Somerville Planning Board 08-06-2026

Okay, good evening everybody. This is the August 6th, 2026 meeting of the Somerville Planning Board at 6.01 p.m. I'm Mike Capuano. I am the chairman of the planning board with me tonight. is our Vice Chair Amelia Aboff and Members Coralie Cooper and Luc Schuster, we have four members of the Planning Board present tonight. We have a quorum pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025. This meeting with the Planning board is being conducted via remote participation Video recording of the proceedings will be available on the City's website's meetings and events page or by emailing planningboard at somervillema.gov. This meeting is being recorded. We have a number of items on our agenda tonight. Several of which have either been continued or will be continued. And so we have meeting minutes that we will take up for the public hearings. 222 Broadway has previously been continued to August 20th.

120 Middlesex Avenue has requested a continuance to August 20th as well. The chair moves to continue that agenda item to the 20th of August, seconded by Amelia. Can we have a roll call please?

Carly Cooper, Amelia Eba, Michael Capuano.

The agenda item is continued. We also have a new case 6 Wheatland Street which has requested to be continued to August 20th. Chair moves to continue that agenda item. Actually, you know what, Aboff? Do we need to read that into the record or can we open it on the 20th pursuant to their request? You can open it Okay, let's do that then. The chamber will continue six weeks on the street until August 20th. Seconded by Amelia. Roll call please.

Luc Schuster? Aye. Carly Cooper? Aye Amelia Aboff?

Aye

Michael Capuano. All right the agenda items continued we will hear but when taking gender items out of order as is the discretion of the chair um we'll take up 32 to 40 white street which has been before this board a number of times for different reasons over the last couple of weeks. We also have two matters of other business One is a discussion of potential adoption of the Arts and Innovation District Urban Design Framework, which is something the Planning Board had a joint meeting on with the Urban Design Commission a few weeks ago and so Sarah Lewis will be Here to talk to us about the changes to that framework that was a result of the joint meeting between us and UDC. Sure.

and we will also have 32 Webster design recommendation for people who might not know when the planning board approved that application. One of the conditions was that staff could elect to choose one of the different design options presented subject to approval by the planning board so we'll take that up because staff has come up with a proposed design. So let's do this, let's bring Sarah Lewis on first so we can talk about the urban design framework for the Austin Innovation District and see if we can speed this one along.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That sounds extremely positive to me. As you know this has been going on a while so I don't have a presentation but i did want to point out in your packet You received the edited version that took into consideration both the planning board and the urban design comments. The most noticeable thing is probably going to be the format tweaks. as a lot of the edits were in the text and none of us had any objections to those. A lot of it, what we had done is sort of add some spacing and breathing room for legibility as well. So things like making sure that there were all the images...

Captions to them. There was a comment about making sure that all the reference documents had links in them, so those are included just to make ease of use easier. We reviewed it obviously for any duplications or conflicts with the zoning ordinance as written. And then The two big items that I wanted to point out were we removed the forward. That was the overview of the plan times because we thought it was duplicative with the introduction. Page. And that page was a very busy plan types overview anyway, so we've removed and then the other piece was one of the urban design commission had requested a

A graphic showing potential massing. So not knowing what any proposals might be, on page 23 we added a A diagram showing the maximum envelope that's permitted under zoning, knowing that architecturally when a master plan comes in there'll be a lot of articulation. within those that maximum envelope but we wanted to make sure that that was pointed out that had been included as well and I think that's about it for an overview of the changes.

Okay, does anybody have any comments or questions of Sarah? Any discussion points that they would like to raise about this framework that we We're entertaining for a little while. Okay, thank you Sarah very much I think The role of the planning board as it relates to that document is to vote on approval. Is that right?

That is correct.

Okay, seeing no further discussion by members of the planning board I want to thank you for all the hard work that you put into this and putting us together with UDC and that was fun. Nice, nice folks. And hopefully we can get this to the next step for your department. So Chair moves to adopt the framework as proposed and amended. Second by Amelia. Roll call, please.

Luc Schuster? Aye. Coralie Cooper? Aye Amelia Aboff?

Aye

Michael Capuano.

