November 25, 2025 – Design Review Board – Video & Transcript
November 25, 2025 - Design Review Board
is good evening it's seven seven o'clock and this is a design review board
and we have i guess i should i call people to order we have tanya person we have
robin borgestat and myself bill sterling three active members for the drb present
now uh we always ask for public comment if there's someone who has joined
i don't know raise your hand if you can i see no one online no one's online okay good no thank you
uh so we should be able to roll fairly quickly into the 321 commonwealth avenue bright horizons
application though um the planning board had forwarded you that application i have hard copy
here but if anyone wants to post it if you don't have it i could try and find it i should i have it
just give me a second um let's see which one is it there's 320 yeah no i just have them both open
on my computer so it's just just hard to find the one there we go yellow box on there all right
are you seeing it now no no no i see oh oh i see wait a minute i need to click on allow
oh okay all right you see it now no yeah oh still three pairs and a lot of little files
oh okay it said i was sharing the right thing see your desktop
yeah it must be oh yep go back in there it is there we go um so right horizons is a um education
preschool yeah program it's on their cover sheet yeah the the applicant's not on are they no
so i had no i had a couple questions um and bill you can answer this i'm sure if the sign is
two-sided does it count as 10 square feet or 20 square feet uh the the zba that when i was on it
uh would count the area on each side okay so it's really 20 square feet yeah and then the building
i mean has its own has other signage yes and so should we know what all the other yeah so we should
know what the total square footage of the whole signage is for the whole building that's correct
so um so i guess we need some more information otherwise it's fine we need a tally of all of them
you know otherwise it's uh how many square feet is it four by two two and a half and a half okay
so and they just want which seems like a fine idea and then it's going from this old beat up sign
to the new one okay any other comments no comments any comment about the sign design uh placement is
supposed to show on the site plan where the sign is it does up here it says new sign far off the property
line it is that i do not think it does it's not too large a scale to be able to do that they could
have on their drawing of the sign itself just located an imaginary property line wherever that is
and show what the setback was on that drawing yeah but none of the other drawings have that
information so i'll note that to see if they're complying the height is compliant yep because we
actually have a 15 foot height maximum you know does it say it in the words it doesn't so and
the last thing i'll say is that you know i don't have any issues with the sign and technically
this qualifies for dover amendment yeah and so you know to the extent that it is perhaps non-compliant
in terms of the square footage for the whole building and all those other things yeah i think
it's i guess we should note that whether we have a basic objection to the design of the sign which it
seems like we don't and it seems consistent with the the area there's mel's it's all a commercial
little area um with mel's and other businesses across the street so yeah so we're missing the
total square footage yep and the exact location line set back okay uh so it's incomplete basically
yeah do we want to um ask them to fill that information in yeah where are we in terms of time for this
what's that where are we in terms of time this is submitted november 3rd 30 days so we're pretty
we won't have time to meet again no we're near the end yeah so i think i guess we've done this before
where we make our recommendation yeah we can just write that we need to have that and i need to be
within the zoning requirement yeah um and then that yeah so if we you know approve the design in theory
but that this other information needs to be provided to the zoning board before they approve it yes
exactly good okay i like that um so let me write up yeah and i think uh the total allowed is 40 square
feet and the setback is 15 feet or more it should not be any nearer than 15 feet to the property line
uh and it looks from the photograph they showed there that it looks like they're trying to be closer
closer than that so that's another thing they have to ask for uh um permission to do that from the
zoning board yep okay so i would move that we approve the design in theory but that the applicant
should provide total square footage for the building signage and the exact location of the sign
to ensure that the total square footage is below 40 square feet and the setback from the road is at
least 15 feet sounds good uh okay that's a motion you second i second uh all those in favor robin yes
tanya yes myself uh yes so it's three zero zero and i'll email you the language great thank you
so it's um it's a little early for us to go into the next one yeah do we want to do the minutes first
yeah i think we should skip it until we uh get to 720 and do the meeting notes have you read the
meeting notes i think i sent them out a while we're back i did i had one change on what is it the second
page let me see no on the third page um it's where it says our work set suggested that the drab
review this application uh review of this application shall not deal with dover amendment i just said
need not deal with dover amendment oh that's on the second page all right um that's under carroll
school or the rice road uh rice road i have it on the third page yeah it is on the third page but
so it's about height of height of tower or where with respect to the whole application we
we're not a permitting authority so we don't need to concern ourselves with dover amendment we're just
making recommendations and then the permitting authorities make their own decision in accordance
with the very last paragraph you're talking about yeah okay i'm sorry it's just it's in a show
it's what uh if you tell me what you're changing i'll write it in here yeah so in the first line
where it says our board you said instead of shall not deal just say need not deal oh okay great
shall is just too strong of a word okay i'm sorry it's okay um so is that um and tanya you ready to
vote on this yeah so i move that we approve the minutes of from october 14th 2025 i'm trying
uh do you make a do you want to second that tanya yes i second them all right let's have a vote
robin yes tanya yes bill yes these are as amended you're gonna say right yes great so that's great
we're still too early and i don't know if you saw the email i sent you before the meeting
yeah i didn't have a chance to read through it though yeah the the must be reference uh so before
we will talk about guidelines yeah yeah let's go into the guidelines for now because i don't think
there's anybody listening in about it no i also had a question though so wayland package ship yeah he
moved next door and he took a sign with him yeah i know he's supposed to come before us right and he'd
never finished coming before us before right so what do we who takes care of that does robert send
him a letter or something uh the building inspector i think is the one who's supposed to enforce these
okay but we should go through robert i guess i don't know yeah um so i sent you a draft of some
sections to talk about uh inserting into the design guidelines so i've been working with anina
