Zoning & Planning Committee - August 17, 2026

Recording in progress.

This is a meeting of the Zoning and Planning Committee on August 17, 2026. I'm Lyle Baker, chair of the committee, and I'm joined at the outset of this meeting by several members of the Committee in the room and several members from Council who are not members of as well as other honored guests. We're joined by the Vice Chair, Councilor Wright, Council Getsch from Ward 5, Council Dahmubed from Ward 4, Online Councilor Albright from Ward 2 We've also the other partners represented by Jonah Temple, Chief Administrative Officer here, Mr. Lawrence online Um, which we will is here. This is a director of planning and we also have represented the planning department in this and uh I'll ask them to introduce them when they come to talk with us

and we're joined in the room by members of the Council, Councilor Block, Councilors Roth, also Councilor Malakie. And I think that's all the councilor present. And then we're going to be joined by a prospective appointee. So before we begin, let me just explain a couple of matters of procedure and just the information attached to the package. We have four individuals who are been willing to step up and assume important roles in the city. And the mayor has asked them to serve, here from them and to appoint them in another case when you have the current member of the Historical Commission who's the chair, is being reappointed. And as a part of the background for this discussion because We're seeing a lot of developments happening both at the state and local level. As part of the agenda, I asked the

were to provide to the members of the Zoning Board of Appeals designated a copy of the changes that have been recently made in the state zoning statute, specifically relating to the Zoniing Board of appeals process. and how it works on variances, just because it may be not something you're familiar with. I don't expect them to be expert. We have Mr. Temple here who's from the law department but at least I wanted to have the committee and the candidates all aware of that. Also, because everyone is assuming a role which is an important part of public process and we talk about process a lot I provided to them a copy of the land use procedures guidelines that we have for special permits because this is something the City Council has developed over time and may be helpful to them in the role they're going to undertake. And then also, because historic preservation is such an important part of the city Mr. Cornelius I ask that the clerk provide some background

from the city website about historic preservation. Again, because we have some relatively new councilors who I'm sure are both familiar with this but probably not these, so I thought it would be helpful to have that as part of the agenda. What I do expect going forward in the September meeting because there's so many changes going on at the state and some perhaps to come. Mr. Lee, who's our normal representative from the law department this week, but I anticipate asking him to give us a briefing at the beginning of the meeting in September So we'll have some update on what is going on at the state level rather than get too deeply into it right. But I think it's important for us to understand the context within which we are operating. And we were joined by the Vice President, Councilor Kalis Farrell from Ward 8 and online also Councilor Gordon, a member of the committee. Welcome.

Okay so with that our first candidate is Chris Markowitz and Chris Can you come up this way? I'm sorry, the city is behind me. There's one piece of background. There was a question about the timing of the appointments and what is, the Chief Administrative Officer has indicated and sent a note to me that Mr. Markowitz could proceed tonight, all of the candidates can be voted tonight and we can pass on them at the council level but the effective date of the appointments of the second two candidates would be deferred in order to make sure an orderly transition to the Zoning Board of Appeals because there's some matters they've already got ongoing and new members can't vote on something that haven't heard.

So, that's a little procedure that is a little different than a copy of that memo will go as part of the report. But first, welcome Mr. Markowitz is known to us as former Councilor Markowitz and it's a pleasure to have you back among us And I would ask if you would like to say a little bit about your background. Your resume and information is attached to the agenda, but for those who don't know you well it might be helpful to have you outline a little of your background and why you're interested in this role. And then I'll turn it over to colleagues to ask questions.

Thank you, Chair. Appreciate that. Well, for starters, I served as city councilor for six years all the whole time I was on land use, was on real property reuse I was the council's representative, there was always one councillor on the OPEB board. It's interesting. I also worked on a couple of ad hoc things this year. I was in early... February, March, I guess I was out of the country for a while but I worked and

The analysis for that and the recommendations that the mayor then took back and was able to get an agreement with the city, with the union, to basically defer the payoff date of the pension liability. That was, by the way, I'm just editorializing here. I think that has been one of and then recently, because I couldn't stay away from this stuff, I worked on the...I chaired a group of citizens that was selected by PS&T to So I've kind of had this continuous involvement.

Interestingly enough, my first foray into Newton politics...I worked as a management consultant so I traveled a great deal in my younger days and it always prevented me in that first career. I went there when it was the second career of the counselor, but in between them, I actually worked on a four-year duty neighbor who never got billed. But I learned an awful lot about pro forma financials all the requirements and, you know, looking at the financing schemes and so forth that are used to create those types of opportunities. So I guess I've just been involved for a long time. Can't stay away. Some of my colleagues probably say why wonderful city. We have

I'm an older man. It would be nicer to see younger people running for office and getting involved in these but by the time during the 40s I don't see a lot more participation from people so you knew I was going to talk right?

Well look if that's the price of admission for you come and do this we're up for it. We're just grateful for your willingness, given that your sentence was up to come back. It really is a great opportunity. I violated parole. Questions or comments from members of the council? Albright. I'm sorry, I didn't really see your hand raised. Thank you.

You want me to go first? Yes, okay. So I've worked with Chris for many years on the council and I know the quality of his work and I am impressed by it. And I know he understands housing needs we have in Newton So I'm glad for that to be going on to the ZBA. And I worked with Chris when we were trying to convince Mayor Fuller and the Retirement Board to change the rate of increase for the retirement. And we were all on the same page and I'm so thankful that finally, Chris you must know this that the retirement board has lowered the increase to three and a half percent, which is fabulous. So I am thrilled that you're willing to take on this mantle again and do this work for the city again.

And you're not in my ward, so I can't make the motion to approve, but I'm sorry that I can do that. So thank you very much for being willing to serve.

So I have worked with Mr. Markowitz and, and without his knowledge of land use and going through Riverside and the details and just really understanding it and getting into the, you know, into the mud on there is going to bring a lot to the ZBA. So I look forward for you being in the ZDA.

We had 90 conditions in that order. That was Riverside two or three, 90 conditions or 91. Every one of those takes.

Well, I look forward to seeing you on the ZBA. All of the expertise that you'll bring to the table. I think of it as being specifically the financial piece of it and I think that's hugely essential. in terms of being able to lead the conversation at the ZBA. I sort of feel as if we're very lucky to have anybody step up and I'm so, I feel as It's been very exciting, you know. And I think that all of us are going to do a deep dive on these variances because I think it's going to impact and potentially A tool that we're all going to have to sort of learn how it's going to work, you know in context but welcome. Thank you and I'm very excited

I have a question to comment on. A couple of things, just again for the public who may not be as familiar with the Zoning Board of Appeals at least three major responsibilities, the variance process and where a particular situation is below the hardship. And the state legislation has relaxed that standard to some degree. And we're all trying to watch that in order We hope, at least for myself I have to syndicate. I hope that the ZVA does not become the first resort but still remains the last resort to remedy a situation that is untenable for an individual property owner. Secondly, review any appeals from decisions of the building and department inspectional services commissioner, specifically relating to interpretation of law. And that was an important part of the role as I understand it. Temple can correct me if I'm wrong, and then any of the 40B projects that come through for comprehensive permit comes through the Zoning Board of Appeals.

So it is quite substantial jurisdiction and importance and again, to Zachary and colleagues we appreciate your willingness to do this stuff. Can you say a little about public participation because that's the matter that people are interested in how the board functions?

Well, I think the availability of the people who serve on these boards for that type of thing is critical. You know, I used to always... So I guess it comes back to chair how much work you do I used to, when I was in land use, I'd like to say that I put myself in the shoes that I would have the confidence that they had done the work to familiarize themselves with what the petition actually was about, what the regulations, what a law was that applied to it. and that I have heard and considered the commentary

and making sure, I don't think we get a city email when you're on the CPA. So that's the councilor. As you all know they come in and that's actually a good line of connection So many, back to using the land use example. While someone being pro or for I think that you do consider a lot what you hear from the parties to the petition, and often the ability to feed back. So it's a dynamic process, not to abuse that word.

and so on. also allows, you know people they look at politicians and they say well they used to say this and now they say this but I'm like that's the nature of politics. You come in with a position, you hear what's going on, you learn about it your opinion should can change If they're not completely informed, they always know something that adds to the argument.

Okay.

Thank you very much. Councilor Dahmubed?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Oh. That's a block. I was going to say, Mr. Markowitz has known me since I was a child, maybe in preteen but yeah as the tenor or as the bass who sat two rows behind me when I was a soprano and then one row when I began tenor at Corpus Christi St. Bernard, which is part of a nice lineage Ward 4 counselors that have come through our church, from Polly Bryson to Councilor Gentile to Council Markowitz and now me.

Councilor Coley even though he's Ward 3.

Yes, and I'm forgetting someone. I'm happy to make the motion to approve.

Before you do, I want to recognize Councilor Block who's not a member of the committee. Thank you.

Um... I'm curious what you think about this variance, the variance responsibility that the chair mentioned and this transition, this change at the state level. I don't know if you followed it that much as brand new It's my understanding The changing standard for approving zoning variances. Any thoughts about that?

is a positive thing. Fixing safety issues is a I did reach out to Attorney Temple on this and I think he's saying,

Even though we don't necessarily talk about precedent when we decide and you decide, well I'm not going to give you the overhang on a porch. I'm using an old example of something that to me wouldn't be correct

OK, thank you. We have a motion. Anyone else from the council or allies that wish to be heard? Having heard about public participation .. All those in favor will say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? I'd say that's unanimous. Thank you very much. You're welcome to stick around if you want or go home.

We'll be working with you all again.

Dean, would you mind coming up? And one of the reasons we like you at the table is so that the microphone can figure out as well as this camera. And the folks on Zoom here, what is being said? Okay. Or do we need them?

Everybody here? A little higher would be better.

So today, welcome. And again we have the background you have and your really quite distinguished career and we're glad you're willing to serve Do you want to give us some again for the benefit of the public and others who have not had the opportunity? Can you say a little bit about your background and why you're interested in this role?

Certainly. My name is Sapir Ng, and during the day I work as an architect I've been working in the field for 25 years and design buildings from a variety of scales, from large scale healthcare hospitals, life science buildings. academic buildings, commercial buildings. In the past 10 years I've worked more in residential and some 40B buildings around in Massachusetts And for my career, I worked in buildings around the Boston area, around the US and internationally. So I work in front of community in a variety geographic locations. And I understand that zoning regulation change and a ripple effect to the community for generations.

And for the residents, it's not just rules that will affect their life And my wife and I moved to Newton six years ago. And our kids go to Newton Public School, and we really loved the city. And the new public school buildings was built Lincoln Elliott, my kids go to Lincoln Elliott. We admire the process and so I look at CPA in a juncture of design regulation and also community and engagement. And so I found this is also an opportunity for me to learn, and I'm new and excited to learn the process and hope to be able to serve thoughtfully. Thank you.

Questions from members of the committee?

You said you've done some 40 projects in Most recently, the one in Boston.

and I'm starting one in Mansfield, Massachusetts. And that is about it. And I also work on other variety of building types as well.

So I saw a few pictures of some your designs, which I like their visually inviting and things like that. And are you able to do them in your 40 bleep designs? Because they're usually somewhat constrained by cost.

That's a very good question, and I believe that Public building, 40 people doesn't need to be cheap. A good design doesn't need to be cheap. You can use more cost-effective material, and a well designed building doesn't have to look cheap at all. We can still work within the budget For example, one of them you mentioned is the senior housing project. It's also a historic project in Auburn, Mass., and it has quite a few design awards. It's a very simple building and you don't have to do, but it's a well-designed space that can be served for better parts aspects.

Thank you. And being an architect, it will bring a lot to the table for the CBA too, which would be good. Because sometimes I say we may ask for something and then they say well we can't do it but it sounds like you'll be able to say yeah, you can do it.

And also when I look at it is in my role, you know, I've been designing buildings in the past 25 years and I look The community, how it looks. But also on the other hand community needs to continue evolve Thank you.

Thank you for applying and stepping up, because I feel as if The skill set that you will bring, as Councilor Wright is suggesting, is essential just in terms of the purview of architecture. I don't know how constrained we will be in terms You can, yes, be additive and you can in the moment sort of make comment. But it sort of seemed in terms of other prior 40Bs, it was pretty restrictive in terms with the amount that change could happen on the project. It always seemed as if the finances Other conditions dictated the outcome. I always sort of felt like that the architecture was very mild, you know, on the order of things but You sound like you're opening and hopefully in committee, you'll be able to enlighten and inform and educate other members so that then it could be applied to the

in terms of the other members being able to see the project through your eyes.

That's also essentially an issue because everyone has a bad place in their mind like I don't want to see 40 people There's the design. Right, thank you. Councilor Albright?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me?

You're breaking up a bit.

I was just told that my internet is unstable. Can

Now again.

