September 29, 2026 – Design Review Board – Video & Transcript
September 29, 2026 - Design Review Board
This is the Design Review Advisory Board and it's 731 and we're calling the meeting to order. I presume there are, there's no, we really would like to defer on questions after this first decision, the first application is the Happy Hollow Water Treatment Facility
and Castle Road pump station. I'd like to, whoever's representing, introduce themselves and present here.
Yeah, I can, I can start off. Can you guys hear me all right?
Yes.
Okay. Well, good evening, everyone. Thanks for having us in tonight to speak about this important project for Wayland. For those of you that don't know who I am, I'm Tom Holder. I'm the Public Works Director in town.
And with me tonight is the Kleinfelder design team. We've got a handful of folks that are prepared to present the topic tonight and answer questions, be able to field any, any, any comments, questions, suggestions that you have.
The project that we're going to talk about tonight is the long-term water supply project that many of you are very familiar with, along with the actual MWRE connection and significant pipe work.
There are vertical components of the project, and we're going to speak primarily to those tonight.
We met with the full planning board on September 9th and heard suggestions and concerns from both planning board members and the public who attended that meeting that night.
Since that meeting, the design team has made adjustments to the original design concept, and we've worked to provide answers and solutions to what was heard at the planning board meeting on the 9th.
We are here tonight to speak to those items and to hear feedback from this board, and with that, I will turn it over to Kirsten Ryan.
She's the lead representative for Kleinfelder on this project, and she can introduce the rest of the team and present the material tonight.
Kirsten Ryan- Thank you, Tom.
Kirsten Ryan- Good evening, everybody.
Kirsten Ryan- I'm Kirsten Ryan, project manager for the team of Kleinfelder.
Kirsten Ryan- Tom summarized that very well.
Kirsten Ryan- I will say I find it kind of difficult to hear the folks in the room, so when we get to sort of getting into questions, we might need to have folks move closer to the microphone if that's possible.
Kirsten Ryan- But we appreciate you letting us join by zoom so let me just quickly say who my team is here, we have Jen Neckerman and Matt O'Dowd they are one of the taking the lead on the water system design.
Kirsten Ryan- Travis Pryor is a landscape architect and engineer.
Kirsten Ryan- We have Mike Hansen he's a stormwater senior stormwater engineer.
Kirsten Ryan- So we have have a lot of folks tonight so as Tom mentioned, we we went back and met as a team did some design revisions met with Tom and dawn from dpw.
Kirsten Ryan- To you know get make sure we're all on the same page and made some significant revisions.
Kirsten Ryan- As Tom mentioned the two components of the project are the happy hollow facility and the castle road pump station.
Kirsten Ryan- What we were hoping to do tonight is to focus on the castle road design, because that had the most comments the most.
Kirsten Ryan- You know public comment and concern so that's where we focused our attention since the night.
Kirsten Ryan- We will be taking your feedback from this meeting, making revisions and putting forth another set of plans to present to the subsequent planning board hearing and also, we know we realize we need to file and finish that application for this board.
Kirsten Ryan- We also just received comments from the third party reviewer on Monday of this week for the site plan application so lots of.
Kirsten Ryan- Can you interrupt for a second.
Kirsten Ryan- Yes.
Kirsten Ryan- We'll get to mention it, please send me.
Kirsten Ryan- email or a text with the names of all the participants, so I can get them spelled right and put in the meeting minutes.
Kirsten Ryan- Certainly.
Kirsten Ryan- Thank you.
Kirsten Ryan- We'll do that.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- I also wanted to add that if you could confirm that it's my understanding that the first part of the project, the pump station is or the other, the pump station is castle road right so it's the other one purification.
Kirsten Ryan- That, as far as I can tell, it's not really visible from a public way to the center might be on the high school.
Kirsten Ryan- If that's the case.
Kirsten Ryan- It really is the reason there were no comments there really is no reason for us to debate about the visual merits of the project because it's.
Kirsten Ryan- Very good yeah we hadn't prepared material relating to that for this evening.
Kirsten Ryan- That works.
Kirsten Ryan- There was some discussion at the hearing on the ninth about the location of the pump station.
Kirsten Ryan- There's we went through an alternatives analysis and I won't go into detail here unless folks in the room have comments or questions, but we can present this on at the next meeting with the public.
Kirsten Ryan- Just explaining how we arrived at the location where it is and how it's really.
Kirsten Ryan- The only best solution that minimizes impacts on a butters and the environment.
Kirsten Ryan- And also.
Kirsten Ryan- The complexity of crisscrossing the aqueduct is is is a primary concern and the expense of that.
Kirsten Ryan- So.
Kirsten Ryan- One of the alternatives that was ruled out.
Kirsten Ryan- Across the street at sycamore road area and also further back this way would have required more complex design.
Kirsten Ryan- So for those reasons is why we landed on castle road back in 2024.
Kirsten Ryan- So just to refresh everybody on the existing conditions.
Kirsten Ryan- You can see here, this is the view from castle road facing west where the pump station would be.
Kirsten Ryan- There was some concerns at the meeting about sight lines and here's a view.
Kirsten Ryan- sort of looking down old Connecticut path.
Kirsten Ryan- If you were pulling out of castle road to make a right.
Kirsten Ryan- There was a tree that's kind of obstructing a view and folks were concerned about the proposed fence line here possibly obstructing sight lines.
Kirsten Ryan- So we have looked into that.
Kirsten Ryan- You can see there's an existing guardrail.
Kirsten Ryan- This is facing west and with some existing chain link fence here.