cleaning up mostly you know housekeeping stuff on the document getting the right names of people in
there and so forth so um but uh and i'm hoping to finish it all by just end of december okay
interacting with you along the way so i sent you the recommended well actually before that
all right we'll do this first um we're going a little backwards the um this was it's not in color
but this is the it shows the community center on the cover page okay and then uh three examples of
what i would call the new england village style that wayland has embraced without ever being called
that it's sort of what it's become and then the last page i threw in for uh to try to answer your
question at the last meeting uh tanya about uh mid-century modern buildings i i think you're right
i think you're absolutely right that we should have uh not only room for preserving them but also
allowing them in uh particularly in the districts where you don't have a historic district or historic
context that you're trying to match or blend with or you know somehow not compete with um and that's
why i threw that in there and it's just a draft i mean we can tweak it more and make it uh uh even more
assertive if you want yeah i didn't have chance to see it oh okay okay so read go to that last
paragraph because that was for you is it what was it uh attached somewhere yeah it came with text and
photographs no no i mean what was the email that it was attached to oh the letter i sent
design guidelines text draft to add okay robin could you maybe ever send it to me i'm not seeing it
that's the weird thing is i don't see it but you were emailing stuff both to me in my personal email
and my town email i did not see that uh so if you could send it to my personal email because
even as i explained to robin it's uh somewhere to find yeah i'm looking to see if i have let me search
um because it's not in my town email all right i've got to find it i didn't i just filed everything
away so it's not on my desktop anymore see uh that's not it and the pictures from concord i don't
have anything else with attachments i don't see anything other than meeting notes the minutes
what's what's this one no no that's all stuff for occasions you want to send it now and then i'll
put it up on the screen uh you could put it on the screen or you could send it late to me and i
will take a look um and also i uh bill did you did you have a chance to look through the email that i
sent like 20 minutes before the meeting started um yeah i sent you um a copy of the application for
that um for the second job we're going to be talking about in two minutes yeah no but tanya sent us
some references um i could actually pull it on the screen if you oh i can too i just opened it
oh okay and it's uh bill maybe it's something that you could review it later and uh some ideas to
add to the guidelines because i think it's a good example the marshby center marshby common um it's a
new new new center uh but it has kind of very right feeling and proportions and um and it's uh here
pictures like it's mostly brick buildings but it's combination of brick and like different materials
yeah yeah and uh down there i put in text like uh the main principle i think they use uh you know the
massing how they they break in the block structure um materials so i think they kind of uh the nails if
the right uh new england style without being you know tacky without um it's uh feels what are we
scrolling through what are we scrolling through on the screen right now so this is what tanya put
together yeah this is a test this uh marshby i i thought about marshby common center as a good
reference for new england style the new center that they put there and uh i thought that might be some
idea so we could uh use and uh um okay i i think in fact um ashby was um was also used for uh designing
as a guide to design the town center and i'm just going from memory that i think it was mentioned even
back then i think it was something that sarki liked it might have even been mentioned in our guidelines but
um i think that's um fine i don't you know i don't think we should push too hard on that
because then the developers will go and copy mashby verbatim and i'd rather be more loose on it and just
say that's why i've really pulled back and said here's what wayland already is it's basically
uh houses that have been converted into offices uh or businesses and uh mixed in with a few
commercial buildings that were built uh as commercial buildings but mostly they're houses that are
converted and now more recently in the last you know in the late 20th century there there are several
buildings that are made to look like a new england house with additions added on to it so it's it's
kind of a style that developers have been creating for themselves in wayland i don't think it was ever
you know even asked that they do that but that is what we have become right but yeah i mean a lot of
the the elements here are elements that we're already looking at we can just look at some of their
wording as being you know a shortcut to getting some of the things that we're trying to describe
sometimes you're trying to describe it you're like well if it's just this and it's just it's hard but
some of these descriptions are are good yeah yeah i i think the the way they describe
uh it's uh describe here um a massing proportion it's actually it's uh gives some distinct distinguished
definition for uh uh commercial building not residential but at the same time keeping it the proper scale
yeah i think i found the letter that i can send you okay uh no i i i could send the work document i don't think so uh no what i found was anina's the one that you just opened the one i had sent let me see if i have something i looked for what came from you but maybe i'll look for to see what i here i found it okay okay so now i what i can do is forward you this letter that has it in it along with anina's so do you want it at both your addresses just my town one is fine i have it open and my private one if possible okay so robin the alternative address for you is gmail yeah and tanya okay okay okay here it comes and it's attached to the letter from anina that i forwarded to you and at the very bottom of it are two files the lower one is the file that i had drafted yeah and it's not i threw photographs in there to help sort of uh support the text i think the text without the photographs is kind of it's hard it's hard to visualize without the photographs oh sorry that's it's uh but i did uh we are now five minutes beyond our deadline for starting while that's coming to you let's go back to discuss the other applicant do you mind nope all right so it's 7 25 and uh at 7 20 the 44 boston post road which is in what used to be post road liquor is now called liquor hub and um that's the file i sent you 20 minutes before the meeting so that's this application there are parts of it i couldn't even read but uh yeah it has similar problems to the other um applicant it's incomplete uh it does not include any of the other signs and there are many signs around the building um right that's what i noted i know there's at least one out by the street that they've already replaced that's right and they didn't get permission to do that no so so i i think that it's a similar letter that we have to draft uh it's about square footage and there's more more to it than that though it's not perfectly clear but it appears that the sign they're showing do you have if you scroll down further you'll see it yeah the uh that looks