirements sort of kick in. Maybe three stories doesn't seem quite right. Maybe four stories would be better. And maybe there are some other sort of metrics that would be a better approach like frontage width or lot size and that's sort of you know similar to

Let's pause you there and get a sense about that because we didn't talk about three or four. And I know you mentioned that the council had come debated it and come down on three. I'm inclined to lean more towards four this particular board member but I don't I'm seeing heads nodding here that there's a general sense that we would tolerate and think we should incentivize greater height, especially with the critical need for housing in our community. So we may differ from the council there. I believe we do differ from the council there.

Okay, I was just giving anyone a moment to step in and object. That sounds great. Mary's got her hand up.

So I'm just... And so right now you can do six stories of residential without any, right? And so, again, it's so... By doing four, I'm just trying to figure out, I mean, do we want a residential only model on Cambridge Street? Or do we want to keep this dynamic of the ground floor retail all the way with something above. Because I'm just wondering, like, if we should, where you can build six stories now. I mean, what if we did six stories is where you start with the ground floor reach. You have to have it. I mean, maybe that's too prescriptive. I don't know. Yeah.

Important questions. Jeff raised his hand maybe as a point to that can help us here on this point.

I just wanted to make one comment because I wanted to make sure that One thing about this is clear, and I know things sort of get less clear as the evening goes on, but the focus of this approach isn't to say that The height will be limited to three stories because we want to encourage three stories of housing all across Cambridge Street. The point is that we want to encourage mixed use. That's the intention of the petition is to encourage almost any redevelopment of scale to have Thank you so much for joining us. That ground floor active use, but also a way to give a little bit more flexibility to, say, existing buildings.

or unusual sites where the owner is just saying well I just want to do something much more modest or maybe it's an enlargement of a building and doesn't want to trigger some, you know, onerous requirement that would kick in that's really intended for new development, you know, entirely new buildings. So that's the idea. They sounded like there were some comments around, well, do we really want three stories? And I think that in all cases, we don't want three stories. The question is, what are... You know, what would we, how strongly would we want to encourage that ground floor retail or the ground floor active use compared to You know, allowing for some possibility of housing without the ground floor active use. And the comments you made, I just want to respond to the comments about the ground floor

We did talk about that a little bit of do we just require it to be designed for active use but allow it to be a flexible set of uses. That is a possibility. We thought it could have some unintended consequences if you know because designing a residential building these days can be very very particular in terms of codes and everything and you know maybe it wouldn't be that effective but that is something that we We had thought about and talked about. I'm not sure if it's not in the petition. Unfortunately, I don't know if we could impose new design standards unless it was maybe a clarification of this broader provision of having Well, no, you're right about the petition.

I just wanted to point out, so the In the zoning, as it has already been adopted, there is a minimum height of 15 feet for any use along the primary street. What we didn't put in the initial... So that's sort of getting to that idea of maybe things could change over time. What we didn't do was... use the same sort of facade transparency requirements for for residential uses and non-residential uses that's where we sort of drew the line and said you know you could say well everything should be this much glass so it makes it that much easier to convert it You know, in the future, but we stopped short of doing that. But the heights are in the existing Cambridge Street Zone.

So, but let's go back to the height just quickly till everybody's clear. The city council, as I understand it, was saying, you can do three stories but if you want to go higher than that you've got to put the active use in and we the planning board at least my intention behind the poll was to suggest no you can do four stories and you can go higher with the actual retail, right? Is everybody clear on that? Yes. Yeah, okay. Okay, I was the only one that was maybe foggy on that. That's because we think housing is really important, central issue every night at this board. Not that the council doesn't feel that, right? Okay, and we've got convertible first floors, it appears. You know, the glazing is an issue. You know, it's hard to, you know, there's levels of privacy that one expects and the residents that are incompatible with commercial glazing, right? So...

although the MIT architect has figured out a way to deal with it. So, okay, so back to the question to staff, have you got enough clarity around the discussion that we've had tonight around this? We are very sympathetic to some of the public comment, I believe. That's my sense from this board that we don't want to displace retail and we want to encourage it.

