January 27, 2026 – Design Review Board – Video & Transcript
January 27, 2026 - Design Review Board
is the design review advisory board i don't know if there are any people who are in the audience
who would like to speak if so raise your hand yep i see one person with their hand raised
well we probably should if it's probably someone representing the first applicant so
yeah carrie de leo and bill proy is there also oh good all right uh with no public comment i think
we can go on to the first item which uh at 701 which is the review of the application from the carroll
school uh i would love to bring on whoever is um representing the carroll school carrie and bob
okay and um not bob bill if you go yeah bill if you guys uh if you um what i what i think is um
it would be really useful to uh i'll recap our position here that basically we're representing
the town and the neighborhood and um yeah that's it's really a discussion that i'd like to hear
between the client uh who's the carroll schools representative and the architect whoever's in
charge to um give me an idea of what the school's vision is and how the architect has achieved that
vision in a way that the town would would be able to embrace it as something we would like to see in
our town robbie can we pull bill proya over yeah sure thanks yeah he should be involved too i'll need a
a list of all those names if you just leave them open up i'll write them down i guess carrie de leo
yeah good evening um thanks for having us as we're waiting for bill to pop over um i can introduce our our team so uh carrie de leo scolor consulting group i'm the owner's project management manager for the carroll school um and then on our team we have uh dahi blair from flansburg architect he's the lead in this um project and mark warfel from uh crowley cotrell there uh the landscape architect and then bill proya who's um coming in as a panelist is uh the legal representation of the school from remer and bronstein so um you know i think just to get you all started you know dahi will be presenting the actual design as will mark but um you know obviously robin knows because she's uh part of the planning experience but we um have been in front of planning board uh for a few months now we are hopefully closing in on the end of that process um and you know looking to get our approvals and obviously um be able to progress the design and so i know uh design review is is something that the town of wayland does but this is also a good time for us because you know what you'll see is is fairly preliminary um and has a lot of development so uh we were actually happy that this aligned with the timing of our design so we could hear any comments or thoughts you may have you know so if they do um want to have influence over the over the design of the building or the landscape that we hear those early on and not after the fact so um all good so i'll turn over to dahi assuming dahi is able to share screen i can share my screen care but the one thing is i don't have i don't have the exact submission that was submitted okay draft so i don't know if you can i do banna for us yes the plans and elevations is that where you want to start yes please okay great i can share that so hello all i'm dahi blair dahi is irish for david and it helps you remember it any easier um the project architect for flansburg architects here in boston who've been working with the carroll school to develop um these plans um and maybe just skip right to the second page because i mean we can go back to this afterwards if it's important um you know the carroll school is is looking to build on their whaling campus um a new 45 000 square foot two-story um educational building with a partial basement you saw the basement on the page before uh with the goal of moving their seventh and eighth grades onto this campus to complement the ninth grade which already exists on the whaling campus um so essentially one of the things we're doing is basically trying to create the square footage and the program on this on this site to facilitate that um you know the school has been um operating pretty successfully in the existing fish center to date uh for the past decade or so um but um the fish center is a is a residential building it's been retrofitted modified for their educational needs and it doesn't quite afford the ideal layout of program and circulation that they need for their school as you likely know the carroll school focuses on students with specific learning disabilities in reading and writing such as dyslexia and that requires a building that sufficiently addresses the needs of both the students and faculty so i want to spend a little bit of time of just explaining what this building is kind of from the inside out to kind of give you an idea of what the school is trying to accomplish here before moving on to how it presents itself on the exterior so the building is organized as a series of pods and each one of the pods is essentially assigned to a different discipline so starting from the west and working towards the east you see on the far west you see an arts and athletics building you see a gymnasium and some localized dining there that dining is essentially a place for the students to eat it's not a kitchen or anything else it's just a place for kids to bring their own lunch um and then following that there's a humanities building that's essentially the english and history departments in that building followed by uh science and then the existing fish center is repurposed as the math building so essentially rather than organizing it say by seventh eighth and ninth grade or some other metric they essentially we've decided to kind of take each of the disciplines and kind of isolate them into these different pods um and each pod is kind of arranged uh around kind of a central uh atrium you can kind of see in the center of the space there's a communicating stair with some large bench seating kind of like a steritorium in each one that's used both for circulation throughout each pod and also is a communal space for uh the students to congregate into um and then those spaces are surrounded by tutoring rooms offices and classrooms the classrooms are generally uh located on the south side you can see that um there's a bunch of them kind of along the south and what that is that basically aligns them so that their views are out towards the campus um they're relatively small um you know they're about 12 students per classroom as compared to a public school which might be around 24 25 students so they're about half the size of a typical public classroom that you would see um and they're a range that's about to give views of the campus but they also um have uh we've been careful to limit the amount of fenestration to the rooms to balance daylighting in the space while also curating the views and finding a way to limit um potential distractions from the outdoor environment to the students of carroll um and that also allows for some breakout spaces both within each of the classrooms themselves as well as breakout spaces back in that atrium space that i was talking about to get kids both places to focus both inside and outside of the classroom um along the north side of each of the atriums is where you'll find uh tutoring rooms and offices so the carroll school by the nature of their program they have a fairly large dedicated tutoring um facility to to assist their students and so there's more tutoring rooms required in a campus like carroll than there would be in a typical school environment and what we've done is we've inter dispersed those tutoring spaces with the offices uh to both um kind of because of the scale of those rooms to put them on the north side towards walltown road meant those smaller rooms but there was greater opportunity for more fenestration that was public facing uh but then also within the actual learning environment it just meant that there was more staff adjacent to each tutoring space and more staff around the kids who are looking for that more individualized uh learning um what that all does is it basically creates an area in that atrium that both creates a sense of place if each pod kind of has its own identity uh which helps with the way finding for both students and visitors or anyone who's in the in the campus uh but it also provides uh an opportunity for the students to be both independent and well supervised in that atrium space uh outside of the classroom um what that does is it results in a building that presents itself as kind of three separate masses right the arts building the humanities building the science building um rather than one kind of larger bar larger mass of a building with all of it contained in one piece it's kind of broken up into pieces and um you know roughly at the scale of the existing fish center at least in in plan area so you essentially end up with four pods kind of littered along in a straight line kind of a long parallel and presenting towards wolfham road um and i guess carrie you can you can scoot ahead to um the overall elevation i think fine yeah so and maybe zoom out a little bit only because i can't see both of the kind of long elevations let me have to scroll down yeah there you go so the the very bottom elevation there is what you'd be seeing in a perfectly orthogonal view of uh the existing campus from waltham road with the fish center on the left and then all the proposed buildings on the right um we elected to utilize a flat roof with a clear story above the atriums for these new buildings because we felt they were most suitable for this atrium arrangement this kind of donut shape that we had for the floor plan of each of the buildings uh that would also allow us to really minimize the overall building height and massing of the building you can see generally the particularly the science and humanity buildings their rooftops are lower than the existing fish center um we did take some cues from the fish center in our design there's kind of a very strong horizontal datum between the first and second floors of the existing fish center that we basically pulled across and used for the science humanities and the arts building uh not necessarily for the gym but for that kind of you know the um the arts classrooms in the storage rooms on the front on the right we did it there so it's kind of a long horizontal that kind of runs between all the three new pods um and then we also look towards the fish center to kind of use the material palette that's present on the fish center and translate that to the new buildings which is a collection of lap siding uh shingle in the case of the fish center it's shingle roofing but we're using some shingles on the siding in the arts and athletics building um and then stone walls there's a lot of stone walls kind of around the base first floor of the of the fish center we're trying to utilize a similar stone on the new building as well as uh some of the the the white uh trim that you see in both we also saw that there was kind of a tendency in the fish center to gang windows in threes and so where the opportunity presented itself we tried to create um windows in multiples of of threes to align with that um the building and the footprint is all you know within the existing zoning setbacks within the allowable heights within the um the far um we've also made an effort to conceal the mechanical electric equipment so we have um for those pods you saw at the very beginning there's a partial basement that provides um the entrance for all the plumbing utilities the uh and the mechanical equipment that serves the science and humanities pods all happens kind of in the basement level underground and then uh for the arts and athletics building uh is where the electrical room and mechanical room are they're on a kind of a mezzanine level behind the gym so they're inside the building and a second floor but on the campus side and enclosed within the building so we've done our best to to take care of that um we did see that there was some comments from the uh previous uh design review board meeting uh about uh what we provided i think some one of the comments was about having um larger elevations and kind of collecting all the elevations of the building which are included in this set um because i know last time i think we just provided these kind of overall elevations but this set we've included in large elevations of each facet of each of the three new pods um we also saw that there was a comment about uh that there was no solar panels on this project um our understanding there is that as an all electric building there's no mixed fuels or there's no fossil fuels used in the in the proposed building so as an all-electric building the building's required to be solar ready so we have to provide all the infrastructure to support the solar panels make sure that they can actually be installed on the roof as well as provide all the conduit and switches to run those panels but that the panels do not have to be installed on day one and that you know would be up to carol in the future should they elect to install the panels they've got the platform to do so um so that's my kind of overall spiel on on on what we're doing and how we're trying to both um provide a building that is best suited towards carol's needs while also trying to um be cognizant and respective of the of the neighborhood that surrounds the proposed building would you like us to do an over a similar overview with the landscape and then open to discussion or or do you want to do the building first and then move into landscape i think i'd rather talk about the building first the landscape is very different we can talk about second robin i want to ask you uh do we have any neighbors um uh in on this are we gonna have to ask for questions at some point right now there aren't any okay so that's fine we'll basically just proceed ourselves then um so i think this is a good pause for question and answer uh tanya do you have any questions or points you want to bring up yeah so so do you have those enlarged elevations that you talked about so we could see by the material application yeah if you should they actually he touched on it lately if you blew that up if you expand that elevation they do note where the um where the the lap siding is and the shingle sliding is okay carrie i think um if there should be are there not more pages to this yeah so here you go so basically the next page is so basically there's you know a 210 220 230 10 20 30 relate to the three different pods so 10 is uh science 20 is humanities and 30 is the arts and athletics and here we basically just took larger elevations of each one simply because the only way we could get the scale to work on on a page right but so so in a way they they're not picking up on uh the existing building in any way other than the fact they're using similar siding material you're not you're not relating to its massing and its spacing uh i mean we're other than horizontal datum that i alluded to so there is that kind of separation on the existing building except see a real clear separation in the materiality kind of above and below that first floor data yeah i'm really just saying that for tanya's because oh i'm sorry i'm sorry the drawings right no no i could see the drawings and i think it is uh actually actually very nicely designed project it's uh works well with existing and uh correspond uh nicely to the existing building and the way of place masses it's very thoughtful so one thing that does correspond uh i i asked the architect uh or could correspond maybe more is how does it relate to the way the original building stone i presume it's stone on the lower levels and wood framing of some kind above how do those relate to each other is that that's that's an opportunity you have to make these new buildings relate to the old one if you have so so up that course yeah so predominantly in the existing building what at least what i've observed is that the majority of the stone not all the stone but the majority of that stone kind of happens under that that kind of horizontal datum and that stone often is recessed um from that kind of building plane there's kind of like these little overhangs of that datum so like the second floor lap siding might be outboard of the stone below so in our plan you'll notice that there are but we do have this stone the stone is actually kind of being pulled back from the the building envelope a little bit to create a bit of a recess at the first floor so we're doing a little bit of that um there's also before you go further can we look at the existing building yeah you have to go to the overall i'm trying to pull up a photo too because that a photo does really help yeah but that's that elevation right there if you can walk us through what is where yeah let me just see the back you would probably want to look at the front here well the the back the