May 13, 2026 – Planning Board – Video & Transcript

May 13, 2026 - Planning Board

Autoscroll:

Good evening. It's May 13, 2026 at 7 o'clock, and this is a meeting of the Wayland Planning Board. We're at the Wayland Town Building. The meeting is in person, and there's also remote access at the link that can be found on the town's webpage and on our agenda. I called the meeting to order, and there are four of us here now, and if we have a quorum. The agenda for this evening is public comment, then review and approve the draft minutes of 4-29-26 and 5-4-26, then updates from the town planner and the chair, including annual town meeting recap, discuss whether to finalize report and recommendation on appeals of the planning board decisions, that was a zoning bylaw proposed change, opportunities for training, and status of planning board committee's appointments. Then at 730, we're going to hear PB2601. It's a public hearing on 1 Hobbs Road, formerly 67A Loker Street, and an application by Oak Street Management for a supportive living residence site plan approval. At 830, the new owners of the town center project are coming in for an introduction and discussion. The new owners are NP Weyland LLC. And then we'll have board comments and concerns. I'm not aware of anything that we didn't know about before the agenda was posted, and then we'll adjourn. So why don't, is there any public comment? Nobody on line? No. Do you want to take attendance? Do you want to take attendance? I don't need to. Oh, because, well, we're in person. I guess that's true. We're in person, yeah. Okay. Well, let's move on to the minutes. Robert has put them here in our packet so that we can look at them. The minutes of April the 29th. Actually, I should also say we have a new member this evening, Bill Sterling, who was just elected. Welcome, Bill. Thank you.
Okay. So for the minutes. Hi, Jesse. Oh, sorry. Oh, hi, Jesse. What happened to the local one? Jesse Newberry has entered. 7-3. You have the time? 7-3, yep. Thank you. Sorry about that. Okay. We're on to the first set of minutes, April the 29th. You're ready.
You're ready? Yeah. Oh, okay. Ira? Okay.
Can I have a motion? Are there any comments on the minutes? Yep. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes of April 29, 2026? I move that we approve the minutes for April 29, 2026. Second. All in favor. All we have to do is do anything. Are you voting, too? Good. You're allowed to vote? Yeah. No, you are. You are, actually. I was sworn in. Yes. I was told he was sworn in. Swear, Bill. Did you swear? I did swear twice. Swore at the time. I won for this one. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor. Okay. Now, the minutes of May the 4th, 2026. I'm all set.
You're all set? You're all set, too? Yeah. Okay. I move that we... Bill, do you want us to wait a few minutes, or can we go ahead for the minutes of May the 4th? No. I'm fine. Okay. Thank you. Can I have a motion? I move that we move the minutes for May 4th, 2026. I'll second. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor. Great. Thank you.
Planner and Chair. Well, Annual Town Meeting went, and I think we accomplished what we intended to. Everybody did a very good job. Thank you, Ira, Jesse, Robin. And thanks for also staying through all of our articles.
Do you guys have any thoughts on how Town Meeting might be able to be improved?
The meeting. The meeting itself, right? Yeah.
I mean, that second night, it was so empty. I was going to say, you need more people. Yeah. Yeah. We used to spread out the articles. I know Carol had done it and spread them out, and then her board changed them. She spread them out so that people would have to not have to call, but yeah, but have a reason to stay. Do you think the day makes any difference to me between Sunday and you? Well, I thought we had good turnout when we did it on Sunday, don't you? Yeah, I agree. And there was nothing big this year. There was no school thing. There was no soccer field. There was 38 million for water. Right. I mean, that's pretty important, though. Yeah. And I think people have made a choice. We have to pay for the water, and we'll go, here we go. But when somebody wants to build a new school or put in a new soccer field, then you get both sides showing up in bigger numbers. I don't think anybody was going to oppose the water thing. It's shocking, and it hurts. It hurts, but I don't think anybody's going to be like, nah, forget the water. I was floored that nobody had anything to say. I mean, I think it'll go down in history. I think, I mean, a $38 million, $34 million, $38 million expense, and nobody's supposed, like, that's pretty rare. 47 years. It's the only time I ever remember anything. But I don't think there was anybody else offering an alternative. No, that's true. And if somebody else said, look, we could do this for less money, we just have to do it this way, maybe there would have been two sides of the question. But there was only one side of the question. You get water to come out of your sink or you don't get water to come out of your sink. Which way do you want? I don't know. Seems clear. Yeah. It was a shocker. I was surprised. I was surprised at some of the stuff that came up on the budget. That was wild. Yeah. Cybersecurity. Maybe feedback. The IT director should be there. It was a poor guy. I felt so bad for him. But then when all those questions came up and they called him in, I was like, I felt so bad for that guy. I hope he was a little over his. He was a little over his head. He was sick. He was sick. I don't think it's. And I think. Probably like running a fever while he's talking. The thing that he was out of his element on was dealing with the public face to face. I think he had mastery of issues. I just think. And to be fair, most IT guys don't excel at public interaction. That's not a service. It's a common affliction. Yeah, it is. My IT guy in our office. He can't make eye contact.
I don't know what you really want. But I'll be honest. Let me get back. A better write-up for the town manager from the IT director. Maybe. So that he can speak to the things that were in his article. Yeah. Or in his budget items, I should say.
Last year, they did a great job with giving families options for babysitting. They didn't have it this year. They did not do that this year. They only do it when there's a big school thing. But it made a difference last year. Like, more people showed up. Yeah. Sure. The real factor. So if that was consistent, maybe we get more people.
Okay.
People will do a lot for free babysitting. Is that it? Yeah.
Okay. We need to consider whether we want to finalize the report on the appeals of the planning board decisions. Under the state law, 40A, section 5, you have to have the hearing. You have to have a report within 21 days in order to be able to vote for it at town meeting. And because we had the hearing, the proposal is live for six months. So if we wound up having a fall town meeting, it could come back the way it is with no recommendation from us. Right. So I'm wondering if we could keep it short and just have our recommendation, which was the straw vote that we took. I mean, we could take it again. Yeah. Well, I can finalize it and then we can bring it back to the group. Would that be within the right amount of time? What's 21 days? The hearing was the 29th. Yeah, they were passing now. Let me see. The next meeting. The 29th. So I think we have like one more week. The next meeting is the 27th. So I think. I mean, I can finalize it and sort of make it, I can shorten it even. Yeah. And then the thing is, what do we do with it? Just put it in the file. Just put it in the file. Yeah. I mean, I thought as you talk about it now, it might be more productive to make it something that we can then pass along to Doug. And say, you know, this is what we came up with. It's basically taking the minutes from that meeting, you know, kind of basically what's in there and saying these were our suggestions. And, you know, these are where we think you were headed in the wrong direction. And make it more of a work and document for Doug to look at than so much. It will call it a report, right? Not so much a report that people will read before they vote. Yeah, I think, I think that's fine. I don't know how the rest of you feel. There's also new legislation that was filed by Governor Healy. It's not great, but it will make, if it passes in some form, it will make site plan a state sanctioned thing. And it will it will give you the right to do your appeal as you would for a special permit, which is sort of what Doug was trying to do anyway. It's got some other issues. It's very long legislation, it's got some other issues in it, and I did send a note to town council and said, you know, do you want input from your clients, because there's a hearing coming up on the 19th and somebody should make some comments because it doesn't work. They're trying, they also tried to define bus station again, and they didn't do a good job again, because you can't, it talks about embarking. Well, if I get on a bus, I'm embarking on that bus at that stop, and I don't think that's what they mean, but they can't seem to get it. This comes up under the MBTA statute.
So is it okay with everyone since we did uniformly not think that the thing was ready to go?
Yeah. Okay, I think you can just finalize it. Okay. Because we went over it before. I'll send it to Robert and he can send it to you before it's really final. Okay.
Opportunities for training. When I talked to town council before town meeting, we had an issue, as you know, on that housekeeping one, where Robert had explained why we needed to make a change. And then the zoning board people were concerned, and they had to talk with town council first, and I had to talk with town council. They haven't been applying the right criteria in some cases, and they've been giving special permits for things that need to have variances. Robert had picked it up, and then when Tom White spoke with, pardon me, Carolyn Murray, our town council, she said, when I talked to her, she said, the problem isn't the language, the language that Robert suggested and what was there already was fine, it's just what they're implementing, they're not doing it right. And she said, you know, and she said, you know, we can do training and we won't have to pay for it, because they do it routinely. And there are a bunch of things that I think we could all stand training on, the zoning board and us, so that we're sure that we're just getting it right. Professor Trane, the town council, gratis, so it seemed to me we should take advantage, and I did talk to Tom White about that, and he said, yeah, he would like to have that. It would even be good if they, so if they, like, came to a meeting, and so that it got recorded, so that we could, people could watch it again later. Right. That would be great. You can also do the funding, you can also do the ZBA meeting, too, before, and they could also do the training before the ZBA meeting and had that recorded. We could do a joint meeting. Yeah. So that we can all ask questions. Regardless of them, they're not, they're not applying, in my opinion, and opinion, the opinion of multiple people in town, they're not applying it correctly. We try to, we try to, we try to correct it, they don't like the way we try to correct it, or step on their toes, or whatever, and that's, you know, we don't want to clarify them, it's like, but we also need them to do the part of the trade-off and to do the training. So, and if we do a joint meeting, we all get the same training, and we all hear the same information, and we can ask, I mean, if they don't agree, they can ask questions of town council and get the same answer that we hear. Right.
So, hopefully we're all on the same page. Okay. So, I'll try and get something set up.
Planning board committee appointments. Everybody who was appointed last year is still, the people that we appoint, still have their appointments intact. None of them are expiring. So, I talked to Larry Fairman and asked if he wanted to stay on the community preservation committee, and he said he did. And so, that's, I think, okay. And then do that in the limit, none of them are. Yeah, because he doesn't have to be a member. It's just. They do have a CPC, too. CPC has, they point someone to the, to CPC that's not on that, that's not on the conservation commission. You don't have to be on the committee. I didn't think you had to be, but I thought representation was important. Well, it is. The problem becomes that they have been having their meetings at the same time that we have our meetings. It's, you know, so we can revisit it if there are other things here as well. Jesse's been serving on the housing partnership, and he said he's got too much on his plate to do. I talked to Rachel Bratt today and asked if they could set up the meeting so that they didn't coincide with our meetings so that we could be off schedule. And she said she thought that that could happen. And it didn't have to be on a Wednesday night either, or they could do it on an alternate Wednesday. If that opens up, I'd be interested to get back on it again. On that one? CPC, right? CPC? Yeah. Okay. What about housing partnership? Anybody jumping? Well, they're very supportive of us. We can't both be on the other ones. I know. I was going to get to that. On the other ones. So one of us has to come off of design review. So I'm not an architect, so I shouldn't. We can't take the architect off. I have to come off. Okay. I think. Well, I was going to just work my way down the list. Bill, I'm assuming that you want to stay on design review, or do you? I would like to stay. Okay. So then I have to switch. But if you drop off, we need bodies. If she drops off, you only have two members. That's what I know. I've still been talking to folks, and if not, they have a lot of great luck. We need to, I think we need to reach out, expand skill. I think that you had narrowed it down to a graphic design professional. I don't think you're going to find one. I try. It can also be somebody who owns a business in town. That's what I'm thinking. We need to broaden that base so that we can get someone in that doesn't quite fit your original request. It could be anybody. We had a real estate broker, and that was funny. Yeah. I thought I had somebody who was a real estate broker who would join in. We have a landscape architect. That's doing business. Yeah, I think a landscape contractor might even be more useful. But it could be an architect and design. Yeah, I'm just picking up what the bylaw said. So, and I have reached out to lots of people over the years, and particularly graphic designers, and they weren't interested. What does a graphic designer have? Signs. What signs do you do? I don't know what we're doing, but it's not rocket science. It's something we all know of fonts, styles, and, you know, basically setbacks for zoning. And it's a very simple calculation of the 40 square feet. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of complicated. No, I think you're more likely to find a dentist. Is that 40 square feet? Lit dentist? No, I think it's... No, they all appeal to zoning for everyone. Zoning gave them. Zoning for more. I see. I think that Duncan is doing a lot of complaints also. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's only giving them. I don't know. I didn't call it that case. The thing about Duncan is when they came to see us, they were at 40. They weren't over. That's right. Somehow the sign got bigger when they went to... Yeah, it looks bigger. Yeah. That is pretty. And it's bigger than the one on the south side of town. I've gotten a lot of negative comments that are trying to blame me for it. I didn't do it. Is there... I'm wondering how we get to the zoning board. I mean, anybody has to sit in a meeting with them? It used to be that we would share our meeting notes with them, and they would actually read them, but I don't... We do that. We still do. Yeah. So I should be sending it... Anita would tag them up, and she'd tag them up, and then she sends it to the building commissioner. Now where he does it, I don't know. He should be sharing the ZBA, but... Yeah. I haven't listened to their meetings to hear... You know, like if we said, you know, limit the sign, and they ask for a variance, and ZBA gives it to them, it'd be interesting to listen to the meeting and see if they actually do that, because that's the impression I got, is what's happening. We could probably just ask the chair. He would remember these two cases. Yeah. What happened?