Okay, well I will try to say okay thank you so i looked at your designs and they definitely have the wow factor to them So I appreciate that you're bringing that to the ZBA and you can advise our architects who come to the zba with a 40b project that you could do better than just plain architecture. I went to planning school, and one of the things that we talked about a lot is that good design doesn't necessarily cost more than bad design. And advising people on how to really make Newton I want to thank you for being willing to serve and

I know that design, as in special permits, design is really not one of our features. But, you know, you can make comments from time to time about how architects could make a design that really works well for Newton and you know enhances our city rather than just kind of everyday kind of it's a lovely design blah blah blah so I hope you'll bring that clearly that talent that you have with you to the ZBBA. And I wanna thank you so much for being willing to serve.

Thank you. I just want to ask the same private question Mr. Markowitz about both the applicant and interested parties. How do you relate to those comments?

And I will look at it in my, throughout my career sitting on the other side of the table and with the community opposition. And also, in the past I also led my community in East Boston to oppose the development and with my career, understand the process and also I've been sitting on the other side you know, I think that the key is to be able to listen for facts and because you can understand a community these are real issues but I'm It could affect their safety, it can affect their life, you know, their properties. And we need to understand these are real issues for people. However, we're not community advocates And we need to look at things in the fair and with the right facts and regulations, and also make the best judgment.

And with that said, sometimes when we are on the other side of this island I'm glad you asked. And so it's actually meeting with community, being able to listen to them This opportunity is also helping the community to design a better community and also enrich my career as well in my design sensibility. I don't know if that answers your question?

So that's for Malakie.

Oh, thanks. Yeah your background is very impressive. I'm curious it sounds like With the 40 bees that you worked on, were you the person who would go to the hearings in these towns?

I'm part of the team.

So you attended them. I'm wondering if you... watched Newton's EVA hearings, how they compare to other towns because one of the issues that we hear a lot about is the residents who come to speak about their concerns feel like They're kind of the last priority. They have to, you know, they'll, they're sitting through an hour, hour and a half of presentations and initial questions, and then they get to speak and they're limited to three minutes. And I know you will be new as one member basically seven, five, whatever. But is there anything that other towns do differently to make people feel like they've at least got a more easy way to speak even if it's not going to make any difference in the end.

Each tongue is different and some of the tongues they don't even, they mill them you know

The last one. You say they mute them so they don't get to speak at all?

In the past, you go to before COVID, you'd see everyone and you know there's some community but now is that some of them it's more organized what I meant is you know they will let you speak, you know, they control the audio. And each part is different Sometimes there are more community outreach, you know they have a liaison. You know they would reach out to the community and they orchestrate, organize, they give you information ahead so You hear some of them. And so I think even though you let the community speak, it doesn't represent an entire community because people who have time We come to the meeting and it's this minority of numbers.

And I think having a better community outreach, to reach out to more people, you know, to get solicited more You know, before just the meeting. People might not have time to attend a meeting so that might be better, you know, be a different approach.

I should mention this docket items, the first one was 231.26 and second is 230.26 but any other members of council? So which board? Board one. Councilor Oliver is not here. I will gladly nominate for approval Mr. Ning and I'll be the proxy for Ward 1 Thank you very much. Okay, your appointment has been moved. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay, that's unanimous except for Councilor Oliver obviously. Thank you very much. And you're welcome to go home or you can stick around depending on your purpose. Thank you.

And finally, but not least, Mr. Carpaso, would you come up? This is item 229.26, pointing Dr. Capazzo 421 in Walker Street, Auburndale is an alternate member of the Zoning Board of Peoples. So do you want to say a little bit about your background and why you're interested?

Good evening, Mr. Chair. Hi everyone. My name is Donnie Capasso. My family's a family business in Newton, Capasco Realty. We're local property owners, managers We almost exclusively do business in Newton, a little bit in Waltham, but Newton's always been our home base for over 60 years. And we're very proud of that. I think I'll compliment especially my two other nominees

Thank you. Questions from the committee?

Yes, thank you for serving and again like you said You have more real life experience in building and things like that. And I think the three nominees, I think that's a very nice job that the mayor did to get all those coming together. So thank you.

Put together a project by yourself. Councilor Good.

Yeah, thank you as with all of you. Thank you because I think it's really critical that you know and I do commend our mayor for having figured out the Touching each of these areas of expertise. We talk a lot on Berto, and I sort of see this as essential. So I really sort of feel as if all of you guys together are really going to do a great job in terms of being able to evaluate projects and ask the right questions. So again, thank you. I'm just very supportive with this idea of mixing it up on the ZVA. And I've seen you quite a bit in the sense of participating in local governance for quite a while, so this is wonderful. This is great.

Your sense about public participation?

Sure. I really think it comes down to respect. You have to respect your neighbors, the people around you. Whenever I've done a development, I personally knocked on every door within a quarter mile. We're not always going to agree but It's their home. It's the most personal thing you need to respect their opinion, and I think just because they do or don't want something makes them mad or anything. You need to show people respect and hear what they have to say. And generally when you do that it seems to be much easier if I

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'm really glad that we have someone with actual development experience Not the architect, which I love having an architect, but someone who's dealt with let's build this building. Let's see how the people are going to deal with it. Let' work with the neighborhood to make it work. I'm glad that we have someone with that kind of experience on the ZBA. So, I really thank you for being willing to serve. I think that's an important aspect of the project and you know, bringing that reality to when a developer says I can't do this or I can do this but I would love to help you out but I can' t do this. You have the reality of how much things cost So I'm so thankful that we have that experience on the ZBA. And I'm going to be supporting your candidacy.

Thank you.

So anyone else?

Mr. Capasso, nice to see you again thank you um you attended the last ZBA meeting

and the zoning What do you think about these? and I asked that because apparently

Rumford Ave, excuse me Riverview Ave for the Walmart facility and it's funny because I haven't been I think I've never been in front of the CBA in at least 10 years. I work with my family and then the My appointment is notified. I have business in front of it, but it was very unique. Perhaps it didn't lower the bar. It certainly moved it a place I don't think we know where it's and so on. really know but a lot different things can now be considered that wasn't

We got everybody? All right.

Happy to make a motion to approve Mr. Kaposka's nomination to the CDA.

Wonderful, thank you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The ayes have it again. Thank you very much. You're welcome to stay or go home. Everybody's your preference. You'll be over here again in City Hall. Thank you for serving us. Okay, and the next appointee is a reappointment. And I'd like to ask Mr. Cornelius if he would be willing to come as opposed to Our prior appointees, Mr. Pauline is willing to come back for lunch. for return engagement, which... But just because I'm somewhat biased in favor of someone who's both a lawyer and a biker. I just wanted to say that this is

I do combine two. I do my tour of the agenda, if I like most times. So both of you join me sometime.

We'll tell everybody. Vermont. I was the chair of the Bicycle Subcommittee of the Environment Committee of the Boston Bar Association back 35 years ago when we had... Anyway, so you know what you're getting in for if you were willing to re-up. So do you want to say a little bit about what brings you into this role again?

Sure. My background, unlike the people who actually have real skills, I'm a lawyer by training back in law school now, a few decades ago. I was actually studying to get my law degree and a master's in short-term residency. Come graduation law school, I got a great offer from firm and still few credits shy of getting that master's degree. and then about 10 years ago I was having a discussion with a neighbor who was on the historical commission about whether I actually studied preservation law. And so he wrote me in to join the historical commission way back when, and I have not found an exit yet.

I should note that you're also volunteering in election capacities, too.

That's what it was before here. Make sure our election runs smoothly on the 1st of September. Everyone knows we have an election on September 1st.

A precious opportunity for us all. So questions from members of the committee? Councilor Wright.

I might be stealing Councilor Malakie's question. Well, the three of us come to a lot of your meetings. One of the things that your committee always complain about There's all these teardowns coming in. You would like the city council to do more to reduce it? That's something I'm looking at, but what are your ideas on how we can help reduce

The main incentive for something to get torn down the city is because you can build something larger. Turning down something and putting up something of the same size Probably does not make a whole lot of economic sense. Definitely not. There we go. So the issue comes into is you have these, the case in point's going to be Oak Hill Park The original small homes are being torn down and something much larger is being built there because the zoning allows something much bigger to be there. I talked to a realtor offhand about this, they said Yeah, the lot goes for $900,000 or a million if you've already torn down the house. The process there, that there's no value whatsoever to the building there because you build something so much larger. So as we look at our zoning as you go across the city and where people are complaining about something being torn down, something bigger going up it's because zoning allows something much bigger to go up So to an extent, something is up zoned. We're seeing challenges with that specifically.

I mean, that's the city council saying it should get torn down. And I think there was a process looking at our resident We spent a lot of time and a lot heartache over the village centers. to focus on the areas in the city where we want to have single-family houses and try to have a zoning that are matched closer to what's actually been built. I think a lot of our zoning was put in place is just so much more expensive now five, six decades later. We want to max that out. So I think it would be great if city council and go look at those areas and say we should have revised zoning for these areas to match closer what's actually there on the ground. To the extent that's what you want. Obviously, if it's something you want something denser, zone it to be denser

Thank you for serving. I think it's always important to, because at this stage you have institutional knowledge. You've watched the historic commission evolve over time. I, you know, I sort of feel as if I attend quite a few of the meetings and I sort to feel that there's a huge disparity between what is allowed, especially with the VCOD. on specific parcels. And then in terms of there's a conflict between the goals or preservation and I think that it is a difficult position for the Historic Commission to be in because i don't think that the prerequisite work has been done, in terms of identifying parts of the city that need to be preserved. One of the mandates or one of the, you know, because I went through the ordinance today in terms of historic preservation for the Commission. And I sort of feel as if this is bandwidth and this is more the interface of like whether or not the Commission members even are capable of doing the preservation work.

And I think it needs to be like historic surveys and identifying specific areas and streets of the city that really merit preservation And I do think that, I wish we could do this work. I think in terms of the village centers, we need to identify these significant buildings you know that identify the village and I think this work needs to be done Because I think that we're in this conflict. And so there is a problem and it's something that we both in zoning and planning and historic need to work to, and this is a huge big problem that we have you know because again and again We've got the competing interests. We have the state development and wood can be permitted on that law, but yet the lack of understanding of what the historic value is of those parcels So I do think that it's not on you and it's Not on the Commission, but I really would like to see more members of

of the commission have the preservation background and expertise, so that then they can educate other members of the Commission. But you're the leader in the sense of being elected chair of the committee but I do feel as if there's quite a lot of work and I'd like you to speak a little bit to this because I sort of feel as though you're conflicted, I know. But I also feel as This is such an onslaught of demolition. I can't fathom being in that room Every single month, because it's just so much.

You used to be a regular attendee. It's a catalog for me because I've seen Mary Lee's here. One of the successes I certainly have seen from the VCOD is MRT, that allowing to preserve it and add on, I think has been wildly successful. and getting units. They actually move stuff along, whereas I think it has not been a lot under the actual VCOD coming in. It's been hard to get qualified people. There's not a lot of people who live in the city who have The background preservation and want to do it.

We have, there's an issue we've run into issues with architects because most of the architects that are interested in it work in small shops in the area. And I know this one case Do it. Because basically your name is on the architectural firm, so your firm can never come for the commission while you're serving on the commission. Even Rucuzo was not enough. So we've had some issues with that on our part.

Do you have any thoughts in terms of going forward for direction or for priorities for the historical commission?

I don't have any particular priorities. We did work with Councilor Baker and Councilor Albright redoing the landmark ordinance and demolition delay ordinance several years ago One thing to think about that I brought up there and the City Council thought about is what's the right range for the demolition delay to come into play in terms of how long the delay should be and how far back it goes. Right now, it's frankly more than 50 years old even lawyer math tells me that's 1976, which most of us would not hopefully think of it actually being historic as to whether

Do you think there's any benefit in terms of adding six months to each of the delays?

There's some huge pros and cons to that. One, you know, there's the one of them is really served for two purposes. Landmarking gives you time to do that process. The other is to create incentive to renovate as opposed to do the demolition, right? Partial demolitions can deal with expeditiously, full demolitions could slow down. So there's the incentive aspect of it. The downside to it is you have an 18-month delay that means there's a house sitting unused in the city, surrounded by construction fence, not being maintained and not being home to a new family of Newton and not be on task force for an extra six months as well too. is a balance there. The question, is it going to create more of incentive? I think we're it might most likely would do and just reduce the sales price.

Someone's finally selling their home, and now the developer or the next person is going to say well I can deal with a demolition delay that's six extra months of carrying cost I'm going to give you X minus X now instead of some larger amount. And for most people, that's their retirement money right there and that ends up taking some of that chunk away But at the same point, we like preservation. We like doing it. So there's a tough balance there on the perturbation side. Yeah, that's good. It's more likely to do more preservation, but there is negative impact of that as well.

That's why we get paid such a big. Do you think more than I? That's all right.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Cornelius I want to start by thanking you for being willing to do all the work when i look at the agendas that you deal with at every meeting. I can't believe that you managed to work your way through those agendas So it's an amazing amount of work for very well, for no pay. So thank you for that. But my question really Your answers to the questions that have already been asked show that you have a real understanding of what's going on in Newton. with development and that is invaluable. But my question has to do with an interesting project that we just had, it was Brookside 60 Brookside, which came before the commission and you gave them a waiver of demolition because you liked their You like their design and you fit in with the neighborhood and so forth.