All right thanks Sarah good luck with that thank you all very much appreciate it have a good evening okay um

The next one I'm going to take up is 32 Webster design recommendations. So who's the case planner on that one and can we make it? Can we have a little presentation on what the design is that you all thought was the best?

Sure, give me one second to pull that up. Hold on one second, but we went with design number five and I think we chose this based on the meeting from the original board meeting. We thought that Complements of the existing neighborhood and some of the other surrounding buildings like the US 2 building. Hold on.

I had it up and it's escaped me, but let me pull up their original plans. Oh, thank you, Alvaro. Okay, we selected design option five. We felt like it articulated the facade nicely and compliments of the existing neighborhood.

Yeah, the really cool balcony points out front that I think we all thought was an interesting architectural feature. So does anybody have any... Comments, questions, concerns about the design option that staff has proposed? Okay. I like that one too. Oh, you took it away. It was so pretty. Jane moves to adopt option five as satisfactory of the condition that was imposed. When we initially approve the application, seconded by Amelia. Roll call vote please. Luc Schuster?

Aye. Carly Cooper? Aye Amelia Aboff?

Aye

Michael Capuano.

All right, we have a design Okay, last one up. Oh, you know what? I actually completely forgot to do meeting minutes. Let's do that real fast. June 18th, 2026. Anybody have any comments, questions, revisions? Chair moves to adopt June 18, 2026 draft meeting minutes as the final meeting minutes seconded by Amelia Wilk-Hawklitz.

Luc Schuster? Aye. Carly Cooper? Aye Amelia Aboff? Michael Caplan.

We have meeting minutes.

I was going to say, Amelia, you're not going to throw off that meeting minutes?

I would be horrified.

The second time your microphone caused a massive issue. Awesome, let's bring up 32 White Street folks.

Who else? Okay. Hello.

Good evening, everyone.

We have Philip Seymour and David Swanson. Just hoping you guys can all just introduce yourselves one more time for the record before we get into kind of where we're at this evening.

Sure. Philip Sima, I'm part of the architectural team. I'm joined by Akshat Sethi as part of that team as well and Kinvara Capital can introduce themselves.

Everybody, David Swanson with Kinvara Capital and the development team for 32 to 40 White Street. We are waiting on... Ryan Wittig, he should be popping on momentarily. He's going to be leading the charge here. He was supposed to be on. So if we wouldn't mind waiting a minute or two. If that's all right with everybody? Let's do this.

Planning Board is going to be in recess until 620. See you all in five minutes.

Hey everybody, let's just wait until the board is reconstituted after the brief recess. Then we can go back on the record. Just waiting for Luke so we can reconstitute quorum. Okay, at 621 the planning board is back in session. Mike Capuano, Chairman of the Planning Board. Amelia Aboff, the Vice Chair of the planning board. We also have our members Coralie Cooper and Luc Schuster we have reconstituted with quorum and we are taking up the last agenda item that we have this evening which is 32 to 40 White Street.

The applicant has come back to us with some proposed revisions based on discussions by the board over the last several weeks um and so hopefully we can see where we're at this evening and uh Have a good rest of our early August. So if the applicant can please and their team, we had some introductions first. Ryan, I know you came in a minute ago. If you can just introduce yourself again for the record please.

Hello, Ryan Whittig representing the ownership team of 32-40 White Street.

Thank you. Let's talk about where we've come from the last time we had a chance to speak.

Sure. Yes, obviously the main takeaway we took from our last meeting which overall we felt the design of the building was well received I think we've worked past the bike room Accessibility, accessible units. Mentioned that we've provided upgraded all of our accessible units to tier two units So we now have three Tier 2 accessible units in our plans as opposed to the minimum requirement of Tier 1. We've upgraded those all to Tier 2. Based on the feedback that we got from the board at the last meeting, it was mentioned that there's a high desire for us to explore incorporating three-bedroom units into our plan. We went back to the drawing board with Phil and his team at Balance, with Akshat as well. And we looked at how would we go about that? And we've looked at it a number of different ways

We looked at combining a number of different units and due to the demising walls The most optimal way to accomplish that would be to merge two of our one-bedroom units together to create a three-bedrom unit, which would take our unit count down from 29 units. Down to 28 units as an experiment to see how we could incorporate three bedroom units into our plants. So after doing that, we looked at what does that do to our project? And obviously we're eliminating one unit to combine it into a three bedroom unit. And essentially what that does is Putting everything aside, keeping all. Thank you.

