Planning Board Aug 19, 2026

Okay, Mr. Marshall, let's see. You have a quorum of the board. We are recording this meeting. You are the co-host of this meeting and the attendees are coming in. I think we're ready and good to go. >> All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Welcome to the Ammeris Planning Board meeting of August 19, 2026. My name is Doug Marshall and as chair of the Amoris Planning Board, I'm calling this meeting to order at 6:35 p.m. This meeting is being recorded and is available live stream via Ammeris Media. Minutes are being taken pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023, and further extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2025. This meeting will be conducted via remote means using the Zoom platform. The Zoom meeting link is available on the meeting agenda posted on the town website's calendar listing for this meeting. No in-person attendance of the public is permitted. However, every effort will be made to ensure the public can access this meeting in real time via technological means. In the event public access is disrupted for any reason, we will post an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings, as soon as possible after the meeting on the town's website. Board members, I will take a roll call. When I call your name, unmute yourself, answer affirmatively, and return to mute. Bruce Coen, >> I'm here. >> Brad Hartwell. >> Brad is here. Jesse Major >> present. >> I Doug Marshall and present. Angus Mloud has told us he'll arrive around 7 o'clock this evening. So we'll look for him. Roy Johnson >> present. >> And Jara Smith >> present. >> Thank you all. >> I'm also present. >> Technical issues. Oh, Angus, good to see you. Sorry, I just joined. >> All right. Thank you. If if technical issues arise and the discussion needs to pause, it will be noted in the minutes, please use the raise hand function to ask a question or make a comment and I will call on you to speak. If speaking, remember to remmute yourself. To the general public, the public comment item on tonight's agenda is for comments on topics not appearing later on the agenda. Please hold comments on those later specific topics until we get to those topics. When public comment is solicited, please indicate you wish to make a public comment by clicking the raise hand button. If you have joined the Zoom meeting using a telephone, please indicate you wish to make a comment by pressing star9 on your phone. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name and address and put yourself back into mute when finished speaking. Residents can typically express their views for up to three minutes or at the discretion of the planning board chair. If a speaker does not comply with these guidelines or exceeds their allotted time, they may be disconnected from the meeting. All right, time is 6:38. We are all assembled. So, we'll go ahead to our first uh denda topic, which is approval of minutes. We have the minutes from May 6th available for approval. Uh, does anybody have comments or want to make another make a motion to approve? Jesse? >> Yep, I read them. I thought they were quite fine capturing the discussion. So, I would move to approve the minutes as they are. >> All right. Uh, if does anyone else have any comments or would someone like to second the motion? Okay, then uh I guess I'll assume there are no other comments and I'll go ahead and second the motion. All right, last call for comments on the May 6th minutes. All right, we'll go ahead and vote for approval. Starting with you, Bruce. I am voting to abstain since there's a full board here and and I was not present to the meeting. >> All right. Thank you, Fred. >> I >> and Roy, >> I'll abstain. I wasn't at the meeting either. >> All right. Jesse, >> I >> Jar >> I. >> And Angus >> I. >> I'm an I as well. That's four in fav. S five in favor and two abstensions. The motion passes. All right. Thank you all. We'll go ahead to the second item in the agenda, which is the general public comment topic. So, uh, members of the public, this is the time to make comments about items that don't appear later on our agenda. So, um, I also typically read the names of the attendees I can see, uh, on the Zoom screen. So, while I'm doing that, if you have a comment you want to make, please raise your hand. I see Kathy Axelson, Barry, Dodson, and Flinker, Hilda Greenbomb, Jeff Davis, Nate Kelly, Peter Flinker, and the Ammerst Notetaker. All right. Um, still don't see any hands raised. I know several of these attendees are here for items on later on the agenda. So I guess we will conclude that there are no public comments today. All right, time is 6:41. We'll go ahead to the third item on the agenda, which is a presentation on the Hampshire campus zoning study. Uh we have Jeff Bag here, director of planning and economic development from the town to introduce the topic. Um Pam, I know he has a couple of uh consultants that need to be brought in. Um so if you can do that and um I will just say upfront uh it's my understanding that this is anformational session for the board to be updated and the public. Um, so, uh, it's not a public hearing. We won't have to have public comment, but, uh, if, uh, it looks like we have relatively few members of the public attending. So, if if there are any that want to make a brief comment at the end of this presentation, uh, I will ask for that at the time of the at the right time. Okay. So Jeff, welcome and u welcome to your consultants and uh take it away. >> Yep. I'll start off really quick, but thank you for having us. Um the board members should have a memo in the packet. Um so it's available on the website and then at the conclusion of tonight, we'll make the slide presentation available so that can also be included in the packet. Um we're really happy to be with the plan board tonight. you know, it's really a first time to be engaging with with you as a board on um the Hampshire College resoning project. The request was for the members to watch the community meeting recording. So, we had a first um community engagement session on July 21st. So, it's kind of a really ground setting the foundation and and establishing the groundwork. We're going to just do a really brief recap of some of that and then kind of move forward with some of the continued discussion um towards a zoning amendment package. And so, um, we're really thankful to Mass Development who is offering the town this technical assistance. And, um, you know, we are also going to be going to the town council for a work session on August 31st to engage with the town council as we continue on this process of a multi-step engagement. Um, and then we'll talk about the schedule in a few minutes. So I think with that I will I will cover a couple slides along the way but I am going to hand it over to Nate Kelly who's the president of Horsely Whitten Group to kind of kick us off share screen and walk us through the the project to date. So so thank you again for having us. >> Thank you Jeff and thank you planning board. I echo those sentiments. Thanks for having us here tonight. I'm going to try to uh share our screen here and All right, we can see your screen. >> All right, thank you for that check-in. One never knows. You've done this 50 times and all of a sudden you don't do it correctly. But thank you for that. Um, and so again, I'm Nate Kelly. I'm a principal planner and president of Horesley Whitten Group. And I'm joined here tonight uh with my friend and colleague Peter Flinker, who is probably no stranger to many of you, has done quite a bit of work u with facilitation, design, and um all sorts of great planning work in the Amherst area. And as Jeff said, we'll go through this pretty quickly tonight. You've seen some of this um but it is good to run through it a bit um to give some context but we have some added detail uh related to the public process project schedule and then some of the things that we're starting to think about uh relative to the key questions that need to be asked. Kind of getting into a sort of a bigger level of detail. Um thinking about the area, thinking about the site um and also thinking about the zoning. this is a zoning project and how we want to approach this. Um so with that again we'll just do our introduction which we've taken care of go through some of the process. Uh we'll recap for viewers and everybody just the alignment with town plans. Um again you're no stranger to a lot of this material but it's really great for us as consultants to come into a community and see the ties see the policy context that's already been set. Um, and it's really important to come back to that uh repeatedly. So, we, you know, we have our compass, our north star as it were, going through this. And as I mentioned, we'll talk a little bit about early zoning considerations. Um, you there's still a lot of work to do in that regard, thinking about our best approach, our best fit for a for a complex site like this. Um, but this is something that, uh, we've looked at a lot over the course of, you know, the last 20 years or more. uh Peter and myself thinking about different ways to uh approach this from the regulatory context and then we can open it up for some early discussion. So our team again is of course town of Amherst and Jeff mentioned Mass Development um provided uh the resources for this Whitten is a is what Mass Development calls a house doctor. We're on call uh with with mass development and do quite a bit of technical assistance assist assistance with them on projects of various scales but a lot of it is this pre-planning and zoning work. We are Horsesley Whitten. Uh not with us tonight is U3 Advisors who is as the process goes on, they're a real estate uh economic development firm. And so once we start to look at different scenarios and think about different ways this site could be used, U3 will help provide some market context for us and look at some fiscal scenarios. So as we think about different mixes of whatever it may be that occurs on the site um they can um again provide that context. Is it realistic? Uh what are some of the barriers or opportunities from a market perspective? And then if we want to test ideas they could say well here are the costs and benefits uh that the town can expect uh from different outcomes. And then lastly, Dodson and Flinker will um help us really through uh the some of the heavy lifting around um how we visualize and think about how the site is going to be used. We'll have plenty of community engagement uh that's going to operate on different levels. Some of you have already attended our first event u but we're really going to get into that um uh soon with a sharet process that Peter will talk us through. I mentioned we have fiscal analyses that are going to occur and we're monitoring infrastructure all the way through. We're not doing indepth sort of infrastructure feasibility but we've had some preliminary conversations with folks who you know are in charge of your infrastructure uh thinking about what the challenges may be in the future um and how those will get managed. And then our goal ultimately is to have dra full draft of the zoning um in January and we can head into the adoption process at that time. Peter, I will ask you at this point um this is a sort of a new slide uh where we've really started to map out of how this process because it is is pretty complicated um and we want to get to that January time frame. So take it away Peter. >> Thanks Nate. Good evening everyone. So yeah, we have um I guess the good news is this is a great time to do public participation. People are coming back from the summer. Uh it's a great time to do public meetings. Um the bad news is we're trying to get everything done in the next basically the next 20 weeks. Uh so you see across the top of the page, it's sort of se starts in September and goes through December. And this of course is the sort of a phase two uh schedule. We've already started collecting a lot of information about the site and then we had the public forum last month. Um so our goal really with this with this process of course is to produce draft zoning amendments but have those based as much as possible on real ideas for the site. So to get to those ideas, we're going to start with a public cheret. uh hopefully the week of September 14th uh maybe Friday and Saturday September 18th and 19th and at that chet we'll be sitting down in large groups and small groups and doing our usual um collection of exercises to try to help people understand the site, understand the history, and then think about what's possible in the future. And that's going to produce hopefully half a dozen different alternatives. And over the the rest of September and the beginning of October, we will refine those concepts into some clear alternatives and then present those to a series of small groups, focus group meetings. Those could include residents of Applewood and the surrounding um neighborhoods around Hampshire College. They could include members of the Hampshire College community itself. uh town staff and officials um and be interested to hear from you who you think it's important to meet with. And then the idea is to sort of have a chance to have a conversation with each of those groups about different ideas and through that sort of flesh out are these the right alternatives? What additional things do we want to explore? and then over the course of the rest of October to sort of refine those into a series of clear concepts and alternatives for the site and then to present those the first week in November at a second public workshop and then in conjunction with that we'll have sort of web- based feedback. So people who can't attend the workshop will have an opportunity to look at and comment on the different ideas. Then following that, we'll have a period of review with our team internally and the town town staff and elected officials uh to finalize the scenarios and then move forward to some final illustrative plans over the course of uh the second part of November and then trying to finish the sort of illustrative plans by the middle of December. Meanwhile, um if you look toward the bottom of the screen, um starting in October with the sort of the first set of wellthoughtout concepts, uh U3 will do uh some fiscal analysis to understand sort of what the how the market right might react to those concepts, but also just as importantly what the implications would be for town finances and services. And then they'll do that again with the final set of illustrative plans in December. And then there's at the bottom a separate track for looking at zoning which we'll be doing collectively as a team but led by Horsely Whitten. sort of starting out with uh exploring different zoning approaches uh different alternatives for zoning and then as we get through into October and November trying