to me like an internally illuminated sign and it says led and it says led so i that was what i took from it um which is not allowed it's also true in almost every community that you're never allowed to stick a sign a vertical sign on top of a pitched roof it's uh just basically really bad form it defies the architecture of the building there's a sign you can't really tell in this photograph but the lower left the brick area there has an existing sign there excuse me yeah i think they've taken it out though uh they're taking it out of this photograph but i drove by there today and it's still there and is it for post road liquors or is it for liquor no it just says liquor oh they just took out the post road they took those yeah there's also another sign on the right of the door that's this canvas thing that they've taped to the wall so they've got you know some serious violations all right i'm working on what we're gonna say and then i'll read it out to you um okay that was another item while we're while you're working on it yep that um i noticed when i read through the conquered new zoning bylaw that they issued in um 22 i think um it forbids signage in the windows and if you look at this window you can't tell from this one but if you drive by the store the windows are all pasted up with with more signs yeah um so it looks cluttered it looks shabby yeah there used to be one which was about the drinking age which i think they're required to have in the window but advertisements they shouldn't be having oh these are ads yeah for types yeah but that that is something that is uh not banned by our current zoning bylaws and i think that it really does make a building look shabby and i and there are others on route 20 that are even worse yeah just basically the building is nothing but a sign board everywhere you go it's just covered with signs so i would recommend robin that the planning board add that to a list of considerations when you're putting together the new zoning bylaw that you yeah take a look at concord if concord can get away with it and they have a very big commercial active commercial community right uh that that tells you something it tells you that they don't want the rest of their stores in town to look shabby right so it's in their best interest not to allow that kind of stuff right so what i have proposed what i drafted is that we recommend that um the application recommend not approving this application insofar as the signage is non-compliant because it is internally lit and mounted on a pitched roof in addition the application fails to include all other signage on the property in the application or in the total square footage zoning board should also consider advertisements placed in windows good yeah is that your motion that's my motion then all right tanya you want to second that i second it let's have a vote robin yes tanya yes myself yes so that um should close that decision okay i don't mean to step on any toes it just seems efficient for us to kind of write it up just and then okay that way we have it in writing and i can just send it to you terrific okay all right so now we could flip back to the design guidelines i believe there's also another item that comes up at 7 40 in about eight minutes which is just to talk if there is any discussion we do have more correspondence than we've gotten and then i think we we owe it to the community to respond or at least show that we've read it yep um so let me go back and share that oh there it is good okay and it's uh it's not a lot of text i wanted to keep it simple so i made it kept it down to just a paragraph or two i think i think the the message here in general is it's a way right and actually i have comment about uh last picture uh about uh mid-century maybe to find a little bit more exciting uh example to scroll but uh to the very last page okay just making a change i'm just highlighting it okay uh i'm i didn't catch all that tanya what do you so no i was talking about the the last page yeah do you mean the change that i made just a syntax change so since these are guidelines instead of saying when you don't want heat gain i just changed it to a a different voice where you say to minimize passive heat gain well it's a little bit too familiar a clause anyway it's really it should be more technical sounding than that so i think does that sound more technical to minimize my part does yours helps yes okay yeah i just you know sometimes i'm guilty this in my legal writing that i'm you know saying you and and we and yeah i shouldn't have done that that's okay so i just made that change that was the only thing so that tanya you had something on the last page uh yeah i just think to find a little bit more exciting example because in the mid-century style you you could find a bit better walking building not in weyland you can't but we are not necessarily obligated to bring examples only from weyland right we want to to bring example for the future weyland right i agree and i and i think that there's plenty of opportunity over by longfellow i think i might have mentioned it the last time we talked over by the longfellow uh jim that um there's really no neighborhood to offend with a contemporary style buildings there and so i i think that that could be an area for example where the weyland encourages um contemporary style um sustainable building types there yeah maybe we just find some some more aesthetically pleasing examples yeah i i agree that there really aren't very many in a way the one on the bottom is an example of one that has been um i don't know what the word is it's been abused and uh you know with additional lights hanging from the windows and and add on and and of course the site filled with machinery and so forth this this is um looks like a backwoods uh country building that uh isn't very attractive right uh and the one to the right there with the red and the signs that's the one that's just peppered with signage um both of those are terrible examples and they're probably the two worst looking buildings in weyland yeah but it's one is gone i think the fact that it's a modern building is not is not what the problem is the problem is that they they don't treat it very well right yeah you know there's only so much you can fix but the the the other gas station the one that's down on plain road i think that building is gone now that no that's still up that's what it looks like i just photographed oh all right i thought they took that down and they no they cleaned it up oh okay like a nice modern building now but it's too small for anybody to want to use for the kind of money they want yeah and so you know so tanya are you saying these are not great examples to show i was thinking that too i especially the green one it's like that that owner will not be happy that we use them as an example of what not to do so that's not a good political thing to do but it should be inspiring in a way i think so yeah i would rather bring something not if not from weyland but something that's great advice i think you're right yeah there won't be in weyland but we can find other buildings uh that are yeah that there are um sustainable and uh currently contemporary in style there's a lot of them going up all over all over boston i think i just opened and i could send the the this uh mashpee reference that i sent the word uh the word uh documents so you could use the wording there because i thought you already had sent that to um i sent it as a pdf yeah she mentioned it yeah okay yeah i will send her the word