Okay. So coming back, would you be willing to be on the housing partnership? I guess so. You've been sort of being trained in housing, haven't you? It is. I just... Yeah. And they meet more regularly. They meet once a month, I think. Yeah, I guess so. So is there a legal reason why you have to get off the design review board? It's like, it makes no sense to have the planning board, and then a three-member board that has two members of the planning board. But is it legally not allowed? I don't... Can't say that. I think it's bad... It's bad optics, and I think it's inappropriate. For me, I think it's inappropriate. Robin thought it was inappropriate. Well, we are a subdivision of the planning board, so I don't think it's bad optics at all. But basically, we're an extension of the planning board. In some things, you're doing the same things that we're doing. I want Robin to stay on this committee.
Well, I think until we find a replacement, do I have to? Yeah, we don't have a quorum. Yeah, I know. Yeah, well, you can stay. Robert, didn't you say there was somebody who might be interested? Yeah, there's someone ticking around. I got to get a name from Jayla. Okay.
Well, then, you know, I mean, you have to have a committee that functions. So, yeah. So, you can stay on, I guess. You have to. Now I'm doing two of them.
Okay. You're staying as a chair. I was just... You can talk about that. You're going to bring that subject up? The elephant in the room? It's just, if I am to stay as chair, or do, even if I weren't, do the work that I'm doing, I can't possibly take on a committee. Right. So, then I'll have to... When do you want me to put that on the agenda? When that was made? Do you want me to do a June agenda? The election of officers? June? July? When do you want me? Second meeting? June? Right.
Let's do it at the next meeting. Yeah, I think we can go around the table and see who's raising their hands.
Am I looking at everyone who's raising their hand? Good. Okay. I'm only... I would only do it because you asked me to before. Yeah. But I'm going to be done at the end of this year. Yeah. Okay. I'm hoping my situation is resolved by the end of this year.
Okay. Yeah. So, put it on the next meeting. Oh.
So, I think that's the only thing.
Ira, let's check on when the Community Preservation Committee meets. See, Thursdays. I thought it was easy Thursdays. I don't know, because Larry was missing it. They moved it on Wednesday. They moved it before their meetings. But they're probably, like, very quiet now. Because of that. Is there another one? Stormwater? Wastewater? Something else? No. That's not a recommendation. That's something different. It's not a planning board. Okay. But, yeah, yeah. It's something water. Surface water. Surface water. That's not from a planning board. It's to point it. Oh, okay. You can keep that.
I just don't think it looks good. No, but we had a planning scenario. I know. We had earlier today. Okay. So, I guess I'll let the select board know that we're switching bodies. And you don't do it yet. But you'll have to turn in a resignation. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Of course.
Let's see. Okay. CPC left them in April 16th and January 7th. Pardon me? 16th and January 7th, the last two of the time they met. CPC. Yeah. I just can't hear in the screen. I don't know what's on there. Agenda's either Thursday and a Wednesday. So, it was just maybe the Wednesday was a special meeting or something. I don't know.
Susan White, statement? Yeah. I think she's, I don't know if she's the chair or not. I think she is. She's the chair. Okay. Yeah. Just ask her and then we'll work it out with Larry.
He told me he was moving the surface water. He is. Yeah. Yeah, he was appointed to surface water. Okay. So, he wanted a new trip home? Well, he said, when I called him, he said, I didn't know that I could stay on. I said, well, technically, you can stay on. You know, what are your thoughts? He said, well, if I can, I'd like to. And then I thought, well, gee, if they're meeting on Wednesdays, which is why he couldn't go, that might be okay. But, you know, I told him. He's still two more years on his term. So, it's not like, well, let's see what Susan said. I can just offer it. You know, Larry, I can do it. Do you sure you want to keep it? Okay. We'll get an answer there. I want to make sure that it's at a time when one of our board members can be there. What we've been trying to do, Bill, is put people from the board on the other committees so that we can have some kind of continuity and reporting that. And we have, I think, five different committees that we appoint people to. And we've been, it used to be just whoever came in and wanted to be appointed. But we never knew what was going on because they didn't keep us abreast. It's technically six. It's technically another one, too, but it's not a committee. It's the MAPC sub-region. The planning board also has an appointment. But that's like, three, four, five, six. But that's me. Yeah, that's a staff or planning board, which can be anybody. We want to stack the committees in our favor. It's not my staff. It's not my staff. It's not my way or forget it. I had a question about this. Someone mentioned to me about the task force. You have to get back to the select board about the task force. Yeah, I've got it. Right. Someone mentioned me passing about that. Yeah, we had talked about it at our meeting, and I have to just write the thing up and send it in. I started doing it. Yeah. I don't want to slap on members of that. No, I've got it. I just, I needed a break after town meetings. It's 7.29. 7.29.
Well, we can't stop for another minute.
Actually, like 15 seconds.
Yeah, it should be Bob, Brandon, and... Do you have a list of all of our meeting schedules? What's coming up for meetings? Go for me, too. From Robert, great.
Are there any participants that the applicant need? Yeah, no, never mind. It's 7.30. We've got the last minute. We've got them last week. Oh, okay. Right, yeah, I do. It's 7.30, and it's time for the public hearing. PB2601, 1 Hobbs Road, formerly 67A Walker Street, map 48, lot 042, Oak Street Management, supportive living residents, site 10 approval, please.
Hi, thank you all for having us. Thank you. My name is Matt O'Connor.
I'm the applicant. I'm here this evening with some of our team members online, I guess I would say. Can you talk a little louder than Sam in here, and we can't hear. Sorry.
Much better. All right. Sorry. I'll use my... So my name is Matt O'Connor. I'm with Oak Tree Management. I'm here with Andy Richard from the Minuteman Arc. We have some other team members online here on the screen. We may or may not get everybody, but as you can... Introduce them? Yes, I'll do that. Yeah, Suneeth John is our housing advisor. Andy, as I mentioned, is here from the Minuteman Arc. Brandon, our engineer, is on the screen here. Bob Livermore, our architect. Brandon Ducharme. Yes. Yep, sorry. I can't see that. And now, I think that's what we have for now. Mark Lanza is our counsel. Mark Lanza? Yes. Okay. He represents Waylon, I believe. Yeah. He didn't. It was the same Mark Lanza. Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes. So I've dealt with Mark's time, some different projects in town. So he would... I'm relying on him to really know the local bylaws and whatnot, if he would be a good resource. And then Al Gala, who may or may not be with us, designed our septic system, which actually has already been approved. But so what we're proposing to do here, we've got a slideshow, kind of introducing you all to the project. It's basically a six-unit house designed for supportive housing for folks with disabilities. The current parcel has got an old barn that has collapsed a couple of different times that I'm maintaining, really, for the time being. He's got the project team listed there. Is there a way to make it bigger, Robert? No, I... Is this on our system or his system? Sanif, you can advance the slide. There you go. And also, will you send the slide presentation? I have it. Oh, you have it. Okay.
That is great. Feel free to let me know when you need to advance the slide, like next slide. You need to expand the slide. Right now, it's not a full screen. And people can't read it. Get rid of the people. Yeah. We did. I'll try to expand them. Sorry. It's okay. Should we all get close to the screen? I was just kidding. How dare you go? Yeah. So, just kind of a project highlight for noting that we are redeveloping an existing site, as I mentioned, with the... The Rappetite Barn that's there now. So, if you bring that back up, and I'll just kind of go through it.
Okay. So, this will describe as the square footings of the first, second, and a basic level. The first floor, two units that are fully handicap accessible. The second floor will have four units. They're all set up in modular fashion. One of the ideas is that taking folks and trying to help them progress to their highest level of functioning, you know, with housekeeping being one of those items. Community integrated housing and educational environment focused on life skills and development. So, essentially, these are units. The intent here is that right now, those who have some independence with an intellectual disability, there's not a path for them. And we're all familiar with 24-7 group homes and then independent apartments, but there's not a middle ground there to help individuals advance from their family home to an apartment. So, this is an opportunity for them to expand their independence and test their independence, really develop those independent living skills in a safe environment. So, five of these units are micro units or compact units for those individuals. And then there's a sixth unit on site, which is the residence of a safe neighbor who's that safe overnight presence to help them should something come up overnight. And then there's also staff throughout the day to support them, but it's not a 24-7 environment. It's intended to help them progress, as Matt said, to more independence. How do you define what that is? Intellectual and developmentally disabled. Is there a limited time so that there'll be a turnover of residents? Well, ideally, residents may advance. They may build their skills such that they can't move out on their own, continue to support, but it's not up or out. It's not as if, you know, you have 18 months to move on to an apartment, otherwise you go back where you came from. That's not the intent at all. So, it's not, you know, I think that 18 months might be the most aggressive that someone would move through. The idea is not to move individuals through quickly. Want to go to the next slide, Cindy?
This shows you the location of the site. This is actually the local school. So, the site you can see is kind of the corner, if you will, of the three different streets. It had been originally 67A Local Street. So, I remanded it one of Hobbs.
And then all those streets aside, if you guys know the area, come down Local Street, it's right there in front. There's a yellow house, and it's the barn right next to it. Haven't they been restoring that for a long time, though? Thank you. Are you going to actually use that building? So, we, as I mentioned earlier, it's collapsed a couple of different times. There was a fire in the 70s. The barn's been through an awful lot. We are keeping it up, and we've supported it. I'm trying to think the last time I had collapsed, in the last big snowstorms, I think it was 2018. We had back-to-back two-foot storms. So, fortunately, I had collapsed. I removed it. And then it backfilled kind of the hole and, you know, fenced it off for safety. I've been trying to maintain the barn. I've been fixing the roof. I've been trying to keep the weather out of it. Uh-huh. But you're planning on taking it down? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's a stone, you know, foundation. It's, you know, you do a lot of restoration work. At this point where it's, you know, cost-to-privative is when you're borrowing money. There are banks, you know, they don't, you know, they're, like, new and stable and current structure. Keep going. Yeah, so this is the state of the barn here now.
It's a condition. So this year is the area that kind of looks on the foliage around.
Again, the existing conditions of the barn. The barn had, you know, some folks remember, extended more to the left. And it also had extended to the right. The dog laid right at one time.
A couple of different, you know, current entrances that we're using now. There's one from Alden Road, kind of the corner of the Hobbs Road. The permanent entrance would be shifted upwards, I guess I would say, more into Hobbs Road. There's actually a cat facing right there. You can see some of the prints where that would be laid out. And then the site would feed a small parking area. We've been... Go ahead. And Brandon, do you want to jump in and talk more about the buffers and everything? Sure. Yeah. Brandon Ducharme with David E. Ross. Hopefully everybody can hear me. Yeah. What I just want to do is just kind of acclimate you and familiarize you with the site. This is a rendering of the existing site features. As Matt said, it's 1 Hobbs Road, formerly 67A Loger Street. It's a corner lot located just west of the intersection of Hobbs and Alden Street. The property lines are shown there in purple dashed line. And it's about three quarters of an acre in size. It's located within the R30 residential district. As you can see, in the middle of the property is where the existing barn is.
And then from there, we also... There's some wetland resource areas that abut the property. To the north or the top of the page, there's a stream that runs down the north side of Hobbs Road. And that stream has an associated bordering vegetated wetland. And the stream is also a perennial stream, which has riverfront area. So that stream flows to a head wall, like I said, north of Hobbs Road. And then there's a 30-inch culvert that proceeds under Hobbs Road. It clips the corner of our property. It travels through our property through a 20-foot wide drainage easement. And then it goes underneath Alden Street. So now we're closer to the bottom of the page to where the culvert daylights. And there's a small pond there. So from those wetland areas, we have a 100-foot buffer zone, which is the red dash line that you see on the plan. As well as there's a blue dash line, which represents the 200-foot riverfront area.
A couple other points is there's a driveway and utility easement along the west side of the property. You can see on that image that there's some parking that kind of comes onto our property. So that is for the benefit of 67 Loker Street. And again, just looking at the property, the high side of the property is the northerly side, abutting Hobbs Road. It's pretty flat all the way through the existing barn site. And then it dips down as you approach Alden Street, where there's essentially a walkout access to the lower level of the barn.
The next slide. So now what I'll do is I'll just kind of walk you through the proposed site plan. You know, as Matt has said, we're proposing a six-unit supportive housing residence. We've located the proposed building in place of where the existing barn is on the site. And then the main entrance is going to be off of Hobbs Road. There's an existing driveway that is close to the intersection of Hobbs and Alden Street. So what we've done is we've proposed that access way a little further north up Hobbs Road just to provide some relief to that intersection. As shown on this plan, that's an 18-foot wide access driveway, which would serve two-way traffic to the main parking area as you come into the site. We've provided for six parking spaces, one of which will be handicapped accessible. And you can see there's a painted-off aisle width of eight feet just for that van-accessible spot. From the lower side of that parking lot, along the parking spaces, we've provided a sidewalk, which will give pedestrian access to the main entrance of the building, which is on the north side. And you can see where it kind of goes into that covered porch. The sidewalk also continues in a westerly or left direction to go around to the westerly side of the building, where there is a secondary means of ingress and egress into the building.
