September 12, 2025 – Economic Development Committee – Video & Transcript
September 12, 2025 - Economic Development Committee
Rebecca Stanizzi: Alright, we
will call to order the Wayland
EDC meeting for September,
Friday, September 12. 2005 one
may be a watch or might
participate remotely with the
meeting link that can be found
on the agenda pursuant to
chapter two of the acts of 2025
this meeting will be conducted
in person and via remote means,
in accordance with applicable
law. This meeting will be
recorded and made available to
the public on WayCAM as soon
after the meeting as is
practicable. So with that, I'm
not seeing any attendees or
public comment. No one is here
publicly. Technically, this is a
hybrid meeting, but all the
participants right now are in
person. So Karen Kelly, Katie
Harris, David Larry and myself,
Rebecca Stan, see, we may have
one other person joining
remotely, I believe, so we'll
keep track when that happens. So
meeting minutes from August 28
was not able to get those done
yet. That was again, sort of our
meeting of just tackling the
memo. So we'll do that for next
time town planner update, I
added it, but Robert is still on
vacation, so back next week, I
think. So hopefully next
meeting, we'll be able to get
that, get that report from him.
I did note on the planning board
agenda, they mentioned the
splash pad in the town planner
report at the end. I didn't
watch it,
Karen Kelly: but Oh, from when
Rebecca Stanizzi: they met
Wednesday, I think usually go
back and we came and you can
yep, yep, just swing by and ask
Anina, because it was a Nina who
reported instead of Robert.
Karen Kelly: So okay, because it
was
Unknown: this past Wednesday.
Yeah, yeah, I'll pop in and
watch that
Katie Noble Harris: link. David, if you happen to David Villari: it'll take me, like, three days to find it, but I will, well, Rebecca Stanizzi: it's always at the end. So on the agenda, it's always the town planner report at the end that Yes. So, yes, yeah. So just deliver for Adina speaking. And you know, time of date, timestamp, Karen Kelly: wait till Monday to look right, David Vallari: just because it'll take, Rebecca Stanizzi: sometimes it takes a couple of days. Yeah, and it's funky right now. It's not an I don't think they switched it back. It's still, you go to wake him, usually you see the whole grid of meetings. But it's like, it's not working right now. I think they're posting directly to YouTube or something, I don't know, but go look at the top of the list, and you'll see them there. Marvel. David Villari: Yeah, I'll find at some point. And then when I do, I'll send a link today, and we can save Rebecca Stanizzi: Alright, so the EDC annual reports. So for newbies, if you've never seen, actually, the Wayland town report, it's like they publish a book pretty much every year, and every board and committee gives a report of what they did for the past year. So usually it's like they say to be about 1000 words. This is about 1100 but ultimately, so we're saying before I struggled to get it below 1000 like, Oh, it's just the guidelines. Okay, so it just kind of gives an update of the business that you did in the fiscal year. So that is July 120 24 through June 30 of 2025, which is the fiscal year. Karen Kelly: So they're a digital copy of it. Rebecca Stanizzi: There must be on the on the website. Yeah, it's usually there's like, stack of them sitting around somewhere, but, yeah, it's kind of interesting. Flip through a nail. Like everybody, every board and committee is reporting on what they did Unknown: so well. And that would be like, if we did have a digital copy, that would be a great thing to to like when you think about what is the use of AI and and not some are trying to listen to meetings where there's many people talking in person, and some are not, but to actually take something like this that's been approved by every single town board and committee in writing and then be able to push that out as a piece of content a podcast or Something like that, right? That's good point me to be a lot more accurate. Yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: Probably really wonder how many people actually read it, but there's a lot of ton of useful information Katie Noble Harris: in it. Yeah. So is there a digital copy, or we're not sure, Rebecca Stanizzi: it must be posted on the website somewhere, okay, thank Interesting. Yeah, who would be the right person ask? Yep, yep. I'm sure if you look on the web, it's almost got a beat. I don't know if it's a state requirement, but it's really something they've they've done. Katie Noble Harris: So when does it usually release the whole Rebecca Stanizzi: Fay. It's always due by September 30, yep. And then, typically you see it within like, a month or two. So they just format everything and then just print it all out. It's literally like, you know, it's like a book like that, kind of interesting in your record of what the town did for eons and eons go back years. So were there any comments on this? Anything that didn't read, right? Anything I forgot,
Karen Kelly: anything to add
Katie Noble Harris: that was great. It was like, super informative. And Memory Lane, yeah, Unknown: we did do a lot, a lot good, great.
Rebecca Stanizzi: And then liaison, I put in. And slash Tom, because technically, as of the end of the fiscal year, we had Tom, but just and technically Nick was still our clerk as of the end of fiscal year 25 because that was the end of his term. But so it's literally that snapshot at the we had 30th 2025 Unknown: haven't shared a survey that we didn't hear. I'm sorry, no, Rebecca Stanizzi: and they, they limit you and what you can attach as visuals and attachments, things Unknown: like that. No, I don't mean to start. I mean, they know, okay, that you Rebecca Stanizzi: that we did the survey, the survey results are not Unknown: that's fine, okay, yeah, sorry, that's awesome.
Great. So we could, but no, I want to make sure that we that's mentioned in here. It is interesting. Katie Noble Harris: This is just a tiny note not to belabor anything. But like that, some of these things, like the economic development bond bill and then the tip funds, those are something that like are going to keep they haven't happened yet, and so we're going to have to keep, keep going, keep going with them to get the those big Rebecca Stanizzi: funds. It takes years. Yeah, yeah. So report that went so last year there was like a wrap up of October occupied and generating full tax revenues. So it's like, that snapshot, and then it was like, Oh, we have a new it's like, it literally just sold. But otherwise, you know, before it was just what you did on rivers. I mean, Riverside took us eight years, so it was a long time. So some are longer, some are shorter. All right, any other comments? David, you have anything that you want? David Villari: Just very nice. Minor edits to that one section. Small words, Rebecca Stanizzi: just on the non critical Yeah, to the splash pad. Okay, ground area. Does that say what you guys wanted to say? Is it like a fair capture as of June 30, you guys actually sent the memo? Oh, not until after Labor Day, right? Um, so we in there at all will be recommending, because we were definitely talking about it in June. Yeah, we started talking about it may is considering,
David Villari: is considering, considering is considering, and then maybe just help on wording to reduce some pieces of the funding discussions there CPA only is where I think we're worth exploring, like local fundraising and then Tom meeting budget as well, if needed. Yep, the town Rebecca Stanizzi: meeting budget, you'd be capital budget, and you're going to be down the totem pole, right? So you're not gonna be able to most likely either way, I think so. Saying CPA only might restrict us. Okay? So I'll take it only Yeah, David Villari: and then and amenities, I think would be the only other thing. Yeah, yeah.
Katie Noble Harris: I was interested in the on the last page, the EDC sponsored article for the historic facade of Sydney. I That's the first I've heard of that is, would we ever want to check back in on that, or is it just not worth it? Rebecca Stanizzi: So it came down to the prop. It's a private property. Yeah, right. And so it was an older gentleman and had health and family issues, and he just couldn't kind of get motivated enough to do it. So essentially, CPA said, you know, you've had it for three years. We've set aside those funds, but if you see, he's not going to use it. And so that's we said to him, like, get move it or lose it, right? And basically, let go, because he just couldn't, couldn't quite deal with it. So that was, that was very sad, because we know if the building is still owned by that same person, I have heard it might have been bought by the people next door, who, when he was saying that they might be interested, they were not interested in doing the historic so might be worth checking in. We can always go back to CPA, go back to town meeting, re request the funds, but that's sort of the discipline. They let it go for a little while, but at the end of the day, they don't want to hold on to those David Villari: funds forever. So yeah. So just Katie Noble Harris: curious, if it's worthwhile for us to even just know who the owner of that building is. Seems like a lot of work to try to get those funds. Maybe we don't want to focus our energy on but might just be worthwhile Rebecca Stanizzi: knowing it'd be easy. Now everybody knows what it was, and you know, sort of, oh, look, they're back and they're willing to do it, and here's their signed document. David Villari: Then it could probably be very pretty quick. So, Katie Noble Harris: 70 to 70. Okay, Rebecca Stanizzi: anything else?
Hearing? None? Do I hear a motion to approve. Katie Noble Harris: Motion to approve Unknown: a motion second, second and second. All in favor. Karen, Hi, Katie, hi, Becky. All right. Rebecca Stanizzi: So, so approved as amended. So this came in hot at the last minute that you EDC goals. So given that we did not get you guys have it right, given that we don't have Val's in here, and also given that Jeff didn't rank the major categories, but this just gives you kind of a data dump of where people are at and then also what people wanted to spearhead, and either that or work on so we can kind of digest it a little bit. I mean, even I admit it's really a chance to kind of really deep dive into the data. And kind of typically, what we do before is then rank them. You show where those priorities are based on where the numbers popped out. But you can kind of see, you know, the major categories. It's interesting to see where people were seeing what was important. And a lot of this is also, you know, important based on the time that you have, because it's just only, only so much time in the day. So but, David, I was interested. I think you had a note, and you had several notes on yours, but, like, you had 10s, like, very low on existing corridor cleanup tasks. But why was that? I forget it was because, David Villari: because it should come down to, like, other departments to do the enforcement right, not necessarily. EDC, if we're, if we're, our charter is to, that's what Rebecca Stanizzi: you were feeling like Design Review Board was on top of it, sort of thing. David Villari: Bill Sterling and the team seems to have been empowered by Select Board to, like, take some control on all those guidelines, all those zoning laws, for the facade rules, etc. So, I mean, okay, but that was Rebecca Stanizzi: why you but you saw it as important, which was a high number, but then it was, like a low number. Well, exactly reverse. David Villari: That's exactly reverse. That's exactly that was why I think it's still really important for like, the overall objective of the EDC, like it played into it, but it's the responsibilities of Rebecca Stanizzi: another team to execute well, part of it, as we've seen, like, it falls in between a bunch of teams, right? So Design Review Board, they look at proposals coming in, not necessarily looking backwards, right? And then building department, they're also looking at what's coming in, and not necessarily they can, but they're often not. And so it's like, how do we, how do we marshal those and get them pushed forward? David Villari: So, but, like, so, like, the code administration, I think Robert said very specifically, like, that's the planning board's job Rebecca Stanizzi: on the zoning side, yeah. So part of it is, I think cataloging, which is what Katie and I were doing, literally walking around. And, you know, what do we want to be notifying property owners about? And then it's a question of, who is it going out through? David Villari: Yep. So, okay, Katie Noble Harris: that's actually doing the logistics, like the actual grunt work of making it happen, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, or making and making sure that it happens in the different directions. So, yeah, David Villari: yeah, don't let my 10s, like, super skew it. Do this kind of, Do I understand the roles? Yeah,
Katie Noble Harris: this is just one note. I'm curious to Karen, like, what you think about this. I think I would have said, like a year ago, like, put a one as to, like, reaching out to new businesses. And I will admit I can do more work on that front, and I'm happy to do it, depending on our decisions on this, but I kind of feel like my opinions have changed after working on outreach to a few businesses. Just kind of feels like maybe it's not worth our while, and that if people do want to expand, they will be looking at Wayland, Unknown: and so you're talking about existing or new, Katie Noble Harris: new coming to Wayland. It feels like maybe it's just not worth our time and energy to be going out and making I mean, yeah, occasionally like trying to do our best. But I just, I don't know, after some of the experiences and meetings we've had, I'm it kind of feels like it's a lot of effort for not a lot of Unknown: I appreciate you on that, and also, like the brokers are supposed to be doing this, yeah, yeah. I just it feels like we're, I feel like I'm trying to insert myself into space. I don't know well, and so, you know? And then it's like, well, then what's the process? So we, and then who, like, also thinking through, like, Who do we reach out to at these chains? You know, I think that's the other we might be totally barking the wrong tree. David Villari: Like, I think Jeff said it too. It's like that's very much a broker to broker transaction that we should stay out of, in a way. And I think I did the same thing. I marked that as lower down for us, but then higher up, I marked things like us putting a database together that represents those businesses or those empty storefronts, so that it's easier to access and find out. So give that to brokers. We have the sale brokers, you know, with all that information, all of the, you know, the one mile, two mile, three mile info, like, right at their fingertips, yeah, and then maybe that makes it a little easier, Katie Noble Harris: yeah, it feels like a different thing, reaching out to brokers, rather than like individual businesses. Rebecca Stanizzi: We can, we can hit. 15 or 20 different groups with that one broker. So we need to make sure that the brokers are educated and then David Villari: and see the vision of, like, where everything's trying to go, because they're not seeing that on the day to day, Rebecca Stanizzi: right? Yeah. And most important that they can reach out and who to reach out to at the town, because as they walk in blindly, right? And then you want them to at least have that, yeah, that connection, that conduit, David Villari: I have the same thoughts, Katie Noble Harris: yeah. I mean, does doesn't it feel like we've kind of trying to, yeah? Karen Kelly: No, I, I totally agree with you. Rebecca Stanizzi: That comes down to the predilections of the property owner and what their goals are, and then the vendor and like, there's so many variables, it's just hard to Yeah. Unknown: You think about as like, a risk discussion too. Like, is a business owner going to trust someone just like, as a town representative? It's going to be great. Like that should be a best business risk evaluation that they're doing on the broker sides. I don't think it's necessarily bad. I don't think it looks bad for an economic development group To, but I don't, I think like, we might like, but again, we might reach out to one of five potential people in an org, right, that like might be the one responsible for something like this, and then it just could be a lot of wasted energy. That's my biggest fear. And we only have so much time and David Villari: exactly, Rebecca Stanizzi: and the test case, like, if there is an economic development director, then people know to go to them, like, it's just that natural magnet, because otherwise, if it's not, like, do I got a planning board, do I got a slick board? Like, what do I do? But if there's an ed director, that's where you go if you want to potentially locate so that's the beauty of having that position. And then they are then full time or part time, you know, focused on that, right? Katie Noble Harris: And they're probably tapped into the brokers and the Rebecca Stanizzi: this, over time, they'll get to know everybody who's kind of sniffing around town. Unknown: So it's interesting, we actually all aligned on that. Yeah, I couldn't go I never picked any number low. It's five. My brain only works on scales of one to five. David Villari: I started to fill it out, then I put 10 is like, we should work on that. Yeah? Then you're Rebecca Stanizzi: like, I know. David Vallari: So I did that backwards for a minute. Katie Noble Harris: Is it 10 correct? Rebecca Stanizzi: The lowest
Karen Kelly: trend lines? I think, you know, David Villari: I can always just wait her scores, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, yeah. I think my lowest was a seven. So yeah, I David Villari: did try to, like, focus on putting things as higher, like 10s and eights and stuff, just because there's, like, six of us, yeah. And that was it, yeah. It's like, I think everything here on this list is important in some way, shape or form. It's just, if we have to tackle something to make an impact, what do we do? That's right, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: And then, you know, most importantly off to the right is who's willing to lead an issue and who wants to work on it, kind of seeing some of this stuff. And again, that's why saying, like, pick multiples just because they're, you know, we may have a wealth of people want to work on a certain topic. So that kind of gives a good view of what people are interested in. Karen Kelly: slacker, Rebecca Stanizzi: I know, and Katie. So Katie didn't do it. It was off to the side. Like, I want to do nothing. Unknown: I missed you. Like, look at this. I like and like, David Villari: you can just everything. I put my name next to and Karen too. I think that's where Katie's been, because we tend to overlap very well.
Rebecca Stanizzi: So I think over the next, you know, before next month's meeting, it's a lot to digest right here, but you can kind of look at the data, think it through. You can insert, I'll send it, we'll kind of recirculate the file. Okay, we'll get valves in there, and then, you know, kind of digest. But particularly, okay, it's interesting knowing where we want to go in prior years that there were so many things thrown at the wall, like we're pretty focused in what we're doing now. It's a Karen point. You know, Karen, you didn't have anything lower than a five, right? So it's kind of before. When we were first doing it was, like, all over the map, and you have things that we had a scale of one to five, and it wasn't dense enough, like it didn't give you enough with somebody else's three or something like that. So that was where the 10 came from. But so we'll get Vals Katie, if you can input your your wanting to lead and wanting to participate in and then, yeah, just kind of digest it and what you're seeing and kind of natural teams. David Villari: May find a couple in the others. And I think I might be the only one that did that. Rebecca Stanizzi: So sorry. No, no, you that's exactly what you're supposed to do. Unknown: But I think the only, like, real, other one that's worth discussing, or it needs more detail around it, I'll send a memo, is that last one on the last page, business vacancy fees, Rebecca Stanizzi: is that if there's a vacant storefront, then they're gonna I David Villari: found, like, a really nice set of case studies on like Wellington, they brought it down from like 17 vacancies all the way to six in less than a year, because they started to impose vacancy fees, basically for empty storefronts. Rebecca Stanizzi: We talked about this a bit. Did? We did? We're so unusual. Friendly already. Yeah. Rated that. But. David Villari: But like, who's whose friend should we be? Are we the brokers friend, or are we the town representative? Rebecca Stanizzi: In town, we represent property owners and we are the town. That's good. Clarity, right? That's fine. So it's kind of easy, like in Arlington, things that are more dense, it's much easier. It is typically a small spot in a bigger building. Here, it's typically the whole building, or it's, you know, it's much more impactful. So for us to do a fee that is meaningful enough to get their attention in reverse, it's going to be painful enough that they're going to be really annoyed, right? So it's, you know, part of it was, you know, before it was Whole Foods, that was, that was the poster child, right? That it was just sitting there empty Santander, Bank of America. You kind of knew that something they were paying but you know, kind of our big gaps in our teeth are now kind of filling in, which is good, David Villari: but the math is always like, this is a problem with plazas. And like any large landlord corporation like the math always favors them to boost rents higher, which strangles small businesses out, right? Because they always want, if I have 10 storefronts, and they're like, Okay, I could charge $5,000 a month and have six, you know, tenants, instead of 10, I have $30,000 coming in per month. Or, you know, another landlord come in and under charge and have all 10 filled. But that problem there is that they'd have now four extra, you know, utility bills, water bills, maintenance fees for extra people to keep track of, make sure they're paying their rent like it's a lot more work for them. So there's like, a cost benefit to landlords keeping rent high, and if you de incentivize that, then you bring that more neutral. Unknown: I just worry that we're already, we already struggle to attract retailers. David Villari: But it's not the retailers we're attracting. The brokers own it, right? And the retailers because of the rates of rent. Like, if you talk to businesses in the plaza, a lot of them say the same thing. They're like, rents pretty high, you know? And rents high, and that's controlled by Zurich, or whoever. Right? Katie Noble Harris: Could it be, I'm thinking, not for small businesses? Could it be something that is for larger properties? Yeah, I don't know if that changes your feeling Unknown: about it. I mean, I don't know if we don't think it would discourage I mean, it isn't right. It's not an impact on the small business. It's an impact on the person who owns the building.