back is fine the back is fine they both did so if you just kind of really just kind of resume in as best you can on the on the fish center for now um you know the existing building again you can see you see that horizontal datum and you can see that there's kind of an illusion of shadow going on here most of that's from our modeling it's not us directly putting on there but that kind of whole first floor of stone in most locations is actually set back by about three feet from the lap siding on the on the floor above so it's almost like there's a little like you know like a portico porch system happening at the first floor so we try to take that kind of change in in plane and translate that over to the to the new building where there's these kind of overhangs of the floor above um on the on the new proposed pods so we just on the new proposed pods what are you focusing on as what would you call the style of the building uh in relation to the style of this building and how do you see them as being friendly neighbors well i would say um you know first and foremost i would say that just the configuration of the floor plans on themselves right and how the floor plan for the school i'm more concerned about how it looks i i understand that the neighbors and the people yeah no i i i understand but i'm but i guess what i was just going to say is that the first kind of thought was the first kind of move was that there was there was very unlikely that we're going to be for example put like out a pitched roof on this thing to mimic the gable ends of of the fish center like the room why is that unlikely well one because the existing roofs of the of the fish center are fairly steep right they're they're they're they're might say they're like 10 and 12 or something like that they're pretty pretty steep roofs and um the in order to do that with the new buildings we'd have to basically drop the ceiling heights quite a bit down and while also still accounting for all the mechanical equipment that needs to serve buildings with assembly spaces and all the rest right so we just don't disagree with this so what about the shape of the massing you've got uh some uh interesting shapes on the existing building that uh you're not uh in any way relating to in the new building so i'm finding it hard to see how these two styles uh mesh together well actually the way it's broken into the small masses the the overall masses are corresponding to each other but also the way the new part is broken into the small masses they're smaller i agree but let me finish saying that doesn't seem to be any relation to the rhythm though the the pattern of spacing of the massing is very abrupt and different on the new building and it doesn't it doesn't seem to make any effort to look like take for example the little tower there on the old building with the big tall windows uh over on the right of the new building exactly over the right of the new building you had an opportunity there to make another sort of vertical tower shape uh the same width perhaps and the same material to somehow start getting these to blend to each other but instead you just went with something floating above the wall that has an opening below it which is kind of counter intuitive it looks like it's going to fall down and that's an that's a modernist statement i understand that but i'm wondering why you're going out of the way to make it not relate at all to the existing building well i mean i i i just i don't necessarily agree that it doesn't relate in any in any way to the existing building well how does it relate then please convince me i think in the changing of planes and that horizontal datum is where we're picking up the cues i don't i don't necessarily believe that it has to pay direct homage to the fish center in all aspects right i mean you're right there could be a situation where for example there was a tower that kind of broke that horizontal datum and poked up above the roof plane like we could let's move on let's move on and yeah you don't have to argue for it i'm just saying now another another element where there's a difference a significant difference is the size of the windows you mentioned that you wanted to go in the pattern of three windows getting together on the existing building and they go over and look at the new building and uh they don't let those windows the height of them the proportion of them uh the spacing of them has nothing to do with that existing building it does it doesn't pick up an element in my opinion at all well there's a goal i think you missed it there okay well i was going to say that there's on that second floor you're right there is a pattern on the second floor where the windows are just regularly spaced across the the facade right and that partially has to do with just the the program within that building of those tutoring and office spaces that the way that they lay out so where we had an opportunity to gang windows in three we did uh but those are those are isolated locations there's kind of the three little square windows on the right side there's on the first floor both in the science building and the humanities building there's gangs of three windows there sometimes space closer together sometimes space further apart but we're picking up on that idea of three it's not necessarily mimicking the layouts of the windows that were in the existing fish center yeah and when you drop that when you drop it that far away from what the original is i think uh an ordinary person looking would not notice that they wouldn't see it it's just uh too far remote from what your what you said your goal was but um that's fine i'm not you know i'm just making observations at this uh from there you know if you'd kept the see literally gang together and kept the windows proportioned similarly i think it would have been uh a way of connecting to the existing building but because they're all spread out in only in two places and i by the way you know i'm not i i understand you have your windows are dictated by the functions inside the building and i think that's legitimate i you know i'm not questioning that i presume that you're um stating what you have to do now what about the clear story at the top is that open to a a well that goes down below is that all that light come into the inside that's right so that clear that that clear story is the the basically the same footprint as the atrium below so what that does basically means that when you're in that atrium space and you're looking up from the first floor you're looking up through a large opening into the second floor and then up to that clear story above and so it's getting daylighting into that space for the students who are working in that atrium area now can i ask you a question this is about um uh again about the current code and passive massive house principles it is well known established that if you have if you want to benefit from the solar gain in the building you have the most glass facing the south side and the least glass i'm talking windows now facing the north side because you have tremendous heat loss out of the windows even when you have you know super insulated windows they still have tremendous heat loss and heat gain in the summer when you don't want it so the thought the thought is again a solar approach would be you take your south elevation you have as much glass there as you could possibly live with and you put solar sunscreens on them and you're going to end up with free energy uh it's going to save energy and it also is the view that you wanted which was a view out in the south direction now maybe i'm wrong maybe you don't want the distraction of a south view and if that's the case then this would be too much of a distraction yeah i mean i think um i think we definitely do try to put that into play as best we can but um you know again i think you know there's basically we wanted every single room whether it was a classroom or an office or a treating room to have direct daylight we want each one of them to have their own window yeah but the windows could be smaller on the north side they don't have to be the same exact size and the same exact spacing they could be for sure all the way around the building i think that as a result the building's not really telling us much about which direction is north south east or west it's because it's something elevations are almost the same all the way around
but i don't know what your client goal was did your client express any interest in
making an energy efficient building well we i mean we know that we're in the specialized stretch energy code in in wheyland so we know that we've already got some pretty robust energy requirements for the building and clearly the the client carol school wants to be the best steward of the environment that they can be um but at the same time we also just need to make sure that we provide an appropriate route of daylighting for the students so for example on that campus facing side which is the south side um we're limited towards the amount of views to the campus we can provide in those classrooms because we've got marker boards tack boards you know there's the there's a requirement for distraction free learning in the classrooms so we're limited in that sense for how much we can actually provide on you know where you could do it though up in that clearest story if you've made that sort of like a solar greenhouse and face the girl the glass on the south with an overhang that blocked the sun in the summer instead of making it equal windows the same size all the way around you can have the most of the windows on the north side be small i mean you could do it either way but you could have all the glass if you have all the glass on the north side then you have tremendous heat loss in the winter which is terrible so it's better to face it all the glass in the south side with an overhang and have that be your atrium source of light it doesn't have to be all the way around mm-hmm and i think that would really make that make that clear story work much better for you
you could even pitch it and make it a you know if you're going to put solar panels on the roof you could pitch it the direction but by the way i agree with your idea of not showing the solar panels on the roof for the neighbors um by going to a flat roof and having i don't know if you'd have to put a little parapet around there to kind of hide all the little solar panels i could do that later though
um robin i didn't ask you for your opinion that let me um yeah to a certain extent i agree with some of your comments in terms of there not being a lot of connection visually between the existing fish center and the new buildings um you know i completely fine with them being very modern and all that but it would be nice to see some sort of a visual connection especially where the style and the scale of these new buildings is so out of character for this residential and really rural neighborhood um it would kind of warm it up a little bit i think if there was more of a connection uh between the buildings but um seems like that ship has sailed without any further concerns so um yeah i think the the renderings that we have that came with the plans i got for planning board this week sort of make it look a little more tied together i think looking at it without any plantings makes it look just very stark i think you know seeing it with trees around it at least warms it up a little bit but they're still sort of visually disconnected but there is more screening um to to disguise the lack of connection i guess um and it's less aesthetically displeasing um compared to what we see here in just these really stark you know line drawings so um totally agree with what bill is saying um but at this point it doesn't seem like there's any impetus for change yeah that's why i wish we'd had a better meeting but long before this so that they weren't all the way down the road uh with um the design before we could even discuss these ideas how do you um uh mr blair how do you feel about making some tweaks to these elevations as we discussed are you guys willing to take a look at it i'm i'm definitely willing to take your comments and concerns and and work to address them into what's here um i can't guarantee that i can incorporate every comment uh but i can definitely work towards that and what i'm hearing the predominant thing that i'm hearing is the um dissonance between the proposed building and the existing building is a bit further than you'd want it to be so i guess my my plan would be to try to find ways to incorporate that whether it's whether it's you know working on the fenestration to tighten those up and try to be more proportionate to the existing building um or to break up the um the regular rhythm of windows on the second floor or even to find some kind of connection between the first and second floor that's tower adjacent uh to try to take those gestures and try to incorporate it into design i'm i'm happy to try to work through that stuff i would really appreciate it if you would i i i think that there could be and they could be very subtle changes that really wouldn't be that dramatic to your uh effort that you've already done here which i'm sure inside and out are all coordinated right now and that's something that uh i know nothing about because i haven't worked on it so but i if you would make that effort i think it would really help this these these new buildings connect to the old mansion in a very nice way i like what you've done with the idea of using the same materials so you know using the lap siding and using the stone uh particularly if you can make a real effort to make them very similar not just uh you know not just close but if you could get that stone to actually match would be great tanya you have any other comments um i think uh mass inquires i like the comment about the tower it potentially could be indeed uh easily integrated and make some difference i not fully agreed uh with the comment regarding the window and i agree that it should uh correspond to the north versus south and uh for uh to provide maximum uh heating during uh to be maximum beneficial the size should be may be adjusted but it should be also it should also work functionally and right now it's functionally works well and as uh regarding mimicking the windows from the old building i kind of disagree because it has the main characteristic of this windows it's uh works with overall style of the old building and it has multiple windows versus here we have modern building which windows supposed to correspond to this modern style and address it so i'm not sure that mimicking the proportion and proportionally also works well with punching versus in previous building it was a refurbished uh building uh where originally it wasn't built for this function it wasn't school so this building works perfectly as a school building and it should we should maximize every element of it to work to be beneficial to work for the function so i agree with that tanya and i think that uh my suggestion is not that you change the entire elevation to match all the windows in the main house but i think if you had one or two or three on any given elevation if you had just a couple of connecting masses and window arrangements that would uh relate and to just in terms of size and proportion um that i i think that the two buildings would mesh together much better