that's yeah i will send you the word document okay and i i could add there i found actually a couple gas stations i was looking for new england style gas stations i didn't find a sound on something very uh kind of for cartoony so this is a you know a rendering of a house and i kind of cut off most of the garage because otherwise this could be a commercial building yeah exactly and i may add a couple mid-century buildings as well so even that though is that's a 1929 style building or early 20s you know that's international style which is it's as historic a style as victorian and you know any of the others you want to go through um but i'm going to look for to respond to tanya's suggestion is truly contemporary style buildings that are sustainable um sustainable solar buildings that would be uh welcome in wayland yeah i'm not saying that isn't welcome that's just another old style yeah in looking at you know what what i'm finding sort of quickly just by google searching is more either large-scale commercial buildings or residential buildings i'm not finding a lot of i agree i tried doing that myself about two weeks ago and i guess all they turns out they were all just marketing their product yeah really they weren't even good examples i mean there's a fair number of like deck houses yeah well we had a lot of those in wayland you know yeah and then but they look very residential they are yeah that's right yeah around here especially i thought about mentioning it because well it had so many of them because that basically was part of our character but that's not commercial i didn't want to lead us in that direction no um but this is this is sort of an interesting one because let me snap this one and then because this one could actually it's a house but it could be a gas station honestly which one i don't see it i'm gonna open it up you gotta give me a second all right let me move you guys out of the way here it is now i can share it so yeah um yeah let me make it bigger if i can like this could honestly be the overhang over a gas station oh you know and a garage bay there's no reason it couldn't be yeah and that's cool and that's definitely mid-century modern oh yeah my son bought a house that looks just like that in uh california the whole neighborhood is yeah alexander's neighborhood looks like this too in oakland yeah that's kind of cool so you know there's stuff out there it's it's hard to find it you know looking through google images yeah i agree because i tried to but i i know i could find some i will uh i will give it one more try and i will send you shortly i don't know because i wasn't looking for the mid-century examples i was looking for the new england style but i yeah what i think the best one that came up is marsh i think it's even wiser to look at current buildings they're going up all over boston and find uh one or two that would fit into wayland's character uh not not in the sense of matching what's here but in the sense of the kind of buildings that will probably have people want to build on empty lots in wayland in the commercial districts but we can just drive around and find some okay okay um all right are we ready to do our next what's our next thing oh the coptic church yeah we can do that that was it right yep so well our discussion about the church oh that's right we skipped that that was on at 7 40 so we can we can do that now we got a formal letter from i i'm i don't know if you've all read on november fifth uh formal letter from many abutters many neighbors who all signed the letter two pages of signed names yep and it went through traffic issues the church design um diocese center uh lighting setbacks i'm just reading the captions construction phases uh that was a that was the summary of their outline now we can skip items like traffic it's not really anything for us to review no uh so we're not going to comment on it uh the church design though that's item two um i don't know if you find it robin it was sent to all of us a while ago yeah oh i mean the actual letter yeah i can you want to post it i don't know it doesn't matter if you don't because i basically it's the the first point on the church design is they want to consider limiting the height of the towers yeah my mailbox is just being slow i'll pull it up though they want to do it in such a way that it's not visible from the surrounding neighborhood communities yeah and an earlier suggestion they had suggested that you keep the height below the tree line of existing trees that are going to remain and my outlook is being sketchy okay all right let's try again okay november 5th some of these things i have filed so they might be in my file for this application oh just look yeah okay when i file things they go down a rabbit hole i find them very hard to find um learn and enable them better that helps i try to be organized so each application has a folder yeah um and that's hard to do that because like tonight we're talking about a previous meeting so which place do you file that in the previous meeting or tonight's meeting because we're discussing it yeah okay now let me share okay okay yeah that's it so i went down the item two church design yep building church that one so because so the dover amendment come in comes into play because our ability to limit the height of the church is going to be minimal but as the design review board it is within our purview to note that a building of that height um which is above the canopy of the trees and all these other issues leave the building inconsistent with the character of a scenic road and the character of rice road in particular and such a you know wild and natural area with lots of conservation land surrounding it um and i think it's important to note that and the the arrangement of the buildings on the site in terms of their proximity to rice road um is also a little inconsistent with the the scenic character and the the you know wild landscapes on rice road um so that would be that would be my comment okay could you scroll through the this whole letter so i will see the other items do they talk do they talk about uh like program overall like how packed the site and in general with this program uh i'm not sure i understood the question uh the the it's uh like whatever they're trying to fit into the site so it's a very big program uh they have chores they have sports centers they have basically uh apartment building there oh yeah yeah questioning the program of all the activities yeah so basically i don't think the church itself is a problem the overall uh program and uh this whole uh complex is a problem yeah so if they would reduce the program uh the church itself would look yeah i'm not sure you know you could find the proper place you could push it inside the sites the parking lot would be smaller i think the problem overall is with very ambitious programs that they're trying to fit into the small site um yeah you're starting to touch on a lot of the things that the last letter talked about i'm not sure this one does it the same but that was a that was a sorry that was a question that came up about what um again it's not something that we vote on the dover amendment amendment but whether the housing for example uh is allowed to come into play on on the dover amendment and the office diocesan office it becomes a borderline uh question of whether that's actually even religious right and the same with the gymnasium and the soccer field yeah exactly so it's recreation so i think that that's outside our um area of um charge i think our charge is to talk about the design of the building and i think building height is a big part of that yeah and i think the program is right in this sense tanya that they're jamming a lot of material on this small site and so program is an issue if you're crowding the built in this you know tiny little residential lot full of everything they can imagine it certainly should come into question but um