Katie Noble Harris: And that owner of the building would have to meet a threshold either their national chain or their Karen Kelly: problem is, though, that the whole foods Plaza was 80% full. Yeah, yeah, it was just dark leases. Katie Noble Harris: So, but I think, couldn't it affect something like David Vallari: empty storefronts would be the like criteria that Rebecca Stanizzi: as a landlord, you can't force your tenant to occupy the space, so I don't know. But if you, if you saw something that was a good summary of case studies, David Villari: well, they, I'll send it. I mean, I created the case study list and stuff. Okay, but there was another one that looked at like, beautification is the wrong word, but it was like, they didn't upkeep the property. So the old Bank of America site, with the lack of mowing for how many years, would have been something that got, like fined, and eventually the fines would have outweighed just paying someone to mow the lawn. And so you would have had a mow the lawn, right? So it's, it's doesn't need to be big to be an impact, right? And get what you want out of the town center Unknown: there, I think, does that fall under the design guidelines? Rebecca Stanizzi: Like the plant flowing doesn't. That's the thing, the maintenance, the initial design does, the meat doesn't. And that's one of the questions is, you know, we sit down with Nate the building inspector and say, What? What do we have the rights control? We're not, we're not like a homeowners association. You have to keep your grass mode and your flowers, right? It's just so we may not have that tool. Should we have that tool in our code? You know that David Villari: all that, it's a tool that other towns have found out how to use. Yeah, right? Rebecca Stanizzi: Useful to know for the next time. David Villari: Yeah, so I'll write it up. I mean, I know, like, I totally hear it. I knew anyway, so I could be enrolled. Unknown: No, I don't think there's a right or wrong here. And I think, like, again, it's like, if it's we would just need to thread the needle, because there are so many ways that even Santander, technically, they're, they have a lease right, they they're getting rent money every month right from that bank. So unless we, in my mind, if we were to do something, we would need to do something that would also thread the needle of penalizing people who a lot like, take offices, yeah, that just like, remain unoccupied for more than six months, or something like that. And I don't know we can do that legally, but in my mind, that would be a practical component. Rebecca Stanizzi: That's one where somebody's paying rent but not looking occupies, correct. The next is like a town center that one corner, this kitty corner from ex golf and across for our sway, the new staff that has been empty from the beginning. It's still gravel in there, like we can do something, right? David Villari: So, oh, I had a question on that, because it was in the infographic. We say 90% is that on square footage? Or number of storefronts? I couldn't square footage. That's on square footage? Yeah, it's like, because the supermarket's huge, yeah. So what could we look at that, fortunately, number maybe as as also, like, what's the storefront vacancy? Because that I'd be curious about, is that more like 60% because it feels more like 60 Rebecca Stanizzi: well, by the time you had the medical bill, they'll be pretty high. I mean, it's just like, you know, yeah, Town Center Plaza. I mean, you have two that are, they're, they're right at Alyssa, Andrew, like they're so prominent, if the old artists of the kids strong space and then that want to cross, everything else is, David Villari: I think, still, I think I counted six when I was there last week that are just empty, empty stores. Yeah, I Unknown: don't know. To Cara, well, like to Carl going to bagel table and David Villari: to card spaces. There was a place behind Takara too, as well. That's a dermatologist. It's a services space available and big, plastered, you might Rebecca Stanizzi: just, but that's for Takara. Yeah. Just, yeah, dermatologist. Couple hair around that David Villari: way, either way. Like, I was curious, because it doesn't always feel like 90 when you're down there and you talk to the storefront people, and they're, Unknown: they're saying the same thing. Do you think it's but I do think it is close to 90, like, I think it just feels, the thing is, like, there's a lot of things about the way that Plaza was designed. Like, when we've gone in and talked to business owners, they're like, You never see people here. And part of that is the design things behind the swift and so you have these little pathways, you know, it's almost like a little street in there, but like, there's, you know, there's a reason why all the new types of like shopping positive squares with parking in the middle, and if you're sitting outside of the restaurant, you can see all the other restaurants and people walking around. There's a sense of, like, there's activity here, and that is just, Katie Noble Harris: it's designed backwards, almost the building space, in Karen Kelly: our very professional opinion, Rebecca Stanizzi: interesting with the new property owner does with it? Yeah, they're good at this. Yeah, they'll understand this. They could change, Katie Noble Harris: change the businesses to incoming businesses to face. Rebecca Stanizzi: They could change incoming businesses. They could add additional square they could reconfigure. They could do whatever, I think there's still additional retail space that they could build. They just haven't, they haven't chosen builders. You're listening. So that'll be those discussions with the David Villari: property owner, the other others that I had added here on support Wayland businesses that section talk about like the ribbon cuttings and the Wayland post and like that could tie in nicely, too, for people that are just driving by and on 20 that don't get the Wayland post Sudbury people. What if you had, like, chocolate therapy on the Billboard, like, one month Unknown: and then so is this an existing billboard? David Villari: You're thinking it's the billboard right at the town center that the town uses, like, every now and then they're advertising like, oh, the planes are coming through, yeah. But like, you see that when you're sitting at the light, yeah? Like it's very visible, yeah? And I'm just wondering, like, could we one week a month, right? Or one week a quarter, or whatever, get a business on there, grow the same Wayland Post article, yeah, and just highlight it, yeah, and then do the same thing in South Wayland and see if we drive a little traffic. Yeah. Unknown: Are you thinking about the what the intersection of old con path and 126 David Villari: Yeah, I couldn't think though, if there was an outboard type thing already in Rebecca Stanizzi: use there, there is, there is, yeah, there's one there and there's one at 20 and 25 Katie Noble Harris: Why would we ever want to do a new one, like an additional one, kind of up, up a little further. Unknown: We do need, like in general, we need signs that are promoting the retail, the current retailers in town, in town center, yeah, yes, the signage, I mean, David Villari: that's, it's after the intersection on the road, yeah. And you can Unknown: even see what's up there. You can't turn you can't see what's up there. There's no sign ahead of time. Yeah, it's just, like, there's just so many basic things I don't know. Like, if there's anything else, like, I like this idea, and we have this, then we have this. The infrastructure is there, intersection there too. I think that could be a good place to start. David Villari: I mean, because if we're doing the work for the Wayland post articles or whatnot, then you just trip it down. Cater it. Put a picture on the map of where the business is. People can go get it Rebecca Stanizzi: well. Plus Katie, as we walked around and talked to some of the property owners, right? You want to incent them to make changes, like change the sign. We were talking with cooks automotive, and he might be interested in doing a sign. Like, great, if you did that well, you hopefully get you profiled in Wayland post, and you'd put them there. Like, you'd want to reward those companies and businesses that go out of their way to make improvements and highlight that Lloyd was in. He was good. He is interested. Yes, yes. He's good, yeah. So, yeah. So all this can virtuous cycle of getting some of that information out there. Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, kind of changing topic. If that's okay. Just back to this. I don't know if there's a way like I'm thinking about explore meals, tax, explore rooms tax. And also, I don't know if it's on here anywhere like but getting gas. Station approval to have convenience stores, but things like that, those feel like we've kind of missed the deadline for town meeting this year. So I don't know if there's like, a way to say, Okay, this is something that's on our charter or agenda, whatever, but kind of like, not right now. Like, I don't know how we would break that down, if that's something for 25 or 2627 David Villari: Yep. Rebecca Stanizzi: So part of that is kind of, it's sort of in the route 20 master plan. It's buried in that. So we could kind of flush that out as a topic, because, again, we have that as a survey question, right? Didn't we, when we surveyed, and people were surprisingly amenable to that. David Villari: So the meals tax that exists already, it doesn't like point seven, five, I thought it did, Rebecca Stanizzi: doesn't I thought it did like the town meeting thing, right? It's something, yeah, there's we have to be past the Tom meeting. But yeah, most cities and really thought it did. I thought we had one, and I went looking for it, and I was like, and I was like, Oh, can't we use a little bit of that for, you know, doing, like, cleaning up the corridor or something. We don't have it. I'm going to be like, David Villari: super rude to go to chat for a minute. Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, that's something we could maybe punt to FinCom to see if they Well, that's Rebecca Stanizzi: part of it, so we can talk through we still have this joint meeting, and I haven't heard from Phil, which is kind of strange, but that's one of the things on there. Is, you know, what are those things that we can be doing to boost our tax base? And with that, you're not going to get a lot of money. It's going to be maybe 100 grand, if you're lucky. But if you use those funds to then clean up the corridor or, you know, do something with it and magnify it instead of just having it, you know, go in the endless Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, probably new songs. Unknown: Chatgpt thinks we do too. Did we used to 75% I don't think so. I think so I'm going to see what it Rebecca Stanizzi: ask for this source. Can you do that? I'm finding more. I'll use this very finding more and more often it's on. It's like, yeah, me, it's kind of interesting. Anyway, all right, so we are 909, just to keep this going. So if you can fill out yours spearhead and the do, I'll get vows, we'll integrate it, kind of think it, and then I'll sort of rank it a little bit more to kind of the data will pop a little bit more. Yeah, if anything else you thinking of, anything else, Katie Noble Harris: things that we want to they're important, but they're just not timely right now, like the do it in the future. I think, Unknown: I think we need to wait for Jeff to fill out his thing, and then we circle back to that. Rebecca Stanizzi: Yes, yeah, we can kind of do that, and maybe we have sort of that bottom list of looking ahead to fiscal year 27 Yes, God yes. That's a kind of horrifying thought, but yeah,
David Villari: there were community banks didn't maybe touch base with separately because I couldn't score them, just because I didn't know enough about them. Yeah, yeah, we can Rebecca Stanizzi: chat about those a little bit. Yeah, we can do that. Okay, all right. So the upcoming Joint Finance Committee, EDC, I still have a bunch of notes, and I finally just put them all in one spot. So that's this, if you guys have this, give that one with the green stripes. There we go. So in a joint meeting with the FinCom, I tried to separate it into what are high impact things we can do, what are medium and what are low? Like, you can have a bunch of ideas, but, you know, like, the meals tax is not going to be moving the needle a whole lot unless you Super Target it. So you know the highest impact, and you know, you can be talking about this. These are some of the data. So this is sort of, you know, every FinCom loves a spreadsheet, right? So high impact things are encouraging town homes and revisiting MBTA communities encouraging town homes. This has the data. Our existing commercial tax base is 160 million. Alta Oxbow itself was 73 it just sold for 98 that gives you perspective. It's this high, big, splashy thing going on, but town homes are the quiet engine. We don't have to build more Alta oxbows, nor should we like it's that was in its place in time, and it solved 40 B and all that stuff, but town homes right now, our existing condominium townhouse base is three and a half times our commercial tax base. It dwarfs our commercial tax base. So, and this is sort of people are fine with them, right? They're used to them. They make sense. They're really land efficient. They're super low in services. Usually it's retirees, a lot of school kids, private roads, infrastructure. It's basically like the equivalent of commercial. The reason why towns and cities like commercial is because usually it's low services, high revenues. This is basically more so it's three and a half times a commercial tax base. This is our financial engine in this town. A few questions here. Unknown: So one is, is is it? Is it our financial engine, mostly because we don't have a lot of zoning for commercial in terms of, Rebecca Stanizzi: okay, yeah. I mean our commercial tax base is literally, it's 2.8% of our entire tax base, 2.8% that's Karen Kelly: it, because you have so little. Zoning for commercial Rebecca Stanizzi: use is that correct? Our commercial is not as dense as it could, but you're never, based on our limited areas, you're never going to suddenly right up the native mall, right? It's not Unknown: okay. So then, then, because I one of the things that was on my mind to discuss at this meeting was, you know, I just saw some more chatter online about, about, you know, what we need to do to get the financial engine moving in this town and people shouting all kinds of wrong information about and so I was like, we need to put something out about this. And so it's exactly that. And so I'm just thinking in my mind, and Katie, I'm happy to take this on, is putting together, like, I don't even know if it's an infographic or if it's like a PSA, like we've done before, like we did with the talent center, stuff about, here's what's really going on. But I do think it would be really valuable to kind of like, pull some pieces of some major facts about what is driving the engine, why it's driving the engine, and how we can think about Yeah, David Villari: you had that on Rebecca Stanizzi: the on the priorities, I think, yeah. So I put at the top, and this was actually an order was on the agenda, which is why it was at the top. But, yeah, but part of that is exactly that, because people don't necessarily understand. I mean, even looking at Town Center, even I was surprised looking at it, I was expecting a little bit more it literally, River Trail place, 42 units is worth the same as the entire rest of the town center plaza, yeah, yeah. Like, stop and think about that, three acres versus 21 acres. This is how much these are worth. I mean, literally, those are assessed at like a million dollars a piece. So it's huge. I mean, even that is, you know, worth $42 million right? So that's 42 across the way all to Oxbow. Huge, massive, what, like eight acres. That's 70, right? The town homes were really good at building expensive town homes. Yeah, we're good at that. Lean into it, land efficient, generate those tax revenue crisis, yeah, David Villari: if you could, if you could get the mahoneys to not do cascade and instead build like five, six town homes on there, whatever. Rebecca Stanizzi: We probably have more than that, because they're like a two, but yeah, I mean, it's ultimately for this size building that. And I would not be surprised if they came back and said, I just want to do town homes. I would not shock me in the slightest, because the same value building a lot less square footage in a very cost effective stick built way, you're going to get the same value, right? So, yeah, it's kind of like, how do we get people focused in that mindset? And then do we encourage zoning in that regard? Do we, you know, second of this is the MBTA communities. If we put MBTA community zoning, which is literally 15 units an acre, River Trail places, 12, it's not like you have to build like, apartment buildings with MBTA communities. It's 15. Is not that dense. It's basically close to townhomes. So because we have are so dense at Alta Oxbow, it averages out across the entire town for 15 you have to hit that threshold. So you know where Alta Oxbow is, 27 you could put 10 somewhere, which is what they did when they put the zoning over at mate stop, right? So that's River Trail place just within put that down David Villari: with the data you gave here, right? 21 acres for the 42 43 million. Right? Three acres, 41 and a half, that's $2 million an acre if you're doing commercial or $13.8 million per acre doing town homes. Rebecca Stanizzi: Yep, yep. So and then, you know, and then, you know, and that doesn't even count Wayland columns, which is also there, yeah, I don't know if that was originally part of the raythe It must have been part of the Raytheon site, but that's another 40 million. Which one Wayland? So River Trail is behind the common the town green, okay, it's right there. And then Wayland Commons is along 27 so that's the one. It's the kind of as you first turn in, off of 27 David Villari: it's right and left. And that makes sense, because that's bigger acreage they have. They have a Rebecca Stanizzi: lot of conservation. They're the where the housing is not that tight, but the site itself is literally 18 Acres, because there's a ton of green space around. David Villari: If we took like, a look at just on the map, the density of the housing, like, how many acres would that be if? Rebecca Stanizzi: I'd guess probably, like, five to seven. It's not quite as dense as River Trail place, but, David Villari: but still. So that's, let's call it like 38.3 divide by I'll go the high, high route seven. That's five and a half million dollars per acre instead of the two commercial Rebecca Stanizzi: Yep, yeah. And so then the column on the right is just taking our tax rate at the top and just putting into perspective what it means in terms of tax revenues. So, you know, we always, I always tout that all talks about is making about 1,000,001 a year in tax revenues. So our entire commercial tax base just makes two and a half million. It's just that you could, you could expand, you could double your commercial tax base, which will never happen, never, and you still are not going to make the dent that you could make with other things. So revisiting MBTA communities. So as we know, with MBTA communities right now, our 25 acre districts. Are you aware of MBTA communities? Do you know the nuts and bolts? Bad enough short story we have to do like 50 acres. You have to designate it for a minimum of 15 units an acre. Great. And you can average across your site. Some can be more dense. Some could be less right. One of the sites has to be a minimum of 25 acres. The second 25 acres has to be lots that are minimum size of five acres. So it can be five and 10 and 10. It can be 55555, you know, it's basically you can make a collection of those. So our 25 acre district that was designated is put at Mainstone. So it's in Colts way. It's a street that was already it's already built out as townhouse condominiums, right? And it has been for a while. So they put it there because if you plug it into the model at the state, which was our criteria, it says, Oh, this works. But you know that it will never, all those condominium owners won't get together collectively, sell a builder, tear them down, and then, you know, build something like, it'll never happen. And that honestly, was the thought process at the planning board when they were thinking through they wanted, they didn't want to create housing necessarily, they would have commentary, and they're like, We don't like this law, and we shouldn't have to comply with it, but we have to. So, you know, grumpy and they did it. But what that does center point might actually well, so the town center was put on there, right? However, there is a deed restriction with Raytheon right. And so build above the height that they currently have for the no, they cannot put additional residential on the site without Raytheon approval. It's a deed restriction so that one may be blocked logistically, right? So what do those mean? So you required acres, you have 50 acres. You have to do 15 years. So we should be doing 750 units. I'm going to check with Robert, I believe, with our plan, ours Rebecca Stanizzi: in the economic development bond bill is at like 896, if I'm following what our zoning was, that we approved. So I'll check that number. But right now, at Alta Oxbow, some of them comply with that right. We could count our non age restricted units. Two thirds are non age restricted. One is a senior building. So it leaves us 720 units left to be built. So at an average Alta value, just being low, using that as an apartment value, then it's $240 million worth of that was that $100,000 to look at MBTA communities, to re look development, or that's $3.7 million in tax revenues. So that is value within the MBTA communities. If it were all built out, will it be over time? I don't know, but the two pinch points one is our paper district. It's not buildable, and we are giving up $1.3 million in tax revenues forever, right?