to refine those into a clear path for the best fit between the zoning and the site plan goals and then finalizing uh draft zoding amendments by the end of the year for presentation in January. Okay, we'll come back to that a bit when we get to the end here. You know, again, just to recap, um some of the local context and especially there's, you know, anybody will watch the recording of this. You know, the the top priorities have were stated by town council um in a vote on June 1st, 2026. And these priorities focused around housing, small business development, and tax revenue generating uses. There's a clear acknowledgement that there's some sensitive lands here, sensitive habitat, farming, other resource areas. There needs to be a balance and adequate protection for those areas. With regard to the housing development, I think there's a recognition on the part of this this resolution um that this is an opportunity to provide a wide range of housing types. Um perhaps a once in a generation opportunity for a community like Amherst. And of course, all of this needs to be um considered in within the context of services and facilities. What are the opportunities here? What are the things that the town uh could take on uh to help better serve uh the folks who live here? We have had preliminary discussions about utilities. I think the takeaway here is that there are no major red flags. Um there are some utilities on site. There are some extensions that would certainly be needed. There are some upgrades that would certainly be needed. But generally speaking, when you look at the capacity uh of the roadways, when you look at the capacity of the water and the sewer, again, there are really no major barriers anticipated here uh beyond what you know again the normal improvements that need to take place as part of a significant development project. The current zoning as all of you uh certainly know um this is really part of the urgency of this project is right now the core of this is the ED district um which allows basically for one thing to occur and that's you know what's been occurring there since uh the the college was established and so that um changes need to occur in order to meet any of the of the um potential options or different uh ideas that may uh be floated. Um, importantly, there are areas around um the the the core that are zoned for lower density residential. Uh, so that provides some important context. And there's some the farm overlay district in this area that provides special considerations and protections and encouragement uh for the continued use of some of these areas uh as agricultural use. And then this was a a map um that we spent a little time using some desktop analyses. Maybe Peter you can just give us a quick uh walk and walk through on how we came to this and how this helps us. >> Yeah, I mean as as so you know that the entire Hampshire property is close to 800 acres >> with about um 630 of those acres in the town of Ammerst. And so this was kind of our usual site assessment process to try to understand how much of that is actually developable. And of course this is as Nate said a remote process using existing GIS data. Probably the most important thing to remember is none of the wetlands um have been surveyed in the field and would have to be before determining what's actually developable. But what this shows is wetlands and water bodies and the associated buffers. It also includes hydric soils which are likely to include um additional wetland areas. And what we learned is sort of what you you understand through common sense if you drive around the site, which is there's a a high and dry central plateau that sort of runs north and south through the campus. And that's where they built the majority of the campus buildings. And then the water drains off to the east and west into uh the various brook systems. And as you get further down into those brooks, it gets less and less uh developable probably. And as a result, I think our preliminary conclusion that there's probably at least 200 acres that are developable, probably more uh subject to uh more intensive site review. Um but that a lot of it is also sensitive habitat and wetland areas that probably cannot be developed under current regulations. >> Great. And you know in terms of context I won't spend a lot of time on these slides but you know your 2010 master plan which was readdopted in uh 2020 um really just provides again some really sound uh policy frameworks relative to land use, housing, economic development and sustainability that will carry forward um through this process as an important backdrop um again as an important policy foundation um supporting wellplanned mixeduse communities. uh on the Hampshire campus in 2021. The comprehensive housing policy um talks about providing housing that balances the needs for students, families, and seniors, promoting home ownership, increasing housing supply, that variety that we talked about, um promoting climate sustainability, and aligning and leverage multiple funding sources to support affordable housing. So, these are important for us to carry forward in this process. continuing to build into the housing production plan which provides some really good fresh data for us. Uh that helps us think about the different needs that could be fulfilled uh looking at this site in the future. Um so it really does you know again we won't spend a lot of time going through this. I think most of you are familiar with this, but these are just really important um uh sort of documentation that again as consultants we'd love to see this going um coming into a process like this because it really gives us something sort of firm to stand on as we go forward. Um, in terms of local precedents, um, we had talked about some of the, uh, you know, Jeff talked with us a lot about some of the most more recent, um, zoning efforts that have occurred in the community and the developments that have come from that. Maybe Jeff, I could just ask you to, um, talk about how these are useful to us. >> Yeah, thanks. you know, so since the town went to town council formal government, there there's not that many um things that we can go back to, but we really want to sort of highlight University Drive overlay district and the effort, the thought that went in and how that actually has resulted in development to occur, which was the goal. And so kind of the overlay district is a success story that we want to kind of look at. Here it says it may be more about the intent rather than the specific uses and that's something that we have to tailor as we move down south to the college campus. But uh five university drive is an example that has benefited from the zoning change, the predictability and some of the some of the things that the plan board spent a lot of time and you know town council as well spent a lot of time on crafting. Um and then you know um the time that the planning board and the zoning subcommittee has spent looking at North Ammerst and the idea of the overlay district over some of the existing apartment complexes also gives us a guidepost to kind of look at and um while we're acknowledging that it wasn't imple implemented it was kind of held back for a little bit. The idea of looking at an area and encouraging certain types of development to occur in a predictable way is really a great idea and a great model that we want to look at for for this area. And then I think just kind of we have a lot of project examples, but the two that we kind of called out are some of the housing types that we see is some of the larger buildings, um, rental units and that kind of thing. And then you know the the project on Monagu Road the the 30 affordable home ownership units is something else that we can start to to look at and understand that there is demand for that and how could it potentially fit in the context of the of the of the college campus land that's available. So those are you we're starting to backfill a lot of that information to the team so that they can see where um we've had success and I think we can go to the next slide. um some of the constraints as well. So um on the left, you know, we're really um looking at the site for the first time. It's just it's just always existed as uh Hampshire College and the town hasn't really investigated it. And so that's that's really what the team has been doing since since we started is really just kind of catch up on a lot of the baseline information that we often get if we're looking at like East Ammeris Village. you know, the, you know, we have information and we've looked at some of those areas and they've been zoned. Um, here we're really starting from scratch and so looking at um the resource areas and, you know, acknowledging that there are farmland and conservation interests that are kind of surrounding the campus infrastructure as was mentioned and then really just this opportunity that it's presenting itself for the town to uh meet some of its housing needs, also produce much needed tax revenue and so there's really an opportunity here. Um, and then the challenges, you know, there's a couple projects. The plan board has gone through a couple of these. Um, you know, it's a variety of different challenges that we that we want to walk through when we look at the zoning. Some of it has to do with the the community character, the resource areas or the location. Um, all of which we see some potential benefits um with this the way that the college has been laid out and and its location close to roads and infrastructure and things like that. So, I think um I don't know what the next slide is. if you can go to the next slide. I think this is where I'll hand it back over to either Nate or Peter to talk about a couple case studies. >> Yeah. And so, thank you Jeff. So what we've been doing um all of us on the consultant team have some experience um in different communities where this sort of larger site u you know single opportunity uh has come up and so we we brought our own experience with a few of these projects and then we've uh reached out into the planning community and then done some of our own research um to pull together uh probably about a dozen different case studies that We're still combing through to make sure that we understand. Um but you know, it's just it's always good to know how this has been done elsewhere, right, before you start to try to reinvent the wheel. And so we've looked at a few different um examples uh that were brought to this presentation. Uh but again, there's more sort of back in the lab, if you will, that we're we're looking through and and thinking about, you know, where is it relevant, where is it not relevant to Amherst. And um one that you all are for familiar with is the Village Hill Northampton. And this is a 126 acre master plan community. Um combining commercial, R&D, light, residential uses. Um and it really uh is just again it's a good visual uh for everybody uh who's who's been there to see how these different uh uses can be woven together in sort of a cohesive concept. but one that gets built over time. Um and so we thought it was important to look at both the outcome and the approach. Uh there are some unique uh aspects of this from an administrative aspect that make this really different. You know the the presence of mass development uh as a as a key player providing a lot of administrative capacity and oversight. That's something that's going to be very different from Amherst. Sammers is going to be um you know administering this at the town level through their normal development processes. So it's a little bit different in that regard. Um but it is nice for us to look at sort of a success story here that evolved over time and ask ourselves questions about the design. What makes this a good output? Um how does this or does this not apply uh to Amherst? They are interestingly they they started out with a special permit process with their plan village district um and it appears as we're reading this that it evolved uh into a 40R when those provisions and those incentives became available. So the foundation changed from a special permit process uh to a byright process over time. Um but still uh good to look at those different design aspects and how they baked that into their zoning. Uh with Sudbury uh there was the Rathon property. So this was a major manufacturing operation uh out in Sudbury, Massachusetts. um where you know they really had a considerable amount of uh potential uh developability there. Uh which turned into a really nice uh mix of housing and commercial uh development. Uh big sort of plaza concept, very walkable in the way it's set up. Sort of like a lifestyle centers is one of the planning terms that you'll hear. Uh but it's got the mix of grocery and everyday goods and restaurant. Um and that one was set up um with with a lot of oversight in the beginning. This is an interesting concept where they actually required a physical master plan to be approved at town meeting with a twoth3 vote. And so that was a high bar uh for the developer to get through. After that high bar, from that point the approvals, the individual approvals have essentially been administrative. So they really frontloaded the scrutiny on this and then when they were happy with that they sort of let the normal uh building permit process take over uh with Retham Village. So this is not the Rentham outlets. Uh this is Rentham Village. Uh this is an interesting site where they have their traditional town center. U but right adjacent to it just to the north is the old Tao industrial site. So again, another sort of largecale 50 acre um site that has a unique uh development opportunity and it's right adjacent to you know a wellestablished town center. Um so they had sort of a an interesting setup of uh you know two different districts an A and a B and those were further subdivided. So the scale of this project, not particularly large, allowed them to really get in there and think about sort of different zones, different subzones, um, and how they wanted to to move this forward. Um, and the special permit does play a role, uh, in this particular, uh, process as well. Interesting. Another interesting note here is they have it's pretty much a mandatory pre-application process. So this helps them to sort of set the stage early with developers of sort of larger scale chunks of this as they go through. Um in Great Bington there's the campus overlay district. Um so this is uh an area that um encourages this is where Bar College campus uh was and this encourages a mix of uses um and operates on different scales uh very similar to sort of a conventional um zoning piece where they have a mix of special permits, a mix of you know and it really depends on the density. So certain densities are going to be allowed um with a lower level of scrutiny and as you get up the ladder they