April 8, 2026 – Economic Development Committee – Video & Transcript
April 8, 2026 - Economic Development Committee
Terrific. So this is calling to order the meeting for ADC with members of the planning board
as of April 8th at 5 p.m. in the usual time. We are both hybrid. We are in person, but also
one of our members is remote. So just introducing myself, Rebecca Stanizzi, I'm chair,
Katie Harris, we have David Villari, we have Ali Pollack, and then Karen Kelly will be joining us,
and then Jeff Vecchio is remote. Jeff, are you there? You have your mic off. Just want to make sure you're good to go.
Jeff, are you there? Yeah, sorry, I was on mute. Yes, I'm here. Perfect. Okay, great. So it's really just one of your members who isn't here. That's great. Yeah, so maybe he's traveling, you couldn't make it. So yeah. So just introducing there and actually wanted to introduce Ali, who's one of our newest members. Needy, our other new member, is traveling and not here. But Ali's background is quite interesting, so I will just give you a good two seconds. Thank you. I think you reached out to Annette, you said. Yeah, actually we exchanged an email when I first moved to Wayland. It was many moons ago. Oh yes, and they said we'd like you to be invited. Right, exactly. You remember me. I do. So yeah, we are a new resident to Wayland like a year and a half ago. I am an urban planner. I am trained as an architect and urban designer, and I practice urban planning, and I teach actually urban planning, and cartography, map making as well. So I have some skills in GIS. I do teach in multiple institutions, and I have a consulting business that I actually help to towns like us, mostly in upstate New York, though not in Massachusetts, about planning, zoning, and land use issues. Right. So we're excited to have money. That's wonderful. Do you have experience with the MBTA community's statutes and regulations? Yeah, getting there, because I'm actually using it as a case study in my school as well. I teach in Boston Architectural College, so I'm making myself more and more familiar now, now that I have to explain it to students. So with that, so Ali and I had, this had come up in a meeting in Roberts online as well, but we have in our EDC meeting, we put a line in town planner update because we felt like we weren't hearing what was happening with the planning board necessarily, if there was something we should be aware of. And so Robert had mentioned it in February, but as, I don't know if you guys were aware, but November, December, we had put together a presentation written about growth items within the town of Wayland. Yes. And presented to the FinCom and select board, and we're just waiting for budget data. Everyone's been tied up with town meeting. But ultimately, let's look at how we might be able to grow as a community. And one of those is MBTA zoning. So in the economic development bond bill, when the town manager had asked, like, if we can get an earmark, what would you ask for? Part of it was Route 20 master planning, but also was MBTA communities, because it's definitely worth money to us as a town. So Alta Oxbow is really phenomenal in how it's performing so far, with few impacts to the city or to the town. And so we wanted to be able to look at that overall. And so this was sort of right in wheelhouse. So when Robert mentioned it, we're like, oh, wow. Okay. So we wanted to know, and Ali, our first questions are, what does it look like? What does the massing look like? But there really wasn't anything available. And so basically, Ali does this. And so he was able to take a look at it and say, okay, well, we have 58 feet instead of 30, 35. What does it look like within the envelope that it's being proposed at? So that's what we had looked at. Similar to what we had done way back with River's Edge. And, you know, Bill Sterling and I are basically the ones who wrote the design guidelines there. We could control that because we own the site and we could dictate exactly where we wanted it to be. We basically wrote our own zoning as well as design guidelines. But it definitely stepped the massing back away from the road because it's quite difficult. It's quite overwhelming when it's close to the road. So as we looked at it, we were just concerned. We love the density, would love to see it move forward, but we just need to sort of protect the town. There are two pieces to the district, as you well know. One is sort of tucked in a little bit behind the Sudbury landfill. Uh, okay. There are four. So, but there are essentially, yeah, two sides of the street, basically. No, there are four. Okay. Has the pantry siphon subdivided? Yeah, a while ago, and it's less than two acres, so it's not even eligible for the MBTA. Okay. Yeah. But it could combine with an adjacent site. If someone was smart, they would do the parcel behind and coordinate with them to get a bigger site, most likely. It's just sort of, it's something that could happen, right? Becky, it was combined. It was combined, Becky. It didn't. It was combined once. And they subdivided it off. So, at this point, it's not in play, unless they go back and, and, yeah, and put them out together. At this point, it's not in play. And so it's, it's not forecasted to be developed. However, it is a non-profit that's there, that's sitting on quite valuable land if the zoning goes there. And so it would make sense from their perspective to combine with the site behind in some way, shape, or form that they could then be a part of the new development while still gaining the rights. So you, you have to anticipate that if the zoning is there, it could and very well may be exercised, right? Mm-hmm. So we looked at it just looking at, okay, very simple change of two different numbers on the page, number of units, and then ultimately the height, it can get a very different outcome. So we had sent some of the visuals. And I would just say, before we go through this, two different things. One is, we are not looking to change the MBTA zoning. It stays as it is. It's been approved. Nobody should upset that apple cart. What we're talking about is above and beyond, right? So that's at our discretion. So we can talk about that as a premise, but that's the intent, that we would not go back to the state. We can do whatever we want with our zoning, we've complied with MBTA. We have to go back to the state. In our approval letter, it says, if we want to make any kind of change whatsoever, we have to present it to them in advance. Robert presented ours to them in advance before we decided to go forward with it. Okay. So that might be a deal stopper going before town meeting this time. However, what has been presented, let's talk about that. So it is not our intent to upset that apple cart. We should, even if it's a different clause, I mean, we, we should be able to do anything we want. We can still do commercial zoning. We can still do what the underlying zoning is besides the MBTA. But ultimately, if there is this requirement, then maybe it has to wait until next year. However, should this go forward with the 58 feet, 30 feet from the road, that is, that's a concern. Okay. Can we talk and get these things one at a time? Um, because if you look at the, uh, plan that's at the registry of deeds, uh, where it, we had it in front of us, uh, to do with the A&R and split across the western parcel into two, the front parcel has a very large waterline easement that you can close the entire front page. So you could never put something on top of that. And then on the western side, there's another easement for, uh, an existing 30 foot wide gas line easement. Again, we can't go onto that. So for the western parcel, even if it were combined with the parcel behind it, you still couldn't get right on the road. Okay. Can I, I'm trying to share my screen and I, so we can look at a little segment. So Robbie, when says I can. Your GIS is not up to date, just so you know. You can share it. Okay. But now I'm just sharing my screen. So let's see. There we go. There we go. Okay. So if we're looking at the site, for example. So this red, um, let's see if we can do a slideshow. There we go. So with this, the red outline, which is a little darker on the screen, but it's this district right here. Yeah. So Annette, where were you saying? You were saying there's an easement. There are two. One right here. And then there's another one that goes up here. Okay. And how deep is the easement in the front? Uh, in the front. It, I didn't flip it off. It didn't say, but I'm just looking at the drawing on this. The, uh, that was done by a surveyor and it's not insignificant. And it doesn't continue in front of what is labeled as 21 cm? 21 cm. Is that the one over here? No, it doesn't. So it stops at and it goes down the road. The Longfiller. Okay. Anything else you wanted to do? And it goes across that parcel. It goes simply. It goes right here. And then it goes like that. You know, it goes like this out here too. It turns. It's, it's compromising the site basically for use. The food pantry site. Yes. Okay. Anything else? Uh, for right now, I just wanted to hit each of the issues as we go forward. Okay. So with that, it was, that was the intent not to disturb the MBTA and then also make sure that it stays financially feasible. I think Robin, that was your concern. I'd watch you guys meeting that somehow we would create something that the property owner would walk away to be no longer financially feasible. Um, the key for that is that the lot coverage is only 25%, right? So it's 25% of the lot coverage. Yes. So with that, your footprint of your building is 25% of the site. So as long as any setback doesn't limit you to less than that 25%, and it's much greater than that, then you can still put your building. It's just a matter of where, and that's really the concern of us here is we don't want it too close to the road because it would be very overwhelming. And right now your design regulations say that the parking has to be in the side and the rear, which pushes the building to the front, right? So it depends where they decide their frontage is. They can decide that their frontage is on, uh, the, uh, miniband road. And then the, then the side setback is 15 feet, which is even worse. So, well, except, except that if you're talking about this parcel, the one on the east, yes, there is a very large topographical drop. Yes. And they can't, they can't do anything there because it would undermine the road. They can't curve it down. They could build into the hill. It happens all the time. Well, you would, Alta Oxbow is built into the hill. You would not build it into the hill in this location and our regulations and bylaws between the combination. I can break apart, which is which you have to have screening around your property, um, particularly coming from a public road. And you also have to get the approval of the fire department. The fire department from our experience with them wants to be able to go around the entire building. So to do that, you would not build into the hill and you would also have windows at that area. You wouldn't have, if you were doing a large building, you would not have a brick wall. Right. But you would put your garage up against it. Absolutely. And you would, you would reset your building into that, into that topo. You mean, if the grid, if the garage is under the building. Yeah. Yeah. And then you would have your building face and you would have some trees in front in that 30 feet, but otherwise you could have that building at 30 feet off the road. I think in order for this site to be profitable, they aren't going to be able to incorporate the garage into the building. The parking will have to be surface parking. Oh, they won't, it won't be a problem. With the number of units that they have, they probably won't be able to do it with the site area that they have. Once you get to 20 to 32 units an acre, then you're pretty much going to have to have some parking underneath the building. So, and it won't be cost effective to put it fully underground, but kind of that. Do you have how many, you look at the bylaw to see how many, how many parking spaces you one has to have per unit? No. Okay. That's in there too. But any developer will want to have in suburbia where there is no bus or subway transportation at least one minute. Well, you actually have a number. So for Eastern parcel, I think you need 137. And then for the Western parcels, if they ever get to a load that combined... 137 for how many units? Uh, 137 for 91 dwelling units. Okay. Okay. And then for the other two parcels, the 21 and 2106, if they ever combined, it would be roughly around 140, 147.5 units. So let's call it 147 units. That would require 220, 221 parking units. So yeah, that's what we're talking about. Yep. So typically you, you hear about this construction type that's called four over one or five over one. It's always sort of this concrete foundation garage at that first level or sort of a recessed first level. And then it's a number of levels above. So it's four, four stories over one, five over one. It's pretty typical to build in that fashion because it does get you some garage parking, which is more valuable. But then also it just gets you to your parking counts because you need to be able to offer parking. It's my understanding that it costs more to build parking spaces than if you do them on the surface. Absolutely. But if it's between that and not having parking and not... I understand that that increases the cost of the development. It would increase the cost for sure, but it would also add anonymity, right? Because I mean, typically it depends on how you configure the building. So if we're talking about a two to three story, kind of like a very modest multifamily building, like an L shape or U shape, you would actually try to leave out maybe parking. But if you want to build more like a straight slab or like a little L maybe shaped building, you might actually want to put it underneath it. Again, it would become an amenity, especially in a climate like this. And also typically this kind of parking allows you some like dead interior spaces, which are also good for amenities. Like many of these new buildings now come up with things like kids room, like X facility, mail room, XYZ. So some of those actually doesn't even require windows. So it would be okay. I'm not saying I would do it fine with the developer, but I can very much see that it's actually doable if the developer chooses to go with that. And I think I have the map in front of me right now. So the topography is really a concern. You're absolutely right. So it drops down, but it drops down in that first 30 feet. So after 30 feet, there is some, but not much, maybe like five to six feet of difference going through that in the next like 20 feet after 30 feet. So if we talk about a setback, likely nobody would move closer than 30 feet to the Route 20, I would say. But can a building be built at 30 feet with the topography? It could actually. And what about the police and fire? That's their jurisdiction. I know, but we know what it is. Yeah, exactly. I do. But you have Route 20, like right there, about 30 feet away. It has their access. We've talked to them about this kind of thing, and they weren't excited about that. But does MBTA allow that within their required guidelines? Now what? With MBTA, there are certain things, and we have designed requirements, right? But they haven't been approved by the state. And you were saying that it went farther than what they typically allow. No, not typically allow it. We did what we thought they would allow, but we didn't put it into the bylaw because we wanted the bylaw to be approved out of the box. We didn't want to take a chance. And then when we came up with the design or the performance standards, we followed state requirements of what would be allowed. And we can change those because they're regulations. We can't change bylaws easily unless we go to town meeting. But have they been approved by the state? No, and they don't have to be approved by the state. So I'm just one of the disconnect, right? They go beyond what the state typically allows. I didn't say they go beyond what the state typically allows. You said that. No, that's what you said in the meeting. No, I didn't. Yeah. You had just said that it went farther than the guidelines typically did, which is that's why. Well, I didn't mean to say that if that's what I said, but I don't think that's exactly what I said. I said that in the bylaw, we kept it as simple as we could keep it. And we reserved the performance standards for our regulations because we're in charge of our regulations, but not the bylaw. And we wanted to get the bylaw approved. We did not go further. We adopted the kinds of things that the state said we could do, but we did them in the bylaw and the regulations because the state is
They don't have veto power over our regulations. Right. They don't have veto power. And we just didn't want to take a chance of them saying that we wrote something funny. For example, in the ADU bylaw, we used the word minimum and we knew what we meant. They rejected that and the AG did. So we've got to go back at town meeting this year and take out the word minimum. It's that kind of thing. Okay. So the question is with the fire department, if the building is close, right, it's going to be easier to do it at 30 feet than it will be potentially at 60 feet because you have that roadway access and it's not necessarily because we don't know. We don't know. So I'm just telling you what they said to us. I hear you. I hear you. But at some point, the state wants housing. And so if this is going to be talked through, do we stop a housing project that is going through and meeting the guidelines because of this one little thing with the fire department or does the state really want to create housing here? It's not up to the state and that part, it's up to the public safety officials. So why don't we, we're litigating something that we don't have the fire department here. We're not litigating anything. Well, using the wrong word, we're debating it. So what we're trying to say though, is that everything is better off when it is pushed back, right? You have your fire lane. We have the buffers. You're able to get some of that parking out front. It's not as onerous at the street. So we're actually agreeing on the same things. We're just saying it should be in the zoning because otherwise we're leaving it to chance. We're leaving it to the chance of the fire department. We're leaving it to chance the developers going to do the right thing. We're leaving it to chance that we may end up with something that the easement may get moved. The fire, you know, ultimately the pantry may get climbed with another site. We don't know what may happen. So we just need to protect the town, which is what zoning is, and put in these these binder guardrails to make sure that what gets developed there, because it is as of right, is something that will fit in there and is not overwhelming of the street. So with that, we had sent these, but we'll show you very quickly. When Ali did this, he actually combined the road is private and it's privately is owned by the same parties that owned the old Candela building and previously owned the food pantry. For this analysis, he had actually combined it with the one on the right. But it's, you know, it's one point that those road rights will probably transfer to an adjacent site. I think that actually the road, I could be wrong, but I think the road rights go back to the Longfellow property. It's privately owned and it's the same ownership as this building. Okay. And did you check out who has the ownership of the Longfellow building? Because I think it's all part of the same company. That I don't know because it wasn't part of the district. Okay. I believe it's part of the same. Okay. So the zoning is over the roadway and the roadway is private. It's not public. So those development rights. And so what Ali was doing, it was combining with one or the other and we combined it on this side. It could be the other side. Ultimately, the discussion was, as we talked through, you can see this topo right here. This is the grade difference around Route 20. You know, it's 30, 20, 18, 13 feet above the site, which is about at 137. So you can see the big drop in topo and sort of that first kind of 20, 30, 40 feet. It is actually 10 feet lower down here where the food pantry is. But there was some discussion, you know, at 137 feet with a 58 foot tall building at 195, it will be taller than the highest point in the Sudbury landfill, which is 180. So it will be quite visible even if, even with the landfill next door, it's quite large. So with this, with the reasonable worst case development, if we looked at 30 foot setbacks along the roadway, at some point, the side yard is 15 feet, but we're, for sake of argument, showing that Route 20 should be considered frontage. But worst case, it would be 15. But logically, it seems like it would be 30. This shows 30 foot setbacks here, again, following the regulations that the parking should be in the side and the back, hidden, exactly. And so what this does is it pushes all that massing toward the street. So that you were saying there's an easement here that kind of goes here, you could still have a building back here. You know, you would look at all these sites, and you would look at what your envelope is to build. And you would look to maximize that. So from the east parcel, you can see the existing two-level office building, which is kind of tucked behind some trees, you can't really see it. Ultimately, if you add a four story building, then this is 49 feet, and there's a peaked roof, which gets up to 58 feet, kind of similar to Alta Oxbow. Stop it one moment, please. Where you've got the gray, is that meant to be a garage? That's meant to be a garage. And how high is that from the base zone? So with this one, in your guys' regulation, no more than six feet can show. This shows a little bit more, but you kind of grade against it, kind of what they did at Alta. But this is just getting to a roof line that is at 49, not at the 58. We can show you in a second the six feet, and you can see what that looks like. Ultimately, this is what four, four over one, this is four over the garage, what that height looks like over at Alta Oxbow on the back side. What's the distance? So this red line? What is it? What is each floor? How's the height of each floor? So at this point, they went up to the 58. They were actually, I think I didn't look at the exact on the building documents, but four floors, it would be consistent with what's being shown on the other page. On each floor, what is the height of each floor? I put the massing diagrams that we show. She's pointing to Alta Oxbow. I'm asking for each story. Somewhere between 10 and 11 feet. That's where it typically is, and I think Ali, you used 10 feet? Yeah, it's pretty much the industry standard. Yeah, it's pretty much industry standard. Slap to slab though, it's not like finished floor. Finished ceilings, you'd typically try to get to like a nine, nine, six. So this is that kind of height. This red line is 30 feet from the edge of the building. So you figure a sidewalk is four feet, a parking spot is about 18, another eight feet. This is how close the roadway would be if a building is built 30 feet off of Route 20. Just kind of gives you a sense. And that's with a four-story building. Yeah, so this red line, if you're looking, this is a perspective drawing, right? So this parking space, typically parking spaces are 18 feet long. There's a sidewalk behind it up against the wall. So it's four foot sidewalk, 18 foot, basically for a parking space, another eight foot. This is about where 30 feet is, where a roadway would be, the road being over here, compared to a 58 foot building. And that's with a peaked roof. That's not with a flat roof, but it gives a sense of that level of density and how close to the road it would be. And that was our concern. So yeah, the road would be, exactly. So going back to the four stories, as we looked in, Robert had sent us the design requirements and no more six foot of the garage can be exposed. So with that, you basically 58 feet, take off six, you've got 52 feet, which at 10 feet floor to floor, you can have five stories with a flat roof. So there is no guidance whatsoever as to number of floors, which we did it at River's Edge and Alta Oxbow. If you keep within the zoning, you could do a five-story building on this site. Because of how things are written with a, you could do a five over one because the garage has said it can't be any more than six feet out of the ground. It leaves the ability to do five stories. I'm having trouble on the Route 20 side, visualizing the end of the building, where you've put it, and if there is room for a road around there. It looks to me like it's sitting smack against the land. You're 30 feet off of a major roadway. You could access it from the roadway. But again, the fire department is not here. Yeah, they're not going to look at it. They don't want that. We've talked to them about it already. No one's in the room to be able to verify that. What we're saying. So if you say that, then why do you have an issue with pushing the zoning back to 80 feet? You want it back there. You're saying you want it back there. We're saying this is what the zoning allows right now. And it's an issue. We're all saying it's an issue. You're saying for access. We're saying for density. I hear all of the things that you're pushing. I'm not arguing with them. I just want you to understand that we spent two years before with getting the zoning ready and doing the modeling. We had two grants totaling $49,000 from this state to do the modeling. It is not intuitive modeling. Not everybody has access to the modeling. We had to use the people that the state had on their list. And it was really complicated. As you start changing certain parameters,