at it and think, How can we look at it from an economic development perspective, to create more housing for us? This housing is worth money to us, right? Again, it's like, it's just, it's if we do, you know, like, single family homes are the the worst thing we can possibly do, because it's public roads. It's. Very expensive infrastructure, like all this stuff, eye services. Whereas doing this, and not necessarily in Alta, you might do something more dense that side of town, and do town homes somewhere else. So these are the numbers. I mean, this is where you're going to move the needle in terms of tax revenues. So the next page is medium impact. And this is where you start thinking about, Okay, what if we make our commercial districts better? What if we add square if we add square footage, or, what if we make the districts better, right? Unknown: And DEP, I know we talked about mixed use zoning. Town Center, route 20 is it is Town Center currently mixed use. I mean, there are obviously different parcels of land that have both residences on it and businesses on it is the business area of town center zone for mixed use
Rebecca Stanizzi: right now. It is because, as the MBTA communities before, it wasn't mostly because it followed the deed. So with the MBTA communities, they added the ability to mix in the residential but you're running up against the deed. Okay. Okay, good. And right now, in the route 20 corridor, you can't, but that's one of the questions for the route 20 master plan is to be able to add, is to be able to, you know, if you want to do a second or third floor, it could be office, it could be residential. Unknown: So, but is that off limits right now for Town Center? Because if you're just building on top of existing structures, Rebecca Stanizzi: the deed restriction is you can't do residential without their approval. Unknown: Is No, is no, so it's not zoned. Then for mixed where the commercial is, Rebecca Stanizzi: it's zoned. But the deed prohibits, Unknown: prohibit the property owner rules this in a pickle. A like, Rebecca Stanizzi: Yeah, we were hoping that, you know, Raytheon be a good corporate citizen Massachusetts housing, we just did the zoning. Won't you please come on. Unknown: And they're like, No. They're not even not breaking ground anywhere new. But they Rebecca Stanizzi: just, they're just like, from them, it's, it's a formerly contaminated site, so doing anything beyond what they're doing now just invites risk that additional contamination will be found. They're like, No. And that's, you know, that's in the DEP, so kind of you'd love to get beyond it, but you're not the property owner. You can't force them to do something. So again, do you put that zoning somewhere else? Unknown: So how would we like? Obviously, we got new zoning class passed last year. But when you're thinking about, um, most of the town is already zoned for residential. So then how, like, how do you go about, you know, like, what is the process by which pieces of land are identified to build town homes? And then, you know, like, what does that look like? Becky, like, what role do we play and make like, Rebecca Stanizzi: if the town really want to do it, we could work with certain property owners. The question is, is there land left in stone? Is there Right? Like, where are those pockets? Yeah, can you find those pockets? Identify them. Is this something that we want to encourage we have town land. So that's one of them on here is activate underutilized town land. We have 13 acres Orchard Lane. It's owned, yeah? Orchard Lane, I keep hearing about, yeah. So it's 13 acres by the schools. It's owned by the schools. Yeah. So it's 13 acres is too small for a school. It's kind of, there were playing fields that were suggested there, and like, heads exploded at the neighborhood, because nobody wants to have 50 million cars going in to their small roads. You know, what have? Town homes. Town homes are very different. It's very quiet. It's not as if you have screaming kids and you have 100 people descending on a playing field, you know, like, multiple times over a weekend or every afternoon, right? It's very different. You know, people understand it, right? And so he took that, and that's looking at this and, like, literally, what are the dollar values? You took five acres, you put MBTA community zoning on it for 1515, units. But you know what? We own the land. We can dictate how many units go there. We can dictate what it looks like, just like we did at Rivers Edge. So say that there's 12 units an acre. It's a little bit less dense than over there. You have 60 units. You probably get, you'd probably get over $100,000 per unit for land value. But there's going to be some infrastructure. There's no roads. You have to add something. So like at 80 that would get you almost $5 million so the school would get $5 million and then $60 million worth of condos would be built, which then generates a million dollars a Unknown: year. Essentially, it looks like the school district or the town sells the land to a developer to build town homes. But can they dictate what they're going to do with Rebecca Stanizzi: that land? River's Edge? Absolutely. If you're the property owner, just like Raytheon, it's terms of sale with terms of sale. So when we did rivers edge, we said, we wrote the zoning for them. We said, this is as of right? So they just had to submit their plans and go through the normal kind of code review sort of stuff. But we had design criteria, we had floor plans, we had height like we mapped out everything. And when we put it out to RFP, we said, give us your plans of what you're going to look like. So we even could pick between the bidders of what esthetic we liked. So that's why we got a really good product. When you're the property owner, you can do that, right? So pound Karen Kelly: makes five. A million dollars Rebecca Stanizzi: and then, and it generates a million dollars a year. Yeah, forward, right, yeah, yeah. Unknown: So, like, I'm curious about why this was not I think this did come up with MBTA housing. Like, where is the sticking point here? Is it still like, well, we might need that for schools. Or, like, where is the sticking point, inertia? David Villari: It's also, I mean, yeah, I'm looking at the map. Orchard Lane is, like, pretty small and, like, quaint and quiet residential right now, like, you're building 60 units, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah? But think of main stem is gonna there's a lot of units that you really don't perceive from the road, right? It's 13 acres, and you take five, you can absolutely set back from everybody else, like you can, you'll never really see it. It'll be just like main stone, like, it's just set back and, you know, it's like a little David Villari: road that goes I just wonder if your inertia rates are like, very different, you have an easier time building, which is, like, what Robert's very concerned about is it's hard to get us to do it, like, if that number goes down from 60 to like 20, is everyone just like, Yeah, let's go do it. Everyone sees the vision that it plays into MBTA and 40 B potentially, and all these other things, and then it's just done instead of multi year play out of Unknown: pushback, yes, although we sacrifice a lot of recurring revenue, like tax Rebecca Stanizzi: revenue, but it's not gonna be worth trade offs to be worth it coin for just 20 units. Unknown: Yeah, I agree. Like, you, if you're gonna do it, do it, yeah? And I think, I mean, I'm no expert, but, like, there is a way. I mean, like those town homes in town center are lovely. Rebecca Stanizzi: They're stunning on the outside, yeah? Like, I just think it's like an eyesore or anything David Villari: I'm calling it from like a bird in the hand burning your Bush type thing. It's like, I'd rather have it in the hand and get Unknown: having a million, then we'd still get pushed back. Either, either way, there's going to be a bill David Villari: Exactly. There's part of it too, though, is if you build those, like those town homes that are a little bit larger, maybe more attractive, the tax base of those homes goes up as well. So it's not just that they're valued at which per unit, 1 million, right? But if you have 60 on that acre, like, do we really think we get a million? Is that? Is that in line with the density? Rebecca Stanizzi: And that's what they're getting newer ones at Main stone, that's what they're getting at River Trail place. That's kind of no but is it 1,000,005 then, if you built like, no means, because at some point there is a price sensitivity to a town hall. If you have a million and a half to 2 million, you're gonna go buy a house, right? You're not gonna so it's kind of, that's the that sweet spot, right? Fair, yeah. So it's just kind of, this is, you know, if we can control it, we can make it worth our while. So that's we had lobbied for with MBTA. Communities put the zoning there, we can check the box, and then it's there, and then we can decide, as a town, what kind of density we want to have there, right? And then we did Unknown: your pushback that kind of kept Orchard Lane off the docket was Rebecca Stanizzi: actually being considered by the planning board, and then it just fell off. They found mainst like, Okay, we're done. Katie Noble Harris: So, yeah, slightly different angle on this. You ever give an incentive to a current property owner to put in a town home? I think that that's what people of Wayland. I'm just like remarking on, like, what I always seen see is the development. And I might be ignorant, but it feels to me like there might be a couple of properties in town that aren't being utilized. Can those Unknown: be and like a dwell, like in a ADU? ADU, yeah, yeah. Katie Noble Harris: Or maybe just, okay, this isn't the right type of building, but the the one with the facade, like, Could, could we entice that to that owner of the building? Hey, we'll give you this much money if you convert that building to be, well, I guess that wouldn't be a town home, but are there any existing buildings that could become town homes or or existing land that has stuff on it? Rebecca Stanizzi: So that's a question. So you'd kind of look at all the parcels in town with that lens and see, like what makes Katie Noble Harris: sense, but like an incentive also, given it's mostly just writing Rebecca Stanizzi: zoning that they can build, right? So remember they were talking, remember when we were doing the Self Storage, there was the guy who was trying to do the solar compact cluster, right? So there was eight acres up on Shaw drive. Basically, it's semi remote, right? But they wanted to do essentially cluster. We have a cluster development by law right now, but is extremely onerous. Really hard to go through it? Do you simplify that so more people will check that box? I think if you give them a path, they'll do it. But seeing the path that's in place right now is really hard. You literally have to design the site as if it's single family homes and then design it again with the cluster. So you compare the two and do like it's literally it's huge amount. So I think if you just streamline that, I think you could that would be enough incentive for those people who are willing to do it that they would Katie Noble Harris: do it. Just wonder if that feels like a little bit more palatable than building something totally new and or maybe both at the same time, both at the same time. No. So
Rebecca Stanizzi: anyways, the medium impact. Adding density commercial districts the planning board, when they were talking with the tax assessor, they were struggling. Well, what's worth more residential or office? Basically the same like it's so incrementally, not not material. Just add the square footage, right that adding the value to the commercial districts, that's where you're sort of elevating your game right now, route 20 corridor is not commanding higher rents because it looks like crap, but that will change over time. How do you make that quarter look better? Good news property owners and the town does better. Bad news makes rents more expensive. So there's it's a push and pull, but at the end of the day, you know that adding the value might be more impactful, and in fact, that may improve your tax basis 2.8% right? The rest of it, if you live in a town that's really attractive, those values go up, right? So it's almost like you're boosting it for the visual, but for the rest of everybody else to sort of float their votes, activate and under the site, town land and the last one of the meals tax in the room stats very small dollars. But you know, if they were leveraged, you might be able to get something out of them. But if you guys have other ideas, as we sort of massage this at this point, I have not heard back from Phil yet. I know they're probably diving into stuff. So it might be October at this point. David Villari: So for the meals, one you show, 10, 1215, is that just when the breakdown Rebecca Stanizzi: of what we get, if we Yeah, I'm guessing as to what we are. I mean, we do have coach bro, which breaks it. But, you know, I'd be curious to know what the each of them are getting on an annualized basis, is that David Villari: in like, fiscal reports, anywhere, in any report that Rebecca Stanizzi: so if any, you know, any restaurant property or just reports, rents, expenses, and David Villari: that's it. So you're not, no idea what the potential revenue here is based on. I mean, we could Rebecca Stanizzi: talk with Jeff, and Jeff could probably give us some kind of, yeah, yeah. But, you know, ultimately, in this range, you know, you're not talking it's not suddenly that we're going to find half a million dollars, right? David Villari: Because you look at it in like, I think I mentioned this on the survey too, is, is meals tax, or something like that. You could also play it by, you know, local districts too, and you say Town Center meals tax will go to feed upkeep, landscaping, fees, all these other things, looking at signage and like, maybe that's just Rebecca Stanizzi: the that would incent the restaurant owners to go along with it, if they reap the reward, like we all reap the rewards. And I think it's a really good virtuous cycle, as opposed to, we're just going to collect tax and we'll be on our Ma we're going to go take care of the schools for meals, tax. Thanks for that one. Yeah, exactly, harder, and it would annoy you every single time that you saw it on your bill, exactly. David Villari: But if you're like, oh, meals, tax, played, paid for the playground, we're happy, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: So the rooms tax, we clearly don't have that many Airbnbs. This is what Jesse does, actually. So I know he has a multiple number of them, but it's a higher tax. You can do it up to 6% so the state charges 5.7 towns and cities can go up to 6% so as opposed to point seven 5% it adds up faster. But it's a question of what those revenues are, and is it okay? So we have 10 Airbnb and I'm guessing, yes, I'm guessing, I think when I looked at an airbn, you know, you can kind of see David Villari: that, because that's why I didn't give it a score, I was like, how worth it? Is it to chase all that. Rebecca Stanizzi: Yeah, yeah. So this just kind of gives the the dollar impact there. Interestingly, I would have expected the room stacked up in less, but if you do it at the max, you know, it's like, will it stop somebody from coming to Wayland? Probably not. You know, it's like, when you do air and B's vrbos anywhere else, it just gets tacked on at the end. It's one of those annoying fees, and they, Oh, we collect, collect revenue. So the 200 things, exactly, yeah, exactly, exactly. So this is, I'm going to send this because Phil was asking kind of a draft and what, what we were thinking, if anybody adding on to this questions, otherwise, we kind of revisit it next month and then plan to go and have a joint meeting with FinCom too. But that's sort of the how do we get high, medium, low, and thinking of, you know, what's what's worth the effort, right? You can do a lot of things, but at the end of the day, what's going to David Villari: actually, very obviously,
Unknown: can we put on the to do list, like putting something together to share online on this which, like I said, I'm happy Katie Noble Harris: to do. I think next meeting a bit, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, I think after, probably after the FinCom meeting, I think that would be a good time to get their feedback, too, and kind of see where they, you know, just to get that we, you know, EDC met jointly with the FinCom, and we just wanted to give you some highlights of that discussion. And you know, they may have some interesting tidbits for us that we don't, we don't know, we might want to publicize, but if you want to start thinking about it absolutely, and then, you know, to get it out after you share this job with me, yes, absolutely, yeah. So I'll circulate this. I didn't want to throw everything spreadsheet. It's a spreadsheet I can click and follow through, yeah, and you can play with numbers, yeah.
Katie Noble Harris: So that's yeah. David Villari: Okay, Rebecca Stanizzi: so we are at 937, so we spend a lot of time so zipping through some of the other stuff. So splash, slide, playground, you heard from Carol, right? Yeah, she David Villari: gave me, like, very informal call on what you wanted to do with. Was, was find out when we can get on that agenda. So I agreed for us to be on the October six. And the way she's going to do that is she's going to run through town manager and make sure that there weren't other agenda topics that he'd like to have above that one. And yeah, she was very kind. She gave, like, her own candid personal feedback too, on the project. Which was overall positive, right? Like, overall positive, but, like, coming from EDC, I think they're going to be looking for, like, a very clear breakdown of what is the benefit. And I think that's going to be tough is like, how do we quantify increasing foot traffic for a financial plan? Rebecca Stanizzi: I think you can find those metrics, yeah, I think places that have added them, yeah, I don't chat GPT, but, like, so there's David Villari: over six, like, that's the example dominant question we're gonna get. Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, Catherine might be able to help with that too, based on the touch of truck data that she got from last year. David Villari: That's true about that. Yeah, yeah. She gets cell phone data from, like this. They come in, they're like, Oh, we can track people's cell phones and see where they came from. Katie Noble Harris: Who's they? A company that Catherine got. David Villari: Like, it's creepy. He said it Rebecca Stanizzi: was creepy. Got it. She's like, Oh, David Villari: yeah, come to this free trial. And it's, she's smart with it. I'm showing me how good it is before I buy it, and she doesn't ever buy it. It's good. That was fine to hear that around trying to find the right, right one. Yeah, right data. So I think that's going to be like the dominant How do we show that narrative and explain that there's a benefit she hadn't really caught on in the proposal where we, like recommended it could also be phased so I think we really want to highlight that, because for $25,000 I can pour a three inch slab of concrete, get a 16 by 16 posted beam pavilion down and throw some $250 Home Depot pick up picnic tables right? Like I can do that for 25 if someone tells you that 75 they're lying right, like that is a cheap, easy construct. You have to go through a procurement law, I think. Yeah, so that's But either way, procurement laws shouldn't make it keep it under five grand. It should make it more expensive. Oh, it does. And if it does, then that's part of the systemic problems that towns have, but that's fine, whatever. Yeah. So I looked at that, and I discussed that with her, and she was like, okay, yeah. Like, not everything needs to be a giant proposal that has to go through town meeting, and maybe we discuss that with them. Of like, how can we use shared streets, things like that, to play into this and make it happen faster. Yeah. And then I, she and I talked very informally, too, about the deed restrictions and LSL and stress the importance there of that. Rebecca Stanizzi: That's the LSP. LSP LSP is the environmental issues David Villari: licensed site. Professional, yeah, so that's the Raytheon has their own license site. Professional, that controls that site for their own internal liability for anything long term, right? So if you want to do anything on that land, they have to sign off. And we had the health department informally help us out with just looking at, like screening, and they did confirm that playground, even as simple as that would fall under to, like a fixed structure that would have to get signed off, approved by them. Yeah, so there's hurdles. Have we? Unknown: Okay? So then that me, it's like, is it? David Villari: Should we? I, you're going down the same road, I think. Is it worth it if it might not happen? And that's why she said, Let's not do touch a truck. Let's not do any outreach yet. Let's chat with them, make sure that Select Board wants to go forward with it. Then the first thing we're going to hit is the health department work, the LSP, aols, all that stuff, clear that hurdle, and if that's clear, then we just see what go forward. Unknown: I think that you're right that we need to keep it like, very like. This could be very simple, easy. Let's just, let's not get in the weeds of this meeting. Let's just talk about what like could be and like, but we still have this other huge hurdle of breakout in front of us. We just generally want to know if this life board understands, and like, to your point, like, what would be the economic since the EDC bringing it benefit of it, but I think, like, don't get in the weeds. Let's not Yeah, yeah. We tool right now? Yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: So part I was talking with Tom Fay, not knowing that part of the discussion about touch a truck, and that is, mean, the environmental, environmental, right? So part of it is not being able to get some feedback at touch a truck, you're going to have every family I know. In the town there. So I was saying to Tom, could we come to select board meeting next Monday or two weeks after, which is the 29th and just five minutes on the agenda? And just say, will you please just let us survey people at touch a truck, because then we'll have the data to bring to you for that October meeting. Right? Who will they Karen Kelly: care about that David Villari: data? But only be two days a date. That's a lot to collect all that data. Unknown: We're better off sending if we're going to collect data editing, we're going to get more if we send an email instead of being a touch dog. Yeah, okay, I'm not saying I'd be there. I'm saying I've tried to collect data from people, and it's not that easy. Yeah, got to get aggressive Rebecca Stanizzi: and let's kind of email and such a truck at the same time. It gives us that excuse, right? Email is a must, yeah, oh, yeah, without a doubt, not such a pressing it's getting an email and and they're hearing it David Villari: truck. But the other thing I wasn't sure about is, like, because this is a plaza owned area, right? The foot traffic increase going to be for the plaza, for those businesses. How does that play into, like, what we receive back as a town? And I don't know that answer Unknown: at all. Not educated, like, right? Like, how much more money does each business like, David Villari: are we talking like 1% Rebecca Stanizzi: of their sales actually comes back as I don't know what the numbers are. It's just elevating the value of the plaza, right? So is that where the money is? Yeah, value, elevation, value in the real estate tax. Yeah, we don't have, like, a sales tax. We don't have a local like that. Mean, we have, well, we don't have meals tax. So, yeah, it's, it's just purely real estate values. David Villari: Okay, that's cool. So then I got to talk to Chris at ConCom, who we'd started those, like, very informal discussions with two the comments, the playground vendor. Oh, and they had that one Wrentham Plaza, and they put the playground on, and I bet I could find the before and after valuations with the playground, yeah. Like, that was that Unknown: as the that's the drive, yeah, yeah. Get us through the discussion. Okay, yeah, yeah. Katie Noble Harris: I wonder if Watertown has anything, because they just put in that new splash pad. Yeah, I'm
Rebecca Stanizzi: sure if you chat GPT, it'll pop up a bunch of stuff. David Villari: It's just whether that's fine sits or Yeah, the valuation difference in the surrounding Rebecca Stanizzi: area, part of it'd be interesting to know. At town center right now, typically in a commercial valuation, they'll look at your rents and then your expenses, right? But they'll look at your actual vacancy. So the question is, how much vacancy is baked in? And if you know part of it is filling vacant spaces, and that helps bring up the valuation, and then it's kind of floating the rents, the rents already high, right? But if you can get those last spaces filled, then that's that may be something we actually talk with the assessor. And so we have a David Villari: matter both ways. We say assessed value would go up in general, because you have, if you can build store, friends obsessed, and then two, you actually fill those properties. So assessed value also goes up for, yeah, that's definitely the goal. So I would, I think I'll request some assistance on putting that story together. But, yeah, okay, so, so, October 6. October 6, Katie Noble Harris: Monday, okay, in person for Unknown: you. I'll pop in, in person. Yeah, right here. So I won't be there. I'll be out of the country. Will you? Okay? Yeah, bummer. We'll prep you before,
Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, I mean, it's for them. You'll have to, it's not like they're suddenly going to dive into all the data, right? It's going to be very high level numbers, if we can, if you can, show that, you know, other properties have increased the value of that commercial tax base by 10% like, just gorilla math, like this is what it means, right? So now we know what the valuation is for the commercial it's Unknown: really just a nod to move forward. But it's not a nod of it's a very it's a non committal not that's all we're asking. Rebecca Stanizzi: It's just starting the process. Yes, yes, yes. And the other Katie Noble Harris: thing I know, a possible objection that was raised was the cost of, like, landscaping. And I think one thing that we could do is private fundraising, like, raise money to try and cover those costs. Rebecca Stanizzi: If we can find those precedents, find the precedents where they've done it. What's that David Villari: I said? I'll just move it in one that was part of the reason why I think we wanted to get with DPW and understand like they're the ones that do the maintenance facilities. Team is going to do the construction. So, like, those two inputs would have been really great to go into the Select Board meeting. But process wise, like, because we're just advisory to select Rebecca Stanizzi: board, yeah, just map out. This is, this is what we want to do, first steps, environmental, DEP, W, I could just, and then, then you just Katie Noble Harris: go and do it, yeah, that's something that's even in the new plaza owners lease, is that they mow the lawn for the playground,
Rebecca Stanizzi: or they already they do. I think they do.
Karen Kelly: Nothing has to mow the lawn over there. Unknown: But is it the town these goats that just come Rebecca Stanizzi: out good to know and get that information. So. David Villari: Of galaxy, or is it? Yeah, Zara people, okay, yeah. So I'll take a crack and I'll circulate when it can feedback. Okay, um, all right.