they sort of ratchet up uh their different permitting process. Um so modest densities again site plan review and several of the districts especially with some existing structures. The higher you go the the more that special permit uh sort of kicks in along the way. And then of course we are looking at your existing zoning. you have some tools in the toolbox here. Um, and we look at something for example like plan unit residential development. Does this have a place or something like it have a place here? You know, this is something that you're used to using. Um, so we will look at this closely and see if there are elements of this that we can carry along. Um, Jeff, I didn't know if you wanted to add anything to that, but that's really what we're thinking there. The only thing I'll add is it it's probably not as well used as it should be. And I think that's one of the things that we can hopefully kind of assess is is there something in here that's holding things back and do we have an opportunity to clarify or or adjust it? And I think you'll talk about a couple of the other zoning districts on the next slide too which are very very similar circumstances of kind of just testing what we have and is it producing the things that we hope for. Um I think that would be what I would add. >> Yeah. So here with the um you know the resident village center, the business uh village center um these are things that have been tested that are at play in the community. So what elements of these are potentially scalable? What elements of these could fit nicely into a larger concept? Um so between those uh two village center districts, the University Drive, we've already talked about um you know what's working, what fits, what doesn't fit. So an interesting observation is you know these are areas where more than u one potential principal building is allowed on a single lot. That's really an important consideration going forward. So our job is to kind of go through sort of surgically and look at these different things um that we want to carry over that we want to borrow that we want to tweak um as we go into our sort of new zoning uh that will be developed for this. Um, you know, other considerations, we're looking at housing types. Remember in the beginning of the presentation, this is really an amazing opportunity to provide a diversity of housing types. So, what definitions, what controls do you have in place now relative to mixeduse apartments, different scales, different densities, and we'll be looking critically like, do those meet the needs, and are there things missing? are there just definitions of different housing types that we need to fold in here to make sure we get that rich diversity that um could be a great opportunity here. And so here, you know, this as we get close to the end here, as you saw in Peter's schedule, we're thinking very high level right now, but we are thinking about, you know, the different zoning elements here, whether we'll be looking at an overlay or a new base district. Predictable permitting is going to be essential here. in a complex site, you don't want to fall into the trap of making your zoning too complex. There's already enough to think about and there are good tools and good approaches in here that can help make this predictable, easy for you to administer and attractive to the developer and good for everybody because you know what you're going to get. Um, and this idea of master plan approval phase development, as I mentioned, we'll be looking at the plan unit residential. We have to think about building reuse. There may be an opportunity to reuse some of these buildings and we don't want to unintentionally um draft zoning provisions that all of a sudden makes that really difficult uh to do going forward. If that's a good idea, if that's a desirable use, I talked about the definition of housing types. Design standards will be key to this as we go forward. How they fit in uh remains to be seen. And then a large site's going to have different ownership opportunities. And again, we just don't want to set up barriers to that um going forward and make sure folks can seamlessly integrate the experience of multiple parcels even if they have different owners across the site. And then maybe you Peter you could speak a little bit to you know what's the link here between these questions and these considerations and the sharet process the public process that we're going to be doing. Well, I think it's uh it's easy to say but hard to do. But I think where we've seen successful examples, it's where there's the right fit between the zoning and the site planning goals. And so, as I said, what we're going to be doing as we're thinking about different alternatives for the physical layout of the site and the types of uses and the type of structures uh that we want there. We'll be thinking about what's the best fit with the zoning strategies and how do we make it really easy for developers to do a good thing and sort of get out of their way while protecting the town's um the town's needs to ensure that there are no negative impacts or at least reduce those impacts. So that's it's going to be an interesting interesting challenge. Uh but one of the things we want to hear from you tonight is uh what aspects of zoning do you think are really important to explore in this way >> right and so we you know we had sent along some primer questions um but you folks um certainly I mean this is your meeting you can you can bring forward what you think is important u but you know broadly we want to know what your top goals are for reszoning the campus why are those the highest priorities what are your biggest concerns um as a local official and what are your biggest concerns for your constituents and the public? Um you know, what specific conditions, what kind of safeguards or performance standards do you think are going to have to be included in this to to make it successful? Um what type of housing, you know, what are the housing types, the building heights, the setbacks? was sort of the key zoning elements um that you think either have to be flexible or have to be really well defined. Um so yeah, we're thinking about you know what kind of opportunities you think this presents very broadly and looking ahead you know 20 years from now what's a really positive outcome going to look like? So with that I'll I'll pass it back to you Mr. chairman and and um you know you can sort of have folks weigh in as you see fit. >> Okay. Thank you Nate and thank you Peter. Board members, any thoughts? I know this this uh study was not initiated at our request but this is our chance to influence where the consultant team is going. Bruce. Um, >> first of all, I was really raising my hand to ask if we can take the uh the visuals down and and see our ourselves all together. There we go. Uh, but basically it's accomplished. But not seeing any other hands. I'll say this in the presentation and what I've seen and read about the intentions of the town. I haven't come across anything that I have found to be seriously problematic or something that has galvanized my uh concern, shall we say. I mean, it's not that I don't have any and that I don't have interests. I have many of those. But I thought it might be useful to say that the general intent here seems to be uh in my judgment to be applauded. I think it was the the the speed with which the the town moved to secure the mass development interest and the support and then to engage the uh trio of consultants and what's come so far is um generally very encouraging from my point of view and I'll I have other things to say but I'll stop at that for the moment. >> All right, Angus. >> Yeah, I'd agree with a lot of what uh Bruce just said. Um, so it's great to see the work that y'all are doing. Um, and thank you for for coming here and sharing Simo with us. Um, I guess I have uh two questions about kind of process. Um, I'd agree with Bruce that the the priorities the town has put forward seem in keeping with the master plan, the housing production plan with the opportunities this this presents. Um, so I guess my my two questions for you all are um, one, there are uh, reported attempts to uh, by Hampshire alums and other groups to try and raise money to to purchase the land and keep it focused on education on an educ some kind of educational mission. Um, which would would seem to run counter to the plans that we're exploring here uh, for the most part. Uh, so I guess one one and I don't know how serious those are, but but it's something that I' I've heard a lot of people talking about. So I'm curious how that's being thought of. Um, and then uh perhaps connected to that um I'm also curious how Hampshire College itself is is figuring into this um and the the likelihood that they'll be I mean I know we're on this expedited timeline, but Hampshire also seems like it needs to sell the land quickly. Um, so I guess I'm curious how you all are thinking about this planning process when Hampshire is simultaneously having a process and conversations with, you know, possible buyers um, who whose vision may not be as aligned with this, although through zoning we can control to an extent what they can do. Uh, so I guess I'm just I'm curious about those kind of two things. >> Jeff, I'll try to take I'll try to take a stab at that. I mean I think you know we have been trying through the that community meeting you know be very clear that we are we are not making the decisions about what happens um that is something that's solely the responsibility and and and the control of the college and the trustees. Um however um you know zoning is what the town does. Um, this is pretty common for the town to zone private property to assess and understand and envision the the you know what does the what is the best for the town. So that's that's really our opportunity and our our goal here. And I think in terms of like the timelines and over you know the questions about timeline are great. They're great questions, but the rationale that we have is that we our best foot forward and our best opportunity and our most legitimate um process is to just jump in and start. We don't want to wait um and just sit around and find out what happens. Um that's not going to serve the residents of Amoris the best. And it's also going to likely put us under the most pressure possible is if we just sit back and wait for a sale of some sort to happen and then try to respond to that, we would be behind the curve. So we just try to position this that we are communicating with the college. They're aware of our process um but we are moving forward and and the thing that we're trying to do is do it as quickly as possible so that we don't interrupt what they need. We complement it somehow. So this is options. I I said in another meeting this is like a menu. Uh we're helping create a menu of options. Right now the menu is very minimal opportunity for institutes of higher education to to function here. Um so we just want to open it up and we want to use it use our plans and all of our thought process to kind of set us up well for the town. And then the one more specific comment is in terms of educational institutions or people who want to reestablish educational use. And we want to be really clear that that's always an opportunity. So chapter 4A section 3 has has certain protections to uh educational institutions where you know it doesn't matter what the zoning is, they can always establish an educational use. And so we're not restricting them in any way. We're actually just creating that menu of other options. You know, understanding that the town has so many needs and they're really well established as Nate said. I mean, the master plan and all of our planning documents point us to talk about a walkable village center here. And so, we we just jumped in to act as as quickly as we can. We're not rushing it, but we just need to be approaching this with erns because this this has a real potential to uh be necessary and also critical for the town. So this is this is not like a blue sky exercise that we just want to put on a shelf. This will be utilized. And so you know just to reiterate like the college is has its own process and we'll be making its own decisions but we are um really considering what the town's needs are and establishing what we can through through zoning which is under the town's control. So hopefully that starts to answer that question. >> Thank you Jeff Brad and then Jesse. >> Yeah. Um I generally support Jeff's uh approach but I have to ask um guys I have not heard whether uh UMass has been approached uh to step in here because uh I mean from the perspective of the housing subcommittee uh we are very aware of the uh effects on the of the uh the pressures occasioned by off-campus student housing of UMass students and you know if uh it wouldn't be awful if UMass stepped in here and said okay now we have a whole bunch of basically dormitories and that would take a lot of the pressure off of the uh housing the adverse pressure off the housing market if you mass got involved in here. So, I'm just curious whether uh they have been approached uh or whether that's out of the question. >> Jeff, >> also try to answer that. I mean, I I we are not in the position to be approaching, you know, UMass or other organizations. That's that that would be something that would be the college. This is the college's land. We are working to establish the zoning that would allow multiple different things to potentially happen there. I think the the key thing though, Brett, that you did mention, which is which is important, is housing and the the demand and things like that. I mean, what the town council initially voted on back in June was that this is an opportunity to potentially generate new tax revenue from land that had never really been considered as a potential option for tax revenue. So over the coming months and year, we're going to start hearing other conversations at town council level about deficits, budgets, structural deficits, and things like that. And just a growing need for the town to to increase its taxable base. And this does create this unique opportunity that hadn't really been ever uh considered until recently. you know, inviting UMass um could have some potential benefits of relieving some of the demand, but if it immediately or just transfers and continues to stay off the tax roles, that's not going to benefit us in the other way that um town council has identified as a goal. So, it's a it's a little bit of a balancing act there, but I guess the bottom line is that to the best of our knowledge, we're it's not it's not something that the college is is pursuing. Um that's what we think we know. Um the college has a lot of its own initiatives. The UMass has a lot of its own initiatives. They have a big program that they're launching to investigate, you