or even just some sort you know to pick up a theme like if it were the tower yeah the tower i think is an easy that's yeah there's that sort of glass uh looks like an entryway between the uh humanities building and the science building and exactly that tower were reproduced right there on the front of the building you'd see that theme carry over and it might it might accomplish exactly what we're talking about to pull the two buildings together visually a little bit and that may be all you need it's basically just a little gesture and there it is and it doesn't have to be exact but something that is reminiscent at all yeah visually reminiscent there you go very good um yeah having i i was actually involved with carol uh when they retrofitted the mansion into the into the fish center and i can tell you uh tanya to your point it was definitely not made to be a school um and the amount of space that ended up being unusable because of the the way that that building is uh divided and um and broken up into the pieces made it made it very challenging so um yeah i agree with that i understand it i've had projects like that and i completely sympathize with the uh yeah it's a beautiful building though um shall we look at landscape yes uh mark would you like the illustrative or probably better to look at that than the permit drawing yeah let's look at the illustration thanks carrie and i'm just zooming in you know just the the fields that are in the rear the only difference back there is that we have to add a fire lane but ultimately nothing's really happening uh of change in the backyard all of the all the development and proposed changes are in the front uh yard or long ball fan road there are trees coming out obviously where the building is going yeah but everything kind of from the fields and this kind of stone patio back we would put the leaching field here but nothing there there's purpose i know there was some question at planning why this was cut off but it's really beyond the limits of the of the bed yeah i know that yeah but north is to the top of the page right yes yeah yes that's correct um hi everyone i'm mark warfel i'm a landscape architect with crowley cottrell landscape architecture um so yep north is up we have waltham road uh towards the top of the page uh the first major site change is uh increasing the parking lot and reconfiguring the circulation on the site so there's one entrance from waltham road you come into um what was this is a new entrance but you come into the existing parking lot which is extended to the west um that then loops around in front of the building uh where it splits off there's the kind of standard flow of traffic um which is on the north side and then uh which exits on the furthest east end of the site just as it happens now and then the um kind of westernmost leg is for um bus drop-offs uh deliveries um trash removal and uh it rejoins the main access road and leaves the site the same way so in the in the drop-off area we have connections to the rest of the site uh both the fish center and the um there's a dedicated bus drop-off on the east side um as well and uh ross walks to the parking lot so the all of the sidewalks are um proposed as concrete they're accessible um and closer to the building we're proposing some more um special pavement it's called out as um unit pavers here with two different colors and we're exploring that now to see what that you know eventually looks like uh both in color and material um size unit size that that sort of thing um leading that walk up to the entry there's um bollard lights that light the path um it's a much more pedestrian scale and adjacent to the sidewalks on the north side of the building or the front side of the building are shorter uh light poles so they're um simple uh poles i think we're calling them um 14 foot i can double check that actually carrie i've got got got something i've got the list would you rather drive no no that's okay i can reference this and and talk as well um and then on on in the parking lot it's the same fixture but a uh a taller mount and um so just referencing this so the the parking lot lights are 24 25 foot poles um which helps us get better performance um but also keep light spillage to zero at uh the lot lines um we also the pedestrian scale poles are 14 foot um so much shorter and that's the majority of the site lighting on the north side is actually the the 14 foot pole i think we have um uh seven of the 25 foot poles which are are really the south edge of the parking lot uh adjacent that's an important thing just to pause on and robin may already know this but originally we were trying to use the existing light poles that were on site but those are very much residential in size and scale and also in lights village right and so um mark's team did a bunch of study and we actually realized we were probably better off doing fewer taller poles in the center of the site to really minimize the amount of light that was getting to the property line and to provide i have to add to that i i've done a number of projects where low profile lighting the shorter the pole the better for the neighborhood uh you really should be up about 12 feet no more than that you know of course you have to have more frequent poles and it costs more money but if you go to 25 foot poles everybody in the neighborhood is going to see all that light well we that was the initial submission and we studied that and the issue was um the spillover on waltham road so in order i don't understand that you're making the low profile lighting that is shielded and won't spill over the uh photometric calculations that were done even with shielded fixtures we still had issues with spillover on waltham road and part of that is the portion of the new parking lot that comes um closer to the property line yeah this area here was really tough no matter what you did to get the coverage we needed in the lot for safety without getting out onto waltham road we were i believe we were fine all along kind of here and you know here but this area so thin okay so if you were to get rid of that big swath in the middle and pull your parking away from waltham road further so that it was similar to the space you have for a buffer on the east side then it would work work we did study that the uh issue arises with the fire truck turning radius so being able to have emergency vehicles um turn at the west end and circulate through the site so we're we're balancing a few different constraints with this layout um as well as site lighting uh and i should mention that all of the site lighting is uh 3000 kelvin color temperature um high cri which helps with uh
it renders better at night with less light so we're really going for the minimal amount of light to make it uh safe and functional and then carroll school has committed to to timing it um um as and all the light pictures are also dark sky compliant uh go off are they going to time it when do they go their lights go out are they gonna have them on timers the whole system is um it's going to have a control system so it'll be programmable and uh i believe we're in early stages of talking through how they might have um they might be dimmable uh and i mean carrie you can speak to if you've had conversations recently about it but there's been no agreed upon time but i think it was yeah i think that's a topic for tomorrow night's planning board meeting because i think there are some proposed times in the um conditions um so essentially when there aren't folks on campus the lights will go off and then um you know there will be uh probably some allowance for you know maybe motion sensor you know for security but the the general idea is that when the campus is not inhabited the lights are not on do they have night activities at the school that are frequent no they don't they don't have right now they don't have any type of rental program you know they don't rent their gyms or their fields and uh in general in general their their normal operations are just after school athletics and that's i think that that closes up some around time around six on a typical night and then they have occasional you know after hours you know events but definitely not on any type of standard schedule does that sound right though so i think uh yes and bill prior but i'm going to ask robin to please um take that in consideration tomorrow night as a a major issue of uh scheduling the activities so they they don't have these lights in this neighborhood um very often and and again bill all we have done like mark mentioned that there is a full engineered photometric plan that indicates no no spillage at the at the lot line so every all the lighting is contained to the property good because that's required yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah this is bill the only typical or you know sort of predictable school evening events would be something like a band concert occasionally or a play or a debate club potential you know things you'd see in a school but you know not these aren't scheduled nightly sorts of events so there are quarterly kinds of things that you'd have in you know any any normal school with seventh eighth and ninth grade children we also have requirement for or notifying the neighbors and the police departments of any events like that so um we've thought about it fairly carefully and trying to minimize any effects on the neighbors so thanks for those comments as well and yes the planning board will be we'll be looking at that carefully i presume tomorrow night and the next meeting i guess yeah and william while the neighbors are not here the neighbors the neighbors have been actively engaged with these conditions of operation um throughout the process um so and again robin's familiar with that um but they they have a an attorney working on their behalf to ensure that they get uh something that is what they consider acceptable to you know to their needs so okay thank you uh on the front side of the building we have in the in the island between the parking lot and the drop off the drop off is a rain garden uh that's planned with um many uh shrub and small trees as well as uh kind of ephemeral grasses um we have a whole scheme of new street trees through the parking lot as well as uh foundation planting and uh some larger trees between the drop off area and the front facade of the building so i have a question mark about the plants um are you have you referred to the list of native species that are preferred by the conservation yes yes and have you absorbed into this proposal uh we are fully in compliance with that it's been reviewed and um no further comments from the conservation commission on the plant palette great um the planting continues around back um we have some larger plant beds right up against the buildings as well as raised uh planters in the gathering areas that act as seat walls but also we imagine that they could turn into areas for instruction for science classes if if needed um their seating areas on on the west side is more um they're smaller areas for class breakout or small tutoring sessions um where the west area is more of the active side for recess or lunch we we've heard that sometimes they like to eat lunch outside provided some picnic tables um as well as the active recreation of two new basketball courts and um paths leading to the playing fields um there are some new stacked retaining walls that act as uh viewing platforms for sports field or places for students to sit on read a book or or hang out during recess um as well as another set uh by the basketball court that's functions as an outdoor classroom so you can have a class sitting on the retaining walls with a an instructor standing on the basketball court and instructing to the class uh material wise uh the paving is similar to out front we're thinking of a special you know some either unit pavers or a um uh exposed aggregate concrete and uh the planter walls uh and retaining walls are a mix of concrete and stone so we have some that are uh precast concrete and some that are uh stacked stone there's a number of existing retaining walls on site that we're uh preserving but also picking up the language of the stone that's used there so if you see that one in white that carry was just indicating that's an existing stone wall that we'll be preserving and we continue that on the other side uh adjacent to the basketball court so we're continuing that language across the back of campus um and then planting wise we're we've really endeavored to save uh the mature campus trees that we can and there's three sizable examples on the back side where we've really kind of i think massaged the spaces to work functionally but also preserve these uh very mature trees uh and i think that's that's the gist of it i'm happy to go into depth more the only other thing i would mention mark is um there's quite a bit like if you drove by on waltham road now that you know that existing hedgerow at the street is pretty thick so in this area where mark indicated that there's actually not much here right now because that um that's the 37 um 39 part of waltham road versus 45 which is the existing fish center property um so we are trying to fill in as much as we can with different size um shrubs and plantings to kind of build that barrier in the area where there's not one right now i had a question mark the spacing between the 25 foot lights is what versus the 14 yeah i don't know that off the top of my head um these look like they're about 60 feet apart is that right are these nine by 18 spaces is that the size of a yeah it might be uh like 70 to 80 is the range and there's 14 footers um they would be less i think those are you still have some there right yeah here 30 and yeah those are the ball ballard lights adjacent to that path that's the main entry these are the short ones here those are 14 footers but also um carry it i can i think i can draw you can just just send me a memo on it that's fine so these the only reason these are when i was doing these uh i went to 12 feet you you you have less uh light overflow the closer you put those short poles together so i know i still don't understand the logic of going to 25 foot poles and saying there's going to be less spillage it just doesn't make sense to me the the what i was told by my lighting consultant was shorter and closer together the less spill you're going to get that's true and i think what we so i think there's two factors um that that played into this the first was that we were the first attempt we made was to use the existing types of lights which were not uh not great i understand so that was that then when we redid this the idea was to get the level of coverage with the fewest number of poles to start to try to control yeah see that's the part that i thought was going you're basically finding a cheaper solution and it costs more money to have the 12 foot poles closer together yeah it may just be worth it to the neighbors that you have to spend that money it's not i think lighting that's not true you're not getting better lighting you're getting cheaper lighting i mean i i would say it's um more appropriate to the site and what we've the issue that we're running up against is as soon as we have to light the parking lot from one side and not both we need horizontal throw across the parking lot and there's no fixtures uh on the market that have uh light that goes out 80 feet from the pole yeah without being 100 feet tall you never go 80 feet you always make them 20 feet and that way your lighting is discrete it's kept low profile and it's uh not overflowing into everybody's eyes across the street yeah i i think um we can revisit that on our end but i feel fairly confident we went pretty deep on this with the planning board um comments and uh landed where we thought was the best suited for a site like this um yeah but i question the the facts here i think that the planning board needs to be told the truth that there is a way to do it with lower profile lights there surely is it may not be the most fiscally responsible thing for us to propose to the client though i think that's that's about you know what maybe you should find out how much it is yeah until we are down what the problem and we're always because of lighting it's because of cost but we're also up against uh between a rock and a hard place on the north side of the parking lot yeah here in that we're always going to have spillage for whatever fixture we put on there whether it's shielded or we've tested many different fixtures over there and that has always been the case and we've worked with our vendors and engineers to come up with a solution that fulfills that requirement and and meets the performance needs of the school yeah i would i would just say this that we've studied it and you haven't i have on other projects well that that's that's this project so i can sniff out uh stretch yeah well you haven't studied it so for you to say something like that is it's based on it's offensive experience doing this stuff it's offensive it's offensive for you to try and tell me something that i know is not true you don't know it's not true yeah i do you don't i've done it in other projects whatever um that's yeah i think that's the only thing to say i think there are photometric plans that had been previously submitted to the planning board that show that we had a hard time making that work and so there is a suggestion to pivot we have pivoted and this would mean going back to where we started so look we're not saying mark's done a thorough job is what i would say but we hear what you're saying you have a difference of opinion you don't know the facts of this site or what we've done you're analogizing it to some other project that might or might not be relevant but we heard what you said and i'm not speaking for mark but we understand the comments and we'll make sure we didn't overlook anything that's what we're how we're leaving it thanks bill are there any other questions um i wonder i think the gray boxes between the buildings and the driveway um it's a is it a a covered structure for students who are waiting to be picked up do you have a any sort of image of what that looks like or nothing i didn't see it on the detailed plans i don't think that we've gotten that far yet okay any other questions no okay thank you very much thank you