Rebecca Stanizzi: So quickly the other so the pre order pickup window outreach, we were talking about that before. So I think it's the information to the brokers. So you guys were trading something you wanted to compare with Jeff, who's not here. You guys want to kind of connect and then be able to send it out after next meeting. Katie Noble Harris: I redid it a little bit. I think I need Jeff's input on some of this stuff. I'm a little bit like that. Okay, got it? You're confused about some of it. Yeah. All right, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: And then the question, you know, can we post it even though nobody's going to our web page, maybe we can drive a little traffic to it, but it'd be great to get that posted on the town website somewhere. Katie Noble Harris: So I guess we'll call it outreach to brokers. Yeah.
Rebecca Stanizzi: Okay, so existing quarter conditions clean up. So Katie, do you want to update our stroll? Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, Becky, I took a stroll down Route 20 the other day. Beautiful morning. Rebecca Stanizzi: It was a beautiful when he came out. I heard everyone around with a piece of paper, and you're taking pictures, like, what are you doing? You guys actually walked down. We did. We walked the whole corridor. Oh, that's coming out and talking to us. And, yeah, imagine we had sidewalks. I know what a concept. David Villari: No, it's not very fun with the stroller. No, Katie Noble Harris: yeah. So we started kind of near Pelham Island and worked our way down. And yeah, had a bunch of business owners come up and inquire what we were doing, and had some great conversations. We made contacts with a few business owners that we just haven't been able to get their contact info for So Becky got that info and reached out to a few of those people. And I'd say it was like a really positive interaction that we had learned some Wayland history, and then we just took some pictures and wrote down some notes about some things that we think could be improved in the Rebecca Stanizzi: future. And I was just organizing that and then getting into our columns of zoning cleanup. And then, you know what? Zoning has to change, whether it's landscape or whatever, but, and then we also ran into the maple maple gate, maple tree, maple tree landscaping guy, Vinny. David Villari: So you know, I got his contact too. He's doing our loan. Rebecca Stanizzi: So part of what you see in that corridor are some property owners who just let their landscaping go, right? And so talking to the vet that, you know, woman who works there came out and talked to us, and their weeds are all overgrown, but the dogs like it, right? But clearly, they're not paying for landscaping, but it's expensive, right? For a landscaper to show up for this little, tiny plot, it's going to be expensive. So if we can talk with Vinny like, what if you had the whole corridor, or you had, you know, five or six that you just coming in one fell swoop, and it's really cost effective for the different people. Would you be willing, you know, talking to those people? Would you be willing to do that? And I think that could make a huge difference, even just the landscape.
David Villari: There you go, round two. Rebecca Stanizzi: So apologies to anybody watching. Hopefully you can still see it. We got cut off for some reason. But yeah, so the landscape part, it'd be great to kind of figure that out. He seems to be super motivated, so we're meeting with him next Tuesday. When we met with cook automotive, he came out. Was talking like, if you, if you work there, that sign, the gas sign, clearly needs to come down. But he's like, yeah, like, you want me to take it down? I'll take it down, but you do a new one. Oh, let's talk. We're like, oh, it'd be lovely to have a nice sign. And, you know, so we're gonna go and talk about so, yeah. David Villari: So I go to Lloyd all the time for our cars, so I'm happy to go down and talk to him right there. So if that makes it easier for you too, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: So it'd be great if, you know, he could be our test case, and he could write a story about it in the post. They get some good PR, you know, like, this virtuous cycle of, oh, look, somebody did that. Oh, I'll do that. So, yeah. So he had shared by next time, and Danny David Villari: and I talked with he shared that he tried to get that Santander building as, like, office space and some training space, and it just couldn't work out because of, like, high, high, high rent prices and some other hurdles. Did he share that story with you guys too? No, but I'm sure we'll hear it, because that's also valuable. It's like, we're looking to expand, like, better commercial use of that area in a corridor, like, hey, Vinny, tell us what those problems were, and you kind of had that is like, tell us what the problems were, sex. Better understand them. Yeah. So he's he has one, and if you guys already have good contact, Rebecca Stanizzi: okay, talk to him. Next Tuesday. We'll be seeing him. We'll ask him. Okay, so we'll click that for next month, and then we can kind of look at it and then reach out from there to because we've been talking with Bill Sterling at DRB and Tom White and CPA, and then also mentioned it to Nate at the building department. So hopefully we can get that moving along with the goal of, can we get it cleaned up for next spring. It's next spring. Duncan will be opening, you know, ultimately, terrain will be opening in the in the summertime, so we get the whole corridor looking nice. That would route 20 Master Plan sidewalks, curb cut. I've been reaching out. I got approval to be able to do that, so I'm talking with Tom holder to get that moving along. So I. Him yesterday, just to find out if he's moving it along. But the next step is to do an RFP for that scope of services. So he had one couple that he was looking at, and I had sort of pulled out a chat GPT and had him do one. So it's, it's like state bidding, it's, it's, it's just, yeah, typical protocol. So hopefully we get that one moving, because the cash is there. We are have the ability to do it. And it's just, I know that Tom is really busy so, but he believes in it as a topic, so he lived through it in his town, and the difference that it made with the with the new curb cuts and sidewalks, so ribbon cuttings. So United volleyball is opening this weekend. But have they said? Unknown: So I have a back channel with them, yeah. So, you know, did you see my email Monday, where I CC to everyone and said, Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, like, it's happening this Saturday. So no, so Unknown: that's what I'm saying, like, so I think it's important for us to kind of own each of these businesses if we're having conversations with them, yeah, just so that all the communications so they they are doing it, like an open house for their current teams and stuff. Yeah, their current members this weekend. And then they had asked last week, hey, we're doing that. We they said, We're doing this next weekend. We would like to have the river coming the next week. Do you have any recommendations on, like, best time of day, or blah, blah, blah, and then I CC them in with the rest of the ribbon cutting crew, and said, Hey guys, great news. See you seeing BBC folks like they would like to get something started for next week. Michael, what is your availability? No one responded. So if Rebecca Stanizzi: it's Robert has said he's going to do it, then I would ping Anina directly and say, Anina, can you step in at least today? Unknown: I think, I think in general, we have to have another discussion as the ribbon cutting committee, because this is going to go on forever, and if the person running point is not available, we need to have a secondary person. It's just not reasonable. It's also not reasonable to cc new lessees in town, and have no one respond from the town. It's just not good enough. It's not okay, my opinion. So I'm upset about that, and I feel like Michael should be upset about that too. It's a terrible look for us. So moving forward with that, like, I'm not really sure what to do, I can reach back out to them and say, Hey, I'm sorry. No one's responded. Somebody's on vacation Rebecca Stanizzi: would stop by in Nina's office. Just went by and say, Can you at least just love in an email? Yeah, Robert usually hums these he's been out, but you know, it's on our radar. And you know, maybe she has thoughts as to certain day or time if he's she's been talking with Robert in the past, but just so they get something today, Unknown: she needs to be given permission to do so I may ask. I'll ask her to, yeah, I don't know that she will, because, well, Rebecca Stanizzi: she's supposed to be standing in for him this week, so okay, if nothing else, then the placeholder, he'll be back. Type of thing. We hear you like, I agree that, you know, it shouldn't just kind of fallen off into David Villari: that hole either. They look to open. I mean, I saw a bunch of people, so they are open, right? Rebecca Stanizzi: Yes. Like, a soft opening, Unknown: yeah, yeah. Like, very soft. But they're having, like, games. I don't know if they've actually she they said open house this weekend and then ribbon cutting next week. So they're definitely starting, I don't know, David Villari: after bike rides with my kids, like, we stop in, we get chocolate, chocolate therapy. And then there was, like, kids, like, flowing out of volleyball, like, a bunch of yay. Unknown: They also was interesting. When I was in there, they raised the ceilings. Yeah, they didn't, actually, so I take it back, they didn't actually raised the ceiling, they removed the ceiling. Yeah, yeah, to do this. But I walked in there, I was like, man, actually, there's some space up there. So anyway, they're very nice. They have a manager who's very responsive. They really want to be part of the community. David Villari: And it drove a lot of traffic, because each one of the kids that I saw was getting picked up in like, their own car, yeah, nobody I saw. I saw people like, then pulling over to the grocery store, right? And I was like, Oh, man. Like, if they just knew the kids could just walk five feet and go spend $5 at the chocolate store too, yeah? Like, that would be Yeah, but they'll figure that Rebecca Stanizzi: over time, hopefully, yes. Would be great if inside there was a map on the wall of the retailers around David Villari: we only have, like the plaza, only has one map that shows all the businesses, and that's outside, yeah, which is that little circle next to the back door of bagel table. That's the only location that I saw, yeah, could be better. But anyway, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, but it's not for them to be able to broadcast. That's why they're coming, because they like the fact there was so much around. So the question is, do you have, are they planning on doing a little map or, you know, we help them dudes get a David Villari: poster, stick it on the doors Exactly, exactly down the street. Unknown: You've done a good I know that somebody had forwarded us by retailer of the month boarding us emails. Hmm, and they, I remember there was one email where they said, like, oh, there's all these great retailers in the plaza, and, like, listed them out, yeah, but like to continue to do that, you know? Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's keep moving. I need to jump, Katie Noble Harris: okay, the same lines, just like life text. I sent an email, and again, no response from the town, and they're having an opening this weekend. Unknown: So what did you send to them? To who, like, what was the message Katie Noble Harris: was I sent to Michael and the rest of our looks like they're having that they're opening this Saturday. Is there anyone from town that might be able to attend? Karen Kelly: Oh, that's so funny. I thought that he sent that about the Katie Noble Harris: UBC. No, no, it's for the life tax. Karen Kelly: Okay, sorry, I looked very late Katie Noble Harris: last night. Robert said, I'm happy to take the lead, but there's no right way, because he was he the one who forwarded that to us. Yes, okay, yes, just no follow up. So I'm Unknown: not like, we're not going to be involved in this and have this kind of behavior, like, it's not okay. So right, Rebecca Stanizzi: all right, Collins market, so I went to the zba hearing, so everybody's aware of the townhouse they do. So everybody loves it. They have no parking. And so I was talking with them after the fact, and I said, they want to do have you
seen their plans downstairs, half the floor is kind of dining area. And then upstairs, half the floor is sending real estate is still there, and then they have, like a space that would be for dinner or for events or whatever. So they have quite a few potential seats, and they have no official parking, so there's spaces out front. The discussion was, we're right now put just like around the corner on Pelham Island. Put signs that say max two hours, because right now, employees from those other buildings take those parking spots and park all day, and they do the same thing at the depot. So put signs there. Zba is like, I don't know if we can actually do that, but they could recommend to the town to do that, so at least get those spots flowing. But I talked with them offline after the fact, and they said, as we were standing in the parking lot, so the pediatricians just redid their parking lot, and it backs right up to the building. And I said, you guys should talk with them, because it's dead empty at night, and you need nights and weekends, and that's exactly when they're not there. So coordinate with them. Rent some parking it's good publicity for them, you know, just passing by their building, and then you can book events, because events, they'll need the parking right? They'll meet for dinner. You can't be schlepping that far away when it's February, right? It's lovely in June. But yeah, so with that, I mean, clearly the zba was trying to figure out how to approve it, but if they could at least do that, I think it'd be a slam dunk, and they'd be good to go. So that was the email. So I met with I met one of the proponents consultant, and yeah, I did not so Kirsten was too tied up with people who were talking after the fact. So that's why they were wanting to reach out, and we can kind of communicate with them. But I think if they can just do that little bit, the library is unwilling to share their parking. They are okay. David Villari: Library own the accessory town building as well. It's the rail Karen Kelly: trip. They do, yeah? It's owned by the town. Rebecca Stanizzi: It's, it's dedicated, yeah, and they have the whole lot, yeah. So they are unwilling to, because, I mean, so much gets abused right now with the bike trail, right? And, you know, here, people will walk, but to have it as official, Unknown: what do you think is the likelihood that she'll be able to, like space, share with pediatricians. I think if Rebecca Stanizzi: they could. I mean, pediatricians, you know, it's like they can share on their snow plowing bill. And, you know, it's like there's liability insurance. David Villari: It's just hard to see this be a problem because, like, parking is, if you have to walk 100 feet, it's a good thing for the town. We're trying to get foot traffic. That's interesting. It's like, you want to see more people using the street, slowing down, making sure crosswalks get used on the DEP W curve, but all that stuff. So it's like, don't let that barrier, Rebecca Stanizzi: I know. But the interesting thing so when we were walking around and me talking with silk veterinarian. They just bought the chiropractor building on the corner. Why? Because they wanted the parking spots. So silk is that stress for parking. They have maybe two spots. Say, I have in front there, and it is a pain in the neck, pain in the neck. So mean, clearly businesses like that, I don't want to say that they are, but they're the ones putting their employees over on 27 so if they can't park there, where are they going to go? You know, it's going to it's going to get tight, and in the morning it's incredibly congested. So I'm hoping a lot of people do walk, but it we've all seen Starbucks, right? So I'm of the mindset, let it go, and if it's too difficult for people to go in the morning, that's the business's problem. That was sort of the discussion. Like, at some point you're harming yourselves by not having that parking. And that's why I'm like, you know, it's like you can't use that parking during the day, but at least if you've had it when you really want to make your money and just find a liquor license, right? So, and I think so. So, yeah, so it's like, you'll want to have that parking. So are we out of liquor licenses? David Villari: Like, a half when you do? Can't sell wine in beer and tequila, just Rebecca Stanizzi: beer and wine. You know, not I remember. It was mentioned before, but I don't remember it in the zba app. Maybe it's just coffee for right now, but they're definitely doing dinner or an event. Oh, yeah. So if you have an event, you unless you bring your own Unknown: eat with terrain. There's place we have space for both, David Villari: I don't, yeah, but Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah. Long story short, like our zoning code is so wacky that they could, literally, if they squinted, probably approve the building without parking, but it doesn't pass the giggle test, right? So it's just our thing is so poorly written. It's just, it's bizarre. So yeah, they're just trying to figure out. So Tom, who's an architect, not an attorney is trying to figure out, so he needs to check with Town Council, and, you know, can they approve it without any, you know, dedicated parking? But when I was talking to them afterwards, if you can just get something, yeah, that's dedicated, everyone will just breathe a lot easier. During the day, you will get people off the bike path and walking and but you you know, at night, it's going to be different. So it's kind of you gotta and we all events is where you make your money. Yeah, that's David Villari: so you need a bike rack, yeah? Rebecca Stanizzi: So anyway, so there they were. Well prepared, well received. Had people speaking sport like nobody was really the only service the library said, We love the concept, don't use parking. So that was sort of the extent David Villari: surprising they would say that, because, like, if you're parking to go get a coffee and then you use the library lot, you're more likely to now be like, All right, kids, let's go in. Let's go read a book, and you'll use the library more. Unknown: Yeah, I don't know their volumes. Like, I don't know. Like, I Yeah, it's full Rebecca Stanizzi: often, okay, yeah, the library, the library, yeah, yep, it is. You can usually get a space, but it's, yeah, okay, so infographic, sorry, how much time do you guys have left? It is now 1005. Minutes. You have five minutes All right, so you have you looked at this revised or not, or Okay,
Katie Noble Harris: photo of sign, yeah, Yeah, okay.
Oh yes, sir.
David Villari: My that was my 90% Katie Noble Harris: I should just put 90% square footage. David Villari: It's worth clarifying, yeah, because I, I'm like, oh, that's b Yeah, if I look at it, I say square front, Rebecca Stanizzi: but it is, when you stop and think about it, like all the doctor's offices. I mean, everything is basically filled except that, you know, and like, you're always going to have one or two that are baking at any given time, but it's those, it's the kids strong, and it's the one across that makes it feel like he's David Villari: I just I walked in, like, I like, consciously went by and tried to count the number of doors, yeah, stickers on it, like, front doors. And it was like, six still, Rebecca Stanizzi: but the kid strong being all one space, or were you counting because it has multiple David Villari: doors? That's where I don't I don't have, like, their layout of the plaza. Is that available online? Just missed it disruption. It's just gonna call summit Rebecca Stanizzi: and just, oh, I have one. I said, I don't know if it's on. I don't know if they posted online, but yeah, I'll text Unknown: you out. Yeah, yep. Yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: I think we should do so. So with the sale, I think data is good, the occupancy rate, the tax projections, those are always like the three hot buttons, just like small tweaks in language, but the bike path, so did you get a hold of Larry? Katie Noble Harris: Yes, it is that's correct. Rebecca Stanizzi: Well, you just say what they're paving. When are they paving? Katie Noble Harris: I can try and get more info from him, Rebecca Stanizzi: because one is like, what are they actually doing? The connector from Russell's to Sudbury that way. But then the question they're they're supposedly paving, what's now stoned us. That drives some people crazy. David Villari: That should be after. I think timing was, from what I saw. It's after they build the bridge, because they consider, you know, the stone dust area, it's writable, it's usable. Yeah, so they were going to do the bridge work and all that, and get the commitment and do paving here. But is it? DCR is Rebecca Stanizzi: doing it? I thought it was like a different pot of money or something. No, I don't know. Try to find out when, you know, hopefully when that's happening is that sort of the missing link you Unknown: and I were just chatting about, maybe we take any text feedback now and then she and I can work on this together for next meeting, just clean up some design and other stuff, and then have it ready to go. Okay, she's been doing a lot. I can help there with Rebecca Stanizzi: lot of stuff going on. Cool, alright. So get any comments. So guys, alright, that's alright. This is on the property of contact list. I clean that up. We're actually in pretty good shape. It's really it's looking great. I remember the colors on it. Yeah, I was asking you, do the colors mean anything was that just left over? Katie Noble Harris: You added a lot of info, the colors for were for like, information that I was missing. Okay, so I Rebecca Stanizzi: can kind of change around for that, just to highlight with the box we're missing. Yes, I didn't want to change it without I'm like, there's maybe some system here, I don't know, Katie Noble Harris: but yeah, you can change it, or I can change it whatever you want. Rebecca Stanizzi: Okay, all right, and then committee liaison updates, joint meeting with FinCom. Now it's probably gonna be October lanes. I did ping Jeff. I said, Any update on lab? And he's like, No, I was chastened. He's Jason. He was just so concerned about the last I think we need sort of a, yeah, he's to go by right, and talk with them. I think it was just too they didn't quite understand getting a phone call. Katie Noble Harris: Otherwise, I'm happy to go by. I'm at often at the high school for like, Val Rebecca Stanizzi: lives there too. So the question is, and I think before he stopped in, I don't know, Val is sort of the natural one. He lives around the corner type of thing. So I'll ping him and see if he can pick up that ball. And then the economic development bond bill we still don't have. So it could be researching other bond bills. It could be anywhere over five years. I'm like, Oh, nice, right? So you really plan on that? Yeah, and, oh, I should have taken off 14 West plane was supposed to come off. There is public forum next Monday. Next Monday. Do you think you'll go to that, or I probably will just to listen. But I think that I know the library would love to do a satellite there. I don't know if anybody's gonna be organized enough to do community center different from the library, but, and then it's a question of the office David Villari: uses, was that going forward is count use. That's what's Rebecca Stanizzi: being proposed. That's why they're doing this public forum. And so the question is, what within the town, like officials, town uses, or, yeah, yeah, because you can easily move, like the school department over, yeah, anything we can do to condense here, it's going to make it less expensive to build or rebuild, or whatever we're doing later Katie Noble Harris: notice, a bit of chatter about that building online, and I do wonder if, in the new near future, like maybe later this fall or winter, if it would be, depending on how it goes with the meeting, if it would be worthwhile to kind of put some numbers down for people to read an infographic. Yeah, because I think that there's some assumptions that maybe people are making about it, or why the town buildings, wow, that would be helpful for people to see the math down. Unknown: Yeah, yep. And like the cost per square footage to build the community center versus Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the client makes some useful sense. Yep. All right, whether that's us or not, I'm actually not sure, but yeah, Rebecca Stanizzi: so next month I'm coming back on the 10th so it's also a social Columbus Day weekend. So 17th, work for you guys. We're in October. I know, isn't it crazy? October 7, October 17, 830,
Katie Noble Harris: as of right now, David Villari: yes, yes.
