Meeting transcript
Planning and Zoning- Regular Meeting
September 15, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
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Hello, mister. Alright.
Ready or not? Good evening. Welcome to the September 15 Andover Planning and Zoning Commission meeting and we're going to start off with the public hearing. And, John, can you take it away from there?
Sure. So you what do you you know, I called you do you have, established a forum? Seat any alternates?
You don't need to do that for the public hearing. But after the public hearing, I think.
Well, so, yeah, I'll turn this over shortly to the applicants. But again, this is a private application to make modifications to the town's zoning regulations and specifically concerning the mixed use floating zone in order to enable a broader scope of development opportunities. Again, the mixed use floating zone is, applied to certain eligible districts, that broadly have some, that are zoned commercial, or have a portion of commercial use and have frontage on Route 6. And, the proposals, which we will hear a presentation on, again, are intended to enable, a broader range of flexibility and, development type and intensity, that the current regulations do not allow. But I will, allow the presentation by the applicant and happy to participate in any questions that the commission may have. Thank you, John.
Good evening, Chairman Daugherty. For your record, I'm Peter Daugherty, principal of Design Professionals Incorporated in South Windsor. We're a multi disciplinary consultant practice including planning. It's my specialty. Engineering, landscape architecture, and land surveying. We've been engaged by the principles in Rosewood Acres LLC who are in in the tennis to my right is Leslie before and also to his right is Sean Callahan and present, I think, yes, on remotely is Gavin Duffy who's their third partner on this development. So, I'm gonna give you a little background here. So, back in, looks like on 03/19/2018, the commission, I know many of you were not on it, adopted the Andover mixed use floating zone regulations to amount mix, allow mixed use floating zone developments. Basically, section 26 which may apply to parcels in either business or industrial zones and parcels on Route 6 of relative size. Clearly, they need to be updated. There are a number of areas where they can allow for and improve the potential to encourage and permit a quality and mixed use development meeting the goals and objectives of Andover including those contained in the end of numbers, land use guide was called Plan and Conservation Development which was adopted back in 2020 or earlier this year, guess, 2026. So, it's recent and specifically, the plan of conservation development. I'll paraphrase a little bit of it. It did a survey of town residents which was tremendous response responses over 200. So, I recall and they some of the big picture in that service are big picture items of concern to residents were such things as that the population and job growth was stagnant. That school enrollment has appreciably declined both the end of our elementary school right next to us and also our brand the grade seven through 12
region like Hebron and her school system there. And it said, in Marlborough, it said that 80% of the residences are owner occupied, which is the highest single for any community in this 169 towns in the state. So, and housing costs are skyrocketing, meaning homeownership is out of range of many people. It's becoming unattentable and to position of the population. So, and there are lot of people who just can't afford a single family home. I know if I had to repurchase my single family home that I've been in for thirty years, That'd be an interesting discussion with my wife. You know, we had to go take out an 80% mortgage or something on that. We own it out right now, but to start all over again, we bought our first house or around 30 years old. No, 20. Yeah, more like 25. So, anyway, so nowadays, people are expected to buy their first home in their 40s. Yeah. So, we gotta figure out how to accommodate our population and how to do it fairly and so so many people in the in your POCD plan custody enrollment and based on that survey. So, there are many rental opportunities. So, people are looking for that to start out and sometimes to finish up. Plenty of people 55 and older and 62 and older who are going into rental rentals when they're finished selling a larger single family home range into a lot. Within Andover typically with a well on septic system. And so families and smaller families, they need a place to live in. Maybe they can come to Andover or stay in Andover
if they have something like what my clients to my right are proposing. And there's a desire to grow the tax base with commercial industrial enterprises and perhaps with their apartments as well. They tend to be good sources of it. Every single town I know of has been struggling with the increased cost of government, educational costs, labor, highway department, diesel fuel costs are through the roof right now. Fuel, if you're doing I don't know how you're heating your buildings in town but if they're if they're oil, it's like as much as diesel fuel, I believe and this winter is going to be challenged. So, and all these costs are going up to the towns are looking for some where where where they can increase revenue and and broaden their tax base, the grand list. So, my clients at Rosewood Acres which is of course the corner of Route 6 and Route 87 on the basically Columbia tenant line is at the back of the property. Had moved forward since our meeting in June. We had an informal discussion with this commission and they have let me just highlight a few things that have occurred. They retained Ian Cole out of Middletown, Connecticut. He's a highly respected wetlands and soil scientist. Who works statewide and they retained him to flag the site wetlands. And one of the things we discovered regrettably is that there are more wetlands on the site than we thought of from the GIS and other
sources of information about what might be wet. So it's a little bit more extensive. So therefore that concept layout we did for you for the informal, it's gonna be modified significantly, but we'll come in with something substantially what we had would just be adjusted to avoid violence impacts.