all for your time thank you thanks for the input robin we'll see you tomorrow you'll see me tomorrow good night good night oh can i ask one question maybe robin you can send me the list of names that were yeah i took a screenshot that'd be great thanks yeah and there were no other attendees so it's interesting have you not had people from the neighborhood no we've had tons but they are represented by dan hill and really yeah so he has been uh you know on top of things and they have been communicating with the neighbors quite a lot so um so do we uh we need to make a motion on this yeah sort of have findings so we should kind of lay them out a little bit first and then do a motion think about what we want to say okay um so and you know just like the rice road project it's dover but that doesn't mean we shouldn't say what we think and yeah people can take it for what it's worth i can i can tell you that 25 foot poles you're going to get a lot of complaints from the neighbors if they're not coming to the meetings they're going to be really sorry that they didn't bring it up they've been to the meetings and they've seen i'm not sure that um and there were a lot of issues with the lighting there were i i don't know if i have a lighting plan but they didn't submit it so we're probably not supposed to look at it um they they have gone back and forth with the lighting plans they had a lot of issues if they had lights closer to the to waltham road that they were having trouble finding ways to make it work um yeah because there are areas where there isn't very much screening uh where you know they're starting from scratch because it's where they were old driveways and so it's going to take some time before that fills in and they didn't necessarily want to put lights there and they did provide you know like lighting drawings that show that there isn't spillage um but i i agree i mean 25 feet is probably taller than most of the trees exactly and so people will see it you get a cloud of light up there yeah so um so i think there's a difference between the light not being visible and it not spilling so i think that's where that line is just keep in mind that what's really driving this is cost they didn't want to say it but that's what's going on so it's happened on other projects it's a lot more expensive to put three times as many lights you have to wire each one you have to buy you know each separate light pole and so it definitely is a much more expensive way to light up a parking lot yeah i i just wish they'd tell the truth you know and say we can't afford it you know yeah um so we sort of have the two different things to deal with the land the the actual structures and then the landscaping yeah okay um i think that the fact that they um have have worked with uh concom on the plant selection is very reassuring to me i have not studied the plant types for their aesthetic value and maintenance issues that may uh come up but i think that the school is probably it's in their self-interest to maintain these properties uh so that i i have less concern than i would on a public building yeah their their issue is that with them moving the parking closer to waltham road there are places where they don't have the depth to put in you know really large plantings um before they hit the right of way so some of the areas are going to appear pretty thin because they can't put anything really giant in there and what do the neighbors feel about that were they concerned about yeah they're not particularly happy yeah they're not particularly happy with it but they understand there's not you know that between planning and concom i think people have done what they can to get as many plants in there and they have been flexible they have come back to us and you know oh well we can try and fit more plants in this section and i had suggested just adding some more screening back by the building because even that would help and first they said no but then they came back and put a couple trees between the parking lot and the building so that there's a little bit of screening at the distance okay so um good so they have been receptive and they have added i think as many plants as they can um it's just the way that they're having to move their parking is just making it very challenging yeah and i get that i get the the turning radius for the fire truck yeah eats up a lot of space it does anything you have to say uh tanya no regarding lighting pictures i believe it was good good what about the buildings um about building i feel they actually i do feel that they did a good job there are improvement as you said considering uh north south size of the windows and uh but uh functionally it works well the building uh like uh the type and style of the windows and proportion of the windows fits to this uh modern architectural style that they picked and they brought it in the the small massing overall like three buildings works well not just for this existing building but uh overall as a project i don't think it's uh and it's i think it's actually it will look different than uh original building but it should look a little different in my opinion because uh uh uh or you do exact copy of it or you you know it will be a continuation of the project this project started when this uh original building was built or retrofitted and then now it's uh like it's built like in 2026 or 2027 and it should look like that yeah that i would agree with that except i don't think that looks like a 2026 building it looks to me like a 1979 uh data terminal systems building it's it's it's not very all those vertical windows i mean that was done uh 50 years ago these guys are you know sleeping in the last century uh the building could be much more creative than this it's called a bear in a way it's always could be yeah and i'd like to see them pick up at least one little element and not copy it in the new building but at least mimic it do something to tie them together a little bit yeah your suggestion about the tower uh it was a very good suggestion i think that's what ties us building together like to make the kind of entrance point yeah yeah i think that would work yeah what they've done makes no connection to the building at all it's just too abstract a lot of times people think in their head well if we have a cluster of three now we've matched the building well it's like the class the size of the windows is different the spacing is different there is literally no connection left and they make everything change so i think we all agree that the tower idea should be developed further uh also uh as you said from natural uh natural ventilation natural uh heating point of view they could uh review the size of the windows and uh the clear store part this could be good as well but again if they're doing it they need to think about overhang and this would change the character of the building and it's uh it will a lot of things yeah i missed that i'm not sure i understand i'm saying if they would
add more glass on the south side they also need to think about the overhang because otherwise they would have problems during the summer so it would change completely the character of the building so it's quite a redesign for them do you think he's open to that though i i i think it'd be nice if you do that but all right we can mention it what about i think an easy fix that i brought up though was to do something with the clear story glazing and take advantage of the south light for the clearer story you don't have to have windows all the way around that to get the light well you only need it from the south side that's true yeah and it's interesting the the middle building does not have lights it does not have windows on the north side yeah that's right it's nice to have colored elevations because i still don't understand some materials like uh yeah um i have a difference yeah i have some different drawings from the um the packet that was submitted for i i have a hard copy set of what um what he had delivered yeah i did there was a different set that was submitted for planning boards meeting tomorrow that's why i have some different drawings um but i don't know that it but they weren't submitted to us for this meeting so i don't know that we're supposed to use them um so he submitted what i have a site he submitted yeah but yeah i'm saying he submitted more to planning board and he didn't submit them to us why do they do that i don't think that's appropriate yeah so well there were different things asked you know planning board had asked for specific things so but i don't think i'm supposed to share them because they weren't submitted for this okay for drab to consider so my first stab at the motion is that you know our recommendation is that the building is functionally well designed for the purpose but there are no elements that tie the existing building and the new building such as the tower structure or tie them together there's also concern the twin that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings okay sounds good that's definitely true yeah good that sound okay yeah and then the third thing is i don't have a third thing was there a third thing oh i had to put them in a different order i had lighting uh well there was landscaping you had comments about that yeah we didn't have any real comments about landscaping though if concom was happy okay we weren't unhappy yeah we could say that though i don't know um okay you could say that we've reviewed them and they were pleased that they've complied with the conservation commission
okay so you want to hear it one more time yes please all right i move that we recommend that we find the building is functionally well designed for the purpose but there are no elements that tie the existing building and the new buildings together such as the tower structure visually i've heard the word visually visually okay um there is also concern that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings well actually what the statement you just made they could argue that it's not true because they did try to tie together the lap siding and the shingle and the stone finishes so you could say except for the finishes there's no relation i think that's true or we could say there are not enough elements could be that too yeah um and then uh the lighting poles i just read so there is also concern that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings the landscaping plans comply with the conservation commission's requirements and the board is satisfied well you might even among us right now think that it may be preferred to the town to accept some spillage from the lower poles at the street in exchange for not having 25 foot high poles that can be seen from blocks away because they're making that their driving point we should say well we'll accept a little spillage and still have the low poles that we would accept 14 foot whole height which apparently they had shown you before is that right robin yeah just tell them to go back to that it's the lesser of two evils okay i'm gonna try and read again sorry um wait a minute okay uh i move that the board recommend finding that the building is functional the buildings are functionally well designed for the purpose uh but that there are not enough elements that visually tie the existing building and the new buildings together such as the tower structure there is also concern that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings and the town must decide if some light spillage from 14 foot poles is acceptable or preferred over 25 foot poles which will leave light visible over the buffer plantings the landscaping plans comply with the conservation commission's requirements and the board is satisfied sweet i'm in okay so you who seconds it i second oh yeah okay and so we'll vote and then i'll type this up and send it to you like normal bill okay those in favor robin vote hi hi bill hi so it's unanimous that's great that's great thank you that was very helpful robin we got meeting minutes uh i move that we approve the meeting minutes from december 16th 2025 tanya seconds on your seconds okay all those in favor hi hi okay now we're at uh next item which is the oil and design guidelines since we're running running late uh unless you have questions this is just a draft that um anina and i have put together for text for you to review we don't have to discuss them tonight if you want to do uh comment comment directly to anina and not through me basically that way with open meeting law um we're not conspiring outside right so how to is is what's highlighted what's new yeah the blue the highlight was uh anina's ads of things that she had to do okay the yellow highlights and uh some of them i already added the text but she didn't eliminate her highlighted yellow so it's redundant in that sense in some places but okay don't worry we can take a look at it um i also when i was out in wisconsin i took some pictures yeah i'm going to share my screen okay and show some pictures that i took right good or bad good oh yeah that's good i was in the middle this is the national mustard museum oh my case you've never seen the national mustard museum i have not but this is a part of wisconsin this is a town called middleton and this is all brand new this is all new construction um but this is what it looks nice um there's all different sections oh by the way that was mentioned very lightly tonight but you can bring up tomorrow if you go back or even here you can see this pavers on the ground and then the slab yeah great they're using different colored pavers on the school you may want to find out what the materials are tomorrow these look like they're just bricks and then concrete yeah but yeah we went there for dinner one evening which is this is the picture i took that evening yeah um and then i went back and found pictures online of it during the day yeah um and it's you know it's it's all brand new but it's pleasing it's not you know there's enough variation there's variation height in the facades and there's housing up above these you know the stores and offices and everything so it was a nice mixed use yeah but it's uh quite dense you know it's attached to each other so it does create this continuation of the retail street versus severe yeah we don't have it in the most places so it it's dense but it's very small it's maybe it's a very small area it's very interesting it's not big um but it was interesting i thought i'd send some pictures very they've got very consistent sign band yeah um that we don't have in wayland and no actually don't even have in concord and the band is consistent but the signs are all different yeah but it makes it easy to find what you're looking for yeah i think those so and you'll see that in the in the draft for the design guidelines we have we borrowed a couple pictures from concord that are better examples than we have here in wayland yeah but i did want to get that national mustard museum in there oh that's wonderful yeah it's i love the mustard yellow sign color it's great it's pretty funny we didn't go in though it was closed when we were there so so but i can send those to you bill um or i'll send them to anina and then she can send them over or whatever um well if you have you know i just would like you to read this particularly the text yeah in blue that i've added because it's sort of thrown it together and it probably could stand some wordsmithing and comments and i i welcome your uh input on that okay so the blue is you and the highlighted is anina now yellow highlights are anina yeah okay i don't see either oh so robin maybe could you send to me yeah i need to send it you know what it is i'm sorry she accepted all the edits so they're no longer no longer blue they're blue on my copy oh okay yeah mine aren't blue sorry so so maybe go ahead resend her yours and ask her to send it without accepting the changes yeah she could do that yeah because all she did was accept it yeah just so that we can compare the two together i think it helps to compare yeah so she can send that um and i saw there are a lot of places where she's talking about you know adding pictures and maybe some of the pictures from here are good i don't know yeah a lot of them that she didn't put in were just reusing the old ones from the old uh yeah fine guidelines because it's uh not a good time of year to take new pictures no for now we're just going to drop in the old ones in those cases okay um we should have a reference sorry i saw a reference to the old collins market did you hear that that's going to become a bistro yes i hope it works out yeah yeah because it's it's it was really fun when it was a i don't know if you were here in town when it was a little general store and a little grocery store now it's really fun to have people you know milling around in there yeah tanya this is the building in the center of town with the big columns out front oh yeah exactly oh yeah tanya greek what are they calling greek revival greek revival yeah yeah hi i saw article about it yeah um okay so yeah i'll take a look at it but maybe have anina send your copy without the changes accepted so that we can see what your changes were yeah so robin please fold it to me as well okay because it's so cycle missions okay yeah anina sent this one to our town email addresses okay if you could forward it please yeah i will