And I, frankly, I appreciated that and I agreed with that but That project had to come before the city council for a special permit and it was denied because it required a super majority. And you mentioned our zoning. I understand we just want to try and get him through the process when

We can talk about their zoning policy in more detail, but can you focus on... Can we just talk about the special apartment versus historic preservation?

We had an extensive discussion at the council about this.

That's why I'd like to keep our conversation moving forward.

So let me see if I can ask you a question that has more to do with what, so you clearly the historic commission had a sense for what would work on a site. And I've seen many meetings, I don't come to all the meetings but I've see in the ones where people ask for waiver, I have seen the way you put a lot of energy and expertise into deciding what could work if the waiver was shortened and you can build X instead of Y or you don't have to wait the full year and I guess what i'm saying is, what helps you make those decisions I mean, you knew what that project was going... It's not about that particular project. It's about any project. You know

what is being proposed to you and you know, what's going to happen in the future to make a project happen. So what are the things that go into your decision-making as a commission to give that kind of a waiver that allows a project to have the delay of a full year taken away. How do you decide that?

One thing that's in my mind, I think many of the commission members' minds is it's a demolition delay. So if we just deny a waiver application, the applicant can just wait out the additional months and do whatever it is they want. so oftentimes you know a person not always looking for the perfect but good enough that this is better than what they could do otherwise to go along with that. They make an attempt to sort of mitigate the loss of the existing structure. I've been trying to take into context in the neighborhood and nearby houses, so it sort of fits into that general context that goes a long way towards that is really difficult when you have sort of the sore thumb being proposed that doesn't quite fit in to the area. We try to avoid taking into account sort of

necessarily the number of units or that other aspect to go along with it as long as it has sort of the architectural and historical features. Malakie, and then Councilor Farrell.

We've got people in other businesses to do so I'm going to encourage

Yeah, thank you.

Can I call you Douglas? You can call me that, it's fine. If you call me Douglas, I think I'm in trouble. No, that is fine.

Talk to your mom. Councilor Wright is correct. She did steal my main question, but I wonder if you can elaborate a little on what measures the City Council could take in terms of starting with zoning would Limiting FAR help would change any other.

I'm going to suggest you save that.

Right, longer.

You've got some more coming up. I think it's the idea of more of a pattern zoning, but this is sort of the size and what we're on in there The issue is FAR works great to sort of keep the same size. If all the lots are the same, we don't have a lot of that in Newton. I wanted to ask you about at

Multiple meetings, I've raised the issue of this house that somebody wants to tear down. It never hit the market. Nobody ever got, nobody who wants to live in it ever got a chance to buy it and you say we can't consider that I learned recently from a comment on a Boston Globe article about this swastika house that Stockbridge actually has a provision that does that. Their words are, well first, the planning board may, after a public hearing can conclude no reasonable likelihood that person's going to buy it and preserve it or be for at least 12 months. The owner has made continuing bona fide and reasonable efforts to locate a purchaser willing and reasonably able to preserve viewability and restore the subject building. And that such efforts have been unsuccessful, and as we talked about appraisals and stuff like that.

So it seems to me that One of the problems is that developers just factor in our 12-month delay into their business plan and it's next in the queue after they do the one that they're working on now, whereas if there had to be if it had to be on the MLS, beyond Zillow they could very well get offers.

You mentioned that- When it comes to Malakie I'm gonna suggest again that's a policy conversation we're going to get into I'd prefer this to focus on...

I would like the applicants' thoughts on that.

Is that article referring to a demolition of labor rights?

Yeah, it's

I would defer to Jonah still hanging out there as to whether we can take into account who owns the property or where the process got you before it got there.

There are alternative ways that some communities have done this. So I guess you work with the ordinance you're given, really.

Yeah, I'm trying to think how can we make our origins better.

Again the downside is you force this additional process and I agree if developers coming to do it they take into account that i'm going to have to have these carry costs during the demolition delay period If you force some other additional process in there, again I think that ends up being

I'm not sure that's necessarily... Let's not get into that.

You've asked his opinion and he's given it, but I want to focus on again just getting a chance Have you talked about public participation? We've asked everybody, but Ms. Gordon, excuse me, Councilor Gordon is on CR hand up. So I want a chance to recognize her.

Thank you, Chair Baker. Just I wanted to follow up on something that Councilor Albright asked you and I just wanted some clarification Mr Cornelius. You were saying that you take into account the project that's going to be done to replace a teardown and how you think that fits into the neighborhood? Did I hear that correctly or I just want to clarify what you were saying.

When they come for waiver of the demolition delay.

Okay, so in neighborhoods where there's been a waiver then the project that's gone up and it's Instead, you have looked at how you feel that that fits into the neighborhood in terms of its historical context and its architecture.

If they come for a waiver, oftentimes the project will just wait out the demolition delay and we never see what's proposed.

Right, but if you waive the delay, you are taking that into account. Is that correct? I just wanted to understand what you were saying.

Yeah, the standard around the waiver that we use is does it mitigate the loss of the structure? Which is, does it take into account the architectural historic features of the existing structure and or the neighborhood nearby.

And do you feel seeing what's going on in Newton that that's working right now?

Again, a lot of projects wait out the delay.

Yes, I'm asking for the ones that you have waived. Have you followed up and looked at what's been built? And do you feel like that process is working in terms of we're getting what it is that we would like?

I can't say we're always getting what we like. The ones that come through, I think the process works well for some cases and it doesn't work well for other cases. There's a lot of stuff personally that I don't particularly think looks great but it's not always my decision.

Yeah, no I just was trying to understand the whole process and sort of the outcomes that we're seeing. Thank you very much.

Thank You. And Chancellor Farrell?

Thank you very much, Chair. And thank you for joining us. But I'm going to withdraw my request to speak. I think a lot of what I'm hearing and a lot Your decisions will allow you to be helpful in helping the council do its job of trying to determine what we want. to see the city look like and then say to you, this is what we want you to do. I happen to live in a ward that has many more sore thumbs than we ever hoped to see. The demolition delay doesn't work, I don't believe. I've seen very few instances where this ends up with a landmark. and Chase. And I honestly don't know when you do a demolition delay What you would really like to see happen.

But I don't think that's the conversation we're going to hear, and I think it really behooves us as a council to sit down and seriously discuss what do we want and make the ordinance work for you. So thank you for being here, and thank you

The other benefit I see to the demolition delay is most of the projects that come through us are as a right. So this is the only time that their neighborhood has a chance to express their opinion about what's happening for that particular project. And it's generally one or two meetings to address that. I think I do a good job getting public public comments input the entire process. Welcome. I tend to let people go longer than some other people might like to go with that, but again this is sort of the one opportunity for it to happen and I think certainly a lot of our applicants are often not represented by a lawyer in this. And it takes some hand-holding to get them through the process and understand what's happening, and the procedure that goes through this.

Any other questions from anybody or members of the council?

Related to public input, I appreciate that you bring some things to NHC that you say, you're not sure about but you want them to have a chance to look at it. But that's part of the process of UN Mr. Lewis staff person sort of weeding out the things that you think are not of interest and could you talk a little bit about how you decide because I mean long ago before I was even involved in anything but trees, It happened to the house across the street from me on Larkin Road. Suddenly it was being, you know, taking out the sewer and being demolished and I didn't get any notice because it did not meet the threshold for whoever was running the NHC back then to bring it to commit, and it was staff approved.

And it's true when something comes to the NHC is people's opportunity to comment on what would otherwise be a by right project but if it never comes to they don't get that chance. So how do you decide which is gonna make the cut?

Right, there was a delegation by the full commission or the chair and a member of the staff to make a determination of application. It's clearly not have historical significance, and that's either by itself or in the context of the area it's in. And then once it passes that standard and comes to commission we do the properly preserved determination by vote there. So we do try to weed out some of the ones that seem very clear nothing's going to happen to it. It's certainly not a match that, not setting it that way. So, and I'll strive to just keep the agenda a little more manageable through up to 20 items next week which is a long night.

Yeah. I mean, I think some of those old garages I can understand those but and it's probably, it was probably before your time when this house across the street from me. It was a 1940 something 50 cape in an intact street of capes

The point, I guess, is that the Chair has a role specifically in assisting the Commission shape its agenda to figure out which items are going to come before it and not which Don't pass the initial screening. So that's an important role that you have, and I think it's been articulated by the counselor from Ward 3. Any other comments or questions? If not... Mr. Cornelius, you're in West Newton.

I move forward. Ms. Cornelia is for the Newton Historic Mission. for reappointment.

Thank you very much. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Abstentions? The ayes have it, thank you very And I want to express my appreciation to all the candidates tonight, and especially also for the members of the planning department staff in the public who have been willing to participate in the conversation as observers because I think part of the value of these conversations is to educate us all about some of the issues that we're going to be addressing as a committee coming forward. So, I think it's important to have a sense of a little bit people in the process as well as their institutional arrangements. So is that, I think we're ready to move on to our next item. Thank you all for coming. Okay. Thank you very much.

So now we want to move to item 5726, which is request for discussion and ordinance amendments to dimensional controls aligning Use and zoning, and this I think we have representative of the planning department here tonight. And I want to welcome all of you to please come to the table where you can be heard and seen

Would you hand that to Douglas? Yes.

Thank you.

So we're joined by Nora Colello and Amanda Walsh, both respectively ahead and definitely long range planners. And we're delighted to have you here to help us through this ticket one more time. And there's an extensive presentation, which I appreciate the members of the department putting together which memorandum and a copy of their fly deck. But we've got that, but this is one where so much of the work I went into this was site-specific I'm sure especially Councilors from the respective areas will want to know exactly what you're talking about. So who's going to be the lead presenter?

We're sharing duties tonight. Somebody's got to talk first. Amanda's debut at that, so she'll take the lead here, but I will...

I guess we should all applaud it's your first piece.

I'll just help add some context for the work.

We're also joined by the planning director. Do you want to sit at the table with us?

I'm okay, I'm actually just observing.

Okay, thank you Ms. Garrett. All right, so...

Um, so I do want to acknowledge, I obviously just got here. So, um, I wasn't, didn't have the opportunity to partake in the earlier conversations, but, um... So, just bear with me, but by all means interject with questions as we go. So this is a discussion of ordinance amendments to dimensional controls, aligning use and zoning We're going to begin with a background and scope of analysis, and then we're going go into the individual citywide parcels that we looked at outside of Nonantum to build on the conversation you've already had. and then lastly, Nora's gonna talk about some possible special permit criteria that would be helpful in conjunction.

Now just let me just mention The clerk, we are going to be seeing the slides so we can see them clearly. But if there's a question that comes up or somebody raises their hand, we want to know that we need to fill out a form right away.

So starting with a little bit of background, I know at least for me it feels like June was somehow ages ago and we're already in August. So at the June 22nd meeting when this was last discussed, We focus really on the commercial areas in Nonanta where the zoning extends into predominantly residential areas. and where A, there was a majority of the parcels of this nature and B, there is a kind of clear delineation between the commercial area and the more residential side streets. and from that meeting we proposed three kind of options rezoning individual parcels in that area adding a special permit criteria regarding contextual massing and then looking at additional zoning language changes.

and the committee, after I'm sure you all recall great discussion came to the consensus that we would be moving forward with examining the commercially zoned Thank you. quite a few slides to go through on that front that Amanda will be presenting on. And then, We also were directed by the committee to circle up with our counterparts in current planning and the law department to explore special permit criteria. So I will speak to that after the city-wide personal analysis.

There we go. Oh, there it is on a delay. So in order to look at all of the parcels in the city that are, so we used the same criteria that was using Nomandum. So residential uses with one-to-three units that are in commercial zones. We first just did a basic observation. What are the uses in that neighborhood? Where do the heights, what zoning districts are providing those parcels that are residentially zoned right now What are the age of the structures and their relation to those surrounding areas, such as is there a high traffic corridor nearby? And then from that we looked at recurring themes and patterns that came from that basic observation. These are ultimately all the criteria we looked at. That being said, if we went through all of these for every single parcel tonight you could be here a long time.

So we're gonna focus on a high level Things that were notable in each neighborhood, but just to give you a sense of what we looked at first was context. So what are the primary uses in that area? Are there other distinct neighborhood features that impact things? Historic considerations, so is it in a historic district or is it an historic property which would change the purview that it's under. Does it reflect historical patterns? So like the idea of the corner store that serves a neighborhood, you know. Is there a reason maybe it was once owned commercially even though it's now residential? Distinction between zones. Is there a clear boundary between commercial and residential, or is it more mixed? Does it have a buffering purpose? So in some cases you'll see that maybe

commercial area that buffers a residential area from a highway or more intensive uses. Redevelopment potential. We're not here to analyze what will happen if it's redeveloped, but we will point out if we've already seen redevelopment under the current zoning requirements and what that looks like. and then what are the heights? One thing I will know is that Our ordinance is a little unusual in that we recognize half stories and residential uses, but we don't recognize it in commercial uses. So we did base those commercial uses on observation. We didn't have like an exact number to pull a map. And then lastly, if it were to be rezoned what is the nearest residential district that would naturally be moved into?