you can't just do it. You have to be able to prove that you're producing the same number of units. We could prove it. No, because we don't have right now, unless you have a magic wand, we don't have any money to go and do modeling. And it is not something that you can do in three minutes. And it's not something that'll be ready for this town meeting. That is the question. So what we're proposing was not disturbing our existing approval, but layering on top of it. If they're saying it can't be done, so be it. We're still concerned about this zoning the way that it's written, that it could create a bad result. They still have to go through site plan review with the planning board, follow our regulations, and listen to the things that it is different than if you were dealing with the Dover amendment. Different standards. Okay, can we finish going through this really quickly? We don't need to go off on the Dover amendments. It's not really applicable here. So what we were showing was by having massing where you also control, this is another part of it, avoiding long building lengths that face Route 20. That's specifically something we did at Alta Oxbow. So the long building lengths are not along the roadway. Have you looked at our regulations about how long you can have long building lengths without breaking them up? It says you're supposed to break them up every 45 feet. However, you could have a 300-foot wall and just break it up every 45 feet, and there's no definition on what that is. You could do different paint colors. You could do a six-inch reveal. You could, it's having a big building face. I don't know that there's 300 feet there, first of all. I mean, I know you're being hyperbole. Yeah, yeah, but the key is good planning is that with this roadway, the shorter ends facing the roadway. That is also important so that these buildings don't feel overwhelming regardless of where they are, right? So 80-foot setback, which meets what you're looking for for a loop around. How the existing guidelines, if you did review the fire state, I don't know how the fire department went signed off on the 30 feet, which is currently in the existing zoning, but 80 feet would guarantee that loop that allows the fire department access. No long facades along Route 20, and limiting the housing to four floors. Because the way the zoning is written right now, you could do a five-story building. The problem, again, it's the modeling, and we can't intuit how it would turn out. The modeling just guarantees the number of units, correct? Yes. Okay. It guarantees the number of units in the actual space available, allowing for parking, roadways, walkways in through it, public spaces. So with all of those requirements, that would naturally push someone to go to five stories instead of four. And five stories is a full 58 feet. So it's just, if everybody's image in their minds that this should be a four-story building, the zoning right now, as it's written, allows a five-story building. In with Alta Oxpo, the bylaw says one thing, and what they've built is something different than that. Alta Oxpo is going up to 53 feet on three of the buildings. They applied for variants, and they got a variance. I don't think they were entitled to a variance. I think it was illegal. I think if somebody went after them, that they wouldn't win, and we would have lost as a town. So we cannot,
in the MBTA zoning, we cannot do what you do at Alta Oxpo. We can't write a bylaw that looks like the Alta Oxpo bylaw, where you have to go back X number of feet, and from that X number of feet, you can only go up this high, because you can't model it. We tried to do that. We thought at one point, well, with all of these buildings, maybe we would begin in all of the entire zone, all four sub-districts. We thought, you know, we'd really like to have them tiered so that they cut, they move back in a single building, but have them tiered at different lengths, and we weren't able to bottle it. We asked the consultant. They said, we can't, we can't do that, because we don't know how they're going to move their tiers when somebody applies. We just don't know how they're going to do the development. Right, but you've brought the guidelines that they fit within, so you know what the envelope is. So again, as we look at overall MBTA districts from an economic development standpoint, that's exactly what we would look at, right? So that you would look at what's the massing, how does it look, where do we fit in density so it looks and feels, right? Instead of leading it to chance. We know that we need more density in certain locations, but at the same time, you don't want to completely let that go, that you could have a five-story building that's very close to the road. Even if it's not close to the road, a five-story building is very tall. It's very tall. So I guess the primary question is, where did 58 come from? 58 came from having looked at the highest point at the Oxbow. But without stipulating a steep roof, a peach roof, then you would have 58 get you to five stories. We, the way that we've written all of the zoning, we do not deal with what the roof looks like. Our zoning bylaws, all across the board, go from, well, except for Alta-Oxbow, go from the average, yeah, the average grade across the entire site up to the top of the roof. Not the roof, the top of the building. And then what is on the roof is over and above that. But in Alta-Oxbow, you have it so that it goes, that you're measuring from right next to the building. That's how you measure the height, which is quite different than all the other bylaws. Just to clarify, average grade for the whole site, so if you have a headly slope site, you're going to have more than a five-story, is that what? No, it's at the building. Yeah, it's at the building, not the whole site. Right, right. Yeah. You go, it's the average grade of the site, and then you have to take that average grade and apply it to the building. Well, that's not how you get it from anywhere else interested. Well, that's what our bylaw says. Oh, weird. I didn't write it. I believe every town could have their own. It's about like, typically, you would get the average curve level, we would call it, and you would just apply it to the average curve level will define where your building starts, so theoretically. But if I have a, sorry to just use my hands, but if I have a building that, or a lane that looks like this, and my average grade is this line here, but let's say I want to be cool, and I want to build down here, and does that mean I can go 58 feet above that line? Above that, yes. And have like a seven-story building? Yeah, on one side, theoretically it's possible. That's how you, like in, if you're familiar with in New York City, that's how you have that huge lobbies and kind of like cool nightclubs and everything. That's how they get that. And it's usually not regulated by a regular zone in anyone, so you can see that anyway, anything you want in that area. Okay. But Oxbow, we're saying we did, like the town went by building height, like I took the corner of the building. Right. Down the floor. That's what it says in the bottom. Interesting. Okay. Can I ask just like a totally layman, regular townsperson question? I feel like when I look at that image of the road that's, what is it, 58 feet against the road, five stories, to me that looks not like Weyland. And I think the majority of Weylanders, if they were to see that, they would agree. So I think around this table, I think that we're all wanting the same thing. It's just a matter of how do we make that not happen. I guess. And how can we get there? Well, I don't know that you can this year. And I'm not sure that we will ever be able to under the MBTA thing. To me, I'm looking at that. And that doesn't look to me like what I think it would be. I mean, I just, I don't think that that's a realistic drawing. I'm not sure if we need to call it realistic anyway, right? For planning concepts, that's a reasonable worst case scenario. It just means it could be built. It may not be built. It may never be built. Why would anybody want to do that? I mean, seriously, if what you're trying, the rents here in Weyland are really high. But why chance it? This is probably what would be. No, with all due respect on it, I totally hear your climate. And before actually, I was in here and before California, I was actually working in New York. And I worked for, worked with Department of City Planning in New York as well. Totally out of the context. But if you're familiar with all those pencil towers that they call the Billionaire's Row, zoning never changed in there. It's like 42 years ago, actually. Nobody built for 30 years. And then there was money. There was a crisis. Nobody knew where to put that money. And we got started getting residential buildings as tall as Empire State Building. Now, I mean, we could argue that's New York City. It's insane to compare it with Weyland. But 20 years ago, if you told me that somebody would build a residential building that's 1500 feet tall and sell the top penthouse for more than $100 million, even in New York City, I would have said, not really. It's not going to happen in our lifetime. It did. So again, I mean, when I created these, the motivation was not that somebody will definitely build this tomorrow. I was basically just trying to see, well, what could be built? So we should take it to that. I mean, again, I'm going to use planning term of reasonable worst case development scenarios. So that's typically maybe 80% of the developments that I help with. I don't see that. But there is another like 15, 20% sometimes I see that. So it's, I think, well, I agree with Becky. We're all trying to do the same thing, I guess. But when it has a character, just keep the character and then keep the development multifamily housing is a must. If we don't do it, state will do it anyway. So it's better to have a little bit of control over it. I don't know how much that control it is, but I actually was going to ask you. So since there is an MBTA zoning in there anyway, and this article would require an increase in two things, that requires not going back to MBTA, correct? Right. And it doesn't because we're keeping everything the same and it would just have to go up. So why can't we write it in a way that we would say, okay, the height limit is X feet and then beyond X feet of the property line, it is Y feet. So theoretically, we're still giving like a height incentive. We're just saying not everywhere in the site, but we're keeping the MBTA at a base anyway. So that one doesn't change. Because the MBTA modeling, it has already put into it. Yeah. It has, and some of it doesn't even apply to this site, but it has wetlands, floodplain, parking, open space, walking trail. It's got all of that put in. So if you move it back, it is not clear that you would be able to get all of those things in there. You'd have to prove it to the state. Right. But I totally agree. We're not moving the MBTA baseline anymore, right? So whatever the height limit is there right now with the minimum setback, somebody is allowed to do it. That's fine. What we're saying is only for the additional height, let's just say, well, like additional height could be accommodated. It could just be accommodated a little further from the site line. That's I guess all it is. No, you're not talking about moving the base building. Okay. That was my understanding from what you have been talking about. We're not talking about it by implying it. So if a developer wants to build a three-story building and then have terraces and set back the building and go to a single-loaded corridor from a double-loaded corridor, they can, sure. And they can do that under our bylaw regulations now. And that might be okay. So we might be seeing a 34, 35-story building, 30 feet away from the street. We can't change that. That's MBTA anyway. We're locked in with that. But at least for the additional 20, 28 feet, whatever the difference between the current MBTA and the 58, we can at least help them push it back. And likely, a developer would not going to change the frame of the building by going from a double-loaded corridor to a single corridor. But doesn't that come in under the regulatory section, not under the bylaw? I wouldn't necessarily agree because, again, we're keeping the base MBTA. I mean, the town could say no to this article. If we make changes to the table,
I don't know how you would make that kind of change that you're talking about. I had understood that you were not doing it incrementally, but you wanted the whole building to be back. That would be great. But again, what you're explaining to us is that it can't be done. So I'm just trying to be creative in here. So we could just say... And we could do that in regulations. And maybe then the whole idea is that we don't redo the table, but we just put an asterisk and just say, actually, the maximum height is still... What is the current maximum height? Sorry, 35. So we say it's still 35 and we put a little asterisk. 35 feet can go up to 58 feet within X number of feet setback or within X number of distance from Route 20. It could be, I think, very specific even to Route 20. And I think that would actually help you. That will help the planning board. That will help the town because what will happen is MBTA zoning is not going to stop in these sites. We're going to have to be keeping building multifamily homes. Not maybe in the next decade, but maybe in 30 years, maybe in 40 years. Some of our single family is going to have to be, unfortunately, it's going to be forced to change. So I lived in California before Massachusetts, which this thing is like crazy in there, right? And at least we would not set a precedent so that a new developer would come to you 10 years later and say, well, you allowed it in this site. Why don't you allow it on another site? So we could actually say, well, here's how you build multifamily housing in Wayland. And it is okay with the MBTA. We're okay with the character. I mean, maybe that's the way to do it. Again, it's a maybe. I think one needs to separate two things out. There's the MBTA, and then there's other multifamily housing. Right. And we've talked before with the record about the fact that we can create multifamily housing. It has nothing to do with the MBTA district. And if we are going to have more, I would prefer to do it that way. And the board would prefer to do it that way and not be tied into all the garbage that goes along with the MBTA community stuff. So I think those are two separate things. But what I'm looking at are our regulations right now. And have you looked at our regulations? Yes. Oh, great. We're going to buy her some time just for a sec. So for the modeling that we did with the MBTA do you know if there's going to have like the board out of a sec and we could look at those modeling details? Because I was kind of curious to look at the stuff she was mentioning, whether that's the ads, or how it goes in. I don't know if we see all the announcements. But yeah, there was a whole consultant who went through and every single site had to go through that. It was a model that was built at the state level. It wasn't always perfect, but it kind of put everything in and they were able to analyze it. Is there data? Did we get like printouts of that analysis or? We've got final numbers. They don't give you the print, pronounce of the analysis. Robert, are you here? Robert? Yeah, I have the final file, but I don't think it's as detailed as what they were holding on to. And yeah, you can't read it. It's really hard to read. Yeah. So, you know, in looking at this, the information we've received is that the added height is what will be needed to make the site profitable. If there's a desire to put in rules that say that that height has to be set back from the roadway, that should be done in regulations because it gives us so much flexibility. We can change that when we want. We can be very specific without worrying about the Attorney General's office being like, nope, we don't like that. If we make the table too complicated and the Attorney General's office like, nope, we don't like that. Our regulation can be very specific. It can be very specific to that site, to the roadway. It can be much more flexible and it's more nimble in every way in terms of creating it, changing it and forcing it. And that would be the place for you guys to focus your energy if you want to be very specific. It's really easy in 306, 3.2 to go through this and put in meaningful restrictions on where that height has to be, where it can't be, what the massing has to be by the roadways and all that kind of stuff. It's just, it's the cleaner way to do it whenever we're changing these regulations that have to do with a state law. The Attorney General's office is just ruthless. You know, we couldn't say a minimum of one parking space. We had to say only one parking. You know, they're just, and the last time they didn't like how we changed the table, red line right through that. And it's not just the Attorney General. We have the Executive Office of Housing and Liberal Book Communities with the MBTA stuff. So in the regulations, can you change the number of units and the height? Like this stays exactly the same. We wouldn't change the number, we wouldn't be able to change the number of units. No matter what. In our regulations. No matter what. Because that's part of the modeling. But if it's in excess of what's here, and these rights are always there. I hear you that you don't want to have it on this page necessarily, because this is what we're not talking about in the regulation. Yeah, but we're not talking about limiting the number of units. That is something that is, that's a fixed thing from the modeling. And that's required. But setting it so that if the building is within so many feet of a roadway, you know, there has to be this setback before the height goes up. You know, you can write it in a way that is really specific and very clear. And... But if the density, the density would still change here. This would still see 32 and 58, but all those qualifications would be in the regulations? Yeah. But wouldn't then those regulations be suspect if somebody challenged it at the state level saying, no, no, no, no, no. Those regulations weren't approved. We don't have to follow. No, the regulations don't have to be approved. Right. But anything is appealable. And every, anything that we do, uh, somebody can go after. Of course. But I'm sticking through, Robin, what you're saying is, you know, is there a way to do it in the regulations and not necessarily here? Yes. What we were saying is, you know, let's not change that table. There's just an asterisk. If you want to have higher height, if you want to have higher density, then these are the hoops you jump through. But it doesn't change any of our baseline of hoop. That was definitely the intent. So, but if you're saying if we could change the density in the regulations, this would stay. No, you can't change the density. You can change what the mass in the building looks like from the roadway. You can set requirements. Um, you know, that if you're building right up to the setback, then you'd have to, your height has to be set back as well. That, that extra height has to be set back as well. But couldn't somebody then dispute that? And then we wouldn't have a light to stand on because it hasn't been approved. They could dispute anything they wanted, but it costs money to dispute and you have to get, they have to get an approval from us to get a building permit. And if the, if the profit margin on these apartment buildings is so narrow, they're not gonna, they're gonna try and find a way to work with what it is rather than litigating it. That eats away at their profit margin. So the issue with these buildings is the profit margin is so narrow that they're trying to find a way to comply, but still get what they need in terms of the number units. And one of the issues that we have had, and we didn't realize it until after we were very focused on originally following the state's requirements, but the state never took into account what would be financially feasible. I guess we talk a lot about profitability and I, I, you know, trust me, I understand the importance of it, but I wonder how much, you know, we really need to get into just because we're not trying to regulate the cost of steel and concrete and that feeds profitability in the same way. The building has to get funding even if they can't, if it's not going to be profitable, they can't get funding. Right. I hear that, that, that drives what a project happens and timing for when it happens, but that's not something that we would put into a bylaw that says. No, no, no. So, no, but we, we need. It goes down to number of units. So typically to have a building be financially solvent, you need to have at least 75 units. Ideally you have 150 units because that's sort of the operational ideal. Sure. One property manager on site, you're not splitting. It's sort of, it's getting to that critical mass and that's basically what it is. But that's the density requirements. That's the density requirements. As is and that's not. Right. So right now at 20 units an acre, you could probably only get 40 or 50 units, which would be difficult. Yeah. Right. Not impossible, but it just makes it difficult, right? It's more attractive if there's more density there. Sure. Um, so it's just basically, how do we make sure, you know, going back to the 58 feet, it is absolutely more cost effective to do a five-over-one than a four-over-one. If we have 58 feet, you can almost guarantee that you will have a five-story building because that is the most cost-effective way to build. So if you don't want a five-story building. I thought I just heard you say that you didn't necessarily, I don't, I don't know about the stories, but I thought I heard you say that it wouldn't be horrible to have a five-story building if they had a setback. Oh, we weren't saying a five-story garage, four-over-one. Right. I'm saying this is, this is a six-story building. Under 58 feet, you could get a six-story building. Five livable stories. Five livable stories over a garage that's halfway in the ground. Right. No, I was actually referring to, if you can't control this, let's assume this went in like this and there is 58. And then, I mean, we could talk about these sites. We could talk arbitrary as well, because this is going to happen in the future as well. So if there is a chance that we would get a five-story building, at least we want to push the fifth story or the fourth story or whatever it is, as much as possible to the back. Not necessarily, we may be okay keeping the base of the building. Right. And if a developer is willing to, I mean, theoretically, they wouldn't like it to build it that way. They're going to probably push the whole building back so that they have a single framing, because that would, I mean, talk about architectural and engineering costs of a project. Right. If they have the same footprint, it's just a cheese slice extruding it up. It's much cheaper than having a different layout on every floor and then the setbacks and the terraces and the whole installation of the terraces and all that. It's going to be a nightmare to them. That would only be viable if this is like very luxurious development, which I guess none of us would anticipate would happen exactly at that site. So we're basically, I mean, I don't want to say playing the trick, but we're trying to say, well, if you want to build it taller, it just needs to be further away. You can build it right by the road, but then you would be okay with the MBTA heights that is listed in there. And if you want to go above that, which we understand density is a concern for visibility and finances of the project, then you need to allocate the building in a smart way that would fit into our agenda, that would fit into your agenda as well. Right. But again, to do that, we have to write something. So if there's something that we could put into our regulations that you think would work for your concerns, we're happy to look at it. Mm-hmm. So I guess my point is, since the MBTA is already there as a baseline, anything you provide to these three sites is like an added bonus anyway, right? So nobody really can come after the town and say, taking something away. Yeah. Because we're not taking something away. You're not taking away. So you're actually given generously something saying, well, I mean, if you follow XYZ, which XYZ would be, you know, your 35 feet can be actually 58 feet if you are 80 feet away from the art block. So it's still giving them actually a lot of incentive. Now, regarding if that is, that fits into development criteria for the developer. Since you didn't see any tables or any feasibility study from them, we don't have a developer. Right. I mean, if an interested party, let's say, right. So somebody wants to develop this site. I think that's what Robert said. I mean, we don't know the name or if it is a, it may not even be a new project right now, but eventually they're going to have to run numbers by you anyway. They're going to come to the planning board and say, well, we requested this because the current table doesn't help us build a project. There's no profit margin. We can't sell it. We can't build it. Nobody's going to finance it. So it's still giving them more than the MBTA. I guess what I'm trying to say is when we say the extra height could be pushed further. Okay. I hear you and I'm not arguing with you. I'm just suggesting that if you, if that's what you're interested in doing, look at our regulations and come up with a place in the regulations where you can state what it is that you're saying. Because personally, I'm having difficulty stating it. No, but that's totally fine. I think what Becky and I were saying, we could even just use the table because the table already has a master's, right? It has like 40 feet for architectural features. So this is only for one district. Yeah. And so, you know, on that district, we worked with the property owner at the time to come up with what standards they wanted. So can we, I think the question is then, can we, like, what would stop us from adding another asterisk since we're actually... What would the asterisk say and how could you make that work? So the asterisk would say the 35 feet could be increased to 58 feet if you, as long as the 58 feet portion of the building is, let's just say, 80 feet away from the property line or 100 feet away from the property line. Or route 20. Yeah. I'm sorry, the property line... Well, you can't do the route 20 thing. That wouldn't work. And again, we don't know where any developer will choose frontage. They can choose it wherever they want, pretty much, as long as it's a, there's a roadway there.