know, the condition of all their facilities and buildings and things like that. So I just don't think that's going to be the highest or most direct path forward. More so that this is going to be sold and um we want to just at least set the stage for for the town to to kind of reap some kind of benefit um if possible. So Fred, hopefully that answers some of the question. >> All right, thanks Jeff. Uh Jesse, >> great. Thanks and thanks for the presentation. Um overall very supportive of the approach. Uh just one quick comment I guess you sort of ended with looking at the mechanisms we already have in zoning and how that could fit in here. And in my mind it it's almost like why go there? like what this is a real opportunity to do just different things we can't do the rest of our town and like in you know in subcommittee and planning board also we've talked about 40R 40 Y different types of things like that where we couldn't figure out where it made sense in our current zoning and to me this is a really big opportunity to do that kind of thing and do it differently there because it is such a large physical and otherwise opportunity um and priority wise in my mind is sort of the workforce starter housing would be top of the list if you were asking us to prioritize. So yeah, thanks. >> Oh, thank you for that and I I couldn't agree more. This is a a once in a generation opportunity. So we'll, you know, we like to do our homework and see what's on the books right now, but we will be thinking outside the books. Um, most certainly. Um, Angus, uh, go ahead. >> Yeah, I was just gonna also, um, echo what Jesse is suggesting. Um, that the idea of a 40R district is is great there. Um, I think the other thing that I I was, uh, also thinking as as you all were talking about possibilities. Um, I remember talking with Nate Mallaloy about um the the prospect of trying to bring another grocery store into town or something something like that and uh his concern or what he voiced was that there's not really places in town that would allow for a whole lot of parking for another grocery store um apart from the big Y. Um this also seems like it could be another opportunity and that would be a major source of tax revenue which could also be helpful. Um, so I think also just trying to think about what kinds of commercial spaces would work there. Um, it's not a great location for a lot of commercial spaces, but it if if you were able to build if we're able to build up some kind of a walkable area, it's near Atkins, like there there could be things that we could that that could could be viable there. Um, which I would I hope would be included. And it sounds like y'all are thinking of those kinds of things. Yeah, that Sudbury example um I think really speaks to um the kind of thing you're talking about, Angus, in terms of how they took advantage of those sort of like larger um larger development opportunities. >> All right, Roy, you're next. >> I want to commend the town for hiring a group like Horley Whitten and um I really like the examples that you gave. you know, like I've been around the uh village hill at Northampton and that gave me a a picture of what could be there. So, I just wanted to thank you for doing that and any more that you find like that I think would be really helpful for anybody looking at what the possibilities are there. Thank you very much. >> All right, before Bruce, before you go, I'm going to jump in with just a couple of responses. Um, one thing that I'll be interested in is how you think about this parcel in relationship to what we thought was going to be a town center just south of it. Uh, kind of around Atkins. Um, which we found out, you know, with the project that was proposed down there a year and a half ago. Uh, there's a fair amount of wetlands and it's fairly difficult to develop. So, you know, should the village center that we envisioned not be centered on Atkins or those roundabouts which are frankly not very pedestrian friendly and should it be centered on the Hampshire campus? Um, so you know, maybe we want to have some village center zoning and some other, you know, more commercial zoning in a part of the property. I guess the other thing, um, from my perspective, we have a lot of single family housing in town. We're going to have a bunch of ADUs in town whether we like it or not. Um, we have a fair amount of what I'll call multifamily, but you know, a lot of it is student housing in downtown and certainly there's the potential for more around the university, but we don't have uh places like Amity Place, I guess, which which are condos. Um, reasonably, I don't know, maybe there's what, maybe 12 units per acre. Um, but those kinds of things uh are fairly efficient in terms of land and are taxable and they can function as starter homes for families. They're not single family homes, but they are, you know, single family dwellings which can be bought and sold in the market. So, I would I would encourage a fair amount of consideration of of that kind of development. Um, I'm more of a fan of that than I am of uh the sort of tiny little houses on individual plots. Um, which I although they're charming, uh, I I'm not sure they're very efficient in terms of land use. and um they certainly demand more yard upkeep than u some families may want to do. So that's my two cents. And with that, I'll turn it over to Bruce who's got his hands up. Um I I I kind of agree. I I I I look at uh this opportunity and so far as housing is concerned my general sense is that it should be more dense rather than less dense. I think the uh the ball lane example is probably kind of minimal in terms of uh density and that we should move up from a base slightly higher than that. I also think that uh I I recall that the board the planning board was I think universally supportive of the uh project that Archipelago brought to Atkins Corner. We never got to formally vote on it. The only ray I think I know what I'm talking about is when uh um when it came time to withdraw the application and the application was withdrawn uh we all took it upon ourselves pretty much spontaneously to express some degree of regret. Um I think I said when that project first came I said this is what uh good development looks like. Uh that was a phrase first thing out of my mouth at the beginning of that hearing, the first hearing of probably five. And I never really changed my mind on that. It seems to me and I don't know this but that what uh uh the possible waterloo of that project was the the ex the incursion into the wetlands which may or may not have been uh slightly due to parking and the the amount of parking generated may or may not have been to the amount of first floor commercial space that the uh the applicant the developer perhaps thought that was necessary in order to gain approval. And we've been looking at that, this board has been looking at the percentage of first floor use of com, you know, non-resident commercial for quite a while now. And we we've thought about it and we've shaped it and steply tend like we recognize that there's a resistance to providing even the minimal levels that we've proposed. And it seems to me that on this part of town rather than University Drive, we might be more forgiving. So I think I would ask that the uh the study a thought in terms of uh some development or encouraging some development opportunities saw uh in South Amos. That would have been a beautiful building if it had have gone forward. It was really elegantly designed. It really would have been nice to have lived in. It would have been nice to visit. It would have been nice to look at in my view. Although if people in in Applewood may not have agreed but I think they would have in time actually. Um so that development seems to be one of the uh guidelines the the formal guidelines that I would like to think that we could have there. But nonetheless, um, South Amist is more spread out that this opportunity should seek to go backwards from the the the general configuration of South Amist. I don't know that people in South Amist would agree or disagree with that. My sense is it should be non not controversial. We have a unique opportunity. So using this opportunity to consolidate uh density and so forth in various ways would be I think uh an important thing to do. Number two, I also agree with I agree with Jesse and others that workforce housing should be a primary objective here. It seems to me that it's too far away from campus to be as effective at UN at student housing as the overlay in North Amist was was deemed to be by those of us that were trying to advance it. So workforce housing is also been something that we spent time wondering how to make happen and this seems to be a good opportunity, a good place and so forth. Um what else did I want to say? Um, I wondered about I think something you said Jeff or one of the one of the maybe Nate uh the existing buildings and and uh and how to encourage, manage, regulate the reuse of those buildings and for what purpose. It's seems that that portion of the site that's already got buildings on it represents different challenges and so forth than the open parts of the site. May be wrong, but it seems to me that it probably is different. It's not obviously going to be ideal for housing. It's uh we don't perhaps know what it might be ideal. might be ideal for some other educational institution although that would seem to be a challenging thing to wrap one's imaginative mind around but nonetheless I'm wondering whether the process would um phase or subdivide the uh the way in which the uh the zoning is brought forward uh to to to the extent that if the existing block is more challenging more demanding, more difficult that maybe that gets handled on a different schedule because you have got a as you said a pretty advanced schedule and I'm wondering whether letting focusing on the easier and perhaps the larger of the 200 acres uh that are there and not letting something that may be difficult and uh uh slow down the process if it can be intelligently and manageably cut out and and put onto a different um zoning um schedule. Uh I don't think I'm expressing myself very well, but you kind of bright intelligent people. I think you can figure out something from what I'm getting at here. It's the um I think I'll stop for the moment. I've got a couple more things, but I'm not sure that they're um worth saying yet. Oops, wrong thing. muting >> Jeff. Thanks, Bruce. >> Sure. I just wanted to offer just a quick comment on the existing buildings and reuse. I mean, I think um our our conversational example that we've been using is the Red Barn. Um you know, right now the thing that we're facing is without an institute of higher education owning the property, the Red Barn cannot operate. Um, so it is what Bruce said very important that we are addressing this. I think we want to go with as much flexibility as possible for reuse of existing buildings. Um, you know, so much so that maybe they're not even required to have their own lot. You know, maybe there's ways that just allow them to be reused. Um, but the Red Barn is our our conversational example because it's pretty wellreceived. It's pretty well understood. you know, it's a it's it's a venue for a bunch of different events and and it would be a shame if we can't figure out a way to allow that to continue um easily and quickly. The only thing I just wanted to add to this was the idea of thinking outside the box, you know, my my approach, my push is let's not talk about this never getting passed. Let's talk about making this happen. let's talk about how important this is and let's get the zoning passed so that it doesn't have to get broken up and that we can actually accomplish this sometime early next year. Um I think to me that's thinking outside the box for for what we can do and what we need to do to really maximize like the timing of all this. But that's just my opinion. Uh that and site plan review kind of discussions I think would really be outside the box and kind of help us push push just push this forward so that it the opportunity doesn't get missed. And I think that's one of the biggest concerns we have is just making sure that we don't miss the boat. Um, so I'll stop there. >> Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Jer, >> thank you. Um, I just want to say thank you guys for all the work that you have put in and will be putting in over the next couple of months. It's a lot. Um, uh, I just want to echo really actually all these sentiments about thinking outside of the box. I love Jeff's point about making sure that we have something practical that can be passed. Um, but I do also, you know, I would enjoy being challenged and being presented with new ideas that we haven't seen in Ammerst before. And I would encourage you guys to be bold and creative um, within the world of reality, of course. Uh, but thank you for all you're doing and uh, I look forward to to seeing what you guys produce. >> All right, Jara. Um, I had one other thought uh that I'll express um at the risk of making probably an enemy or two. um the farm that's at the sort of the northern end of the property along Route 116. Um you know, to me it feels like a relic um in that it has it's not it's it seems like it's mostly been livestock and I don't see very much other livestock farming uh in town. So although it it lends the sort of rural character to that end of town, I'm not sure that it's a really economically viable piece of land for some new owner to come in and farm. So, I guess I'm just saying it wouldn't I don't think I'd be all that disappointed if if that parcel was uh zoned for new housing just like much of the rest of the open land on the property. And that that may prompt some folks to disagree with me and that's that's fine. That's why we're here. Bruce. >> Um, do I correctly understand that that parcel is in APR? >> I don't know. >> Not that we know of. >> How did you? So, it said it said FC and I farmland conservation and I wasn't sure whether that extended to being APR. I can say that u u I'm the chair of the board of the North Amus community farm and that is a 30 acre parcel of which 20 is arable and so forth and we're in the process of trying to figure out how that land can be maintained in a useful uh agricultural uh and very broadly interpreted so but also with a strong community involvement and so forth and it's a problem we haven't solved with our as our current lesses have uh entering some form something something effectively a bankruptcy. So we're we're we're navigating that water. So there may be some uh particularly if it was APR land that we're talking about here. The experience that we're going through in North Amus might be useful for that pass parcel of land. But that's not actually why I put my hand up. Um that was just app propo of you what you said Doug. uh and for the