Katie Noble Harris: Okay, easy.
Rebecca Stanizzi: Anything else before we adjourn? Do I have a motion to adjourn? Motion, David, motion, second, second, Aaron, second, all in favor. Aye, four, oh, we are adjourned at 10:11am,
Katie Noble Harris: link. David, if you happen to David Villari: it'll take me, like, three days to find it, but I will, well, Rebecca Stanizzi: it's always at the end. So on the agenda, it's always the town planner report at the end that Yes. So, yes, yeah. So just deliver for Adina speaking. And you know, time of date, timestamp, Karen Kelly: wait till Monday to look right, David Vallari: just because it'll take, Rebecca Stanizzi: sometimes it takes a couple of days. Yeah, and it's funky right now. It's not an I don't think they switched it back. It's still, you go to wake him, usually you see the whole grid of meetings. But it's like, it's not working right now. I think they're posting directly to YouTube or something, I don't know, but go look at the top of the list, and you'll see them there. Marvel. David Villari: Yeah, I'll find at some point. And then when I do, I'll send a link today, and we can save Rebecca Stanizzi: Alright, so the EDC annual reports. So for newbies, if you've never seen, actually, the Wayland town report, it's like they publish a book pretty much every year, and every board and committee gives a report of what they did for the past year. So usually it's like they say to be about 1000 words. This is about 1100 but ultimately, so we're saying before I struggled to get it below 1000 like, Oh, it's just the guidelines. Okay, so it just kind of gives an update of the business that you did in the fiscal year. So that is July 120 24 through June 30 of 2025, which is the fiscal year. Karen Kelly: So they're a digital copy of it. Rebecca Stanizzi: There must be on the on the website. Yeah, it's usually there's like, stack of them sitting around somewhere, but, yeah, it's kind of interesting. Flip through a nail. Like everybody, every board and committee is reporting on what they did Unknown: so well. And that would be like, if we did have a digital copy, that would be a great thing to to like when you think about what is the use of AI and and not some are trying to listen to meetings where there's many people talking in person, and some are not, but to actually take something like this that's been approved by every single town board and committee in writing and then be able to push that out as a piece of content a podcast or Something like that, right? That's good point me to be a lot more accurate. Yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: Probably really wonder how many people actually read it, but there's a lot of ton of useful information Katie Noble Harris: in it. Yeah. So is there a digital copy, or we're not sure, Rebecca Stanizzi: it must be posted on the website somewhere, okay, thank Interesting. Yeah, who would be the right person ask? Yep, yep. I'm sure if you look on the web, it's almost got a beat. I don't know if it's a state requirement, but it's really something they've they've done. Katie Noble Harris: So when does it usually release the whole Rebecca Stanizzi: Fay. It's always due by September 30, yep. And then, typically you see it within like, a month or two. So they just format everything and then just print it all out. It's literally like, you know, it's like a book like that, kind of interesting in your record of what the town did for eons and eons go back years. So were there any comments on this? Anything that didn't read, right? Anything I forgot,
Karen Kelly: anything to add
Katie Noble Harris: that was great. It was like, super informative. And Memory Lane, yeah, Unknown: we did do a lot, a lot good, great.
Rebecca Stanizzi: And then liaison, I put in. And slash Tom, because technically, as of the end of the fiscal year, we had Tom, but just and technically Nick was still our clerk as of the end of fiscal year 25 because that was the end of his term. But so it's literally that snapshot at the we had 30th 2025 Unknown: haven't shared a survey that we didn't hear. I'm sorry, no, Rebecca Stanizzi: and they, they limit you and what you can attach as visuals and attachments, things Unknown: like that. No, I don't mean to start. I mean, they know, okay, that you Rebecca Stanizzi: that we did the survey, the survey results are not Unknown: that's fine, okay, yeah, sorry, that's awesome.
Great. So we could, but no, I want to make sure that we that's mentioned in here. It is interesting. Katie Noble Harris: This is just a tiny note not to belabor anything. But like that, some of these things, like the economic development bond bill and then the tip funds, those are something that like are going to keep they haven't happened yet, and so we're going to have to keep, keep going, keep going with them to get the those big Rebecca Stanizzi: funds. It takes years. Yeah, yeah. So report that went so last year there was like a wrap up of October occupied and generating full tax revenues. So it's like, that snapshot, and then it was like, Oh, we have a new it's like, it literally just sold. But otherwise, you know, before it was just what you did on rivers. I mean, Riverside took us eight years, so it was a long time. So some are longer, some are shorter. All right, any other comments? David, you have anything that you want? David Villari: Just very nice. Minor edits to that one section. Small words, Rebecca Stanizzi: just on the non critical Yeah, to the splash pad. Okay, ground area. Does that say what you guys wanted to say? Is it like a fair capture as of June 30, you guys actually sent the memo? Oh, not until after Labor Day, right? Um, so we in there at all will be recommending, because we were definitely talking about it in June. Yeah, we started talking about it may is considering,
David Villari: is considering, considering is considering, and then maybe just help on wording to reduce some pieces of the funding discussions there CPA only is where I think we're worth exploring, like local fundraising and then Tom meeting budget as well, if needed. Yep, the town Rebecca Stanizzi: meeting budget, you'd be capital budget, and you're going to be down the totem pole, right? So you're not gonna be able to most likely either way, I think so. Saying CPA only might restrict us. Okay? So I'll take it only Yeah, David Villari: and then and amenities, I think would be the only other thing. Yeah, yeah.
Katie Noble Harris: I was interested in the on the last page, the EDC sponsored article for the historic facade of Sydney. I That's the first I've heard of that is, would we ever want to check back in on that, or is it just not worth it? Rebecca Stanizzi: So it came down to the prop. It's a private property. Yeah, right. And so it was an older gentleman and had health and family issues, and he just couldn't kind of get motivated enough to do it. So essentially, CPA said, you know, you've had it for three years. We've set aside those funds, but if you see, he's not going to use it. And so that's we said to him, like, get move it or lose it, right? And basically, let go, because he just couldn't, couldn't quite deal with it. So that was, that was very sad, because we know if the building is still owned by that same person, I have heard it might have been bought by the people next door, who, when he was saying that they might be interested, they were not interested in doing the historic so might be worth checking in. We can always go back to CPA, go back to town meeting, re request the funds, but that's sort of the discipline. They let it go for a little while, but at the end of the day, they don't want to hold on to those David Villari: funds forever. So yeah. So just Katie Noble Harris: curious, if it's worthwhile for us to even just know who the owner of that building is. Seems like a lot of work to try to get those funds. Maybe we don't want to focus our energy on but might just be worthwhile Rebecca Stanizzi: knowing it'd be easy. Now everybody knows what it was, and you know, sort of, oh, look, they're back and they're willing to do it, and here's their signed document. David Villari: Then it could probably be very pretty quick. So, Katie Noble Harris: 70 to 70. Okay, Rebecca Stanizzi: anything else?
Hearing? None? Do I hear a motion to approve. Katie Noble Harris: Motion to approve Unknown: a motion second, second and second. All in favor. Karen, Hi, Katie, hi, Becky. All right. Rebecca Stanizzi: So, so approved as amended. So this came in hot at the last minute that you EDC goals. So given that we did not get you guys have it right, given that we don't have Val's in here, and also given that Jeff didn't rank the major categories, but this just gives you kind of a data dump of where people are at and then also what people wanted to spearhead, and either that or work on so we can kind of digest it a little bit. I mean, even I admit it's really a chance to kind of really deep dive into the data. And kind of typically, what we do before is then rank them. You show where those priorities are based on where the numbers popped out. But you can kind of see, you know, the major categories. It's interesting to see where people were seeing what was important. And a lot of this is also, you know, important based on the time that you have, because it's just only, only so much time in the day. So but, David, I was interested. I think you had a note, and you had several notes on yours, but, like, you had 10s, like, very low on existing corridor cleanup tasks. But why was that? I forget it was because, David Villari: because it should come down to, like, other departments to do the enforcement right, not necessarily. EDC, if we're, if we're, our charter is to, that's what Rebecca Stanizzi: you were feeling like Design Review Board was on top of it, sort of thing. David Villari: Bill Sterling and the team seems to have been empowered by Select Board to, like, take some control on all those guidelines, all those zoning laws, for the facade rules, etc. So, I mean, okay, but that was Rebecca Stanizzi: why you but you saw it as important, which was a high number, but then it was, like a low number. Well, exactly reverse. David Villari: That's exactly reverse. That's exactly that was why I think it's still really important for like, the overall objective of the EDC, like it played into it, but it's the responsibilities of Rebecca Stanizzi: another team to execute well, part of it, as we've seen, like, it falls in between a bunch of teams, right? So Design Review Board, they look at proposals coming in, not necessarily looking backwards, right? And then building department, they're also looking at what's coming in, and not necessarily they can, but they're often not. And so it's like, how do we, how do we marshal those and get them pushed forward? David Villari: So, but, like, so, like, the code administration, I think Robert said very specifically, like, that's the planning board's job Rebecca Stanizzi: on the zoning side, yeah. So part of it is, I think cataloging, which is what Katie and I were doing, literally walking around. And, you know, what do we want to be notifying property owners about? And then it's a question of, who is it going out through? David Villari: Yep. So, okay, Katie Noble Harris: that's actually doing the logistics, like the actual grunt work of making it happen, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, or making and making sure that it happens in the different directions. So, yeah, David Villari: yeah, don't let my 10s, like, super skew it. Do this kind of, Do I understand the roles? Yeah,
Katie Noble Harris: this is just one note. I'm curious to Karen, like, what you think about this. I think I would have said, like a year ago, like, put a one as to, like, reaching out to new businesses. And I will admit I can do more work on that front, and I'm happy to do it, depending on our decisions on this, but I kind of feel like my opinions have changed after working on outreach to a few businesses. Just kind of feels like maybe it's not worth our while, and that if people do want to expand, they will be looking at Wayland, Unknown: and so you're talking about existing or new, Katie Noble Harris: new coming to Wayland. It feels like maybe it's just not worth our time and energy to be going out and making I mean, yeah, occasionally like trying to do our best. But I just, I don't know, after some of the experiences and meetings we've had, I'm it kind of feels like it's a lot of effort for not a lot of Unknown: I appreciate you on that, and also, like the brokers are supposed to be doing this, yeah, yeah. I just it feels like we're, I feel like I'm trying to insert myself into space. I don't know well, and so, you know? And then it's like, well, then what's the process? So we, and then who, like, also thinking through, like, Who do we reach out to at these chains? You know, I think that's the other we might be totally barking the wrong tree. David Villari: Like, I think Jeff said it too. It's like that's very much a broker to broker transaction that we should stay out of, in a way. And I think I did the same thing. I marked that as lower down for us, but then higher up, I marked things like us putting a database together that represents those businesses or those empty storefronts, so that it's easier to access and find out. So give that to brokers. We have the sale brokers, you know, with all that information, all of the, you know, the one mile, two mile, three mile info, like, right at their fingertips, yeah, and then maybe that makes it a little easier, Katie Noble Harris: yeah, it feels like a different thing, reaching out to brokers, rather than like individual businesses. Rebecca Stanizzi: We can, we can hit. 15 or 20 different groups with that one broker. So we need to make sure that the brokers are educated and then David Villari: and see the vision of, like, where everything's trying to go, because they're not seeing that on the day to day, Rebecca Stanizzi: right? Yeah. And most important that they can reach out and who to reach out to at the town, because as they walk in blindly, right? And then you want them to at least have that, yeah, that connection, that conduit, David Villari: I have the same thoughts, Katie Noble Harris: yeah. I mean, does doesn't it feel like we've kind of trying to, yeah? Karen Kelly: No, I, I totally agree with you. Rebecca Stanizzi: That comes down to the predilections of the property owner and what their goals are, and then the vendor and like, there's so many variables, it's just hard to Yeah. Unknown: You think about as like, a risk discussion too. Like, is a business owner going to trust someone just like, as a town representative? It's going to be great. Like that should be a best business risk evaluation that they're doing on the broker sides. I don't think it's necessarily bad. I don't think it looks bad for an economic development group To, but I don't, I think like, we might like, but again, we might reach out to one of five potential people in an org, right, that like might be the one responsible for something like this, and then it just could be a lot of wasted energy. That's my biggest fear. And we only have so much time and David Villari: exactly, Rebecca Stanizzi: and the test case, like, if there is an economic development director, then people know to go to them, like, it's just that natural magnet, because otherwise, if it's not, like, do I got a planning board, do I got a slick board? Like, what do I do? But if there's an ed director, that's where you go if you want to potentially locate so that's the beauty of having that position. And then they are then full time or part time, you know, focused on that, right? Katie Noble Harris: And they're probably tapped into the brokers and the Rebecca Stanizzi: this, over time, they'll get to know everybody who's kind of sniffing around town. Unknown: So it's interesting, we actually all aligned on that. Yeah, I couldn't go I never picked any number low. It's five. My brain only works on scales of one to five. David Villari: I started to fill it out, then I put 10 is like, we should work on that. Yeah? Then you're Rebecca Stanizzi: like, I know. David Vallari: So I did that backwards for a minute. Katie Noble Harris: Is it 10 correct? Rebecca Stanizzi: The lowest
Karen Kelly: trend lines? I think, you know, David Villari: I can always just wait her scores, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, yeah. I think my lowest was a seven. So yeah, I David Villari: did try to, like, focus on putting things as higher, like 10s and eights and stuff, just because there's, like, six of us, yeah. And that was it, yeah. It's like, I think everything here on this list is important in some way, shape or form. It's just, if we have to tackle something to make an impact, what do we do? That's right, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: And then, you know, most importantly off to the right is who's willing to lead an issue and who wants to work on it, kind of seeing some of this stuff. And again, that's why saying, like, pick multiples just because they're, you know, we may have a wealth of people want to work on a certain topic. So that kind of gives a good view of what people are interested in. Karen Kelly: slacker, Rebecca Stanizzi: I know, and Katie. So Katie didn't do it. It was off to the side. Like, I want to do nothing. Unknown: I missed you. Like, look at this. I like and like, David Villari: you can just everything. I put my name next to and Karen too. I think that's where Katie's been, because we tend to overlap very well.
Rebecca Stanizzi: So I think over the next, you know, before next month's meeting, it's a lot to digest right here, but you can kind of look at the data, think it through. You can insert, I'll send it, we'll kind of recirculate the file. Okay, we'll get valves in there, and then, you know, kind of digest. But particularly, okay, it's interesting knowing where we want to go in prior years that there were so many things thrown at the wall, like we're pretty focused in what we're doing now. It's a Karen point. You know, Karen, you didn't have anything lower than a five, right? So it's kind of before. When we were first doing it was, like, all over the map, and you have things that we had a scale of one to five, and it wasn't dense enough, like it didn't give you enough with somebody else's three or something like that. So that was where the 10 came from. But so we'll get Vals Katie, if you can input your your wanting to lead and wanting to participate in and then, yeah, just kind of digest it and what you're seeing and kind of natural teams. David Villari: May find a couple in the others. And I think I might be the only one that did that. Rebecca Stanizzi: So sorry. No, no, you that's exactly what you're supposed to do. Unknown: But I think the only, like, real, other one that's worth discussing, or it needs more detail around it, I'll send a memo, is that last one on the last page, business vacancy fees, Rebecca Stanizzi: is that if there's a vacant storefront, then they're gonna I David Villari: found, like, a really nice set of case studies on like Wellington, they brought it down from like 17 vacancies all the way to six in less than a year, because they started to impose vacancy fees, basically for empty storefronts. Rebecca Stanizzi: We talked about this a bit. Did? We did? We're so unusual. Friendly already. Yeah. Rated that. But. David Villari: But like, who's whose friend should we be? Are we the brokers friend, or are we the town representative? Rebecca Stanizzi: In town, we represent property owners and we are the town. That's good. Clarity, right? That's fine. So it's kind of easy, like in Arlington, things that are more dense, it's much easier. It is typically a small spot in a bigger building. Here, it's typically the whole building, or it's, you know, it's much more impactful. So for us to do a fee that is meaningful enough to get their attention in reverse, it's going to be painful enough that they're going to be really annoyed, right? So it's, you know, part of it was, you know, before it was Whole Foods, that was, that was the poster child, right? That it was just sitting there empty Santander, Bank of America. You kind of knew that something they were paying but you know, kind of our big gaps in our teeth are now kind of filling in, which is good, David Villari: but the math is always like, this is a problem with plazas. And like any large landlord corporation like the math always favors them to boost rents higher, which strangles small businesses out, right? Because they always want, if I have 10 storefronts, and they're like, Okay, I could charge $5,000 a month and have six, you know, tenants, instead of 10, I have $30,000 coming in per month. Or, you know, another landlord come in and under charge and have all 10 filled. But that problem there is that they'd have now four extra, you know, utility bills, water bills, maintenance fees for extra people to keep track of, make sure they're paying their rent like it's a lot more work for them. So there's like, a cost benefit to landlords keeping rent high, and if you de incentivize that, then you bring that more neutral. Unknown: I just worry that we're already, we already struggle to attract retailers. David Villari: But it's not the retailers we're attracting. The brokers own it, right? And the retailers because of the rates of rent. Like, if you talk to businesses in the plaza, a lot of them say the same thing. They're like, rents pretty high, you know? And rents high, and that's controlled by Zurich, or whoever. Right? Katie Noble Harris: Could it be, I'm thinking, not for small businesses? Could it be something that is for larger properties? Yeah, I don't know if that changes your feeling Unknown: about it. I mean, I don't know if we don't think it would discourage I mean, it isn't right. It's not an impact on the small business. It's an impact on the person who owns the building.