So that part, I don't know the bylaws. When you choose your frontage, who allows, like, who says, okay, that frontage is fine? The applicant decides. Okay. The applicant to decide if it wants the frontage on route 20, it can decide if it wants the frontage on Minuteman Road, or if it's going to create another road, where if that would be it. But doesn't they have to come up with, like, the main entrance or the roadway entrance, like, at hat? So the frontage needs some sort of a definition, right? I don't know. And in the bylaws, it talks about that. They can just, I think it says that the main entrance shall be on a road, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or away. And that's true, but they decide themselves. We don't, the town doesn't dictate that. But it's going to be either the route 20 side or the Longfellow Road side. It's going to be one or the other. Maybe not. They could also put in a road. Yeah, off of Minuteman. Off of Minuteman. But then they would be losing more area because the frontage would require. But again, you're telling us we shouldn't be hypothetical and we need to think about everything. So we're sharing with you the everything. Let me ask the layman's question also. What is the definition of frontage? I'll have my Bible with me. It is an area along a road and there's for each zoning district and each in our overall bylaw and each, for example, in residential, we have a residential district, but then it's broken down into 20,000 square feet, 30,000 square feet, 40,000, etc. Each of those, there's a table at the end of the zoning bylaw and each of those has a frontage amount. So wherever you decide you want your frontage, that's where it is. In the 60,000 square foot zone, the frontage is 210. You could put it on the road where you're going to build your house. You could put a new road in and call that your frontage. So again, another layman's question. Why can't we use Route 20 as a reference point? Because it's too specific for the zoning. So the purpose of zoning, the only reason we're allowed to do zoning isn't for how things look, just so you know. It's for health, safety and welfare. And that is the basis that any zoning exists. So the kinds of things that we have done go well beyond that. At River's Edge, we owned the land. We got a lot of agreement in advance. And then we had a bylaw that went to town meeting twice because people in town didn't like going more than 190 units. And then after the bylaw was approved, and the agreement was made to sell the land, the developer then decided that that wasn't good enough. He needed more units and he needed more height. So for us, we think that it's better for town meeting to decide if they're willing to go to a height difference rather than having the zoning board, without real input from town meeting, make additional decisions that abrogate the bylaw that the town approved. I don't know if there's any disagreement on that. We're looking at the zoning and looking for it to be something that's reliable and predictable for everybody, right, in this situation. So part of it is we can put criteria in the regulations, right, but the key is what then would show in the table. If the table has 32 and 58, 32 units per acre and 58, you could potentially still get this because these criteria were not approved by the state. And the only thing that has been approved by the state is our MBTA law, right, which has no design criteria, correct? No, because our regulations still apply. Right, but they, for them to truly apply, they have to be approved by the state, don't they? No. Regulations, they're very, but what their guidance is, the trick always is, make it so onerous in all the regulations that it's impossible to build, right? That is always the wrinkle, more affordable materials, things like that, that make it difficult to build, and that's why the state wanted to be as a right, right? Right, but we could not,
in the regulations that we adopted, they don't have what materials you can use. It does, but it doesn't say it has to be clabbered and all the rest of it. I don't believe, I think it talks about different materials. Well, again, we had a consultant that we worked through all of this stuff with, and we took training, we went to a million different courses, and I just, I hear you, but I can't personally see doing that in the bylaw. Robert, what do you think would happen if we put a footnote into the bylaw? It's a little, I don't even know how you'd write a footnote. I heard what you said, but I don't think it would work. We might get pushback for the state, and might screw up the modeling, or I just, might screw, the whole thing might just, might pass this great thing and come to this great compromise in the bylaw, and then the state says, nope, or the, or ELOC says, nope, and it's, it's all gone. All that, all that amendment is done. I would have approved bylaw. So, you basically make it subject to state approval, right? I mean, the same reason you were talking to them, and they were okay with upping the height, right, to get to more units. It's the same premise, we're getting to more units, which they should want, so our acceptance is subject to the same. We can't do contingent approval. It's not possible. I have to, I have to have to go, and this has been a very long discussion, but I would, I would recommend if you really want to put in some kind of language, put in the regulations. We, we can work with the developers on this. Like, this is not like, ooh, you know, mean developer, like, let's, let's work with people. That's, you know, that's our job, to work with people. And if you put something in the regulations, let's work with someone to design it. Eventually, when they actually have a plan that they are ready to, to go to meeting, public meeting, or we can, we can work with people. Like, that's, do that. Don't, don't, let's not like screw around too much and change the amendments and, and then get past it and be thumbs up. And then get the AG saying, nope. And then we, the whole thing is scratched. And we lost all that, all that work we just did to try to, to change it. So, I stand, I stand by what we have in the bylar, um, since we, and, and, and, and, and, you know, like I said, every time meeting, and this, this is what, this is what we need to do as a town to, to move forward. So. Yeah. Hey, Robert, I know you gotta leave, but just to clarify, you're, you're saying we could have this discussion with developers. Does that mean there is a developer that's teed up for this? No, he's talking about when we had a developer. There's, I mean, there's a property owner of this property. And if they, if they would like to develop in the future, then, you know, we can have that discussion. Yeah. Okay. Just like anything, anything other kind of properties when people come in. So, um, at this point, the other two pieces of properties are not looking at housing. I can tell you that for a fact. The other two pieces of property in this overlay are not targeting for housing. We have a, a nonprofit that is just started. And we have, and then we have a piece of industrial piece of property that they're trying to figure out what they do with it. So at this point, there's only one piece of property that is at play potentially at this, within the next, you know, year. So, all right. Yeah. Is there any other questions I can answer before I leave? I won't hold you up. Sorry. No. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you. Thanks, Robert. And in terms of regulations, you know, if we made unreasonable regulations, you know, if you wanted to, uh, have a commercial building, you had to have, I don't know, some ridiculous number of parking spaces. We get sued over that. You know, if, if it was so unreasonable, right. Yeah. Yeah. They're unreasonable. But if they were like really unreasonable, you get sued for that. And that is, that's just not good legislating. Um, nothing, nothing that the UDC has proposed is outrageous. I mean, I, I, you can't play like extremes with this. I don't think anything that we've proposed is outrageous. And, you know, I think just assuming that the attorney general would knock it down and, you know, throw it out the window. I mean, I just kind of like fear monitoring a little bit here, you know, you know, I mean, if we feel like something's best for the town, you push it through. And if it gets shot down, it gets shot down, but we're not. If it gets shot down, our whole MBTA bylaw gets shot down. And then we list list, we risk losing state funding, like the towns that haven't passed an MBTA bylaw. Why would we structure it that way? Why can't we take a vote that is subject to state approval? And if not, you can't, that's not how this works. Well, then it sounds like we don't go to town meeting this year. Right. So we're going, we're going to time with the article. And then the question is, you know, do you want to work with us and create some regulations that will put in place the restrictions that you think will make this better? And I think that's a great solution. But, you know, risking that we don't find a developer to take on this property and build the housing that the town needs there is, is a big risk. And in terms of, you know, the building that's modeled right there, they need to be able to get Wayland rents. And if they, and if they build a giant monolith with no windings and no windows and no changes in the massing, and that don't make use of the views out towards the wetlands and all these other things, they're not going to get the rents they need, they have to build a nice building. And they're going to want to work with within the regulations, which enforcing some sort of a step back of the building is not going to be unreasonable to somebody who wants to do this, hopefully. But, you know, and there's another perspective, you know, when you turn the building, to me, in some ways, that's a less desirable way to site the building, because then every inch of that height of the building is right there in your face. Hiding, hiding some of the massing of the building up against the hill of Route 20, where people are going 45 miles an hour as they fly by it, there are people who might prefer that, as long as it's built nicely. And they're not going to want to build it too close to Route 20 anyway, because again, they want to get Wayland rent, and if you put, you know, windows from an apartment building right on Route 20, they're not going to get the rents they need for those units. Well again, we're all saying the same thing, the building should be set back. We don't want it left to the lowest common denominator, because you see that happen. That's the problem, right? And so we're opening up a door here, and that by just having these two numbers here, with no criteria, you're opening up the door to a potential lowest common denominator. We bought with you a solution that we think is viable, and you know, if we need to change it next year, and go through modeling, and get money to do the modeling, and all the rest of it, that's great. But we've been working on this now for months. 58 feet is a mission, right? Yeah, with all due respect, it doesn't matter how long you've been, you know, trying to push it through and ram it through. I mean, that doesn't mean you came up with the best design. Nothing that the EDC has proposed makes this project unfeasible, or cost prohibitive. I mean, it just, it seems like you have kind of an agenda, Annette. I can't place my finger on it. I can't say that it's not an agenda. Well, you're coming across, you're coming across like that. You're coming across, I'm just letting you know. I'm sorry. So that's my opinion. Well, I'll tell you my issue. I think that we need people on the planning board, and I think if you people are zoning type people, and you want to come on to the planning board, it would be wonderful. We are overworked. We're happy to work with people. And we've been working on this for a long time. It's quite frankly, this is my own opinion. It's not the EDC's function to tell the planning board, or any other board, how to do things. You're an advisory board, and we're happy to listen to your advice. We've heard your advice, we've given you our advice, and we think that, for the things that you're talking about, they can be worked out in the regulations. The regulations cannot be passed until next town meeting, correct? No, the regulations have nothing to do with town meeting. As soon as we can have a public meeting, so that people have achieved. Yeah, that was my question. It's quick. Okay, so the regulations didn't make it through town. What didn't go through town? No, they don't have to go through town. It's just a vote on the board, and I assume we have to have a public hearing. Yeah, well, we have a hearing, and at the same hearing, we can adopt the regulation change. And if you give us the language that you think would work for you, that would be a great solution. And it's not like there's an application pending for this. We don't, the current owner doesn't, isn't developing this, but he's interested in it. I don't have anybody. No. And somebody came, the reason that this whole area, the Route 20 West, was even in the district is because the property owners at the time came to us and said, we'd like to be in the district. And we said, fine. But they, we, yes, somebody else recommended it. Pardon me? EDC also recommended it. Yeah. I mean, full disclosure, this is Dave Watkins, who is a former EDC member. It is not Dave Watkins. It is the property that you, if you're talking about. This property right here is owned by a former select worker. It is owned by a corporation of multiple people who is controlled by. Oh, come on, Annette. Please. Oh, my God. It's inappropriate. I am sorry. It is inappropriate to talk about individual. Okay. Annette, Annette, maybe you should recuse yourself from this because maybe there is a conflict of interest. Okay. So let's not, let's not, let's not even go down that path. Okay. Well, I think you should go down that path. What kind of, you want to go down that path? I don't think that's going to look good for you and the property owner. I mean, I think let's call a spade a spade. You know, nobody, nobody, nobody brought this up except yourself. So, I mean, if you want to go down that road, we can go down that road. I didn't bring it up. You didn't bring it. Dave Watkins doesn't own the building. It's owned by an LLC. That's a joke. Okay. He is the LLC. It's owned by a corporation. Nobody brought the proposal to you. Nobody brought any proposal to us. Somebody came in to Robert. Robert. Someone. Who is the someone? It's not, I'm just not going to get into that. Why don't we call this meeting? Because, you know, I think we're just going around in circles at this point. You know. I thought that we had a resolution. It's not, does it not work for you, Ali? I think the EDC should reconvene and just kind of, I don't know. Hang on. We'll let Ali, we'll let Ali answer a second. Go ahead. So, if we want to do this with regulation, we could do it with regulation. I think that's the harder way to do, and it will extend and require more effort on your side. I don't know. I'm okay helping. We're okay helping. I just thought, you know, I'm more of a pro-development person, I guess you would call me. So, I just thought we would make the site ready for development ASAP. I don't know the interested parties. I don't know. There is an interested party. Part of the discussion, I have no idea since I just moved here like a year and a half ago, and I'm going to be honest. I don't care. It could be X, Y, Z, me, you who's developing it. That's fine. Anybody can develop it at this point. I'm just saying, if this is going to be developed, and there is some interest based on somebody coming to Robert, we should probably help them develop it ASAP, if there's an interest, and then try to hit minimum roadblock. Yes, let's definitely remove things that are contingent in front of them so they could actually build this. But while doing that, let's make sure we do good planning, which is what you want, what we want as well. Right. I agree. I think we all want, from the beginning of the meeting, I can tell that, sorry, I mediate usually meetings like this when I work as a planning board consultant for many other towns. And it's interesting because we both want to do the same thing, right? And we want the development to happen. We are okay with the development, I'm assuming. And we're okay even with the height. It's just, we're talking about where should it go? So let me just explain, because you probably don't know the process. Zoning amendments have to be submitted to the, under state statute, have to be submitted to the select board, returned to the planning board within 14 days. The planning board has to have a hearing within 65 days. And then issue a report to be able to vote on the article. And then if it passes a town meeting, it gets submitted to the attorney general. The attorney general has 90 days to approve it. So if we were to change regulations, we could change the regulations before, I mean, almost immediately after town meeting, if it passed. So I guess the part that's not clear to me, that's very standard procedure is we're already changing two things in that table, right? And we're okay changing that with the whole time comes troops, like with the whole responsibility and everything. And what I guess we're saying is, okay, if we're increasing 35 to 58, let's just say 58 applies on certain places. That's it. It still applies, and 38 applies everywhere anyway. So I'm actually kind of like questioning why the attorney general would look at this and say no. Yeah. Because 35 is still there. 32 is there. So what you, sorry, 35 feet, I was talking about it. And then the density, 32, the 20 is still there, which is the maximum units per acre. So theoretically, the attorney's general... It's actually... The attorney general will do one thing and the executive office of housing... But still, we're not... I'm telling you, I'll read you the letter from them if you'd like to. It's online on our page. They did the approval. They said exactly what they approved, what the modeling showed. And then they say, please note that continued district compliance is subject to the following requirements. Municipalities must notify the executive office of housing and livable communities in writing of any proposed or active zoning amendment that affects the district or of any other bylaw, ordinance rule, regulations, or municipal action that limits the development of multi-family housing in the district. This notification must be sent prior to any planning word public hearing on the proposed zoning amendment. Then it says they can establish a system to monitor compliance over time to assure that the approved districts allow multi-family housing in accordance with the criteria under which they were approved. And then it says ELOC may rescind the determination of district compliance or require changes to the district to remain in compliance as per section 10 of the guidelines or if it becomes aware of additional information not identified in this compliance review that would render the district non-compliant with section 3a. Permitting conducted in connection with the additional factors listed above must not effectively reduce the estimated multi-family unit capacity of the district. If permitting processes such as a specific site plan review or development standards result in special permit requirements for multi-family housing projects proposed in the district and or the permitting process effectively reduce the estimated multi-family unit capacity of the district. The executive office of housing and livable communities may revisit Weyland's compliance with section 3a and could require the town to remedy any deficiency with amendments to its zoning. Right so and we're not reducing it you're actually increasing you might just be reducing the increase that part you're absolutely right is subject to an analysis. Some professional needs to be hired so they could run through and say okay originally we wanted 58 feet maximum height 32 units per acre and if we allow that let's say 80 feet of the lock line we could only achieve whatever was the original number and again we don't even know if there's an original study from what you're saying there's not really a developer so it's just at this point somebody who's approached the Roberts. Can I ask to understand in like a really fundamental way I just want to make sure I got it clear so we're going to go with the the town is going to go forward with the OO or the proposed change change. I don't watch out for that I would maybe right yeah but if we didn't push that forward at all we would still be in compliance right right yes right so all we're saying is that I think we're saying is a very collective group instead of going all the way there you said it nicely we're just saying go three quarters of the way there and do it a little bit differently still make the full extension everyone's happier they got better profit margins but we're just saying you still need everything from the start. I don't know how you explain that to the state so again if you could give us I don't think we can do what you're suggesting but if you can give us language then we can see how we can deal with it. So my question is right now it says maximum building height 35 crossed over 58 and maximum units per acre 20 crossed over 32 right that's the proposal that I will talk about so that 32 and 58 are arbitrary the 58 could be 52 32 could be 28. right so as long as we don't bring anything that the new whatever we want to call it regulations asterix would make it not buildable reaching to that density MPTA or the state can't actually say anything because you already have a baseline which is MPTA and that still applies it's buildable all you're saying is we're actually allowing you to build more right but it's when you get to the you're not going to change the setback right you're just going to change it in the building so how would you write that to put it in a bylaw and in addition I'd have to check with town council to see if we'd have to have a hearing because that would be a change so is the better option to just not change this table at all and then to regulate the addition and say do you want to do a little extra right so you're saying we're saying no we can't do it no I don't I think we have to have the added height in there and then put in a regulation that says that added height has to be set back um from the edge of the building but why could we put the added height in the density in the regulation if that's totally in the regulation or in the bylaw on the regulation it's like hey we're saying regulation is our discretion right right yeah it's not even touched the MPTA bylaw but it's in the regulation as it is you have this ability to go up higher if we do xyz we were looking to do that asterisk of the table just saying and next to 20 saying you can go up to 32 right if so we can doesn't change the rest of it I think from a legislative drafting standpoint saying in the table that the max is 58 and then restricting where that 58 can be is a better way to do it if the table has a lower height and we put in a regulation says but we can do a higher height yeah that is that yeah because it's not how zoning works zoning has to have them if you're going to have minimums and maximums it has to be in the zoning but it's conditional it's not on that specific thing right no it's not conditional but it can be regulated