Starting off with a big assignment. So we've talked about state law changes a lot and law will be provided much more detail on that But one thing we did want to make sure is do any of the current changes that were in the state budget bill outside sections impact This docket item. And ultimately, we believe that this would still be a valid means to move forward. The distinct detail about nonconformities to recognize under the new protections is it doesn't add protections for non-conforming uses. It just adds protections for not conforming structures, that being said

While the new laws do allow non-conforming structures to go beyond the dimensional requirements, it does not allow it for height and setback. So any changes we make to this The height requirements of the new district would apply. You wouldn't have any additional protections under the new law. Does that make sense?

I know we're all going to have to go to school.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the kind of key takeaway is we were like Does any state law change make all this work moot? And I think the conclusion we came to is this is still a worthwhile endeavor. Any zoning change that we would make would be impactful.

So with that, we did want to just give a high-level overview of if you were to rezone what would those dimensional requirements be. so in all cases the parcels are starting off in the business one or two districts and we then polled okay what are those abutting districts to these parcels um and that only came out to MR1 through 3 and SR1 through three. So we did not look at districts that weren't already abutting these parcels. The main takeaway with this is that, I just want to make sure I'm covering. So the main takeaway is that rezoning to any of these

districts that you see on the screen from the BU district would increase the buy-write story limit by a half story. That being said, from rezoning be you one to any of these districts, the story limit would remain unchanged. And if you were rezoning from BU2 to any of these districts, the special permit story limit decreases by one. So in some cases you're decreasing the special permanent allowance and otherwise you're actually increasing the buy-write allowance

that all being said stories do not necessarily just one just to clarify that point um in a residential zone when you're two and a half stories right is that what the right the right band will

Correct.

And you're talking about as bright in a business one, they're two and a half stories in a business one, right?

Or is it... Two stories.

Two stories, oh my gosh. So the blue is by Wright.

Yes, sorry, I should have explained it that way. So blue is By-Wright your green as a special permit

Now I understand it better. Okay, so the basic point is that in a business one you're limited to two stories but you can go up to three by special permit. In the residential you're Bigger increment in a business one by special permit, but not by right. And then in business two, you're still at the two-story, but you can go even higher. You can go up to a higher number by special permits. So that's the difference.

And roughly what's the, how many BU1 percentage? Mostly like 80% of BU1 and 20% of EU2? There's a lot less of you two than once.

We have it labeled just off the top of my head as I guess it's more BU1 than BU2. Oh yeah, by a lot. But yeah, the main takeaway here is that as we consider rezoning if the goal is to reduce the height allowance. We would just want to be careful because in some cases you could be increasing the buy right allowance if you convert a business to a residential zone, which is a bit counterintuitive, which was why we wanted to make sure that was

Somebody once said a side effect is the primary effect you hadn't anticipated.

Very wise, yeah.

Good point about it.

So related to that, we also wanted to address height limits because the way height is measured in our ordinance means that you can have a two and a half story structure and a three-story structure that look very similar from the outside. So this comparison changes it slightly. Overall, the same patterns But you will see on our ordinance, we have more allowances in the residential districts if it's a sloped roof versus a flat roof. So that's what the flat lines versus the triangles are depicting and the main takeaway with this is that rezoning to any of these residential districts from BU1 or BU2 may, or sorry, increases the by right height by six to 12 feet. Interesting.

and the special permit height decreases or stays the same. In other words, rezoning to residential may not always decrease height.

Just in general. Yeah, just in general but it doubles to quadruple the FAR going from BU to any other residential so the volume of the house on the lot Greatly comes down.

We'll get to that, but I think what you're trying to say is let's take the dimensional controls that are still available to us under state law and say, what do those variables do?

This is just comparing the two zoning districts in terms of height as you consider rezonings.

Yeah, it's one of those huge problems.

You could look at in many different aspects, but given that height was one of the conversations we just wanted to start with that and then we're happy to present other factors as well.

The point of this slide is that sloping roof has an impact?

The point is that the buy-write potential, if you were to rezone from BDU to residential increases in height whereas the special permit potential Decreases.

Sloped or flat, it increases. Okay, so it doesn't matter.

Yeah, we just want it to be technically accurate in terms of pointing out this residential and I don't have the ability to get a high increase your special permit. That's one fixed point where you do in business

And this is, again, high level. I think if when we get to it, if there's interest in rezoning, we can talk about that specific case and get more into details. This was just High level takeaway that it's not necessarily straightforward in terms of business zone is greater in height and residential zone is less in height.

Could I ask a question?

I'm trying to understand

I don't understand the context, so what is it? You're breaking up.

Can you hold your question and we'll come back to it?

We had that issue where that was... Okay, it helps me understand but I can wait.

Well no, but we want to just respond to your question if we can understand it. Just say it again.

So the Clinton Road height, it was a BU zone and it ended up being a house. Do you remember Nora or Amanda how high that building was?

I don't know if Deputy Director Riewel is still on. I will just make the note that a significant issue with the Clinton Height was the regrading, which the committee addressed last term in terms of changing the height measurement and the retaining wall allowances. But the height how we measure height starts from original grade or proposed whichever is lower, which was not the case

So it wasn't an issue of this that's displayed on this chart. It wasn't one of these issues.

I can pull it up, but this is Katie. Well, I do recall the project did obtain Special Permit Relief to exceed the maximum amount of stories. So I think it was three stories and I just don't remember the corresponding height. I can try to locate that and follow up

Okay, that would be useful as we understand all of this in the context. Thank you, Katie.

Okay, so does Will carry on?

Yeah, one thing I will clarify with this is is that in this case, height limits are the same for buy right and special permit. For the MR1-3 and the SR 1 through 3, that's why they're depicted in green because there is no difference between the separate permanent buy rates. So to just draw back to the last slide for a second It looks very different when you look at it from a story perspective, but then when you get it from the height limitations, it tells slightly different story.

And I believe Director Feerick found that it was 35.5 feet.

Yes, which is on

So now we're going to go into the citywide parcel analysis. And again, this is residential uses that have one to three units in commercial districts. One thing I will also point out is height is obviously not the whole story, it's also context. So the other thing we're looking at is does commercial zoning make sense for that neighborhood? And so that's more what we're going to look into with this section. Because we looked at so much criteria, we tried to simplify mostly for our own brains but also for yours. where we came up with a traffic light system where if it's a reason that rezoning may be beneficial, we've used a green circle. If it's It's yellow. And then if it's a reason that the zoning may not be beneficial or maybe not necessary, it's in red.

So we're going to start in Newton Upper Falls and Waban which is board five So we have two parcels on Chestnut Street just north of Boylston Street. To put it into context, this is the Boylton Street overpass so where the bridge is Oh, it's jumping ahead. Okay. So overall this is a residential area however it does have a buffering purpose and that even though these two parcels on the end are currently residential uses, If it were to become commercial, it wouldn't necessarily be an unnatural fit just because most residential uses wouldn't want to be directly abutting the overpass anyway. I will say I should have started this

with this, but none of the neighborhoods stuck out to us as needing rezoning the way Nonantum did. They didn't meet that same criteria Commercial Zoning clearly extending into a residential use.

I'm going to talk about each one. Okay, so Councilor Wright had an end up and then Councilor Dunham.

So this one There's no other business last right there. It's all residential. I could see changing this to residential because there's no BU lots whatsoever. Some of the other streets, they're busier Annum Street, and you have a mix. But there's no mix here. It's all residential.

That's okay to comment on for Again, we just want to get through the slides and then come back for these.

These two parcels I mean the proximity to Route 9 is really difficult But I was trying to identify these two parcels actually are not considered part of the historic district. All the rest of the parcels in this conversation are So, you know these were the two that stood out in terms of but you can see this 1295 is not it's a It sold for $315,000 and it's you know like the lot itself I think is It's minutiae. I mean, it's just incredibly tight, incredibly small and it's a benefit in terms of...I would say yes, it absolutely needs to be left as residential these two parcels

I don't see them evolving into commercial at any point because the proximity to the overpass and, you know, it's just a zone that is so car-centric. You wouldn't even want to walk in this area. You know, it's just incredibly difficult and with the Wellesley Office Park, people literally do a zigzag underneath the overpass. It is so car centric, no one's walking anywhere near that period.

So let me just say as a process matter what I'd like to go through, but I'm hearing a comment from the ward counselor that this might be an appropriate area for consideration for rezoning. Is that your comment?

Well, right now. Yes, absolutely.

Yep. So let's just make a note of that and then go forward because I want to get through each of the sites if we can and think about where we're going from here.

And I'll add that one thing I do want to double check because you mentioned that it's outside the historic district. Our maps show it inside, so we'll just double check though. It could be an error on our part, but that definitely affects the reason. So I want to...

The only two in all of the parcels that you identified that I, you know, in my assessment database were not part of the district.

Sorry, just a follow-up question. So if the committee after all your discussion decides to rezone this I'd like to kind of explore which residential zone makes sense because they each abut a different one. So would it just be the abutting residential zone? Would that be the preference or...

Well, I was trying to figure out what they actually are right now.

In general. They're a budding MR1 and SR2.

Okay, so you're suggesting that all of... Chestnut on that zone is MR, correct?

On the right side, east side of the road is MR. And on the other side is us.

Yeah, but this lot is literally a dock.

Definitely, but I think that all... That little one?

It is today.

We need to give the departments some general guidance. What I think the default is that if the abutting zone is MR or the budding zone was SR, it would make sense to extend it unless there's some positive reason not to. If you do the resounding, I just want to try and give them some more changes.

If I had to say, the one that's on the east side was LR, and the one on the west side was S.

Okay, thank you. Anybody have more comments on this site? Okay, very nice.

Oh yeah. One clarification. Did you do any historic research to figure out why these were originally zoned for you

So I wasn't able to find that. Um, I can definitely do more digging. I did find that the existing structures that you see are from 1950 and 1970s so compared to the neighborhood they were redeveloped more recently. So it's possible at one point, it was a commercial use but I haven't found anything supporting that Not always easy to choose values, but I can definitely find out if that's something.

And then across the street on the south side of Route 9 they're residential so it's just kind of weird that they just

The city does have a lot of areas where you do have a residential area and then a small commercial corner so it's possible at one point that that's what existed there. So then we're going to move further south down Chestnut Street between Summer Street and Winter Street. And There's several parcels that, or sorry, in Sullivan Avenue. We're looking all the way down. You'll see a mix of uses And then when you actually look at the context of the area, it is a historic mixed-use village center. So you can see the different types of buildings on this street we have everything from a gas station which believe or not is considered historic and to these mixed-use buildings up here, and then your traditional residential single family residence.

So it's definitely more of a mixed use area and It is part of the historic district, so it has additional oversight as well.

So just to be clear Where do your stop-lives colors come in here?

So for example, yellow we said is a reason that maybe rezone with caution. So it is already mixed use with some ground floor commercial if you make an entirely...

I'm having trouble seeing the colors.

It goes yellow, red, red and yellow in this one.

I just wanted to figure out.

Thank you. So in general, like on Chestnut Street and there are commercial uses on there and it's kind of mixed use. I'm fine with kind of leaving it, just like Adams Street. And this area has a lot more protection because it's in the historic district so it's not like they're just going to be able to tear it down and put in whatever So personally in this area, I could see you just leaving it.

Yeah, I'm on that page because I attended quite a few of the historic district commission meetings and nine, I think it's 984. It's in this strip came in as a much larger residential and was denied and then was brought down as a smaller project. So the purview of the commission is really strong in the sense of, and I wouldn't want to lose the commercial in this zone because it's from the 1830s You know, these buildings. And you just can see that brick building right there has such incredible charm in the sense of the size of it and that it's still a commercial building. So you want that, you know, it feeds the whole street.

Your consensus just to be clear in this one. Okay. Yep.

One thing I also want to mention, and I think goes right to your point is this also was a nice transition zone. There's a large office development down here and then you get to I-95 so It kind of transitions from residential to mixed use, too. Those heavier impact uses you wouldn't really want residential mix to.

I'm going to compliment the department here. Give us both a map and the pictures because it's It gives you much more sense of things than just the math.

So now we're going to move a little further south down Chestnut Street, where we have one parcel that is part of the historic district and one parcel. That isn't so I just want to flag that while we have it here. So overall, this is a continuation of that mixed use district. So very similar conditions. The other thing is we have This larger scale three-story apartment complex, they have multiple buildings where the commercial massing kind of balances with that. The other thing is even though 1076 Chestnut Street is outside the historic district it does fall under the 15-year threshold. So it still would have additional review over there. It's also already has a accessory structure built behind it to make it multifamily, so we don't necessarily see the turnover of that is already being

So it's really hard to see in the left little map there, the last lot to the right. Go down a little bit. What exactly is that? That kind of seems like... on the right side since the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah so that second rectangle um is that accessory building behind that? No it's the other one across. Oh this one?

Go back go one more. Go to the right. Keep going, keep going. Right here, I'm sorry. Yeah, so that is

currently being used as commercial. So that's the other thing to consider is a rezoning would isolate that from the other commercial uses.