Kirsten Ryan- The MWA is looking to prevent, you know, vehicles from getting onto this area.
Kirsten Ryan- Unauthorized vehicles.
Kirsten Ryan- So there's fencing there.
Kirsten Ryan- And here's a view just heading down old Connecticut path.
Kirsten Ryan- East bound east, northeast bound with castle road here on the left.
Kirsten Ryan- And this area is where the pump station would be.
Kirsten Ryan- Sorry to interrupt Kirsten.
Kirsten Ryan- If you can go back a slide.
Kirsten Ryan- So, you know, as we talked about sight lines and Kirsten's going to talk a little bit about the changes that we've made to the fencing.
Kirsten Ryan- The tree that you see in the photograph.
Kirsten Ryan- We've actually, you know, so we recognize that that provides a significant sight line issue when looking westbound towards the west.
Kirsten Ryan- So we've actually tagged that tree.
Kirsten Ryan- We've added it to the list of trees that we're going to contemplate removing at our October tree hearing.
Kirsten Ryan- And with all likeliness, I don't think there'll be any contention.
Kirsten Ryan- We will likely recommend and have that tree removed.
Kirsten Ryan- So I just wanted to point that out.
Kirsten Ryan- It may not need to be removed entirely.
Kirsten Ryan- If you live it up five feet from the ground, I think that that may give you enough sight lines.
Kirsten Ryan- But yes, I'm not a traffic engineer, but if that's suitable, I'm sure that the tree committee would be.
Kirsten Ryan- We prefer that to just cut your area.
Kirsten Ryan- Right, right.
Kirsten Ryan- So we're glad to at least be able to provide that that improvement.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, so looking at what we had presented on the ninth.
Kirsten Ryan- The original fence line of highlighted that in red here.
Kirsten Ryan- This is Castle Road right here.
Kirsten Ryan- Old Connecticut path down here.
Kirsten Ryan- And this is a rendering of this design that.
Kirsten Ryan- So you come on down on Castle Road there's a driveway here and then the pump station is here.
Kirsten Ryan- Originally we were proposing a septic system.
Kirsten Ryan- And beach field due to plumbing code requirements.
Kirsten Ryan- But we were able to apply for a waiver that we're quite confident that the town will be able to receive a waiver to omit.
Kirsten Ryan- Sanitary facilities from this this building that will eliminate the need for these elements.
Kirsten Ryan- The general there's a sound attenuated soundproof generator emergency generator back here we've also.
Kirsten Ryan- reoriented that so it's it's pulled closer to the building you'll show show you that in a moment.
Kirsten Ryan- The stormwater subsurface stormwater infiltration system is here, and that had been enclosed within the fence we decided that we could.
Kirsten Ryan- Take that take the fence line in which you'll see in a moment.
Kirsten Ryan- This is what we presented on the line.
Kirsten Ryan- Before going to the next slide where is the surrender view is taken from.
Kirsten Ryan- Can you repeat the question.
Kirsten Ryan- What's the point of view.
Kirsten Ryan- Oh here.
Kirsten Ryan- yeah this is um you're on Castle road looking um west towards the pumps the proposed pump station.
Kirsten Ryan- So basically you're not supposed to see this building you're supposed to see the fence.
Kirsten Ryan- There yeah this has a fence with privacy slats shown.
Kirsten Ryan- But I believe there was some objection to that.
Kirsten Ryan- The visual of that so.
Kirsten Ryan- we've made some revisions.
Kirsten Ryan- So so because it's good to understand the height of the fence compared to the building what would be seen behind the fence.
Kirsten Ryan- Yes, we.
Kirsten Ryan- We are going to prepare a new rendering we just haven't had time because this revisions really just in process this week, so we are going to prepare a new visual rendering that you'd be able to see.
Kirsten Ryan- There'll be some screening vegetation which i'm going to get into in detail here.
Kirsten Ryan- So this is.
Kirsten Ryan- have to put more attention to the fence book versus for the building because it's a complete account.
Kirsten Ryan- The one says the building behind the fence.
Kirsten Ryan- The one thing the one thing about the topography of the property is you know so we're we're going to talk about whether the fence is going to be six or eight feet.
Kirsten Ryan- Our recommendation would be a six foot fence.
Kirsten Ryan- But this road is actually elevated higher than the property.
Kirsten Ryan- So when when standing on the road or when driving a vehicle on the road.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- You will likely be able to see over the top of the fence and actually be able to see the building.
Kirsten Ryan- I thought Tom that i'm done preferred an eight foot fence, which is consistent with the other facilities, but we can.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, that's fine.
Kirsten Ryan- Yep.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, so before I show you our revisions I just want to summarize what we heard at the nine nine hearing.
Kirsten Ryan- The the sight lines I already talked about the type of fencing sounded like people were not thrilled with that with the privacy slats particularly they didn't prefer I believe that's what they said.
Kirsten Ryan- Looking for landscaping and screening the siding color was mentioned lighting traffic noise and flooding, so those are all the things that we've been looking at and we'll talk about.
Kirsten Ryan- We just want to you know point out this is a piece of drinking water infrastructure, so we have certain constraints certain requirements, we need to work within obviously the Massachusetts water resources authority this is their property that the facilities being constructed.
Kirsten Ryan- So we need to consider their existing infrastructure that they maintain the guardrail.
Kirsten Ryan- The distance that we are separated from the underground aqueduct and then mass DEP drinking water guidelines and requirements, along with other standard things so we're we are attempting to address all of these concerns within within these constraints.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, so here's what we have revised the site plan to look like.