different way of looking at it no deal thanks so you know based on our summary right this is how the zoning and i have not with anybody else this is my public comment did not work it through with anybody else it literally is just taking what was in the powerpoint and saying this is how you could draft the zone it's a simple asterisk nothing changes in this chart right 20 stays 35 stays all you do is add a third asterisk which says the things we're talking about may increase to 32 if if if no this is what you do right you can't do it so it's too much so but the question is whether it's in the regulations or whether it's in the zoning it's making it conditional right it's saying how do you get to that density doing the right things right so that was the thought process my bigger concern of doing this chart and going to the 58 if we go and do the design regulations that limit it to four stories and we have 58 someone can easily go to the state and say that is an unreasonable cap because 58 is typically a five-story building right and we would lose so we would get a five-story building if someone wants to push it which they will because that's the most cost-effective way to build right they may not but it opens it up to that right so the concern is you guys when we're looking at it is how do you make an asterisk for the one thing the maximum units per acre nothing else changes just like the little asterisk down below where you know the height limitation at town center you can go up to instead of 35 and go up to 40 if it's for xyz same thing you just put an asterisk next to 20 that's it you can go up to 32 if you do these things but this is all right you asked you asked how to write the zoning this is no i asked how you would you ask your footnote and this is more than i'm sorry a footnote this is this is one it is but it gets significant amounts of density and it gets it masked in a proper way so that it fits what we're looking for so it's not overly burdening on the road which we all agree with it keeps it from going to five stories which i haven't heard what you guys think but five stories over parking is a lot that's taller than alta you're doing your sales pitch and i'd really rather be working with you if you look at the bottom thing chapter 306 design regulations you wouldn't ever put that in a bylaw i'm this needs to be lawyer this is what i'm asking you i'm not sure i i want to understand what you think has to be in the bible our concern was that the design regulations weren't binding nbta we have to have the law it has to be self-standing if someone comes in and says these regulations are too onerous they can go to the state right that's the whole point of the state limiting what those design regulations can do so that was only saying you know what to do this you need to actually comply with the regulations no question if you don't think we need to put that so be it but what needs to change is the length of facade and then allowing surface parking because right now you preclude having parking in front of the building right so it's just staying those things and ali as we looked at some of the images you want to make sure that you've got the landscaping which you sort of have but it's making sure that that parking is masked so it's just these simple things we have the parking masked i believe and we have the uh landscaping uh mostly it's i think there's something it doesn't the parking isn't mass it says the landscaping like a certain percentage within the parking lot etc etc but actually i just think that this is oh i don't i only give you this because you asked the right and i appreciate it look like so it's just that's you asked i think that you could talk so i think the concern i would just say i would be concerned about the 58 as it stands because it's a very strong likelihood that you could get a five-story building which will be huge whether it's 30 feet 50 feet 80 feet from the road right so so that's like a fundamental concern the rest of it like we can figure out how to do this but ultimately that's the concern if we vault to this without any necessarily conditions that we know can hold then it just opens us up so this for example the setbacks that you have in there yep i think that that the um executive office of housing would say no that's not okay because they don't know the site it's just on a piece of paper to them and they've got modeling and they might punch it into something and say oh well if you have that big of a setback and this and that it's not gonna no it won't fit you can't get the density right but it's required for mbta but so your lot coverage is 25 means that you would only cover 25 of your site so by taking a bigger setback do you get down to something that is smaller than 25 not by a long shot you know they don't know that because they don't know what other restrictions there are there are other restrictions in in choosing these mbta sites that could limit where on the site the building has to be and they don't know that because they're not going to look at the site they're going to say that's too restrictive they don't plug it in they may not no but i thought you said they need to model it they need to put no they have the existing modeling i don't think they're going to do new modeling but their existing model is it based off of the before these new changes come in or yes yes so they may see something from the modeling it's like well they can't do that like they may see the easements that are there they might see other things and be like have they done new modeling
we have to pay for it right but with the increased type changes that are being no but they said that we had to go to them robert went to them and they said no you can do this because it's essentially the same footprint yeah and it's just up but setbacks and things are going to change footprints and that may be enough for them to say no unless you're going to spend another 45 000 on modeling i'm getting at is i just think of this as like a simple you know rectangle or square it's like i can pinch it still the same volume of everything inside if i go a little higher so like you increase the setback and you allow them to go higher which is happening already then you know to me i think it that's why i'm curious like if they've done the revised model that would tell you the numbers of what's happening with the shape yeah so to them i don't think it will but there are other things they're just this minimum setback along the 20 80 feet what does that mean that's not very specific does it mean that the fire access road could be within that 80 feet probably not the way that's worded it's just a setback so that has to be inside so you're just you know the road around the building for fire department access what if you if that can't start until 80 feet away from route 20 you're pushing it back and you're pushing it back and i think that's the type of restriction that i think the housing folks would be like without new modeling we're not going to allow that can i ask you a question can is it possible to go to state again and say okay we want to do this and you said we could do it as we cross the lines on the table and just write their higher numbers can we ask them we want to actually keep the numbers as is and put an asterisk and have the higher numbers if certain conditions are met because theoretically again i'm looking from a planning perspective and i work with a lot of land use attorneys i'm looking from an attorney perspective as well theoretically you're not taking away anything you're not down zoning you're not changing their model it's still gonna guarantee to produce more than their model or an equal if the conditions are ridiculous let's assume that conditions are ridiculous let's assume this site was only 100 feet deep and we propose an 80 foot setback and then nobody will build a 20 foot deep building right still the mbta is buildable because that would be the table that's i think that was the reason becky and i are mostly interested in not crossing the table but literally just putting an asterisk and saying they could be increased if a few conditions are met but that's not zoning i mean zoning isn't written that way zoning has finite numbers i will happily disagree to that well that's how we do it in massachusetts i think there's a lot i mean massachusetts has a condition of use permit so there is a condition inside our zoning right there are as of right uses and then there are uses in certain places in massachusetts that you need to apply with a condition so um they're they're all have separate i don't even paddocks each there are things that you can get by special permit there are things that you can get by uh as a as of right zoning um i don't think that you can put i don't think you can put a shorter a lower number and then increase it afterward based on criteria that would be a variance but you do it right in the table you say a town center is 35 feet but the height limitation may be increased to 40 feet in order to accommodate architectural features yeah but that's the tables and parapets so it's kind of the way that we have defined
the building height it deals with the definition of the building height yeah from that right so is it possible to go to state and ask this because it seems like we'll ask town council i doubt it would happen before town meeting yeah she's really bonked um we can ask if you get i'm not going to give them this but if you have something simple about what the way you're saying it we can send it to town council and ask i think oh i mean we can we could definitely simplify this we could basically just say we want to keep the numbers in there and we want to put on asterisks and put a few conditions underneath the asterisks so we want to do this we want to make this site happen if like a few conditions are met and we shouldn't probably even disclose how many conditions because it again it's everything is a work in progress in here right so we could just no i think that the conditions have to are actually important for them to understand okay then we can yeah i mean it's conceptual right it's not the final language but it's the concept of we put an asterisk can we then control setback maximum height maximum floors and then ultimately or i wouldn't even call it a setback theoretically zoning wise it's not a setback it's a height limit basically you're limiting height from a distance to the property line i mean yes in planning terms it is a setback but we don't need to write it into a setback well except that the setbacks have to be in this table right and they will be because they are the governing setbacks you're not changing the setback you could still build that whatever the table says as the setback you're just saying i'm providing the additional height in a different place that's why a regulation is the way to do this this is to try and put all this in the table and expect the executive office of housing to understand what you mean and and think that that's okay the more likely response from them is to be this is too complicated and we're concerned that you are that you are restricting this more than what you had originally gotten approval for but what we got even if you're not but what we got the approval for is still buildable because it's an estrus right yeah so the developer can say whatever i don't want 58 feet i i'm okay with 35 and i'm okay with density at 20 it works for me that original one is but if we put 58 and we put the new density he can still do that can't he so i took a crack ready like leave the table alone except at the top of the header for route 20 west you add three asterisks and or the three stars and we add a new note and then basically we just say what what ali's kind of outlined here maximum building height may be increased from 35 to 58 if the setback for additional height is increased to this for front this for side this for rear resulting in a step building or otherwise yeah you have to not be using the word setback unless you mean the actual distance from the road to the edge of the building so we could just say portions of the building yeah the setback is defined it's it's the base of the building setting a building in that's why you cannot use not use setback but the legal lingo the legal way of framing it we could discuss and we could figure that out that's that's that's not hard to do we could just say portions of the building you know i i i think look we can look there's here we disagree with you yeah you think it's hard but so if i didn't use the word setback and and i phrase it i'm sorry it's right we don't need any of them we could just say portions of the building that exceeds the maximum building height highlighted it in table row xy yeah can only happen 80 feet away from the property line that's it you don't go to setback it's just just say portions of the building and actually penetrate the you that's the thing i guess i was trying to say we shouldn't even even say we're changing the height limit we're saying portions of the building can exceed the height limit provided in this table to this given that they are then there's no maximum height limit that's why you need to change the maximum height limit to 58 and and put the asterisk saying that the 58 is only allowed under these circumstances i think this is going very like a nice discussion right now so i'm enjoying this and and i'm not not holly's experience i'm just an engineer i still think that this is better in a regulation because it's more nimble for the town i think so too but it feels like danger whenever we want we don't have to go to town meeting we can in a way i look at it and and i i fear you know we make a change to the table and then five years from now two years from now whenever someone wants to discuss building and we want to say hey let's like revisit how we phrased it then we're going to go back into the same cycle again of oh we don't want to touch the table it's dangerous for mbta but i to me it almost feels like leave the table as it is today because it's approved everyone's happy but give them the avenue like ali is recommending of this extra you know ability to build higher with some more clear bill's phrasing was nice i don't know i'm not an expert but bill can you say those words again you're crazy those are from my experience with new york no i know new york city what were the words just like it was on them and then they found step massing step massing thank you it's from a sky exposure point i'm not sure but the the table height if we're going to allow 58 feet under any circumstances the table height has to say 50 yeah but it's not under any circumstances and i think no no i don't mean under any circumstances but if there is one circumstance under which we will allow it you have then we have to have it in the bylaw because it's just the way the wall works but it says 35 and then 40. it's the same thing it's you know basically the 35 is the baseline but you can go up to 40. it's conditioned how do we govern the variance but that's more architectural features at the top and it's because of the way they were done wrong that's the problem so don't use alta oxford as the model but like variances in general like how do you govern how do we it's a curious question various there are specific criteria on how you can get a variance um i brought my statute for height the height well for how that's financial yeah exactly for height yeah well it's the same criteria all the way around there are some three
sorry so as i'm looking at the clock we're now quarter of seven so definitely hearing that you can't necessarily change this because your concern is that if when you approve it then somehow the state rejects then we're out of commission right so that means that we either wait until next year or this get passed but has a huge aspects that was good unfortunately because it's not on the page that we have work to do and that 58 could get us in trouble that that's my concern that's it that we have months to put a regulation into place i know but we can't reject the 58 so if we're going to limit to four stories unless you guys want a six-story building the 58 puts you at risk of that what is you could do that wouldn't the article a better chance of passing if you do the regulation before town meeting and well we can't do it before because we don't have the bylaw changed understood okay so you asked what you had to do for a variance there are uh three criteria uh substantial hardship uh okay especially affecting land or structures but not affecting generally the zoning district in which it is located you know what this district is and that little literal enforcement of the provisions of the bylaw would involve substantial hardship financial or otherwise and that desirable relief can be granted without nullifying or substantially derogating from the intent and purpose of the ordinance or bylaw there are the three criteria of course it's um soil conditions shape and topography but it has to be different than all the other surrounding land in the district okay okay alta oxbow as you may know is one district there is nothing else that it is different from and it was um it created just for that project so technically it should not have been able to get a variance because it's not different because it is the district it is the district but so in this situation financial hardship goes into the profit profitability you have to have you have to have the other things first it has to relate to soil conditions shape or topography of land or structures especially affecting land or structures but not affecting generally the zoning is the uh yeah the zoning district in which it's located i hear the words i need to digest them yeah they're very difficult but it's a it's it is not clear that you could ever get a variance you have to go hang that out and then Jeff's not on we're going to work on so yeah Jeff i think is definitely let's see and a complication as a as a business person who might want to develop the site whether it's the current owner or anybody else so Jeff are you still on that we can keep pulling Jeff in here and the construction is going to be contingent on you winning of areas yeah that's going to make that piece you're not going to get to that yeah you're not going to get it's not going to go to order yeah Jeff are you still there clear he's not responding all right so why don't we just wrap up quickly so the concern being if any changes are made the state might not approve them other concern is if it passes and then we have the design regulations that we could be at risk right so ultimately we need to sort of hear from the state to understand conceptually do you have any problems with what we're suggesting knowing that it's just as financially feasible that it does everything we want it to do and it cites the building in a better position not leaving it to chance that it could be quite close to the road i mean conceptually are there any issues with what we're proposing i think conceptually in a general sense it would depend very much on how it was written but i would give you a maybe conceptually for what's written on this piece of paper yes i have issues with what's on this piece of paper no doubt but conceptually what you're seeing like what we're trying to do are there any concerns of how it would affect what would happen on site um no what what i think would be acceptable would be to require the stepped massing that i think is perfectly acceptable messing with setbacks to the extent that these are changed from what is in our current bylaws i i'm not comfortable with being that rigid um but requiring the step massing so that the building does not appear as tall from the ground um that in in theory i have no problem with that at all okay so i think conceptually we're all trying to get out of the same spot right and right it's just i think it's more a question of the distance that's and we have limited time now before town meeting and ultimately the state is part of this right and in our regulations just so you know at 306 dash uh three uh the performance standards such as uh design elements to break up the length of building walls setbacks to break up the apparent height certification from the fire department concerning adequate access for services and equipment um surface parking and i mean we have we thought about it it's not like we didn't think about these things as we were doing them right but as it's written it just leaves us open well i don't think so i think putting it into the regulations is the way to go personally but it's still the concern of 58 so karen we need to go out and we personally i just feel mad i'm just breaking up this good time so um to be continued yeah i mean ideally robert went to the state and got an answer on this question of can we just go straight up and they said sure so i imagine you could go to the state and ask them the same question we want to increase the density and the number of units and the height are cool with that given a little bit of change in setbacks they should be able to understand that that's the key no just do we just that no we just step mass whatever we call it is it worth asking that question so that we have it will require the setback thing if we're talking about not the stepped massive but if you're talking about the building itself that would require new modeling okay so that's the question we've approached it as stepped massing right then you could deal with that yeah we have to end yeah we are losing karen it is six by karen so with that we are going and let's get jeff are you still there if you're there we can continue just sitting in this car so i i i am but i i need to drop i need to drop okay it's like two minutes and we'll wrap out the meeting okay yeah all right so karen just left jeff is still on so the question is either thinking through how we get it into the regulations but primary question do you want to limit to four stories or do you want it to go to five i think our strong opinion is that we don't want it to go to five over one which is a six story building that is way beyond anything that alta osbo is so that i think is sort of a fundamental thing even if we address everything else after the fact that's a problem yeah right so i'm not prepared to answer that and i also don't think we should answer it at all because we're not the board right so that's a good question yeah totally fine so let's kind of think through what our next steps may be we had a lot of information we got some new information easements otherwise but ultimately you kind of know where we're coming from we're not trying to stop the density in fact we want it there we want it understandable we want it predictable more that's why alta oxbow sold because it was predictable it was as a right right so how do we get those parameters in there so that we get what we want as a town protecting us right from any you have a good developer often you have a good developer often you don't right so that's why you have zoning to protect against that so that is why we're saying all of this and why we're looking to try to get a mechanism that does that so we can all kind of digest everything that we heard and kind of think it through we'll think through about the regulations you can think through the asterisks we can talk with robert who dropped off maybe we get guidance from the state it won't be in time for town meeting most likely but it may give some indication of a pathway so if yeah and if you were about the language um that we could use in a regulation that would be great yeah going to the state without specific language yeah what you wanted to do it conceptually just saying that you wanted to eat because it wasn't it it was it was density which they don't have a problem with and the height and they it was it didn't change any setbacks it's the setback stuff and the open space that the state allows i don't know how they do it i mean we we tried ourselves to sort of figure out districts all by ourselves um and we we thought we were fine and we thought we were figuring out what the units could be and how many you could have but when you modeled it it wasn't the same so there's crap junk i mean that's all i can call it junk in that model that knocks stuff out and it's not linear and some of the stuff has changed since they did the modeling the rail trail is across 320 i don't know if it's close enough to affect any the modeling i don't think it would and is the daycare longfellow affected because it could be within us so many oh i just saw that there was a day there is a daycare no i think it's five i think it was 500 feet okay so it's probably far enough away we'll kind of again so the next steps we'll kind of think about through and digest a little bit and if you guys have more thoughts etc but you see where we're coming from and apologies that we didn't even know that your hearings were happening so hopefully now we'll have a little bit more yeah i don't know how we do it um i know that we do um list everything for public hearing in a legal notice and it is posted on the town's website and i thought that we sent it out to uh town boards could be wrong but in as much as economic development like we're total advocates for this right so we could have helped along the way we just didn't even know about it right so the last thing we want to happen is bad development because that will stop us under the grass all the oxbow people are happy with it it's generating tax income if we have a bad development we're happy with most people so but you know if we do it badly it'll freeze us for all the other ones that go yeah it's like we've got to do it well and it's an important site it's the game i agree you don't see it a lot when you drive from weyland to sudbury but when you drive from sudbury to weyland that would be the first thing you're going to see and would you think you were seeing weyland i know it's well i drive it twice a day for daycare as soon as the right building goes up there's a big sign in there that says welcome to weyland and that sign is going to be there so you're going to realize it's on the right side of the road when you drive out yeah yeah there's a big like it's a weyland and it's already signed it's right there they're possibly the gas station do you want your vote to adjourn funny shape because the dumber we see i'll leave motion to your second i'll second second ollie beaver hi