Katie Noble Harris: And that owner of the building would have to meet a threshold either their national chain or their Karen Kelly: problem is, though, that the whole foods Plaza was 80% full. Yeah, yeah, it was just dark leases. Katie Noble Harris: So, but I think, couldn't it affect something like David Vallari: empty storefronts would be the like criteria that Rebecca Stanizzi: as a landlord, you can't force your tenant to occupy the space, so I don't know. But if you, if you saw something that was a good summary of case studies, David Villari: well, they, I'll send it. I mean, I created the case study list and stuff. Okay, but there was another one that looked at like, beautification is the wrong word, but it was like, they didn't upkeep the property. So the old Bank of America site, with the lack of mowing for how many years, would have been something that got, like fined, and eventually the fines would have outweighed just paying someone to mow the lawn. And so you would have had a mow the lawn, right? So it's, it's doesn't need to be big to be an impact, right? And get what you want out of the town center Unknown: there, I think, does that fall under the design guidelines? Rebecca Stanizzi: Like the plant flowing doesn't. That's the thing, the maintenance, the initial design does, the meat doesn't. And that's one of the questions is, you know, we sit down with Nate the building inspector and say, What? What do we have the rights control? We're not, we're not like a homeowners association. You have to keep your grass mode and your flowers, right? It's just so we may not have that tool. Should we have that tool in our code? You know that David Villari: all that, it's a tool that other towns have found out how to use. Yeah, right? Rebecca Stanizzi: Useful to know for the next time. David Villari: Yeah, so I'll write it up. I mean, I know, like, I totally hear it. I knew anyway, so I could be enrolled. Unknown: No, I don't think there's a right or wrong here. And I think, like, again, it's like, if it's we would just need to thread the needle, because there are so many ways that even Santander, technically, they're, they have a lease right, they they're getting rent money every month right from that bank. So unless we, in my mind, if we were to do something, we would need to do something that would also thread the needle of penalizing people who a lot like, take offices, yeah, that just like, remain unoccupied for more than six months, or something like that. And I don't know we can do that legally, but in my mind, that would be a practical component. Rebecca Stanizzi: That's one where somebody's paying rent but not looking occupies, correct. The next is like a town center that one corner, this kitty corner from ex golf and across for our sway, the new staff that has been empty from the beginning. It's still gravel in there, like we can do something, right? David Villari: So, oh, I had a question on that, because it was in the infographic. We say 90% is that on square footage? Or number of storefronts? I couldn't square footage. That's on square footage? Yeah, it's like, because the supermarket's huge, yeah. So what could we look at that, fortunately, number maybe as as also, like, what's the storefront vacancy? Because that I'd be curious about, is that more like 60% because it feels more like 60 Rebecca Stanizzi: well, by the time you had the medical bill, they'll be pretty high. I mean, it's just like, you know, yeah, Town Center Plaza. I mean, you have two that are, they're, they're right at Alyssa, Andrew, like they're so prominent, if the old artists of the kids strong space and then that want to cross, everything else is, David Villari: I think, still, I think I counted six when I was there last week that are just empty, empty stores. Yeah, I Unknown: don't know. To Cara, well, like to Carl going to bagel table and David Villari: to card spaces. There was a place behind Takara too, as well. That's a dermatologist. It's a services space available and big, plastered, you might Rebecca Stanizzi: just, but that's for Takara. Yeah. Just, yeah, dermatologist. Couple hair around that David Villari: way, either way. Like, I was curious, because it doesn't always feel like 90 when you're down there and you talk to the storefront people, and they're, Unknown: they're saying the same thing. Do you think it's but I do think it is close to 90, like, I think it just feels, the thing is, like, there's a lot of things about the way that Plaza was designed. Like, when we've gone in and talked to business owners, they're like, You never see people here. And part of that is the design things behind the swift and so you have these little pathways, you know, it's almost like a little street in there, but like, there's, you know, there's a reason why all the new types of like shopping positive squares with parking in the middle, and if you're sitting outside of the restaurant, you can see all the other restaurants and people walking around. There's a sense of, like, there's activity here, and that is just, Katie Noble Harris: it's designed backwards, almost the building space, in Karen Kelly: our very professional opinion, Rebecca Stanizzi: interesting with the new property owner does with it? Yeah, they're good at this. Yeah, they'll understand this. They could change, Katie Noble Harris: change the businesses to incoming businesses to face. Rebecca Stanizzi: They could change incoming businesses. They could add additional square they could reconfigure. They could do whatever, I think there's still additional retail space that they could build. They just haven't, they haven't chosen builders. You're listening. So that'll be those discussions with the David Villari: property owner, the other others that I had added here on support Wayland businesses that section talk about like the ribbon cuttings and the Wayland post and like that could tie in nicely, too, for people that are just driving by and on 20 that don't get the Wayland post Sudbury people. What if you had, like, chocolate therapy on the Billboard, like, one month Unknown: and then so is this an existing billboard? David Villari: You're thinking it's the billboard right at the town center that the town uses, like, every now and then they're advertising like, oh, the planes are coming through, yeah. But like, you see that when you're sitting at the light, yeah? Like it's very visible, yeah? And I'm just wondering, like, could we one week a month, right? Or one week a quarter, or whatever, get a business on there, grow the same Wayland Post article, yeah, and just highlight it, yeah, and then do the same thing in South Wayland and see if we drive a little traffic. Yeah. Unknown: Are you thinking about the what the intersection of old con path and 126 David Villari: Yeah, I couldn't think though, if there was an outboard type thing already in Rebecca Stanizzi: use there, there is, there is, yeah, there's one there and there's one at 20 and 25 Katie Noble Harris: Why would we ever want to do a new one, like an additional one, kind of up, up a little further. Unknown: We do need, like in general, we need signs that are promoting the retail, the current retailers in town, in town center, yeah, yes, the signage, I mean, David Villari: that's, it's after the intersection on the road, yeah. And you can Unknown: even see what's up there. You can't turn you can't see what's up there. There's no sign ahead of time. Yeah, it's just, like, there's just so many basic things I don't know. Like, if there's anything else, like, I like this idea, and we have this, then we have this. The infrastructure is there, intersection there too. I think that could be a good place to start. David Villari: I mean, because if we're doing the work for the Wayland post articles or whatnot, then you just trip it down. Cater it. Put a picture on the map of where the business is. People can go get it Rebecca Stanizzi: well. Plus Katie, as we walked around and talked to some of the property owners, right? You want to incent them to make changes, like change the sign. We were talking with cooks automotive, and he might be interested in doing a sign. Like, great, if you did that well, you hopefully get you profiled in Wayland post, and you'd put them there. Like, you'd want to reward those companies and businesses that go out of their way to make improvements and highlight that Lloyd was in. He was good. He is interested. Yes, yes. He's good, yeah. So, yeah. So all this can virtuous cycle of getting some of that information out there. Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, kind of changing topic. If that's okay. Just back to this. I don't know if there's a way like I'm thinking about explore meals, tax, explore rooms tax. And also, I don't know if it's on here anywhere like but getting gas. Station approval to have convenience stores, but things like that, those feel like we've kind of missed the deadline for town meeting this year. So I don't know if there's like, a way to say, Okay, this is something that's on our charter or agenda, whatever, but kind of like, not right now. Like, I don't know how we would break that down, if that's something for 25 or 2627 David Villari: Yep. Rebecca Stanizzi: So part of that is kind of, it's sort of in the route 20 master plan. It's buried in that. So we could kind of flush that out as a topic, because, again, we have that as a survey question, right? Didn't we, when we surveyed, and people were surprisingly amenable to that. David Villari: So the meals tax that exists already, it doesn't like point seven, five, I thought it did, Rebecca Stanizzi: doesn't I thought it did like the town meeting thing, right? It's something, yeah, there's we have to be past the Tom meeting. But yeah, most cities and really thought it did. I thought we had one, and I went looking for it, and I was like, and I was like, Oh, can't we use a little bit of that for, you know, doing, like, cleaning up the corridor or something. We don't have it. I'm going to be like, David Villari: super rude to go to chat for a minute. Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, that's something we could maybe punt to FinCom to see if they Well, that's Rebecca Stanizzi: part of it, so we can talk through we still have this joint meeting, and I haven't heard from Phil, which is kind of strange, but that's one of the things on there. Is, you know, what are those things that we can be doing to boost our tax base? And with that, you're not going to get a lot of money. It's going to be maybe 100 grand, if you're lucky. But if you use those funds to then clean up the corridor or, you know, do something with it and magnify it instead of just having it, you know, go in the endless Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, probably new songs. Unknown: Chatgpt thinks we do too. Did we used to 75% I don't think so. I think so I'm going to see what it Rebecca Stanizzi: ask for this source. Can you do that? I'm finding more. I'll use this very finding more and more often it's on. It's like, yeah, me, it's kind of interesting. Anyway, all right, so we are 909, just to keep this going. So if you can fill out yours spearhead and the do, I'll get vows, we'll integrate it, kind of think it, and then I'll sort of rank it a little bit more to kind of the data will pop a little bit more. Yeah, if anything else you thinking of, anything else, Katie Noble Harris: things that we want to they're important, but they're just not timely right now, like the do it in the future. I think, Unknown: I think we need to wait for Jeff to fill out his thing, and then we circle back to that. Rebecca Stanizzi: Yes, yeah, we can kind of do that, and maybe we have sort of that bottom list of looking ahead to fiscal year 27 Yes, God yes. That's a kind of horrifying thought, but yeah,
David Villari: there were community banks didn't maybe touch base with separately because I couldn't score them, just because I didn't know enough about them. Yeah, yeah, we can Rebecca Stanizzi: chat about those a little bit. Yeah, we can do that. Okay, all right. So the upcoming Joint Finance Committee, EDC, I still have a bunch of notes, and I finally just put them all in one spot. So that's this, if you guys have this, give that one with the green stripes. There we go. So in a joint meeting with the FinCom, I tried to separate it into what are high impact things we can do, what are medium and what are low? Like, you can have a bunch of ideas, but, you know, like, the meals tax is not going to be moving the needle a whole lot unless you Super Target it. So you know the highest impact, and you know, you can be talking about this. These are some of the data. So this is sort of, you know, every FinCom loves a spreadsheet, right? So high impact things are encouraging town homes and revisiting MBTA communities encouraging town homes. This has the data. Our existing commercial tax base is 160 million. Alta Oxbow itself was 73 it just sold for 98 that gives you perspective. It's this high, big, splashy thing going on, but town homes are the quiet engine. We don't have to build more Alta oxbows, nor should we like it's that was in its place in time, and it solved 40 B and all that stuff, but town homes right now, our existing condominium townhouse base is three and a half times our commercial tax base. It dwarfs our commercial tax base. So, and this is sort of people are fine with them, right? They're used to them. They make sense. They're really land efficient. They're super low in services. Usually it's retirees, a lot of school kids, private roads, infrastructure. It's basically like the equivalent of commercial. The reason why towns and cities like commercial is because usually it's low services, high revenues. This is basically more so it's three and a half times a commercial tax base. This is our financial engine in this town. A few questions here. Unknown: So one is, is is it? Is it our financial engine, mostly because we don't have a lot of zoning for commercial in terms of, Rebecca Stanizzi: okay, yeah. I mean our commercial tax base is literally, it's 2.8% of our entire tax base, 2.8% that's Karen Kelly: it, because you have so little. Zoning for commercial Rebecca Stanizzi: use is that correct? Our commercial is not as dense as it could, but you're never, based on our limited areas, you're never going to suddenly right up the native mall, right? It's not Unknown: okay. So then, then, because I one of the things that was on my mind to discuss at this meeting was, you know, I just saw some more chatter online about, about, you know, what we need to do to get the financial engine moving in this town and people shouting all kinds of wrong information about and so I was like, we need to put something out about this. And so it's exactly that. And so I'm just thinking in my mind, and Katie, I'm happy to take this on, is putting together, like, I don't even know if it's an infographic or if it's like a PSA, like we've done before, like we did with the talent center, stuff about, here's what's really going on. But I do think it would be really valuable to kind of like, pull some pieces of some major facts about what is driving the engine, why it's driving the engine, and how we can think about Yeah, David Villari: you had that on Rebecca Stanizzi: the on the priorities, I think, yeah. So I put at the top, and this was actually an order was on the agenda, which is why it was at the top. But, yeah, but part of that is exactly that, because people don't necessarily understand. I mean, even looking at Town Center, even I was surprised looking at it, I was expecting a little bit more it literally, River Trail place, 42 units is worth the same as the entire rest of the town center plaza, yeah, yeah. Like, stop and think about that, three acres versus 21 acres. This is how much these are worth. I mean, literally, those are assessed at like a million dollars a piece. So it's huge. I mean, even that is, you know, worth $42 million right? So that's 42 across the way all to Oxbow. Huge, massive, what, like eight acres. That's 70, right? The town homes were really good at building expensive town homes. Yeah, we're good at that. Lean into it, land efficient, generate those tax revenue crisis, yeah, David Villari: if you could, if you could get the mahoneys to not do cascade and instead build like five, six town homes on there, whatever. Rebecca Stanizzi: We probably have more than that, because they're like a two, but yeah, I mean, it's ultimately for this size building that. And I would not be surprised if they came back and said, I just want to do town homes. I would not shock me in the slightest, because the same value building a lot less square footage in a very cost effective stick built way, you're going to get the same value, right? So, yeah, it's kind of like, how do we get people focused in that mindset? And then do we encourage zoning in that regard? Do we, you know, second of this is the MBTA communities. If we put MBTA community zoning, which is literally 15 units an acre, River Trail places, 12, it's not like you have to build like, apartment buildings with MBTA communities. It's 15. Is not that dense. It's basically close to townhomes. So because we have are so dense at Alta Oxbow, it averages out across the entire town for 15 you have to hit that threshold. So you know where Alta Oxbow is, 27 you could put 10 somewhere, which is what they did when they put the zoning over at mate stop, right? So that's River Trail place just within put that down David Villari: with the data you gave here, right? 21 acres for the 42 43 million. Right? Three acres, 41 and a half, that's $2 million an acre if you're doing commercial or $13.8 million per acre doing town homes. Rebecca Stanizzi: Yep, yep. So and then, you know, and then, you know, and that doesn't even count Wayland columns, which is also there, yeah, I don't know if that was originally part of the raythe It must have been part of the Raytheon site, but that's another 40 million. Which one Wayland? So River Trail is behind the common the town green, okay, it's right there. And then Wayland Commons is along 27 so that's the one. It's the kind of as you first turn in, off of 27 David Villari: it's right and left. And that makes sense, because that's bigger acreage they have. They have a Rebecca Stanizzi: lot of conservation. They're the where the housing is not that tight, but the site itself is literally 18 Acres, because there's a ton of green space around. David Villari: If we took like, a look at just on the map, the density of the housing, like, how many acres would that be if? Rebecca Stanizzi: I'd guess probably, like, five to seven. It's not quite as dense as River Trail place, but, David Villari: but still. So that's, let's call it like 38.3 divide by I'll go the high, high route seven. That's five and a half million dollars per acre instead of the two commercial Rebecca Stanizzi: Yep, yeah. And so then the column on the right is just taking our tax rate at the top and just putting into perspective what it means in terms of tax revenues. So, you know, we always, I always tout that all talks about is making about 1,000,001 a year in tax revenues. So our entire commercial tax base just makes two and a half million. It's just that you could, you could expand, you could double your commercial tax base, which will never happen, never, and you still are not going to make the dent that you could make with other things. So revisiting MBTA communities. So as we know, with MBTA communities right now, our 25 acre districts. Are you aware of MBTA communities? Do you know the nuts and bolts? Bad enough short story we have to do like 50 acres. You have to designate it for a minimum of 15 units an acre. Great. And you can average across your site. Some can be more dense. Some could be less right. One of the sites has to be a minimum of 25 acres. The second 25 acres has to be lots that are minimum size of five acres. So it can be five and 10 and 10. It can be 55555, you know, it's basically you can make a collection of those. So our 25 acre district that was designated is put at Mainstone. So it's in Colts way. It's a street that was already it's already built out as townhouse condominiums, right? And it has been for a while. So they put it there because if you plug it into the model at the state, which was our criteria, it says, Oh, this works. But you know that it will never, all those condominium owners won't get together collectively, sell a builder, tear them down, and then, you know, build something like, it'll never happen. And that honestly, was the thought process at the planning board when they were thinking through they wanted, they didn't want to create housing necessarily, they would have commentary, and they're like, We don't like this law, and we shouldn't have to comply with it, but we have to. So, you know, grumpy and they did it. But what that does center point might actually well, so the town center was put on there, right? However, there is a deed restriction with Raytheon right. And so build above the height that they currently have for the no, they cannot put additional residential on the site without Raytheon approval. It's a deed restriction so that one may be blocked logistically, right? So what do those mean? So you required acres, you have 50 acres. You have to do 15 years. So we should be doing 750 units. I'm going to check with Robert, I believe, with our plan, ours Rebecca Stanizzi: in the economic development bond bill is at like 896, if I'm following what our zoning was, that we approved. So I'll check that number. But right now, at Alta Oxbow, some of them comply with that right. We could count our non age restricted units. Two thirds are non age restricted. One is a senior building. So it leaves us 720 units left to be built. So at an average Alta value, just being low, using that as an apartment value, then it's $240 million worth of that was that $100,000 to look at MBTA communities, to re look development, or that's $3.7 million in tax revenues. So that is value within the MBTA communities. If it were all built out, will it be over time? I don't know, but the two pinch points one is our paper district. It's not buildable, and we are giving up $1.3 million in tax revenues forever, right?