1250 square feet it's checking the box of creating a three-bedroom house or a three bedroom unit I should say but it's not something that we feel is It's definitely not something that we would view as desirable for families. And based on our experience, it's not something We feel would be highly appealing to the market and looking at the market of sold units. It would sell for a considerable discount to the other two one bedroom units. So we had some discussions with the mayor's office, with the city to understand what are the options in front of us Offset this, I guess, I don't know what you want to call it a unwritten mandate as it's not in the ordinance to include three bedroom units and projects under 30 units. So we're asking the city, you know what tools

are in the toolbox to help us offset this loss in marketable units. When we compare the two one bedroom units to the three We see a loss in value in our projects anywhere from $350,000 to $400,000. So on its own, that tips the project for us into the territory of being not viable. We asked the mayor's office, you know, what are the options? discussions about reducing the inclusionary requirement to potentially incorporate these types of requests. And they said, although that's Not something that's unpalatable. It's not something that can be done at the planning board level, or I don't really know if that's at the zoning board or which level it would need to go to, but it's not

approved here. So absent that level of approval, that level discussion we're kind of back to square one for us as a project where incorporating A single three bedroom unit to kind of check the box, if you will, makes this not a feasible project. We would love to work in collaboration with the board and with the city to find a way to do this but Combining those two units is a significant financial impact to our project, which we believe steers us into the unviable and Viable Realm. We've heard Boston, their inclusionary requirements 13%. There's some discussions in Cambridge about potentially reducing the inclusion requirement for 20 down to Something in the 10th. A tiered, you know, starting with smaller projects with a tiered approach for smaller projects and getting maybe up to the 24...

the larger 50 plus unit projects but that's not where we're at here and that's Willing and able to have tonight. So with that being said, we'd be totally open to discussing anything else related to the project in terms of design accessibility. Bike Units. But all that being said... We'd like the board to consider the project that we presented previously, 29 units and the benefits that that brings to the community as it stands which is five true affordable units 8.8% fractional payment towards the affordable housing trust 24 market rate transit oriented units and three tier two fully accessible units.

And that's pretty much where we're at. So, okay.

As it sits, I'm currently calling in from a 1300 square foot three bedroom house. So I think the... Assertion that that's not something that's, you know, a sizable or desirable thing is not exactly akin to my experience. Part one. What I don't want is to foreclose all opportunities for you to be able to make something work. and Detain if my board members agree. is to continue this for another couple of weeks so that you might be able to explore other options through different divisions within the city to try to figure out where some of the relief that you said the planning board might not be able grant, might live.

To see if that's something that you might be able to pursue. Because I'll tell you right now, Ryan... You don't have the votes to go forward as you currently exist. And a no vote from this planning board forecloses your opportunity to reapply for a number of years. I don't want to do that either. So I want to give you another opportunity to try to figure out some relief valves for you because we're pretty Pretty set on this. This is something that's not the first time we've expected an applicant to comply with a reasonable request in a reasonable condition like this I don't recall if I brought this up the last time we spoke, but the one that I'm thinking of is in Union Square actually.

We conditioned them to reduce almost an entire story of their project in order to comply with the residential concerns as well as concerns of the planning board. So that's certainly something This board has done repeatedly for your project and for many, many others that came before you. And something we will undoubtedly continue to do over the next period of time. So, I don't want to put you in a place where this is not going your favor for a very long number of years. What I want to do is give you some more time to try to figure it out on your end and where your relief might come from if it's not from this board, and if that's something that you want to pursue. As you know, this is the second time that this particular site has come before this board in one particular iteration as a lab building.

That application was withdrawn, and then it came to us with your application. So this site has been this way since I've been alive. Another period of time is not going to impact how this works. So I want to make sure that we have the best project that we can for this site in this neighborhood. And I don't want to put you in a position where you can't ask and you can move forward. So what I'd like to do, if my colleagues agree, is continue this for another couple of weeks. You guys try to figure out where and if You can seek further relief to be able to make this project feasible for you.