Kirsten Ryan- The red is the fence line you saw that on the previous slide how much bigger it was.
Kirsten Ryan- We have pulled the fence back to here, it was up it was up close to Castle road now it's back here.
Kirsten Ryan- We needed to we tied it into an existing there's an existing fence here that's the under race fence.
Kirsten Ryan- And then the existing guardrail is this curved.
Kirsten Ryan- Gray line so it's tied in there so that they can.
Kirsten Ryan- People can still walk through here as they people will still be able to walk through as they do now, they would obviously need to step over the guardrail and that will be unchanged.
Kirsten Ryan- Or step through it if it's a very small gap.
Kirsten Ryan- We have added landscaping, we believe that we can actually remove.
Kirsten Ryan- A portion of.
Kirsten Ryan- A portion of the fencing that's existing here portion of the guardrail, because our site will still maintain that restricted restriction on vehicle access, but allow pedestrians.
Kirsten Ryan- And then we would have a gate for the Mdibre if they need to bring a mower through here or something like that.
Kirsten Ryan- We let's see what else.
Kirsten Ryan- So yes, we've reduced the overall fencing footprint by about half.
Kirsten Ryan- We move the generator here, you can see it's now kind of reoriented so that you're standing on this on Castle road.
Kirsten Ryan- It will be likely be mostly hidden behind the building and maintain pedestrian access getting rid of the fence that was all the way.
Kirsten Ryan- To the edge.
Kirsten Ryan- I think will improve sight lines here and then we have some screening of the fencing with native evergreens and tall perennial grasses.
Kirsten Ryan- You can see an example here of one of them screening a fence line and let me show you kind of which which ones we would propose for which areas.
Kirsten Ryan- And yeah if you have any specific questions on the planting some Travis can jump in and and address them but.
Kirsten Ryan- We're thinking some of the couple of these Eastern red cedars that are a little taller flanking the driveway entrance with under planted with Canadian you which is a little shorter evergreen.
Kirsten Ryan- It's got inkberry along the front of the facility and then mountain laurel screening the northerly edge here.
Kirsten Ryan- There is there is there is treat there is a tree line in here but it's obviously all deciduous trees so these would provide an evergreen visual barrier from this a butter to the north.
Kirsten Ryan- And then along the southern side.
Kirsten Ryan- Where we you know we don't have as much concern about a butter visual impacts just wrote people traveling on the road impacts we are proposing tall native grasses like.
Kirsten Ryan- it's big bluestem and Indian grass.
Kirsten Ryan- Let me pause there see if people have questions comments.
Kirsten Ryan- One important thing I have on that is the cedar by the driveway entrance.
Kirsten Ryan- Would that be a problem with visibility.
Kirsten Ryan- For safety for pedestrians or cars approaching.
Kirsten Ryan- When approaching.
Kirsten Ryan- Travis do I can talk to that real quick so that they are set back behind the guardrail.
Kirsten Ryan- About 10 or so feet to 15 feet off the edge of the road.
Kirsten Ryan- So the front of the vehicle coming out of that driveway could be visible.
Kirsten Ryan- Beyond the beyond those shrubs or the small trees from Castle Road.
Kirsten Ryan- I think some of the the idea was to again with that grade drop as well, too, was to get something a little bit taller there that would.
Kirsten Ryan- have a quicker visual screening impact for the butter across the street who has a porch that faces directly at the pump station.
Kirsten Ryan- On want to have any green barrier on the side of the connect to connect to come open.
Kirsten Ryan- Along here.
Kirsten Ryan- I didn't catch that.
Kirsten Ryan- On the other side of the you have green barrier on one side, but on the other side of the.
Kirsten Ryan- On the side of the old connect to the path, we didn't have any green area.
Kirsten Ryan- We have proposed this.
Kirsten Ryan- This yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- There's kind of break up and soften the fence and it's set down a few feet from the road.
Kirsten Ryan- But those are good to be three to four or five feet tall.
Kirsten Ryan- Including lasting through the winter, they would then be probably mowed down early or covered.
Kirsten Ryan- or cut down early in the spring and grow again.
Kirsten Ryan- I'll just mention the reason that we're proposing the native grasses along the old Connecticut path side versus a shrub or a taller tree is because we encroach.
Kirsten Ryan- On the side closer to the Holtman, which is the mwra is aqueduct and we haven't reviewed this plan this landscaping plan yet with mwra but.
Kirsten Ryan- I anticipate based on previous feedback we've heard from them they're not going to want to have root deeper root systems close to their aqueduct that will be an option for us.
Kirsten Ryan- yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- It's not close to the aqueduct it's close to the old Connecticut path itself.
Kirsten Ryan- That hatched line that we see on the screen now is the aqueduct.
Kirsten Ryan- We also want to minimize the visual sight distance concern we think that pine tree is right in the way.
Kirsten Ryan- Something with that height would be okay.
Kirsten Ryan- Otherwise, it's just grass.
Kirsten Ryan- Is that right?
Kirsten Ryan- Yes.
Kirsten Ryan- From that corner.
Kirsten Ryan- If you were looking at the pump station heading along the negative path in the other direction, you would see the use and then you would see those taller 10 foot inkberry.
Kirsten Ryan- The kind of like the lower lower picture shows against an eight foot fence.
Kirsten Ryan- So at some point they will get up to that mature size.
Kirsten Ryan- So you have two rows of evergreens from Castle Road and from that intersection looking back at the building.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, nothing but nothing but nothing but the view of the model.
Kirsten Ryan- There were all connected parts to our side.