i don't know if we can take it any further than that the parking you know they may be able to prove that they need that much parking in which case i would say well then you need to build a parking garage either underground or above or whatever but you need to condense it so that you can fit the rest of the things on there for me my my first reaction and it's still i think a very prominent one uh prominent issue is what we've done and when i was on the zoning board for a big project like this we've always insisted that there be a setback that is that has a screen a visual screen of landscaping and the best example of that i think i mentioned the last time is but greenways that became named something else but it basically is right across from saint anne's church and we had a 50 foot set back there and it was heavily planted and you drive by there today you don't even know that that yeah building complex is back there yeah so the applicant has changed their application since it was sent to us and they have um based on issues that were raised during the site walk along turkey hill road on the side and then up around the back of the site they have added a basically a hedge of cedars so that the building will be screened at least at you know to a certain height from the the turkey hill village area and from the the street there so they did make that one change but they haven't really pulled back you know away from the setback but they're just at the edge of the setback yeah okay well for me that was that was you know what a hedge is certainly an alternative um but i i not a great one i don't think but
for one thing it's it's really not it does not have the appearance of a natural landscape and they're going to buy a bunch of uh arborvitae up there which is not even a native species and then trim it every month so that it looks like a wall yeah i don't think i don't think that's a great buffer no you could build a wall too that's another way to do it okay yeah um so that we we done with the church design and want to talk about lighting or um i don't know do you have any more tanya on the but the only thing that came up in some of the meetings i went to the one that was public hearing uh was the style of the church but you know it's basically an antique style pre-production old church put on the site yeah you know i think church could be a unique building it just uh the problem my problem with this overall complex that it's not just a church and uh yeah the way how they position it and it makes it a community yeah yeah
so so i i don't think uh the style of the church is a problem
the problem that this the church would be surround uh with a huge parking lot and next to it it will be some apartment building and sport complex which is kind of overwhelming yeah and in fact on on most sides as you're driving on rice road you don't even actually see the church you see these you know accessory buildings the school building and the diocese building yeah so all right so what what could we be robin what do you think we could contribute to as you know design review uh we've talked about the building a little bit we've talked about the site uh those are the two major things that we can drive we they haven't shown us anything about lighting yet or signage or any of the other things that we have to review yeah to the extent that i know about those things it's because of their more recent materials that they haven't submitted to us but they also didn't request an extension we're beyond the timeline they did not no i don't believe they did but we asked we asked them to come back right well they didn't even really come before us they came and said we're not ready and that was really it so but i think we could write up um you know an opinion that says that you know as a board we find you know these these flaws in the application that the scale and the placement of the buildings on a scenic road in a in a natural area in a semi-rural environment is is not consistent with that with with the nature of the area that we think that the size of the project as a whole is problematic um given the the the fact that the project is going to overwhelm the site and that um the the the the parking facilities are are also overwhelming the site and would perhaps be better addressed in a parking structure rather than a sprawling lots underground on the option that creates what yeah underground structure i think so underground would be the way to do it yeah or at least partially underground yeah but a multi-level structure that yeah yeah yeah so you know i think that if if those are things we can address and then we can point out that they did not provide us with landscape plans lighting plans uh what else was on here you know that we didn't have those issues to address because the applicant didn't provide those so we may have further objections or comments but these are the ones based on the information we have now and that we would ask you know other permitting boards to consider these recommendations and i would add in that letter if you want to do a first draft i'd appreciate it but if you don't i'll try it um i would add a request um for an extension of our time to review their project and and even you know can we ask that they reapply because they never really followed through on their application oh good that's even better yeah i'd basically declare it incomplete and uh or inconclusive anyway and then um ask them to finish the questions that they didn't answer landscape lighting not sure what else setbacks section through the site great is that a motion to write um yes you want to make it a motion okay i'll have to write it up and i don't know that i'll be able to write it up exactly as i said it oh unless you want to take it from the minutes if you take it from the minutes then it's it can be a motion and you'll just pull it from the minutes yeah okay so then yes it's a motion okay good um i second that motion i second it okay tanya you do it and uh vote yes yes yes and we made it just in time anyone want to move that we adjourn i move that we adjourn i second it all those in favor yes yes three zero zero