Jeff, are you there? Yeah, sorry, I was on mute. Yes, I'm here. Perfect. Okay, great. So it's really just one of your members who isn't here. That's great. Yeah, so maybe he's traveling, you couldn't make it. So yeah. So just introducing there and actually wanted to introduce Ali, who's one of our newest members. Needy, our other new member, is traveling and not here. But Ali's background is quite interesting, so I will just give you a good two seconds. Thank you. I think you reached out to Annette, you said. Yeah, actually we exchanged an email when I first moved to Wayland. It was many moons ago. Oh yes, and they said we'd like you to be invited. Right, exactly. You remember me. I do. So yeah, we are a new resident to Wayland like a year and a half ago. I am an urban planner. I am trained as an architect and urban designer, and I practice urban planning, and I teach actually urban planning, and cartography, map making as well. So I have some skills in GIS. I do teach in multiple institutions, and I have a consulting business that I actually help to towns like us, mostly in upstate New York, though not in Massachusetts, about planning, zoning, and land use issues. Right. So we're excited to have money. That's wonderful. Do you have experience with the MBTA community's statutes and regulations? Yeah, getting there, because I'm actually using it as a case study in my school as well. I teach in Boston Architectural College, so I'm making myself more and more familiar now, now that I have to explain it to students. So with that, so Ali and I had, this had come up in a meeting in Roberts online as well, but we have in our EDC meeting, we put a line in town planner update because we felt like we weren't hearing what was happening with the planning board necessarily, if there was something we should be aware of. And so Robert had mentioned it in February, but as, I don't know if you guys were aware, but November, December, we had put together a presentation written about growth items within the town of Wayland. Yes. And presented to the FinCom and select board, and we're just waiting for budget data. Everyone's been tied up with town meeting. But ultimately, let's look at how we might be able to grow as a community. And one of those is MBTA zoning. So in the economic development bond bill, when the town manager had asked, like, if we can get an earmark, what would you ask for? Part of it was Route 20 master planning, but also was MBTA communities, because it's definitely worth money to us as a town. So Alta Oxbow is really phenomenal in how it's performing so far, with few impacts to the city or to the town. And so we wanted to be able to look at that overall. And so this was sort of right in wheelhouse. So when Robert mentioned it, we're like, oh, wow. Okay. So we wanted to know, and Ali, our first questions are, what does it look like? What does the massing look like? But there really wasn't anything available. And so basically, Ali does this. And so he was able to take a look at it and say, okay, well, we have 58 feet instead of 30, 35. What does it look like within the envelope that it's being proposed at? So that's what we had looked at. Similar to what we had done way back with River's Edge. And, you know, Bill Sterling and I are basically the ones who wrote the design guidelines there. We could control that because we own the site and we could dictate exactly where we wanted it to be. We basically wrote our own zoning as well as design guidelines. But it definitely stepped the massing back away from the road because it's quite difficult. It's quite overwhelming when it's close to the road. So as we looked at it, we were just concerned. We love the density, would love to see it move forward, but we just need to sort of protect the town. There are two pieces to the district, as you well know. One is sort of tucked in a little bit behind the Sudbury landfill. Uh, okay. There are four. So, but there are essentially, yeah, two sides of the street, basically. No, there are four. Okay. Has the pantry siphon subdivided? Yeah, a while ago, and it's less than two acres, so it's not even eligible for the MBTA. Okay. Yeah. But it could combine with an adjacent site. If someone was smart, they would do the parcel behind and coordinate with them to get a bigger site, most likely. It's just sort of, it's something that could happen, right? Becky, it was combined. It was combined, Becky. It didn't. It was combined once. And they subdivided it off. So, at this point, it's not in play, unless they go back and, and, yeah, and put them out together. At this point, it's not in play. And so it's, it's not forecasted to be developed. However, it is a non-profit that's there, that's sitting on quite valuable land if the zoning goes there. And so it would make sense from their perspective to combine with the site behind in some way, shape, or form that they could then be a part of the new development while still gaining the rights. So you, you have to anticipate that if the zoning is there, it could and very well may be exercised, right? Mm-hmm. So we looked at it just looking at, okay, very simple change of two different numbers on the page, number of units, and then ultimately the height, it can get a very different outcome. So we had sent some of the visuals. And I would just say, before we go through this, two different things. One is, we are not looking to change the MBTA zoning. It stays as it is. It's been approved. Nobody should upset that apple cart. What we're talking about is above and beyond, right? So that's at our discretion. So we can talk about that as a premise, but that's the intent, that we would not go back to the state. We can do whatever we want with our zoning, we've complied with MBTA. We have to go back to the state. In our approval letter, it says, if we want to make any kind of change whatsoever, we have to present it to them in advance. Robert presented ours to them in advance before we decided to go forward with it. Okay. So that might be a deal stopper going before town meeting this time. However, what has been presented, let's talk about that. So it is not our intent to upset that apple cart. We should, even if it's a different clause, I mean, we, we should be able to do anything we want. We can still do commercial zoning. We can still do what the underlying zoning is besides the MBTA. But ultimately, if there is this requirement, then maybe it has to wait until next year. However, should this go forward with the 58 feet, 30 feet from the road, that is, that's a concern. Okay. Can we talk and get these things one at a time? Um, because if you look at the, uh, plan that's at the registry of deeds, uh, where it, we had it in front of us, uh, to do with the A&R and split across the western parcel into two, the front parcel has a very large waterline easement that you can close the entire front page. So you could never put something on top of that. And then on the western side, there's another easement for, uh, an existing 30 foot wide gas line easement. Again, we can't go onto that. So for the western parcel, even if it were combined with the parcel behind it, you still couldn't get right on the road. Okay. Can I, I'm trying to share my screen and I, so we can look at a little segment. So Robbie, when says I can. Your GIS is not up to date, just so you know. You can share it. Okay. But now I'm just sharing my screen. So let's see. There we go. There we go. Okay. So if we're looking at the site, for example. So this red, um, let's see if we can do a slideshow. There we go. So with this, the red outline, which is a little darker on the screen, but it's this district right here. Yeah. So Annette, where were you saying? You were saying there's an easement. There are two. One right here. And then there's another one that goes up here. Okay. And how deep is the easement in the front? Uh, in the front. It, I didn't flip it off. It didn't say, but I'm just looking at the drawing on this. The, uh, that was done by a surveyor and it's not insignificant. And it doesn't continue in front of what is labeled as 21 cm? 21 cm. Is that the one over here? No, it doesn't. So it stops at and it goes down the road. The Longfiller. Okay. Anything else you wanted to do? And it goes across that parcel. It goes simply. It goes right here. And then it goes like that. You know, it goes like this out here too. It turns. It's, it's compromising the site basically for use. The food pantry site. Yes. Okay. Anything else? Uh, for right now, I just wanted to hit each of the issues as we go forward. Okay. So with that, it was, that was the intent not to disturb the MBTA and then also make sure that it stays financially feasible. I think Robin, that was your concern. I'd watch you guys meeting that somehow we would create something that the property owner would walk away to be no longer financially feasible. Um, the key for that is that the lot coverage is only 25%, right? So it's 25% of the lot coverage. Yes. So with that, your footprint of your building is 25% of the site. So as long as any setback doesn't limit you to less than that 25%, and it's much greater than that, then you can still put your building. It's just a matter of where, and that's really the concern of us here is we don't want it too close to the road because it would be very overwhelming. And right now your design regulations say that the parking has to be in the side and the rear, which pushes the building to the front, right? So it depends where they decide their frontage is. They can decide that their frontage is on, uh, the, uh, miniband road. And then the, then the side setback is 15 feet, which is even worse. So, well, except, except that if you're talking about this parcel, the one on the east, yes, there is a very large topographical drop. Yes. And they can't, they can't do anything there because it would undermine the road. They can't curve it down. They could build into the hill. It happens all the time. Well, you would, Alta Oxbow is built into the hill. You would not build it into the hill in this location and our regulations and bylaws between the combination. I can break apart, which is which you have to have screening around your property, um, particularly coming from a public road. And you also have to get the approval of the fire department. The fire department from our experience with them wants to be able to go around the entire building. So to do that, you would not build into the hill and you would also have windows at that area. You wouldn't have, if you were doing a large building, you would not have a brick wall. Right. But you would put your garage up against it. Absolutely. And you would, you would reset your building into that, into that topo. You mean, if the grid, if the garage is under the building. Yeah. Yeah. And then you would have your building face and you would have some trees in front in that 30 feet, but otherwise you could have that building at 30 feet off the road. I think in order for this site to be profitable, they aren't going to be able to incorporate the garage into the building. The parking will have to be surface parking. Oh, they won't, it won't be a problem. With the number of units that they have, they probably won't be able to do it with the site area that they have. Once you get to 20 to 32 units an acre, then you're pretty much going to have to have some parking underneath the building. So, and it won't be cost effective to put it fully underground, but kind of that. Do you have how many, you look at the bylaw to see how many, how many parking spaces you one has to have per unit? No. Okay. That's in there too. But any developer will want to have in suburbia where there is no bus or subway transportation at least one minute. Well, you actually have a number. So for Eastern parcel, I think you need 137. And then for the Western parcels, if they ever get to a load that combined... 137 for how many units? Uh, 137 for 91 dwelling units. Okay. Okay. And then for the other two parcels, the 21 and 2106, if they ever combined, it would be roughly around 140, 147.5 units. So let's call it 147 units. That would require 220, 221 parking units. So yeah, that's what we're talking about. Yep. So typically you, you hear about this construction type that's called four over one or five over one. It's always sort of this concrete foundation garage at that first level or sort of a recessed first level. And then it's a number of levels above. So it's four, four stories over one, five over one. It's pretty typical to build in that fashion because it does get you some garage parking, which is more valuable. But then also it just gets you to your parking counts because you need to be able to offer parking. It's my understanding that it costs more to build parking spaces than if you do them on the surface. Absolutely. But if it's between that and not having parking and not... I understand that that increases the cost of the development. It would increase the cost for sure, but it would also add anonymity, right? Because I mean, typically it depends on how you configure the building. So if we're talking about a two to three story, kind of like a very modest multifamily building, like an L shape or U shape, you would actually try to leave out maybe parking. But if you want to build more like a straight slab or like a little L maybe shaped building, you might actually want to put it underneath it. Again, it would become an amenity, especially in a climate like this. And also typically this kind of parking allows you some like dead interior spaces, which are also good for amenities. Like many of these new buildings now come up with things like kids room, like X facility, mail room, XYZ. So some of those actually doesn't even require windows. So it would be okay. I'm not saying I would do it fine with the developer, but I can very much see that it's actually doable if the developer chooses to go with that. And I think I have the map in front of me right now. So the topography is really a concern. You're absolutely right. So it drops down, but it drops down in that first 30 feet. So after 30 feet, there is some, but not much, maybe like five to six feet of difference going through that in the next like 20 feet after 30 feet. So if we talk about a setback, likely nobody would move closer than 30 feet to the Route 20, I would say. But can a building be built at 30 feet with the topography? It could actually. And what about the police and fire? That's their jurisdiction. I know, but we know what it is. Yeah, exactly. I do. But you have Route 20, like right there, about 30 feet away. It has their access. We've talked to them about this kind of thing, and they weren't excited about that. But does MBTA allow that within their required guidelines? Now what? With MBTA, there are certain things, and we have designed requirements, right? But they haven't been approved by the state. And you were saying that it went farther than what they typically allow. No, not typically allow it. We did what we thought they would allow, but we didn't put it into the bylaw because we wanted the bylaw to be approved out of the box. We didn't want to take a chance. And then when we came up with the design or the performance standards, we followed state requirements of what would be allowed. And we can change those because they're regulations. We can't change bylaws easily unless we go to town meeting. But have they been approved by the state? No, and they don't have to be approved by the state. So I'm just one of the disconnect, right? They go beyond what the state typically allows. I didn't say they go beyond what the state typically allows. You said that. No, that's what you said in the meeting. No, I didn't. Yeah. You had just said that it went farther than the guidelines typically did, which is that's why. Well, I didn't mean to say that if that's what I said, but I don't think that's exactly what I said. I said that in the bylaw, we kept it as simple as we could keep it. And we reserved the performance standards for our regulations because we're in charge of our regulations, but not the bylaw. And we wanted to get the bylaw approved. We did not go further. We adopted the kinds of things that the state said we could do, but we did them in the bylaw and the regulations because the state is
They don't have veto power over our regulations. Right. They don't have veto power. And we just didn't want to take a chance of them saying that we wrote something funny. For example, in the ADU bylaw, we used the word minimum and we knew what we meant. They rejected that and the AG did. So we've got to go back at town meeting this year and take out the word minimum. It's that kind of thing. Okay. So the question is with the fire department, if the building is close, right, it's going to be easier to do it at 30 feet than it will be potentially at 60 feet because you have that roadway access and it's not necessarily because we don't know. We don't know. So I'm just telling you what they said to us. I hear you. I hear you. But at some point, the state wants housing. And so if this is going to be talked through, do we stop a housing project that is going through and meeting the guidelines because of this one little thing with the fire department or does the state really want to create housing here? It's not up to the state and that part, it's up to the public safety officials. So why don't we, we're litigating something that we don't have the fire department here. We're not litigating anything. Well, using the wrong word, we're debating it. So what we're trying to say though, is that everything is better off when it is pushed back, right? You have your fire lane. We have the buffers. You're able to get some of that parking out front. It's not as onerous at the street. So we're actually agreeing on the same things. We're just saying it should be in the zoning because otherwise we're leaving it to chance. We're leaving it to the chance of the fire department. We're leaving it to chance the developers going to do the right thing. We're leaving it to chance that we may end up with something that the easement may get moved. The fire, you know, ultimately the pantry may get climbed with another site. We don't know what may happen. So we just need to protect the town, which is what zoning is, and put in these these binder guardrails to make sure that what gets developed there, because it is as of right, is something that will fit in there and is not overwhelming of the street. So with that, we had sent these, but we'll show you very quickly. When Ali did this, he actually combined the road is private and it's privately is owned by the same parties that owned the old Candela building and previously owned the food pantry. For this analysis, he had actually combined it with the one on the right. But it's, you know, it's one point that those road rights will probably transfer to an adjacent site. I think that actually the road, I could be wrong, but I think the road rights go back to the Longfellow property. It's privately owned and it's the same ownership as this building. Okay. And did you check out who has the ownership of the Longfellow building? Because I think it's all part of the same company. That I don't know because it wasn't part of the district. Okay. I believe it's part of the same. Okay. So the zoning is over the roadway and the roadway is private. It's not public. So those development rights. And so what Ali was doing, it was combining with one or the other and we combined it on this side. It could be the other side. Ultimately, the discussion was, as we talked through, you can see this topo right here. This is the grade difference around Route 20. You know, it's 30, 20, 18, 13 feet above the site, which is about at 137. So you can see the big drop in topo and sort of that first kind of 20, 30, 40 feet. It is actually 10 feet lower down here where the food pantry is. But there was some discussion, you know, at 137 feet with a 58 foot tall building at 195, it will be taller than the highest point in the Sudbury landfill, which is 180. So it will be quite visible even if, even with the landfill next door, it's quite large. So with this, with the reasonable worst case development, if we looked at 30 foot setbacks along the roadway, at some point, the side yard is 15 feet, but we're, for sake of argument, showing that Route 20 should be considered frontage. But worst case, it would be 15. But logically, it seems like it would be 30. This shows 30 foot setbacks here, again, following the regulations that the parking should be in the side and the back, hidden, exactly. And so what this does is it pushes all that massing toward the street. So that you were saying there's an easement here that kind of goes here, you could still have a building back here. You know, you would look at all these sites, and you would look at what your envelope is to build. And you would look to maximize that. So from the east parcel, you can see the existing two-level office building, which is kind of tucked behind some trees, you can't really see it. Ultimately, if you add a four story building, then this is 49 feet, and there's a peaked roof, which gets up to 58 feet, kind of similar to Alta Oxbow. Stop it one moment, please. Where you've got the gray, is that meant to be a garage? That's meant to be a garage. And how high is that from the base zone? So with this one, in your guys' regulation, no more than six feet can show. This shows a little bit more, but you kind of grade against it, kind of what they did at Alta. But this is just getting to a roof line that is at 49, not at the 58. We can show you in a second the six feet, and you can see what that looks like. Ultimately, this is what four, four over one, this is four over the garage, what that height looks like over at Alta Oxbow on the back side. What's the distance? So this red line? What is it? What is each floor? How's the height of each floor? So at this point, they went up to the 58. They were actually, I think I didn't look at the exact on the building documents, but four floors, it would be consistent with what's being shown on the other page. On each floor, what is the height of each floor? I put the massing diagrams that we show. She's pointing to Alta Oxbow. I'm asking for each story. Somewhere between 10 and 11 feet. That's where it typically is, and I think Ali, you used 10 feet? Yeah, it's pretty much the industry standard. Yeah, it's pretty much industry standard. Slap to slab though, it's not like finished floor. Finished ceilings, you'd typically try to get to like a nine, nine, six. So this is that kind of height. This red line is 30 feet from the edge of the building. So you figure a sidewalk is four feet, a parking spot is about 18, another eight feet. This is how close the roadway would be if a building is built 30 feet off of Route 20. Just kind of gives you a sense. And that's with a four-story building. Yeah, so this red line, if you're looking, this is a perspective drawing, right? So this parking space, typically parking spaces are 18 feet long. There's a sidewalk behind it up against the wall. So it's four foot sidewalk, 18 foot, basically for a parking space, another eight foot. This is about where 30 feet is, where a roadway would be, the road being over here, compared to a 58 foot building. And that's with a peaked roof. That's not with a flat roof, but it gives a sense of that level of density and how close to the road it would be. And that was our concern. So yeah, the road would be, exactly. So going back to the four stories, as we looked in, Robert had sent us the design requirements and no more six foot of the garage can be exposed. So with that, you basically 58 feet, take off six, you've got 52 feet, which at 10 feet floor to floor, you can have five stories with a flat roof. So there is no guidance whatsoever as to number of floors, which we did it at River's Edge and Alta Oxbow. If you keep within the zoning, you could do a five-story building on this site. Because of how things are written with a, you could do a five over one because the garage has said it can't be any more than six feet out of the ground. It leaves the ability to do five stories. I'm having trouble on the Route 20 side, visualizing the end of the building, where you've put it, and if there is room for a road around there. It looks to me like it's sitting smack against the land. You're 30 feet off of a major roadway. You could access it from the roadway. But again, the fire department is not here. Yeah, they're not going to look at it. They don't want that. We've talked to them about it already. No one's in the room to be able to verify that. What we're saying. So if you say that, then why do you have an issue with pushing the zoning back to 80 feet? You want it back there. You're saying you want it back there. We're saying this is what the zoning allows right now. And it's an issue. We're all saying it's an issue. You're saying for access. We're saying for density. I hear all of the things that you're pushing. I'm not arguing with them. I just want you to understand that we spent two years before with getting the zoning ready and doing the modeling. We had two grants totaling $49,000 from this state to do the modeling. It is not intuitive modeling. Not everybody has access to the modeling. We had to use the people that the state had on their list. And it was really complicated. As you start changing certain parameters,