Kirsten Ryan- Correct is it yeah most of that is drivers going by and their view would not be as obstructed.
Kirsten Ryan- It's it's hard to hear.
Kirsten Ryan- I think the comment is can we pull some of the proposed shrubs, maybe the inkberry along the.
Kirsten Ryan- The front of the site i'll call the old kind of get past side of the site in the corner where we come away from the aqueduct can we.
Kirsten Ryan- Like along the parking area we have next to the driveway i'm here.
Kirsten Ryan- yeah part of where we're showing the grasses convert that to shrubs where we're not too close to the.
Kirsten Ryan- aqueduct.
Kirsten Ryan- Which we can take I think the concern would be site distance and we can we can do an analysis on that and see what our options are.
Kirsten Ryan- yeah we're trying to balance the the sightline concern with the visibility concern.
Kirsten Ryan- Again, I think that row in front of the building there.
Kirsten Ryan- Do the same visual block.
Kirsten Ryan- If you put them there, I think if you're still looking at it from across the intersection that it would not add any additional screening, but it could.
Kirsten Ryan- add visual impact coming out of castle road.
Kirsten Ryan- Right.
Kirsten Ryan- or site distance.
Kirsten Ryan- But it sounds like we can talk with MWRA and see how close we can plant shrubs and trees to their aqueduct.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, because we're talking about shrubs.
Kirsten Ryan- It's not necessarily should be called trees, but some shrubs would work as well.
Kirsten Ryan- Along with high grass.
Kirsten Ryan- I think that our.
Kirsten Ryan- Our concern at the beginning of the meeting is that this is a residential neighborhood and I think it would be in everybody's best interest to treat the appearance of this property as much like a neighboring residential property.
Kirsten Ryan- So landscaping approach, you know, it would be, I think, appropriate to make it.
Kirsten Ryan- blend in with the neighborhood landscaping.
Kirsten Ryan- Travis, do you think.
Kirsten Ryan- Putting.
Kirsten Ryan- Like shrubs in here behind like.
Kirsten Ryan- Is that.
Kirsten Ryan- going to interfere.
Kirsten Ryan- That's definitely some potential I think what i'm hearing you know we have very linear plantings here.
Kirsten Ryan- And it looks.
Kirsten Ryan- More like a screen version i'm not sure if what you're suggesting is it looks a little more informal.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Could do some triangulated or staggered spacing or we could mix.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- So it looks less engineered.
Kirsten Ryan- Other than straight lines.
Kirsten Ryan- I think.
Kirsten Ryan- This is a case where you want to get.
Kirsten Ryan- More like old instead work done.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, we can certainly we can certainly soften it to look more like a residential landscaping.
Kirsten Ryan- i'll leave it up to landscape architects and engineers to deal with the traffic safety issue as well.
Kirsten Ryan- Mm hmm.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- Yep.
Kirsten Ryan- That's helpful feedback.
Kirsten Ryan- Anything else on plantings I have a few just of these pictures, but we probably don't need to talk through them all you're probably all familiar with what these types of plants are.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, so the fence itself and the type of fence was a topic of discussion.
Kirsten Ryan- I believe what we had proposed was the chain link fence with the vinyl slats.
Kirsten Ryan- And I was not at the meeting, but I understood there was an objection to the vinyl slats.
Kirsten Ryan- You know, we would still like to go with a chain link black vinyl coated seems to me to have or to our team to have the least amount of visual impact.
Kirsten Ryan- If you were you know a typical pump station would have tall fence sometimes barbed wire obviously we're not proposing that but we are proposing to keep this facility safe.
Kirsten Ryan- Other options that could be considered are probably a little more expensive, and I may have also an objection to how they look I don't know I think it may be.
Kirsten Ryan- interested to hear your thoughts, but I think our goal is to really screen them with the plantings.
Kirsten Ryan- I do know there is chain link fence.
Kirsten Ryan- In the residential neighborhoods on Castle road, you know the one of the abutters to the north there's there's chain link fence around their property it's not you know unprecedented to have that in the in that the part of the neighborhood.
Kirsten Ryan- Obviously options on the right, it looks, you know, statically, statically pleasant.
Kirsten Ryan- And yeah, it's matter of the budget.
Kirsten Ryan- It's also depends how much greenery we'll put outside of the fence to cover.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, we're definitely putting a lot more greenery outside the fence.
Kirsten Ryan- But you are saying that it's going to be eight feet high, right?
Kirsten Ryan- The fence.
Kirsten Ryan- The shrubbery will not be eight feet high, presumably.
Kirsten Ryan- Two of the shrubs will.
Kirsten Ryan- The mountain Laurel and the inquiry get up to 10 feet.
Kirsten Ryan- But the grasses along Connecticut path side on the south, those only get to be four or five feet and they are seasonal.
Kirsten Ryan- It will not be 100% screen though i'm sure there's going to be some some gaps and some of the shrubs and things like that over time.
Kirsten Ryan- But the idea is to screen the majority of it from the abutting residential properties.
Kirsten Ryan- I think that's the most important to address.
Kirsten Ryan- But I don't think we should dismiss the fact that this property will now be basically the entrance to that neighborhood.
Kirsten Ryan- It's basically their front door.
Kirsten Ryan- So I don't think we should ignore how it looks.
Kirsten Ryan- But the first impression is that someone drives into a neighborhood.
Kirsten Ryan- I think that should also look residential.
Kirsten Ryan- High chain link fence.
Kirsten Ryan- I'm sure the abutter that you found doesn't have an eight foot high chain link fence.