Yeah, I think to just run through my list again and then Jeff can add if I miss something and But I think overall the conversation is about, you know, Cambridge Street is very different than Mass Ave. It's a more challenging conversation. there's more probably more concern about Displacing existing businesses and things should be, you know, considered maybe outside of zoning that can help existing businesses and those sorts of things. That's sort of the overall maybe tenor of the conversation. As for the specifics of the zoning, leaning more towards or supporting maybe four stories rather than three stories.

Above four stories where the active use requirement kicking in, recognizing that There is a critical need for housing, so maybe leaning a little bit more towards that end of the The scale okay with the formula business special permit. That could be a positive addition to the corridor. Okay with taking O'Brien Highway, that area out of the Cambridge Street districts. and general, you know, the other pieces, the active uses required, that's all supportive. I think that's...

that's pretty clear well thank you for listening carefully that that feels right to me Dan you've got your hand up yeah so I'm totally in support of the

of the Four Story Pushing for Housing. I think the dimensionality kicks in here a little bit. I think that if staff could think about a maximum linear I think that that is to Mary Lydecker's earlier points, if we have a fairly large run, whether it's VinFen or otherwise, You know that maybe there is a requirement for a limitation of linear frontage that that would be allowable for. because there is a balance in there somewhere but you know we would really hate to say it's an unintended consequence so we say yeah by right no ground level and four stories and, you know, some assemblage of parcels ends up, you know, 200 feet of linear dead street front.

That's helpful. Thank you. All right, so I think at this point, I think we're prepared to make recommendations along the line that have just been sketched out by Evan and were summarized also for us at Mass Ave. We could also continue the hearing. I don't sense that the board needs more data, more information, or more discussion relative to these issues. So our options before us is to recommend that the petition be adopted with some suggestions and changes. I don't believe we're suggesting that it not be adopted. and I think we've got comments that have been very carefully noted by the staff tonight.

I think I'd like to make a personally a positive recommendation for consideration of the petitions but with a lot of A lot of recommendations for changes. Is that a sense of other board member?

No.

We can also just make comments, right, Ted? Yeah. We don't have to make a recommendation, thumbs up or thumbs down, and leave that to the political sphere.

I don't understand what you're saying about I don't understand what you're saying about making a positive recommendation with a lot of proposals for change. From my point of view, I would not want to vote a positive recommendation for the proposal that's before us and before the city council. I think we've raised a lot of issues that staff and maybe the City Council and the Urns Committee ought to be discussing. But I don't, you know, I would not want them to think, oh, we've approved this, but think there are, you know, small changes they can make that would improve it, I think. Certainly as to Mass Ave, it needs to be rethought pretty much completely.

As to Cambridge Street, I think, yes, we could say With a couple of tweaks, we would recommend that, but certainly not as to my staff.

Okay, and then you've got your hand up.

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I understood which one we were talking about first. I know we kind of... went through the summary of Cambridge Street, but I was going to go back to Mass Ave too. We can vote on Cambridge Street and then do everything. for Mass Ave. I think it's a little out of order than what we planned, but I think that's probably fine. And maybe Jeff has more to say on that.

Well, thank you, Ted, for for clarifying and expressing your feelings about Mass Ave. Maybe I have more faith in the staff and the city council to resolve everything and tie it up with a bow. You're right. I mean, we raised a lot of serious questions about Mass Ave 90 minutes ago, and it's hard to imagine that the form of that petition could be positively adopted. But we can simply... Put comments in on both. But you're also suggesting, Ted, on Mass Ave, that we recommend not adoption?

Yes, I'm recommending not adoption in its current form. Yeah. But we have a lot of questions and suggestions. And I don't think we reached any resolution about what the resolution of the question should be. And I think it needs to go back to staff. You know, presumably with our comments and presumably the ordinance committee and maybe the full city council are going to have their own point of view and it could be very different from ours because they're the political people. and they've got, you know, different people they're trying to deal with. Yeah. Jeff.