I'm pretty sure the proximity to the historic district here is impactful. I think if you have protections, I'm almost positive that I'm not 100% on that view. It's in the audience. So the proximity of this is significant, you know, in terms of just how close it is to the district. I'm just explaining the weightedness of it. and if in fact because some of these buildings you don't have a picture of that one that Council Wright was pointing out the 390 red that's right there.

Yeah over here yeah

Yeah, some of these properties have actually been redeveloped by special current. 1092 former Councilor Yates' property has turned into attached works. So it's like literally two more down, you know? Or this was special permit It's outside of the district, but I'm explaining to you that it actually has already turned over. Quite a few of these properties on Chestnut have been redeveloped.

Yeah, but they're keeping the business. Those were MR... Zoning. They weren't using the BU zoning.

No, but what I'm explaining to you is that there's probably not the likelihood of redevelopment is, you know, I just sort of this one.

The 10 out of six resources. This conclusion is leave us alone.

Yeah, leave it alone. I think so.

I appreciate it.

Great. No, I'm just giving you the sense of this film.

We just want to make sure we give guidance to the part.

So now we're going to move into Wes Newton. We're looking at the intersection of River Street and Auburndale Ave. You have one mixed-use building, and then these are all residential. So this gives you a glimpse of what this intersection looks like. It is kind of, kind of like the first example it's as commercial island and mostly residential area That being said, a rezoning of this entire side where it is all being used as residential would entirely isolate this business. So that's something to consider in it. It is a highly visible corner compared to that might be more conducive Your thoughts on this?

This is your award.

I think this is the corner store It is being used as a corner store. It's not as residential. Well, it's actually a dry cleaner. So keeping that because it is a business use now just business use and then the lots on the south of that I would rezone to residential. Now the two lots, the two buildings to the far right there they're pretty new so those aren't going to get torn down anytime soon but the other ones are much older ones and so if they would have been up kind of outside of those other houses, you know, those condos that do if they took the BU zoning and made it residential. It would really stick out being very, very different versus what's there.

So I think all of it should get rezoned, but there's only a potential the two lots to the left that really might have any near-term rezoning. I think the other ones were built like five, eight years ago.

Over here are the two parts I believe you're referring to.

This structure, I think was from 2012 or something around that had a fire and so they rebuilt it exactly the way it was and then the other building there. But if it was zoned BU, Again, BU zoning when you use residential is two to four times more the FAR. A lot more denser in a neighborhood that has residential houses. It's not like there's apartment buildings there.

Councilor Roche had a comment.

First, a question. So just to be clear if they get rezoned from this They can't, the by right gets to be a little taller. A special permit could be substantially taller and the FAR goes down so Collectively, my development opportunity, if I'm understanding this and use small words and speak slowly. The development potential goes down Okay, so one of the things that concerns me and this will be a theme I'll bring to these meetings going forward is being explicit about I have a position on this, but I want to talk about it more generally in process terms.

Being explicit, this committee and then ultimately the council, about how we feel Sorry about that. It was just water. How do we feel about taking away that development potential from property owners? And I thought New Elias was very, very open about this and about the balance between what our zoning goals are and the price in particular. Property owners will pay for that. And we may use the formulation Okay, to take property value from people in order to pursue some of these other zoning goals.

Let's be explicit about that. So in this instance you know, devaluing these properties in order to meet these other goals.

This is contextual. Those are two sitting in a sea of you know one and two and three family homes so from a contextual Point. It's going to stay the same as what it is now versus putting something much, much more denser on that lot four times more dense than what's already there.

Right? Well, already there says the zoning The zoning that would allow them. Oh yeah, it would. So the contextual goal... My point isn't to debate whether or not we need to debate it but my Context is important, and it may be. Let's at least be explicit that someone will be paying the cost in terms of their property value to achieve those contextual goals.

Let me just comment on that because I think it's a sensitive point and an important one. My sense of the framing, however, is that the value of these properties is a function of what the zoning allows. There's nothing inherent here and part of what we're wrestling with is what is the appropriate zoning arrangements. And there are some situations where We may change the zoning so someone has more opportunity than in the past. We did that with the village center districts, for example. They were much more limited and we had more and more opportunities to develop there because we thought it was in the public interest. and I think the point is that anytime we make a change there may be some impacts on potential value but again, the question is what is the community interest that we're trying to serve? and we're going to have that debate regardless, I think.

So two quick points on this. One is, I just want to be explicit about it, right? Zoning, special permits can be wealth creation or wealth destruction events, right? And when we do wealth creation, it's a win-win. We say The village centers, we win if they're denser. It's a win-win because if you increase the assessed value of property there's more tax revenue right? In the case of a down zoning It is not a win-win, it is a win law because you're doing value destruction. So there is a difference between those two things

I don't want to get into that conversation tonight, but I appreciate it. I just disagree with the framing. I have to say that.

are assessed on their value of the house itself and their finishes and things like that. And you get an assessed value on them. And generally, the houses are sold 100 or $200,000 over assessed value. Now if you want to develop it with much denser Then someone may pay more, but the rest of the houses in the neighborhood are going to be valued like this. So I don't think they bought this house because it's a BU Zoning, and I hit the jackpot. And when I'm ready to do it, I can sell it for four times more than all my neighbors.

Hang on folks, we're going to try and get through. Councilor Roche, I appreciate the point There's a choice that we make. And if there's a change in the zoning, that means you can build less than you could before. That affects the values. We've done that in this council time and again. The FAR that we adopted many years ago reduce the value of opportunities to build. We've taken the height that you could put on a property and we said, you can do less of that. So we do this all the time. The question is what is appropriate in the context? I don't think we should ignore the impacts, but I disagree with the term taking because that has a constitutional effect. Well, I didn't use that term. No, I just want to be clear about it. There is a change likely in the anticipated value that you might be able to sell it for if you had less opportunity, right? and that's what we're trying to wrestle our way through.

And we've heard time and again from community residents about their concerns about what is the built environment of the city, so but we will have that conversation I'm sure. and simply because I know you will be part of it. So let us stipulate that that is a Background music, and then we can go on for a while. Okay. All right.

So I think the only other comment that I'd like to make is that we're looking at the zoning assignment as of today And I actually, you know, in terms of when we go further into this deck, I will speak to one specific Ward 8 example. How did this law even get its designation? Because historically it's fallacy And historically, there was sort of a description of a specific lot that may not have necessarily met that use. So it evolved to this designation. So there needs to be and we are at the parcel level right now A deeper dive to appreciate maybe this was a corner store originally way back when. And so that's the kind of appreciation that we will have to get to in order to understand what it is. I actually sort of see this as a misalignment, that the zoning designation may or may not suit that parcel.

I'll just say as a historical matter we had many years ago actually realigned some zoning In residential areas, there were two families where the whole pattern was single family and we made

I want to ask him to replay it for us.

Those are Dahmubed, but I want to just get clarity about where we give direction to the planning department on this.

So maybe this will help us get there by not helping at all. The reason for that is that I think I'm personally a little bit of two minds on this corner. It being sort of on the edge of Ward 3 and Ward 4, it's a corner that I pass a lot and Taylor was there It does have quite a kind of lovely historic character in this intersection, and it reminds me a little bit of the intersection that's just down the road in River and Lexington. where there's sort of a bakery and a little restaurant like we used to be the old corner store joke shop and that kind of thing. And to the degree that we zone for what we want to see, I'm wondering what zoning allows that kind of character to be, you know, have this the kind of neighborhood corner store coffee shop pastry shop

character that seems, that this suggests to me was at some point the historic kind of nature.

This is too much from Westman Square which has it and we rezone our village centers or VCOT for what we want to see you know first floor retail and things like that This is just two blocks away, kind of an outlier I see it. And those other two buildings, they were very old buildings. I don't know what the age is in that. So they've been residentials for quite some time, 150 years. except for that one right there, which I'm fine leaving as the corner store type of thing.

on the bottom to the right are fairly recently redeveloped, right?

Oh no. So that one right there, it burned down and they rebuilt it exactly what it was like before. I was wishing we would rebuild it a little nicer looking. but it had a fire.

But I'm wondering if like I, for whatever reason and I didn't quite follow our choices were kind of basically between the MR and SR options. But like, I'm wondering if it's like that triple decker in that two to four armadillo lab photo on the right. Would an MRT zoning for that parcel produce a better preservation likelihood?

I mean, it's totally out... The MRT is... is specifically for going from the village centers and going into the residential neighborhoods. This is two blocks away from the Village Center, and there'll be a single you know a lot so no not MRT. Now that's another discussion somewhere else about what we can do to try to preserve these other homes which we will have at a later date but making that lot MRT That's not the purpose of MRT.

Can I ask a clarifying question? I think we're using MR and MRT interchangeably.

So just to move us along here, because it's 9 o'clock and I want to get us out of your decent hour. But Kalis reminds me that we do have a bedtime for all of us. And the planning director has to drive an hour. So the conclusion here, as I hear it is that this might make sense to return to residential use. Am I hearing that? from the Councilors as well?

On the south side of the street. The one has a business there, like a corner store and I would just keep it.

It's a dry cleaner. As soon as that dryer closes, it's not sticky.

So the next step would be a public hearing to rezone?

Well, the conclusion is that these would be beneficially rezoned to residential rather than commercial. Then ultimately, when we get through this, we're going to have a menu of specific sites. Just note it for now. But I'm not going to sign a public hearing where you don't have a docket item for that yet. A longer term process. These buildings are not going to be redeveloped tomorrow, but the point of this docket item initially was we have a misalignment in certain places and what does that misalign look like? And can we fix it or should we fix So at least this is a, as we carried forward on this, as a candidate seems appropriate for reads in some context. The others so far have not. Did we jump to Oak Hill Park?

So, Councilor Farrell can participate.

Oh sure we can again the department's got a whole menu here but

What I'm going to suggest is that

We had a clearer conclusion I thought in the first item to leave it alone.

No, no on the first site we're going to move into residential. 1295 Boylston and

I want to confuse you all by my poor summary, but I thought we had come to a clear resolution on

The first one we resolved, the next two or three. Now we're here.

Okay and so this one is kind of a at least Councilor Dahmubed is not We're still on the fence. Okay, so let's just flag that it's not this resolve. That's all I want to get through the high level.

Would you like to jump out? Yes. Yeah. Are you going to stay the whole time? Keep moving.

If you're comfortable and Councilor Cato is comfortable, then let's stay in order.

Thank you. I appreciate the consideration.

Your colleague in the board looks happy.

Just quickly, I do want to address a couple of things based on all the comments and I know I'm not going to catch everything but one important consideration is multifamily always required So that's just something to keep in the back of your minds. It's a different level of purview depending on what they want to read about us. um and then the other thing is you know we're, we obviously put a lot of information on these slides and we tried to cover it from different perspectives knowing different counselors will value different things, you know historic value versus existing heights. So if there's any follow-up questions or anything we're happy to walk through those in more detail. So now we're going to move over to the corner of Washington Street and Watertown Street, where you have this one parcel that is currently a single family house. It's right here. You can see it's

Watertown, and Washington. So it's very much a commercial area. The house itself is subject to NHC oversight because of its age and it is kind of a transition area. It does help with the buffering, you can see the single residence zone in the dark yellow that's SR2 I believe or sorry, SR3 to the north. So it does kind of help buffer before you get to that busier area on the other hand is a clearly residential use currently I think

So I think that will actually get rezoned as residential. It's been residential for 120 years. The corner lot, I mean, I believe it as such but that kind of seems a little bit as an outlier because that whole street is all residential. I mean, you do have business on the south side of the street but you could've just stopped at the gas station. But The One House has been there forever The women that live there do a nice job, nice flowers, the whole bit.

We should do it based on who's there, but I like this as residential.

Well, it's a nice house and it's sort of a shame to see.

Well the thing is the other two houses that the next house on the corner there at 77 Davis. You know, they bought the house being next door to another house and now that turns down and comes up to a four-story building. That really changed what, you know... they bought into. And so this is kind of, you know, leaving it as such. Now the foreign one can get higher and everything too because that's business use. It was a special firm but they could take that down and build that up

But the consensus is that this one is appropriate to result.

953, yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions?

It gets a little bit to Councilor Rich's point, but sort of more granular and personal. These are kind of big decisions about like in this case an individual family's life. Do we go and talk to them? Do we, is there public engagement that occurs as part of this process?

Public hearing. If we decide we want to do it, we're going to have a public hearing.

Okay, great.

And they'll be... Oh yeah!

Okay, wonderful.

Great. Let me be explicit about it. The public hearing formal notice is done through the conventional process of a public hearing, but if a specific parcel was involved My experience has been that people are affected by that or aware of it, and either the councilor is making them aware or they're aware indirectly. And if they want to be heard, they come and talk about it.

We do notice. if a parcel is being rezoned.

I would think so too. It is not state law. You don't have to issue notices to people if their property is being rezone, reason being that it is a community decision in the future of whatever properties may be. So it's not a state law, you might have a local ordinance that requires it but

I think that in the whole VCOD, we didn't notify every property owner what we were doing. It would have been usually impractical to do that. But in a situation where we're going to have

The other thing, you know, people buy their houses. When I bought my house, I didn't check my zoning. I had no idea what I could do afterward. You bought the house, this is what you have, this isn't what you think you can have and then, you Zone BU, and I can build four times more than what's on the lot right now. Most people don't know that.