yeah i'll wait until i get the yeah the unchanged one from it nina and then i'll send them both wonderful wonderful all right thank you guys we have a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn i move to adjourn it's 8 29
yeah good evening um thanks for having us as we're waiting for bill to pop over um i can introduce our our team so uh carrie de leo scolor consulting group i'm the owner's project management manager for the carroll school um and then on our team we have uh dahi blair from flansburg architect he's the lead in this um project and mark warfel from uh crowley cotrell there uh the landscape architect and then bill proya who's um coming in as a panelist is uh the legal representation of the school from remer and bronstein so um you know i think just to get you all started you know dahi will be presenting the actual design as will mark but um you know obviously robin knows because she's uh part of the planning experience but we um have been in front of planning board uh for a few months now we are hopefully closing in on the end of that process um and you know looking to get our approvals and obviously um be able to progress the design and so i know uh design review is is something that the town of wayland does but this is also a good time for us because you know what you'll see is is fairly preliminary um and has a lot of development so uh we were actually happy that this aligned with the timing of our design so we could hear any comments or thoughts you may have you know so if they do um want to have influence over the over the design of the building or the landscape that we hear those early on and not after the fact so um all good so i'll turn over to dahi assuming dahi is able to share screen i can share my screen care but the one thing is i don't have i don't have the exact submission that was submitted okay draft so i don't know if you can i do banna for us yes the plans and elevations is that where you want to start yes please okay great i can share that so hello all i'm dahi blair dahi is irish for david and it helps you remember it any easier um the project architect for flansburg architects here in boston who've been working with the carroll school to develop um these plans um and maybe just skip right to the second page because i mean we can go back to this afterwards if it's important um you know the carroll school is is looking to build on their whaling campus um a new 45 000 square foot two-story um educational building with a partial basement you saw the basement on the page before uh with the goal of moving their seventh and eighth grades onto this campus to complement the ninth grade which already exists on the whaling campus um so essentially one of the things we're doing is basically trying to create the square footage and the program on this on this site to facilitate that um you know the school has been um operating pretty successfully in the existing fish center to date uh for the past decade or so um but um the fish center is a is a residential building it's been retrofitted modified for their educational needs and it doesn't quite afford the ideal layout of program and circulation that they need for their school as you likely know the carroll school focuses on students with specific learning disabilities in reading and writing such as dyslexia and that requires a building that sufficiently addresses the needs of both the students and faculty so i want to spend a little bit of time of just explaining what this building is kind of from the inside out to kind of give you an idea of what the school is trying to accomplish here before moving on to how it presents itself on the exterior so the building is organized as a series of pods and each one of the pods is essentially assigned to a different discipline so starting from the west and working towards the east you see on the far west you see an arts and athletics building you see a gymnasium and some localized dining there that dining is essentially a place for the students to eat it's not a kitchen or anything else it's just a place for kids to bring their own lunch um and then following that there's a humanities building that's essentially the english and history departments in that building followed by uh science and then the existing fish center is repurposed as the math building so essentially rather than organizing it say by seventh eighth and ninth grade or some other metric they essentially we've decided to kind of take each of the disciplines and kind of isolate them into these different pods um and each pod is kind of arranged uh around kind of a central uh atrium you can kind of see in the center of the space there's a communicating stair with some large bench seating kind of like a steritorium in each one that's used both for circulation throughout each pod and also is a communal space for uh the students to congregate into um and then those spaces are surrounded by tutoring rooms offices and classrooms the classrooms are generally uh located on the south side you can see that um there's a bunch of them kind of along the south and what that is that basically aligns them so that their views are out towards the campus um they're relatively small um you know they're about 12 students per classroom as compared to a public school which might be around 24 25 students so they're about half the size of a typical public classroom that you would see um and they're a range that's about to give views of the campus but they also um have uh we've been careful to limit the amount of fenestration to the rooms to balance daylighting in the space while also curating the views and finding a way to limit um potential distractions from the outdoor environment to the students of carroll um and that also allows for some breakout spaces both within each of the classrooms themselves as well as breakout spaces back in that atrium space that i was talking about to get kids both places to focus both inside and outside of the classroom um along the north side of each of the atriums is where you'll find uh tutoring rooms and offices so the carroll school by the nature of their program they have a fairly large dedicated tutoring um facility to to assist their students and so there's more tutoring rooms required in a campus like carroll than there would be in a typical school environment and what we've done is we've inter dispersed those tutoring spaces with the offices uh to both um kind of because of the scale of those rooms to put them on the north side towards walltown road meant those smaller rooms but there was greater opportunity for more fenestration that was public facing uh but then also within the actual learning environment it just meant that there was more staff adjacent to each tutoring space and more staff around the kids who are looking for that more individualized uh learning um what that all does is it basically creates an area in that atrium that both creates a sense of place if each pod kind of has its own identity uh which helps with the way finding for both students and visitors or anyone who's in the in the campus uh but it also provides uh an opportunity for the students to be both independent and well supervised in that atrium space uh outside of the classroom um what that does is it results in a building that presents itself as kind of three separate masses right the arts building the humanities building the science building um rather than one kind of larger bar larger mass of a building with all of it contained in one piece it's kind of broken up into pieces and um you know roughly at the scale of the existing fish center at least in in plan area so you essentially end up with four pods kind of littered along in a straight line kind of a long parallel and presenting towards wolfham road um and i guess carrie you can you can scoot ahead to um the overall elevation i think fine yeah so and maybe zoom out a little bit only because i can't see both of the kind of long elevations let me have to scroll down yeah there you go so the the very bottom elevation there is what you'd be seeing in a perfectly orthogonal view of uh the existing campus from waltham road with the fish center on the left and then all the proposed buildings on the right um we elected to utilize a flat roof with a clear story above the atriums for these new buildings because we felt they were most suitable for this atrium arrangement this kind of donut shape that we had for the floor plan of each of the buildings uh that would also allow us to really minimize the overall building height and massing of the building you can see generally the particularly the science and humanity buildings their rooftops are lower than the existing fish center um we did take some cues from the fish center in our design there's kind of a very strong horizontal datum between the first and second floors of the existing fish center that we basically pulled across and used for the science humanities and the arts building uh not necessarily for the gym but for that kind of you know the um the arts classrooms in the storage rooms on the front on the right we did it there so it's kind of a long horizontal that kind of runs between all the three new pods um and then we also look towards the fish center to kind of use the material palette that's present on the fish center and translate that to the new buildings which is a collection of lap siding uh shingle in the case of the fish center it's shingle roofing but we're using some shingles on the siding in the arts and athletics building um and then stone walls there's a lot of stone walls kind of around the base first floor of the of the fish center we're trying to utilize a similar stone on the new building as well as uh some of the the the white uh trim that you see in both we also saw that there was kind of a tendency in the fish center to gang windows in threes and so where the opportunity presented itself we tried to create um windows in multiples of of threes to align with that um the building and the footprint is all you know within the existing zoning setbacks within the allowable heights within the um the far um we've also made an effort to conceal the mechanical electric equipment so we have um for those pods you saw at the very beginning there's a partial basement that provides um the entrance for all the plumbing utilities the uh and the mechanical equipment that serves the science and humanities pods all happens kind of in the basement level underground and then uh for the arts and athletics building uh is where the electrical room and mechanical room are they're on a kind of a mezzanine level behind the gym so they're inside the building and a second floor but on the campus side and enclosed within the building so we've done our best to to take care of that um we did see that there was some comments from the uh previous uh design review board meeting uh about uh what we provided i think some one of the comments was about having um larger elevations and kind of collecting all the elevations of the building which are included in this set um because i know last time i think we just provided these kind of overall elevations but this set we've included in large elevations of each facet of each of the three new pods um we also saw that there was a comment about uh that there was no solar panels on this project um our understanding there is that as an all electric building there's no mixed fuels or there's no fossil fuels used in the in the proposed building so as an all-electric building the building's required to be solar ready so we have to provide all the infrastructure to support the solar panels make sure that they can actually be installed on the roof as well as provide all the conduit and switches to run those panels but that the panels do not have to be installed on day one and that you know would be up to carol in the future should they elect to install the panels they've got the platform to do so um so that's my kind of overall spiel on on on what we're doing and how we're trying to both um provide a building that is best suited towards carol's needs while also trying to um be cognizant and respective of the of the neighborhood that surrounds the proposed building would you like us to do an over a similar overview with the landscape and then open to discussion or or do you want to do the building first and then move into landscape i think i'd rather talk about the building first the landscape is very different we can talk about second robin i want to ask you uh do we have any neighbors um uh in on this are we gonna have to ask for questions at some point right now there aren't any okay so that's fine we'll basically just proceed ourselves then um so i think this is a good pause for question and answer uh tanya do you have any questions or points you want to bring up yeah so so do you have those enlarged elevations that you talked about so we could see by the material application yeah if you should they actually he touched on it lately if you blew that up if you expand that elevation they do note where the um where the the lap siding is and the shingle sliding is okay carrie i think um if there should be are there not more pages to this yeah so here you go so basically the next page is so basically there's you know a 210 220 230 10 20 30 relate to the three different pods so 10 is uh science 20 is humanities and 30 is the arts and athletics and here we basically just took larger elevations of each one simply because the only way we could get the scale to work on on a page right but so so in a way they they're not picking up on uh the existing building in any way other than the fact they're using similar siding material you're not you're not relating to its massing and its spacing uh i mean we're other than horizontal datum that i alluded to so there is that kind of separation on the existing building except see a real clear separation in the materiality kind of above and below that first floor data yeah i'm really just saying that for tanya's because oh i'm sorry i'm sorry the drawings right no no i could see the drawings and i think it is uh actually actually very nicely designed project it's uh works well with existing and uh correspond uh nicely to the existing building and the way of place masses it's very thoughtful so one thing that does correspond uh i i asked the architect uh or could correspond maybe more is how does it relate to the way the original building stone i presume it's stone on the lower levels and wood framing of some kind above how do those relate to each other is that that's that's an opportunity you have to make these new buildings relate to the old one if you have so so up that course yeah so predominantly in the existing building what at least what i've observed is that the majority of the stone not all the stone but the majority of that stone kind of happens under that that kind of horizontal datum and that stone often is recessed um from that kind of building plane there's kind of like these little overhangs of that datum so like the second floor lap siding might be outboard of the stone below so in our plan you'll notice that there are but we do have this stone the stone is actually kind of being pulled back from the the building envelope a little bit to create a bit of a recess at the first floor so we're doing a little bit of that um there's also before you go further can we look at the existing building yeah you have to go to the overall i'm trying to pull up a photo too because that a photo does really help yeah but that's that elevation right there if you can walk us through what is where yeah let me just see the back you would probably want to look at the front here well the the back the back is fine the back is fine they both did so if you just kind of really just kind of resume in as best you can on the on the fish center for now um you know the existing building again you can see you see that horizontal datum and you can see that there's kind of an illusion of shadow going on here most of that's from our modeling it's not us directly putting on there but that kind of whole first floor of stone in most locations is actually set back by about three feet from the lap siding on the on the floor above so it's almost like there's a little like you know like a portico porch system happening at the first floor so we try to take that kind of change in in plane and translate that over to the to the new building where