Kirsten Ryan- No, no.
Kirsten Ryan- But I agree with Tonya that it looks like a wrought iron, it could be a aluminum fence on the right.
Kirsten Ryan- It is a better look than the chain link.
Kirsten Ryan- I agree.
Kirsten Ryan- I'm thinking if I lived across the street from this.
Kirsten Ryan- I'd rather see that with some plantings.
Kirsten Ryan- The whole line along all that can pass where the grasses will be planted.
Kirsten Ryan- Those grasses won't really be won't help screen in the wintertime.
Kirsten Ryan- So you'll be seeing a long line of fence.
Kirsten Ryan- And the chain link fence is a little industrial looking.
Kirsten Ryan- We can explore that.
Kirsten Ryan- We can work on that rendering.
Kirsten Ryan- I think that'll show better how things will look in our revision.
Kirsten Ryan- Would it be amenable with the fencing to, you know, on basically three sides,
or say on the Castle Road side and the Connecticut Pass side, have that fencing
Kirsten Ryan- and have chain link on the other, on the back side, the north side, where it'd be more hidden.
Kirsten Ryan- And you could have a different kind of fence on one side than the other.
Kirsten Ryan- That would help.
Kirsten Ryan- And so where the mountain orle is that could potentially be chain link.
Kirsten Ryan- And then maybe the stretch up to the abutter in the north.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, so.
Kirsten Ryan- Next, regarding the building.
Kirsten Ryan- You know there's an options for multiple colors.
Kirsten Ryan- That we can talk about and believe people were interested in more of a gray color.
Kirsten Ryan- So here's an example of some colors.
Kirsten Ryan- They have, you know, could be a smooth finish could be a more of a wood grain finish on the siding.
Kirsten Ryan- This is again the old original rendering.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, I'm the one that brought that out.
Kirsten Ryan- I still believe it would be better, better to go with the color of the bark on the trees.
Kirsten Ryan- And so it blends in with the landscape better and bite.
Kirsten Ryan- And I don't know if you have a different opinion about what and whether it should have a more color hint in it.
Kirsten Ryan- No, I think it should be, it should be blending in.
Kirsten Ryan- It's not really doing some architectural marbles that should stand out.
Kirsten Ryan- Sure.
Kirsten Ryan- So, I think the wood grain texture,
Kirsten Ryan- I like that.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, I'm hearing wood grain texture and I'm hearing a color more like a maybe a
Kirsten Ryan- Like the tree chunks in that picture.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, like something like this.
Kirsten Ryan- If you go to about a five on a scale of zero to 10, you should be pretty safe.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, very good.
Kirsten Ryan- Next, we had looked at noise or we had some comments about noise.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, I'm sorry.
Kirsten Ryan- That means that you don't go with white trim, which makes it busy again.
Kirsten Ryan- Someone might be tempted to do that because ASAC comes white and you don't
have to paint it.
Kirsten Ryan- But I think everything should be muted.
Kirsten Ryan- No accent trim either.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, a dark trim, like a dark gray or darker color trim.
Kirsten Ryan- Could go darker, but you certainly don't worry.
Kirsten Ryan- Yep.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay, that's great.
Kirsten Ryan- Thank you.
Kirsten Ryan- Not related to aesthetics, but we have done a, or we have a noise analysis
on the generator unit.
Kirsten Ryan- It's a sound itinerated generator and you know, just in preparation for comments
Kirsten Ryan- We have this slide here, which demonstrates that it's really going to be at
the generator itself, but you're standing right next to it.
Kirsten Ryan- It's about as loud as a vacuum cleaner or 70 decibels.
Kirsten Ryan- So at the property line that reduces down to the level of like a restaurant
conversation.
Kirsten Ryan- So and also that's without considering screened planting so it's really going to be
Kirsten Ryan- Quite quiet operated only about 30 minutes a week during the week during the day.
Kirsten Ryan- For routine testing obviously there's the power outage you know it's going
to be on for until that's restored, but it's it's very quiet.
Kirsten Ryan- Some other considerations.
Kirsten Ryan- It comes.
Kirsten Ryan- It comes with the sound isolation unit, or is that something you're adding.
Kirsten Ryan- I believe it's comes out in the unit is that correct or
Kirsten Ryan- The.
Kirsten Ryan- The project will include the sound attenuating unit, but the contract will include that.
Kirsten Ryan- And where are the decibels you said.
Kirsten Ryan- Right at the unit itself 70 and at the property line it shouldn't be any more than 60.
Kirsten Ryan- 60.
Kirsten Ryan- yeah without even considering you know shrubs so.
Kirsten Ryan- lighting, we are working on lighting plans.
Kirsten Ryan- That will be available soon.
Kirsten Ryan- I know that we're planning on dark sky compliant fixtures.
Kirsten Ryan- If there's any comments regarding lighting from the board.
Kirsten Ryan- No it's just what the zoning would require for anybody who wants a residential property.
Kirsten Ryan- You have to screen all lighting in from the dark sky.
Kirsten Ryan- Wood is also part of it.
Kirsten Ryan- Yep.
Kirsten Ryan- The shield is lights.
Kirsten Ryan- Yep.
Kirsten Ryan- Flooding the stormwater design is extremely robust and conservative.
Kirsten Ryan- If somebody mentioned concerns about that corner, but it's it's going to attenuate the 2070 hundred year 24 hour storm traffic is really going to generate only one operator visit per day.
Kirsten Ryan- And the DPW is, you know, taking this seriously the concerns about that intersection and I don't know Tom if you want to chime in on anything there.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, sure, sure.