for the for the group's record I I I I I could be useful if that is in fact APR land. Um but uh as we I thought it would might it would be my question to myself and perhaps so others then was uh on this land is the opportunity sufficiently attractive to development or could it be made sufficiently attractive to development where the inclusionary zoning fraction could be lifted from 10% to say 12% or something like that. I would simply ask whether the study would ask that question because uh um it was something that we were thinking about in the North Amist and whether it not it would be an unacceptably disincentive or whether the whole proposition is sufficiently attractive that uh that the that it could stand a greater slightly greater percentage of inclusionary zoning um attached to it. So that's really really just a suggestion or a question. >> Bruce, you're reminding me I think I saw an article just this week uh that some I don't know if it was San Francisco or one of the or Berkeley or one of the towns around there. They were thinking of actually eliminating their inclusionary zoning requirement to spur more housing construction. Um, I realize that's probably not a an option we'd want to consider given the the state benefits uh for maintaining our level of of affordable housing. But um you know on the other coast it seemed like the pendulum might be swinging a little bit in the opposite direction. >> Yeah. To to be clear uh I'm not advocating this at all. I'm simply saying that is this an is this a moment when the question is asked and we learn a little bit. >> All right. Thanks Jeff. >> Again just um >> Whoops. I can't hear >> my microphone. Yeah. Just to offer just a thought on inclusionary zoning. I think we have identified it as a potential policy discussion that we want to chew on as this unfolds. And I do want to just offer I guess using the outofthe- box theory just you know there could be other opportunities to not require the inclusionary not apply the inclusionary zoning but think about other mechanisms to bring the mix of housing. So, you know, one thing that we see is that um affordable housing developments are, you know, especially of a certain type, if they're located correctly, they just need bigger buildings in some cases. And so if there's a way to create an area that's suitable and allow the denture development to occur and encourage that to be affordable or potentially even create a pocket that's going to be for affordable housing, there could be another way to do this that would actually um allow more creativity to come um from the development community into a parcel like this. So we're going to look at inclusionary zoning and and I think this is kind of the weighing the pros and cons of different options. So, it is on the list and I think um a policy discussion about whether applying the inclusionary over this acreage is the best way or if there's another alternative way, but I think it's a good conversation piece. So, I just wanted to kind of lift that up and echo it. >> Great. >> Bruce again, >> the never ending Bruce. Um the question I you went through a number of things that you were doing Peter you Nate and you Jeff uh with charetses and and and and so forth and so forth but what I didn't hear uh was whether there is any intent to try and convene uh a little focus group of the five or six existing active uh property developers in town. Um, I would simply say beyond that that when we were 30 years ago trying to uh do the beginnings of what was then comprehensive planning we would call it, there was a different uh they weren't the same. It was hard for us to get that group to even uh pay attention or to be involved. But it seems that uh that we've got uh developers in town who are active now who who would be prepared to uh uh sit down and talk. Is there intent? Is there value? Is it would is or is there perceived no value in talking to these folks? Or is it just something you intended to do that you didn't broadcast and maybe you don't want to broadcast it? I don't know. Or maybe you would just say no comment. But I it seems to me that that this is a group of individuals that should be u brought into this discussion uh to the to the to as as as engagingly as possible. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We we we welcome that idea and it's definitely been in our thought process. I think the unique the uniqueness is the way that the college has their request for prop request for proposals process out. So we have you know talked that if there's organizations that have expressed interest through the college and would like to talk to the town we're we're very open to that. Um I think it's the size and scale of it that we want to make sure that we're understanding um the the size and scale and the need if if you know one of the options that we think is one entity who has a series of partners within it to to do different types of things. We think that could be one scenario that might play out and you know if understanding that size and scale and those needs would be would be important for us and that's helping that would help us calibrate um the zoning so that we want to make sure that our zoning is um sufficient to to support the things that people say they what the market will need or what people are proposing. So we we are looking for ways to calibrate what we propose. We don't want to propose something that's too small or so low density that it will never materialize cuz that's not that's not worth anyone's time and it's not um going to help the town. So, we are we are thinking about that. Bruce, I think the focus groups um is not fleshed out exactly who they will be after we have these next couple meetings, but it is something that we we see part of the process. >> All right. uh Jara and then I think I'll ask if there's any members of the public that want to make a comment. >> Thank you, Doug. Um uh actually Jeff, you kind of alluded to this just at the end there about if we if we were to zone this like too low density, it may never materialize. I really appreciate the fact that several of you have mentioned that this is like a generational opportunity for Ammerst. Um because I think a lot of people don't quite understand that. And so what do we need to do to either make sure that we really take advantage of that or what could we do to get in our own way of being able to take advantage of that? I know that's not a super easy question, but uh I would love your thoughts. Jeff, you want to take it up? >> And that one is a great question, Jar. I think that's what we need to focus on. I think that's the input we're gathering tonight and just understand that. I don't I don't actually have an answer to that, but I think that's the kind of thinking that we need to bring through the process and whatever zoning amendment package gets produced in for January and gets referred to to the the CRC and the planning board, you know, at that time, that's what we need to be making sure of that we've been clear what if we're producing barriers or if we're creating the opportunity that we we hope to. >> Uh Nate, I said you put your hand up. Yeah, just to to quickly for you Jarro, I think you know a lot of this is sweating the details in the zoning and you know that's one thing that you know Peter and I have we've given conference presentations for decades on the common pitfalls like where communities get cold feet where communities um put something on the books that seems to make perfectly logical sense but they don't understand the unintended consequences. And so, you know, some of this is big picture and thinking outside the box and being bold. And then the other side of that coin is sweating the details and just making sure we don't um you know, put in overly complicated provisions or um capriccious density caps and you know, just things that you know make people feel comfortable when they read it on paper. but you know sacrifices some of this incredible opportunity. >> Very well put. Thank you. >> All right. So, members of the public, uh do does anybody want to make a comment about this topic? Uh then now would be a good time to raise your hand. Um we typically allow three minutes. All right, I am not seeing any hands. I guess everyone is here for the next topic on our agenda. So, um, with that, Nate and Jeff, uh, have you gotten what you hoped to get tonight from us? This is great and I hope to see many of you all of you as we keep you know convening folks and at the shared it'll be will it will be a lot of fun. >> All right. Well, thank you for coming. >> Thank you for having us. >> Yep. Thank you very much. Great timing. Appreciate it. >> All right. Good night. All right. We usually take a break around 8:00 and I think this would be a good time to do it. Uh it's now 7:54 on my clock. Uh board members, if you can mute and turn off your camera while you go away and come back by 8:00, that would be great. Thank you. All right, as you come back, panelists, please uh turn on your camera and let me know you're back. Looks like we've got one member left to return. All right, Jara and uh Pamfield Saddler. I'm seeing uh two Ammerst notetaker Uh, is that a is that an AI recording device you're using or is that not related to you? >> That is not related to me. >> Okay. >> As far as I know. >> Okay, that's fine. Then I guess uh whoever's managing that will manage it. All right, time is 8:02 and we'll resume with our agenda. Next item is East Ammerst local historic district review proposed revisions for the East Ammerst Historic District. So from my perspective, we've received the proposal from uh the local historic district commission. Uh we've received at least I think two memos from their chair, Steve Bloom. Uh we've received uh couple of p pieces of correspondence from the public. Uh one from Cinda Jones and one from Janet McGawan and one from another gentleman. I don't remember his name, but we have all that material available to us. And um we've been asked whether we would like to recommend this uh revised uh historic district to town council for adoption. And with that uh I guess I think we should just go ahead and have a conversation. Um, I will ask uh or offer members of the public uh an opportunity to make uh to comment on the proposal or whatever uh at le point during the discussion. So, um I guess the only other thing I'll say is um we reviewed the initial proposal I think back in April. Um, Bruce, you were out of the country at the time. I think the rest of us were here except for Roy. Roy obviously was not part of the board at the time. Um, I think then the vote that evening was something like five to one maybe. Um there were six votes I think that night um against a a recommendation which had prompted the commission to come back with their revised proposal. So anybody want to talk about this? Angus then Jesse. >> Yeah, I I wasn't here la uh at the last planning board meeting. um we were in the hospital. Um >> congratulations by the way. >> Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Baby baby is good, mom is good. We're we're in good shape now. Um so, uh uh there's just a couple of things that I I I that I wanted to add that I that I would have shared then. Um, one I I wanted to say that I am really impressed with the historical commission for the work they did with this consultant to record information about these properties. Um, to to you know write them up in a report. Um, and I'm really excited to um I've already driven around a little bit and looked at some of the houses. I'm excited to like actually walk around um with the the um packet and like spend some time looking at the properties. Um and uh and I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to think about ways of foregrounding this area and helping people understand this area better. And I think the historical commission has done a really nice job of like jumpstarting that and I'm excited to see what else we could do with it. Um, that being said, I expressed uh a great deal of hesitation around the initial proposal um of the East Ammerst Historic District. I think this is a much better proposal than the one that was brought to us before that is more consistent with balancing a number of different priorities that the town has, including historic preservation, but also including lots of other things. Um, that being said, I don't think this is the right time for me at least um for us to to uh move forward with this historic district. Um, especially considering the changes we're considering to the commercial area just directly abuing this area. Um, I I've already expressed a number of thoughts about the this particular um area that's under consideration for this historic district. I'll just add a couple of other final thoughts. Um, one, I I'm not sure what our vision as a planning board is for this particular intersection of streets. Currently, it falls under four different zones, RVC, BVC, RN, and RG. Um, I don't know what that means. What I do know is that it it it's on a PBTA bus route. It's right near one of the only commercial strips in town and it's near a brand new large elementary school. So, I think there's actually a lot of prospect for us to make some changes to this area and to think more intentionally about what we want the area to look like in the long term. I don't feel at this juncture that a historic a local historic designation will help us with that process and I fear it could hinder it. Um the final thought I'll just leave with is that um any additional regulation, zoning or otherwise, um is going naturally reduces um new construction. That's fine if that's a trade-off that the town council wants to accept. Um but it's something that I am hesitant to just run forward with without deep consideration. I think this is an area that's ripe for infill. Um, and I'd like us to be thinking about how we can change the zoning to make that more possible and to have a coherent vision for this portion of town. Okay, that's it. Sorry, but I wasn't here at the last meeting. Thanks. >> Thank you. Thank you, Angus. Jesse, >> thanks, Doug. Um, I also missed the last meeting. I did watch most of it after the fact. I was here at the original meeting. Um, in April, I was also not in favor of the broad district. I actually do like this um proposal to identify specific properties. Living in our one of our other local historic districts, I have not seen it as a big barrier to development or infill. I know some of the parcels might limit larger scale thinking. Um, but I agree with what Angus just said is we want to be intentional about that and I don't think this would would really be prohibitive of some of these larger scale thought processes that could could still include some of these identified properties. So yeah, I would I would vote in favor of it. That's all. Thanks. >> Okay. Anybody else want to make a