there's these kind of overhangs of the floor above um on the on the new proposed pods so we just on the new proposed pods what are you focusing on as what would you call the style of the building uh in relation to the style of this building and how do you see them as being friendly neighbors well i would say um you know first and foremost i would say that just the configuration of the floor plans on themselves right and how the floor plan for the school i'm more concerned about how it looks i i understand that the neighbors and the people yeah no i i i understand but i'm but i guess what i was just going to say is that the first kind of thought was the first kind of move was that there was there was very unlikely that we're going to be for example put like out a pitched roof on this thing to mimic the gable ends of of the fish center like the room why is that unlikely well one because the existing roofs of the of the fish center are fairly steep right they're they're they're they're might say they're like 10 and 12 or something like that they're pretty pretty steep roofs and um the in order to do that with the new buildings we'd have to basically drop the ceiling heights quite a bit down and while also still accounting for all the mechanical equipment that needs to serve buildings with assembly spaces and all the rest right so we just don't disagree with this so what about the shape of the massing you've got uh some uh interesting shapes on the existing building that uh you're not uh in any way relating to in the new building so i'm finding it hard to see how these two styles uh mesh together well actually the way it's broken into the small masses the the overall masses are corresponding to each other but also the way the new part is broken into the small masses they're smaller i agree but let me finish saying that doesn't seem to be any relation to the rhythm though the the pattern of spacing of the massing is very abrupt and different on the new building and it doesn't it doesn't seem to make any effort to look like take for example the little tower there on the old building with the big tall windows uh over on the right of the new building exactly over the right of the new building you had an opportunity there to make another sort of vertical tower shape uh the same width perhaps and the same material to somehow start getting these to blend to each other but instead you just went with something floating above the wall that has an opening below it which is kind of counter intuitive it looks like it's going to fall down and that's an that's a modernist statement i understand that but i'm wondering why you're going out of the way to make it not relate at all to the existing building well i mean i i i just i don't necessarily agree that it doesn't relate in any in any way to the existing building well how does it relate then please convince me i think in the changing of planes and that horizontal datum is where we're picking up the cues i don't i don't necessarily believe that it has to pay direct homage to the fish center in all aspects right i mean you're right there could be a situation where for example there was a tower that kind of broke that horizontal datum and poked up above the roof plane like we could let's move on let's move on and yeah you don't have to argue for it i'm just saying now another another element where there's a difference a significant difference is the size of the windows you mentioned that you wanted to go in the pattern of three windows getting together on the existing building and they go over and look at the new building and uh they don't let those windows the height of them the proportion of them uh the spacing of them has nothing to do with that existing building it does it doesn't pick up an element in my opinion at all well there's a goal i think you missed it there okay well i was going to say that there's on that second floor you're right there is a pattern on the second floor where the windows are just regularly spaced across the the facade right and that partially has to do with just the the program within that building of those tutoring and office spaces that the way that they lay out so where we had an opportunity to gang windows in three we did uh but those are those are isolated locations there's kind of the three little square windows on the right side there's on the first floor both in the science building and the humanities building there's gangs of three windows there sometimes space closer together sometimes space further apart but we're picking up on that idea of three it's not necessarily mimicking the layouts of the windows that were in the existing fish center yeah and when you drop that when you drop it that far away from what the original is i think uh an ordinary person looking would not notice that they wouldn't see it it's just uh too far remote from what your what you said your goal was but um that's fine i'm not you know i'm just making observations at this uh from there you know if you'd kept the see literally gang together and kept the windows proportioned similarly i think it would have been uh a way of connecting to the existing building but because they're all spread out in only in two places and i by the way you know i'm not i i understand you have your windows are dictated by the functions inside the building and i think that's legitimate i you know i'm not questioning that i presume that you're um stating what you have to do now what about the clear story at the top is that open to a a well that goes down below is that all that light come into the inside that's right so that clear that that clear story is the the basically the same footprint as the atrium below so what that does basically means that when you're in that atrium space and you're looking up from the first floor you're looking up through a large opening into the second floor and then up to that clear story above and so it's getting daylighting into that space for the students who are working in that atrium area now can i ask you a question this is about um uh again about the current code and passive massive house principles it is well known established that if you have if you want to benefit from the solar gain in the building you have the most glass facing the south side and the least glass i'm talking windows now facing the north side because you have tremendous heat loss out of the windows even when you have you know super insulated windows they still have tremendous heat loss and heat gain in the summer when you don't want it so the thought the thought is again a solar approach would be you take your south elevation you have as much glass there as you could possibly live with and you put solar sunscreens on them and you're going to end up with free energy uh it's going to save energy and it also is the view that you wanted which was a view out in the south direction now maybe i'm wrong maybe you don't want the distraction of a south view and if that's the case then this would be too much of a distraction yeah i mean i think um i think we definitely do try to put that into play as best we can but um you know again i think you know there's basically we wanted every single room whether it was a classroom or an office or a treating room to have direct daylight we want each one of them to have their own window yeah but the windows could be smaller on the north side they don't have to be the same exact size and the same exact spacing they could be for sure all the way around the building i think that as a result the building's not really telling us much about which direction is north south east or west it's because it's something elevations are almost the same all the way around
but i don't know what your client goal was did your client express any interest in
making an energy efficient building well we i mean we know that we're in the specialized stretch energy code in in wheyland so we know that we've already got some pretty robust energy requirements for the building and clearly the the client carol school wants to be the best steward of the environment that they can be um but at the same time we also just need to make sure that we provide an appropriate route of daylighting for the students so for example on that campus facing side which is the south side um we're limited towards the amount of views to the campus we can provide in those classrooms because we've got marker boards tack boards you know there's the there's a requirement for distraction free learning in the classrooms so we're limited in that sense for how much we can actually provide on you know where you could do it though up in that clearest story if you've made that sort of like a solar greenhouse and face the girl the glass on the south with an overhang that blocked the sun in the summer instead of making it equal windows the same size all the way around you can have the most of the windows on the north side be small i mean you could do it either way but you could have all the glass if you have all the glass on the north side then you have tremendous heat loss in the winter which is terrible so it's better to face it all the glass in the south side with an overhang and have that be your atrium source of light it doesn't have to be all the way around mm-hmm and i think that would really make that make that clear story work much better for you
you could even pitch it and make it a you know if you're going to put solar panels on the roof you could pitch it the direction but by the way i agree with your idea of not showing the solar panels on the roof for the neighbors um by going to a flat roof and having i don't know if you'd have to put a little parapet around there to kind of hide all the little solar panels i could do that later though
um robin i didn't ask you for your opinion that let me um yeah to a certain extent i agree with some of your comments in terms of there not being a lot of connection visually between the existing fish center and the new buildings um you know i completely fine with them being very modern and all that but it would be nice to see some sort of a visual connection especially where the style and the scale of these new buildings is so out of character for this residential and really rural neighborhood um it would kind of warm it up a little bit i think if there was more of a connection uh between the buildings but um seems like that ship has sailed without any further concerns so um yeah i think the the renderings that we have that came with the plans i got for planning board this week sort of make it look a little more tied together i think looking at it without any plantings makes it look just very stark i think you know seeing it with trees around it at least warms it up a little bit but they're still sort of visually disconnected but there is more screening um to to disguise the lack of connection i guess um and it's less aesthetically displeasing um compared to what we see here in just these really stark you know line drawings so um totally agree with what bill is saying um but at this point it doesn't seem like there's any impetus for change yeah that's why i wish we'd had a better meeting but long before this so that they weren't all the way down the road uh with um the design before we could even discuss these ideas how do you um uh mr blair how do you feel about making some tweaks to these elevations as we discussed are you guys willing to take a look at it i'm i'm definitely willing to take your comments and concerns and and work to address them into what's here um i can't guarantee that i can incorporate every comment uh but i can definitely work towards that and what i'm hearing the predominant thing that i'm hearing is the um dissonance between the proposed building and the existing building is a bit further than you'd want it to be so i guess my my plan would be to try to find ways to incorporate that whether it's whether it's you know working on the fenestration to tighten those up and try to be more proportionate to the existing building um or to break up the um the regular rhythm of windows on the second floor or even to find some kind of connection between the first and second floor that's tower adjacent uh to try to take those gestures and try to incorporate it into design i'm i'm happy to try to work through that stuff i would really appreciate it if you would i i i think that there could be and they could be very subtle changes that really wouldn't be that dramatic to your uh effort that you've already done here which i'm sure inside and out are all coordinated right now and that's something that uh i know nothing about because i haven't worked on it so but i if you would make that effort i think it would really help this these these new buildings connect to the old mansion in a very nice way i like what you've done with the idea of using the same materials so you know using the lap siding and using the stone uh particularly if you can make a real effort to make them very similar not just uh you know not just close but if you could get that stone to actually match would be great tanya you have any other comments um i think uh mass inquires i like the comment about the tower it potentially could be indeed uh easily integrated and make some difference i not fully agreed uh with the comment regarding the window and i agree that it should uh correspond to the north versus south and uh for uh to provide maximum uh heating during uh to be maximum beneficial the size should be may be adjusted but it should be also it should also work functionally and right now it's functionally works well and as uh regarding mimicking the windows from the old building i kind of disagree because it has the main characteristic of this windows it's uh works with overall style of the old building and it has multiple windows versus here we have modern building which windows supposed to correspond to this modern style and address it so i'm not sure that mimicking the proportion and proportionally also works well with punching versus in previous building it was a refurbished uh building uh where originally it wasn't built for this function it wasn't school so this building works perfectly as a school building and it should we should maximize every element of it to work to be beneficial to work for the function so i agree with that tanya and i think that uh my suggestion is not that you change the entire elevation to match all the windows in the main house but i think if you had one or two or three on any given elevation if you had just a couple of connecting masses and window arrangements that would uh relate and to just in terms of size and proportion um that i i think that the two buildings would mesh together much better