Kirsten Ryan- I mean, during our site visits, it became quite apparent to us, if you're exiting Castle Road, taking a left onto old Connecticut path heading eastbound.
Kirsten Ryan- That's a really tough spot to pull out.
Kirsten Ryan- I mean, this project is not going to help or hurt that situation.
Kirsten Ryan- But I think, you know, since we're looking at this, I think as a department, we would certainly be supportive of placing some signage.
Kirsten Ryan- As somebody was driving westbound to alert them to the fact that there is, you know, kind of a blind corner ahead.
Kirsten Ryan- We've had some success in other parts of the community installing those signs.
Kirsten Ryan- So we would, we would be supportive of doing that as well.
Kirsten Ryan- And that can be done.
Kirsten Ryan- You know, we could do that in a month.
Kirsten Ryan- We don't have to wait for the project to to commence.
Kirsten Ryan- We could actually, you know, do that well ahead of time.
Kirsten Ryan- I think that is all we had to present.
Kirsten Ryan- I'm happy to circle back on anything or any other things that that we didn't touch upon that you want to talk about.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't.
Kirsten Ryan- No.
Kirsten Ryan- I think we have enough comments about .
Kirsten Ryan- I agree.
Kirsten Ryan- The most important part to address.
Kirsten Ryan- And thanks to-
Kirsten Ryan- Thanks.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So-
Kirsten Ryan- Final rendering, it would be nice to see from all sides.
Kirsten Ryan- So what we will do is I will write up the minutes of our advisory suggestions and write them up when you get the minutes you'll have what our decision is.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So unless there's other comments, questions to the audience, then I think we're going to move on to the next topic that we're going on.
Kirsten Ryan- All right.
Kirsten Ryan- Very good.
Kirsten Ryan- Well, thanks to the membership and thank you to the Kleinfelder team.
Kirsten Ryan- Appreciate it.
Kirsten Ryan- Thank you.
Kirsten Ryan- Thank you.
Kirsten Ryan- Thank you.
Kirsten Ryan- Good night.
Kirsten Ryan- Good night.
Kirsten Ryan- So it's the view of the amended design guidelines.
Kirsten Ryan- Have you, you, I made a copy of Robert your team.
Kirsten Ryan- Right.
Kirsten Ryan- So you haven't had a chance to look at them.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So maybe, maybe we could look at this very good next time.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, I think so.
Kirsten Ryan- What I have done in the past, for the past few years, though, is actually, I think I copied up the original existing one from Robert if you want.
Kirsten Ryan- I find it really useful.
Kirsten Ryan- When I start to compare what's proposed now with what is existing.
Kirsten Ryan- So I often flip back and forth to see what's new because it's not highlighted in here.
Kirsten Ryan- What's the new text and what isn't.
Kirsten Ryan- Because most of it is new.
Kirsten Ryan- But there's a lot here that was just lifted and edited slightly.
Kirsten Ryan- I would like to just ask a couple of questions that I've been struggling with for the last few months.
Kirsten Ryan- And that is, and you'll see my comments in here.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't want to be reading my head already because they're scribbling in my youth only.
Kirsten Ryan- And so, yeah, I can watch you through one.
Kirsten Ryan- No, it's okay.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't refuse to it.
Kirsten Ryan- It's okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So an architectural action.
Kirsten Ryan- So, the thing is, though, I mentioned page two, the item of things that are not
Kirsten Ryan- I think that are not really part of design guidelines, I think, just trying to be taken out.
Kirsten Ryan- There are only two of them in there.
Kirsten Ryan- And that one that's on page two, where it says, want to get involved.
Kirsten Ryan- And there's another one towards the back that is just almost like an ad that's not related to what we're doing.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't think it's-
Kirsten Ryan- We can do that on their website if they want, but I don't think-
Kirsten Ryan- I think we should be consistent, and if we want to remove this one on the page two, we should remove this kind of ad through the-
Kirsten Ryan- There's a lot of that that needs to be done.
Kirsten Ryan- We were moving things around, and then-
Kirsten Ryan- So a lot of it is like placeholders.
Kirsten Ryan- There's a whole page here and a very small little text, because for a while we're playing with the idea of giving a separate page to each of these districts, and then getting more photographs and filling it out.
Kirsten Ryan- So they get a sense of the district character on a page-by-page basis.
Kirsten Ryan- I think it's a nice idea, but we never took it to that next year.
Kirsten Ryan- And if you-
Kirsten Ryan- Will it help?
Kirsten Ryan- Can you drop for this idea?
Kirsten Ryan- No, this is as far as we go.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So at this point, I feel that we're facing three options.
Kirsten Ryan- The one that would take the least time would be to just kind of take these comments and wrap it up, you know, without anything.
Kirsten Ryan- And that would be this suggestion, for example, a separate page for each topic.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't think we really need to do that.
Kirsten Ryan- We didn't do it on this existing one, and it's worked fine.
Kirsten Ryan- But that's one example of a way of just finishing the project and getting it out.
Kirsten Ryan- If you feel it's important to make this more embellished, and it certainly would be-
Kirsten Ryan- For someone from out of town who wants to know what our design guidelines are, you know, separating each page off separately, would certainly make it clearer what's going on.
Kirsten Ryan- There were other things in here besides that.
Kirsten Ryan- One of them is, there's an insert in here, zoning bylaws that were basically redundant in the sense that they're just-
Kirsten Ryan- Repeat clips from zoning bylaws and insert it into the guidelines.