Understood. Thank you. The point of this story is that the possibility of doing something, it's not the assurances. Okay, are we clear? Then at least this is a candidate. Yeah. Right. All right.

All right, so now we're going to look at another section of Washington Street over where Cross Street and Parsons Street intersect. There are two parcels over here on Cross Street as well as one that's on Washington Strait and one we are sending to you. So this is, it's Washington Street so as a commercial area. It has its well served by transit The structures are predominantly, the residential ones that are there are older so they are subject to the historic mission oversight. It does follow the strategy that was discussed in an anthem of one to two parcels back from Washington Street is owned commercially. Redevelopment is possible due to the proximity to Washington Street. But you do have those limitations by age.

So just another set of considerations.

This is Councilor Brankness and your opinion.

Yeah, so actually The owner of the building with Trader Joe's. Oh, actually, this is Tom Parsons. Oh he purchased the ones on that. I'm just looking. Oh, the MR lots.

This looks like it has a lot of red lights. Red dogs! I know 57, 59 person. The thing we're wrestling with is, these are currently residential uses right? and if they're rebuilt, there are going to be a different kind of residential use. If you want them to be business, they could be business. So the question is what I tend to be residential. In reality,

57, 59 are condos. So that kind of is difficult. You have to buy about three people in order to develop that and 53 cross, or 51 cross. There's a table in the memo. Assessor's Database, and there's no 53 on here.

Oh, I don't see the right ones. Sorry about that. Yeah.

At least the argument that the Parsons, the 57-59 Parsons and the two Cross Street parcels were backed into the neighborhood. The one 1077-79 Washington Street is at least on the corridor. If you're saying what would be the rational piece, it would be to maintain the residential or those residential and maybe leave that one. Is that?

Yeah. I mean, 53. You do keep Washington Street commercial.

I mean 1077 and 79 what is that building? I can't see which one is that? Do we have a picture of that one?

I don't have it in the slides. It's just a house, right?

1077, 1079. I mean it's on Washington Street. Anything on Washington street I don't should stay business.

But there's a sense again of the conversation that at least the parts that are back from Washington Street are appropriate for Makey Residential.

So the one parcel at 53 Cross? It was 53 Cross and 49 Cross, those two, and then 57-59 Parsons Even those within two. I was just commenting that for Adam Street, we would have within two parcels. We maintain the commercial but if you'd prefer to

Well, so right across the street from 5759 is an MR lot. And I think the lots Right along Washington Street might be a little bit deeper than the ones along Adams Street. But right across the street here, this is an MR lot which is closer to Washington Street and this one here is commercial. I mean, B.U. So for...

No. Super clarifying because we were, our understanding was it was one to two back from the main commercial corridor not the street that it's on so I'm just... It depends how

I think the last one. They wanted a different context for this one. Yeah, is an MR lot, which is even closer to Washington Street than that is.

So just to give guidance to the department, we're talking about potentially rezoning 49 Cross and 53 Cross, 57 and 59 Parsons. Am I correct?

I think it was just the 50.

The Cross and then Yeah, 49 and 53. I mean, I think 49 definitely should get resold because it's across the street from an MR lot. 53 is across the street from BU lot.

But they're abutting each other, shouldn't they be?

Piece of this is that 53 looks like it's It's currently a three family. So it's very deceptive in terms of, and it's from the era that is 1890s house so it's been You know that.

Yeah, 1890s. A stark condition right now. No, it doesn't look like an instrument.

So just to move things along, 49 and 53 rezone. Okay, 57-59 Parsons, rezone. And leave 1077-79 Washington Street commercial.

Yeah. What I was going to say, Professor Baker, was I disagree They abut the Trader Joe's lot, and behind it is the Traders Joe's parking lot. And my suspicion is, given the state of the Trader Joe's that there will be an opportunity there that is large enough to consider buying out. And so I think this is a potentially commercial opportunity and so to foreclose that by making it residential now when it will have no impact

So I'll tell you right now, the owner of the building of Trader Joe's has bought out north of that 4143. And the last I heard and he would have to go I think for a special permit but um he was taking oh he already subdivided um the lot and and uh he's going to take he wasn't going to tear down the house he got a lot of Pushback Matt, too. So he's going to take the backyard and use it as part of the parking lot. I'm surprised they haven't gone through this. And then he was going to do the same with 49. And I don't know if He was in negotiations with the P3. But to make it a bigger parking lot and make an exit right out there for Trader Joe's, So that's happening right now.

But I mean, he was in the process of and he's working with Bookbinder to make 4143 which is right now an MR lab, I think. and they're going through to make it power of the parking lot.

So, but again, the question is what is our I think we're pretty clear that 57-59 Parsons doesn't really want to be on a candidate list Lisa, question about 49 and 53 now.

No, 57 I would say we just that's part of 1105 so that's all state SBU because they're on Washington Street.

Yeah 1077-79 Leave that alone, but I'm just talking about we give the kinds to them. So there's a basic question about what's appropriate for 49 and 53. Yep. All right. So at least we've got one candidate rezoning and one question.

And Parsons, rezone? Yeah. Yeah. It's across the street from MR already, and it's the whole street.

Yeah. The two cross-street parcels are uncertain there. That makes sense. OK. All right, are we clear? I just want to move forward if you can. We can come back to anything if we leave no longer time. Again, the hour is ticking away at us. Okay, so next one. Barbara Day.

We are looking at this block between Comab and Auburn Street. You'll notice what's really unusual about this is this parcel is doesn't have the greatest access to anything right now.

It is a fascinating spot.

So it is commercial mixed-use area with some multifamily You can see that this view right here is the only angle you could actually see that building. Otherwise, it's blocked from the other directions. It does meet the 50-year threshold, so it would be subject to that oversight. But it is kind of in this transition zone where it could fall either way.

Can I just... say one thing about the 50-year oversight? All it is, is a speed bump. They can still tear it down. Yeah, they can still turn it up.

Yep. So this is board for

Yeah, I just met with the family that owns the house just next to them. It's an 1890s household barn and so the way that you access this building is uh that white street, narrow street that you can see cut through the block which is a sort of technically public but doesn't feel like it, Little Street. I'm very important about a lot of these. The question we worry about is that if they are

repurchased and sold and made into something because of their business selling much bigger, it would be much more out of context with what's there. That's the Clinton Street-

Given the context of this block, as you can see I don't necessarily know that it should stay residential Yeah, it's a nice old house.

So I would suggest that this one maybe is our candidate for resuming. Is that fair?

284, you think? It was just the one?

Yeah, we kind of disagree. Yeah, it's so curious.

Turn this into a commercial right behind the residential?

It's bizarre.

Well, but the whole block on the other side of it was also all commercial and the anomalous character of this block is actually these couples

This could offer a lot of opportunity for a street-facing business to have storage or something, right?

Not at that particular interval. It would

that actually faces onto major streets. And then you could have, it could be, yeah, stories

I think so. We're trying to get candidate properties for rezoning. We may not do any of them at all, but the department's gone through a good deal of effort to give us some clarity about the context for these So I would like to at least get a preliminary call on this one.

Yeah, because it's Buddy and MR. You know, it's right now... On one side.

One side. And the other three sides are...

BU and BC2.

Yeah, so it's right there.

And it's surrounded by the middle of the block that is BU is also parking. A combo of privately and publicly owned parking.

Yeah, but it's not always going to stay parking. I mean there's talk about- Inshallah. of Housing.

So where are we, folks? Raise a hand. Who wants to change 284?

We're only looking at 284. Who want them to change to residential?

Oh, it's already residential, right?

Well, no.

But it's BU1. That's its designated name. And then it's budding. It's right next to VC2. It's, you know, adjoining and it's MRI too. I think so. All right, there we go.

When in doubt, I give the presumption to the ward councilor who knows what I'm talking about.

Well, we'll say I think because that one's dependent on likely combining with another parcel. It might not be so.

The person who owns 284 owns the BU lot that's along Melrose Ave right up there. So they own both of those.

So it's not worth it. I don't want to go, I don' t want to say the Sound of Pride was not going to be productive. Okay. All right, go to the next one.

So now we're gonna look at Newton Center which includes Four Corners and Newton Highlands awards six and eight. Starting with the four corners, so right up the street where Whole Foods is. We have some parcels down here on Carthay Circle and then up here towards Brentwood Ave. So this is a largely commercial area and it is intersected by the two aqueducts. you know development somewhat limited particularly of that one parcel down there and it does have a nice buffering purpose between the residential and the more heavier uses as you go further down and there also was a very clear delineation so once you get to Brentwood Ave. You see it right here, it quickly

Transitions to Residential.

Can you blow up the map that shows the difference on the one in the bottom left corner? Okay, so we're talking about all the old babies. up there too.

They're here and here so this is basically the back of the Whole Foods parking lot, and because you have those restrictions yeah that's a special apartment Yeah, and then up here you do have this commercial corner and then the residential kind of wraps around it but otherwise it is a commercial corridor. Here I will say these parcels were all redeveloped within the last... That's Carthay.

I would leave those.

Yeah, so... On the south side of Beacon nothing is going to change because those are all brand new or Going to be brand new. The two Brentwood lots rear butt the substantial, well not substantial but commercial buildings, one of which is the Minion. The other, which is Steve Siegel's engineering firm and then The one that's at the corner. My eyes are not great, but is it 542 or something? Anyway, the one that took a corner of Brentwood and Walnut is an office building. It was kind of like residential presenting office building.

Yeah, in 46.

I would say that there's not a whole lot to be gained by changing any of these.

This is... Isn't the point of rezoning it is so that we don't get gigantic The point is that if you don't rezone it, someone could take a business zone parcel and make a very large Clinton Street scale building. right next to a residential zone. That's why we're going through this, not because it can't be commercial use in some context but if it's not Clearly commercially beneficial like it's on a main corridor, which we've talked about as a distinguishing feature, like it was on Adams Street and has a commercial value as a commercial use. If it's really going to be turned into a residential use now and could become a much bigger residential use,

as a right, then it makes sense to rezone it. So we're really trying to make the call on where in fact there is an anomaly or at least are concerned that our current zoning is going to potentially change that into a very different outcome.

So that was my understanding, in which case I do think these should be zoned as residential and not left as business.

Yeah. And if you rezone it as residential, then it's not going to be used for business. It may not have that opportunity much anyway. So the question is just to clear these out and move along, are they circle properties What about those? Yeah.

I'm sorry, leave them... When you say leave them are you saying leave them as business use or...?

Leave them as businesses. They could be converted to residential but the point is they've been have been redeveloped recently. The risk is low, the question isn't where's the trouble?

Okay.

I mean, the rest of that circle is residential. Yeah. Why not?

Yes. See, I would say why don't we make it residential? It is residential.

I just want to get a clarity here on my committee.

No, the only thought that I have is in what we were discussing at the beginning. I looked to the zoning that was presented when we were doing a VCOD. These parcels were not part of the VCOD maintained, you can see the map right here. The two on Carthy Circle were not part, but right on Beacon Street. That's all Priority Street.

Yeah, so 899 Walnut State Business and then 57911 Carthay Circle should be rezoned. Residential. Yeah, and right next door it's MR1.

And I'll say this about... Hang on, wait a minute. I've got to recognize people otherwise we're going to... Come on up front where you can see that I can raise your hand and I can...

So my concern about the destruction of value doesn't apply on Carthay Circle because they picked a dog in this fight. They picked to be residential relatively recently, as has 1062 Beacon. So those three locks, I would not object to changing those to residential. because they don't... They don't, they're not looking to redevelop that anytime. They're not thinking of that as value or wealth.

What was the third one? 1062.

Okay, 1062

So the area south of Beacon would be candidates for results. Okay? Councilor Gordon? Can we put Councilor Gordon's picture up so you can see that I'm hidden behind the map? There she is.

I don't disagree with what Councilor Roach just said. If we're just talking about Brentwood and Carthay, is that correct?

No, right now it's just Beacon and Carthe.

Okay.

Now let's go north and pick up the two, uh, the three parcels of, um, um. Again, award six. Councilor Gordon do you have a preference?

So this is 850-846 Walnut Street and then Brentwood 5860 and all of them.

Oh, well, OK, so if you're looking at the 858 Walnut and the 860 to 862, those are businesses right now. Yeah. and if they wanted to convert those to residential that would be special permit wouldn't it?

So can I clarify the photos are to give you context of the street 858 Walnut and 860 Walnut are not

We're part of the chain. Go one slide. Yeah, I think that might be helpful. So it's two, not the corner where the business is. Okay. The three that wrap around that.

We were talking about the wraparound parcels

At the end, Brentwood and Walnut.

Oh, yeah. So at least there's an argument that 850 Walnut Street is on the major, you know, if it got redeveloped as a residential, a big residential, it's on a major street. But the other two parcels are on minor streets and are part of more residential area and it would seem to me to make sense to take those and make those consistent but that's just my over my you know this is not my award so I'm going to

Well, I agree with if there's residential right there and further down. There's a real estate agent right next door to that but they're in a house So I do think they should be rezoned to residential. Not far away from the street, from the main shopping area.

