Land Use Committee

And now to declare this meeting of the Land Use Committee in order. Please note that pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation. We'll post an audio recording, audio video recording. This is roll call. Councillor Davis? Here.

Sait, here, Councilor Wilson, present, Councilor Ewen-Campen, here, Councilor McLaughlin, here, with all Councilors present we have quorum.

Thank you very much. We have a few items on the agenda today. We do have a request to take the 90 Washington Street items out of order. Mr. DeMose has a plan to catch. So we'll do that. But before that, I'd like to move to approve the minutes. Any discussion on that? Seeing none, please call the roll to approve the minutes.

And on acceptance of agenda item 1, 25-1710, approval of the minutes of the Land Use Committee meeting of November 6, 2025. Councilor Davis?

Yes.

Councilor Sait? Yes. Councilor Wilson?

Yes.

Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

Councilor McLaughlin?

Yes.

Those are accepted.

All right. I'd like to move to take items 7, 8, and 9 out of order. Seeing no discussion on that, please read those items.

And that brings us to Agenda Item 7, 8, and 9, 25-1595, requesting approval of an amendment to the Memorandum of Agreement between the City Council. and Redevelopment Authority regarding the redevelopment of 90 Washington, 25-1596, requesting approval of the development objectives for the redevelopment of 90 Washington Street, and 25-1605, Executive Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, conveying a summary of the 90 Washington process review and development objectives.

Excuse me. And let's do item six as well. Forgot that one.

in Agenda Item 625-1594 requesting approval of the amended 90 Washington Street Demonstration Project Plan.

All right, so we got a presentation about this at the last meeting. We had a public hearing. Mr. Demers is here to answer any questions. Does anyone on the council have any questions or comments right now? Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, I just wanted to say I don't have any questions. I'm in support of these changes. I think they make sense based on where we are. They'll help us move forward. All right.

Any further discussion? Seeing none, I agree and would like to make a motion to approve. Let's see which items. I guess we can just approve all four of them. If there's no objection to that.

We would mark the agenda item 9, sum for discussion is work completed, but 6, 7, and 8 can be.

Very good. So I'd like to move to approve item 6, 7, and 8 and mark item 9 work complete. Please call the roll. Are you going to say something?

Sorry, did I just glitch out on you? Nope, go ahead, finish what you were saying, apologies.

If you have no comments, please call the roll.

And on the approval of agenda items 6, 7, and 8, Councilor Davis?

Yes.

Sait? Yes. Councilor Wilson?

Yes.

Councilor Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

And Councilor McLaughlin?

Yes.

Those items are recommended to be approved.

All right. Thank you. Have a nice flight. Let's go back to the regular order business. So we have a few items here on the agenda. We had a public hearing. A lot of them we cannot vote on just yet because the planning board has not made their recommendations but I'm going to open them up for discussion if anyone had any questions and I do believe In terms of the citizen petition, we might have the representative of that citizen's petition here for discussion. Let's just go through the agenda. Could you read item number two?

Agenda item 225-1554, requesting ordainment of an amendment to multiple sections of the zoning ordinance to make pre-submittal meetings optional for most permits and to improve clarity and consistency.

Does anyone on the council have any questions or comments about this item? Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Mr. Chair, just a procedural note, and I know you're aware of this, but for things that the planning board hasn't yet but we anticipate will soon offer something something we've done in the past is we recommend them out of committee and then they're just before the council that way we don't have to come back to committee to do it you can also just discharge them I'm in support of this and the next one

Yeah, I think we could do it either way. I was thinking to just liaison Yasmeen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Yasmin Radassi, Legislative Liaison with IGA. My understanding is that because at the public hearing, the committee opted to keep public comment open until the 21st, which is tomorrow. that we cannot take action and the clerks can correct me if I'm wrong but we cannot take any action to recommend approval or any action until the public comment period has closed because technically the public hearing is still open please if anyone That was my understanding, though.

I think that's correct. And the other thing I was going to say is if we approve it tonight, it'll come on the next city council meeting and we won't be able to really vote on it until the December 11th meeting. So I would just leave it in committee and then we can discharge it out at the December 11th full council meeting but if no one has any questions I'm going to leave this one in committee. How about item number three? Does anyone have any questions or comments? So do people anticipate voting in favor of that? Leave that one in committee. Item number four. Please read that one.

And that brings us to agenda item 4, 25-1539, 12 registered voters requesting a zoning map amendment to change the zoning district of 363 Highland Ave from Mid-Rise 4 to Mid-Rise 5 and from MR4 to... Mid-Rye 6 and 110 Willow Avenue MR4 to MR6.