at it and think, How can we look at it from an economic development perspective, to create more housing for us? This housing is worth money to us, right? Again, it's like, it's just, it's if we do, you know, like, single family homes are the the worst thing we can possibly do, because it's public roads. It's. Very expensive infrastructure, like all this stuff, eye services. Whereas doing this, and not necessarily in Alta, you might do something more dense that side of town, and do town homes somewhere else. So these are the numbers. I mean, this is where you're going to move the needle in terms of tax revenues. So the next page is medium impact. And this is where you start thinking about, Okay, what if we make our commercial districts better? What if we add square if we add square footage, or, what if we make the districts better, right? Unknown: And DEP, I know we talked about mixed use zoning. Town Center, route 20 is it is Town Center currently mixed use. I mean, there are obviously different parcels of land that have both residences on it and businesses on it is the business area of town center zone for mixed use
Rebecca Stanizzi: right now. It is because, as the MBTA communities before, it wasn't mostly because it followed the deed. So with the MBTA communities, they added the ability to mix in the residential but you're running up against the deed. Okay. Okay, good. And right now, in the route 20 corridor, you can't, but that's one of the questions for the route 20 master plan is to be able to add, is to be able to, you know, if you want to do a second or third floor, it could be office, it could be residential. Unknown: So, but is that off limits right now for Town Center? Because if you're just building on top of existing structures, Rebecca Stanizzi: the deed restriction is you can't do residential without their approval. Unknown: Is No, is no, so it's not zoned. Then for mixed where the commercial is, Rebecca Stanizzi: it's zoned. But the deed prohibits, Unknown: prohibit the property owner rules this in a pickle. A like, Rebecca Stanizzi: Yeah, we were hoping that, you know, Raytheon be a good corporate citizen Massachusetts housing, we just did the zoning. Won't you please come on. Unknown: And they're like, No. They're not even not breaking ground anywhere new. But they Rebecca Stanizzi: just, they're just like, from them, it's, it's a formerly contaminated site, so doing anything beyond what they're doing now just invites risk that additional contamination will be found. They're like, No. And that's, you know, that's in the DEP, so kind of you'd love to get beyond it, but you're not the property owner. You can't force them to do something. So again, do you put that zoning somewhere else? Unknown: So how would we like? Obviously, we got new zoning class passed last year. But when you're thinking about, um, most of the town is already zoned for residential. So then how, like, how do you go about, you know, like, what is the process by which pieces of land are identified to build town homes? And then, you know, like, what does that look like? Becky, like, what role do we play and make like, Rebecca Stanizzi: if the town really want to do it, we could work with certain property owners. The question is, is there land left in stone? Is there Right? Like, where are those pockets? Yeah, can you find those pockets? Identify them. Is this something that we want to encourage we have town land. So that's one of them on here is activate underutilized town land. We have 13 acres Orchard Lane. It's owned, yeah? Orchard Lane, I keep hearing about, yeah. So it's 13 acres by the schools. It's owned by the schools. Yeah. So it's 13 acres is too small for a school. It's kind of, there were playing fields that were suggested there, and like, heads exploded at the neighborhood, because nobody wants to have 50 million cars going in to their small roads. You know, what have? Town homes. Town homes are very different. It's very quiet. It's not as if you have screaming kids and you have 100 people descending on a playing field, you know, like, multiple times over a weekend or every afternoon, right? It's very different. You know, people understand it, right? And so he took that, and that's looking at this and, like, literally, what are the dollar values? You took five acres, you put MBTA community zoning on it for 1515, units. But you know what? We own the land. We can dictate how many units go there. We can dictate what it looks like, just like we did at Rivers Edge. So say that there's 12 units an acre. It's a little bit less dense than over there. You have 60 units. You probably get, you'd probably get over $100,000 per unit for land value. But there's going to be some infrastructure. There's no roads. You have to add something. So like at 80 that would get you almost $5 million so the school would get $5 million and then $60 million worth of condos would be built, which then generates a million dollars a Unknown: year. Essentially, it looks like the school district or the town sells the land to a developer to build town homes. But can they dictate what they're going to do with Rebecca Stanizzi: that land? River's Edge? Absolutely. If you're the property owner, just like Raytheon, it's terms of sale with terms of sale. So when we did rivers edge, we said, we wrote the zoning for them. We said, this is as of right? So they just had to submit their plans and go through the normal kind of code review sort of stuff. But we had design criteria, we had floor plans, we had height like we mapped out everything. And when we put it out to RFP, we said, give us your plans of what you're going to look like. So we even could pick between the bidders of what esthetic we liked. So that's why we got a really good product. When you're the property owner, you can do that, right? So pound Karen Kelly: makes five. A million dollars Rebecca Stanizzi: and then, and it generates a million dollars a year. Yeah, forward, right, yeah, yeah. Unknown: So, like, I'm curious about why this was not I think this did come up with MBTA housing. Like, where is the sticking point here? Is it still like, well, we might need that for schools. Or, like, where is the sticking point, inertia? David Villari: It's also, I mean, yeah, I'm looking at the map. Orchard Lane is, like, pretty small and, like, quaint and quiet residential right now, like, you're building 60 units, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah? But think of main stem is gonna there's a lot of units that you really don't perceive from the road, right? It's 13 acres, and you take five, you can absolutely set back from everybody else, like you can, you'll never really see it. It'll be just like main stone, like, it's just set back and, you know, it's like a little David Villari: road that goes I just wonder if your inertia rates are like, very different, you have an easier time building, which is, like, what Robert's very concerned about is it's hard to get us to do it, like, if that number goes down from 60 to like 20, is everyone just like, Yeah, let's go do it. Everyone sees the vision that it plays into MBTA and 40 B potentially, and all these other things, and then it's just done instead of multi year play out of Unknown: pushback, yes, although we sacrifice a lot of recurring revenue, like tax Rebecca Stanizzi: revenue, but it's not gonna be worth trade offs to be worth it coin for just 20 units. Unknown: Yeah, I agree. Like, you, if you're gonna do it, do it, yeah? And I think, I mean, I'm no expert, but, like, there is a way. I mean, like those town homes in town center are lovely. Rebecca Stanizzi: They're stunning on the outside, yeah? Like, I just think it's like an eyesore or anything David Villari: I'm calling it from like a bird in the hand burning your Bush type thing. It's like, I'd rather have it in the hand and get Unknown: having a million, then we'd still get pushed back. Either, either way, there's going to be a bill David Villari: Exactly. There's part of it too, though, is if you build those, like those town homes that are a little bit larger, maybe more attractive, the tax base of those homes goes up as well. So it's not just that they're valued at which per unit, 1 million, right? But if you have 60 on that acre, like, do we really think we get a million? Is that? Is that in line with the density? Rebecca Stanizzi: And that's what they're getting newer ones at Main stone, that's what they're getting at River Trail place. That's kind of no but is it 1,000,005 then, if you built like, no means, because at some point there is a price sensitivity to a town hall. If you have a million and a half to 2 million, you're gonna go buy a house, right? You're not gonna so it's kind of, that's the that sweet spot, right? Fair, yeah. So it's just kind of, this is, you know, if we can control it, we can make it worth our while. So that's we had lobbied for with MBTA. Communities put the zoning there, we can check the box, and then it's there, and then we can decide, as a town, what kind of density we want to have there, right? And then we did Unknown: your pushback that kind of kept Orchard Lane off the docket was Rebecca Stanizzi: actually being considered by the planning board, and then it just fell off. They found mainst like, Okay, we're done. Katie Noble Harris: So, yeah, slightly different angle on this. You ever give an incentive to a current property owner to put in a town home? I think that that's what people of Wayland. I'm just like remarking on, like, what I always seen see is the development. And I might be ignorant, but it feels to me like there might be a couple of properties in town that aren't being utilized. Can those Unknown: be and like a dwell, like in a ADU? ADU, yeah, yeah. Katie Noble Harris: Or maybe just, okay, this isn't the right type of building, but the the one with the facade, like, Could, could we entice that to that owner of the building? Hey, we'll give you this much money if you convert that building to be, well, I guess that wouldn't be a town home, but are there any existing buildings that could become town homes or or existing land that has stuff on it? Rebecca Stanizzi: So that's a question. So you'd kind of look at all the parcels in town with that lens and see, like what makes Katie Noble Harris: sense, but like an incentive also, given it's mostly just writing Rebecca Stanizzi: zoning that they can build, right? So remember they were talking, remember when we were doing the Self Storage, there was the guy who was trying to do the solar compact cluster, right? So there was eight acres up on Shaw drive. Basically, it's semi remote, right? But they wanted to do essentially cluster. We have a cluster development by law right now, but is extremely onerous. Really hard to go through it? Do you simplify that so more people will check that box? I think if you give them a path, they'll do it. But seeing the path that's in place right now is really hard. You literally have to design the site as if it's single family homes and then design it again with the cluster. So you compare the two and do like it's literally it's huge amount. So I think if you just streamline that, I think you could that would be enough incentive for those people who are willing to do it that they would Katie Noble Harris: do it. Just wonder if that feels like a little bit more palatable than building something totally new and or maybe both at the same time, both at the same time. No. So
Rebecca Stanizzi: anyways, the medium impact. Adding density commercial districts the planning board, when they were talking with the tax assessor, they were struggling. Well, what's worth more residential or office? Basically the same like it's so incrementally, not not material. Just add the square footage, right that adding the value to the commercial districts, that's where you're sort of elevating your game right now, route 20 corridor is not commanding higher rents because it looks like crap, but that will change over time. How do you make that quarter look better? Good news property owners and the town does better. Bad news makes rents more expensive. So there's it's a push and pull, but at the end of the day, you know that adding the value might be more impactful, and in fact, that may improve your tax basis 2.8% right? The rest of it, if you live in a town that's really attractive, those values go up, right? So it's almost like you're boosting it for the visual, but for the rest of everybody else to sort of float their votes, activate and under the site, town land and the last one of the meals tax in the room stats very small dollars. But you know, if they were leveraged, you might be able to get something out of them. But if you guys have other ideas, as we sort of massage this at this point, I have not heard back from Phil yet. I know they're probably diving into stuff. So it might be October at this point. David Villari: So for the meals, one you show, 10, 1215, is that just when the breakdown Rebecca Stanizzi: of what we get, if we Yeah, I'm guessing as to what we are. I mean, we do have coach bro, which breaks it. But, you know, I'd be curious to know what the each of them are getting on an annualized basis, is that David Villari: in like, fiscal reports, anywhere, in any report that Rebecca Stanizzi: so if any, you know, any restaurant property or just reports, rents, expenses, and David Villari: that's it. So you're not, no idea what the potential revenue here is based on. I mean, we could Rebecca Stanizzi: talk with Jeff, and Jeff could probably give us some kind of, yeah, yeah. But, you know, ultimately, in this range, you know, you're not talking it's not suddenly that we're going to find half a million dollars, right? David Villari: Because you look at it in like, I think I mentioned this on the survey too, is, is meals tax, or something like that. You could also play it by, you know, local districts too, and you say Town Center meals tax will go to feed upkeep, landscaping, fees, all these other things, looking at signage and like, maybe that's just Rebecca Stanizzi: the that would incent the restaurant owners to go along with it, if they reap the reward, like we all reap the rewards. And I think it's a really good virtuous cycle, as opposed to, we're just going to collect tax and we'll be on our Ma we're going to go take care of the schools for meals, tax. Thanks for that one. Yeah, exactly, harder, and it would annoy you every single time that you saw it on your bill, exactly. David Villari: But if you're like, oh, meals, tax, played, paid for the playground, we're happy, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: So the rooms tax, we clearly don't have that many Airbnbs. This is what Jesse does, actually. So I know he has a multiple number of them, but it's a higher tax. You can do it up to 6% so the state charges 5.7 towns and cities can go up to 6% so as opposed to point seven 5% it adds up faster. But it's a question of what those revenues are, and is it okay? So we have 10 Airbnb and I'm guessing, yes, I'm guessing, I think when I looked at an airbn, you know, you can kind of see David Villari: that, because that's why I didn't give it a score, I was like, how worth it? Is it to chase all that. Rebecca Stanizzi: Yeah, yeah. So this just kind of gives the the dollar impact there. Interestingly, I would have expected the room stacked up in less, but if you do it at the max, you know, it's like, will it stop somebody from coming to Wayland? Probably not. You know, it's like, when you do air and B's vrbos anywhere else, it just gets tacked on at the end. It's one of those annoying fees, and they, Oh, we collect, collect revenue. So the 200 things, exactly, yeah, exactly, exactly. So this is, I'm going to send this because Phil was asking kind of a draft and what, what we were thinking, if anybody adding on to this questions, otherwise, we kind of revisit it next month and then plan to go and have a joint meeting with FinCom too. But that's sort of the how do we get high, medium, low, and thinking of, you know, what's what's worth the effort, right? You can do a lot of things, but at the end of the day, what's going to David Villari: actually, very obviously,
Unknown: can we put on the to do list, like putting something together to share online on this which, like I said, I'm happy Katie Noble Harris: to do. I think next meeting a bit, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, I think after, probably after the FinCom meeting, I think that would be a good time to get their feedback, too, and kind of see where they, you know, just to get that we, you know, EDC met jointly with the FinCom, and we just wanted to give you some highlights of that discussion. And you know, they may have some interesting tidbits for us that we don't, we don't know, we might want to publicize, but if you want to start thinking about it absolutely, and then, you know, to get it out after you share this job with me, yes, absolutely, yeah. So I'll circulate this. I didn't want to throw everything spreadsheet. It's a spreadsheet I can click and follow through, yeah, and you can play with numbers, yeah.
Katie Noble Harris: So that's yeah. David Villari: Okay, Rebecca Stanizzi: so we are at 937, so we spend a lot of time so zipping through some of the other stuff. So splash, slide, playground, you heard from Carol, right? Yeah, she David Villari: gave me, like, very informal call on what you wanted to do with. Was, was find out when we can get on that agenda. So I agreed for us to be on the October six. And the way she's going to do that is she's going to run through town manager and make sure that there weren't other agenda topics that he'd like to have above that one. And yeah, she was very kind. She gave, like, her own candid personal feedback too, on the project. Which was overall positive, right? Like, overall positive, but, like, coming from EDC, I think they're going to be looking for, like, a very clear breakdown of what is the benefit. And I think that's going to be tough is like, how do we quantify increasing foot traffic for a financial plan? Rebecca Stanizzi: I think you can find those metrics, yeah, I think places that have added them, yeah, I don't chat GPT, but, like, so there's David Villari: over six, like, that's the example dominant question we're gonna get. Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, Catherine might be able to help with that too, based on the touch of truck data that she got from last year. David Villari: That's true about that. Yeah, yeah. She gets cell phone data from, like this. They come in, they're like, Oh, we can track people's cell phones and see where they came from. Katie Noble Harris: Who's they? A company that Catherine got. David Villari: Like, it's creepy. He said it Rebecca Stanizzi: was creepy. Got it. She's like, Oh, David Villari: yeah, come to this free trial. And it's, she's smart with it. I'm showing me how good it is before I buy it, and she doesn't ever buy it. It's good. That was fine to hear that around trying to find the right, right one. Yeah, right data. So I think that's going to be like the dominant How do we show that narrative and explain that there's a benefit she hadn't really caught on in the proposal where we, like recommended it could also be phased so I think we really want to highlight that, because for $25,000 I can pour a three inch slab of concrete, get a 16 by 16 posted beam pavilion down and throw some $250 Home Depot pick up picnic tables right? Like I can do that for 25 if someone tells you that 75 they're lying right, like that is a cheap, easy construct. You have to go through a procurement law, I think. Yeah, so that's But either way, procurement laws shouldn't make it keep it under five grand. It should make it more expensive. Oh, it does. And if it does, then that's part of the systemic problems that towns have, but that's fine, whatever. Yeah. So I looked at that, and I discussed that with her, and she was like, okay, yeah. Like, not everything needs to be a giant proposal that has to go through town meeting, and maybe we discuss that with them. Of like, how can we use shared streets, things like that, to play into this and make it happen faster. Yeah. And then I, she and I talked very informally, too, about the deed restrictions and LSL and stress the importance there of that. Rebecca Stanizzi: That's the LSP. LSP LSP is the environmental issues David Villari: licensed site. Professional, yeah, so that's the Raytheon has their own license site. Professional, that controls that site for their own internal liability for anything long term, right? So if you want to do anything on that land, they have to sign off. And we had the health department informally help us out with just looking at, like screening, and they did confirm that playground, even as simple as that would fall under to, like a fixed structure that would have to get signed off, approved by them. Yeah, so there's hurdles. Have we? Unknown: Okay? So then that me, it's like, is it? David Villari: Should we? I, you're going down the same road, I think. Is it worth it if it might not happen? And that's why she said, Let's not do touch a truck. Let's not do any outreach yet. Let's chat with them, make sure that Select Board wants to go forward with it. Then the first thing we're going to hit is the health department work, the LSP, aols, all that stuff, clear that hurdle, and if that's clear, then we just see what go forward. Unknown: I think that you're right that we need to keep it like, very like. This could be very simple, easy. Let's just, let's not get in the weeds of this meeting. Let's just talk about what like could be and like, but we still have this other huge hurdle of breakout in front of us. We just generally want to know if this life board understands, and like, to your point, like, what would be the economic since the EDC bringing it benefit of it, but I think, like, don't get in the weeds. Let's not Yeah, yeah. We tool right now? Yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: So part I was talking with Tom Fay, not knowing that part of the discussion about touch a truck, and that is, mean, the environmental, environmental, right? So part of it is not being able to get some feedback at touch a truck, you're going to have every family I know. In the town there. So I was saying to Tom, could we come to select board meeting next Monday or two weeks after, which is the 29th and just five minutes on the agenda? And just say, will you please just let us survey people at touch a truck, because then we'll have the data to bring to you for that October meeting. Right? Who will they Karen Kelly: care about that David Villari: data? But only be two days a date. That's a lot to collect all that data. Unknown: We're better off sending if we're going to collect data editing, we're going to get more if we send an email instead of being a touch dog. Yeah, okay, I'm not saying I'd be there. I'm saying I've tried to collect data from people, and it's not that easy. Yeah, got to get aggressive Rebecca Stanizzi: and let's kind of email and such a truck at the same time. It gives us that excuse, right? Email is a must, yeah, oh, yeah, without a doubt, not such a pressing it's getting an email and and they're hearing it David Villari: truck. But the other thing I wasn't sure about is, like, because this is a plaza owned area, right? The foot traffic increase going to be for the plaza, for those businesses. How does that play into, like, what we receive back as a town? And I don't know that answer Unknown: at all. Not educated, like, right? Like, how much more money does each business like, David Villari: are we talking like 1% Rebecca Stanizzi: of their sales actually comes back as I don't know what the numbers are. It's just elevating the value of the plaza, right? So is that where the money is? Yeah, value, elevation, value in the real estate tax. Yeah, we don't have, like, a sales tax. We don't have a local like that. Mean, we have, well, we don't have meals tax. So, yeah, it's, it's just purely real estate values. David Villari: Okay, that's cool. So then I got to talk to Chris at ConCom, who we'd started those, like, very informal discussions with two the comments, the playground vendor. Oh, and they had that one Wrentham Plaza, and they put the playground on, and I bet I could find the before and after valuations with the playground, yeah. Like, that was that Unknown: as the that's the drive, yeah, yeah. Get us through the discussion. Okay, yeah, yeah. Katie Noble Harris: I wonder if Watertown has anything, because they just put in that new splash pad. Yeah, I'm
Rebecca Stanizzi: sure if you chat GPT, it'll pop up a bunch of stuff. David Villari: It's just whether that's fine sits or Yeah, the valuation difference in the surrounding Rebecca Stanizzi: area, part of it'd be interesting to know. At town center right now, typically in a commercial valuation, they'll look at your rents and then your expenses, right? But they'll look at your actual vacancy. So the question is, how much vacancy is baked in? And if you know part of it is filling vacant spaces, and that helps bring up the valuation, and then it's kind of floating the rents, the rents already high, right? But if you can get those last spaces filled, then that's that may be something we actually talk with the assessor. And so we have a David Villari: matter both ways. We say assessed value would go up in general, because you have, if you can build store, friends obsessed, and then two, you actually fill those properties. So assessed value also goes up for, yeah, that's definitely the goal. So I would, I think I'll request some assistance on putting that story together. But, yeah, okay, so, so, October 6. October 6, Katie Noble Harris: Monday, okay, in person for Unknown: you. I'll pop in, in person. Yeah, right here. So I won't be there. I'll be out of the country. Will you? Okay? Yeah, bummer. We'll prep you before,
Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, I mean, it's for them. You'll have to, it's not like they're suddenly going to dive into all the data, right? It's going to be very high level numbers, if we can, if you can, show that, you know, other properties have increased the value of that commercial tax base by 10% like, just gorilla math, like this is what it means, right? So now we know what the valuation is for the commercial it's Unknown: really just a nod to move forward. But it's not a nod of it's a very it's a non committal not that's all we're asking. Rebecca Stanizzi: It's just starting the process. Yes, yes, yes. And the other Katie Noble Harris: thing I know, a possible objection that was raised was the cost of, like, landscaping. And I think one thing that we could do is private fundraising, like, raise money to try and cover those costs. Rebecca Stanizzi: If we can find those precedents, find the precedents where they've done it. What's that David Villari: I said? I'll just move it in one that was part of the reason why I think we wanted to get with DPW and understand like they're the ones that do the maintenance facilities. Team is going to do the construction. So, like, those two inputs would have been really great to go into the Select Board meeting. But process wise, like, because we're just advisory to select Rebecca Stanizzi: board, yeah, just map out. This is, this is what we want to do, first steps, environmental, DEP, W, I could just, and then, then you just Katie Noble Harris: go and do it, yeah, that's something that's even in the new plaza owners lease, is that they mow the lawn for the playground,
Rebecca Stanizzi: or they already they do. I think they do.
Karen Kelly: Nothing has to mow the lawn over there. Unknown: But is it the town these goats that just come Rebecca Stanizzi: out good to know and get that information. So. David Villari: Of galaxy, or is it? Yeah, Zara people, okay, yeah. So I'll take a crack and I'll circulate when it can feedback. Okay, um, all right.
Rebecca Stanizzi: So quickly the other so the pre order pickup window outreach, we were talking about that before. So I think it's the information to the brokers. So you guys were trading something you wanted to compare with Jeff, who's not here. You guys want to kind of connect and then be able to send it out after next meeting. Katie Noble Harris: I redid it a little bit. I think I need Jeff's input on some of this stuff. I'm a little bit like that. Okay, got it? You're confused about some of it. Yeah. All right, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: And then the question, you know, can we post it even though nobody's going to our web page, maybe we can drive a little traffic to it, but it'd be great to get that posted on the town website somewhere. Katie Noble Harris: So I guess we'll call it outreach to brokers. Yeah.