you can't just do it. You have to be able to prove that you're producing the same number of units. We could prove it. No, because we don't have right now, unless you have a magic wand, we don't have any money to go and do modeling. And it is not something that you can do in three minutes. And it's not something that'll be ready for this town meeting. That is the question. So what we're proposing was not disturbing our existing approval, but layering on top of it. If they're saying it can't be done, so be it. We're still concerned about this zoning the way that it's written, that it could create a bad result. They still have to go through site plan review with the planning board, follow our regulations, and listen to the things that it is different than if you were dealing with the Dover amendment. Different standards. Okay, can we finish going through this really quickly? We don't need to go off on the Dover amendments. It's not really applicable here. So what we were showing was by having massing where you also control, this is another part of it, avoiding long building lengths that face Route 20. That's specifically something we did at Alta Oxbow. So the long building lengths are not along the roadway. Have you looked at our regulations about how long you can have long building lengths without breaking them up? It says you're supposed to break them up every 45 feet. However, you could have a 300-foot wall and just break it up every 45 feet, and there's no definition on what that is. You could do different paint colors. You could do a six-inch reveal. You could, it's having a big building face. I don't know that there's 300 feet there, first of all. I mean, I know you're being hyperbole. Yeah, yeah, but the key is good planning is that with this roadway, the shorter ends facing the roadway. That is also important so that these buildings don't feel overwhelming regardless of where they are, right? So 80-foot setback, which meets what you're looking for for a loop around. How the existing guidelines, if you did review the fire state, I don't know how the fire department went signed off on the 30 feet, which is currently in the existing zoning, but 80 feet would guarantee that loop that allows the fire department access. No long facades along Route 20, and limiting the housing to four floors. Because the way the zoning is written right now, you could do a five-story building. The problem, again, it's the modeling, and we can't intuit how it would turn out. The modeling just guarantees the number of units, correct? Yes. Okay. It guarantees the number of units in the actual space available, allowing for parking, roadways, walkways in through it, public spaces. So with all of those requirements, that would naturally push someone to go to five stories instead of four. And five stories is a full 58 feet. So it's just, if everybody's image in their minds that this should be a four-story building, the zoning right now, as it's written, allows a five-story building. In with Alta Oxpo, the bylaw says one thing, and what they've built is something different than that. Alta Oxpo is going up to 53 feet on three of the buildings. They applied for variants, and they got a variance. I don't think they were entitled to a variance. I think it was illegal. I think if somebody went after them, that they wouldn't win, and we would have lost as a town. So we cannot,
in the MBTA zoning, we cannot do what you do at Alta Oxpo. We can't write a bylaw that looks like the Alta Oxpo bylaw, where you have to go back X number of feet, and from that X number of feet, you can only go up this high, because you can't model it. We tried to do that. We thought at one point, well, with all of these buildings, maybe we would begin in all of the entire zone, all four sub-districts. We thought, you know, we'd really like to have them tiered so that they cut, they move back in a single building, but have them tiered at different lengths, and we weren't able to bottle it. We asked the consultant. They said, we can't, we can't do that, because we don't know how they're going to move their tiers when somebody applies. We just don't know how they're going to do the development. Right, but you've brought the guidelines that they fit within, so you know what the envelope is. So again, as we look at overall MBTA districts from an economic development standpoint, that's exactly what we would look at, right? So that you would look at what's the massing, how does it look, where do we fit in density so it looks and feels, right? Instead of leading it to chance. We know that we need more density in certain locations, but at the same time, you don't want to completely let that go, that you could have a five-story building that's very close to the road. Even if it's not close to the road, a five-story building is very tall. It's very tall. So I guess the primary question is, where did 58 come from? 58 came from having looked at the highest point at the Oxbow. But without stipulating a steep roof, a peach roof, then you would have 58 get you to five stories. We, the way that we've written all of the zoning, we do not deal with what the roof looks like. Our zoning bylaws, all across the board, go from, well, except for Alta-Oxbow, go from the average, yeah, the average grade across the entire site up to the top of the roof. Not the roof, the top of the building. And then what is on the roof is over and above that. But in Alta-Oxbow, you have it so that it goes, that you're measuring from right next to the building. That's how you measure the height, which is quite different than all the other bylaws. Just to clarify, average grade for the whole site, so if you have a headly slope site, you're going to have more than a five-story, is that what? No, it's at the building. Yeah, it's at the building, not the whole site. Right, right. Yeah. You go, it's the average grade of the site, and then you have to take that average grade and apply it to the building. Well, that's not how you get it from anywhere else interested. Well, that's what our bylaw says. Oh, weird. I didn't write it. I believe every town could have their own. It's about like, typically, you would get the average curve level, we would call it, and you would just apply it to the average curve level will define where your building starts, so theoretically. But if I have a, sorry to just use my hands, but if I have a building that, or a lane that looks like this, and my average grade is this line here, but let's say I want to be cool, and I want to build down here, and does that mean I can go 58 feet above that line? Above that, yes. And have like a seven-story building? Yeah, on one side, theoretically it's possible. That's how you, like in, if you're familiar with in New York City, that's how you have that huge lobbies and kind of like cool nightclubs and everything. That's how they get that. And it's usually not regulated by a regular zone in anyone, so you can see that anyway, anything you want in that area. Okay. But Oxbow, we're saying we did, like the town went by building height, like I took the corner of the building. Right. Down the floor. That's what it says in the bottom. Interesting. Okay. Can I ask just like a totally layman, regular townsperson question? I feel like when I look at that image of the road that's, what is it, 58 feet against the road, five stories, to me that looks not like Weyland. And I think the majority of Weylanders, if they were to see that, they would agree. So I think around this table, I think that we're all wanting the same thing. It's just a matter of how do we make that not happen. I guess. And how can we get there? Well, I don't know that you can this year. And I'm not sure that we will ever be able to under the MBTA thing. To me, I'm looking at that. And that doesn't look to me like what I think it would be. I mean, I just, I don't think that that's a realistic drawing. I'm not sure if we need to call it realistic anyway, right? For planning concepts, that's a reasonable worst case scenario. It just means it could be built. It may not be built. It may never be built. Why would anybody want to do that? I mean, seriously, if what you're trying, the rents here in Weyland are really high. But why chance it? This is probably what would be. No, with all due respect on it, I totally hear your climate. And before actually, I was in here and before California, I was actually working in New York. And I worked for, worked with Department of City Planning in New York as well. Totally out of the context. But if you're familiar with all those pencil towers that they call the Billionaire's Row, zoning never changed in there. It's like 42 years ago, actually. Nobody built for 30 years. And then there was money. There was a crisis. Nobody knew where to put that money. And we got started getting residential buildings as tall as Empire State Building. Now, I mean, we could argue that's New York City. It's insane to compare it with Weyland. But 20 years ago, if you told me that somebody would build a residential building that's 1500 feet tall and sell the top penthouse for more than $100 million, even in New York City, I would have said, not really. It's not going to happen in our lifetime. It did. So again, I mean, when I created these, the motivation was not that somebody will definitely build this tomorrow. I was basically just trying to see, well, what could be built? So we should take it to that. I mean, again, I'm going to use planning term of reasonable worst case development scenarios. So that's typically maybe 80% of the developments that I help with. I don't see that. But there is another like 15, 20% sometimes I see that. So it's, I think, well, I agree with Becky. We're all trying to do the same thing, I guess. But when it has a character, just keep the character and then keep the development multifamily housing is a must. If we don't do it, state will do it anyway. So it's better to have a little bit of control over it. I don't know how much that control it is, but I actually was going to ask you. So since there is an MBTA zoning in there anyway, and this article would require an increase in two things, that requires not going back to MBTA, correct? Right. And it doesn't because we're keeping everything the same and it would just have to go up. So why can't we write it in a way that we would say, okay, the height limit is X feet and then beyond X feet of the property line, it is Y feet. So theoretically, we're still giving like a height incentive. We're just saying not everywhere in the site, but we're keeping the MBTA at a base anyway. So that one doesn't change. Because the MBTA modeling, it has already put into it. Yeah. It has, and some of it doesn't even apply to this site, but it has wetlands, floodplain, parking, open space, walking trail. It's got all of that put in. So if you move it back, it is not clear that you would be able to get all of those things in there. You'd have to prove it to the state. Right. But I totally agree. We're not moving the MBTA baseline anymore, right? So whatever the height limit is there right now with the minimum setback, somebody is allowed to do it. That's fine. What we're saying is only for the additional height, let's just say, well, like additional height could be accommodated. It could just be accommodated a little further from the site line. That's I guess all it is. No, you're not talking about moving the base building. Okay. That was my understanding from what you have been talking about. We're not talking about it by implying it. So if a developer wants to build a three-story building and then have terraces and set back the building and go to a single-loaded corridor from a double-loaded corridor, they can, sure. And they can do that under our bylaw regulations now. And that might be okay. So we might be seeing a 34, 35-story building, 30 feet away from the street. We can't change that. That's MBTA anyway. We're locked in with that. But at least for the additional 20, 28 feet, whatever the difference between the current MBTA and the 58, we can at least help them push it back. And likely, a developer would not going to change the frame of the building by going from a double-loaded corridor to a single corridor. But doesn't that come in under the regulatory section, not under the bylaw? I wouldn't necessarily agree because, again, we're keeping the base MBTA. I mean, the town could say no to this article. If we make changes to the table,
I don't know how you would make that kind of change that you're talking about. I had understood that you were not doing it incrementally, but you wanted the whole building to be back. That would be great. But again, what you're explaining to us is that it can't be done. So I'm just trying to be creative in here. So we could just say... And we could do that in regulations. And maybe then the whole idea is that we don't redo the table, but we just put an asterisk and just say, actually, the maximum height is still... What is the current maximum height? Sorry, 35. So we say it's still 35 and we put a little asterisk. 35 feet can go up to 58 feet within X number of feet setback or within X number of distance from Route 20. It could be, I think, very specific even to Route 20. And I think that would actually help you. That will help the planning board. That will help the town because what will happen is MBTA zoning is not going to stop in these sites. We're going to have to be keeping building multifamily homes. Not maybe in the next decade, but maybe in 30 years, maybe in 40 years. Some of our single family is going to have to be, unfortunately, it's going to be forced to change. So I lived in California before Massachusetts, which this thing is like crazy in there, right? And at least we would not set a precedent so that a new developer would come to you 10 years later and say, well, you allowed it in this site. Why don't you allow it on another site? So we could actually say, well, here's how you build multifamily housing in Wayland. And it is okay with the MBTA. We're okay with the character. I mean, maybe that's the way to do it. Again, it's a maybe. I think one needs to separate two things out. There's the MBTA, and then there's other multifamily housing. Right. And we've talked before with the record about the fact that we can create multifamily housing. It has nothing to do with the MBTA district. And if we are going to have more, I would prefer to do it that way. And the board would prefer to do it that way and not be tied into all the garbage that goes along with the MBTA community stuff. So I think those are two separate things. But what I'm looking at are our regulations right now. And have you looked at our regulations? Yes. Oh, great. We're going to buy her some time just for a sec. So for the modeling that we did with the MBTA do you know if there's going to have like the board out of a sec and we could look at those modeling details? Because I was kind of curious to look at the stuff she was mentioning, whether that's the ads, or how it goes in. I don't know if we see all the announcements. But yeah, there was a whole consultant who went through and every single site had to go through that. It was a model that was built at the state level. It wasn't always perfect, but it kind of put everything in and they were able to analyze it. Is there data? Did we get like printouts of that analysis or? We've got final numbers. They don't give you the print, pronounce of the analysis. Robert, are you here? Robert? Yeah, I have the final file, but I don't think it's as detailed as what they were holding on to. And yeah, you can't read it. It's really hard to read. Yeah. So, you know, in looking at this, the information we've received is that the added height is what will be needed to make the site profitable. If there's a desire to put in rules that say that that height has to be set back from the roadway, that should be done in regulations because it gives us so much flexibility. We can change that when we want. We can be very specific without worrying about the Attorney General's office being like, nope, we don't like that. If we make the table too complicated and the Attorney General's office like, nope, we don't like that. Our regulation can be very specific. It can be very specific to that site, to the roadway. It can be much more flexible and it's more nimble in every way in terms of creating it, changing it and forcing it. And that would be the place for you guys to focus your energy if you want to be very specific. It's really easy in 306, 3.2 to go through this and put in meaningful restrictions on where that height has to be, where it can't be, what the massing has to be by the roadways and all that kind of stuff. It's just, it's the cleaner way to do it whenever we're changing these regulations that have to do with a state law. The Attorney General's office is just ruthless. You know, we couldn't say a minimum of one parking space. We had to say only one parking. You know, they're just, and the last time they didn't like how we changed the table, red line right through that. And it's not just the Attorney General. We have the Executive Office of Housing and Liberal Book Communities with the MBTA stuff. So in the regulations, can you change the number of units and the height? Like this stays exactly the same. We wouldn't change the number, we wouldn't be able to change the number of units. No matter what. In our regulations. No matter what. Because that's part of the modeling. But if it's in excess of what's here, and these rights are always there. I hear you that you don't want to have it on this page necessarily, because this is what we're not talking about in the regulation. Yeah, but we're not talking about limiting the number of units. That is something that is, that's a fixed thing from the modeling. And that's required. But setting it so that if the building is within so many feet of a roadway, you know, there has to be this setback before the height goes up. You know, you can write it in a way that is really specific and very clear. And... But if the density, the density would still change here. This would still see 32 and 58, but all those qualifications would be in the regulations? Yeah. But wouldn't then those regulations be suspect if somebody challenged it at the state level saying, no, no, no, no, no. Those regulations weren't approved. We don't have to follow. No, the regulations don't have to be approved. Right. But anything is appealable. And every, anything that we do, uh, somebody can go after. Of course. But I'm sticking through, Robin, what you're saying is, you know, is there a way to do it in the regulations and not necessarily here? Yes. What we were saying is, you know, let's not change that table. There's just an asterisk. If you want to have higher height, if you want to have higher density, then these are the hoops you jump through. But it doesn't change any of our baseline of hoop. That was definitely the intent. So, but if you're saying if we could change the density in the regulations, this would stay. No, you can't change the density. You can change what the mass in the building looks like from the roadway. You can set requirements. Um, you know, that if you're building right up to the setback, then you'd have to, your height has to be set back as well. That, that extra height has to be set back as well. But couldn't somebody then dispute that? And then we wouldn't have a light to stand on because it hasn't been approved. They could dispute anything they wanted, but it costs money to dispute and you have to get, they have to get an approval from us to get a building permit. And if the, if the profit margin on these apartment buildings is so narrow, they're not gonna, they're gonna try and find a way to work with what it is rather than litigating it. That eats away at their profit margin. So the issue with these buildings is the profit margin is so narrow that they're trying to find a way to comply, but still get what they need in terms of the number units. And one of the issues that we have had, and we didn't realize it until after we were very focused on originally following the state's requirements, but the state never took into account what would be financially feasible. I guess we talk a lot about profitability and I, I, you know, trust me, I understand the importance of it, but I wonder how much, you know, we really need to get into just because we're not trying to regulate the cost of steel and concrete and that feeds profitability in the same way. The building has to get funding even if they can't, if it's not going to be profitable, they can't get funding. Right. I hear that, that, that drives what a project happens and timing for when it happens, but that's not something that we would put into a bylaw that says. No, no, no. So, no, but we, we need. It goes down to number of units. So typically to have a building be financially solvent, you need to have at least 75 units. Ideally you have 150 units because that's sort of the operational ideal. Sure. One property manager on site, you're not splitting. It's sort of, it's getting to that critical mass and that's basically what it is. But that's the density requirements. That's the density requirements. As is and that's not. Right. So right now at 20 units an acre, you could probably only get 40 or 50 units, which would be difficult. Yeah. Right. Not impossible, but it just makes it difficult, right? It's more attractive if there's more density there. Sure. Um, so it's just basically, how do we make sure, you know, going back to the 58 feet, it is absolutely more cost effective to do a five-over-one than a four-over-one. If we have 58 feet, you can almost guarantee that you will have a five-story building because that is the most cost-effective way to build. So if you don't want a five-story building. I thought I just heard you say that you didn't necessarily, I don't, I don't know about the stories, but I thought I heard you say that it wouldn't be horrible to have a five-story building if they had a setback. Oh, we weren't saying a five-story garage, four-over-one. Right. I'm saying this is, this is a six-story building. Under 58 feet, you could get a six-story building. Five livable stories. Five livable stories over a garage that's halfway in the ground. Right. No, I was actually referring to, if you can't control this, let's assume this went in like this and there is 58. And then, I mean, we could talk about these sites. We could talk arbitrary as well, because this is going to happen in the future as well. So if there is a chance that we would get a five-story building, at least we want to push the fifth story or the fourth story or whatever it is, as much as possible to the back. Not necessarily, we may be okay keeping the base of the building. Right. And if a developer is willing to, I mean, theoretically, they wouldn't like it to build it that way. They're going to probably push the whole building back so that they have a single framing, because that would, I mean, talk about architectural and engineering costs of a project. Right. If they have the same footprint, it's just a cheese slice extruding it up. It's much cheaper than having a different layout on every floor and then the setbacks and the terraces and the whole installation of the terraces and all that. It's going to be a nightmare to them. That would only be viable if this is like very luxurious development, which I guess none of us would anticipate would happen exactly at that site. So we're basically, I mean, I don't want to say playing the trick, but we're trying to say, well, if you want to build it taller, it just needs to be further away. You can build it right by the road, but then you would be okay with the MBTA heights that is listed in there. And if you want to go above that, which we understand density is a concern for visibility and finances of the project, then you need to allocate the building in a smart way that would fit into our agenda, that would fit into your agenda as well. Right. But again, to do that, we have to write something. So if there's something that we could put into our regulations that you think would work for your concerns, we're happy to look at it. Mm-hmm. So I guess my point is, since the MBTA is already there as a baseline, anything you provide to these three sites is like an added bonus anyway, right? So nobody really can come after the town and say, taking something away. Yeah. Because we're not taking something away. You're not taking away. So you're actually given generously something saying, well, I mean, if you follow XYZ, which XYZ would be, you know, your 35 feet can be actually 58 feet if you are 80 feet away from the art block. So it's still giving them actually a lot of incentive. Now, regarding if that is, that fits into development criteria for the developer. Since you didn't see any tables or any feasibility study from them, we don't have a developer. Right. I mean, if an interested party, let's say, right. So somebody wants to develop this site. I think that's what Robert said. I mean, we don't know the name or if it is a, it may not even be a new project right now, but eventually they're going to have to run numbers by you anyway. They're going to come to the planning board and say, well, we requested this because the current table doesn't help us build a project. There's no profit margin. We can't sell it. We can't build it. Nobody's going to finance it. So it's still giving them more than the MBTA. I guess what I'm trying to say is when we say the extra height could be pushed further. Okay. I hear you and I'm not arguing with you. I'm just suggesting that if you, if that's what you're interested in doing, look at our regulations and come up with a place in the regulations where you can state what it is that you're saying. Because personally, I'm having difficulty stating it. No, but that's totally fine. I think what Becky and I were saying, we could even just use the table because the table already has a master's, right? It has like 40 feet for architectural features. So this is only for one district. Yeah. And so, you know, on that district, we worked with the property owner at the time to come up with what standards they wanted. So can we, I think the question is then, can we, like, what would stop us from adding another asterisk since we're actually... What would the asterisk say and how could you make that work? So the asterisk would say the 35 feet could be increased to 58 feet if you, as long as the 58 feet portion of the building is, let's just say, 80 feet away from the property line or 100 feet away from the property line. Or route 20. Yeah. I'm sorry, the property line... Well, you can't do the route 20 thing. That wouldn't work. And again, we don't know where any developer will choose frontage. They can choose it wherever they want, pretty much, as long as it's a, there's a roadway there.