So Councilor Davis is raising his hand to recuse himself?

I'm recusing this item as I am a butter to the Highland Ave. Properties.

Alright, we have Mr. Adam Dash in attendance in the audience, if we could upgrade him to a panelist. If anyone has any questions or comments about this item, I'll see you on camera.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, I was interested if the city staff has any feedback on this, any context, any thoughts.

Yes, thank you. Mr. Bartman is in attendance. Does the planning department have any comments on this item?

Yes, Mr. Chair, thank you. For the record, Dan Bartman, the planning director of PPC. We do support the map change. We've also met with the applicant and talked about some Urban Design Goals for the future development that might come from changing the zoning on these parcels. So generally speaking, we support the map amendment. We are in contact with Eversource, the property owner of 110 Willow, and are awaiting feedback from their real estate department to find out if they would like to have their property upzoned or not.

and Mr. Chair, through you, if I may. So obviously we're in a, you know, the ward councilor's recused, so I'm just kind of have basic questions here, but... I know that there's been a ton of work on a Davis Square overall plan. I think we were also told at the public hearing that the incipient neighborhood council is supportive of this and that there have been a number of neighborhood meetings. I don't know, does planning staff have any kind of context on those conversations or has that just been between the developer and the neighborhood council?

Through you, Mr. Chair, to my knowledge, that's been between the Neighborhood Council and the developer at this point. We have not met with the Neighborhood Council yet. ourselves. But we know generally that there's been support for the map change. And this is kind of on the edge of the commercial core. while some decisions are still pending related to the plan that we've been working on for some time now. So... I would say that fate of the Corps is still a decision to be made in the near future, hopefully.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, I'll just say we have not received any Negative public feedback on this. It's been represented to us by the developer that there's neighborhood support, which, you know, take with a grain of salt. It's coming from the applicant, but I presume that that is... accurately reflects the meetings they've had with the neighborhood council. So that all being said, I'm interested to hear what my colleagues have to say and await a recommendation from the playing board.

Any further questions or comments from the committee? That's Councilor Wilson.

Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yeah, this one seems like the sort of development that we generally hear from constituents we want to see near transit. Seems like a much better use of land and what we currently have there. I particularly appreciated What we heard in terms of a willingness to maintain, I'll say improve upon the access to the community path that we've seen in that site. That's been something I've heard a lot from constituents. So, yeah, to me it seems like this is the sort of development that people want to see in the city.

Any other comments?

I'll just add that this is a plot of land that I have passed by most of my life, and it's been the same thing for many years, and... Thank you for watching. and we can discharge it at the December 11th meeting. If there's no further discussion, Councilor Sait?

Through the chair, I was just going to add that I'll be in support of this as well, and we'll be waiting for the planning board's recommendation. I just had... I guess this one thing that was mentioned, is that the Willow Ave owner... We have not yet heard from them if they're interested in upzoning. Is that what Director Barman just said?

I believe so, but I'll let him clarify.

Yeah, if you could clarify that, like how does that, yeah, like what's the process from here?

Mr. Bartman?

Through you, Mr. Chair, we are in regular contact with Eversource. We actually have monthly meetings with them and the engineering division. So I reached out to that contact. and explained the proposal to them and what the timeline was and what it meant for them and what their land use was and they took that information and are now meeting with their legal and real estate department. They know that There's a deadline for voting after closing the public hearing and I expect to hear feedback from them in short order. Next week is Thanksgiving so it might be the following week but I expect to hear back from them.

Thank you for adding that director through the chair. Yeah, this is helpful just to make sure no votes are taken until we hear back from them. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no further discussion, this item will be left in committee. Next item.

This brings us to agenda item 525-0085 of the Director of Planning, Preservation, and Zoning Draft Amendment to the Zoning Ordinances for Transit-Oriented Height and Density Bonuses for Additional Affordable Housing and Other Enumerated Community Benefits.

And Madam Clerk, this is the last item on the agenda, right? Correct. Okay. We have Samantha Carr, Land Use Analyst, present. Ms. Carr, did you have any updates for us?

Thank you, Chair. Just had a couple of quick updates to the maps we shared at the last land use committee meeting based on feedback we received from a few committee members.

All right, take it away.

Hi, everyone. Hope you're doing well this evening. Just had a quick presentation to go through a couple of map updates since our last discussion here. Next slide, please. So in terms of points of feedback we heard at the last land use committee session, kind of two pieces were being teased out. One was talking about Adding some urban residential parcels to contextually buffer or transition between existing neighborhood residential properties and parcels that are being proposed for mid-rise upzoning, primarily off of the core streets of Medford and Pearl Street.