There's a separate... Mr. Ducharme, do you have a pointer that you can use? This is really hard to see from where we are. That would be much better. Thank you. Okay, so, John, if you want to just kind of point these out, as we just talked about, you can use on that main entrance and the parking area. You can see the parking spaces. That is... And then the sidewalk that goes into the entrance of the building, as well as he's now showing the sidewalk that goes over to the westerly side of the building, where there's actually a deck there. Because the way that the proposed grades are, is it actually has first floor access on the north side, and then it's got a walkout access, which is a drive under garage on the rear, which is in that area. So, that is a secondary means of access into the site, which would be a maintenance access. So, really, it's just not for the primary function of the building, but it provides maintenance vehicles to be able to come in. Like I said, there's two garage bays that access the lower, the basement level of the building. Just to kind of go over, we've provided stormwater management for both of these parking areas, as well as the proposed building. If we start with the upper area, all of the stormwater from that area is pitched, so it heads towards Hobbs Road. And there's a catch basin there, which picks up and collects the drainage. It takes it to a manhole, where we have a stormwater treatment unit to polish the water. And then it goes to where the cursor is now, which is a subsurface infiltration system. So, a below ground recharge and storage area for the drainage. In the rear of the building or on the Alden Road side, we have a low area where he's pointing now, which will have a catch basin, which will pick up that drainage. There's also a stormwater treatment unit there to polish the water. And then it'll deposit to a rain garden to recharge the water there. Water will be provided to the new building through Alden Street. There's municipal water out in the street. That'll provide both domestic water, as well as water for fire protection. The building will be sprinkled. And as Matt said, if you go up to the main parking area, there's going to be an on-site septic system. Partially under the parking lot, as well as extending north into the open area there. So, that is the location of the new septic system.
If you've had a chance to go through the plan set, just other items that we've provided is we've designated some areas for snow storage. In green, you can kind of see some of the plantings. We've gone through and provided some landscaping. We have filed a notice of intent with the Conservation Commission, given the fact that we're in both a wetland buffer zone, as well as riverfront area. Part of that application, you know, we've worked with them to reduce the overall size of the impervious area. And we have, there's a planting detail that's in the construction set of drawings that outlines those plantings to be native. So, not only just to revegetate the areas, but also just to provide some aesthetic attraction and improve the overall area. So, that's just kind of a quick overview of the civil plans. And at this point, I'll just pass it over to the architect, Bob, to kind of talk a little bit more about the building itself. There, I'm unmuted now. Can you hear me all right?
Yes. Does everybody hear me? Yes, yes. Can I tell you, Bob? Okay, thank you. Say your name again, please. So, I'm Bob Livermore. The firm is Livermore Edwards & Associates, architect for the project. I'll just go through this and stop me when you have questions. Here is the porch that Brandon talked about with an entrance going straight into the building. Oh, I guess you don't see my cursor, do you? Thank you. Thank you, Susan. No, please see the cursor. You can see it now. Okay. And then that enters in by a kitchen area. The kitchen area is meant to be a teaching kitchen as well as a community kitchen. So, it's set up so that people can use it in a communal way. They also have small kitchens in their unit, so they can also feed themselves in their units. On this floor, underneath this section here, there's an office and next to it, a handicapped toilet. So, that's the public handicapped toilet. There's a laundry for the full house, living area and dining area, as you see there, with a porch off the living and dining that looks out towards the school, I guess, in that direction. There are two units on this floor which are handicapped units. They have entrances off of this main space, and let's just go through unit one. There's a little, you pass by a kitchen with a living area next to it, a small table over in the corner by the closet, so that there's an eating place. There's a handicapped toilet, which includes a roll-in shower, handicapped bars for the toilet, and a sink, handicapped sink. Going across from the toilet is a general closet, so that there is a closet coming into the unit. I guess we can go back over to the main door there. There's a closet there for outdoor wear, and this is another closet which is generally used for the unit.
Going into the bedroom, there's a big closet and a bedroom and the mechanical unit in the corner. Now, on these units, we looked at the code. The code said that there had to be two ways out in a unit, either directly to outside. If there was, no, if we didn't put a door in this side, there would have been only one door out the front. And we assumed that because these people would be handicapped, that that wasn't two ways out. So we have a way out through the deck and boardwalk to the front, as Brandon talked about. And then, of course, there is a second way out of the dining area and living area that goes up to the floor upstairs.
And it goes down to the basement so that there's access to trash and so forth in that direction. The main entrance to upstairs, which enters from the front entry, if we can go back to the front entry, John, and that goes upstairs, but doesn't enter or exit through the communal area. So it's somewhat private.
So now if we can go upstairs, the upstairs, say we're entering from down below. You come into a corridor where four doors are off that corridor. There's a stair from the other side that comes up from the interior side of the communal area and also down to the basement. Four units. The units are pretty much the same. On the right-hand side is the unit for the overnight person who would be there to help people. They wouldn't necessarily be there all the time, but they would be at night to cover any questions or problems that may come up. That unit has a bedroom, a regular bathroom, a closet with a bedroom, a walk-in shower, a fairly big kitchen area with a range, and a big living area. If we go to unit three, which is just across the hall, you walk in, very similarly laid out to the units downstairs. You walk by a kitchen and a living area, and then it comes to the toilet, which is a stand-up shower in that unit. Across from there is a general closet, and then into the bedroom, which is similarly laid out to the other unit. And unit four and six are exactly the same. So I think that's a problem. Go ahead. Unit five. Unit five. Sorry, Bob. Unit five is a little bigger than that. I'm just looking at that. Correct. Unit five is the bigger one. Yeah, it's at the overnight unit. Yeah, that's the good neighbor unit. Yes, good neighbor unit. You were talking about having to have two exits. And on the first floor, I don't know what the building code says. What is the requirement for exits? If you're, the building code says in a unit, which is, this is an R3 unit. An R3 unit, it has to have two exits unless it exits directly to the outside. So you could have a stair that went down and exited directly to the outside. But obviously, the, in these upper units, the second exit would be out the back. And down to the, down, it comes out on the back, down here side of the basement. So that would be the second exit. And that takes you outside? Both of those take you outside? It takes you downstairs and, yes, outside directly from the stair. So the stair itself and both the front and the back are enclosed. And you would exit directly outside. And when, okay, that's on the first floor. And the, um. I was sitting at the garage level. Yeah, no, I know. So, um, the, um, looking at the first floor over to the left, um, you said that was a deck. And then is there a ramp that goes down? It's actually a deck and it goes out flat to the front of the building. Um, where Brandon showed that before. It's, it's in that light colored yellow is the deck part. Okay, thank you. So if I may, that, that's a deck because of the elevation change, the grade change. If you look at the site, it swales way, way, way down. Um, and then, so to come out level, it would be a deck and then transition to a ramp to grade at the front of the building, the front of the house. And then is there a balcony over on the right? On the right is a communal living space. I see. Another deck facing would be, uh, all that. Thank you.
Any questions on the layout?
I had one question. I don't know. It's so different, but you've got the garage down there. Is the garage size so that it can accommodate the, uh, the van? Yes, that's exactly. It's a very good point. Uh, Bob, you want to comment or I can, uh, it can, go ahead. It can contain the, the handicap accessible van. It also contains, it keeps out of sight trash. So it's tall enough for the van. Yeah. The, the, the, there is a beam that's, you know, at eight feet is the, is the low point. Uh, but I design it so that we can put the van, the handicap van, uh, in that area. Two garage doors. Yes. Correct. Yep. Yep. And the drying is just, uh, it's kind of easy to get a van in one side and then trash to more easily be brought out. The other would be a roll away, uh, bin basically for pickup. So maybe we could show the front elevation and the back elevation. So there they are. There's the front elevation on the top with the porch, with a, with a roof over it. And, uh, in the back, um, you have the two garage doors, um, and the stair coming down from the upper level and the deck by the kit, by the, uh, dining area.
And the driveway by the garage is big enough for a trash truck to come in and back up to get the dumpster loaded. Yeah. The idea of the, yes, there's a turnaround. If you go to the, um, the, uh, site plan, if you go to the site plan, it's also like a T like a turn on T. Yeah.
How wide is that driveway?
Brandon, can you answer that question? The width of that back driveway. Is that also 18? So it's, uh, that is 12 feet coming in and then it expands to obviously larger to accommodate the turning movements. So again, this, this is another area that when we initially went to the commission, we had it a little bit larger, but in, in order to reduce that impervious area of the buffer zone, we, we kind of, we paired that down to, you know, what we felt was kind of the minimum standard to be able to get, you know, that maintenance and trash access, um, into the site and turn around. The department of public works about the 18 foot wide access driveway off of Hobbs.
Yes. I have spoken to them and conservation. Um, and we had some initial drawings that we proposed, um, numerous discussions over the past two, two years actually, um, and they commented, we made adjustments, um, and that, and that's how people. Okay. With 18 feet. Cause that's larger than they normally allow in a residential district. Uh, so I don't know if you specifically commented on that with, there were numerous other comments, um, just from memory. I don't remember that with being an issue, uh, specifically, um, I think that fire, when I initially spoke to fire department, uh, you know, they were looking for a reasonable, uh, way to get in and out of the, the upper portion of the site. Um, Robert, can you check it with the DPW and just make sure that you're okay with that?
So, uh, do I understand it that the dumpster, is there a dumpster? Yes, sir. Under the, and, and recycling. It would be inside. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Usually when they help those into the, um, collection, uh, they need a lot of heavily. Is this, uh, going to be a problem? I think I have to wheel the dumpster out into the yard and dump it in. Yeah. There's small recycling bins and then a plastic, uh, dumpster that's in a fire rated box, essentially. That would be. That would be done outside. Um, yes, it would be, it would be, you wouldn't see it until trash day to have trash pickup. And then you bring it outside of the garage. Roll it out. The idea is to, yeah, to roll it out. Yeah.
Well, do you think there should be a little visual screening of that from residential neighborhood? No, because it's in the garage. It's in the building. So, uh, visual screening of the process of dumping how many, you have a number of barrels and a dumpster. And it's, uh, basically, it's going to be right on the street. Yep. Visible from the street. But that's all. Yeah. The trash truck would pull into the site. Yeah. Uh, load, turn around and exit. And all I'm suggesting is if that's kind of an eyesore, it might be nice to screen with some vegetables. We do. So the, the, if you look at the elevation drawing, there's a high side looking out the back. It's higher to the right. Yep. So we do have, uh, plantings, uh, noted in that area. Yeah, as well as a, a buffer between, uh, this turnaround spot at the back of the building and then what would be Alden Road. Yeah, you're showing quite a lot there. Yes, sir. One of the things with this project is that it's a Dover project. I'm not sure of exactly which Dover project. Um, right. Okay. And we'll talk about that, um, in a minute. Um, they've suggested that it was an educational use, which would only allow us to have four or five things that we're allowed to address. Um, and if it's not fully an educational use, then it fits under Dover, but it has not as many restrictions on us. And we can ask for the kinds of things you're talking about. This fits under Dover? It's a nonprofit. Yeah. Um, the, the one, well, I'll ask while we're talking now. Um, you have a company, but your company is not incorporated, um, because I can't find it on the registry list, um, at the Secretary of State. I know you have some kind of an arrangement with, um, the ARC, but we haven't seen anything. Um, so technically under, um, the Dover amendment statute, um, in order for it to be considered an educational use, if that is in fact what it is, it has to be presented by and by either, um, an educational corporation, nonprofit educational corporation. Or we have to see something that shows us that you have some kind of a long-term arrangement so that we can apply those standards to you. Um, and if we don't have that, you're still Dover, but because it's a congregate living facility, but we have, it's not as limited. Our review isn't as limited. Okay. So, yeah. And then we are in the process of getting the letter of engagement from our board at Miniman ARC. We, uh, have a new CEO who just started last week. Yeah. So we're kind of in a period of transition. So our next board meeting is next week. And so we're going to present that to the board for signing. Okay. So what we'll need is something that shows that it's a long-term arrangement, not just five years. I mean, something considerable.
Yes. Okay. So is 10 years or 15 years what's an appropriate operation? I mean, it's going to be built for this particular purpose, which is wonderful. Um, and I think we'd like as a community to know that that's what it's going to stay. Yeah. And that it won't then be rented out for, you know, yeah. Okay. Okay. Let me go back to the trees just for a second. I just suggest that you do evergreen in that area that you want to screen out. That's basically a soda. Yes, sir. And it's better practice to screen that off. All your, uh, Brandon is, is a green giant, a native species. No, I don't know the answer. No, you should go to the leaves. Okay. Yeah. There's a number of, um, native evergreens, whether, you know, spruce or, you know, there's, there's, there's certainly ones that we can select that would achieve what the purpose. Yeah. And shrubs. So I think the whole thing is green, but you're buying them anyway. You're just saying, yeah, it doesn't show what trees are coming out and it doesn't show what species are being put in. Yeah, it does. It does? No, I didn't see what was coming out. It's 3, 3, 4, 1. Yeah. There's a chart. I saw the chart, but it didn't say what species is. Yeah, it does. It does? Where does it say species? It has sizes. So, yeah, so what we did is we identified the number of trees being removed and the, the chart that shows the trees to be planted just references, um, it was through the Wayland Conservation Commission that they have a list of acceptable native trees. So we kind of, at this point in time, just left it, as long as we selected species from that approved list, um, those species could be used. Uh, I'm looking at the plan now, um, maybe I'm missing it. How do I know? I can see it says, uh, trees to save, trees to remain, but what's coming out? We need a separate plan and charting all the trees. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult with the busyness of this site plan. What we tried to do is, is we identified all of the trees on site. Um, that, um, on the existing conditions plan. And then what we did was we flagged on that plan, the trees that will be saved. So essentially the trees that are not identified to be saved would be the ones that would be removed. Well, where's a list of how many there are and how big they are? Yeah, there's, yes. You know, a table here, it shows 12 being removed, but not a lot of detail.