So that part, I don't know the bylaws. When you choose your frontage, who allows, like, who says, okay, that frontage is fine? The applicant decides. Okay. The applicant to decide if it wants the frontage on route 20, it can decide if it wants the frontage on Minuteman Road, or if it's going to create another road, where if that would be it. But doesn't they have to come up with, like, the main entrance or the roadway entrance, like, at hat? So the frontage needs some sort of a definition, right? I don't know. And in the bylaws, it talks about that. They can just, I think it says that the main entrance shall be on a road, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or away. And that's true, but they decide themselves. We don't, the town doesn't dictate that. But it's going to be either the route 20 side or the Longfellow Road side. It's going to be one or the other. Maybe not. They could also put in a road. Yeah, off of Minuteman. Off of Minuteman. But then they would be losing more area because the frontage would require. But again, you're telling us we shouldn't be hypothetical and we need to think about everything. So we're sharing with you the everything. Let me ask the layman's question also. What is the definition of frontage? I'll have my Bible with me. It is an area along a road and there's for each zoning district and each in our overall bylaw and each, for example, in residential, we have a residential district, but then it's broken down into 20,000 square feet, 30,000 square feet, 40,000, etc. Each of those, there's a table at the end of the zoning bylaw and each of those has a frontage amount. So wherever you decide you want your frontage, that's where it is. In the 60,000 square foot zone, the frontage is 210. You could put it on the road where you're going to build your house. You could put a new road in and call that your frontage. So again, another layman's question. Why can't we use Route 20 as a reference point? Because it's too specific for the zoning. So the purpose of zoning, the only reason we're allowed to do zoning isn't for how things look, just so you know. It's for health, safety and welfare. And that is the basis that any zoning exists. So the kinds of things that we have done go well beyond that. At River's Edge, we owned the land. We got a lot of agreement in advance. And then we had a bylaw that went to town meeting twice because people in town didn't like going more than 190 units. And then after the bylaw was approved, and the agreement was made to sell the land, the developer then decided that that wasn't good enough. He needed more units and he needed more height. So for us, we think that it's better for town meeting to decide if they're willing to go to a height difference rather than having the zoning board, without real input from town meeting, make additional decisions that abrogate the bylaw that the town approved. I don't know if there's any disagreement on that. We're looking at the zoning and looking for it to be something that's reliable and predictable for everybody, right, in this situation. So part of it is we can put criteria in the regulations, right, but the key is what then would show in the table. If the table has 32 and 58, 32 units per acre and 58, you could potentially still get this because these criteria were not approved by the state. And the only thing that has been approved by the state is our MBTA law, right, which has no design criteria, correct? No, because our regulations still apply. Right, but they, for them to truly apply, they have to be approved by the state, don't they? No. Regulations, they're very, but what their guidance is, the trick always is, make it so onerous in all the regulations that it's impossible to build, right? That is always the wrinkle, more affordable materials, things like that, that make it difficult to build, and that's why the state wanted to be as a right, right? Right, but we could not,
in the regulations that we adopted, they don't have what materials you can use. It does, but it doesn't say it has to be clabbered and all the rest of it. I don't believe, I think it talks about different materials. Well, again, we had a consultant that we worked through all of this stuff with, and we took training, we went to a million different courses, and I just, I hear you, but I can't personally see doing that in the bylaw. Robert, what do you think would happen if we put a footnote into the bylaw? It's a little, I don't even know how you'd write a footnote. I heard what you said, but I don't think it would work. We might get pushback for the state, and might screw up the modeling, or I just, might screw, the whole thing might just, might pass this great thing and come to this great compromise in the bylaw, and then the state says, nope, or the, or ELOC says, nope, and it's, it's all gone. All that, all that amendment is done. I would have approved bylaw. So, you basically make it subject to state approval, right? I mean, the same reason you were talking to them, and they were okay with upping the height, right, to get to more units. It's the same premise, we're getting to more units, which they should want, so our acceptance is subject to the same. We can't do contingent approval. It's not possible. I have to, I have to have to go, and this has been a very long discussion, but I would, I would recommend if you really want to put in some kind of language, put in the regulations. We, we can work with the developers on this. Like, this is not like, ooh, you know, mean developer, like, let's, let's work with people. That's, you know, that's our job, to work with people. And if you put something in the regulations, let's work with someone to design it. Eventually, when they actually have a plan that they are ready to, to go to meeting, public meeting, or we can, we can work with people. Like, that's, do that. Don't, don't, let's not like screw around too much and change the amendments and, and then get past it and be thumbs up. And then get the AG saying, nope. And then we, the whole thing is scratched. And we lost all that, all that work we just did to try to, to change it. So, I stand, I stand by what we have in the bylar, um, since we, and, and, and, and, and, you know, like I said, every time meeting, and this, this is what, this is what we need to do as a town to, to move forward. So. Yeah. Hey, Robert, I know you gotta leave, but just to clarify, you're, you're saying we could have this discussion with developers. Does that mean there is a developer that's teed up for this? No, he's talking about when we had a developer. There's, I mean, there's a property owner of this property. And if they, if they would like to develop in the future, then, you know, we can have that discussion. Yeah. Okay. Just like anything, anything other kind of properties when people come in. So, um, at this point, the other two pieces of properties are not looking at housing. I can tell you that for a fact. The other two pieces of property in this overlay are not targeting for housing. We have a, a nonprofit that is just started. And we have, and then we have a piece of industrial piece of property that they're trying to figure out what they do with it. So at this point, there's only one piece of property that is at play potentially at this, within the next, you know, year. So, all right. Yeah. Is there any other questions I can answer before I leave? I won't hold you up. Sorry. No. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you. Thanks, Robert. And in terms of regulations, you know, if we made unreasonable regulations, you know, if you wanted to, uh, have a commercial building, you had to have, I don't know, some ridiculous number of parking spaces. We get sued over that. You know, if, if it was so unreasonable, right. Yeah. Yeah. They're unreasonable. But if they were like really unreasonable, you get sued for that. And that is, that's just not good legislating. Um, nothing, nothing that the UDC has proposed is outrageous. I mean, I, I, you can't play like extremes with this. I don't think anything that we've proposed is outrageous. And, you know, I think just assuming that the attorney general would knock it down and, you know, throw it out the window. I mean, I just kind of like fear monitoring a little bit here, you know, you know, I mean, if we feel like something's best for the town, you push it through. And if it gets shot down, it gets shot down, but we're not. If it gets shot down, our whole MBTA bylaw gets shot down. And then we list list, we risk losing state funding, like the towns that haven't passed an MBTA bylaw. Why would we structure it that way? Why can't we take a vote that is subject to state approval? And if not, you can't, that's not how this works. Well, then it sounds like we don't go to town meeting this year. Right. So we're going, we're going to time with the article. And then the question is, you know, do you want to work with us and create some regulations that will put in place the restrictions that you think will make this better? And I think that's a great solution. But, you know, risking that we don't find a developer to take on this property and build the housing that the town needs there is, is a big risk. And in terms of, you know, the building that's modeled right there, they need to be able to get Wayland rents. And if they, and if they build a giant monolith with no windings and no windows and no changes in the massing, and that don't make use of the views out towards the wetlands and all these other things, they're not going to get the rents they need, they have to build a nice building. And they're going to want to work with within the regulations, which enforcing some sort of a step back of the building is not going to be unreasonable to somebody who wants to do this, hopefully. But, you know, and there's another perspective, you know, when you turn the building, to me, in some ways, that's a less desirable way to site the building, because then every inch of that height of the building is right there in your face. Hiding, hiding some of the massing of the building up against the hill of Route 20, where people are going 45 miles an hour as they fly by it, there are people who might prefer that, as long as it's built nicely. And they're not going to want to build it too close to Route 20 anyway, because again, they want to get Wayland rent, and if you put, you know, windows from an apartment building right on Route 20, they're not going to get the rents they need for those units. Well again, we're all saying the same thing, the building should be set back. We don't want it left to the lowest common denominator, because you see that happen. That's the problem, right? And so we're opening up a door here, and that by just having these two numbers here, with no criteria, you're opening up the door to a potential lowest common denominator. We bought with you a solution that we think is viable, and you know, if we need to change it next year, and go through modeling, and get money to do the modeling, and all the rest of it, that's great. But we've been working on this now for months. 58 feet is a mission, right? Yeah, with all due respect, it doesn't matter how long you've been, you know, trying to push it through and ram it through. I mean, that doesn't mean you came up with the best design. Nothing that the EDC has proposed makes this project unfeasible, or cost prohibitive. I mean, it just, it seems like you have kind of an agenda, Annette. I can't place my finger on it. I can't say that it's not an agenda. Well, you're coming across, you're coming across like that. You're coming across, I'm just letting you know. I'm sorry. So that's my opinion. Well, I'll tell you my issue. I think that we need people on the planning board, and I think if you people are zoning type people, and you want to come on to the planning board, it would be wonderful. We are overworked. We're happy to work with people. And we've been working on this for a long time. It's quite frankly, this is my own opinion. It's not the EDC's function to tell the planning board, or any other board, how to do things. You're an advisory board, and we're happy to listen to your advice. We've heard your advice, we've given you our advice, and we think that, for the things that you're talking about, they can be worked out in the regulations. The regulations cannot be passed until next town meeting, correct? No, the regulations have nothing to do with town meeting. As soon as we can have a public meeting, so that people have achieved. Yeah, that was my question. It's quick. Okay, so the regulations didn't make it through town. What didn't go through town? No, they don't have to go through town. It's just a vote on the board, and I assume we have to have a public hearing. Yeah, well, we have a hearing, and at the same hearing, we can adopt the regulation change. And if you give us the language that you think would work for you, that would be a great solution. And it's not like there's an application pending for this. We don't, the current owner doesn't, isn't developing this, but he's interested in it. I don't have anybody. No. And somebody came, the reason that this whole area, the Route 20 West, was even in the district is because the property owners at the time came to us and said, we'd like to be in the district. And we said, fine. But they, we, yes, somebody else recommended it. Pardon me? EDC also recommended it. Yeah. I mean, full disclosure, this is Dave Watkins, who is a former EDC member. It is not Dave Watkins. It is the property that you, if you're talking about. This property right here is owned by a former select worker. It is owned by a corporation of multiple people who is controlled by. Oh, come on, Annette. Please. Oh, my God. It's inappropriate. I am sorry. It is inappropriate to talk about individual. Okay. Annette, Annette, maybe you should recuse yourself from this because maybe there is a conflict of interest. Okay. So let's not, let's not, let's not even go down that path. Okay. Well, I think you should go down that path. What kind of, you want to go down that path? I don't think that's going to look good for you and the property owner. I mean, I think let's call a spade a spade. You know, nobody, nobody, nobody brought this up except yourself. So, I mean, if you want to go down that road, we can go down that road. I didn't bring it up. You didn't bring it. Dave Watkins doesn't own the building. It's owned by an LLC. That's a joke. Okay. He is the LLC. It's owned by a corporation. Nobody brought the proposal to you. Nobody brought any proposal to us. Somebody came in to Robert. Robert. Someone. Who is the someone? It's not, I'm just not going to get into that. Why don't we call this meeting? Because, you know, I think we're just going around in circles at this point. You know. I thought that we had a resolution. It's not, does it not work for you, Ali? I think the EDC should reconvene and just kind of, I don't know. Hang on. We'll let Ali, we'll let Ali answer a second. Go ahead. So, if we want to do this with regulation, we could do it with regulation. I think that's the harder way to do, and it will extend and require more effort on your side. I don't know. I'm okay helping. We're okay helping. I just thought, you know, I'm more of a pro-development person, I guess you would call me. So, I just thought we would make the site ready for development ASAP. I don't know the interested parties. I don't know. There is an interested party. Part of the discussion, I have no idea since I just moved here like a year and a half ago, and I'm going to be honest. I don't care. It could be X, Y, Z, me, you who's developing it. That's fine. Anybody can develop it at this point. I'm just saying, if this is going to be developed, and there is some interest based on somebody coming to Robert, we should probably help them develop it ASAP, if there's an interest, and then try to hit minimum roadblock. Yes, let's definitely remove things that are contingent in front of them so they could actually build this. But while doing that, let's make sure we do good planning, which is what you want, what we want as well. Right. I agree. I think we all want, from the beginning of the meeting, I can tell that, sorry, I mediate usually meetings like this when I work as a planning board consultant for many other towns. And it's interesting because we both want to do the same thing, right? And we want the development to happen. We are okay with the development, I'm assuming. And we're okay even with the height. It's just, we're talking about where should it go? So let me just explain, because you probably don't know the process. Zoning amendments have to be submitted to the, under state statute, have to be submitted to the select board, returned to the planning board within 14 days. The planning board has to have a hearing within 65 days. And then issue a report to be able to vote on the article. And then if it passes a town meeting, it gets submitted to the attorney general. The attorney general has 90 days to approve it. So if we were to change regulations, we could change the regulations before, I mean, almost immediately after town meeting, if it passed. So I guess the part that's not clear to me, that's very standard procedure is we're already changing two things in that table, right? And we're okay changing that with the whole time comes troops, like with the whole responsibility and everything. And what I guess we're saying is, okay, if we're increasing 35 to 58, let's just say 58 applies on certain places. That's it. It still applies, and 38 applies everywhere anyway. So I'm actually kind of like questioning why the attorney general would look at this and say no. Yeah. Because 35 is still there. 32 is there. So what you, sorry, 35 feet, I was talking about it. And then the density, 32, the 20 is still there, which is the maximum units per acre. So theoretically, the attorney's general... It's actually... The attorney general will do one thing and the executive office of housing... But still, we're not... I'm telling you, I'll read you the letter from them if you'd like to. It's online on our page. They did the approval. They said exactly what they approved, what the modeling showed. And then they say, please note that continued district compliance is subject to the following requirements. Municipalities must notify the executive office of housing and livable communities in writing of any proposed or active zoning amendment that affects the district or of any other bylaw, ordinance rule, regulations, or municipal action that limits the development of multi-family housing in the district. This notification must be sent prior to any planning word public hearing on the proposed zoning amendment. Then it says they can establish a system to monitor compliance over time to assure that the approved districts allow multi-family housing in accordance with the criteria under which they were approved. And then it says ELOC may rescind the determination of district compliance or require changes to the district to remain in compliance as per section 10 of the guidelines or if it becomes aware of additional information not identified in this compliance review that would render the district non-compliant with section 3a. Permitting conducted in connection with the additional factors listed above must not effectively reduce the estimated multi-family unit capacity of the district. If permitting processes such as a specific site plan review or development standards result in special permit requirements for multi-family housing projects proposed in the district and or the permitting process effectively reduce the estimated multi-family unit capacity of the district. The executive office of housing and livable communities may revisit Weyland's compliance with section 3a and could require the town to remedy any deficiency with amendments to its zoning. Right so and we're not reducing it you're actually increasing you might just be reducing the increase that part you're absolutely right is subject to an analysis. Some professional needs to be hired so they could run through and say okay originally we wanted 58 feet maximum height 32 units per acre and if we allow that let's say 80 feet of the lock line we could only achieve whatever was the original number and again we don't even know if there's an original study from what you're saying there's not really a developer so it's just at this point somebody who's approached the Roberts. Can I ask to understand in like a really fundamental way I just want to make sure I got it clear so we're going to go with the the town is going to go forward with the OO or the proposed change change. I don't watch out for that I would maybe right yeah but if we didn't push that forward at all we would still be in compliance right right yes right so all we're saying is that I think we're saying is a very collective group instead of going all the way there you said it nicely we're just saying go three quarters of the way there and do it a little bit differently still make the full extension everyone's happier they got better profit margins but we're just saying you still need everything from the start. I don't know how you explain that to the state so again if you could give us I don't think we can do what you're suggesting but if you can give us language then we can see how we can deal with it. So my question is right now it says maximum building height 35 crossed over 58 and maximum units per acre 20 crossed over 32 right that's the proposal that I will talk about so that 32 and 58 are arbitrary the 58 could be 52 32 could be 28. right so as long as we don't bring anything that the new whatever we want to call it regulations asterix would make it not buildable reaching to that density MPTA or the state can't actually say anything because you already have a baseline which is MPTA and that still applies it's buildable all you're saying is we're actually allowing you to build more right but it's when you get to the you're not going to change the setback right you're just going to change it in the building so how would you write that to put it in a bylaw and in addition I'd have to check with town council to see if we'd have to have a hearing because that would be a change so is the better option to just not change this table at all and then to regulate the addition and say do you want to do a little extra right so you're saying we're saying no we can't do it no I don't I think we have to have the added height in there and then put in a regulation that says that added height has to be set back um from the edge of the building but why could we put the added height in the density in the regulation if that's totally in the regulation or in the bylaw on the regulation it's like hey we're saying regulation is our discretion right right yeah it's not even touched the MPTA bylaw but it's in the regulation as it is you have this ability to go up higher if we do xyz we were looking to do that asterisk of the table just saying and next to 20 saying you can go up to 32 right if so we can doesn't change the rest of it I think from a legislative drafting standpoint saying in the table that the max is 58 and then restricting where that 58 can be is a better way to do it if the table has a lower height and we put in a regulation says but we can do a higher height yeah that is that yeah because it's not how zoning works zoning has to have them if you're going to have minimums and maximums it has to be in the zoning but it's conditional it's not on that specific thing right no it's not conditional but it can be regulated