Thanks for watching!

As well as looking to expand the small business district overlay in the core of Gilman Square to ensure the area has a variety of sizes of commercial spaces to support small and independent businesses and enhance the pedestrian experience through the streetscape. I did have one slide here talking about small business district overlay just to provide a bit of additional context in terms of when that tool comes into activation. So the small business district overlay can be placed over any zoning district. However, its impact will be felt differently based on whether that parcel is designated neighborhood or urban residential versus mid-rise. In the neighborhood and urban residential district, what this overlay district allows is it permits commercial spaces for small businesses. but it does not require them. So this provides a bit more flexibility for the owners of the parcel to consider using their residential spaces to have small businesses

including home-based ACE uses for arts and creative enterprise as well as some small commercial spaces and fresh food services. When we think about the other zoning districts, this can be applied to in terms of mid-rise and outside the context of Gilman Square, but high-rise and commercial district as well. Once the overlay district is placed on any of these parcels Commercial spaces for small businesses will be required when any new principal building is constructed with the exception of the apartment building type, which is designated to not have any commercial uses within its typology. Once we get into this category, there's kind of two permutations of paths. So one is if the building width is less than 100 feet. Only one ground floor commercial space to a maximum of 35 feet of that width is permitted.

So in terms of activating the overlay district, this comes into effect for buildings greater than 100 feet in width. After this threshold, 50% of the commercial spaces must be 20 feet or less to break up the commercial spaces on the streetscape and provide smaller spaces for local and independent businesses to frequent. So I just wanted to highlight this for folks. We have updated the maps to include the overlay district at a larger scale across the core of Gilman Square. But wanted to add this as a point of clarification that it will be for buildings that are greater than that 100 foot width threshold where it will be activated to start having these smaller commercial spaces come online.

Davis, you had a question?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to Ms. Carr for this. I actually just wanted to add a little historical Context, and only because this question has come up to me from constituents, and so to the extent that might help clarify and avoid confusion if folks are watching this, thinking about it, the small business overlay For folks who may be familiar with our old zoning or at least sort of the way things have always been, it was primarily sort of created to to account for the loss of what used to be called the neighborhood business zone, which was like, you know, think of three quarters. Speaking of Ward 6, up Highland Ave, up College, from Davis Square to Powder House, where there's lots of dentists' offices, right? Or a real estate office.

And so it was, you know, when we got rid of the neighborhood business zone and those all became residential, it was a way to still allow those types of, you know, in-home businesses or small businesses along those lines. So that's why it first came into place. It wasn't expanding. It wasn't really intended to expand commercial use or anything like that. It was just a sort of and so on. Small and medium-sized commercial spaces in core areas if we were to put it in place there. That's the history behind the two aspects of it. The one was just to

and so on. Thank you.

Please proceed.

Thank you, Chair. If we could advance to the next slide. I just wanted to share the four upzoning scenarios with a few updated features here on the maps. And I have included the four maps seen previously at our last meeting in the appendix for a point of reference for folks and did just want to reiterate that these are not formal proposals and these are being used as tools to catalyze conversation within the committee at this point in time. Next slide please. So scenario one remains unchanged from last week. This is the scenario closest based to feedback received from the Gelman Square Neighborhood Council during initial conversations around an upzoning in Gelman Square. So this is really looking at a concentrated upzoning of mid-rise mixed-use development along the core streets of Medford and Pearl Street.

directly adjacent to the train station. So no substantive updates have been made here on this scenario since the last conversation to preserve existing conditions as closely as possible to the Gilman Square Neighborhood Council's proposal. If I go to the next slide. So scenario two here is building upon that framework and is also starting to take into consideration urban residential parcels within the quarter mile walk shed. So you can see those extending on the west side of Medford Street. as well as along the Marshall and School Street corridors within the quarter mile zone. The two changes that have been made here are expanding the small business district overlay in the central portion of Gilman Square. So you'll see the black overlay district on the maps here is extending from the west side of Medford Street

to the east side of Pearl Street up to the point where MR6 parcels have been recommended, as well as a urban residential transition band of parcels have been added on any lots that are falling between proposed mid-rise properties and existing neighborhood residential parcels. And for the purposes of allowing this to create viability for new development Those are often seen in blocks of two or three parcels together. So, for example, if you see here on Pearl Street, on the east side of Pearl Street, we've got five parcels proposed for MR6 upzoning. The backing parcels of those, they'll see three UR parcels to the right side and two UR parcels to the left to allow a little bit of... Depth to those lots to be considered for consolidation and redevelopment under urban residential.