I just thought I'd hazard to kind of break things down a little bit just based on what I've been hearing for the board. And this is just putting it out there and then members can, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. look at it all. And then the contrast I find is helpful in terms of How we apply the tools given what the thinking is about each of these individual areas. So starting with North Mass Ave, I think there was a lot of discussion of North Mass Ave, North of Porter, and it sounded like The sense of the board was maybe that was an area that either wouldn't benefit from this type of requirement at all or have from an additional

Thank you for joining us. And I think there was some comment that if it did go in that direction of a stronger mandate, then there maybe should be some thinking about, you know, More kind of flexibility for smaller sites, smaller frontage. That was the sense that I was getting. And that could easily be kind of articulated. I think south of Porter Square, It's worth acknowledging that it already has this requirement pretty much in place because the council was able to put that in place as part of the original Mass Ave zoning. So I think that's sort of Maybe that's kind of out of the question a little bit. We didn't talk much about Porter Square itself.

That's one of the other main areas where I think the city council wanted to have A stronger requirement to sort of avoid you know buildings without active ground floor use so I don't know we can go we can kind of go back to that and answer maybe the specific question of where the board lands if you if you're thinking of Porter Square the same as The rest of North Mass Ave, or maybe it's a little bit more like the south of Porter part of Mass Ave where we would have stronger mandates. So that seems to be how Mass Ave breaks down. And I think Cambridge Street, apart from The other matters that aren't directly related to incentivizing or disincentivizing. Incentivizing ground floor retail or disincentivizing not ground floor retail, however you want to look at it, is that The board seems to be more in line with the council that there should be some different treatment and there may be, maybe deserves a stronger mandate but is in more,

is in support of maybe relaxing a little bit from the three stories to the four stories without the active use. And to maybe look at, I think the part where I'm a little bit lost is the maximum linear run of I'm assuming you don't mean that we want to limit the maximum length of retail frontage, because I think that would be... that would probably not be in line with. And the VinFen building was cited. And just to note, that's a building that doesn't have any There really isn't any building at the ground floor. It's just parking at the ground floor, which I think is an outcome that we don't like. And this zoning, apart from the active use, this zoning would prevent that kind of outcome. But in terms of the maximum linear run, that's something we can look at more. And I guess if it's adding another requirement on, I'm not sure that that's something we could

could really pursue as part of the zoning, but we can think about, again, ways to adjust The kind of retail mandate or active use mandate, if there's something that would be clarified.

Yeah, it's not limiting the retail, the active use. It was limiting the... residential, you know, the residential use that you would have.

The maximum frontage of interrupted. Yeah, that's something, again, we could... We could play with that within the, you know, I think the current petition doesn't propose any additional limitations on three-story residential, so we'd kind of be talking about you know if we allow if if if if that were kind of relaxed a little bit to allow four stories it would maybe we could think about it as four stories but not longer than You know, you would not have certain, four stories couldn't go for longer than a certain amount until, you know, the active use requirements would begin again. Mary, this is your idea.

Yeah, so maybe I'll jump in to say, I think Jeff did bring something up is we didn't talk about the suggestion here that for MAS 18 in Porter Square, that that would also extend this requirement that above four stories you need active retail at the base. I think we probably missed it because it seems so obvious that you're looking for really tall. Why wouldn't you have that? I would say that if that is correct, what my understanding is, it almost feels like it's correcting something that feels It should be part of that. I think I would say in that area, Porter Square, anything over four stories, I think it should be like 12A towards South Mass Ave. So maybe if everyone can kind of That feels like we could recommend that. And then my take from the group was that the north section, what we

A general take seemed to be, we don't think that that needs to change from what the current zoning is, that the petition does not require that. But if the council decides to pursue the petition, the option two that you guys talked about, the exceptions, needs to be studied. and so forth. The priority seems to be like you're trying to activate a linear thing. So if you're looking at the way to create those exceptions, you have to look really closely at the frontage, the linear frontage, right? So if a building is 20 linear feet, Thank you for joining us. as a driver for how that's pursued.

Yeah, thank you. That's very clear, at least in my ear. Dan?