yeah i think i found the letter that i can send you okay uh no i i i could send the work document i don't think so uh no what i found was anina's the one that you just opened the one i had sent let me see if i have something i looked for what came from you but maybe i'll look for to see what i here i found it okay okay so now i what i can do is forward you this letter that has it in it along with anina's so do you want it at both your addresses just my town one is fine i have it open and my private one if possible okay so robin the alternative address for you is gmail yeah and tanya okay okay okay here it comes and it's attached to the letter from anina that i forwarded to you and at the very bottom of it are two files the lower one is the file that i had drafted yeah and it's not i threw photographs in there to help sort of uh support the text i think the text without the photographs is kind of it's hard it's hard to visualize without the photographs oh sorry that's it's uh but i did uh we are now five minutes beyond our deadline for starting while that's coming to you let's go back to discuss the other applicant do you mind nope all right so it's 7 25 and uh at 7 20 the 44 boston post road which is in what used to be post road liquor is now called liquor hub and um that's the file i sent you 20 minutes before the meeting so that's this application there are parts of it i couldn't even read but uh yeah it has similar problems to the other um applicant it's incomplete uh it does not include any of the other signs and there are many signs around the building um right that's what i noted i know there's at least one out by the street that they've already replaced that's right and they didn't get permission to do that no so so i i think that it's a similar letter that we have to draft uh it's about square footage and there's more more to it than that though it's not perfectly clear but it appears that the sign they're showing do you have if you scroll down further you'll see it yeah the uh that looks to me like an internally illuminated sign and it says led and it says led so i that was what i took from it um which is not allowed it's also true in almost every community that you're never allowed to stick a sign a vertical sign on top of a pitched roof it's uh just basically really bad form it defies the architecture of the building there's a sign you can't really tell in this photograph but the lower left the brick area there has an existing sign there excuse me yeah i think they've taken it out though uh they're taking it out of this photograph but i drove by there today and it's still there and is it for post road liquors or is it for liquor no it just says liquor oh they just took out the post road they took those yeah there's also another sign on the right of the door that's this canvas thing that they've taped to the wall so they've got you know some serious violations all right i'm working on what we're gonna say and then i'll read it out to you um okay that was another item while we're while you're working on it yep that um i noticed when i read through the conquered new zoning bylaw that they issued in um 22 i think um it forbids signage in the windows and if you look at this window you can't tell from this one but if you drive by the store the windows are all pasted up with with more signs yeah um so it looks cluttered it looks shabby yeah there used to be one which was about the drinking age which i think they're required to have in the window but advertisements they shouldn't be having oh these are ads yeah for types yeah but that that is something that is uh not banned by our current zoning bylaws and i think that it really does make a building look shabby and i and there are others on route 20 that are even worse yeah just basically the building is nothing but a sign board everywhere you go it's just covered with signs so i would recommend robin that the planning board add that to a list of considerations when you're putting together the new zoning bylaw that you yeah take a look at concord if concord can get away with it and they have a very big commercial active commercial community right uh that that tells you something it tells you that they don't want the rest of their stores in town to look shabby right so it's in their best interest not to allow that kind of stuff right so what i have proposed what i drafted is that we recommend that um the application recommend not approving this application insofar as the signage is non-compliant because it is internally lit and mounted on a pitched roof in addition the application fails to include all other signage on the property in the application or in the total square footage zoning board should also consider advertisements placed in windows good yeah is that your motion that's my motion then all right tanya you want to second that i second it let's have a vote robin yes tanya yes myself yes so that um should close that decision okay i don't mean to step on any toes it just seems efficient for us to kind of write it up just and then okay that way we have it in writing and i can just send it to you terrific okay all right so now we could flip back to the design guidelines i believe there's also another item that comes up at 7 40 in about eight minutes which is just to talk if there is any discussion we do have more correspondence than we've gotten and then i think we we owe it to the community to respond or at least show that we've read it yep um so let me go back and share that oh there it is good okay and it's uh it's not a lot of text i wanted to keep it simple so i made it kept it down to just a paragraph or two i think i think the the message here in general is it's a way right and actually i have comment about uh last picture uh about uh mid-century maybe to find a little bit more exciting uh example to scroll but uh to the very last page okay just making a change i'm just highlighting it okay uh i'm i didn't catch all that tanya what do you so no i was talking about the the last page yeah do you mean the change that i made just a syntax change so since these are guidelines instead of saying when you don't want heat gain i just changed it to a a different voice where you say to minimize passive heat gain well it's a little bit too familiar a clause anyway it's really it should be more technical sounding than that so i think does that sound more technical to minimize my part does yours helps yes okay yeah i just you know sometimes i'm guilty this in my legal writing that i'm you know saying you and and we and yeah i shouldn't have done that that's okay so i just made that change that was the only thing so that tanya you had something on the last page uh yeah i just think to find a little bit more exciting example because in the mid-century style you you could find a bit better walking building not in weyland you can't but we are not necessarily obligated to bring examples only from weyland right we want to to bring example for the future weyland right i agree and i and i think that there's plenty of opportunity over by longfellow i think i might have mentioned it the last time we talked over by the longfellow uh jim that um there's really no neighborhood to offend with a contemporary style buildings there and so i i think that that could be an area for example where the weyland encourages um contemporary style um sustainable building types there yeah maybe we just find some some more aesthetically pleasing examples yeah i i agree that there really aren't very many in a way the one on the bottom is an example of one that has been um i don't know what the word is it's been abused and uh you know with additional lights hanging from the windows and and add on and and of course the site filled with machinery and so forth this this is um looks like a backwoods uh country building that uh isn't very attractive right uh and the one to the right there with the red and the signs that's the one that's just peppered with signage um both of those are terrible examples and they're probably the two worst looking buildings in weyland yeah but it's one is gone i think the fact that it's a modern building is not is not what the problem is the problem is that they they don't treat it very well right yeah you know there's only so much you can fix but the the the other gas station the one that's down on plain road i think that building is gone now that no that's still up that's what it looks like i just photographed oh all right i thought they took that down and they no they cleaned it up oh okay like a nice modern