So similar strategy was taken for any areas that now have this quote-unquote UR transition band. Go to the next slide. So scenario three is building off scenario two. It's extending the UR parcel designation slightly beyond the quarter mile walk shed up to the Broadway corridor along Marshall and School Street. as well as slightly further on the east side of Pearl Street and the west side of Medford Street. Otherwise, the points of feedback received from the committee last session have been incorporated here in terms of expanding the small business district overlay on those two main corridor streets as well as ensuring that any parcels that are designated as mid-rise have those UR transition parcels backing behind them on the lots. And the last slide here for scenario four.

The key difference here is the mid-rise zone is extended slightly along Medford and Pearl Streets. So, for example, on the west side of Medford Street, you'll see continuation of MR6 and then a few parcels of an MR4 transition before we go back towards the UR parcel designation. This is also including The full scale of UR upzoning along School and Marshall Streets up to the Broadway corridor. and otherwise same principles as scenarios two and three. Small business district overlay has been expanded on any parcels that are being considered for upzoning along Medford and Pearl Street. And we are also Preserving the principle of keeping that UR transition band of properties between proposed mid-rise parcels and existing neighborhood residential parcels.

So just wanted to share a quick update on those maps with folks and I'm cognizant that we introduced these for the first time to folks during the last session as well so Happy to answer any questions folks have or hear about if there's a particular scenario you're interested in exploring further.

Any questions or comments? First of all, thank you very much for the presentation. Do we have any questions or comments from the council? Seeing none, I am just curious. I know, I think we got a few people's time constraints tonight. I'm not sure if we're going to have another land use committee meeting this year. So I would like to, and I may or may not be the chair of this committee next year, I'd like to leave Ms. Carr with a little bit of guidance. If anyone had any just general thoughts about the proposal before us, I'll just say that I appreciate all four scenarios. I would say I like Any scenario that the Gilman Square Neighborhood Council will get support for because that means we're more likely to get community support. And then I also think scenario three...

takes that proposal and then also talks a little bit about what Colta Wilson's been talking about with UR districts. I just want to put that out there. It's not my ward anymore, so I definitely want to make sure that the people whose ward it still is get some input. No one has to speak either. All right. No one wants to come. Sorry. Councilor Davis, then Councilor Ewen-Campen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I paused for a moment. I thought long enough to allow a ward councillor or close to ward councillor to speak up, so I'm happy to defer to Councilor Ewen-Campen first if you'd like to go ahead.

Okay, well, Councilor Davis, everyone's being generous tonight.

Fair enough. My comment is more sort of a general thought and I I actually can't remember if I mentioned this at the last meeting or if I was talking to Ms. Carr about this directly. But this is great, and I share your gratitude for pulling all this together. My current thinking, I was going to say my preference, my current thinking, and I'm always willing to be convinced otherwise, as with anything, but my current thought is that... I think I would love to see sort of the next step be, or one of the very near steps, next steps to be, you know, taking... to take these concepts, maybe not all of them, but, you know, pick one or two or, you know,

Whatever makes sense to do and applying them to the other transit nodes. My thought is that it It makes more sense for us to do this citywide rather than piecemeal, one square at a time. Thank you so much for joining us. to think of this as sort of a collective effort throughout the city to move forward with upzoning around our transit nodes. And I could be wrong, but I feel like that may shift the conversation a bit as we sort of go through the process.

It may prolong it in terms of it's going to take longer to pass something that affects all of the transit nodes than it would for the first one or the second one. But I think overall it would be faster to get everything up zoned. I think we'd likely avoid sort of missing opportunities where, as I mentioned at the last meeting, I have a couple in Davis Square that are Fairly modest developments based on the current zoning that, in my opinion, could have been something more. and so I just want to throw that out there sort of for as a thought you know get folks input and then you know if it does make sense to do that maybe and to be clear you know Ms. Carr I I don't think I'm asking for four different options for every square. That feels like a lot, but maybe we can think about, or I'd certainly value your input on what's the best sort of jumping off point from here to

to start mapping these to the other squares as a starting point for the discussion. I think also it's likely that a different neighborhood might... One of these... Scenario 2 versus Scenario 3 or 3 versus 4 might be appropriate for this square, but not that one. And so there might be some variation there, but... I don't know. That's sort of all of the various thoughts bouncing around in my head. So I'll leave it at that just sort of for discussion in terms of, as the chair mentioned, the kind of guidance or thoughts on next steps going forward in the next year.