or even just some sort you know to pick up a theme like if it were the tower yeah the tower i think is an easy that's yeah there's that sort of glass uh looks like an entryway between the uh humanities building and the science building and exactly that tower were reproduced right there on the front of the building you'd see that theme carry over and it might it might accomplish exactly what we're talking about to pull the two buildings together visually a little bit and that may be all you need it's basically just a little gesture and there it is and it doesn't have to be exact but something that is reminiscent at all yeah visually reminiscent there you go very good um yeah having i i was actually involved with carol uh when they retrofitted the mansion into the into the fish center and i can tell you uh tanya to your point it was definitely not made to be a school um and the amount of space that ended up being unusable because of the the way that that building is uh divided and um and broken up into the pieces made it made it very challenging so um yeah i agree with that i understand it i've had projects like that and i completely sympathize with the uh yeah it's a beautiful building though um shall we look at landscape yes uh mark would you like the illustrative or probably better to look at that than the permit drawing yeah let's look at the illustration thanks carrie and i'm just zooming in you know just the the fields that are in the rear the only difference back there is that we have to add a fire lane but ultimately nothing's really happening uh of change in the backyard all of the all the development and proposed changes are in the front uh yard or long ball fan road there are trees coming out obviously where the building is going yeah but everything kind of from the fields and this kind of stone patio back we would put the leaching field here but nothing there there's purpose i know there was some question at planning why this was cut off but it's really beyond the limits of the of the bed yeah i know that yeah but north is to the top of the page right yes yeah yes that's correct um hi everyone i'm mark warfel i'm a landscape architect with crowley cottrell landscape architecture um so yep north is up we have waltham road uh towards the top of the page uh the first major site change is uh increasing the parking lot and reconfiguring the circulation on the site so there's one entrance from waltham road you come into um what was this is a new entrance but you come into the existing parking lot which is extended to the west um that then loops around in front of the building uh where it splits off there's the kind of standard flow of traffic um which is on the north side and then uh which exits on the furthest east end of the site just as it happens now and then the um kind of westernmost leg is for um bus drop-offs uh deliveries um trash removal and uh it rejoins the main access road and leaves the site the same way so in the in the drop-off area we have connections to the rest of the site uh both the fish center and the um there's a dedicated bus drop-off on the east side um as well and uh ross walks to the parking lot so the all of the sidewalks are um proposed as concrete they're accessible um and closer to the building we're proposing some more um special pavement it's called out as um unit pavers here with two different colors and we're exploring that now to see what that you know eventually looks like uh both in color and material um size unit size that that sort of thing um leading that walk up to the entry there's um bollard lights that light the path um it's a much more pedestrian scale and adjacent to the sidewalks on the north side of the building or the front side of the building are shorter uh light poles so they're um simple uh poles i think we're calling them um 14 foot i can double check that actually carrie i've got got got something i've got the list would you rather drive no no that's okay i can reference this and and talk as well um and then on on in the parking lot it's the same fixture but a uh a taller mount and um so just referencing this so the the parking lot lights are 24 25 foot poles um which helps us get better performance um but also keep light spillage to zero at uh the lot lines um we also the pedestrian scale poles are 14 foot um so much shorter and that's the majority of the site lighting on the north side is actually the the 14 foot pole i think we have um uh seven of the 25 foot poles which are are really the south edge of the parking lot uh adjacent that's an important thing just to pause on and robin may already know this but originally we were trying to use the existing light poles that were on site but those are very much residential in size and scale and also in lights village right and so um mark's team did a bunch of study and we actually realized we were probably better off doing fewer taller poles in the center of the site to really minimize the amount of light that was getting to the property line and to provide i have to add to that i i've done a number of projects where low profile lighting the shorter the pole the better for the neighborhood uh you really should be up about 12 feet no more than that you know of course you have to have more frequent poles and it costs more money but if you go to 25 foot poles everybody in the neighborhood is going to see all that light well we that was the initial submission and we studied that and the issue was um the spillover on waltham road so in order i don't understand that you're making the low profile lighting that is shielded and won't spill over the uh photometric calculations that were done even with shielded fixtures we still had issues with spillover on waltham road and part of that is the portion of the new parking lot that comes um closer to the property line yeah this area here was really tough no matter what you did to get the coverage we needed in the lot for safety without getting out onto waltham road we were i believe we were fine all along kind of here and you know here but this area so thin okay so if you were to get rid of that big swath in the middle and pull your parking away from waltham road further so that it was similar to the space you have for a buffer on the east side then it would work work we did study that the uh issue arises with the fire truck turning radius so being able to have emergency vehicles um turn at the west end and circulate through the site so we're we're balancing a few different constraints with this layout um as well as site lighting uh and i should mention that all of the site lighting is uh 3000 kelvin color temperature um high cri which helps with uh
it renders better at night with less light so we're really going for the minimal amount of light to make it uh safe and functional and then carroll school has committed to to timing it um um as and all the light pictures are also dark sky compliant uh go off are they going to time it when do they go their lights go out are they gonna have them on timers the whole system is um it's going to have a control system so it'll be programmable and uh i believe we're in early stages of talking through how they might have um they might be dimmable uh and i mean carrie you can speak to if you've had conversations recently about it but there's been no agreed upon time but i think it was yeah i think that's a topic for tomorrow night's planning board meeting because i think there are some proposed times in the um conditions um so essentially when there aren't folks on campus the lights will go off and then um you know there will be uh probably some allowance for you know maybe motion sensor you know for security but the the general idea is that when the campus is not inhabited the lights are not on do they have night activities at the school that are frequent no they don't they don't have right now they don't have any type of rental program you know they don't rent their gyms or their fields and uh in general in general their their normal operations are just after school athletics and that's i think that that closes up some around time around six on a typical night and then they have occasional you know after hours you know events but definitely not on any type of standard schedule does that sound right though so i think uh yes and bill prior but i'm going to ask robin to please um take that in consideration tomorrow night as a a major issue of uh scheduling the activities so they they don't have these lights in this neighborhood um very often and and again bill all we have done like mark mentioned that there is a full engineered photometric plan that indicates no no spillage at the at the lot line so every all the lighting is contained to the property good because that's required yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah this is bill the only typical or you know sort of predictable school evening events would be something like a band concert occasionally or a play or a debate club potential you know things you'd see in a school but you know not these aren't scheduled nightly sorts of events so there are quarterly kinds of things that you'd have in you know any any normal school with seventh eighth and ninth grade children we also have requirement for or notifying the neighbors and the police departments of any events like that so um we've thought about it fairly carefully and trying to minimize any effects on the neighbors so thanks for those comments as well and yes the planning board will be we'll be looking at that carefully i presume tomorrow night and the next meeting i guess yeah and william while the neighbors are not here the neighbors the neighbors have been actively engaged with these conditions of operation um throughout the process um so and again robin's familiar with that um but they they have a an attorney working on their behalf to ensure that they get uh something that is what they consider acceptable to you know to their needs so okay thank you uh on the front side of the building we have in the in the island between the parking lot and the drop off the drop off is a rain garden uh that's planned with um many uh shrub and small trees as well as uh kind of ephemeral grasses um we have a whole scheme of new street trees through the parking lot as well as uh foundation planting and uh some larger trees between the drop off area and the front facade of the building so i have a question mark about the plants um are you have you referred to the list of native species that are preferred by the conservation yes yes and have you absorbed into this proposal uh we are fully in compliance with that it's been reviewed and um no further comments from the conservation commission on the plant palette great um the planting continues around back um we have some larger plant beds right up against the buildings as well as raised uh planters in the gathering areas that act as seat walls but also we imagine that they could turn into areas for instruction for science classes if if needed um their seating areas on on the west side is more um they're smaller areas for class breakout or small tutoring sessions um where the west area is more of the active side for recess or lunch we we've heard that sometimes they like to eat lunch outside provided some picnic tables um as well as the active recreation of two new basketball courts and um paths leading to the playing fields um there are some new stacked retaining walls that act as uh viewing platforms for sports field or places for students to sit on read a book or or hang out during recess um as well as another set uh by the basketball court that's functions as an outdoor classroom so you can have a class sitting on the retaining walls with a an instructor standing on the basketball court and instructing to the class uh material wise uh the paving is similar to out front we're thinking of a special you know some either unit pavers or a um uh exposed aggregate concrete and uh the planter walls uh and retaining walls are a mix of concrete and stone so we have some that are uh precast concrete and some that are uh stacked stone there's a number of existing retaining walls on site that we're uh preserving but also picking up the language of the stone that's used there so if you see that one in white that carry was just indicating that's an existing stone wall that we'll be preserving and we continue that on the other side uh adjacent to the basketball court so we're continuing that language across the back of campus um and then planting wise we're we've really endeavored to save uh the mature campus trees that we can and there's three sizable examples on the back side where we've really kind of i think massaged the spaces to work functionally but also preserve these uh very mature trees uh and i think that's that's the gist of it i'm happy to go into depth more the only other thing i would mention mark is um there's quite a bit like if you drove by on waltham road now that you know that existing hedgerow at the street is pretty thick so in this area where mark indicated that there's actually not much here right now because that um that's the 37 um 39 part of waltham road versus 45 which is the existing fish center property um so we are trying to fill in as much as we can with different size um shrubs and plantings to kind of build that barrier in the area where there's not one right now i had a question mark the spacing between the 25 foot lights is what versus the 14 yeah i don't know that off the top of my head um these look like they're about 60 feet apart is that right are these nine by 18 spaces is that the size of a yeah it might be uh like 70 to 80 is the range and there's 14 footers um they would be less i think those are you still have some there right yeah here 30 and yeah those are the ball ballard lights adjacent to that path that's the main entry these are the short ones here those are 14 footers but also um carry it i can i think i can draw you can just just send me a memo on it that's fine so these the only reason these are when i was doing these uh i went to 12 feet you you you have less uh light overflow the closer you put those short poles together so i know i still don't understand the logic of going to 25 foot poles and saying there's going to be less spillage it just doesn't make sense to me the the what i was told by my lighting consultant was shorter and closer together the less spill you're going to get that's true and i think what we so i think there's two factors um that that played into this the first was that we were the first attempt we made was to use the existing types of lights which were not uh not great i understand so that was that then when we redid this the idea was to get the level of coverage with the fewest number of poles to start to try to control yeah see that's the part that i thought was going you're basically finding a cheaper solution and it costs more money to have the 12 foot poles closer together yeah it may just be worth it to the neighbors that you have to spend that money it's not i think lighting that's not true you're not getting better lighting you're getting cheaper lighting i mean i i would say it's um more appropriate to the site and what we've the issue that we're running up against is as soon as we have to light the parking lot from one side and not both we need horizontal throw across the parking lot and there's no fixtures uh on the market that have uh light that goes out 80 feet from the pole yeah without being 100 feet tall you never go 80 feet you always make them 20 feet and that way your lighting is discrete it's kept low profile and it's uh not overflowing into everybody's eyes across the street yeah i i think um we can revisit that on our end but i feel fairly confident we went pretty deep on this with the planning board um comments and uh landed where we thought was the best suited for a site like this um yeah but i question the the facts here i think that the planning board needs to be told the truth that there is a way to do it with lower profile lights there surely is it may not be the most fiscally responsible thing for us to propose to the client though i think that's that's about you know what maybe you should find out how much it is yeah until we are down what the problem and we're always because of lighting it's because of cost but we're also up against uh between a rock and a hard place on the north side of the parking lot yeah here in that we're always going to have spillage for whatever fixture we put on there whether it's shielded or we've tested many different fixtures over there and that has always been the case and we've worked with our vendors and engineers to come up with a solution that fulfills that requirement and and meets the performance needs of the school yeah i would i would just say this that we've studied it and you haven't i have on other projects well that that's that's this project so i can sniff out uh stretch yeah well you haven't studied it so for you to say something like that is it's based on it's offensive experience doing this stuff it's offensive it's offensive for you to try and tell me something that i know is not true you don't know it's not true yeah i do you don't i've done it in other projects whatever um that's yeah i think that's the only thing to say i think there are photometric plans that had been previously submitted to the planning board that show that we had a hard time making that work and so there is a suggestion to pivot we have pivoted and this would mean going back to where we started so look we're not saying mark's done a thorough job is what i would say but we hear what you're saying you have a difference of opinion you don't know the facts of this site or what we've done you're analogizing it to some other project that might or might not be relevant but we heard what you said and i'm not speaking for mark but we understand the comments and we'll make sure we didn't overlook anything that's what we're how we're leaving it thanks bill are there any other questions um i wonder i think the gray boxes between the buildings and the driveway um it's a is it a a covered structure for students who are waiting to be picked up do you have a any sort of image of what that looks like or nothing i didn't see it on the detailed plans i don't think that we've gotten that far yet okay any other questions no okay thank you very much thank you all for your time thank you thanks for the input robin we'll see you tomorrow you'll see me tomorrow good night good night oh can i ask one question maybe robin you can send me the list of names that were yeah i took a screenshot that'd be great thanks yeah and there were no other attendees so it's interesting have you not had people from the neighborhood no we've had tons but they are represented by dan hill and really yeah so he has been uh you know on top of things and they have been communicating with the neighbors quite a lot so um so do we uh we need to make a motion on this yeah sort of have findings so we should kind of lay them out a little bit first and then do a motion think about what we want to say okay um so and you