Kirsten Ryan- Well, I mean, one other way to do that would just simply represent the CCBA for that information.
Kirsten Ryan- Because the zoning bylaws get in in such detail, it goes beyond just design guidelines.
Kirsten Ryan- It's telling you setbacks and a number of other things.
Kirsten Ryan- And I'm on the fence on that.
Kirsten Ryan- I know it's relevant.
Kirsten Ryan- It is relevant to design, but it's what anybody who's designing a building already knows for it.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Which is, you know, for zoning bylaws.
Kirsten Ryan- I think it should be separated to document and zoning, and the design guidelines should have a clear reference to the bylaw, but not circumvent.
Kirsten Ryan- I prefer that rather than repeating it all over again.
Kirsten Ryan- Absolutely, yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Because it's also will be confusing.
Kirsten Ryan- Well, that's the thing that the end result of this, you know, really, is because it's got these new inserts.
Kirsten Ryan- Instead of just being, here's what I want to build a lot.
Kirsten Ryan- Here are pictures.
Kirsten Ryan- Now it's, and here's the zoning bylaws, and here's some other stuff.
Kirsten Ryan- That is inserted in ways that don't run smoothly through it.
Kirsten Ryan- If we're going to do it, I think we need to rethink the overall construction of the document, because it's going to jump through it.
Kirsten Ryan- And it's not, I'm not blaming anybody.
Kirsten Ryan- It's just what happens when you start adding, you know, new documents from that.
Kirsten Ryan- So that's a little background, so when you're reading through this, if you want.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- And I don't, you know, you can't read my notes.
Kirsten Ryan- We can save it for our next meeting when we really spend.
Kirsten Ryan- And I really feel that we could have a working session that lasts about an hour and wrap it up.
Kirsten Ryan- That's how I feel.
Kirsten Ryan- We could also say, no, let's make it more elaborate and have three working sessions.
Kirsten Ryan- Can you give me just a little background on how we got here?
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, I can.
Kirsten Ryan- And also, just FYI, I only have every other page here.
Kirsten Ryan- This looks like it was a two-sided copy and got one-sided.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- They said you only made it one-sided, but you didn't say it.
Kirsten Ryan- Unfortunately, one second.
Kirsten Ryan- I got the even pages.
Kirsten Ryan- What pages?
Kirsten Ryan- I also have the even pages.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah, yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Otherwise, we could combine this.
Kirsten Ryan- But I have to say, I mean, I've spent my life writing and editing documents.
Kirsten Ryan- Is there an electronic copy that I would be much more comfortable editing
the document on the screen.
Kirsten Ryan- You have to get Anita to release it to her.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So that's-
Kirsten Ryan- If you don't have the password, I think, I imagine what it is, is she makes
it limited to just our three, maybe not even mine.
Kirsten Ryan- Mine didn't work.
Kirsten Ryan- And if you try to-
Kirsten Ryan- I didn't try to open it.
Kirsten Ryan- You told-
Kirsten Ryan- You told-
Kirsten Ryan- You told-
Kirsten Ryan- So we just need to-
Kirsten Ryan- Nina was not in today.
Kirsten Ryan- Hopefully she's in tomorrow.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- We can get her to resend, and we can also copy the other half of these easily
enough.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- I mean, what I need that sounds like is only on paper are your comments.
Kirsten Ryan- That's important for me to see what you've said.
Kirsten Ryan- Well, let me back up a second.
Kirsten Ryan- The only reason we copied Mom-
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Was that we couldn't get Anita to give Robert the password either, so he couldn't
copy it from the file she said.
Kirsten Ryan- Oh, okay.
Kirsten Ryan- So I said, well, let's just do these so we can talk about them tonight.
Kirsten Ryan- Okay.
Kirsten Ryan- And like I say, these were my own comments for discussion.
Kirsten Ryan- A lot of them I can't read myself, so it's going to be, I'm not putting
a lot of weight on you guys reading these notes.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Because I, because I'm backing up to the position of, we could streamline
this and not do all these comments.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Well, here's the other example that you might notice in here.
Kirsten Ryan- That is, in this document, we, we put together, we had a committee of like
20 people.
Kirsten Ryan- And at that time, we thought every zoning district that we, on page four,
they're all listed.
Kirsten Ryan- And we renamed them, instead of zoning district one, two, three, four,
10, we changed them to overlay district, thinking that we would have unique design guidelines
for each district.
Kirsten Ryan- Well, it's turned out that that's really never happened.
Kirsten Ryan- That districts are not all that different from each other, although there
are some significant differences.
Kirsten Ryan- But it didn't, didn't inspire any of us on that committee to actually get
down in there and say, no, this district is going to have these characteristics, and that
one's going to be .
Kirsten Ryan- We basically concluded that, in general, all of women should have a New England,
traditional, I guess, New England style.
Kirsten Ryan- Uh-huh.
Kirsten Ryan- And that, that's kind of what brought to a lot of styles.
Kirsten Ryan- Could be Georgia, or it could be Farmhouse.
Kirsten Ryan- There are a number of real styles, architecture used, within that umbrella,
Kirsten Ryan- as the New England traditional look.
Kirsten Ryan- And so, and people say that, even they say, well, that's a New England colonial
house building.
Kirsten Ryan- You know, even within colonial houses, there are many different areas.
Kirsten Ryan- The farmhouse versus Georgian.
Kirsten Ryan- Uh-huh.
Kirsten Ryan- So, the terms, we made it in general.
Kirsten Ryan- And that's, that's not, and we, that was by public poll.