building now but it's too small for anybody to want to use for the kind of money they want yeah and so you know so tanya are you saying these are not great examples to show i was thinking that too i especially the green one it's like that that owner will not be happy that we use them as an example of what not to do so that's not a good political thing to do but it should be inspiring in a way i think so yeah i would rather bring something not if not from weyland but something that's great advice i think you're right yeah there won't be in weyland but we can find other buildings uh that are yeah that there are um sustainable and uh currently contemporary in style there's a lot of them going up all over all over boston i think i just opened and i could send the the this uh mashpee reference that i sent the word uh the word uh documents so you could use the wording there because i thought you already had sent that to um i sent it as a pdf yeah she mentioned it yeah okay yeah i will send her the word that's yeah i will send you the word document okay and i i could add there i found actually a couple gas stations i was looking for new england style gas stations i didn't find a sound on something very uh kind of for cartoony so this is a you know a rendering of a house and i kind of cut off most of the garage because otherwise this could be a commercial building yeah exactly and i may add a couple mid-century buildings as well so even that though is that's a 1929 style building or early 20s you know that's international style which is it's as historic a style as victorian and you know any of the others you want to go through um but i'm going to look for to respond to tanya's suggestion is truly contemporary style buildings that are sustainable um sustainable solar buildings that would be uh welcome in wayland yeah i'm not saying that isn't welcome that's just another old style yeah in looking at you know what what i'm finding sort of quickly just by google searching is more either large-scale commercial buildings or residential buildings i'm not finding a lot of i agree i tried doing that myself about two weeks ago and i guess all they turns out they were all just marketing their product yeah really they weren't even good examples i mean there's a fair number of like deck houses yeah well we had a lot of those in wayland you know yeah and then but they look very residential they are yeah that's right yeah around here especially i thought about mentioning it because well it had so many of them because that basically was part of our character but that's not commercial i didn't want to lead us in that direction no um but this is this is sort of an interesting one because let me snap this one and then because this one could actually it's a house but it could be a gas station honestly which one i don't see it i'm gonna open it up you gotta give me a second all right let me move you guys out of the way here it is now i can share it so yeah um yeah let me make it bigger if i can like this could honestly be the overhang over a gas station oh you know and a garage bay there's no reason it couldn't be yeah and that's cool and that's definitely mid-century modern oh yeah my son bought a house that looks just like that in uh california the whole neighborhood is yeah alexander's neighborhood looks like this too in oakland yeah that's kind of cool so you know there's stuff out there it's it's hard to find it you know looking through google images yeah i agree because i tried to but i i know i could find some i will uh i will give it one more try and i will send you shortly i don't know because i wasn't looking for the mid-century examples i was looking for the new england style but i yeah what i think the best one that came up is marsh i think it's even wiser to look at current buildings they're going up all over boston and find uh one or two that would fit into wayland's character uh not not in the sense of matching what's here but in the sense of the kind of buildings that will probably have people want to build on empty lots in wayland in the commercial districts but we can just drive around and find some okay okay um all right are we ready to do our next what's our next thing oh the coptic church yeah we can do that that was it right yep so well our discussion about the church oh that's right we skipped that that was on at 7 40 so we can we can do that now we got a formal letter from i i'm i don't know if you've all read on november fifth uh formal letter from many abutters many neighbors who all signed the letter two pages of signed names yep and it went through traffic issues the church design um diocese center uh lighting setbacks i'm just reading the captions construction phases uh that was a that was the summary of their outline now we can skip items like traffic it's not really anything for us to review no uh so we're not going to comment on it uh the church design though that's item two um i don't know if you find it robin it was sent to all of us a while ago yeah oh i mean the actual letter yeah i can you want to post it i don't know it doesn't matter if you don't because i basically it's the the first point on the church design is they want to consider limiting the height of the towers yeah my mailbox is just being slow i'll pull it up though they want to do it in such a way that it's not visible from the surrounding neighborhood communities yeah and an earlier suggestion they had suggested that you keep the height below the tree line of existing trees that are going to remain and my outlook is being sketchy okay all right let's try again okay november 5th some of these things i have filed so they might be in my file for this application oh just look yeah okay when i file things they go down a rabbit hole i find them very hard to find um learn and enable them better that helps i try to be organized so each application has a folder yeah um and that's hard to do that because like tonight we're talking about a previous meeting so which place do you file that in the previous meeting or tonight's meeting because we're discussing it yeah okay now let me share okay okay yeah that's it so i went down the item two church design yep building church that one so because so the dover amendment come in comes into play because our ability to limit the height of the church is going to be minimal but as the design review board it is within our purview to note that a building of that height um which is above the canopy of the trees and all these other issues leave the building inconsistent with the character of a scenic road and the character of rice road in particular and such a you know wild and natural area with lots of conservation land surrounding it um and i think it's important to note that and the the arrangement of the buildings on the site in terms of their proximity to rice road um is also a little inconsistent with the the scenic character and the the you know wild landscapes on rice road um so that would be that would be my comment okay could you scroll through the this whole letter so i will see the other items do they talk do they talk about uh like program overall like how packed the site and in general with this program uh i'm not sure i understood the question uh the the it's uh like whatever they're trying to fit into the site so it's a very big program uh they have chores they have sports centers they have basically uh apartment building there oh yeah yeah questioning the program of all the activities yeah so basically i don't think the church itself is a problem