Move is blown, but any other comment on this?

Baker, the one on Walnut 860 I think that is. That one right as she's pointing out would be

No, it would stay the same. Right now it's residential. I mean, excuse me, it's commercial but it could be a business rather. It's business but could be turned into a large commercial. But because it's on Walnut Street, the exposure there of that is not a big problem. Oh, I see. But the two above it? Yes. OK. All right. Are we agreed on that? Okay, so let's go to the next one.

5860 and 50. Okay. We're nearing the end. No comments. All right, so now we're going to look at Langley Road. You see it's kind of a mix of parcels scattered throughout this area But when you actually look at the context, so it is a commercial area but it's also significantly sized multifamily. It's not two or three family. These are large apartment buildings. Something to consider. The other thing is these two parcels up here are quite small, so you probably would see if those were to turn over, it would be some sort of larger combining of lots most likely not necessarily in itself.

But they said nobody ever.

I've never heard that. You haven't heard of Eastman? It's like Friday 4 from Chestnut Hill.

No, the former city clerk used to say that I was a counselor from East Newton.

We'll make sure they're reading any of the slides for next time.

Anyway, but this doesn't The only parcel that is sort of a bit of an inholding is 13 Jackson. I just wondered about that, but the others are really... Don't strike me as the kind of preservation opportunity. No, no.

I mean this is all of this is Thompsonville. It's a village center so it should stay the BU. Yes. 13 and I But are they all

Oh, they're all being used as water resonance. It should stay the same.

Before 1648 is in the middle of redevelopment. Yeah, something's going on there.

Let's go see, is there anybody who wants to do anything different here? Because if not I'm going to move us

I agree with not doing anything.

And 13 is an outlier anyways, amongst all the BU. I would just say that.

So we're all going to roll over on this already and dig into my heels.

It's a no-brainer.

Prepare to go to battle and nobody wants to play. Okay, we want to move on. All right. Nothing happens and you're not doing anything in Thompsonville. All Right?

Okay. Now we're looking at Oak Hill Park. So this is one where you have this commercial zone in the middle of a residential area. But the interesting thing to point out here is when you actually look at the uses, if you remember we're only pulling lots that were with one-to-three units The only commercial use in this entire block is a little functional on the corner. So just something we want to point out. The other thing I want to highlight is one of these parcels, 10-12 Hanson Road recently went through a special permit being developed under the BU zoning. And then interestingly, when you look at Hanson Road and the surrounding neighborhood where it is in the SR3 zoning We're also seeing redevelopment where it is quite significant massing to what's been done across the street.

But I don't think it was quite the same massing

Because of the BU zone, you can have twice as much massing. And it was a lot more and it was kind It hasn't been a problem going through the session.

That's the Hanson Road that is being... Yeah.

So, Councilor Farrell? You want to come to the table on this one because this is... I know, that's wrong. Do you have any views on it?

I don't know what the difference is with 55, which is at the end. Well, you're right on those three. I thought all four of them was right. Well, this is the big one. The big one, 15.

Yeah, so these... That's why they can build so much.

What we're, again, trying to protect against is someone who takes and builds a very large residential structure as opposed to... And so if you're concerned about that and it's not really, this is not a commercial corridor. This would be candidates for rezoning

This entire building was at one point the only commercial property in Ward 8. and it was the original marketplace. And then they cut it in half, and the right portion towards the top of the screen is now residential but there are some commercial properties There's a pizza place and laundromat.

At 655? Yeah.

Okay, 655. Which you can see in this lower part of the picture I would leave that. And then the corner property here is the Sherman Center, which is a nonprofit organization We're not worried about it. It's just the three of them.

Okay, so who does that?

This is part of this. Let me make sure I get everybody.

I've got three people wanting to talk, but I'm going to recognize Councilor Gordon first because her hand is up and online. And I always miss people online so

Thank you, Chair Baker. I just wanted to say that I met with the residents in this neighborhood and they were extremely upset about what was built there and how Thank you so much for joining us.

from others, so just Councilor Getz and then I'll go to Councilor Rue.

In 19 in 2032 55 Palilla was actually a special permit and I went in sort of here's the original map for Oak Hill Park and they were all designated as residential lots. And then what ended up happening was like in the 19, so then it changed and it went into our are two district residential lots. So those on Hanson, those four lots were all residential and then in the 1950s they were designated as BU1 lots All right, so I always felt that these were erroneously labeled BU1 lots. And it's substantiated by what happened historically. If you look at the progression Look at the original Oak Hill map and then you look at the subsequent maps.

Here's the subsequent where it's the neighborhood general designation, and then R2 designation in the 1950s you understand at some point this got converted to BU1 lots and they actually are I consider a misnomer. They should never have received the BU designation.

That's probably true.

I think that given the commercial and given the scale of the building in the north corner, those three properties would be I'm for larger scale multifamily, smaller units not the condos. And then unfortunately in our zoning, the best way to multifamily apartment buildings is special, permanent and P&U. So I would leave them. I would switch it.

Right now, they could have done that with a special permit because they were BU and they could've made apartment buildings there and they didn't. So they're just gonna make really, really big two condos. And so I would change this to residential. I would too.

One thing I'll also point out, this is where half stories being recognized in residential but not business zones has come into play. So the Hanson Road one that additional What looks like a third story. This is considered a two-story building under the BU zoning because we don't qualify half stories, so It's just another helpful perspective to look at it.

So let's just get clarity on Councilor Dahmubed here.

I'm kind of inclined for basically entirely different reasons than any of them that have been said one just sort of like on the basis of mid-century planning uh that you know whole blocks were typically zoned as as one zone in these kinds of mid-century development projects. And so I'm inclined to preserve the zoning integrity of this block and not kind of change it, recognizing that as repercussions down the road. But yeah, I'm inclined towards keeping it.

This entire neighborhood was created in 1949. Yeah. There was nothing. and there may be 10 or a lot of them left. So I mean, when they planned this in 1949 They built a high school, they had a playground. It was a real interesting community. The houses faced each other on paths not roads that you couldn't drive up.

I'm sure that got changed when they changed the big residence and knocked down half of that commercial center and built that big apartment building. And that's probably when this all became BU, whatever it is. But I would keep those three as residential.

Let me get a sense of the committee on this to be clear. How many folks are in favor of making this the three? Four. The four. I don't know why the fourth one's out, right?

The 55 Koloa, the one that's on the corner is special permitted. There's one on the corner. So there's three, and the one on Under right now, the three that are left on Hansen are the ones we've considered. One on the corner has already been redeveloped.

So it's so hard. I mean, you want to be consistent.

What is its designation? Yeah so i can provide some clarity on this um the way the parcel list was extrapolated from the assessor's records was residential one-to-three units there's certain exceptions built into that and this is a housing authority property on the corner. That's why it didn't get put into that extrapolation.

So I think that partial done But let me get clear, then we have three parcels? Three parcels.

Which ones are we talking about?

18 Hanson, 10-12 Hanson and 633 Sawmill Brook So 55, that's not housing authority.

No, but that's the one that's spacing collective and that's special.

I know, but you can't give me zone.

let's excuse me a second but we just got to get clarity on what we at least most of the committee agreed on so we're talking about the three 18 10 to 12 and 633 yes our committee sentiment anybody dissent I think we move for those. Is there a fourth one now that you want?

And what is that? What did you say about the huddling party?

That's the one next to it.

They own at least one of those parcels over there, maybe a little one.

A little one that's... I just looked it up. That's the housing authority.

The one on the corner?

No, 4749, the little one in between. The big apartment building in the corner. Oh!

There was another... I can look as to why this one was excluded, but it would have had to do with how it's coded in the assessor's database.

Okay so if possible I think we'd want to make that one residential as well right yeah

And they just redeveloped it. But yes, I think you should go to residency.

So now we're back to 55 Kalola because that was the one where... Oh, I thought you were talking about the other one.

I'm just a little bit worried that at this stage, after having done eight or nine rounds of these

Now we're saying, oh, even though it was redeveloped recently, we're actually going to consider changing it. That had been excluded parcels from reconsideration up till this point.

I think it's always been considered.

But we keep just saying, oh, it's just been redeveloped so we'll just not do it.

No, we still did it. We just redevelop over in Four Corners on the south of Beacon Street and a bunch of them were just redevelped

And we left them as they were now. Residential. South of Beacon, we changed those to residential. 762 for sure.

I mean, we dominated them. We haven't done anything.

I thought we were leaving them and I would have disagreed then too. Okay. All right, well then that's fine.

I guess as long as we're being consistent. Oh, well, we're making decisions. So let's go. We can always revisit all of these but we're trying to get down to a candidate class of properties to give help to the departments to do something.

So just as a something is thinking of future uses, so even if something is has recently been redeveloped, just as we've heard in previous discussions. Like something that was changed in zoning back in 1950s, we might take issue with today. People 50 years from now might take issue with decisions that are made today. So you're not planning on this round of what's going to be redeveloped in the next 10 years, it's going Yes, we look at from time to time. But what partials are rezoned as can stay that way for 50, 100 years. So you do have to have a very long view of it. Just I'll get it.

Okay. So are we now... Clear on where we are for this particular question.

Did we do the one on Colombo?

So I can speak to that.

I'm going to go to Galella, okay? Did we just talk about them?

So I'll have to double check. I think the reason that it wasn't captured in the map is because the map captured... residential uses of one to three units and that one is likely four units already. And so, that's why it wasn't mapped just to provide

The corner lot. So we have the housing authority property and then that corner one, if it wasn't 1-3 units, it did not get included.

If it's within the, regardless of the number of units.

Should we include it? Yes.

I might have some insight, so it was approved as a special permit for two units. I'm seeing on the assessor's database there is A master deed. So it does look like there's kind of three entries on the assessor, so perhaps that precluded it from being included.

I'm hearing that regardless of the number of units, there's an assignment to include the parcel. Is that correct? Yes. So are you clear on this one? Can we go to the next one? We'll fix that.

A lot of content here.

So now we're looking at Peabody Street where it meets Washington Street. Kind of a similar situation that we saw earlier, where you have a you know, very busy corridor and then it starts to transition into residential. There is some pretty significant large multifamily with 10 plus stories across the street That being said, we're looking a couple of parcels in. There is some pretty significant massing across from these.

So this is Ward 6. Yeah, there was such a row in the

and the labels.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Well, what's on Washington should say BU on Washington? Yeah.

But I think also on Peter.

Yeah. What about Peabody?

Those two Peabodys problems?

Again, remember we're talking about the possibility not that this is likely to be made commercial so much as it may be So that's the policy choice.

So, so the thing is 2123 and 2527 is across the street from a big commercial building So it's not like it's across the street from other houses.

They back up to residential houses?

No, but general.

You know, I mean again this is uh we don't have a word one counselor here so um they back up the mixed use.

Yeah so if you go to the used chart So red is commercial, this golden color is multifamily.

Right. So again, anybody on committee want to include these? If not, we can move on.

Well, I would change them.

Councilor Gordon?

Sorry, Chair Baker. I would changed the ones on Peabody. I think, yeah.

To me they seem appropriate to as anomalies a bit because they're backing up apparently to residential uses you know It's one thing if you're right on Washington Street, but these are not. So again...

to me they make sense to change but oh you're saying on one side they're backing up to residential yeah I will clarify 34 is mixed use it doesn't read very well on the screen but

there's dots there so that one is a mixed use yeah but 34 it looks like a house might have some businesses in there but it's a more what about the ones as opposed to No, there's more.

I'm Channing. Yeah. Channies are multi-family things. Well they're being allowed to follow whoever you want them.

Yeah see it's the ones that i'm looking at are 30 degrees right? There's right

So folks, where are we at? Let me just get a sense of the committee. These students seem to make sense to me to change with Councilor Gordon. Anybody else interested?

Well they seem like there's four of them right there The two on Channing and then the two on Peavy are all designated BU1. And then they abut MR2, right? That's what we're seeing?

Yeah.

And they're from the 1890s. So this is old in the sense that they predate probably all of the development that happened.

Yeah, they predated the zoning that was placed on it. They were residential from the beginning.

So I'm sort of wondering, you know, why the Channing property is not identified.

The way that it's done horizontally, it's all BU and then The consistency is good.

Meaning to keep them residential?

No, keep them commercial. They're unlikely to be turned into business. The question is again will they turn in the big residential if you're comfortable with that outcome you leave them alone. You know, the chances are they may get redeveloped. The point is this a situation which is an anomaly that ought to be corrected? Councilor Gordon thinks so I think so but i don't hear the rest of the committee

So like 3032 Channing was a two-family from 1880. So it was built in 1880 as a two family, so it wasn't never

Do we want to? Is there a sentiment in the committee beyond the two members who said yes to do this? If not, then I think we ought to move on. As much as it's

I just want to say one thing, which is I think one of these at least as a triple decker. And these look like the kinds of housing that we're hoping that people will build. and so I feel like we should be trying to keep them as opportunities for people to live in Newton that may be at a threshold that somebody can afford, that are certainly probably less than one and a half to $2 million houses. So that to me seems like we should wanna keep those as residential not necessarily knock them down into something bigger and more expensive.