different way of looking at it no deal thanks so you know based on our summary right this is how the zoning and i have not with anybody else this is my public comment did not work it through with anybody else it literally is just taking what was in the powerpoint and saying this is how you could draft the zone it's a simple asterisk nothing changes in this chart right 20 stays 35 stays all you do is add a third asterisk which says the things we're talking about may increase to 32 if if if no this is what you do right you can't do it so it's too much so but the question is whether it's in the regulations or whether it's in the zoning it's making it conditional right it's saying how do you get to that density doing the right things right so that was the thought process my bigger concern of doing this chart and going to the 58 if we go and do the design regulations that limit it to four stories and we have 58 someone can easily go to the state and say that is an unreasonable cap because 58 is typically a five-story building right and we would lose so we would get a five-story building if someone wants to push it which they will because that's the most cost-effective way to build right they may not but it opens it up to that right so the concern is you guys when we're looking at it is how do you make an asterisk for the one thing the maximum units per acre nothing else changes just like the little asterisk down below where you know the height limitation at town center you can go up to instead of 35 and go up to 40 if it's for xyz same thing you just put an asterisk next to 20 that's it you can go up to 32 if you do these things but this is all right you asked you asked how to write the zoning this is no i asked how you would you ask your footnote and this is more than i'm sorry a footnote this is this is one it is but it gets significant amounts of density and it gets it masked in a proper way so that it fits what we're looking for so it's not overly burdening on the road which we all agree with it keeps it from going to five stories which i haven't heard what you guys think but five stories over parking is a lot that's taller than alta you're doing your sales pitch and i'd really rather be working with you if you look at the bottom thing chapter 306 design regulations you wouldn't ever put that in a bylaw i'm this needs to be lawyer this is what i'm asking you i'm not sure i i want to understand what you think has to be in the bible our concern was that the design regulations weren't binding nbta we have to have the law it has to be self-standing if someone comes in and says these regulations are too onerous they can go to the state right that's the whole point of the state limiting what those design regulations can do so that was only saying you know what to do this you need to actually comply with the regulations no question if you don't think we need to put that so be it but what needs to change is the length of facade and then allowing surface parking because right now you preclude having parking in front of the building right so it's just staying those things and ali as we looked at some of the images you want to make sure that you've got the landscaping which you sort of have but it's making sure that that parking is masked so it's just these simple things we have the parking masked i believe and we have the uh landscaping uh mostly it's i think there's something it doesn't the parking isn't mass it says the landscaping like a certain percentage within the parking lot etc etc but actually i just think that this is oh i don't i only give you this because you asked the right and i appreciate it look like so it's just that's you asked i think that you could talk so i think the concern i would just say i would be concerned about the 58 as it stands because it's a very strong likelihood that you could get a five-story building which will be huge whether it's 30 feet 50 feet 80 feet from the road right so so that's like a fundamental concern the rest of it like we can figure out how to do this but ultimately that's the concern if we vault to this without any necessarily conditions that we know can hold then it just opens us up so this for example the setbacks that you have in there yep i think that that the um executive office of housing would say no that's not okay because they don't know the site it's just on a piece of paper to them and they've got modeling and they might punch it into something and say oh well if you have that big of a setback and this and that it's not gonna no it won't fit you can't get the density right but it's required for mbta but so your lot coverage is 25 means that you would only cover 25 of your site so by taking a bigger setback do you get down to something that is smaller than 25 not by a long shot you know they don't know that because they don't know what other restrictions there are there are other restrictions in in choosing these mbta sites that could limit where on the site the building has to be and they don't know that because they're not going to look at the site they're going to say that's too restrictive they don't plug it in they may not no but i thought you said they need to model it they need to put no they have the existing modeling i don't think they're going to do new modeling but their existing model is it based off of the before these new changes come in or yes yes so they may see something from the modeling it's like well they can't do that like they may see the easements that are there they might see other things and be like have they done new modeling
we have to pay for it right but with the increased type changes that are being no but they said that we had to go to them robert went to them and they said no you can do this because it's essentially the same footprint yeah and it's just up but setbacks and things are going to change footprints and that may be enough for them to say no unless you're going to spend another 45 000 on modeling i'm getting at is i just think of this as like a simple you know rectangle or square it's like i can pinch it still the same volume of everything inside if i go a little higher so like you increase the setback and you allow them to go higher which is happening already then you know to me i think it that's why i'm curious like if they've done the revised model that would tell you the numbers of what's happening with the shape yeah so to them i don't think it will but there are other things they're just this minimum setback along the 20 80 feet what does that mean that's not very specific does it mean that the fire access road could be within that 80 feet probably not the way that's worded it's just a setback so that has to be inside so you're just you know the road around the building for fire department access what if you if that can't start until 80 feet away from route 20 you're pushing it back and you're pushing it back and i think that's the type of restriction that i think the housing folks would be like without new modeling we're not going to allow that can i ask you a question can is it possible to go to state again and say okay we want to do this and you said we could do it as we cross the lines on the table and just write their higher numbers can we ask them we want to actually keep the numbers as is and put an asterisk and have the higher numbers if certain conditions are met because theoretically again i'm looking from a planning perspective and i work with a lot of land use attorneys i'm looking from an attorney perspective as well theoretically you're not taking away anything you're not down zoning you're not changing their model it's still gonna guarantee to produce more than their model or an equal if the conditions are ridiculous let's assume that conditions are ridiculous let's assume this site was only 100 feet deep and we propose an 80 foot setback and then nobody will build a 20 foot deep building right still the mbta is buildable because that would be the table that's i think that was the reason becky and i are mostly interested in not crossing the table but literally just putting an asterisk and saying they could be increased if a few conditions are met but that's not zoning i mean zoning isn't written that way zoning has finite numbers i will happily disagree to that well that's how we do it in massachusetts i think there's a lot i mean massachusetts has a condition of use permit so there is a condition inside our zoning right there are as of right uses and then there are uses in certain places in massachusetts that you need to apply with a condition so um they're they're all have separate i don't even paddocks each there are things that you can get by special permit there are things that you can get by uh as a as of right zoning um i don't think that you can put i don't think you can put a shorter a lower number and then increase it afterward based on criteria that would be a variance but you do it right in the table you say a town center is 35 feet but the height limitation may be increased to 40 feet in order to accommodate architectural features yeah but that's the tables and parapets so it's kind of the way that we have defined
the building height it deals with the definition of the building height yeah from that right so is it possible to go to state and ask this because it seems like we'll ask town council i doubt it would happen before town meeting yeah she's really bonked um we can ask if you get i'm not going to give them this but if you have something simple about what the way you're saying it we can send it to town council and ask i think oh i mean we can we could definitely simplify this we could basically just say we want to keep the numbers in there and we want to put on asterisks and put a few conditions underneath the asterisks so we want to do this we want to make this site happen if like a few conditions are met and we shouldn't probably even disclose how many conditions because it again it's everything is a work in progress in here right so we could just no i think that the conditions have to are actually important for them to understand okay then we can yeah i mean it's conceptual right it's not the final language but it's the concept of we put an asterisk can we then control setback maximum height maximum floors and then ultimately or i wouldn't even call it a setback theoretically zoning wise it's not a setback it's a height limit basically you're limiting height from a distance to the property line i mean yes in planning terms it is a setback but we don't need to write it into a setback well except that the setbacks have to be in this table right and they will be because they are the governing setbacks you're not changing the setback you could still build that whatever the table says as the setback you're just saying i'm providing the additional height in a different place that's why a regulation is the way to do this this is to try and put all this in the table and expect the executive office of housing to understand what you mean and and think that that's okay the more likely response from them is to be this is too complicated and we're concerned that you are that you are restricting this more than what you had originally gotten approval for but what we got even if you're not but what we got the approval for is still buildable because it's an estrus right yeah so the developer can say whatever i don't want 58 feet i i'm okay with 35 and i'm okay with density at 20 it works for me that original one is but if we put 58 and we put the new density he can still do that can't he so i took a crack ready like leave the table alone except at the top of the header for route 20 west you add three asterisks and or the three stars and we add a new note and then basically we just say what what ali's kind of outlined here maximum building height may be increased from 35 to 58 if the setback for additional height is increased to this for front this for side this for rear resulting in a step building or otherwise yeah you have to not be using the word setback unless you mean the actual distance from the road to the edge of the building so we could just say portions of the building yeah the setback is defined it's it's the base of the building setting a building in that's why you cannot use not use setback but the legal lingo the legal way of framing it we could discuss and we could figure that out that's that's that's not hard to do we could just say portions of the building you know i i i think look we can look there's here we disagree with you yeah you think it's hard but so if i didn't use the word setback and and i phrase it i'm sorry it's right we don't need any of them we could just say portions of the building that exceeds the maximum building height highlighted it in table row xy yeah can only happen 80 feet away from the property line that's it you don't go to setback it's just just say portions of the building and actually penetrate the you that's the thing i guess i was trying to say we shouldn't even even say we're changing the height limit we're saying portions of the building can exceed the height limit provided in this table to this given that they are then there's no maximum height limit that's why you need to change the maximum height limit to 58 and and put the asterisk saying that the 58 is only allowed under these circumstances i think this is going very like a nice discussion right now so i'm enjoying this and and i'm not not holly's experience i'm just an engineer i still think that this is better in a regulation because it's more nimble for the town i think so too but it feels like danger whenever we want we don't have to go to town meeting we can in a way i look at it and and i i fear you know we make a change to the table and then five years from now two years from now whenever someone wants to discuss building and we want to say hey let's like revisit how we phrased it then we're going to go back into the same cycle again of oh we don't want to touch the table it's dangerous for mbta but i to me it almost feels like leave the table as it is today because it's approved everyone's happy but give them the avenue like ali is recommending of this extra you know ability to build higher with some more clear bill's phrasing was nice i don't know i'm not an expert but bill can you say those words again you're crazy those are from my experience with new york no i know new york city what were the words just like it was on them and then they found step massing step massing thank you it's from a sky exposure point i'm not sure but the the table height if we're going to allow 58 feet under any circumstances the table height has to say 50 yeah but it's not under any circumstances and i think no no i don't mean under any circumstances but if there is one circumstance under which we will allow it you have then we have to have it in the bylaw because it's just the way the wall works but it says 35 and then 40. it's the same thing it's you know basically the 35 is the baseline but you can go up to 40. it's conditioned how do we govern the variance but that's more architectural features at the top and it's because of the way they were done wrong that's the problem so don't use alta oxford as the model but like variances in general like how do you govern how do we it's a curious question various there are specific criteria on how you can get a variance um i brought my statute for height the height well for how that's financial yeah exactly for height yeah well it's the same criteria all the way around there are some three
sorry so as i'm looking at the clock we're now quarter of seven so definitely hearing that you can't necessarily change this because your concern is that if when you approve it then somehow the state rejects then we're out of commission right so that means that we either wait until next year or this get passed but has a huge aspects that was good unfortunately because it's not on the page that we have work to do and that 58 could get us in trouble that that's my concern that's it that we have months to put a regulation into place i know but we can't reject the 58 so if we're going to limit to four stories unless you guys want a six-story building the 58 puts you at risk of that what is you could do that wouldn't the article a better chance of passing if you do the regulation before town meeting and well we can't do it before because we don't have the bylaw changed understood okay so you asked what you had to do for a variance there are uh three criteria uh substantial hardship uh okay especially affecting land or structures but not affecting generally the zoning district in which it is located you know what this district is and that little literal enforcement of the provisions of the bylaw would involve substantial hardship financial or otherwise and that desirable relief can be granted without nullifying or substantially derogating from the intent and purpose of the ordinance or bylaw there are the three criteria of course it's um soil conditions shape and topography but it has to be different than all the other surrounding land in the district okay okay alta oxbow as you may know is one district there is nothing else that it is different from and it was um it created just for that project so technically it should not have been able to get a variance because it's not different because it is the district it is the district but so in this situation financial hardship goes into the profit profitability you have to have you have to have the other things first it has to relate to soil conditions shape or topography of land or structures especially affecting land or structures but not affecting generally the zoning is the uh yeah the zoning district in which it's located i hear the words i need to digest them yeah they're very difficult but it's a it's it is not clear that you could ever get a variance you have to go hang that out and then Jeff's not on we're going to work on so yeah Jeff i think is definitely let's see and a complication as a as a business person who might want to develop the site whether it's the current owner or anybody else so Jeff are you still on that we can keep pulling Jeff in here and the construction is going to be contingent on you winning of areas yeah that's going to make that piece you're not going to get to that yeah you're not going to get it's not going to go to order yeah Jeff are you still there clear he's not responding all right so why don't we just wrap up quickly so the concern being if any changes are made the state might not approve them other concern is if it passes and then we have the design regulations that we could be at risk right so ultimately we need to sort of hear from the state to understand conceptually do you have any problems with what we're suggesting knowing that it's just as financially feasible that it does everything we want it to do and it cites the building in a better position not leaving it to chance that it could be quite close to the road i mean conceptually are there any issues with what we're proposing i think conceptually in a general sense it would depend very much on how it was written but i would give you a maybe conceptually for what's written on this piece of paper yes i have issues with what's on this piece of paper no doubt but conceptually what you're seeing like what we're trying to do are there any concerns of how it would affect what would happen on site um no what what i think would be acceptable would be to require the stepped massing that i think is perfectly acceptable messing with setbacks to the extent that these are changed from what is in our current bylaws i i'm not comfortable with being that rigid um but requiring the step massing so that the building does not appear as tall from the ground um that in in theory i have no problem with that at all okay so i think conceptually we're all trying to get out of the same spot right and right it's just i think it's more a question of the distance that's and we have limited time now before town meeting and ultimately the state is part of this right and in our regulations just so you know at 306 dash uh three uh the performance standards such as uh design elements to break up the length of building walls setbacks to break up the apparent height certification from the fire department concerning adequate access for services and equipment um surface parking and i mean we have we thought about it it's not like we didn't think about these things as we were doing them right but as it's written it just leaves us open well i don't think so i think putting it into the regulations is the way to go personally but it's still the concern of 58 so karen we need to go out and we personally i just feel mad i'm just breaking up this good time so um to be continued yeah i mean ideally robert went to the state and got an answer on this question of can we just go straight up and they said sure so i imagine you could go to the state and ask them the same question we want to increase the density and the number of units and the height are cool with that given a little bit of change in setbacks they should be able to understand that that's the key no just do we just that no we just step mass whatever we call it is it worth asking that question so that we have it will require the setback thing if we're talking about not the stepped massive but if you're talking about the building itself that would require new modeling okay so that's the question we've approached it as stepped massing right then you could deal with that yeah we have to end yeah we are losing karen it is six by karen so with that we are going and let's get jeff are you still there if you're there we can continue just sitting in this car so i i i am but i i need to drop i need to drop okay it's like two minutes and we'll wrap out the meeting okay yeah all right so karen just left jeff is still on so the question is either thinking through how we get it into the regulations but primary question do you want to limit to four stories or do you want it to go to five i think our strong opinion is that we don't want it to go to five over one which is a six story building that is way beyond anything that alta osbo is so that i think is sort of a fundamental thing even if we address everything else after the fact that's a problem yeah right so i'm not prepared to answer that and i also don't think we should answer it at all because we're not the board right so that's a good question yeah totally fine so let's kind of think through what our next steps may be we had a lot of information we got some new information easements otherwise but ultimately you kind of know where we're coming from we're not trying to stop the density in fact we want it there we want it understandable we want it predictable more that's why alta oxbow sold because it was predictable it was as a right right so how do we get those parameters in there so that we get what we want as a town protecting us right from any you have a good developer often you have a good developer often you don't right so that's why you have zoning to protect against that so that is why we're saying all of this and why we're looking to try to get a mechanism that does that so we can all kind of digest everything that we heard and kind of think it through we'll think through about the regulations you can think through the asterisks we can talk with robert who dropped off maybe we get guidance from the state it won't be in time for town meeting most likely but it may give some indication of a pathway so if yeah and if you were about the language um that we could use in a regulation that would be great yeah going to the state without specific language yeah what you wanted to do it conceptually just saying that you wanted to eat because it wasn't it it was it was density which they don't have a problem with and the height and they it was it didn't change any setbacks it's the setback stuff and the open space that the state allows i don't know how they do it i mean we we tried ourselves to sort of figure out districts all by ourselves um and we we thought we were fine and we thought we were figuring out what the units could be and how many you could have but when you modeled it it wasn't the same so there's crap junk i mean that's all i can call it junk in that model that knocks stuff out and it's not linear and some of the stuff has changed since they did the modeling the rail trail is across 320 i don't know if it's close enough to affect any the modeling i don't think it would and is the daycare longfellow affected because it could be within us so many oh i just saw that there was a day there is a daycare no i think it's five i think it was 500 feet okay so it's probably far enough away we'll kind of again so the next steps we'll kind of think about through and digest a little bit and if you guys have more thoughts etc but you see where we're coming from and apologies that we didn't even know that your hearings were happening so hopefully now we'll have a little bit more yeah i don't know how we do it um i know that we do um list everything for public hearing in a legal notice and it is posted on the town's website and i thought that we sent it out to uh town boards could be wrong but in as much as economic development like we're total advocates for this right so we could have helped along the way we just didn't even know about it right so the last thing we want to happen is bad development because that will stop us under the grass all the oxbow people are happy with it it's generating tax income if we have a bad development we're happy with most people so but you know if we do it badly it'll freeze us for all the other ones that go yeah it's like we've got to do it well and it's an important site it's the game i agree you don't see it a lot when you drive from weyland to sudbury but when you drive from sudbury to weyland that would be the first thing you're going to see and would you think you were seeing weyland i know it's well i drive it twice a day for daycare as soon as the right building goes up there's a big sign in there that says welcome to weyland and that sign is going to be there so you're going to realize it's on the right side of the road when you drive out yeah yeah there's a big like it's a weyland and it's already signed it's right there they're possibly the gas station do you want your vote to adjourn funny shape because the dumber we see i'll leave motion to your second i'll second second ollie beaver hi