Rebecca Stanizzi: Okay, so existing quarter conditions clean up. So Katie, do you want to update our stroll? Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, Becky, I took a stroll down Route 20 the other day. Beautiful morning. Rebecca Stanizzi: It was a beautiful when he came out. I heard everyone around with a piece of paper, and you're taking pictures, like, what are you doing? You guys actually walked down. We did. We walked the whole corridor. Oh, that's coming out and talking to us. And, yeah, imagine we had sidewalks. I know what a concept. David Villari: No, it's not very fun with the stroller. No, Katie Noble Harris: yeah. So we started kind of near Pelham Island and worked our way down. And yeah, had a bunch of business owners come up and inquire what we were doing, and had some great conversations. We made contacts with a few business owners that we just haven't been able to get their contact info for So Becky got that info and reached out to a few of those people. And I'd say it was like a really positive interaction that we had learned some Wayland history, and then we just took some pictures and wrote down some notes about some things that we think could be improved in the Rebecca Stanizzi: future. And I was just organizing that and then getting into our columns of zoning cleanup. And then, you know what? Zoning has to change, whether it's landscape or whatever, but, and then we also ran into the maple maple gate, maple tree, maple tree landscaping guy, Vinny. David Villari: So you know, I got his contact too. He's doing our loan. Rebecca Stanizzi: So part of what you see in that corridor are some property owners who just let their landscaping go, right? And so talking to the vet that, you know, woman who works there came out and talked to us, and their weeds are all overgrown, but the dogs like it, right? But clearly, they're not paying for landscaping, but it's expensive, right? For a landscaper to show up for this little, tiny plot, it's going to be expensive. So if we can talk with Vinny like, what if you had the whole corridor, or you had, you know, five or six that you just coming in one fell swoop, and it's really cost effective for the different people. Would you be willing, you know, talking to those people? Would you be willing to do that? And I think that could make a huge difference, even just the landscape.
David Villari: There you go, round two. Rebecca Stanizzi: So apologies to anybody watching. Hopefully you can still see it. We got cut off for some reason. But yeah, so the landscape part, it'd be great to kind of figure that out. He seems to be super motivated, so we're meeting with him next Tuesday. When we met with cook automotive, he came out. Was talking like, if you, if you work there, that sign, the gas sign, clearly needs to come down. But he's like, yeah, like, you want me to take it down? I'll take it down, but you do a new one. Oh, let's talk. We're like, oh, it'd be lovely to have a nice sign. And, you know, so we're gonna go and talk about so, yeah. David Villari: So I go to Lloyd all the time for our cars, so I'm happy to go down and talk to him right there. So if that makes it easier for you too, yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: So it'd be great if, you know, he could be our test case, and he could write a story about it in the post. They get some good PR, you know, like, this virtuous cycle of, oh, look, somebody did that. Oh, I'll do that. So, yeah. So he had shared by next time, and Danny David Villari: and I talked with he shared that he tried to get that Santander building as, like, office space and some training space, and it just couldn't work out because of, like, high, high, high rent prices and some other hurdles. Did he share that story with you guys too? No, but I'm sure we'll hear it, because that's also valuable. It's like, we're looking to expand, like, better commercial use of that area in a corridor, like, hey, Vinny, tell us what those problems were, and you kind of had that is like, tell us what the problems were, sex. Better understand them. Yeah. So he's he has one, and if you guys already have good contact, Rebecca Stanizzi: okay, talk to him. Next Tuesday. We'll be seeing him. We'll ask him. Okay, so we'll click that for next month, and then we can kind of look at it and then reach out from there to because we've been talking with Bill Sterling at DRB and Tom White and CPA, and then also mentioned it to Nate at the building department. So hopefully we can get that moving along with the goal of, can we get it cleaned up for next spring. It's next spring. Duncan will be opening, you know, ultimately, terrain will be opening in the in the summertime, so we get the whole corridor looking nice. That would route 20 Master Plan sidewalks, curb cut. I've been reaching out. I got approval to be able to do that, so I'm talking with Tom holder to get that moving along. So I. Him yesterday, just to find out if he's moving it along. But the next step is to do an RFP for that scope of services. So he had one couple that he was looking at, and I had sort of pulled out a chat GPT and had him do one. So it's, it's like state bidding, it's, it's, it's just, yeah, typical protocol. So hopefully we get that one moving, because the cash is there. We are have the ability to do it. And it's just, I know that Tom is really busy so, but he believes in it as a topic, so he lived through it in his town, and the difference that it made with the with the new curb cuts and sidewalks, so ribbon cuttings. So United volleyball is opening this weekend. But have they said? Unknown: So I have a back channel with them, yeah. So, you know, did you see my email Monday, where I CC to everyone and said, Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, like, it's happening this Saturday. So no, so Unknown: that's what I'm saying, like, so I think it's important for us to kind of own each of these businesses if we're having conversations with them, yeah, just so that all the communications so they they are doing it, like an open house for their current teams and stuff. Yeah, their current members this weekend. And then they had asked last week, hey, we're doing that. We they said, We're doing this next weekend. We would like to have the river coming the next week. Do you have any recommendations on, like, best time of day, or blah, blah, blah, and then I CC them in with the rest of the ribbon cutting crew, and said, Hey guys, great news. See you seeing BBC folks like they would like to get something started for next week. Michael, what is your availability? No one responded. So if Rebecca Stanizzi: it's Robert has said he's going to do it, then I would ping Anina directly and say, Anina, can you step in at least today? Unknown: I think, I think in general, we have to have another discussion as the ribbon cutting committee, because this is going to go on forever, and if the person running point is not available, we need to have a secondary person. It's just not reasonable. It's also not reasonable to cc new lessees in town, and have no one respond from the town. It's just not good enough. It's not okay, my opinion. So I'm upset about that, and I feel like Michael should be upset about that too. It's a terrible look for us. So moving forward with that, like, I'm not really sure what to do, I can reach back out to them and say, Hey, I'm sorry. No one's responded. Somebody's on vacation Rebecca Stanizzi: would stop by in Nina's office. Just went by and say, Can you at least just love in an email? Yeah, Robert usually hums these he's been out, but you know, it's on our radar. And you know, maybe she has thoughts as to certain day or time if he's she's been talking with Robert in the past, but just so they get something today, Unknown: she needs to be given permission to do so I may ask. I'll ask her to, yeah, I don't know that she will, because, well, Rebecca Stanizzi: she's supposed to be standing in for him this week, so okay, if nothing else, then the placeholder, he'll be back. Type of thing. We hear you like, I agree that, you know, it shouldn't just kind of fallen off into David Villari: that hole either. They look to open. I mean, I saw a bunch of people, so they are open, right? Rebecca Stanizzi: Yes. Like, a soft opening, Unknown: yeah, yeah. Like, very soft. But they're having, like, games. I don't know if they've actually she they said open house this weekend and then ribbon cutting next week. So they're definitely starting, I don't know, David Villari: after bike rides with my kids, like, we stop in, we get chocolate, chocolate therapy. And then there was, like, kids, like, flowing out of volleyball, like, a bunch of yay. Unknown: They also was interesting. When I was in there, they raised the ceilings. Yeah, they didn't, actually, so I take it back, they didn't actually raised the ceiling, they removed the ceiling. Yeah, yeah, to do this. But I walked in there, I was like, man, actually, there's some space up there. So anyway, they're very nice. They have a manager who's very responsive. They really want to be part of the community. David Villari: And it drove a lot of traffic, because each one of the kids that I saw was getting picked up in like, their own car, yeah, nobody I saw. I saw people like, then pulling over to the grocery store, right? And I was like, Oh, man. Like, if they just knew the kids could just walk five feet and go spend $5 at the chocolate store too, yeah? Like, that would be Yeah, but they'll figure that Rebecca Stanizzi: over time, hopefully, yes. Would be great if inside there was a map on the wall of the retailers around David Villari: we only have, like the plaza, only has one map that shows all the businesses, and that's outside, yeah, which is that little circle next to the back door of bagel table. That's the only location that I saw, yeah, could be better. But anyway, Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah, but it's not for them to be able to broadcast. That's why they're coming, because they like the fact there was so much around. So the question is, do you have, are they planning on doing a little map or, you know, we help them dudes get a David Villari: poster, stick it on the doors Exactly, exactly down the street. Unknown: You've done a good I know that somebody had forwarded us by retailer of the month boarding us emails. Hmm, and they, I remember there was one email where they said, like, oh, there's all these great retailers in the plaza, and, like, listed them out, yeah, but like to continue to do that, you know? Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's keep moving. I need to jump, Katie Noble Harris: okay, the same lines, just like life text. I sent an email, and again, no response from the town, and they're having an opening this weekend. Unknown: So what did you send to them? To who, like, what was the message Katie Noble Harris: was I sent to Michael and the rest of our looks like they're having that they're opening this Saturday. Is there anyone from town that might be able to attend? Karen Kelly: Oh, that's so funny. I thought that he sent that about the Katie Noble Harris: UBC. No, no, it's for the life tax. Karen Kelly: Okay, sorry, I looked very late Katie Noble Harris: last night. Robert said, I'm happy to take the lead, but there's no right way, because he was he the one who forwarded that to us. Yes, okay, yes, just no follow up. So I'm Unknown: not like, we're not going to be involved in this and have this kind of behavior, like, it's not okay. So right, Rebecca Stanizzi: all right, Collins market, so I went to the zba hearing, so everybody's aware of the townhouse they do. So everybody loves it. They have no parking. And so I was talking with them after the fact, and I said, they want to do have you
seen their plans downstairs, half the floor is kind of dining area. And then upstairs, half the floor is sending real estate is still there, and then they have, like a space that would be for dinner or for events or whatever. So they have quite a few potential seats, and they have no official parking, so there's spaces out front. The discussion was, we're right now put just like around the corner on Pelham Island. Put signs that say max two hours, because right now, employees from those other buildings take those parking spots and park all day, and they do the same thing at the depot. So put signs there. Zba is like, I don't know if we can actually do that, but they could recommend to the town to do that, so at least get those spots flowing. But I talked with them offline after the fact, and they said, as we were standing in the parking lot, so the pediatricians just redid their parking lot, and it backs right up to the building. And I said, you guys should talk with them, because it's dead empty at night, and you need nights and weekends, and that's exactly when they're not there. So coordinate with them. Rent some parking it's good publicity for them, you know, just passing by their building, and then you can book events, because events, they'll need the parking right? They'll meet for dinner. You can't be schlepping that far away when it's February, right? It's lovely in June. But yeah, so with that, I mean, clearly the zba was trying to figure out how to approve it, but if they could at least do that, I think it'd be a slam dunk, and they'd be good to go. So that was the email. So I met with I met one of the proponents consultant, and yeah, I did not so Kirsten was too tied up with people who were talking after the fact. So that's why they were wanting to reach out, and we can kind of communicate with them. But I think if they can just do that little bit, the library is unwilling to share their parking. They are okay. David Villari: Library own the accessory town building as well. It's the rail Karen Kelly: trip. They do, yeah? It's owned by the town. Rebecca Stanizzi: It's, it's dedicated, yeah, and they have the whole lot, yeah. So they are unwilling to, because, I mean, so much gets abused right now with the bike trail, right? And, you know, here, people will walk, but to have it as official, Unknown: what do you think is the likelihood that she'll be able to, like space, share with pediatricians. I think if Rebecca Stanizzi: they could. I mean, pediatricians, you know, it's like they can share on their snow plowing bill. And, you know, it's like there's liability insurance. David Villari: It's just hard to see this be a problem because, like, parking is, if you have to walk 100 feet, it's a good thing for the town. We're trying to get foot traffic. That's interesting. It's like, you want to see more people using the street, slowing down, making sure crosswalks get used on the DEP W curve, but all that stuff. So it's like, don't let that barrier, Rebecca Stanizzi: I know. But the interesting thing so when we were walking around and me talking with silk veterinarian. They just bought the chiropractor building on the corner. Why? Because they wanted the parking spots. So silk is that stress for parking. They have maybe two spots. Say, I have in front there, and it is a pain in the neck, pain in the neck. So mean, clearly businesses like that, I don't want to say that they are, but they're the ones putting their employees over on 27 so if they can't park there, where are they going to go? You know, it's going to it's going to get tight, and in the morning it's incredibly congested. So I'm hoping a lot of people do walk, but it we've all seen Starbucks, right? So I'm of the mindset, let it go, and if it's too difficult for people to go in the morning, that's the business's problem. That was sort of the discussion. Like, at some point you're harming yourselves by not having that parking. And that's why I'm like, you know, it's like you can't use that parking during the day, but at least if you've had it when you really want to make your money and just find a liquor license, right? So, and I think so. So, yeah, so it's like, you'll want to have that parking. So are we out of liquor licenses? David Villari: Like, a half when you do? Can't sell wine in beer and tequila, just Rebecca Stanizzi: beer and wine. You know, not I remember. It was mentioned before, but I don't remember it in the zba app. Maybe it's just coffee for right now, but they're definitely doing dinner or an event. Oh, yeah. So if you have an event, you unless you bring your own Unknown: eat with terrain. There's place we have space for both, David Villari: I don't, yeah, but Rebecca Stanizzi: yeah. Long story short, like our zoning code is so wacky that they could, literally, if they squinted, probably approve the building without parking, but it doesn't pass the giggle test, right? So it's just our thing is so poorly written. It's just, it's bizarre. So yeah, they're just trying to figure out. So Tom, who's an architect, not an attorney is trying to figure out, so he needs to check with Town Council, and, you know, can they approve it without any, you know, dedicated parking? But when I was talking to them afterwards, if you can just get something, yeah, that's dedicated, everyone will just breathe a lot easier. During the day, you will get people off the bike path and walking and but you you know, at night, it's going to be different. So it's kind of you gotta and we all events is where you make your money. Yeah, that's David Villari: so you need a bike rack, yeah? Rebecca Stanizzi: So anyway, so there they were. Well prepared, well received. Had people speaking sport like nobody was really the only service the library said, We love the concept, don't use parking. So that was sort of the extent David Villari: surprising they would say that, because, like, if you're parking to go get a coffee and then you use the library lot, you're more likely to now be like, All right, kids, let's go in. Let's go read a book, and you'll use the library more. Unknown: Yeah, I don't know their volumes. Like, I don't know. Like, I Yeah, it's full Rebecca Stanizzi: often, okay, yeah, the library, the library, yeah, yep, it is. You can usually get a space, but it's, yeah, okay, so infographic, sorry, how much time do you guys have left? It is now 1005. Minutes. You have five minutes All right, so you have you looked at this revised or not, or Okay,
Katie Noble Harris: photo of sign, yeah, Yeah, okay.
Oh yes, sir.
David Villari: My that was my 90% Katie Noble Harris: I should just put 90% square footage. David Villari: It's worth clarifying, yeah, because I, I'm like, oh, that's b Yeah, if I look at it, I say square front, Rebecca Stanizzi: but it is, when you stop and think about it, like all the doctor's offices. I mean, everything is basically filled except that, you know, and like, you're always going to have one or two that are baking at any given time, but it's those, it's the kids strong, and it's the one across that makes it feel like he's David Villari: I just I walked in, like, I like, consciously went by and tried to count the number of doors, yeah, stickers on it, like, front doors. And it was like, six still, Rebecca Stanizzi: but the kid strong being all one space, or were you counting because it has multiple David Villari: doors? That's where I don't I don't have, like, their layout of the plaza. Is that available online? Just missed it disruption. It's just gonna call summit Rebecca Stanizzi: and just, oh, I have one. I said, I don't know if it's on. I don't know if they posted online, but yeah, I'll text Unknown: you out. Yeah, yep. Yeah. Rebecca Stanizzi: I think we should do so. So with the sale, I think data is good, the occupancy rate, the tax projections, those are always like the three hot buttons, just like small tweaks in language, but the bike path, so did you get a hold of Larry? Katie Noble Harris: Yes, it is that's correct. Rebecca Stanizzi: Well, you just say what they're paving. When are they paving? Katie Noble Harris: I can try and get more info from him, Rebecca Stanizzi: because one is like, what are they actually doing? The connector from Russell's to Sudbury that way. But then the question they're they're supposedly paving, what's now stoned us. That drives some people crazy. David Villari: That should be after. I think timing was, from what I saw. It's after they build the bridge, because they consider, you know, the stone dust area, it's writable, it's usable. Yeah, so they were going to do the bridge work and all that, and get the commitment and do paving here. But is it? DCR is Rebecca Stanizzi: doing it? I thought it was like a different pot of money or something. No, I don't know. Try to find out when, you know, hopefully when that's happening is that sort of the missing link you Unknown: and I were just chatting about, maybe we take any text feedback now and then she and I can work on this together for next meeting, just clean up some design and other stuff, and then have it ready to go. Okay, she's been doing a lot. I can help there with Rebecca Stanizzi: lot of stuff going on. Cool, alright. So get any comments. So guys, alright, that's alright. This is on the property of contact list. I clean that up. We're actually in pretty good shape. It's really it's looking great. I remember the colors on it. Yeah, I was asking you, do the colors mean anything was that just left over? Katie Noble Harris: You added a lot of info, the colors for were for like, information that I was missing. Okay, so I Rebecca Stanizzi: can kind of change around for that, just to highlight with the box we're missing. Yes, I didn't want to change it without I'm like, there's maybe some system here, I don't know, Katie Noble Harris: but yeah, you can change it, or I can change it whatever you want. Rebecca Stanizzi: Okay, all right, and then committee liaison updates, joint meeting with FinCom. Now it's probably gonna be October lanes. I did ping Jeff. I said, Any update on lab? And he's like, No, I was chastened. He's Jason. He was just so concerned about the last I think we need sort of a, yeah, he's to go by right, and talk with them. I think it was just too they didn't quite understand getting a phone call. Katie Noble Harris: Otherwise, I'm happy to go by. I'm at often at the high school for like, Val Rebecca Stanizzi: lives there too. So the question is, and I think before he stopped in, I don't know, Val is sort of the natural one. He lives around the corner type of thing. So I'll ping him and see if he can pick up that ball. And then the economic development bond bill we still don't have. So it could be researching other bond bills. It could be anywhere over five years. I'm like, Oh, nice, right? So you really plan on that? Yeah, and, oh, I should have taken off 14 West plane was supposed to come off. There is public forum next Monday. Next Monday. Do you think you'll go to that, or I probably will just to listen. But I think that I know the library would love to do a satellite there. I don't know if anybody's gonna be organized enough to do community center different from the library, but, and then it's a question of the office David Villari: uses, was that going forward is count use. That's what's Rebecca Stanizzi: being proposed. That's why they're doing this public forum. And so the question is, what within the town, like officials, town uses, or, yeah, yeah, because you can easily move, like the school department over, yeah, anything we can do to condense here, it's going to make it less expensive to build or rebuild, or whatever we're doing later Katie Noble Harris: notice, a bit of chatter about that building online, and I do wonder if, in the new near future, like maybe later this fall or winter, if it would be, depending on how it goes with the meeting, if it would be worthwhile to kind of put some numbers down for people to read an infographic. Yeah, because I think that there's some assumptions that maybe people are making about it, or why the town buildings, wow, that would be helpful for people to see the math down. Unknown: Yeah, yep. And like the cost per square footage to build the community center versus Katie Noble Harris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the client makes some useful sense. Yep. All right, whether that's us or not, I'm actually not sure, but yeah, Rebecca Stanizzi: so next month I'm coming back on the 10th so it's also a social Columbus Day weekend. So 17th, work for you guys. We're in October. I know, isn't it crazy? October 7, October 17, 830,
Katie Noble Harris: as of right now, David Villari: yes, yes.
Katie Noble Harris: Okay, easy.
Rebecca Stanizzi: Anything else before we adjourn? Do I have a motion to adjourn? Motion, David, motion, second, second, Aaron, second, all in favor. Aye, four, oh, we are adjourned at 10:11am,