Kirsten Ryan- We had public groups come, and we asked them what kind they'd like to have.
Kirsten Ryan- And that was, that was what we got from them.
Kirsten Ryan- Which I'm sure you're not surprised.
Kirsten Ryan- Because only about 10% of the public likes contemporary design.
Kirsten Ryan- Oh.
Kirsten Ryan- And that's how it turned out.
Kirsten Ryan- About 10% said, oh, I looked at some modern houses.
Kirsten Ryan- I just have a question, like, for example, like, yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- Yeah.
Kirsten Ryan- So, would he be able to, to, to, to proceed with such thing under new guidelines?
Kirsten Ryan- Well, I, I, I agree with that.
Kirsten Ryan- And I, I would say, you know, the, the, the haunting question is what the future
Frank Lloyd Wright comes in and wants to design a building.
Kirsten Ryan- And we're saying, no, we want them to look like these old things.
Kirsten Ryan- Right.
Kirsten Ryan- Go away.
Kirsten Ryan- I wouldn't, I, I wouldn't really shudder to think that we'd be turning away
some architectural genius.
Kirsten Ryan- I would, I would say this though.
Kirsten Ryan- For some reason, sustainable design is not being embraced by architects.
Kirsten Ryan- I don't think it's even taught schools.
Kirsten Ryan- Because they're still looking at international style, all glass buildings,
flashy looking things from Moscow.
Kirsten Ryan- No.
Kirsten Ryan- I think it's off-completed.
Kirsten Ryan- They're all into sustainability.
Kirsten Ryan- Right.
Kirsten Ryan- So I, I, to, to, to, against that though, it, I would say as an incentive to
have them do sustainability and say, we would strongly support a sustainable, passive solar building
that is designed for the 21st century. And that's encouraged.
And we wouldn't say you'd have to have poop blows or a little detail.
But I would offer that as an incentive to get them to do sustainable abilities,
because I don't think a lot of them do. And I've asked a few of them,
you know, do you want to make that solar? No, I never do that. It's like, okay, yeah.
Solar is not that simple. For example, we want to have solar on our building.
We have two tools. But we have, like, it's not 100% shaded, so it's not 100% sun through the day,
so the percentage of the sun is not enough to justify the expenditure.
That is what a lot of architects have said to me. It's a marginal benefit,
unless you have insulating shades inside, and you draw the shades as soon as the sun sets.
Then you're retaining the warm air inside the building.
No, now you're talking about national ventilation, and, yeah, I'm thinking about solar gain.
Ah, solar panels. I'm not talking about PV building. I'm talking about acid-solar design orientation,
where you aim your glass to the south. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely.
And you have almost no glass, only more. Absolutely.
So you're basically maximizing your heat gain in the winter.
My fault was build that way. I was built in the 60s.
Yeah.
Build what I like.
Nice. Great.
So anyway, I don't know if you agree with that idea, but somehow incentivize it, so that, yeah,
we'll be encouraging of contemporary, you know, really, literally today-style buildings,
if you do learn truly sustainable buildings. And you could even limit it more than that.
You could say, or passive solar or net zero, then you have that in there as well,
and whatever way they want to do it, they can do the math, and they can .
Oh, net zero is future compliance, I think.
Exactly, yes. That would be their incentive.
Anyway, that's it. That's why I wanted to discuss that more.
So we want to, like, maybe to do something, like, to leave some way for, you know,
I don't want to, like, to, like, new generation to be objective to the, or to be denied,
you know, to be able to discourage, yeah.
I agree.
I'm all in for the new generation, as long as they're not just, uh, fashion, fashion-like people
that just want to make it fancy. You know, magazine building, get some magazines, for magazine's sake.
It's not a better advertisement for the island.
I know. So I, yeah, so I'm, I'm with you on this, and I think that there needs to be a place for that
so that we don't say, no, you can only make a historic-looking building.
We are only advisory anyway, so, you know, they're gonna, many of them will proceed and do whatever they want.
But, um, hopefully, if we make it incentivized right, then, you know, then they would still make it.
It doesn't have to be net-zero, either. It could be, you know, a percentage of energy-saving, or, for example, net-zero carbon, you know.
So there's a lot of stuff. That's why there's a lot to talk about.
And what I'd love to do is the next meeting might just be to say what's in and what's not in, and do an outline of how it's organized.
Because right now, it kind of jumps around. There are things in here that are mentioned twice, like site-planning in one,
landscape in one, and then the paragraph before it is another topic, and it has site-planning.
And another one is parking. So those are all site-planning.
So it's kind of like, um, it's a little, it's evolved over time to the point where things get inserted in something else.
It's like a different spin, but it's the same subject matter, and they should be brought together.
Okay.
Is that enough for tonight?
Um, and do you want me to, I can bring this in, having a copy on the other side, so you don't go there.
Might as well make use of the copy.
If we can get the link, that's all we need.
Okay.
I don't need more.
I don't need more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's what, we'll get there.
And depending on, I don't know what format it's in, but there ought to be a way to, I mean, like with Google Docs,
so you guys can all make comments on the same document, but not change it.
Okay.
She sent it on, I won't even mention it.
Okay.
Um, but I, I think it's, uh, Ford is the software name.
Okay.
The last item today is an item, a matter not reasonably anticipated by the chair.
Madius, you have a copy of, uh, last week's meeting notes.
Yes.
And I, while we're here meeting, I'm working to get it reviewed and voted on.
And it was, uh, this format is dictated.
So moved.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Bye.
Yes.
Bye.
Okay.