More of a landscape plan.
I see. Okay. Yeah, we need, um, we should probably do a site walk. So if the trees are marked on site, we can see what we're dealing with. Okay. That would help. Okay. I can make arrangements. Brandon, can we make arrangements to do that at some point here? Yes. Yeah. We'll tag them. Yeah. Put a ribbon or something. Okay. I can do that. You can put a long tape around that area. Okay. Okay. That we can just, you know, um, I also on the plans, I didn't notice frontages being called out and setbacks for the new building. Is that on the plans? I saw one place where there was a setback, but that was it. So we have a zoning summary table on the cover sheet, um, which isn't in this presentation, but basically on sheet one of the plan set in the lower left-hand corner, there's a table of zoning compliance, which identifies that the lot area, the minimum frontages, the frontage provided, the minimum setbacks, and then it identifies both the existing setbacks as well as what the proposed setbacks are, identifies at the closest point. Right. But we need to see it on a plan. Sure. For the setbacks, we need to see that on a plan. And for the frontage, we need to see it. I'm assuming that you're taking your frontage from Hobbs Road?
Correct. Yeah. So what we can do is that we can do a figure up that, um, specifically identifies the, the frontage and we can, we can have provide dimensions, um, from every corner of the building. Yep. That'd be great. Thank you. Yep. Sure.
You guys jump in. We have a list. I did not receive comments from FIRE. Have you talked to FIRE directly to the FIRE department, make sure that they're okay with, uh, make sure they can get to all the sides? Because they usually, they're like pretty, put them they need to get to the X amount of sides of the building, make sure that they kept the building. So I don't know if you had that. So I had them, uh, primarily approve the, uh, spring push system. Yeah. That was the first thing that we got done, uh, with FIRE. Um, I'm assuming this, the typical process is I, I take the prints. And again, this is, it's been a long time. I can reach out to Miki, I can reach out to Miki, I can reach out to Miki, I can get comments on them, um, I'm not sure if they're- It will go to FIRE for, you know, go to the different departments and then, and then finally it's a building for permit. No, I'll reach out to them too, if you, if you, just make sure that they're okay with the site plan.
We should be fine. I mean, you have, uh, you have access on one.
You have access on almost, almost all four sides. Correct. Yeah. The height of the building, there appear to be two places where it's taller than it is. It's allowed, however, I can't tell what you're measuring from, so, Robert, why don't you explain to them what, where they need to measure from? I did the mean height, and the average grade to that, the highest roof, and those two, two pieces that were higher than 35 feet. It's based on the average grade across the site, so you figure out where that is, and then you measure from what the average grade is, and then you measure up. And the average grade, that's the perimeter of the foot grade. Can I, can I jump in here? The average grade, yeah, go ahead. Um, I was just going to say, there is a, there is a sheet, uh, that came with the architecturals, which, uh, we overlaid, um, our building, um, with the site plan grading, and then worked out a table based on the Weyland, um, conditions, which allowed us to take the mean grade, which came out at about 31 feet. So, um. Okay, because I didn't see the mean grade listed, so that's what I was trying to figure out. It's SB1. There's a table on SB1. SB1 up in the corner, right-hand corner, there's a, there's a chart. Yeah. And it shows, it shows all the, uh, locations where, um, we took the grade to the roof. Right. It doesn't have a number for your average grade, unless I'm missing something.
Is that, or is that what your, 188 is your average grade? No, down at the, I'm down at the bottom of, well, the, all of the points are, are measured from grade to the peak of the roof. And there are, I think, 15 of them. But it, but it's average in measuring. It's the average grade across the site. So, if you took the grade elevation and divided that with the A through P, you would get, I think, to an average grade.
And it's from that point that you measure the height. Um, that isn't the way I understood the, the memorandum that, uh, that I worked from, which I have a copy of here on my desk. It's the height of the room, the base of the building. Our understanding was the foundation. That's always the way it is.
It's not what the bylaws is. Well, I vote to put the bylaws measures. I'm not an author, but I was just asking. Well, let's read the, let's read the bylaws that we all have. It says the distance measured barely from the average grade to the highest roof element. The average. Generally, the average grade plus the height. And elsewhere, if you look in the building code, the same message. You can stand. I'm not looking at building code. I'm measuring it at the base of the building. You don't take the, what if you had a 40-acre lot? That would be, I'm sorry. Right. Right. And I've done it this way before. Mark Lanza is, he's texting me. He's on the call. I don't see him on the screen. Okay. I'm just going by what the bylaw says. No, it's not correct. Well, it might not be correct, but it's interpretation. There are many, many definitions. No, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm just. You are arguing with me. And I'm the one that's done it for 40 years. Believe me. No, but it has, but it has to make sense. I'm a non-autotect. And I'm, this is the way I'm reading it. But that's only a definition of an average. That's all you're getting. No, but. I'm not telling you how to calculate the height of a building. All I asked was the applicants to make sure. There's a formula for calculating the height of the building. And what you're reading is not that.
Well, unfortunately for some of our bylaws, that's how it's written. And actually, that's how the planning board's been doing. I don't think we should do this in a public meeting. I think it's just kind of a discussion without. That's fine. And you shouldn't have been so forceful if you think we should do it separately. And I'm happy to do that. We're all happy to do that. So when we're done with people, we'll talk about it. They can basically demonstrate their calculation and prove that they're right. Just to say that, look at it and make sure that that's correct. And even if it is taller, we can still, the planning board can still grant awareness. It can. That's the whole point is that it's right. Because I was hoping it wasn't higher.
It's not a big deal. Just want to make sure it's based on the same page. That part.
Snow sewage, we've talked about this, Matt, before. About a giant storm. We have 48 inches like that this year. Yep. That they'd probably be some kind of condition that if the snow sewage area overfilled, that someone needs to take off the lot. Yeah, there's ample place. There's ample land area for snow. Yeah. We did label it. It's typical practice in managing properties in general. Unfortunately, we do have to physically remove snow. And we did have to do it actually this past year. So, yeah, we can write that in certainly. You know, just to reiterate that that's common practice.
I don't know if you fix this. One of those sheets had a A1-1 had a weird mislabeled garage label where the diameter was proposed. That should have been corrected. Bob, I think we did correct that. Where the living room said garage. It was right in here. Yeah. We're on a different sheet. We're on a different sheet. Whatever the final sheet is, it's going to be updated. Whatever the point when we finalize the sheets.
It's updated in the presentation. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that.
And none of these are going to have cars. Or then I think they use their cars or they can have a car on site, the residents. It's very unlikely that in the residents, but it is possible. Right. Mostly being visitors. They come and visit. For the day, they want to pick someone up. They want to go to lunch and come back. Or they want to come and spend time. Right. Right. People are not coming and going. I have one people who probably can start to know it's hard to clean going all the time. And you won't see that. No. No. The assumption is also that the residents will be at a program during the day. Yeah. They have activities during the day. So there will be, in any household, there'll be a time when they leave and a time when they come back. But it's not going to be back and forth and back and forth. And your other facilities that you have, maybe similar to this, have they counted as educational? Yes. They're standard group homes. So this is a little different model. No, I understand. And normally, education is on the premises. And so I was just wondering if your other homes, when you have people leaving the facility, if it's still considered an educational facility. Yeah. Because the group homes still have educational components for daily living skills. Okay. Thank you. Do you have all of your questions answered? I think so. I have to check in about the, such as power inventory and how that plays a part. And what will count on the list? Is it SHI? Yes. I have to look into that. Minus N is yes. The answer is yes.
Yeah. Well, it counts in the 20.
Yeah. Which I believe they would also. Right. That's correct. Right. That's correct. Yeah. These will all be affordable. We all consider affordable housing as well. So, I think that's another kind of attribute, yes, of the project. Okay. It's not a 40B. No, I know. It's just, they would qualify. The local action unit, LAUs. So, you'll have to figure out how to do that here. So, it gets qualified.
What becomes of the existing house on lawn here? Say?
It's a separate lot. It's a separate, yeah. It's a solely separate lot. But it looks like, you know, their driveway kind of comes on to property. It's an easement. That's okay. Yeah. Was that probably the original part? The barn belonged to that property originally? My understanding is that if you look way, way, way back, there was 50 acres that got kind of sliced up. And then the Jane Kamen, who still lives next door, she can go over it with you in detail. They had sold off different lots over time. Old houses, too. Yeah. Yeah. It was an approved subdivision, I think, in 1962. Finally, yeah. And I picked, I have the map of you.
We discussed this today, it's just with Brandon. Just give us a little bit of the, the question of the percentage of landscaping, just to make sure that that's somewhere in the plan. So, I would expect the next plan when it's updated to have that information. Is there a certain percentage that's listed? Yeah, I said 10%, 10%. I mean, anything that can be waived, of course, but, but I think, I think Brandon said they're at 10% for that. So, so the bylaw requires 10% around the, the landscape around the parking area. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's 10% of the square footage of the parking facility, which is the spaces including the handicapped. So, what we can do is on, on this updated plan set, we can provide that calculation demonstrating that the 10% is met. Yeah, I see. Yeah, that makes sense. ADL means what? Activity of daily living. Okay.
And in the write-up of date from David Ross on page, not numbered, one page, two, it talks about erosion and sediment controls consisting of straw waddles and siltation fencing. And I'm assuming that's only door and construct. Correct. Correct. Yep. And on that site plan that's on the screen, it's, it's the brown dash line, which pretty much goes around the perimeter of the site along Bob's road and Alden street. Just given the fact that portions of these are within the riverfront and buffer zone, as well as just to protect any undisturbed areas.
Also in the write-up, you talk about six spaces and one handicapped accessible, and then you give the widths, but it looks like the handicapped accessible one is in fact wider, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. That qualifies as a legitimate handicapped space with the adjacent. And the existing concrete pad, is that going to be removed or is that going to be used? No, we're going to remove it all. Yeah. Is it?
There's also a current peer review that should be done hopefully by next week by Dills and Rory. So at the next continuing, wherever that is, that's two weeks or a month, whatever that is, we should have a peer review consultant peer there to discuss that. And you're not going to have any open space at all? Your people won't be walking around in the back part where you're going to have your septic and everything? No, I mean, you're not. You can. I mean, I'm just curious if you were going to or not planning on it. I think it would just be grass. Right. Like a trail or a nature trail. Oh, no. Sorry. No, no. It wouldn't be a paved or specific trail. No. Correct. Correct. Like a walking path. No. Yeah. It's really not that big. The lot's not that big. No, I have nothing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly for a lot. Yeah. Right.
Are you going to have any signage at all? I mean, the number of the address. Yeah. Just the address. Yeah. Okay. How point does this kind of blend in? Yeah. You know, that's fine. I just. You drive by. There's one that Miniman has one on Sedbury. And I think I've been talking. Yeah. We've been to Sedbury, one of those towns. And we visited for a different kind of project. One of them, the 212. And you drive by and you won't know it's it. We made a real conscious effort to make it really, really, really look like an adjacent colonial. You know, it's designed as a house. It's the inside. It's the inside that's very different. Robert, did you say you have heard from the fire department or you haven't? I don't know. Let me chat them again. Yeah. Please do. To make sure that the circulation around the site is okay with them.
So I want to return. Is this primarily what your firm does these times? No. Are there any outdoor lighting fixtures? Are you going to have lights in the parking lot? Yeah. We'll have light from the building so that you can see. You're talking about next to the doors. We have to put lights next to the doors. I'm sure. Okay. There are pathway lighting and lighting out in the parking area. Lamp post? No. Lamp. But the pathways will be lit? Yes. All the doorways, yes, will be lit. So when you see the path, the sidewalks? Yeah. Yep. It would be illuminated so that you could pass over the sidewalk safely. Yes. And was there anything in here about illumination? I didn't notice it. No. So we need to know that it's going to be dark sky compliant and that the lighting will go facing down.
Basically, we need a lighting plan and a landscape plan. Well, we're also missing a septic design. It's not here. Well, let's say. There's not even a plan. It said that it was approved and we can get a copy of it approved by the Board of Health. It said that. It's not part of that plan. No, it's not here. There was a septic plan. There's on the digital file, there's one called, I think it's called labeled septic survey plant and site plan sheet. And that should be the one you're looking for. That's the one you emailed out, right? I might have emailed it. I either emailed it in a file or it's online digitally.
That's septic plan. And that one is dated November 4th, 2025. Is that the one that was approved? I believe so. Yeah.
If I could just get back to the lighting. This is Brandon. So in terms of a lighting plan, I guess my understanding, and correctly if I'm wrong, Matt, is we weren't looking to specify or provide typical commercial site plan lights. And this would be more typically in line with what a single family home would have, where it's going to be light fixtures on the building, you know, and maybe just some lower illumination along the walk would be similar to a single family home. I mean, otherwise, to do a lighting plan with like photometrics and stuff would typically be done if we had, you know, larger, taller. Yeah. And I think the intent was to not have it look like a commercial lot. Am I wrong, Matt? No. Design is like a single family house. For example, in our bylaw, you can't have spotlights that shine onto the street or onto neighboring properties. Right. We need to know that that's not going to be happening and where you're, what kind of lighting you're anticipating. I don't think we need to see. It's going to be fancy. Yeah. I don't think we need to see, you know, that it's this particular sconce that you're using. Just so.