the overall uh program and uh this whole uh complex is a problem yeah so if they would reduce the program uh the church itself would look yeah i'm not sure you know you could find the proper place you could push it inside the sites the parking lot would be smaller i think the problem overall is with very ambitious programs that they're trying to fit into the small site um yeah you're starting to touch on a lot of the things that the last letter talked about i'm not sure this one does it the same but that was a that was a sorry that was a question that came up about what um again it's not something that we vote on the dover amendment amendment but whether the housing for example uh is allowed to come into play on on the dover amendment and the office diocesan office it becomes a borderline uh question of whether that's actually even religious right and the same with the gymnasium and the soccer field yeah exactly so it's recreation so i think that that's outside our um area of um charge i think our charge is to talk about the design of the building and i think building height is a big part of that yeah and i think the program is right in this sense tanya that they're jamming a lot of material on this small site and so program is an issue if you're crowding the built in this you know tiny little residential lot full of everything they can imagine it certainly should come into question but um
i don't know if we can take it any further than that the parking you know they may be able to prove that they need that much parking in which case i would say well then you need to build a parking garage either underground or above or whatever but you need to condense it so that you can fit the rest of the things on there for me my my first reaction and it's still i think a very prominent one uh prominent issue is what we've done and when i was on the zoning board for a big project like this we've always insisted that there be a setback that is that has a screen a visual screen of landscaping and the best example of that i think i mentioned the last time is but greenways that became named something else but it basically is right across from saint anne's church and we had a 50 foot set back there and it was heavily planted and you drive by there today you don't even know that that yeah building complex is back there yeah so the applicant has changed their application since it was sent to us and they have um based on issues that were raised during the site walk along turkey hill road on the side and then up around the back of the site they have added a basically a hedge of cedars so that the building will be screened at least at you know to a certain height from the the turkey hill village area and from the the street there so they did make that one change but they haven't really pulled back you know away from the setback but they're just at the edge of the setback yeah okay well for me that was that was you know what a hedge is certainly an alternative um but i i not a great one i don't think but
for one thing it's it's really not it does not have the appearance of a natural landscape and they're going to buy a bunch of uh arborvitae up there which is not even a native species and then trim it every month so that it looks like a wall yeah i don't think i don't think that's a great buffer no you could build a wall too that's another way to do it okay yeah um so that we we done with the church design and want to talk about lighting or um i don't know do you have any more tanya on the but the only thing that came up in some of the meetings i went to the one that was public hearing uh was the style of the church but you know it's basically an antique style pre-production old church put on the site yeah you know i think church could be a unique building it just uh the problem my problem with this overall complex that it's not just a church and uh yeah the way how they position it and it makes it a community yeah yeah
so so i i don't think uh the style of the church is a problem
the problem that this the church would be surround uh with a huge parking lot and next to it it will be some apartment building and sport complex which is kind of overwhelming yeah and in fact on on most sides as you're driving on rice road you don't even actually see the church you see these you know accessory buildings the school building and the diocese building yeah so all right so what what could we be robin what do you think we could contribute to as you know design review uh we've talked about the building a little bit we've talked about the site uh those are the two major things that we can drive we they haven't shown us anything about lighting yet or signage or any of the other things that we have to review yeah to the extent that i know about those things it's because of their more recent materials that they haven't submitted to us but they also didn't request an extension we're beyond the timeline they did not no i don't believe they did but we asked we asked them to come back right well they didn't even really come before us they came and said we're not ready and that was really it so but i think we could write up um you know an opinion that says that you know as a board we find you know these these flaws in the application that the scale and the placement of the buildings on a scenic road in a in a natural area in a semi-rural environment is is not consistent with that with with the nature of the area that we think that the size of the project as a whole is problematic um given the the the fact that the project is going to overwhelm the site and that um the the the the parking facilities are are also overwhelming the site and would perhaps be better addressed in a parking structure rather than a sprawling lots underground on the option that creates what yeah underground structure i think so underground would be the way to do it yeah or at least partially underground yeah but a multi-level structure that yeah yeah yeah so you know i think that if if those are things we can address and then we can point out that they did not provide us with landscape plans lighting plans uh what else was on here you know that we didn't have those issues to address because the applicant didn't provide those so we may have further objections or comments but these are the ones based on the information we have now and that we would ask you know other permitting boards to consider these recommendations and i would add in that letter if you want to do a first draft i'd appreciate it but if you don't i'll try it um i would add a request um for an extension of our time to review their project and and even you know can we ask that they reapply because they never really followed through on their application oh good that's even better yeah i'd basically declare it incomplete and uh or inconclusive anyway and then um ask them to finish the questions that they didn't answer landscape lighting not sure what else setbacks section through the site great is that a motion to write um yes you want to make it a motion okay i'll have to write it up and i don't know that i'll be able to write it up exactly as i said it oh unless you want to take it from the minutes if you take it from the minutes then it's it can be a motion and you'll just pull it from the minutes yeah okay so then yes it's a motion okay good um i second that motion i second it okay tanya you do it and uh vote yes yes yes and we made it just in time anyone want to move that we adjourn i move that we adjourn i second it all those in favor yes yes three zero zero