And if the answer is you're completely foreclosed from that, then this board will take that up kind of as we need to. That's where I'm at. If you want to move forward as is tonight and just go barrel down the gun, that's up to you and your team. But I don't want to be the roadblock to making this potentially... Doable if there's an alternative way to do it. If there is another board that can potentially give you relief, if you need to explore that. That's kind of where I'm at on this but I'm also happy Move forward on this application tonight if that's where you're at.

I see Amelia's hand raised, so I'd like to recognize her and I also see Luke, but I'm going to take Amelia first.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're both muted, Amelia.

I think I might be the board member most willing to compromise on this item in light of a slightly closer understanding The marketability and the forces at play there. And I just want to bring you the lens that as the person who I think is perhaps most closely aligned with you, I do take issue a little bit with your idea that this is like new information coming to you and that this as a surprise because I pride myself on trying to stick to sort of the letter of the law of the ordinance, and what I'm seeing is You are in an MR4. You are applying for a special permit for an all-residential building, which is an apartment building type. The intent of the MR4 zone is and I quote To create dwelling unit types, sizes and bedroom counts ideal for larger households in apartment buildings. And to create dwelling units type, size and bedroom count ideal for smaller households in general buildings.

like there if you were doing a commercial ground floor I would feel ready to go to bat for you in discussion with my board members to say this is a general building we're going back to the Intent of the MR4 district, we should have small unit mixes. But you have in fact selected a building type where there is explicitly language suggesting that a larger unit mix would be appropriate. So I... I want to be responsive to us discussing what is and was not feasible in the market. And I hear you loud and clear on your concerns about the demand for a condo of a three-bedroom in this location, but I... I can't sort of sit quietly while you're like, this is a shock. Just going by the written document that we are all working from today.

Fair enough. So we were prepared to come present the three-bedroom plan and ask for approval with the... I don't know where we heard it or where we got it, but we thought this board had some latitude in adjusting the inclusion requirement. We don't do a lot in Somerville, frankly. We've done three or four projects and we're not super versed and we didn't hire a zoning attorney. I guess we should have spent a couple thousand more, $10-20,000 more hiring a zoning attorney. I'd like to imagine a world where I don't need an attorney Present a housing concept and need a Sherpa who knows all the paths to take you down. Maybe we're penny wise and pound foolish here.

I wish we had done that to be better advised on that so we could come in here with a better approach. Like I said, we've tried to engage the city to understand where the levers are that we can pull. And we've yet to see the lever. So that's why we're here tonight coming back to where we are. So that's our explanation for why we are where we are, and I appreciate your explanation of the MR4 zoning intent. We just... We felt that given the proximity to the Porter Square T-stop and the high transit oriented nature of this, that it's going to appeal to the bedroom sizes that we've put in. The intent of the MR4 may be to include more larger housing size units like we're talking about, the three-bedroom units.

I don't mean to penalize. And I'm here with Mike saying let's work towards a creative solution and see because I think we all want to see housing get built, and it's not this board's intention stand in the way of that arbitrarily um but i just wanted to clarify that it's not completely out of the blue that this is coming up so thank you for understanding

Thank you for explaining that. Without hearing those sentences, I would think that we're not... We also try to color in the lines. We're trying to comply with the ordinance, which is why we've done that at least on every other dimension that you can talk about. We were complying dimensionally and height and All other shapes and forms, it's just one thing of the bedroom count. So with that being said, we understand the conversation and definitely would like to hear other... Other voices that would have other input or any other thoughts you have?

Amelia, do you have anything else you wanted to add right now?

No. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I will say as the lawyer on the board, always high on. Especially when it comes to municipal boards where we roll We are all amenable to arguments by council who know how we operate and understand the regulations and the ordinances thoroughly. I do see that Alvaro's got his hand raised, so what's up my friend?

Thank you Mr. Chair, I just wanted to make a point of clarification for the public and for the applicants that for administrative permits uh the quorum is three members of the planning board and does the same amount of votes that have to have four site plan approvals, four discretionary permits as special permits. The quorum is four members and there will have to be four votes. So I just wanted to give that as a clarification for both the applicant and the public. Thank you.

Thank You Alvaro, that's also very meaningful information.