Approximately where you're putting the lighting and then it won't be shining onto neighbor's property and it won't be shining onto the street. Of course. So can I, can we add that statement into the drawings to ensure that the building department administers making sure that that is correct to avoid any additional expense of some elaborate lighting? Because now I understand what you're saying. So I have been involved in that type of thing before. So if I may ask the board, you know, we're trying to keep this as affordable as possible.
If there's a way that we could. I'm asking for photometric. No, we're not. The elevation showed that there was lights, you know, an onion fixture next to something like that. Just there was some presentation so that we could see there wasn't a giant floodlight pointing down at the back drive. We just want to see what the land sort of looks like and that it doesn't involve giant. Bob, we could add that to the elevations, show the way the light fixtures are specifically located, that they're down lit. Yes, absolutely. We'll show can lights or something like that, that are that are near the exit ways that we already have. That would that would be the only lights that we would be required by code and it would give a safety aspect to the building. Bob, don't you also need to have some kind of lighting where the van is in the back in case it's dark and people, the van is coming in after four o'clock in the winter? They would be unloading, but the residents would come up at the sidewalk in front. Oh, they just park it on night. That's more of a utility just to keep to keep it again looking like a colonial. Got it. You know, so we don't have any real indication that it's OK. And so it's out of the weather in the winter. Correct. Correct. Was that clabbered siding?
It's vinyl siding. Vinyl plank is what we like to call it.
Is there anything else? Any other questions that the rest of you have? Can they paint that or is it color impregnated material? It's color impregnated in the factory. It is paintable. On top of that. Yeah. You can add a specific primer. Yes. And you can make it. It's not in my business. Is that less expensive than hardy planks? Yes, it is. It's just that when there's a storm, you know, the vinyl doesn't always make it.
I could refer you to different houses that are built in town.
I'm not questioning it. So, Robert, is there anything else that we need? Well, there's a few things. Not any more comments. I think we're at that point where it's meant for being an introduction meeting, get the juices flowing out, some comments, some things that they need to provide or adjust. And then from there is decide, A, do you want to site visit? Yes. And B, we need to have a continuation of a date and another decision. Right. So, why don't we see what we can arrange first? Here we go.
In your meantime, to just get the trees sort of. Yeah, just consult with Brandon. How often should you start looking for dates? Brandon, is two weeks adequate time, you think? It should be. I mean, it's kind of hard to say until we get the results of the peer review on the drainage. But, you know, assuming that everything should be in relatively good standing, you know, I think two weeks would be good.
Wait until the peer review is done. Looking at Robert. That's the same walk. I didn't even do the same walk. Well, peer review. Yeah. I think that just gave Moe the site. Yeah. And you can invite the peer reviewer to do that with us. It makes us take down another tree and make an adjustment on the tree. I'm suggesting date someone. Up the morning of the 27th.
Can't do that. 27th or the 28th.
You're in June now, I assume? I think it's on May. May 27th. And a couple of days a week before. The week before the 18th. Is that what you're talking about?
If they're ready, I don't know. The 22nd. We want to see where the trees are. The 22nd. But that's the Friday before a long weekend. Yeah. Good. I have company on that weekend. The 29th. The 29th. Yeah.
There's a 20th. Can anyone do the 28th or not? I can't. No, you can't do the 28th. Okay. Sorry.
The 29th. It's the 29th. Okay. With you. No. Did you hear that? The 29th. Yes. Yep. That works for me. How does that work for anybody else in the board? You make it work. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Like we did like.
Yes. Earlier than that. We could do earlier than that. Showings. Yeah. We'll go on a separate meeting. We'll take the. We'll retire a guy's piece of work. Seven. I can do seven. But eight is. I can make eight work. I'll skip one. 13. Quarter of eight. 730. I'm fine with 730. But we're getting some grumbling over here. Why don't we try eight. Eight. If it's okay. On Friday the 29th. Is that it? I don't know if you guys. Time. 8 a.m. 8 a.m. 8 a.m. Can you invite the consultant. If he wants to come. Yes. I would like to.
Great. That's one topic. And then the other one is continuation. Date. And then the date of the decision. Which for now. It expires on. May 24th. Okay. Well let's see what we're going to do. Continuation first. So. Our next meeting is. The 27th. Right? Yes. And we're not sure. If they will or won't be ready.
So the peer review. Got back to me today. Let me see what. And also the new plans. Okay. So I'm not. So yeah. So I'm not. Not. I know we'll be thinking. Probably the peer review. Before the next meeting. My concern is that we'll get it too late. For them to be able to respond. And that's why. But let me see what. So I. I'm hesitant to say. Two weeks is good enough. I think it's. I think you're probably looking at. June 10th.
Continue here. Yeah. Let me look quickly. Is that okay with you Matt? Yeah. It'll be completely by the end of the week. Or next week. Which doesn't really give much time for. The peer reviewer is supposed to be getting us something by the 27th. This week. Or early next week.
But that doesn't give us much time for the applicant. And then you would get a copy of what the peer review said. And you'd have to respond to it. So we want to give you enough time to do that. But so if we could continue this hearing until June the 10th. June the 10th. That should give you enough time. To respond. Brandon does that sound fine. June 10th. To give us time to respond to the. Thank you. And we can do it. In person.
It's easier to look at the plan sometimes. By virtually. Yeah. Is that okay with you guys? If we do it virtually. Okay.
That. By Zoom. Come on. You must have a teenager who can show you how. I know.
And then what is the due date for the. Right now it's May 24th. It's what? May 24th. Yeah. So we need an extension of time to review the plans and review with you what we're doing. And then come up with a decision and filing. So I don't know what's going to happen on the 10th. We're still waiting for your proof that whenever that is. Right. That should give you enough time to get that kind of stuff in play. And then when's the next meeting? And the 24th. So perhaps we can get an extension until for a decision until June the 24th. But we will be endeavoring to get you something before that, knowing that we just have to see what happens in between. But rather than keep going and redoing it, it would be better if we could just go to the 24th. So I want to do the 25th. So that we can. The 28th. Well, actually the 26th. So we have time to put it on paper. That's actually what I put down during the 26th. Okay, so Robert, how do you want to do that? Do you have a piece of paper here that you could give them and they could sign up now? I can put it on an hour now. Maybe it's easier. I would think it would be easier. Yeah, I'll do it right now. Okay. After which other. I'll do it after this. Okay. And Bill isn't here. Um, so we need, um, a motion to continue the hearing until, um, June the 10th. What time? Uh, how about, we're going to try and see if we could do it with conservation so that you don't have to keep going around in circles. That would be terrific. So if they start at 630, which is what we're saying, um, should we set it like for seven? Do you think? Yeah. Yeah. So I move that we continue the hearing to June 10th, 2026 at 7 p.m. to be held virtually, hopefully with the Conservation Commission. Second.
All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. And then Robert will get you a form to sign so that we can have that extension of time. It sounds like a lovely project. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing it. Yeah. Well, thank this guy. Well, thank you all very, very much.
Go to these two guys. Okay. Thank you. Thank you guys. We'll talk. Wait for Robert to come back. You can get started. Yeah. Introductions. Great. Could you snap the guy already?
Yeah. Let me make sure that I have the wrong paperwork. All of the residents or clients of this, they all live on site. Is that right? Yeah. They all live on site or people come in? No, they're the residents. It's the residents. I thought they said there was an educational part of themselves as well. Because they're learning to live independently. Yeah. The residents are being educated.
Which walks in. It'll be at seven o'clock. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Friends. Thank you, guys. I think you can, unless you have anything else that you want to tell us, I think you can. Yeah. Brandon, Bob, Mark, you can drop off. Yeah. I think we're hearing it close for this evening. Not close. Can you take up Mark Lansom? Okay.
I'm the chair. Hello. Hello. Robert will be back in a minute, but he knows who you are. So why don't you introduce yourselves to us, and we'll introduce ourselves to you. Great. Well, members of the board, so nice to be here. My name is Jesse Barakon. I'm the founder and president of Fido SP. We are one of the three partners that have come together, and in November, acquired Wayland Town Center outlet, AJ Duzon and Trim. Anthony Rich, legacy capital partners, one of the three partners, as Jesse mentioned, and also a resident of Weston, so right down the street. Yeah. And I think I would say just kind of as we roll in, we'll still keep this in the introduction section until Robert gets in, but AJ and I are both local. We think that's actually really important to executing on this project. Our third partner is a retail real estate investment fund out of Chicago that my firm, Fido, has worked with for many, many years. When we, AJ and I first got interested in this project and the potential for it, and AJ, who lives next door in Weston, kind of dragged me out here, it felt very much like this was doable and challenging and exciting, but also was the sort of project that needed a very, very experienced investor team. And I think in addition to our two firms, North Pond, who some of your colleagues on the select board have met because we've been negotiating very easily, actually, an easement to grant to the town, to then grant to the state to effectuate the paving of the rail trail, which we got done. Um, but North Pond has a lot of experience on centers like this, uh, you know, they have a lot of experience with the asset management. They have some, they have a lot of experience with grocery anchored centers. So our feeling was, as we put together the team, to have two local partners, um, critical to have a partner that owns a lot of retail across the country and can bring that perspective in addition to kind of a deeply local perspective is really important. So that's the introduction, um, of the three groups. You know, I, I know the North Pond team is excited to meet you all. Um, and, you know, we're happy to hold there until Robert gets back or certainly dive in. I know this was framed as a discussion and introduction, which we're looking forward to. Um, can you tell me where you'd like to go from here? Okay. Um, I think we can probably just start jumping in. Um, you had met with the select board and I heard what you said, and, um, that might be a good thing to share with this board. Uh, we'd love to. So, um, you know, the sentiment of, of, and, and the message of what we shared with the select board was, um, in short, we, we don't believe this project is broken, but there are a lot of things that need to be fixed. Um, and I was actually just sitting here on my computer, reviewing the master special permit. And, you know, there's a section there that talks about, you know, in quotes, friendly from a pedestrian perspective. And I think the way we just generally approach the world and retail real estate development, um, and value creation is that to make these places accessible and comfortable for humans, right. To improve the entries and the way people move through the site, how we use public space and open space. That's actually a threshold for us and going out there and then leasing it. That's what tenants want. That's what the community wants. So a lot of what we've been doing, um, in addition to meeting with some of your colleagues, actually meeting with folks from the community. You know, there's a tremendous amount of transactional procedural history on this site, which we've been doing our best to get up to speed on. Um, but there's also just so much that exists out there that folks have expressed what they want to see in their own community. So I think a lot of it for us has just been listening and team building on our side, onboarding a landscape architect. Um, that was kind of an obvious one. I think happened within the first couple of weeks of closing, uh, you know, onboarding a social media team as an example and recognizing that to make this place more accessible and exciting for the next generation of residents in Wayland, how do we have a presence online? Right. And how do we support our tenants who also are trying to do the same? So it's really been a lot of listening. It's been a lot of team building. I think we're transitioning to this moment where, you know, we're going to continue listening and we've heard a lot and we're now moving to a place where we want to start effectuating the plan. And that's why it's really great timing to be in front of you all. We just simply cannot do it without the planning board. Um, and I think we look at this evening's conversation as a chance to really kind of set the table and create a strong foundation for a partnership with you all to fix this place. And our work generally has been really hyper-focused and procedurally, can I hand something out? I know, okay, great. So, um, let me just take one pass. Um, so we put together just this visual tool. You all know the site. Um, I'll wait for it to go around. Okay. Yeah, many. Um, one note I want to piggyback off of Jesse, some of Jesse's comments. And I think you'll see it on the, on the, um, visual here, although it looks very simple and there was a lot of thinking that went into the simplicity here. And Jesse mentioned some really good topical items, you know, at the end of the day, a center like this can't be one dimensional. It's not about one great tenant. It's not about one great, uh, amenity, right? It's about many different pieces coming together. And I don't think any two centers are the same. It really depends. What does it mean for the community? How does the community want to interact with it? Public space is very important. Um, what are the, what are the community groups and how are they going to, um, participate? How are the, um, residents are going to participate? So, um, to Jesse's earlier point, it was really important for us to, to listen, understand the history, understand, um, you know, where we felt they would get the highest and best use of what are the pieces that kind of make the cohesive whole. I think if you go to a center and you're there and it's activated and there's folks everywhere, there's a feeling like that it's just right. And so most of this comes down to how does it feel right? And usually something that feels right has 20 or 30 pieces working together seamlessly. Um, so we can talk a lot about those pieces. Some of it's as simple as paint colors and beautification and, um, connectivity and, you know, all the pieces working in, in unison. And I think Jesse will talk through some of that, but, um, you know, that's our, you know, our point of view is that there's a lot of pieces that come together to do that. And so we're trying to look at that holistically. And I think you'll start hearing how we, how we view that and, and we can go into more detail. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so hopefully something that resonates. I mean, I think just a little bit of framing, I mean, we view our role as the owner, we have two core groups we have to serve. It's the community and the residents and all the people that are going to come to the site. Ideally, it's a lot more than are currently coming to spend money shopping and dining, or maybe not, or maybe it's just hanging out using some of the public realm. And that's one group of kind of folks that we're thinking a lot about. The other one is just the tenants, right? And for us to improve the tenancy there, there are spaces here that have never been leased in the history of the project. We've walked into spaces that there are still no floor. And that is, that's wild, right? To us. Um, and in order to activate those spaces and actually to improve the tenancy, bring in better local operators, like these two things have to coexist together. So where we always start on projects in almost six months is like, all right, to AJ's point, like, how do we fix the public realm elements, access, et cetera? So as you can see in what we handed out, where we are start, have started, and, you know, one of the conversations to have quickly tonight would be like, how do we work with you all on some of the approvals we're going to need on some of the elements we'll touch on? But, you know, we started the edges of the site. Uh, so many people on both 27 and 20 don't even know the concentration of shops at Whalen Town Center. We continue to hear that from folks in the community. Um, the way in which the master special permit and the overall, uh, master overlay use, the muad or written is such that, for example, we can only advertise six tenants, right? We've got 160,000 square feet of space, and we actually need to be able to show the community there are more than six tenants here. We're going to have dozens of tenants. So it's little things like that. So it's gateway signage, announcing the project to the community that's here, advertising for our tenants in a tactful, tasteful way that they are here is kind of a really critical concern of ours. And we think a quite easy fix, uh, so long as it's done, um, in concert with you all and done in a way that we feel like is tasteful and in kind of harmony with the context, we've engaged Whitney Vegas, which is a really great local, um, environmental graphics firm. That's already in process looking at this for us as part of that. In addition to signage, you know, we show here gateway beautification. Like how do we just make the entry into the site feel like you're arriving somewhere more beautiful and more visually stimulated. Some color would be nice. We've talked to Russell's team about how do we beautify it seasonally with different plantings and work with our neighbor. So like this all kind of comes into the category of what's the experience like when you arrive at the site, how do you announce the site? How do we do that in a way that draws people in and benefits the tenants? So I think that's a obvious one. And we'll spend some more time talking with you all about that. Um, moving forward from here. The other one, if you look at the red line that extends on Andrew across the site, we're in the process now of designing, we'll soon install new banners, um, that add some color and texture to the site, you know, that sounds really easy, but the existing hardware is cheap and not great. So we need better hardware and we need better design. We've also redesigned, um, the logo and the likeness of Wayland Town Center. That logo up top in the left, you'll see is inspired by, of course, the W's, but also just the history of quilting in Wayland, some of which is displayed in the historical society, what that means to New England towns. There's a rich history there. It also feels like to us, the way in which we think about communities and retail is also kind of somewhat of a knitting and a quilting. So that really resonated with our creative team and the way in which we thought about how do we visually represent this place in new ways. So you'll see some of that in the banners, wayfinding needs to be improved. You know, one of the things you all see when you're on site is there are all these, and they were permitted, right? There are all these great maps that are on site. Then unless you're this close in front of it are completely like illegible. So like who, like, and we don't really see in public realm, many people going up to signs and looking like it's just, it has no utility whatsoever. So again, I think the idea is how do we make this place more usable and understandable to the humans that arrive there? And that's really kind of the intention of the red line. And then before I go to Alyssa Ave, there are also a series of underutilized green spaces across the site. So to AJ's point about working with community partners, we've met with a lot of folks in the community. There are a lot of needs, desires, and wants. One of the things that we think we can deliver on, which our understanding is that it was a bit harder for the town to figure out where to put it, is simply a dog park, right? So we've been working with a group of residents in a dog park. You can see the location of it on this piece of real estate, which is not a grade. It's not level. It works really well because you can have parking off to the right there, and we feel like that's a great place to work with community members on a dog park. We'll pay for the fence. We're working with them on a license agreement where they will actually maintain an operating, right? And that's part of our MO as developers is that we feel like whether it's a tenant or a community group, we want to partner with partners that can execute versus always feeling we have to self-perform. That is just not necessarily durable or viable in the kinds. Similarly, there's a really amazing local Wayland family that started a foundation on behalf of their deceased daughter, the Eliza Norton Foundation. They've been looking for a site for a skating rink for a long time. We've been talking to them on putting a seasonal skating rink on the green that you can see there that sits just outside of where Sperrywinder is. And then lastly, you know, there's all this other green space kind of in plan to the north of Andrew that we feel like is wide open from an activation perspective. And that's where we're already talking to the volleyball groups about what could they do in the space near them. We've been thinking a lot with a series of youth sports operations coordinators and volunteers about how we can do something else on the green space. But that's generally how we're thinking about the open space in the site. And then the last piece, and then we'll stop our little rant here, is it was very clear to us when we were reviewing kind of the documentation that existed in the public domain around what people wanted and what some of the major moves would be and what the community wanted to see happen was this central spine that kind of exists between Andrew and the rail trail on Alyssa as being a place that actually had some sort of public realm community value. We do not believe as of today that has been satisfied. So we feel really strongly about creating a pedestrian zone in this section shown here on Alyssa. And again, not our idea. There's been a lot of studies done by many of your colleagues. We've talked to a lot of folks in the community. We want to create space that folks from retail can spill out into in common area. We want to leverage the $92,000 left of the shared streets grant and do something there. And I think that for us fits into this overall belief that kind of from the path to the pump, right, if we can also improve the rail trail connection, which right now on site has existed next to a dumpster, right, and actually really celebrate that connection all the way up to the town green, that will finally deliver at the heart of this site something that is of value to the community in a way that hasn't existed before. It will be iterative, right? Some of it will be temporary. Some of it we want to talk to you about, we believe should be permanent. As Robert knows, we've met with fire, we've met with police, we've met with building, just to issue spot with them and understand their concerns. Hardest one, certainly fire, being wanting to have a 20-foot wide fire lane coming through the middle, which if that's what we have to do, we're going to do it, right? But we just fundamentally believe the site has really, really underachieved over the last decade plus. And, you know, some of these things, and again, we haven't spoke yet about a single new tenant. We're just talking about the things that we are going to invest in time, energy, and money to actually make the site better. And again, our fundamental belief is that we do those things, the tendency will improve. There are a couple of things that we've really pushed that we think are critical. There's no place to get a cup of coffee on site, which is wild. You know, Pam from Chocolate Therapy has a little espresso machine, but she doesn't open until 10, sometimes 10.30. And she's serving it because there's nowhere else to go. So I think from our perspective, like, we're going to get that cafe deal done. We're going to get all of this done. And then in a methodical way, we're going to start putting tenants in vacant spaces and then thinking about how we actually support the tenants who really want to be here long term and improve the tendency over time. So that is, in, you know, 10 minutes, our overall philosophy of how we can add value to this site. And, you know, I'm sure a bunch of red flags raised in all of your respective heads when you're like, oh, they're going to need to kind of talk to the planning board about this, namely, Alyssa, obviously, we have to work on the signage. You know, our belief is that anything that is permanent in the public realm is kind of certainly the turf at which we want to come back and have a conversation with you all. And our intention is to get back on the docket, be back in front of you in June. And instead of kind of talking in generalities and sharing plans like this, we're actually coming in and sharing some of the work our landscape architects, our signage designers have done that we can submit to you in a way that can kind of expedite, you know, approvals. And just based on the temperature of this room right now, we're hopefully get as much of that done as possible before the summer. But we're really excited to kind of start the process with you all.
So that was kind of a little bit faster than we did the select board, but a quick sum. One thing that you said, but not as strongly here as you did with the select board is you're not looking to have everything done immediately. You want to just cut off a chunk at a time and see if we can't move forward. And that sounds great. Yeah. And we are just, I mean, AJ and I talk every day on this. We are generally impatient, which is motivated by, I think, enthusiasm and curiosity. Like, how fast can we go? How do we improve this as quickly as possible? But we recognize this takes time. You know, we've been really, you know, to us, six months going by, like there's so much we would have liked to have done, but that's not the way these things work. I will just say, when you look at this site from the perspective of community economic development, tenants are struggling right now. So there are things that we, I mean, there are many things that we wish we had more time on, but I think part of the sense of urgency, and we can share some of this, is from our tenants who are saying, like, when are we going to have better signage? Like, when is this stuff going to happen? When is Alyssa going to become more pedestrian friendly? So I think that is certainly something that we are trying to temper and deal with tenants on, but like, it's not just us saying we've got to move fast. You know, this is coming from rent-paying tenants. And you know, those are important relationships for us. A lot of what I hear, the stores are so empty because the rent is so high. I mean, is that, you know, I don't know if that's 100% true, but that's certainly what's at the tip of everyone's tongue. So is that something that you're, and this doesn't really have anything to do with the planning board, but is that something that you're thinking of acknowledging or working with tenants about? Yeah, no part. So, you know, it's interesting. We do, so whenever we buy an asset like this, we do tenant interviews with everyone because we want to get the temperature of, you know, what are the issues? What are the things we need to solve for, right? And sometimes it's simply an economic issue, right? I would say overall, maybe one tenant thought their rent was too high from a market standpoint. The consistent message was traffic. There's not enough traffic coming through the center because from a market standpoint, Sudbury is more expensive down the street. Like those, those markets that are there, the Whole Foods market across the street, the brothers. So that's Sudbury, right? Like Wayland should be a step up, right? Closer to native Weston and other, and other prime markets conquered Watertown, more expensive, more traffic. So the, the, the number one thing was, was traffic in the sense of like, there's nowhere else for me to go, if I want to be in this Wayland Weston, I want to get to the same market, there's nowhere to go. So our, and then we have monthly check-ins with our tenants, if not a lot more, because we're on site so much. Yeah, here we are. See how it works. I don't buy it here, just walk around. They're there. So, so it's, you know, and I think that's also where like our enthusiasm and our, and our energy comes from is we want to try and solve that because we're there and we can feel it and we can feel that it's, there's not activity. So we know that they're not making it up. So we're sitting there, we're going, where is everyone? I see everyone going in and out of B-Tone. B-Tone is probably the most active place in the whole site, right? In and out, in and out. It's very, you know, it's people are moving and grooving there. So it's, you know, I, and if you look at the parking, right, like it should, fitness, fitness, fitness, sorry. And so the parking, even if you just kind of take a step back and look at the parking, like there's just an abundance of parking, right? So I, you know, my gut is, and, and, and right now our new deals are below market and we're putting more money into the units to get the right tenants in, because if we, if we commit to the wrong tenants, then when we fix everything, we have a whole nother problem, right? So it's kind of that, how do you, and we even have withheld space that we could get rent on right now, because we're like, oh, two years from now, we're not going to like that, right? Which is a hard thing to do economically. So, you know, our collective feeling is we have a traffic issue here. Now you create a lot of traffic and then you don't have great places to shop and eat and can't have coffee. You have another problem there too. So we kind of look at these things in tiers. We need to have a couple traffic drivers, right? We're not going to have all of them. Let's say there's five things that drive traffic. We only have two of those, right? And then when that traffic gets there, we're going to have one thing that they love, right? And so we really think the cafe is that, and we think Alyssa Ave, you know, the Alyssa pedestrian zone is that, so if you have a cafe activated on a pedestrian friendly outdoor seating, and then we have one recreation area, maybe two that are driving traffic. So that brings you there. Then you end up at the cafe and you're sitting outside and go, I like it here, right? Those are the things that, okay, now more people are there. So when we take the next pennant and say, hey, look at what we've accomplished, step one, okay, I want to be here too. I buy into the vision. I see it. And here are the next things we want to do. Here's like the second tier of that activation. And so I think when we think about steps, we try and group these together and then take everyone on that journey with us. Because if you try and do everything at once, right, it just falls apart, right? I would also just say, like, we do a lot of this work. All we focus on is retail real estate development across the Commonwealth with some projects outside of Massachusetts. We do a lot of work with mass development. I've been a house doctor for them. Every single community we go into that has failing retail, the first thing people say is rent is too much. And they're right. Because at the end of the day, rent is just a product of sales. Like the way it works in retail is that you can pay a certain amount of occupant. You can pay a certain amount of rent. It should be a percentage of sales. Your occupancy should be, call it for a restaurant, 7% or 8% of your revenue. And what we're seeing is the rent is definitely too high for certain tenants right now in the Wayland Town Center based on their sales. There's no doubt. Because those two are linked. That's the way we look at retail real estate and pricing. What is interesting is that to AJ's point, the way we are pricing the real estate here, which is still below market for Route 20, is actually what we think a reasonable sales number is for tenants, given the place that we're going to create. And we back out a rent number. And on certain deals that we're going to do at the beginning, we are actually, and I'll share this with you all, we're going to do percentage rent deals. We're going to take some risks. We're going to say that your rent is capped at a percentage of your sales. And we will take the risk with you. We will lower the base rent. And that's just, that's how we've done things in Cambridge. That's how we've done things in Boston, in Newton. And I mean, I think it's just alignment of interest, but also recognizing that rent will always be too high when you're not succeeding in retail, period. And I would just say, you know, there are a tremendous amount of headwinds right now in retail. Cost of goods are accelerating at a rate that I've just never seen over the course, like year to year. Cost of labor is accelerating. It's a rate we've never seen year to year. Post-pandemic, there are so many external factors that are making it really, really hard to be a successful retailer that we just have to deal with in stride. And people always divert to rent, even though it's, you know, a few points relative to labor or goods, because they feel like they can negotiate that. It's harder to negotiate the other. But it's a great question. Your reply, your presentation is excellent. So I hope that gets out in the community. Anyway, you can chop up the stop and shop parking lot in half. Get rid of that for that. Not with the lease they have. Really? How long? You know, we inherited a bunch of leases that we didn't do. And this is nothing we haven't said to stop and shop. They have a really challenging lease document as relates to the amount of parking, the co-tenancy. There are certain, and we're going to work with them on this because we're going to deliver things they need. So one of the approaches is stop and shop wants better signage. Because if you look up and down 20, every other grocery anchor center has way better signage for their anchor tenant, right? We are willing to say to them, we're going to go to the town and we're going to work with all of you guys to get you better signage and everybody better signage. But we need relief from you in all these restrictions on the rest of the site. That's how we'll approach it with stop and shop. And we'll be transparent with you all as to why we're coming to you to ask for these things. I mean, like the bakery competition clause where you're not allowed to put a bakery. Basically draw a line on Alyssa. Everything here on the stop and shop side, there are intense restrictions on that. And the orders actually go in there and things that can't come in with them. That's a mention of that. So, and I just don't think prior owners whatsoever. Like we couldn't do a bakery without a waiver for stop and shop. It must be a fact. In fact, it's a yogurt place in there. You got something, you got to have a last pastry. No, no, but was it a lap?