know just like the rice road project it's dover but that doesn't mean we shouldn't say what we think and yeah people can take it for what it's worth i can i can tell you that 25 foot poles you're going to get a lot of complaints from the neighbors if they're not coming to the meetings they're going to be really sorry that they didn't bring it up they've been to the meetings and they've seen i'm not sure that um and there were a lot of issues with the lighting there were i i don't know if i have a lighting plan but they didn't submit it so we're probably not supposed to look at it um they they have gone back and forth with the lighting plans they had a lot of issues if they had lights closer to the to waltham road that they were having trouble finding ways to make it work um yeah because there are areas where there isn't very much screening uh where you know they're starting from scratch because it's where they were old driveways and so it's going to take some time before that fills in and they didn't necessarily want to put lights there and they did provide you know like lighting drawings that show that there isn't spillage um but i i agree i mean 25 feet is probably taller than most of the trees exactly and so people will see it you get a cloud of light up there yeah so um so i think there's a difference between the light not being visible and it not spilling so i think that's where that line is just keep in mind that what's really driving this is cost they didn't want to say it but that's what's going on so it's happened on other projects it's a lot more expensive to put three times as many lights you have to wire each one you have to buy you know each separate light pole and so it definitely is a much more expensive way to light up a parking lot yeah i i just wish they'd tell the truth you know and say we can't afford it you know yeah um so we sort of have the two different things to deal with the land the the actual structures and then the landscaping yeah okay um i think that the fact that they um have have worked with uh concom on the plant selection is very reassuring to me i have not studied the plant types for their aesthetic value and maintenance issues that may uh come up but i think that the school is probably it's in their self-interest to maintain these properties uh so that i i have less concern than i would on a public building yeah their their issue is that with them moving the parking closer to waltham road there are places where they don't have the depth to put in you know really large plantings um before they hit the right of way so some of the areas are going to appear pretty thin because they can't put anything really giant in there and what do the neighbors feel about that were they concerned about yeah they're not particularly happy yeah they're not particularly happy with it but they understand there's not you know that between planning and concom i think people have done what they can to get as many plants in there and they have been flexible they have come back to us and you know oh well we can try and fit more plants in this section and i had suggested just adding some more screening back by the building because even that would help and first they said no but then they came back and put a couple trees between the parking lot and the building so that there's a little bit of screening at the distance okay so um good so they have been receptive and they have added i think as many plants as they can um it's just the way that they're having to move their parking is just making it very challenging yeah and i get that i get the the turning radius for the fire truck yeah eats up a lot of space it does anything you have to say uh tanya no regarding lighting pictures i believe it was good good what about the buildings um about building i feel they actually i do feel that they did a good job there are improvement as you said considering uh north south size of the windows and uh but uh functionally it works well the building uh like uh the type and style of the windows and proportion of the windows fits to this uh modern architectural style that they picked and they brought it in the the small massing overall like three buildings works well not just for this existing building but uh overall as a project i don't think it's uh and it's i think it's actually it will look different than uh original building but it should look a little different in my opinion because uh uh uh or you do exact copy of it or you you know it will be a continuation of the project this project started when this uh original building was built or retrofitted and then now it's uh like it's built like in 2026 or 2027 and it should look like that yeah that i would agree with that except i don't think that looks like a 2026 building it looks to me like a 1979 uh data terminal systems building it's it's it's not very all those vertical windows i mean that was done uh 50 years ago these guys are you know sleeping in the last century uh the building could be much more creative than this it's called a bear in a way it's always could be yeah and i'd like to see them pick up at least one little element and not copy it in the new building but at least mimic it do something to tie them together a little bit yeah your suggestion about the tower uh it was a very good suggestion i think that's what ties us building together like to make the kind of entrance point yeah yeah i think that would work yeah what they've done makes no connection to the building at all it's just too abstract a lot of times people think in their head well if we have a cluster of three now we've matched the building well it's like the class the size of the windows is different the spacing is different there is literally no connection left and they make everything change so i think we all agree that the tower idea should be developed further uh also uh as you said from natural uh natural ventilation natural uh heating point of view they could uh review the size of the windows and uh the clear store part this could be good as well but again if they're doing it they need to think about overhang and this would change the character of the building and it's uh it will a lot of things yeah i missed that i'm not sure i understand i'm saying if they would
add more glass on the south side they also need to think about the overhang because otherwise they would have problems during the summer so it would change completely the character of the building so it's quite a redesign for them do you think he's open to that though i i i think it'd be nice if you do that but all right we can mention it what about i think an easy fix that i brought up though was to do something with the clear story glazing and take advantage of the south light for the clearer story you don't have to have windows all the way around that to get the light well you only need it from the south side that's true yeah and it's interesting the the middle building does not have lights it does not have windows on the north side yeah that's right it's nice to have colored elevations because i still don't understand some materials like uh yeah um i have a difference yeah i have some different drawings from the um the packet that was submitted for i i have a hard copy set of what um what he had delivered yeah i did there was a different set that was submitted for planning boards meeting tomorrow that's why i have some different drawings um but i don't know that it but they weren't submitted to us for this meeting so i don't know that we're supposed to use them um so he submitted what i have a site he submitted yeah but yeah i'm saying he submitted more to planning board and he didn't submit them to us why do they do that i don't think that's appropriate yeah so well there were different things asked you know planning board had asked for specific things so but i don't think i'm supposed to share them because they weren't submitted for this okay for drab to consider so my first stab at the motion is that you know our recommendation is that the building is functionally well designed for the purpose but there are no elements that tie the existing building and the new building such as the tower structure or tie them together there's also concern the twin that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings okay sounds good that's definitely true yeah good that sound okay yeah and then the third thing is i don't have a third thing was there a third thing oh i had to put them in a different order i had lighting uh well there was landscaping you had comments about that yeah we didn't have any real comments about landscaping though if concom was happy okay we weren't unhappy yeah we could say that though i don't know um okay you could say that we've reviewed them and they were pleased that they've complied with the conservation commission
okay so you want to hear it one more time yes please all right i move that we recommend that we find the building is functionally well designed for the purpose but there are no elements that tie the existing building and the new buildings together such as the tower structure visually i've heard the word visually visually okay um there is also concern that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings well actually what the statement you just made they could argue that it's not true because they did try to tie together the lap siding and the shingle and the stone finishes so you could say except for the finishes there's no relation i think that's true or we could say there are not enough elements could be that too yeah um and then uh the lighting poles i just read so there is also concern that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings the landscaping plans comply with the conservation commission's requirements and the board is satisfied well you might even among us right now think that it may be preferred to the town to accept some spillage from the lower poles at the street in exchange for not having 25 foot high poles that can be seen from blocks away because they're making that their driving point we should say well we'll accept a little spillage and still have the low poles that we would accept 14 foot whole height which apparently they had shown you before is that right robin yeah just tell them to go back to that it's the lesser of two evils okay i'm gonna try and read again sorry um wait a minute okay uh i move that the board recommend finding that the building is functional the buildings are functionally well designed for the purpose uh but that there are not enough elements that visually tie the existing building and the new buildings together such as the tower structure there is also concern that the 25 foot lighting poles will be visible to abutters over the buffer plantings and the town must decide if some light spillage from 14 foot poles is acceptable or preferred over 25 foot poles which will leave light visible over the buffer plantings the landscaping plans comply with the conservation commission's requirements and the board is satisfied sweet i'm in okay so you who seconds it i second oh yeah okay and so we'll vote and then i'll type this up and send it to you like normal bill okay those in favor robin vote hi hi bill hi so it's unanimous that's great that's great thank you that was very helpful robin we got meeting minutes uh i move that we approve the meeting minutes from december 16th 2025 tanya seconds on your seconds okay all those in favor hi hi okay now we're at uh next item which is the oil and design guidelines since we're running running late uh unless you have questions this is just a draft that um anina and i have put together for text for you to review we don't have to discuss them tonight if you want to do uh comment comment directly to anina and not through me basically that way with open meeting law um we're not conspiring outside right so how to is is what's highlighted what's new yeah the blue the highlight was uh anina's ads of things that she had to do okay the yellow highlights and uh some of them i already added the text but she didn't eliminate her highlighted yellow so it's redundant in that sense in some places but okay don't worry we can take a look at it um i also when i was out in wisconsin i took some pictures yeah i'm going to share my screen okay and show some pictures that i took right good or bad good oh yeah that's good i was in the middle this is the national mustard museum oh my case you've never seen the national mustard museum i have not but this is a part of wisconsin this is a town called middleton and this is all brand new this is all new construction um but this is what it looks nice um there's all different sections oh by the way that was mentioned very lightly tonight but you can bring up tomorrow if you go back or even here you can see this pavers on the ground and then the slab yeah great they're using different colored pavers on the school you may want to find out what the materials are tomorrow these look like they're just bricks and then concrete yeah but yeah we went there for dinner one evening which is this is the picture i took that evening yeah um and then i went back and found pictures online of it during the day yeah um and it's you know it's it's all brand new but it's pleasing it's not you know there's enough variation there's variation height in the facades and there's housing up above these you know the stores and offices and everything so it was a nice mixed use yeah but it's uh quite dense you know it's attached to each other so it does create this continuation of the retail street versus severe yeah we don't have it in the most places so it it's dense but it's very small it's maybe it's a very small area it's very interesting it's not big um but it was interesting i thought i'd send some pictures very they've got very consistent sign band yeah um that we don't have in wayland and no actually don't even have in concord and the band is consistent but the signs are all different yeah but it makes it easy to find what you're looking for yeah i think those so and you'll see that in the in the draft for the design guidelines we have we borrowed a couple pictures from concord that are better examples than we have here in wayland yeah but i did want to get that national mustard museum in there oh that's wonderful yeah it's i love the mustard yellow sign color it's great it's pretty funny we didn't go in though it was closed when we were there so so but i can send those to you bill um or i'll send them to anina and then she can send them over or whatever um well if you have you know i just would like you to read this particularly the text yeah in blue that i've added because it's sort of thrown it together and it probably could stand some wordsmithing and comments and i i welcome your uh input on that okay so the blue is you and the highlighted is anina now yellow highlights are anina yeah okay i don't see either oh so robin maybe could you send to me yeah i need to send it you know what it is i'm sorry she accepted all the edits so they're no longer no longer blue they're blue on my copy oh okay yeah mine aren't blue sorry so so maybe go ahead resend her yours and ask her to send it without accepting the changes yeah she could do that yeah because all she did was accept it yeah just so that we can compare the two together i think it helps to compare yeah so she can send that um and i saw there are a lot of places where she's talking about you know adding pictures and maybe some of the pictures from here are good i don't know yeah a lot of them that she didn't put in were just reusing the old ones from the old uh yeah fine guidelines because it's uh not a good time of year to take new pictures no for now we're just going to drop in the old ones in those cases okay um we should have a reference sorry i saw a reference to the old collins market did you hear that that's going to become a bistro yes i hope it works out yeah yeah because it's it's it was really fun when it was a i don't know if you were here in town when it was a little general store and a little grocery store now it's really fun to have people you know milling around in there yeah tanya this is the building in the center of town with the big columns out front oh yeah exactly oh yeah tanya greek what are they calling greek revival greek revival yeah yeah hi i saw article about it yeah um okay so yeah i'll take a look at it but maybe have anina send your copy without the changes accepted so that we can see what your changes were yeah so robin please fold it to me as well okay because it's so cycle missions okay yeah anina sent this one to our town email addresses okay if you could forward it please yeah i will
yeah i'll wait until i get the yeah the unchanged one from it nina and then i'll send them both wonderful wonderful all right thank you guys we have a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn i move to adjourn it's 8 29