And if I could just address that, Councilor Davis. So the reason we decided to focus on Gilman Square is because the city is already doing the Broadway corridor, which is going to cover several of the transit nodes. So my logic was at least go for the one square that there's been a lot of public interest in upzoning while the city focuses on the Broadway corridor and then Finally, we'll have Davis Square and a few other blocks left. But after that, we'll have all the transit areas. All right. Thank you. It'd be great to have something to discuss right off the bat next year, but I see Councilor Ewen-Campen has a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Scheer. I really appreciate both of those perspectives. I think from my point of view, I absolutely want to continue these conversations. And, you know, I think... I think it would make a lot of sense for Councilor Clingan and I to meet with the Gilman Square Neighborhood Council and kind of talk through these. I for one find no matter how many zoning maps I look at, like, I still sometimes kind of feel like it's unreality and really just going kind of walking the streets figuring out what we're really talking about with all these what's currently there that that's really helpful for me so it's I don't want this, from my perspective, to be like a purely kind of formula-based, you know, if you're this far from a transit, it has to be this as much as kind of... you know what what the planning department does right like thinking about the the nuance of all this and i think what we're seeing is that it's both straightforward and really complicated right like it's it's very easy to look at these and see

Good things and challenges about every single one of these scenarios for me. But that said, I think... The way it is now is kind of illogical to me, right? Like, we have a T-station there. We should be zoned for more density, period. And then kind of actually landing on what is the one that we want to put all our weight behind and really, you know... Push for that still has not quite clicked for me. But this is extremely helpful material to kind of get me closer. And I'm more than happy early next year to get together with Councilor Clingan in the Gilman Square neighborhood. Association to talk through this in some more detail. And obviously, you know, for anyone in the public listening at 7 p.m. on a Thursday, I really welcome any kind of feedback on this.

See Mr. Brotman raise his hand.

Mr. Chair, I wanted to share that the Planning Division shares Councilor Ewen-Campen's interest in engaging the broader Gilman Square community, including the Neighborhood Council community. in the new year. And we were just about actually to reach out to both of them to discuss that very notion. So it's encouraging to hear that too, because we think they that the public deserves to take a look at the maps and be able to look closely and talk about that nuance that he had referenced. And that's all.

So I shouldn't just vote to approve scenario four then? You can't do that anyways. Ms. Carr.

Thank you, Chair. I did just want to follow up quickly on a point Councilor Ewen-Campen was mentioning around Kind of the on the ground context of the parcels. I did want to highlight in particular Scenario two was thinking about some of the existing conditions when thinking about the upzoning here, for example, on the west side of Medford Street. Kind of trying to find the sweet spot of where there's already an established commercial mixed use corridor there. And so we're where the proposal here tapered that off was on top of the street right before the church lots there where is that big conglomeration of UR parcels on the west side of Medford Street. And where that boundary was cutting off on School Street and Marshall Street of the UR parcels being expanded, the consideration was they were falling within the quarter mile lock shed.

but also trying to kind of take a consideration of building like for like parcels up on either side of the street and see where there was already some existing density that might kind of help transition that within the fabric of the neighborhood. So those are just two examples of kind of looking at the existing streetscape and how some of that was baked into the proposals here. The other that comes to mind is a little bit further south on School Street directly to the west side of the train station. You know, That's on a naturally high grade and there is kind of a sense of transition within the streetscape of moving outside the main... Central Core Corridor of Gelman Square as you proceed up the hill. So a couple of parcels were considered in the last scenario for mid-rise there that are kind of the corner lots just starting to go up that grade.

The others were zoned or proposed to be zoned for UR to take those existing conditions into mind and to be thoughtful about thinking about whether businesses could proliferate on that kind of streetscape. So I did just want to highlight a couple of those things that were taken into consideration around the parcels and also very much appreciate the value of going in person to see the sites and what's kind of the existing conditions there.

Thank you. Do we have any other questions or comments from the council? Seeing none, this item will be left in committee. And seeing no further discussion, Councilor Ewen-Campen moves to adjourn. So all these items will be left in committee. We did vote to approve the 90 Washington items, which we'll take up Tuesday. And everything else will remain in committee.

And on adjournment, Councilor Davis?

Yes.

Councilor Sait?

Yes.

Councilor Wilson? Councilor Ewen-Campen?

Yes.

McLaughlin. We are adjourned.

All right. Good night, everyone. Thank you.