That is persuasive to me, but I'm already there. So anybody else?

The only thought that I'm having is that it abuts MR2, you know, but it's one lot away.

Yes, no.

Oh.

Tell me where you want to go. We've got two people in favor, we've got seven in favor.

I will keep it as well.

There are two that are leaving alone.

I'm torn.

I am, too, because it's so close to the... It's a, you know, one time we could put it on the maybe list.

We're going to have another conversation. I'm trying to eliminate some that we don't want to do and leave the ones that... And so this is in a maybe category, all right? Okay, let's go on.

I apologize for the mislabeling on the bottom of the slides. Okay, now I'm going to officially pass it over to Nora.

Adam Street and Clinton Street and stuff like that. We did those. Yeah, this was everything else.

So let me be clear about at least this portion of where I think we've come, which is you have some relative clarity about the rezoning in the big Ward 1 categories. You did that before. And then you have some categories here where you've got some clarity, pretty much unanimous committee views. Maybe one or another here. That's all right. And then a member not on the committee but but at least a fairly strong sentiment. And then, a couple of maybes like the last one we did. So I think what we would look for is to maybe go back and take another look at the maybes, and then pull together sort of a comprehensive package on the changes that would be made because at that point, and then just bring them to the committee one last time to maybe think about what we would take to a public hearing. Because all of this is moot unless we actually do something.

So we have to figure out when you would be ready to get a package ready to put to a public hearing for these site-specific rezonings, right? Does that make sense? And so it's not that you have to do it for the next meeting, but that's where we would have to go with this. And at the meeting where we discuss it I would like to sort of get a sense of the committee that we would move forward on the ones that we agreed to resolve the questions of the uncertainties and then send it out for public hearing, and then we decide what we do with it. Thank you very much. Potential, leaving aside the height problem of the Clinton Street outcome is not replicated in other parts of the city because we haven't had an opportunity to fix the zoning.

Okay. Now, is everybody okay with that as a process so far? Okay. All right. Then as far as the other question which we'd asked you to look at is the special permit criteria which is There are some situations where we would leave the loaning alone, but somebody comes in for a special permit. The special permit is going to have some criteria that allows context to be considered, and you all have come up with including the proposed dimensions. So I want to give you a chance to explain that part of it if you would.

Absolutely. Um, so I will just quickly read the existing finding. So the city council shall not approve any application for a special permit unless it finds that the application meets all the following criteria. And the first of that criteria currently is, the specific site is an appropriate location for such use and then in legal language they don't like to do this but and or structure. So we met with the law department. We went with our counterparts in the current planning team division and came up with the addition of including the proposed dimensions. I know this is a little bit different than what we have talked about in June and I want to talk us all through those discussions.

We originally started saying based off of the existing context or exploring language of that nature and As we thought of how that could apply to different areas, we've seen many tonight. The context isn't always the same and it isn't desirable. And so if you go to the next slide, I think the perfect example of this is Four Corners where We have one three-plus-ish story office building. We've got that very short, flat strip mall typology. We have a gas station. And so we didn't want to create language that would put the land use committee in a bind, having to make a finding that A proposal meets the existing context in terms of its dimensionality because that existing context isn't necessarily uniform or desirable.

And so, that's how we landed on this language of for the proposed use and structure, including the proposed dimensions to add explicit consideration of the scale and massing as it relates to the location and give greater attention to the dimensional compatibility.

And that's all. Well, thank you. I have a question just on this. My is this a special permit criteria only for the business use Thank you. Thank you very much. but you're recommending this is across the board. The second part is if that's, The context does, however, matter in some contexts. I mean if I can be permitted to use the term twice. If you were talking about a holy like the Clinton Street example

You would look at that and say, that context is clearly small scale residential around it. We would not have wanted to have a big building there. And so the question is Does this get us to the ability to legitimately consider the surroundings as opposed to just saying it's big?

Yeah, so I think if you look at the first part of the sentence which maybe I should have bolded the word location instead this is asking the question is the massing appropriate for this location and so I would Hope that in the Clinton scenario, the massing, the location and the massin would have been considered and inherently that's contextual.

And all says this is fine then, right?

Yeah. When you have them with this language, you never know. Do we get down the line as much as we could get a stamp of approval for the purposes of our VA?

No.

Oh, no.

It's basically game over, right? So if you object to a special permit application there's the hook you hang your hat on. regardless of where you want to go, right? So you can be saying it's appropriate location. It's context not context if you don't like the proposed dimensions as a city councilor which is fine. It just kind of nullifies our special permit criteria into anything goes, but that's number one. Number two is I think there are enough concerns about our special criteria that I would encourage them to look at special criteria more broadly. We don't currently talk about housing. We don t currently talk climate, which would also be valuable criteria to some of us so I think one tweak to special permit criteria

is not the right way to go at this point. I know it solves that particular problem, the clean street. So one is basically if you I also think that it would be time to look really at the special permit criteria more comprehensively to address housing and climate issues. specifically.

OK, thank you for that. For our purposes tonight however I think we have to respond to the department's recommendation. I do think context is an appropriate element. And if this gets us closer to that, it seems to me a wise decision to have. We've seen that members of the council can object to special permits for all sorts of reasons.

Right, I think it's spanked by the chair reviews for saying you haven't hung your hat on a particular hook.

Well, never mind. I did no disrespect to that point but separate from the one I think we have to respond to here. So, I appreciate the departments. I would've preferred something a little more explicitly representing the context but I understand where The issue is where the context is not clear. And so you're saying this gives you the ability to make those decisions, even in the context unclear situation as well as a context-clear situation.

I'll just clarify, I don't think we have a formal recommendation. The current planning folks were a little on the fence about this. but we really wanted to make sure we were giving the committee what was asked.

So let me, essentially committee I would prefer to have something more rather than less. Oh excuse me.

Yeah um i guess i don't see the problem with explicitly referring to context because the context in, I don't know how often it even comes up where it says diverse is four corners. But if the context is that there's no consistency, you would not use context. But in the cases where the context IS consistent then you could use it. So I guess I don't see the problem with

I have to agree with you, but I'm interested in getting a sense of the committee. So how are other members of the Committee feeling?

I have to sit with this for a little bit because I think that I hear what Councilor Roche is saying in terms of it feels incredibly broad. To me, it sort of feels as if It's an opportunity to nullify, you know, to be able to say just because... A special permit is discretionary any time.

So it's a question of whether You want the criteria to include context in some way, this is a backdoor way of doing it as I hear from the department. Okay now you may disagree with that But it seems to me that that's why we asked them to do this, because there was a situation where you could have a special permit being granted under the current zoning and if you say look it meets all of the, is certainly appropriate for the site but its impact on the neighbors as such that You know, we're not considering the context and this is an attempt to do that. I would prefer what Councilor Malakie has indicated but i'm just one member of the committee so i'm trying to get a sense of the committees I agree with you, Chair Baker.

and so I like the idea that this is a way to consider context but I'm inclined not to lean towards this as the way to do it because this doesn't feel like The right tool for achieving that. And I understand that it might be tricky to figure out what the right tool is, but this doesn't feel like it to me.

Okay. I just wouldn't mind seeing other options. So I think let's do this. The next iteration, come back, I would like you to take a look at the context. There may be other jurisdictions that have done something in that line. and if there's a way to think about it. And I think it's actually going to be a relevant consideration for some of the work we're going forward because part of the difficulty with the whole teardown conversation is, again, the context Some places it works, some places it doesn't. And we've heard that already. I would entertain at this point, if the sense of the committee is that we would like to at least see some alternatives along Councilor Kalis' point to this language but to accomplish the same objective. before we make a decision on it, then I would like to do that. Is that OK with the committee?

Yeah.

Yeah, Councilor Kalis? Move hold on the item. Hm?

I'm going to move hold on .

Yeah, but let me just finish that point. All right, you agree? All right. Let's try and give direction to them.

They're, you know, they get paid less than we do. So never mind.

I think I would just add that if somehow we're saying consider context, there should be a system of criteria for understanding what about that context we're considering. We have some places where we say the setback should be the average of the parcels adjacent, so that seems like the kind of reasonable dimensional consideration that gets built into how do we actually consider context as opposed to a sort of big broad think about the context. Well, the context is the Boston reading or what you know so

all right so we uh with that the thought that there's more specificity sometimes is helpful you know not necessarily exclusive but guidance um so I will now entertain Councilor Kalis' motion. Okay, and I want to commend the department on this before we vote just because i think they've spent a lot of time trying to go through some very site-specific and giving us the sense of the criteria that they did. I really didn't quite understand the light system until you explained it, but now I do. It was very helpful. Was really quite helpful. And I think that we should Now, we have two other items that are before the committee which are very minor and easy to dispose of.

But nonetheless, we have to talk about and at least decide what we do. And let me explain. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. You're absolutely right. There was a motion to hold but no vote. All those in favor of holding say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Okay. The last two items are items which I'm just going to read them. First was item 8426, discussion of the impact of recent ordinance changes on costs and new growth and then the other is discussion of parcel amendment to the 60% facade build-out ordinance. These I wanted to bring to the committee just to get a sense of the scope because they are both They require a significant amount of work and figure out where we're going. And because Councilor Kalis was the lead doctor on both, I mentioned to him that the opportunity

We had was to try and figure out some ways to make some specific issues available to the department carry forward with analysis because these are so big. So for example, conflict between the tree ordinance and the water runoff. Stormwater, where you have two positive objectives but inconsistent Kalis and I'm going to take a motion to hold both of these items just to say something about where you would like to see these go or if they can be the subject of specific docket items later. But I think that the point is that there's embedded in here maybe some specifics that you want to consider at some point.

Thank you for your time. that tension and then we can discuss how to approach it. and then maybe we have an outflow of other items versus this. Okay.

For now, I'll hold it. All right. and then the build out ordinance, we just haven't had enough experience I think yet to give you a good answer on that.

I want to just articulate why I live on an odd shape lot and when this passed at the last minute, I kind of was like oh, I didn't feel like we had discussed it And so I call around and I know that I talked to Councilor Wright who said, yeah, we did discuss it. And I don't know if I was pulling a functional item out. but then I did talk to somebody in planning who's not here and they were like, and I gave them some examples. And their answer was well I didn't sit well with you. And I started thinking, you know, I'd like to have more of a robust discussion around these odd shaped bots and how it does impact them so we just know Clearly what we've done.

And we haven't heard anything, you're right, which is great. But that's why I brought it up.

The other... There have been some special permits come in for the 60% desaturation, but those were regular lots. And they wanted to do... Well, the ones I saw... Elliott Street. Okay, so there have and there was always that option. But taking a look at those What's coming in for a special permit would help, but they can always do a special format for those.

Yeah so just in preparation to have a quick look at those there's been three and at least two of them it was It surprised me, but it makes sense now that I've seen it. It has to do with the combination of the facade ratio and how we're now measuring height from existing grades so some of them they look like one story from the street but then because they're adding an addition on a sloped lot, they're technically two stories so they're not exempt from the facade ratio and so that's why they need a special permit. Not an odd-shaped lot, but a different kind of maybe unintended consequence of two ordinance amendments.

So let me go answer...

Real quick, I think that the lot that Ms. Clull is talking about is a great example and I think the problem is that the compounding effect of the basement and the facade width And I think had we given guidance, we being planning and land use to say this is what's more important and seek relief here. We would have gotten a better outcome. And I and perhaps might be useful for zoning and planning to say facade ratio is more important than the basement measurement, and therefore encourage folks on an odd-shaped lot to abide by the Saab ratio and seek relief in the other division. And I think they were seeking relief in backward priority, you know?

I don't know if that's our function to give guidance as much, but maybe so. So we have sort of two outputs here, but at least the first one you would like some examples of potential ordinance conflicts. And then in the second situation just to take a look at the special permit or the odd checked lot and see if there are any adjustments to the ordinance that make sense, We're going to have a whole battery of things, but I just wanted to get this on the table because there are some things that I think are going to consume the committee, especially with some state

and all sorts of stuff coming down. So I can't promise when this will come back but at least we have some sense We might go with this, I think. Is that fair? Yes. Okay. Are you all clear on what we're doing?

Just for the cost of new growth, do you want an example of a permit all the way through? to see kind of the compiling impacts or just

My recommendation is the friction point of two ordinances which seem to conflict with each other because otherwise you're going to have a huge job

We're already working on something similar to that, so it wouldn't be a piglet. But I just wanted to get...

It's like a pig let go for it, but otherwise I... I think we should...

have where the conflicts are because I think there might be a bunch of them and then we need to pick which ones.

I'd like to start with the conflicts and then go to the Goal, if that's all right. Just because again part of the challenges in time and effort you all are putting and I want to try and allocate that too. So do you want to move hold on both items?

Yes but I think we should talk a little bit more

A motion to hold.

All those in favor will say aye on both items. Aye. Opposed?

Thank you very much. and thank you all for being so patient and sticking around. And also our very We're so glad you're here and hoping to get home. Gordon, thank you very much for coming.

Thanks for watching!