We've had to get, the prior owners have to get a waiver for fitness, for veterinary. It is an incredibly restrictive, it is astounding they agreed to this in the first place, but it is there, we're dealing with it. I think the prior owners just lacked the creativity to figure out how to negotiate around some of this. And like we were already engaged in conversation with stop and shop, but we're going to need the town's help on some of this. Because without it, they're not going to budge. I mean, I'll give you a great example. Like we want to create designated parking for the rail trail. We've already talked to DCR about it. It'll be wonderful. There are very few places to park on the rail trail between 95 and where we are tonight. And we got kicked out of the library, so it's even worse, too. But guess who we're going to have to deal with? Take back parking, be designated for an amazing public asset use. I'm sure.
So this is tricky. This is a tricky project. But they've been receptive. Totally. Doors open. We've met with them. They've been, I think, like most things, it's approach. It's build a relationship before you need something and to ask. And I think they appreciate that. And to Jesse's point, they have a traffic problem, too, right? They want more activity. And so I think the framing has to be, well, this is how we solve that problem. You've been talking about it in exchange and convince them to put it in the cafe in their stop and shop. They're the ones that are failing to draw people. Totally. And I think one of the other challenges back to the rent, like the original vision of this place, when we look at a tenancy map from 12 years ago, it was all national chains, right? It just did not meet the market where the market is, given who lives in this town and surrounding towns. And there were a lot of very formulaic businesses that I don't think knew how to engage in this community. Stop and shop is a good example. Like they are a formula chain. They're going to do the same thing here they're going to do in other communities. And I think we've had success on other projects working with non-formulated businesses that are willing to actually adapt over time and pivot. But that requires an invested, present proprietor or proprietor being in that place and engaging with the community. And that's much of what we're aiming for here. And I think to attract a really great operator that's local, you also have to not present yourself as a national win, right? So we're touring some really exciting multi-chain vendors, but they're local. They have four or five locations in New England, right? These are fabulous operators, whether on the F&B side or experiential fitness side. And I don't know that they would come to this site if there was a REIT national landlord because it just doesn't register, right? They want to also feel like they can pick up the phone and have a conversation with us, right? The same way we want to talk to them and really understand that they're going to be there and they're going to drive energy into their operations and create an experience. So I think that's another perspective. I think when most folks looked at this, they were thinking, how do we get Jimmy John's national franchise chains in here, right? We never looked at it this way, right? We looked at it and said, how do we treat this as a town center, right? Like a town center doesn't have national chains. You go to any town center, it's really well-run local operators, the heart and soul of that community, right? So that's what we're looking to replicate. Those are the people we're talking to. And the funny part is those are the people that are excited about it, right? So that's where it starts matching. And I think the other thing that's really exciting, what I'm really excited about, it might just be my proximity in the age of my children, is this future recreation space. Like we're talking to some really cool operators about activating the outdoor space, right? And again, that would change the activity level here. It would make it a destination for families, right? I think, you know, again, you start changing someone's habit. If you're dropping your kid off here for soccer or volleyball or these things, now all of a sudden you're at the center, you have an hour. Can I go get a coffee? Well, I'm going to go, I'm going to park my car. I'm going to go walk and sit outside. It's a pretty nice way to kill an hour while your kid's doing something fun. And now all of a sudden this becomes part of your life. I agree. But I've heard a lot of this even from the first owner. We're going to create this. You know, of course, the town gets surveyed. Oh, yeah, we want it to look like Concord. You know, dang, you got to stop a chop there, which in a way pollutes all the other vendors that show up because a lot of people don't even want to drive near it. So I hope you can follow through what you're talking about. I think it sounds great. Yeah. I think in our next meeting, we'll have more substance stuff to share for sure. Um, but yeah, we're, we got nowhere to hide. So we're, uh, we're, we're on, we're on there every, every, almost every day. Um, you know, we spend some time on site, so that it's definitely very personal for us. You know, all the people you have that too, like, like, I hope you had all go to the new Takara site. Like the inside, we did the bacon table site and they double the size of the building of the, the dining room and it looks so nice and in the passion that he has, it's not something you're going to get from a corporate company, but he has so much passion and love of, of sushi that he just wants to, he wants to ever be there and he seems so excited for the river cutting. That's one thing that I came in too many a few years to figure it out, but like we need to highlight the businesses. I noticed that town center has now started pointing on Facebook and his mother's day. You should come to this company. That was something that the other companies did not ever do. They never posted about their companies. At all. And that was a missed opportunity to highlight the companies that you have on Facebook and social media. It's so important to be able to see that and like, oh my gosh, this, you know, the Takara just opened and see the line. I feel, check it out. Family and I went there for dinner at night. Was it good? Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Honestly, it's amazing what they did that stage. I know it's awesome. And Jackie was buying the bargain. Yeah. That was the kind of folks we want to work with. Like the owner was behind the bar. I wouldn't be there also. The area that you've got for a future dog park, although I think that's terrific, that is the excess septic area. You know that, right? Okay. So if you ever needed to get more capacity, that's where you have to get it. I mean, we've also been in contact with the town about septic, recognizing limitations. We understand there's some other potential sites for that. On this property? That's our understanding. But that's something for us to kind of study. Happy to talk to you about where we've all been. That'd be good. Yeah, I mean, I think that's also part of it, like, the institutional knowledge that you all have on this site, like, that's one of the reasons we want to be here tonight and have kind of a less structured conversation is, as you look at this, things like the dog park, what feels unattainable?
Only the pedestrian zone. If it is, in fact, pedestrian, it's fine. But for fire and emergency service, there's not a quick way to get across, except to go straight down there. So that's, I'm sure the fire department will. Oh, don't worry. They've been.
It's not even just fire. It's more heart attacks, people falling. Yeah. So we've been looking at different ballads with police. We've been talking to fire about string lights and where the trucks can go and the size of that. But this is exactly the kind of stuff we'd love to hear more from you all as well. There are string lights over that street, but they're not approved, just so you know. We just don't want to be the ones who take them down. I see. I mean, I think when we spoke before, I said some things we'll be able to accomplish with a phase one approval. Some things will need a phase two approval. Some things will need an amendment to the master special permit. And possibly something might need the zoning bylaw changed. I'm hoping that we don't have to do the zoning bylaw thing. The other parts, I think we can manage just something. So I think that free sign and sign, if I'm not corrected, is in the master special clock. I think it is. Because there's pictures of you very good. I was wookie today. It's crazy. But it's just the previous owner didn't really care. Or he just didn't give the effort of like going the next step and realizing, how do I change the sign? Yes. Yeah, they did. They did. But it. Stop. They never came to me. They wanted to put it on the MBTA rail trail land. They can't do that. I mean, they had this whole big plan. And the plan wasn't bad. It's just that they had no ability to put it where they wanted to put it. And from a PACE perspective, our approach, just to share, has been working with consultants. And we're spending a bunch of money on this. There may be a longer term solution to have signage elements in other places. But what we're looking at right now is how do we make an improvement at the location the signage is currently at today? Yeah. Which we feel like is the path of least resistance. And, you know, that's a conversation we'd love to have with this. I'm sure in my head. I can't even. It's just a low sign. But to me, if you say, oh, we want to make improvements to the one location where the location we already have a sign, it would mean making a bigger sign. I think the easier ask might be to have two, to have a duplicate sign that has different businesses on it. So two smaller signs, I think, gives it more of the village feel, which is what we're all about now. The problem on this side is that this is MBTA land and they don't have control over it. And the MBTA, at least when we did it the last time, was not anxious to have anything in there. Right. But to try and find someplace to have two smaller signs or to keep it low and have it longer or whatever. Well, I think, Rob, we've challenged our own like experts that we've hired because it's not hard to like we've challenged them the same way. Like, how do we do something that feels contextually appropriate, but also satisfies some of these other very legitimate needs? And that's some of what we will be sharing with you next time we come. Yeah. And I think some of it, too, is, you know, we put out there like maybe the center, the weight and the size of Wayland Town Center is smaller. Right. And so, but to your point, I think that's also why I'm feeling good about the brand and what the brand means. Like, this isn't meant to be like a, the brand isn't meant to be, you know, to have that village for going. And so, yeah, I think it's important because, again, that would be a piece that doesn't connect. Right. And so, like, what are we doing if this doesn't carry through? The other easier ask is more on-site wayfinding, you know, bigger wayfinding signs that are on-site because I think that's less, it's less of a concern for me personally. If the signs out on the road are more modest once you're on-site, if there can be different types of signs that call things out a little bit more, you know, buildings that are on that where you want to have the pedestrian zone, those buildings don't have a lot of visibility right now out on the main road, so, or on- From the main road. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. And one of the things that we've really struggled with just from an urban design perspective, right, knowing this isn't urban, but I think you get my point, is that most town centers and village centers are actually located at crossroads of main streets. That's correct. Yeah. That's where they are. They announce themselves on their own. Yeah. Because of the existing fabric of the buildings in a place where everyone's converging upon. The challenge we have here is that this town center is buried off of the two main streets and you wouldn't know. So, we went there originally, but the reality is actually to announce this place so people know it's here. Like, we actually need big signage to announce it because we don't actually have the built form on the street. So, that's something we've struggled with. And like, we do a lot of work. You know, I live in Newtonville, right? You know, when you arrive at Newtonville, you just know it, right? No one has to tell you you've reached the village center because of the fabric of that place. But no one is coming through. And we actually don't want people racing for Andrew either from a safety perspective. So, it's forcing us to think about other treatments that normally we wouldn't have to do in a different context. And that's one of the tensions we're trying to balance. And it's a hard one. It's a hard one. I think piggybacking off that, the other challenge is there's a front and a back that challenge you when you're there. It's like, where is the entrance? And where should the sign be? And if I pull in here, we also want to create zones in the site. So, I think this red line is intentional. It has to feel like I've entered, right? That's landscaping. That's beautification. There's wayfinding. There's a lot of components to that. But it's also like, how do you create zones? I think this pedestrian zone and the rail trail entrance, like really having a beautiful rail trail entrance with, you know, sign is it says park here and enter. Like that is a zone, right? And then having wayfinding to get you there, like that is an experience. The pedestrian zone, I think we see that as the center of the site, that crossroads right there as the center. We want folks to journey and explore down pedestrian zone and then realize the rail trails there. We also want them to then explore into town green, right? Like, oh, I just got a coffee. I was sitting outside. Now I'm probably more apt to just go hang out in the town green, right? And then if the recreation space is activated, you now have a straight line up and down the site where folks are walking, right? And I think then it becomes the center of the site. And when you have a center, I think that everything can have zones off of that. So, you know, I think it's going to take some time to get there. But we actually feel strongly that a couple of these things can come together quickly because we have a cafe that we're talking to for that, that we're very far along with in the end of the pedestrian zone. We have a couple of really cool local recreation uses that would activate, you know, the northern part and then I think the rail trail is something we could do immediately and feel like, you know, change the way people, you know, inhabit the site and we're moving the dumpster as we speak. It should happen within the next 30 days or so. So that's happening. Welcome to Whelan Town City. Yeah. You all will laugh. I mean, you've all lived and experienced the site in a way that we haven't because you've been residents in the town for what I assume is. I mean, the way that I explain this site to people from outside of Whelan, because no one knows where it is, is it's across from Russell's and even people that haven't gone to Russell's because the building is there because there's an object there. They know it. No one. There's nothing like it's very hard to understand. There is a there that has a good sign. You have a good sign. And the best is the best. It's just their premise. You can tell what it is. We don't have that. So we have to try to fabricate something at the gateway that announces this place to people and draws them in that is visually interesting and informative. And, you know, that's that's the challenge. That's the challenge. Have you looked at how the options of retail or restaurants that will be able to come in the terrain across the street? The terrain, like the terrain, like that, that, that use. Is there ways to? We met with the general manager already of terrain. We have a good relationship with those guys and know the development team from terrain pretty well. I know there's some uses. That would be terrain is largely going to be an event space. Largely. True. But they're going to, when someone gets ready, they're going to need to go get something. They want breakfast, lunch or something. They got to go somewhere. They go to Dunkin' Donuts and get some coffee and bring it back. They have their own suite. Hey. Did you leave it, Robert? I think, yeah, yeah, but like, I don't know, if I'm, if I'm over there, I want, hey, can you go see my friend? Hey, get