comment? Okay, Bruce, I can always count on you. >> You can, but uh my I've got some menu bar on the bottom of my screen that's interfering with interfering with the hand raise function, so I use the oldfashioned way. Um, whilst I appreciate Angus' uh deliberation on this and and I should say that he's done more deliberation than he gave rise to in the uh his comments including a certain amount of research of uh studies and so forth because he was uh engaged by my comment uh last time uh last a couple of weeks ago where I thought that where I said that I I was unaware that there was any studies that substantially indicated that local the strike districts inhibited uh uh development opportunity and in the way that uh caused uh limited the housing opportunities and so forth. He sent a few studies which I reviewed and uh I was interested in them. I think they are uh they are I will well uh refer them and uh and commend them to the local historic district commission and to its archive and so forth. I think they were very helpful but I also think that they were not entirely uh relevant to our situation because they mostly centered in large metropolitan very large metropolitan areas and so forth. But nonetheless it's very instructive reading. Um, so as I said, I'm Angus, I'm I'm impressed with the way you've approached this, but I disagree with you. I'm uh I essentially agree with Jesse's position that I think that this is not something that will interfere with our deliberations. The local historic district commission's purview while as you noted Doug is absolute in the sense of whether it grants or not a certificate of applicability it is narrow in the sense of uh how it can exercise that uh um absolute discretion and so forth. It's quite narrow and we've defined it a little better recently with we being now the local historic district commission which I am also a member of and have been for eight years. Um we've taken steps to improve our understanding of what is in our um baywick, what what what is our what what areas of our authority and so forth which is as I said quite limited. So I don't think that this is going to be an inhibiting factor. I also know that the local historic district commission and certain members have put a lot of time and effort into this and if we don't do it now it's not going to happen. Um I don't think I mean this this amount this amount of e effort doesn't have doesn't doesn't get redone. It doesn't have a long shelf life. Um members of the commission turnover uh except me it seems uh which is distressing but nonetheless uh there's not another architect type people in town who are prepared to kick me off and so I've agreed to keep staying. But there's a there's a there's a sell by date on that one. I'm sure. I hope. But uh so while I'm still there, I I agree that uh this is a good opportunity. I think it's appropriate. Uh but I think that the um the the the commission will will will be uh will benefit Angus from the deliberative work that you've done. Thank you. >> All right, Bruce. I will I I'm going to just interject. Um, I I was on the CPAC commission when the request for funding for the study came to the to CPAC and um I voted in favor of conducting the study. Uh, at the time I said I'm in favor of doing the research, but I'm not sure I'm in favor of a local historic district. Um, and that position really hasn't changed. Um, I know I mean I'm I my personal observation from a couple of projects that are that have had to interact with the commission is that it does it may end up with a better aesthetic product. Um, but it does take more time and uh if you have consultants involved, time is money. So um, you know, I do think it's a barrier. Um and um I said at the last meeting that uh you know I I just question how many how much of town we want to have under a local historic district and that is not clear to me. Um I'm not really prepared to increase that amount at the moment. Um and you know so be it. I'm probably uh making it Bruce so that I can never succeed you on the local historic district commission, but uh I guess I'll take that risk. Um Jara, >> thanks Doug. Uh I'll just say I I agree with everything that you just shared. Um I agree with Angus's sentiments and everything that he stated beautifully as well. Um, I will restate like I did last time, I would be willing to consider this proposal down the road, but I don't think that right now is the right time. >> Okay. Um, I will say, uh, Bruce, um, I'm surprised that you think that this has a relatively short shelf life because I do I could imagine. I mean, I've I've looked at some of the material on the Historic Commission's website that has, you know, pages about historic properties that were done back in the, you know, back in the 70s. Um, and that kind of information is still useful, I would think. Um, so I'm surprised to hear that that there really is a an urgency to this and that we couldn't come back and consider this in three years or something once we've thought more about uh East Ammerst at you know larger scale. Well, we could we would need a champion at that point in time and the current uh board will have turned over and unless it's uh um driven by Walker or somebody who's and we don't know where Walker will be in three years. So, uh I mean that's not okay. That didn't come out the way I intended. >> We don't know whether you'll still be on the commission at that point. >> Well, we hope we know um that I won't be. Um, but uh it's it's just that that you know the way the world works Doug the things come up and they capture attention for a period of time. This has captured the local historic district's imagination or attention for what it might consider to be too long and which is to say over two years and so other things come up and with other people on the board and and I that's why I think it has a limited shelf life because uh this is the board this is the commission con as constituted that have put the effort into this that have developed the arguments that understand it and have driven it forward. forward and uh it would have to be resurrected by um a group that would want to put the time into going back and further understanding and so forth. And of course things would have changed and so it will require another load of work. That's why I think it has a short short shelf life. I don't think that's the primary reason for why we should move forward. I think we should move forward because I think it's the right thing to do. Um and but but I understand that not everybody on the board here would support that proposition. >> Okay. Thanks, Bruce. Fred. >> Well, I completely agree. Um I've said many times that uh I'm reminded of the Joanie Mitchell, you don't know what you have got till it's gone. And uh I live in this part of the town and I live in an uh an 1868 uh Greek revival and uh I've done a detailed analysis of the the history of this part of the town and uh I think that uh this is certainly worth uh protecting uh to the mild extent the very mild extent that is involved in the historic district. So, I will support this. >> All right. Thanks, Fred. Any other comments from the board at the moment? Roy. >> Well, I was really impressed with Cinda Cinda Jones and what she wrote up and um you know, it's it's hard when someone pays that much money not knowing that it's going to be in a historic district. So, I can appreciate that. Uh, and at the same time, I thought the presentation by Elizabeth Sharp really made some sense to have those 22 um homes on those streets to go into some type of a historical uh district. Um, so I'm kind of on the fence on that, but um both points are made. Um, remember I'm new to the board and I think right now I would fa vote in favor of it. >> All right. Thanks, Roy. Angus. >> Yeah, I don't want to belabor the point because we we need to have a vote. Um, but I would just say that to Roy's point, they are currently already in a in a national historic district. So, this is would be voting to place them into a local historic district and the national designation doesn't come with any kinds of limitations on what property owners do. >> Okay, Rory, I'm going to drop your hand. Bruce, I'm gonna recognize your hand. >> Thank you. Uh, I move that the board recommend the the uh adoption of uh the East Ammeris Local Historic District to Town Council. I think that's simple enough. >> Before we have a second, I'm going to go to public comment because we have a hand raised. >> Oh, >> all right. Uh Pam, could you bring over Nancy Ratner and anybody that wants to make a public comment, please raise your hand. Hello, Nancy. You have three minutes and give us your name and your street address. >> Uh thank you. My name is Nancy Ratner. I'm the chair of the local historic district and uh I want to remind the board that the Amoris master plan enthusiastically adopted by the planning board the plan to have local historic districts and it's your responsibility therefore to be supporting preserving these kinds of neighborhoods. We've gone to great lengths to come up with a plan for this neighborhood. We've reduced the number of properties in response to your concerns. I just want to also uh mention that several of the things that were in Cinda's letter were incorrect. Uh she mentioned a property that was not invol included. That property in fact was included. Uh and if you prefer to have uh all of the houses in the district included, we would support that. It was in response to your concerns that we reduce the number of properties. uh the I believe that the it's important to remember that the National Historic District does not protect the historical properties. It only identifies them. So being in the National Historic District is of no help in retaining a historical section of our town. Um and it's very few towns have the kind of history that we have. These are houses that are all pre-Ivil War. They involve important figures in history. And if you value history at all, which I would hope in a college town, uh, and this is really a college town in many ways, that you should be thinking about ways to preserve what is part of our important history. Uh, I I'm very concerned that you are ignoring the tremendous amount of work that went into putting together this proposal. Uh what Bruce said about uh having a shelf life, I think is correct. Uh many of the documents that we turned to were documents that had been put together uh about 10 years ago. Uh they all had to be redone because there's been change and there will continue to be change if you don't um allow us to go forward with this. And some of that change will end the historical nature of the most important and most historical part of our town. Uh, I sent you a letter uh talking with with a reference to a Connecticut study which said, excuse me, said uh some very important things about the strengths of historic local historic districts and >> 30 30 seconds. >> Uh, I I just want to uh encourage you to support this. >> Okay. Thank you, Nancy. All right, Pam. Can we bring over head startup? >> All right. Welcome, Heddy. Uh, if you can remind us of your street address. >> Hello, Doug and everybody on the planning board. Thank you for your service. Um, my name is Hetti Startup and I live on North Pleasant Street and um I just want to um support what Bruce says and have you urge you to pass this and forward it to town council. It was something dear to the heart of Paul Buckleman um to look into this um nomination. Um and those 22 buildings um contain some of the most interesting architectural styles and history and materials that we have in our town. They are finite. You will not see those kinds of buildings ever again. in terms of square footage, um, in terms of how much that kind of craftsmanship would cost today. What what if you if you ignore this, what you're ignoring or saying can be done down the road um is is an appreciation of of something that is character defining. Um, it's part of the texture of town, but it's also tied with memory. Um, I just recently went to Historic Deerfield and they're working on their federal brick mansion and it's just really fascinating and I want Ammerst to be part of that that wider story of the beginnings of our town. So, I I really hope that you will have um those of you who are unsure of this or don't want this to go ahead right now will have a change of heart. Thanks, Doug. >> Thank you, Hetty. All right, Pam. Um, I think it's Kitty Axelen Barry is next. >> Hello. And if you can Hello, Kitty. Can you repeat your name and give us your street address? Yes, Kitty Axelenberry. Oops, there. Okay. >> Yep, we can hear you. >> And I live at 89 Stony Hill Road, which is in Echo Hill South, which is part of the East Village. Um, I do it's a really vibrant area. I do all almost all of my grocery shopping here. I use the nail salon, the dry cleaner, the dentist, the tax preparer, um the library that's just over the border in um Pelum as well as the car repair place. I take the bus here to go into Ammerst for a filmer concert. So, I'm very familiar with East Village and the historic properties here and they really add up to something as Hy Henny mentioned the word texture and I think that's a really a good word because we all have a very human need for beauty and for diversity and for texture and I'm talking about diversity of architecture. I would hate to be surrounded by the canyons and the monotony that are created by certain types of development in particular when it's development for one age group only as is the case elsewhere in Ammerst in places that were not preserved in what I think and what the master plan calls for as um reasonable and historic. Um, I would like to refer you to the town's master plan, which is really reasonable based on in-depth consideration by so many residents with diverse viewpoints. Unfortunately, the implementation committee that it calls for has never been created. So, we've been cherry-picking from it ever since. But the master plan repeatedly calls on us to honor the historical, cultural character and beauty of our neighborhoods and to protect historic cultural and environment areas from quote domination by development and to quote emphasize preservation. Um we have some work to do on preservation of historic properties here. I hope you will vote on behalf of residents and the need to protect those that kind of diversity and in the three years or so that Doug Marshall mentioned um that we have plenty of time for this sort of thing. There could be a serious dimmunation of the diminu whatever lessening of commercial the commercial activity here and the diversity housing too. if like if it if it happens to um if we overdevelop like we did in town to the destruction of commerce in town in downtown Ammerst and the destruction of >> uh you have 30 seconds. >> Okay. And don't worry if you if you are familiar with this area you will realize that there is plenty of opportunity for development and densification all along Route 9 um Beluretown Road Col Cottage College Street and also Main Street and Pelum Road. Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you Kitty. All right, Pam. Next is Steve Bloom. Steve, don't say anything to >> All right. Welcome back, Steve. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Can you hear me? >> Yes. Welcome back. >> Okay, great. Okay, thank you. I'm uh Steve Bloom. I live at 259 Lincoln, and I just wanted to make first uh two small corrections. First off, as Nancy just said, I'm the vice chair, not the chair of the of the local uh historic commission. Uh secondly, the vote that was initially taken by the planning board was not back in April. It was in June. So, I just wanted to, you know, correct the record there. >> The main thing I wanted to ask is I wanted to ask Mr. Mloud and you know that and also um uh Jared, I'm sorry, I'm blanking here. What's going to change in you say it's not the right time. What's going to change in three years? And what is your vision for this area? I'm kind of at a loss. I mean, is it a vision that there would be smaller buildings, you know, of infill behind these historic structures, or are you hoping to have massive apartment buildings made possible by the demolition of 200-y old buildings? I I I I'm not I'm kind of at a loss of what what you're you know what you guys are driving at and what you think is going to change and why this isn't the right time. >> All right. Thank you, Steve. Anything else? >> No, thank you. >> All right. Uh let's bring over Hilda Greenbomb. Not kitty access and berry. There we go. Um, Hilda Greenbound, 298 Montreu Road. I live in one of the oldest best preserved houses in Aramos built in 1737 and it's built and will last longer than any of the new buildings that are being built and my house happened to have been the family home of the trolley conductor Baxter Eastman. Um, a little bit of history, we've got two people on this board that have no idea about this town. They're newly here within the last couple of years and I really resent the fact that they're deci deciding very important issues about which they know zero. Um, a little history about Main Street in the 1950s that street was a slum. 797 Main Street, which was a important factory house. It's called the Smith House East, was covered with tar paper. And luckily the interior and the most of the exterior was survived underneath the tar paper. My husband and I have saved at least six houses on Main Street and Joel has saved a couple more after that. We have turned the neighborhood around so that now those properties are selling for big prices. People like living in old houses that have character and it's not true that saving old houses ruins neighborhoods. There's no absolutely no data to support that. And I would like to say that the first historic district, the national historic district which was founded and started working on at least mid70s and passed I think around 1980. On that board along with my husband was Cinder Jones's mother. Cinder Jones's mother has written several books on the history of old houses in Ammerst and particularly one about old barns in Ammerst. And what Cinder wrote in her letter is totally contradictory to what her mother probably taught her as a young kid. So, um, at this point, I'm very upset about the kinds of positions that young people new to town are taking because they just don't know. and I'm very angry and I I wish that there could be better support from the planning board, but I don't support a lot of things that you're doing because you just don't know what what's in this town, what the geography of the town is. And um I'm just very unhappy and I I I just I don't know what to say, but I I I I'm have made my living and I am giving my money back to the town that helped me make this living because every time I got a $2,000 job, we bought another old house, fixed it up, and put it back on the market. And now they've become quite valuable looking at the recent sales. So, um, I think I'm living and prove that a lot of the things that are being said by this board just aren't true. So, I can't I can't make you change your mind because you dug in and that's your your problem, not mine. Thank you. >> All right. Thanks for taking the time to come and talk to us, Hilda. >> All right. Um Pam, you can move Hilda back when you get a chance. All right, board members, any any further comments you want to make uh having heard the comments or had other things come to mind? Roy, >> I was in Boston yesterday and as I drove through and went by the old state house where the Boston Massacre happened, um it really hit home that preserving some of these buildings is so important. And can you imagine if they had torn that one down? And there's these skyscrapers all around it. And so Elizabeth Sharp made some great points in the meeting last week. And that's one of the reasons that I think we should support this. It's only 22 buildings. I don't hear any of the owners coming and talking against it. And I would uh I would probably feel different if the owners of those buildings came forward and said something to the effect that it was going to affect their property value or something like that. So I'm very much in support of this. Uh I heard Hilda. I knew Ruth Owens Jones and knew the work she did and I think we need to move forward. I think Bruce is right. You know, let's let's put it to the uh town council and see what they want to do. You're excluding Cinda, right? Right. From >> she's obviously an owner that did reach out to us. >> Yeah. And I think she'll be okay. >> Okay. Angus. >> Yeah. Just two quick final comments. Um, one, the survey that the historical commission did indicated that there were other owners of properties that were not enthused about the local historic designation. Um, the only other thing I'd add is, uh, there were others who were who were in favor of it. So, I think, you know, it's it's there's mixed reception. Um, but, uh, the only other thing I'd add is I think it's regrettable when, um, uh, people in town respond to arguments with ad hominemum attacks, and I don't appreciate that. Um, I think the historical commission has done really wonderful work. I think they're putting forward um a really great idea um in in a lot of ways. It's one that um I think when as the planning board we have to balance different parts of the master plan and local historic designation, local historic district designation is one of those options for historic preservation. There are others. Um Jara mentioned some of them in his memo, but they're also listed in the master plan itself. Um, regularly updating inventories, um, preserving preserving historic properties through direct acquisition, encouraging preservation, res restoration and rehabilitation and adaptive reuse through a variety of financial and other initiatives, um, tax incentives and abatements, federal funding and assistance, shortened project review time. Anyway, these are all in the master plan. Um but my my point is just that um I think it's unfortunate that several times both in my nomination to the planning board as town council was considering this and now in this situation there are um people engaging with attacks on character as opposed to arguments and I've also heard attack criticisms of the arguments which I think is very fair. Um, there are different priorities that we're trying to balance here, but the planning board is trying to balance those different priorities, and the historic commission is focused on historic preservation, which is their goal, and it should be their goal, and I appreciate them for doing that work. Thank >> All right, Angus. Thank you. >> All right. Um, I guess I I will say I enjoy seeing and going by the the Noah uh Dickinson House and the Daniel Kellogg House. Um, I appreciate the architecture and the settings of those buildings. Many of the other buildings don't strike me as architecturally special. They probably are much more special in terms of their history. Um, but uh just wanted to go on the record that I don't hate old houses. All right. Um, we have a motion on the on the floor from Bruce. Does anyone want to second his motion to recommend to town council that they adopt this uh local historic district? All right. I see three hands. Jesse, you got there first. >> Sure. I'll second that. >> Thank you, Jesse. All right. Uh, are there any more comments? All right, then we'll go through. And I think I'll go ahead and start with you, Bruce. >> I'm an I. >> Thank you. And Fred, >> Roy, >> I >> Jesse, >> I >> Angus. nay. >> Cher >> nay. >> And I was a nay as well. So the motion carries four to three. And um Walker, will you be drafting a recommendation memo for me to sign or how will we convey that to town council? Yeah, I'll get a memo drafted and let you know when it's done and then you can sign it and move on to the next steps. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. The motion passes and we'll move on to our next item on the agenda. >> Time is 8:40. Uh we can go to the fifth item which is the general housing discussion. And first item is to talk about the zoning amendments, Angus, that you I believe drafted for us to uh allow housing in the PRP zoning district. And I don't know, Angus, are you going to lead this discussion or Walker, will you? How do we want to do this? I believe we left off the previous um discussion of this matter that Roy and I were going to do some additional research and followup. Um so I'm going to go ahead and say that Roy and I should probably speak first and I can start. I was um charged with talking to Rob Moira about the prospect. Um I did discuss it with him. He said that he is in favor of it. it's been supported by the planning department in the past and he would like to see um a memo and a draft of the language that would include the parcels to be impacted um and see what that would look like, but um he didn't have any negative comments about it. >> All right. >> So, Roy, did you come up with anything? Well, I've spoken to five out of the six owners of the U properties and all of them are really excited about uh changing the zoning to anywhere from u 55 and over type housing, mixed use, affordable housing, I heard and one person was really excited about doing even more with the town with their other parcels. So, I was pretty excited about going forward with this. I sat and talked with Jeff Bag for a while and um I think it's time to continue moving forward, but I think the uh planning board, the zoning board, the staff was is pretty overwhelmed at this time. And I think as Jeff gets really comfortable with doing and pulling all the staff together, I think this can um take place. >> All right. And one suggestion Jeff had he mentioned to me was that um potentially Roy or anyone Angus, anyone who's interested maybe draft the memo um the first time around and that I can then revise it um to save me the time on that at least I can also take a look at what the zoning language would look like if anyone's willing to take a stab at that. >> Um Angus, I'm going to call on you next. Yeah. I'd >> really hate for us to be giving you anything new to do. >> Yeah. I don't want to force it on you at all. >> Well, I'm just trying to clarify it. Is this different from the memo I've already written about the proposed changes? >> Yeah. So, the memos that go to the town council typically include a background of previous discussions on the topic, why it's being considered, um similar zoning, like kind of an overview of the entire thing because they may not be familiar with the discussion at all. So, it will it'll kind of end with what you have, but it should also include kind of a history of the project, which I'm aware is probably not the easiest to do um without been there. I mean they usually I mean I when uh when when Christine Breastrip used to do it um she really it it sort of was ed was based on the minutes for the meetings and and took the text of the minutes and sort of listed that in chronological order and then ended up with some of the pros and cons. >> Yeah, that's kind of the best view is to go back and look at previous discussions. You know, I wonder are you you're saying you really don't have time to support this at the moment. Is that right? >> I don't want to say that for sure. Um I I would like to work on it. I think that if we'd like to get it moving a little faster, um some help from the board would be appreciated. Um but I'm not like so far behind that I can't start taking a look at it. >> Uhhuh. Okay. Uh Roy, I guess I'll call on you and then we can have a discussion about how might forward >> two things because Angus started this project. If you could forward any of the paperwork or anything that you have to me, that would be really helpful. And then I know you're really busy, but if you have time for 20 minutes in the morning for a cup of coffee, I'd love to sit down and talk with you for a few minutes to to see uh what more I can do to move this forward. Um, Roy, that was a question to Angus or to Walker? >> To Angus. I've met with Walk. >> Oh, we can get coffee. That sounds good. >> Yeah. >> I'll email you. >> Okay. And um uh Pam, I'm wondering whether since you are our center of action on minutes, would you be able to uh tell Roy which meetings we've discussed this topic >> in case he you know in case he's able to generate that chronology. Mhm. I will I will definitely be able to tell them which um agendas it was on. Um we just have to keep in mind that there were many nights that it was on the agenda that we tabled it, >> right? >> Um but yes, I can put together that list. >> All right. So Roy, we will check in with you at a certain point about that. Jesse, I do see your Do you want to weigh in on this conversation? >> Just to help we find information. I believe it was discussed at the subcommittee, but Angus, correct me if I'm wrong, not in any detail. It was really just about if that should be on a priority list somewhere. That's my memory. So rather than have you hunt through all those minutes also that's all I'm saying. >> Yeah. I mean the conversations were not were not that substantive. It was it was really basically do I I asked the subcommittee is this something that we want to look into? Subcommittee said yes. >> Right. >> And then I think I asked the sub we we discussed in one of our meetings whether better to do an overlay or to just reszone PRP. But that was pretty much as detailed as the subcommittee got because we stopped meeting uh around March, April, somewhere around there. Um and that was really when I started actually trying to change the language in the bylaw because that was kind of the next step. It was like we the subcommittee needed to actually see the change in language um before we could