Yeah, no, thanks, Mary. that in my mind, particularly on Cambridge Street, it seems to me that a kind of maximum run of residential only and four stories, you wouldn't want it to be more than 50 to 75 feet, right? You're not looking for, you know, Uninterrupted runs of Strictly Residential, but you want to not disincentivize A residential development of that of that scale right so you're talking you know could be 30 40 units The other is just to the Porter Square, and I believe maybe this is just a question back to staff. It's a PUD, so doesn't that give us a lot more discretion in terms of mixed use and how that kind of activation works?

Yeah, that's true. This is under the base zoning, so you can still build under the base zoning without a PUD special permit, so you wouldn't be able to go to 18 stories, but You would be able to go to 12 stories. And so changing the requirement in MAS 18 so that active uses are required above four stories, that's just for any development in that district that isn't seeking a PUD special permit, which may or may not be likely to occur. But that's what that would be.

Yeah, at the risk of being accused of being master of the obvious. It's a transportation nexus, right? And with a long history of retail. And my expectation is that you would... Keep that pattern, right? It makes sense. People are arriving there through all modes and historically people have shopped there. So I think we should strengthen the active. Retail Requirement at Porter Square 18. Agreed. Thanks for the clarification. Okay. Lots of changes in Mass Ave. We're not recommending adoption with lots of comments that have been noted. Cambridge Street, as Ted rightfully pointed out, probably is closer to a recommendation for adoption, but we could also just send comments. So I think there's lots in the Cambridge

Street proposal that makes sense and we differ on the on the issue of where the base height should be I believe. So I'll do these one at a time. I'd say for Mass Ave, we're looking for a motion to submit comments as detailed tonight by the planning board. With those comments, this is not a Well, actually, Ted, you're saying to deny it as written, negative.

Well, I would say to deny it as written, you know, if... I could live with just sending comments without taking an approval or a denial. Just saying that we've got a lot of issues about it that should be resolved. before the city council takes it up and does a final action on it.

That sounds like a motion to me.

So moved. So Ted's moving that. Is there a second?

I'll second it, Mary Flynn.

Thank you, Mary. A discussion on the motion? Hearing none, we'll take a roll call. Vote on the motion, please, Jeff.

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

Yes.

Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Ashley Tan?

Yes.

Carolyn Zern?

Yes.

Thompson Avich? Yes. All members voting in favor.

Okay, let's move to Cambridge Street. My sense is that, well, again, we could just submit comments. What's the will of the board? Do you want to do this symmetrical thing with Cambridge Street or do you want to give them a little more encouragement?

I think we could... I think we could send comments and with you know calling out that we are in support of that you know the items that we talked about yeah okay you know and that We would recommend that it be that the residential only be at least four stories, but talk then too about all of the needs that we had talked about in Cambridge Street, about the need to try to maintain the retail, et cetera.

All right.

I think on this one I thought Evan did summarize it pretty succinctly. I thought he did, right? The only piece that we ended up clarifying was the four stories. And then I had one question about where did we land on Warren Street?

Yeah. Edward, Woodland, and Warren.

Sorry, if I can jump in for a second. Warren Street is kind of an odd one to talk about because it's not actually really In the petition in any way, it's sort of, it was a, it was something we had talked about with the ordinance committee of potentially taking that piece out of the Cambridge Street districts. And then, but the The petition doesn't do that because the council warned us to keep it in. So I'm not sure if there needs... I mean, if the planning board wants to comment on Warren Street, then that's fine, but... but it's not sort of a direct part of the petition.

Ed. Evan, what is on Lawrence Street right now?

It's a good question. It's primarily residential. There's some kind of non-residential. I think there's a Taylor maybe and... Kind of an office space.

General contractor was truant, had his yard there and an office with his house above it. yeah there's so some of those oh sorry Tom go ahead no no I happen to know the individual he used to sit on the zoning board with me and he has had a business on that street, which is still there and it's built for him. He's moved on to better things at this point. So there's a yard and he had an office space with a house above. So it's a kind of slightly odd connection, but because of its relationship to Prospect Street, it's very heavily trafficked, right, to get over to the shopping mall. So it's different from all of the other short streets that cut through a crossover to Gabor.

Yeah, and before the Cambridge Street zoning, it was a business aid district. So that... The mix of uses was allowed and some of that still exists, but I think it's less than what it has been historically.