I'd also say even if the board had the discretion to be able to waive certain inclusionary I would be deeply surprised if the board currently constituted would entertain something like that. But just keep that in mind. I see Luke's end. who was raised before.

Yeah, thanks Mr. Chair. I don't have much to add. Part of what Amelia raised earlier was really helpful and helped clarify one question I had. And also, Amelia, just so appreciate the clarity of the broader context for why this has shifted into special permit land. Anyhow, so just thank you. This may be tough to do, but I would find it helpful to like what are the other sorts of relief just even conceptually that might be considered here? Like I'm just trying to picture what the possible paths are at future meetings. Are you asking me, Luke? Anybody who wants to speculate. The context I'm coming from is similar to Amelia actually feeling like This is a tough one. Want the housing to get built? I feel, I see both sides of the argument that we want to move on a project like this with some

Urgency, on the other hand to the chair's point you know this is a parcel that's had some potential for a long time we also want to get it right but just my sense of like how much adding a few more weeks or months or whatever to this would be shaped a little bit by knowing what the realm of possible alternatives really would be.

My suggestion remains that in the next couple of weeks, maybe you speak with zoning attorney on what options might look like for you in order to get some sort of a permittable and approvable project. They may be able to provide some guidance that I, as the Chairman of Planning Board can't give and it's not our role to give necessarily.

If we were in Boston and this was the same landscape, if we were 13% affordable We could do the three bedroom and we could give that three bedroom to the inclusionary program. And the numbers would still work, but we're not in Boston and that's not... We could land on the same place that we were with our original 29 unit plan Other than any other reliefs, we're not going to change the setbacks obviously. The only other beliefs could be additional Additional floors of housing, which I don't know. Once again, not your place to advise on, but I don' t know how palatable that is. To the board or to the zoning, it would probably that would be a zoning board discussion. I don't know if that's palatable, so I don' t know what other areas of relief there are except for moving the inclusionary.

Let's do this. Let's give you another couple of weeks and then on August 20th maybe you can give us some clearer guidance on where you want this project to go.

Okay. We'd appreciate that. We'd also like to avoid this going into months, not just in terms of process and procedures. And if we have to go to two or three other boards months and months of meetings we do we do on this property um we have paid for it and we do have a mortgage on it and not that that's the board's problem but we if we had a if we We could just walk away right now and cut our losses at 100 grand, 150 grand. We might consider that but we don't have that option right now. We own it, we're pregnant and we want to deliver this baby and have it be beautiful. So I hope that's not a bad analogy. So we appreciate the board's guidance here and if we can come back in two weeks and we will continue to have all the conversations we can with Planning, and City Staff.

to see if there's any way that we can kind of re-envision, reimagine this project to still make it something that we believe we'll be able to get financing for to actually make it come to fruition. We'll be ready to have that conversation.

So let's kick this to the 20th then and see where we're landing. Shane moves to continue this agenda item until August 20th. Seconded by Amelia. Roll call, please. Luc Schuster? Aye.

Carly Cooper? Aye Amelia Aboff? Aye Michael Capuano?

Aye Okay, see you in a couple of weeks. And if you need more time, if you know you're going to need more talk to Alvaro and we can work on it as need be.

Perfect. Thank you all. Appreciate you. Thank

Thank you.

No other business before the planning board at 6 45 p.m. The chair moves to up Carly

Apologies for the late comment. I just want to go back to about a month ago, we had a conversation you know the need for larger units in the city and then so we had that discussion now I'm forgetting the woman's name who joined us She gives an overview of her report. And then I did listen to the recording from the last meeting. I wasn't on it, but the developer did say there was an insatiable need for truly... Can I stop you?

We're not discussing this particular agenda item right now that's been continued.

Oh yeah, absolutely. No, I just wanted to bring up a related item that we talked about a month ago in our Previous conversation. So I just wanted to know if we might bring up this conversation about the need for larger units in a further discussion with the planning board?

I think that is coming our way in the near future.

Great, okay, thank you.

Chair moves to adjourn at 6.46, seconded by Amelia Wilcox-Weiss Luc Schuster Aye Coralie Cooper Aye Amelia Aboff Aye Michael Capuano

Planning Board's adjourned. See you all in a couple of weeks.

Everybody have a good couple weeks.