do anything with it. So I mean I I could we could find, you know, that that meeting potentially um and reference it, but but there's not much of substance. And then as far as I don't I don't know the full history of PRP and like proposed changes over the last 30 years. My understanding is you know was created with one intent. Not much has transpired. There's been some some failures. So, so I'm not sure that I I could narrate that and I I don't know if town staff hopefully y'all yall could I know like there's like the that project up in the north Ammerst PRP that fa that didn't come to anything you know a few years ago accelerator or something >> the erupter >> the erupter um so but but you know but I don't know if there's other examples of that um yeah >> well didn't didn't this this particular change show up on one of Nate's lists of potential things to do. >> Yeah, I think maybe looking through some of Nate's files would be helpful. And just even if we just gave a brief overview of the fact that this zoning was created with a certain intent in mind and that it appears to not have been particularly successful um at achieving goals, that might be enough. Yeah, we may not have to do specific project examples, >> right? Uh, Bruce, >> um, I've got to question or do my comment first. Um, Roy, it might be helpful, it might be possible to give Christine Breast a call. She's retired, but she's only recently retired. And I've uh with her consent and and support uh called her on a couple of things that that were and asked for for her recollection and her input and she's been uh very forthcoming. So it might be that the question about the history of the PRP or you know that that the sentence or the paragraph that she could uh help with that because she's probably got a longer institutional memory than anybody else u around at this point and she's and she's she hasn't lost it. I mean it's still very much there. So, I think she'd be willing, you could suggest that I suggested it um and uh and uh and see what happens. And then there was a question, Doug, we I ordinarily there would be some kind of a vote to to to move this forward, but it sounds like maybe we would wait to move it forward until the the board creates this document. Uh >> yeah, I think that would be that would make some sense. >> Okay. especially with the language still needing to be drafted for this the bylaw the article, >> right? >> Oops, low hand, Bruce. >> All right. Thanks, Bruce. Uh Roy, >> thanks, Bruce. I'll reach out to Christine. I know her pretty well. And u yeah, when I met with Jeff Bag, um Jeff Bag really kind of felt like we should um get together again to go over uh because he had a lot of information. And so I had one meeting with them and I think once I meet with Jeff again I think we can start moving things forward. But anything that anybody has if they can send me that would be help. And I could write up a bylaw and and send it as a uh first draft that would be helpful. >> You're you're writing a memo, right? Not a bylaw. >> Just a memo with bylaws, whatever whatever's whatever is needed. >> Okay. Angus. Well, just to clarify, so the I've I've edited the bylaws that's in the in the document that that or the documents that have been sent around, right? >> Um we we could, you know, go in a different direction with with those edits, but the memo and the memo that I sent around explains each of the line item changes to the zoning bylaw. Um, I think I I would find it helpful if before our next meeting, um, Walker and Pam, y'all could send an example of one of these, um, memos that the town council would want to receive. Um, I was modeling my memo off of memos that that Nate had sent, but I think they weren't like formal town council memos. Um, so it would be that that might help us as we're thinking about what we're aiming for. >> Yeah, definitely. And also, there's certain like legal language around a zoning change. you have to list all of the parcels that will be impacted and some of that hasn't been finalized yet. I don't think I don't think we have to change any of the the actual edits of the bylaw that you did. I think that's all good. >> Well, we could. I mean, like I'm not you know something the board was interested in. >> We don't have to just to make it like legal or anything. >> All right. Sounds like a plan. So Roy and Angus are going to have coffee. Mo many of us are going to send some stuff to Roy. >> Yep. >> Angus will be as in involved as he wants to be. >> All right. So, uh, why don't we just include this on next meeting's agenda just to kind of see if the pieces are coming together or not. >> All right. Um, it was not listed, but under general housing discussion, I thought we could have a brief conversation about the ADU um, situation with the bylaw that we passed last year. I saw in the gazette that the zoning board did make a decision and Walker, I wondered if you could just recap what happened and tell us what the next steps are. I'm not sure where it, you know, what where does it go from here? >> Yeah, I actually just talked to Rob about this today. Um, everyone's a little bit unclear. It's a it's kind of a unique situation, but we are waiting for the official written decision from the ZBA. Um, so that's the first step and then they have to have a specific finding which involves figuring out exactly what they voted on which I guess in the end of the meeting was a little unclear. So once they resolve that, we're going to figure out what sort of enforcement can be done um and how that's going to impact other projects in town and projects moving forward. And in the meantime, there's almost certainly going to be a proposal to change the bylaw um so that we don't run into this situation again, which I think is going to come through planning staff to you. >> Okay, good. Um Jesse and then Angus. >> Thank you. Uh thanks Walker for that. I was going to raise this exact issue and I spent a little time with the ADU bylaw and was going to share and propose some language change even though it seems kind of ludicrous to me. But maybe that's a little ahead of us. If you're going to work on it, I'll just wait and see. >> Yeah. Although, if you want to send me suggestions, >> sure. I mean, it's pretty simple, but >> yeah, I don't think it needs to be a big change, but >> I'll send you what I did. And of course, you're the expert, so thanks. >> Okay, Angus. >> Yeah, it a bizarre hearing. um and a bizarre like cough uh thing to be navigating. Um uh I guess the only question that I have um I think it's great for us to to think about re reward wording uh by law. Um is the town expecting a lawsuit over this decision? >> Um I can't speak to that. I um I think that probably the person who appealed to the ZBA wouldn't sue the town because they got their their they were their appeal was approved by the ZBA, but um I can't speak beyond that. >> All right. Uh Fred. >> Yeah. Um, as I understand it, the the ZBA hearing was and the issue was an appeal from the decision of the building commissioner. uh and the way that he's applying the the bylaw, I um uh was uh gratified by the uh the ZBA decision. Um and uh uh as I indicated at the last meeting, this is a highly consequential uh situation uh and uh issue. Um and uh just in my own neighborhood uh uh the neighbor that uh has been a a friend of my family for 30 years is uh now moved to New York because of the consequences of the degree of uh uh uh change that has been involved in this kind of uh construction and uh yeah uh so it that I I take this uh to some extent personally um uh I can remember 30 years ago my 5-year-old daughter uh discovering that uh the people who moved in and the uh adjacent blot also had a 5-year-old daughter and they became best friends forever and subsequently were maids of honor at each other's wedding and so forth. And um because of the way things have gone uh they uh their uh parents uh discovered that every morning they had to go out and remove beer cups from uh their front lawn that were coming from across the street. And then when this uh situation happened and something very comparable happened even closer and they realized it was just going to get worse and they voted with their feet and as I said a couple weeks ago they they're now residents of New York State. Uh this is a extremely consequential and very important issue and uh I applaud the decision of the zoning board of appeals and we should uh uh support it uh if necessary with clarifying language in the bylaw. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, Fred. >> All right. Um, anybody have anything else on general housing discussion? All right. Uh, we'll move on to old business time is 8:59. Any old business not anticipated? Nope. Uh, >> any new business not anticipated? No. >> Nope. form. Uh, Angus, >> I'm sorry. This might have been under under old old business. Um, I guess I'm I'm curious. Um, especially hearing the the Hampshire plan tonight. Um, there's so much on the planning department's uh, you know, list of things you all are working on. um the downtown design review standards. Um Hampshire, the you know commercial strip on College Street. Um I So I guess I'm I'm curious uh I don't think it needs to happen in this meeting. um especially because it's late and we're I'm sure we're all tired, but um I'd love to to get a sense um from y'all maybe in the next meeting about how y'all are thinking about all the different things that you have cooking and um um balancing prioritizing, you know, if we're still on track with the um design review standards or if that's just kind of been paused as we shift to Hampshire, you know, which is more timesensitive. Anyway, I'm just curious about that. But but it doesn't have to be denied. I don't need any answers tonight. Just wanting to know more. >> Yeah, I can come back with some thoughts at least. >> And deeply appreciative of y'all for everything you're doing. It's it's a lot on y'all right now. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, maybe Walker, let's put that on the agenda for next time, whether it's its own item or just a report of staff. All right. Any form A&R subdivision applications? >> No. >> Okay. How about upcoming ZBA applications? Anything we might be interested in? >> I was supposed to talk to Jeff about that and I hadn't gotten to it. So, I'm still not aware of any. >> Okay. SP, SPR, SUV applications. Yeah. >> Nope. Okay. All right. Um, committee and liaison reports. Bruce, anything for PVPC? >> No, there was a meeting, but my uh my Zoom uh meeting crashed and I couldn't get back in. So, and it happened at the very beginning. Sadly, something must have happened, but I don't know what it was. >> Okay. >> All right. Um Roy, uh have you started meeting with CPAC? >> No, no meetings yet. But who is the lay? Who's the staff person for that committee? >> Leah Carver, the accountant. >> All right. I'll reach out to her to find out when. >> Yeah, I know they're going to start um accepting applications in October, so I'm guessing you'll be meeting around then or a little later. All right. And then um I haven't received official notification or appointment of that I was appointed to the design review board, but I >> I did talk to Angela today about it though. It is in process. >> Okay. Well, I I did get invited to their meeting last week. Um, and uh, the the agenda was one set of signs on a bank building along Triangle Street, which was pretty straightforward. So, that's all I have to report for that. All right. Uh, next item is report of chair. I really don't have anything to report. Uh, Walker and Pam, anything for report of staff? I don't think so. >> No. >> All right. Anybody else have anything they want to say before we adjourn? >> All right. Well, time is 9:03 and Oh, >> sorry. I just wanted to say I I really appreciate, you know, Bruce, I think you said it earlier that um you were expressing appreciation with some of the things that I was saying, but also um uh said that you disagreed with them. And um I think that's just a a really um I appreciate this board and the members of this board for um being willing to countenance disagreements of opinion and not let them kind of devolve into something unproductive or unhealthy or or whatever. We we can and should disagree and people in f all over this town disagree in different ways. And so I just wanted to thank you all for modeling that um civic discourse. >> Thank you Angus Bruce. >> Um yes, that was welld deserved. Angus's contribution to this discussion did not sorry not did not deserve the kind of skeptical reception that various members of colleagues of mine on the local historic mission delivered. uh and I'm trying to help them think and behave better. But what I put my hand up for was to say that the work that Angus did in digging around and then forwarding stuff for me for my opinion, I think I copied Walker with the reply that I made to Angus. And then within a very short time, I got an equally thoughtful and uh thorough evaluation of what Angus had written and what I had written, which was nowhere near as thoughtful. Uh and so between the three of us in the course of a short period of time, um a fair amount of light uh and very little amount of heat was uh put onto the subject and and uh frankly that I will try and bring my commission colleagues uh to understand that whereas the planning boards uh may not have its primary purview in the work that the historic local historic history commission does uh when we turn our attention to things, we we we do it diligently and and I really want my commission colleagues to understand and appreciate that and that will be um something that I raise probably not on the agenda Walker but in some way will try and communicate that to uh uh the the the commission. I mean essentially we the vote was turned around but it was it was three and a half to three and a half or maybe Roy your on the fence comment moved slightly in the latter part of the meeting but essentially essentially this uh board is uh constructively skeptical of the situation and the vote reflected that and uh and that is probably probably not going to have much effect on the on the town council. I think I think the council is going to make its own decision and I think if the local historic district commission doesn't behave a little better, it will be shooting itself in the foot and I think we have to help them walker understand that. >> That's it for me. >> All right, Bruce. Any other last words? All right, time is 9:06 and I guess we are adjourned. Next meeting is in October or is in September, right? >> Um, does anybody remember the date? >> It's the second, >> Pam. Second of September. Okay. >> It is the second. >> All right. All right. Well, enjoy the rest of the summer and we'll see you in September. >> Thanks everyone. >> Bye. >> Good to see you, Angus. Okay, we're stopping recording.