So it's technically not really before us. We don't need to opine one way or another on it, right?

Yeah, I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have discouraged anyone from finding on it.

The map is having a new designation.

It shouldn't be, it's not a new designation.

It's the existing map.

It's currently the Cambridge Street 6 district, and there's no proposed changes.

Okay. All right. okay so back to back to trying to frame a motion around what we want to do uh fellow board members here and forgive me the hour is waning here so we um uh This differs from Mass Ave. I think that except for that we differ on the details of the height, I think we're in broad support of many of the other details of the petition as stands. So I think we would kick that portion of the petition back to the City Council for debate just saying that the planning board wants to encourage more housing with all of the comments that we made about how that might get detailed. So it's, you know, how do we typify the particular motion? I think it's...

We're providing comments and some portions of it we're in strong support of and the staff can give color to our discourse, right, and transmit that to the city council. You comfortable with that, Evan and Jeff?

Seems okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we're not voting to ordain this. We're saying here's comments and thoughts about the petition as written. So that's what I would move that the board would be submitting comments on the Cambridge Street petition consistent with the discussion tonight. Overall support for many aspects of it, but questions about specifically the Do I have a motion? So moved. Thank you, Ted. Looking for a second.

I'll second.

Thank you, Mary. Roll call vote please, Jeff.

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

Yes.

Mary Lydecker?

Yes.

Ashley Tan.

Yes.

Carolyn Zern.

Yes.

Thompson Avich. Yes. All six members present voting in favor.

Agenda item number three. I think we can move quickly through this. I'm not gonna call the brief recess, although I'm tempted. Agenda item number three, the next item on the agenda is a request for an extension of time for hearing and decision. on planning board case PB410, a special permit application to develop multiple parcels in the alewife quadrangle. CDD will provide a staff update. Jeff?

Thank you for keeping me on my toes to get to this page. So this is the HealthPeak PUD application. The first hearing was on April 28th of this year and that had a positive determination and now the applicants are working on the final development plan. We expect to get that in a timely manner, but it's often the case that with these large PUDs that the 90 day specials permit The permit timeframe is really not enough to make us feel comfortable to get through all of the work in time. So the applicant has agreed to an extension, which is fairly typical. So we're kind of doubling the 90-day time limitation. And so the requested

The extension that the applicant has agreed to is to October 30th, 2026. So that's what we've received and the board's action is really just to agree to extend that timeframe.

Okay. Are there questions from the board on the extension? No one indicates such. Is there a motion to agree to this extension of time? Please remember to say your name. Looking for a motion to extend the time.

This is Mary Flynn. I will make that motion.

Thank you, Mary. Looking for a second. Ted, second. You guys are so reliable tonight.

Well, you know, the other people just don't talk when it comes down to moving and seconding.

Important things. And Dan is not allowed to.

Well, Dan is... Not allowed in this case, but you other guys and girls, you know. You could go on record.

That's right. Discussion on the motion. This is one where I would

I would point out to the chair just before you go to the vote that this is one where I believe because it's related to a special permit case, the associate member could be appointed to vote on this.

Oh, Dan, your big moment. Thank you. So I could have made a motion. You could have. Okay, we don't want to drag this. Consistent with Robert's rules of orders, any discussion on the motion as it stands?

No one indicates such. Let's Let's have a roll call vote. Jeff, thank you.

And Dan Anderson is appointed, just to verify that?

Dan Anderson is appointed, yes.

Okay, thank you. So on that motion, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Flynn? Yes.

Yes.

Mary Lydecker.

Yes.

Ashley Tan.

Yes.

Carolyn Zern.

Yes.

Dan Anderson. Yes. And Thompson Avish. Yes. So that's all seven members voting in favor.

Okay. Hard work tonight, but gosh, I'm proud of the board. Everybody contributing really amazing perspective. We're really going to make the staff work like crazy to write up these recommendations. That's why we've got the best ones there are. So thank you, everybody. I think with that, unless there's any other comments from board members, we will adjourn. Yeah, nice work, Evan.

Yeah, thank you, Evan.

Good job, everyone.

And thank you, Tom.

You're welcome. All right.

Good night.