some donuts, get some coffee and bring it back. Like, like, well, while we're getting ready for, I don't know. I think you see, we see Boston Post Road, right? At we see ourselves as part of Boston Post Road, right? We see this section of Boston Post Road really as the center, right? Wingland Town Center is the brand, right? But the actual center, right, is, is one end to Russell's, right? So the beautiful part about that activation is driving traffic, right? It's driving the right sort of traffic. Now it's like, oh, you're near Russell's and Terrain, right? Instead of just Russell's. Oh, you're near the new Dunkin' Donut. So all it's doing is helping activate this as a destination, the whole Boston Post Road. I think that's how we see it. But of course, like, we wouldn't do, we're not looking to do something, we want to do things that are complimentary. So it's, okay, I went to Terrain, I got the kids in the car, right? Where should we go next? Oh, maybe we're going to Russell's because Russell's is, is family activated. If you're there on the weekend, like, bring the kids, like, let's go hop in the cart, right? Like, we're going to spend two hours here, right? It's probably more than we wanted to, but we're going to, we're going to do it, right? And that's a great family kind of outing, right? So, okay, we've gone, so how do we, what are, where do we fit in that? And right now, I will tell you, it's not an option. People aren't going, let's go to Wayland and hang out, right? Or Wayland Town Center and hang out. There's nothing there. Yeah, nothing there. The trampoline park, that's what you're doing. Yeah. But that's the recreation, there's stuff like that. Yeah. And I also say the Russell's potential, like, we, we've had a series of meetings with the owners of Russell's who are amazing people. There's just an amazing story there as well. One example of some low hanging fruit would be their winter farmer's market is arguably the best in the entire state of Massachusetts, right? It's, it's incredible. They don't have enough space for it or parking. We have a lot of parking. We should have a program to invite people to park at Wayland Town Center and go to Russell's. And after they do that, maybe they'll come to our shops and restaurants. But then we're facilitating that movement with a crosswalk that exists. And when you think about what's a potential move for humans, the move from Russell's to Wayland Town Center without getting back in your car is much more viable. That's the train. You're pointing out something. That's something that we realize. Because as you, on Route 20, and you look in that direction of your property, the developers put in a parking lot, and then the buildings even further away from Route 20, they should have put them right on Route 20. So they'd see the buildings right there and say, oh, shop in there. Can you not do that now? I think, to the earlier point, combination of beautification, color, signage, and just a sense that you've arrived somewhere will do a lot. That's our feeling, right? Like, that's big. And we're going to spend a lot of time thinking about that. The entrance could be beautiful. Like, it really could. Like, it has a lot of potential, the entrance. Sorry. But, I mean, on Farmer's Market Days, maybe some overflow food trucks over on your side. Yeah. They do. You've seen them across. I haven't seen them across the street. What are they? Russell's? I've been to that probably. Yeah. No, they're at Russell, but across at Town Center. Well, I think it's about connecting the two, right? Like, and that's, that's all that is in the conversation, right? And they're like, we would love to do that. It's, it's, it's an, if you have all these folks going to a destination and they, and the folks there want to do something else afterwards, there should be, but there right now, there's Farmer's Market Close is at 2.30. There's a huge potential for us to create synergistic programming with that. I just don't think prior owners were thinking this way. Not at all. And even like, even, even the holiday decorations were an afterthought, right? Like, you're not going to be this year, right? Right. So like, again, like we've already, we're already walking through that with our landscapers and we're pushing them on designs and we're pushing them on thinking a little bit outside the box. How do we make it special? You know, and how do you make it a destination? Just like in, in Russell's, I mean, the amount of energy and effort they put into that farmer's market is, is wild. Right. And, and it, it generates the results because of that energy and effort they put into it. So people come from all over to go there too. Sure. That's fantastic.
But I don't think they sleep for like three months.
It's, it's a, it's a labor of love for sure. And also we've been working on with, with, with, I talked to the previous, with the owners of the volleyball places, how to get people in volleyball places to stay around. And I'm like, maybe you guys should try to get a liquor license, a beer license. And how do you talk to the select board about a home rule petition? Cause the China win is out of licenses. Yeah. So, but yes, that's a great idea. Improved more. Didn't we? I thought we did. We did. We did. Pass it at state. I mean, I think, I think that's what it's saying. Yeah. We improved the town part. I mean, everybody tells me they want to see like a brewery or something in here. They're like, why don't we have a brewery down? Like so much space for it. Isn't there one there? I'm in the stoppage. I'm kidding. And I, and I think too, it's, I, I, I, I think it's not all ice cream. I think all the things that you guys are talking about, but again, then how do you attract that person? Well, we have this amazing activated pedestrian area. And they're like, whoa, and what else is going to be? Well, let us tell you what else can be. So, and then, oh, we have this recreation area where kids are playing. Well, that's customers. Those are ice cream buyers. Right. So it's, if you do nothing, right. And you walk someone through the site right now, there's not a lot of excitement for a new tenant. Yeah. And, and I don't blame him because it's like, I walked down there and I'm like, I'm not excited either. Right. As is. And we, we toured an ice cream shop two days ago and folks that we've known in our network that we really want to get here. Excellent local operator. My children have approved it. When we explained to them, they're connoisseurs. Like they, you know, good. When we explained to them the play for Alyssa for them, it's like, oh, there's this common area of people buying thing. You know, like I can, like people are going to come here on a weekend, they can take a cone or a cup and then sit outside on Alyssa. Like that is wildly attractive to them and allows them to make more efficient use of their own indoor press. So this is how it all. I don't know what your time is that people leave Wayland and the surrounding areas and it's death for the stores. And I don't know how you get over that. I think that, I think the answer is to continue to invest in things that will be habitual, right? Like these, like summer, like, again, if you had soccer programs, summer camps, right? It's. Well, that would be great because there are, there are soccer programs right now. They need it to schools. Schools don't really need them because the fields get all torn up. Yeah. And then, and then, and then the families are there and they go get ice cream. And so our, you know, thousand feet up, it's really, we have to invest in things that are going to bring families, right? Like there's some centers are all about office population work, you know, having, you know, tailoring it to, to the workforce, right? This is families. And I think that will continue throughout, right? You're going to have your folks that travel, but even more so if you're not traveling and your kids are out of school. Yeah. Right. And you don't go away. You have even more times, you might be there three times a week versus, you know, so I, I think, I think that has to be the commitment. Um, you know, one of the things we've found on other projects we've worked on is that in very wealthy communities like Weyland and other towns around here where people have the economic resources to have second homes and go away, they go in some, but the majority of people in greater Boston, that's not the situation they're in. And they're looking for experiences on rivers, on bike trails, in all of these places. So in the summer, if we can create a truly special public realm on the rail trail next to the Sudbury river with ice cream and restaurants and programming, we're going to have to draw for this to work. You're drawing from outside of Wynn. And actually, like, if you look at successful suburban projects that are in wealthy communities, seasonally things change people who shop there. And that's the aspiration that AJ said, the rail trail coming through our site is a gift, right? Like, that's why we're so focused on how do you think about the brewery, right? Like in the summer, if you put a brewery, the rail trail coming through our site, if we can improve that connection, which we want to, and work with DCR and work with you all, that is a gift, which is amazing. And if you had like an ice cream place, they can have a little push cart that they take down to the rail trail and sell drinks and, you know, quick ice creams out of, oh, you want a sundae, our store's right there. You can walk right over there. My sister has a cafe in Lexington Center. Great little cafe. She's in the coffee business. They're on the Minuteman Trail. A lot of people in Lexington leave. Go to Lexington Center in the summer. Go to the ice cream shop. Go to the cafes. I mean, there is some tourism there because people are going to the green. Um, but that they get so many, she has actually two cafes on bike trails. The other one's an ale wife on the reservation. It's where they have their commissary. Their whole summer are families and people using these bike trails. It's their business. Cape rail trail is literally the best food. But you've, and you've also got all those kids who are coming to the volleyball place. I mean, and they're coming from everywhere. I've met kids who are there, who are from all kinds of towns. That's awesome. And, um, and those kids will in the summer sit around and go have an ice cream. And all those, and all those programs continue, right? Like all those teams and, uh, the club programs all summer. And, you know, I think that was, we got, we got lucky having those folks there. Right. Cause I think it also made it super clear, you know, the value prop that they drop. Right. And so we're like, well, we should do more of this, right? Like this is bringing folks here, um, and it's bringing folks here every week. Right. Like it's very consistent, um, group. So, yeah, I think that, that was like a, a strong message of, of what can work here. Yeah. What are your response on the town of green? That seems to be super underutilized. They have, they have ads to us, but the ones to the town. Oh yeah. But they can help out. Can't they? I think we, we talked to the select board a little bit about, about that. I mean, I think the question it's, it's kind of two parts, right? I think, I think the town has to drive what their vision is for it. Right. And then we obviously want to be part of the solution, but it's, it's hard to really have a vision for something that we don't, we don't own. Right. Um, you know, I think we'd love to see a playground, not like a traditional playground, but climbing structures and like, how do you, within the landscape, how do you activate it? Right. Like, but again, we don't, you know, I think you have to do something. I don't know that as is it just, people just show up. I think your needs to remember there was like a, there was like a concert or something there, but you do it all the time. I think that the three things that are immutable when you think about that space, I believe are, you've got to find a way of activating it and creating some sort of public utility. And it's got to be multi-generational, right? Like I think it'll be, if the playground that's built there is one of these things with wood chips and shiny, like colorful objects that you're swinging on, like that won't work. If it's a very comfortable place that people can go and sit outside and maybe there's a concert going on at times and it's flexible space, it has to be flexible as well. We have some ideas. We actually told the select board, we come back to them with some inspiration, um, because we think we can push the town based on what we've seen on other projects to actually do something versus just having a piece of green space that's sitting there, which I think other than a few days a year is really not utilized. Even like a parent child park horse. Yeah, exactly. That's the idea. Yeah. That was, you know, here's my workout, but my kid can be on a similar thing, doing a little workout. Well, it's just, again, another destination. I think we also think that if we activate the other parts of the site, then that becomes an obvious area that needs tension, right? If everything's not activated around it, it's like, well, that's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem, right? And you don't, you don't, you can't hone in on it. So I think like, you know, again, if we're, you got all these folks in the pedestrian zone, you got people on the rail trail, we got these recreation spaces. Now all of a sudden you're like, what do we do with town green? Right. I think it becomes a simpler conversation of, of we need to do something because these other areas are working because they've been activated. Um, but I, I agree. Like it, it can't be ignored. You know, I did, as you succeed, it'll push the town. Yeah. So in terms of our next meeting together, um, what we would propose if it's okay with you all would be to put some more definition and actually, um, share more in terms of plans, um, as related to certainly the signage would be one in the gateways. Certainly Alyssa Ave, which we've been working with the landscape architect on, like what are the materials we're using? How are we thinking about some of the hardscape treatments? Like what are the dimensions, like real plans that as a planning board, you can all respond to, um, the rail trail entry we think is really critical. We've been speaking a lot about, and then I think to the extent we can move forward with pace over the coming weeks, um, which I think we can, some of what we're thinking about, for example, the dog park, which would have a permanent fence, like, like more definition around that. And also the way in which we're thinking about this seasonal ice skating rink, um, which we think is really hypercritical. We're already doing some work with the Eliza Norton foundation to kind of figure out how we can actually get this open in November, which, yeah, that family. And, uh, it warms my heart that they're going to have to try to do that. Yeah. It'd be very cool.
So that, those are the things we'd love to come back with. Like an actual presentation on and some real asks and let us know when you're ready. Um, we have meetings currently scheduled for may the 27th, June, the 10th, June, the 24th.
But nothing on the 17th. I am the 17th. I mean, I think for us, we'll be ideal if we would also to get our act together would be the 10th, the 10th of June and we can coordinate Robert with you on that. When, um, just in terms of cadence of materials. Um, when we need submission document so that you can all have a chance to review, like what's the, how, how are you typically, I, it's by, at least that Wednesday to Friday, the week before, so we'll call it seven, we'll call it five business days. If you have gone through any of the permitting documents and you, you have ideas of what you think we'd need to change, that's great. If you don't know that yet, but you have an idea before you come in, if you let me know, I'll go through the permitting documents. That'd be great. That'd be great. That'd be great. Super helpful. Um, we will certainly take you up on that. Any other questions we can answer? I know, I appreciate everyone staying late tonight. We're obviously very excited about this project. We, we really feel like we can make a better place. Oh, we're hoping you can. We don't want that too. Because what you described is basically what the community told us. Yeah.
I think the original, the master special moment was from 2008. It is, but we did zoning in 2005 and then we had to do it again in 2006 because it failed. And then, yes.
Well, we appreciate your time. We really look forward to working with you all. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You