And because we have what percentage it's being reduced by?
We do not know. We've just been authorized to that. We have just started. We haven't finished the concept layout, which will eventually become a master plan as we go forward. If this commission agrees to adopt these regulations we have before us. Other things that we've done is we've been authorized our survey department, our design thresholds, which is actually our largest department. They have completed the boundary surface over 50 acre site with interesting terrain. So they've done the boundary and topographic surveys as well as located all of the impulse wetlands flags and a lot of them. So that's all in a base map for which you can do real full engineering design or or in the case of concept layout, initial concept layout.
Our goal is to do a concept layout and have preliminary grades on it as we've done last time, but advance it more suitable for a master plan where we know it's possible to do it all. This is what we want to achieve. That the final engineering has been done, but you don't want to do that until you've got a green light to go ahead with a zone change and a master plan approval. So, so we have done that that element. So Lauren Mello, who's also on with us right now, she's our director of operations and licensed professional engineer. She's with me and participate in our informal discussion back in June. And some of our other colleagues are preparing this substantial modification to the concept layout. So they will morph into the master plan, working with our clients and other experts that they brought on board for a mixed use floating zone development. And we are working with also professional architect they brought on Lasse Asplin. I've worked with him on a number of developments in the past on building plans and he's working very intimately with them to come up with a good plan. And based on our last discussion in June, you asked, we're intending to do just two bedroom units. And you see for a town of this size where there is nothing available in terms of any apartments, multifamily, homes of that nature,
you'd rather have a mix of sizes in bedroom quantities. So we heard you we're talking about less than two bedrooms. We're also talking about possibly more than two bedrooms. So we have, we're we're going forward with the, Las Asplin and our clients to come up with plans for one bedroom, two bedroom and three bedroom units. As of right now, I think the two and three bedroom units are with an attached garage for all them. And they all have the two and three bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms. And then they also have two or three bedrooms and it has a basement as of right now. And so it's based because the grades maybe walkout have windows at least in the basement gives you a little bit more living space. So they'll they'll as of right now, they're all going to have basements and texturize those to accommodate one bedroom. They're proposing and those are all two story buildings as of right now, the two and three bedrooms, but in order to request to look into smaller units, maybe one bedroom or whatever. So they've been working the last, it looks like they're probably a one story building. So, and
there may be multiple buildings. As of right now, there probably would be, but they'll all be, all the one bedroom units would be in one story and they will probably not have a basement and has a breakdown in other garage either, it's my understanding. And then the full bath, but they're smaller units. But if you think about, kids who get out of high school, get out of college, whatever, and they wanna come back to town. My kids had to go out of my town because there's nothing available. They went over to Manchester, yours weren't available at the time, gentlemen. So but but they went over to Manchester and Vernon for apartments and and they did and worked out very well for them. And and then they eventually didn't end up residing back in my town.
So they're now they're still in the region, but they're a half an hour away. And we were still in town, we couldn't accommodate. So with this type of development, we should be able to accommodate so the young people just starting out can't afford their own home. They're just getting started in a career, or even going out and maybe practice score, whatever, but they they just starting out, they don't have resources. And as I said, nationwide they're saying it's in the 40s now for typical first house unfortunately whereas it was 25 or 30 not that long ago, but they buy their first house. So how many individual or single or a couple in one bedroom can be accommodated readily. And then, and they could even have, it could be a young married couple and they even have a baby in a one bedroom, in a basset or whatever in a little crib and stuff. I've seen that many times and then you move up to you move up to a two bedroom unit
and then then the three bedroom unit they have more kids they can still say stay in town. And then also you have seniors. It's very common for seniors to have two bedrooms. I've done 20 or more 55 and older developments, I've done 62 and older, plenty of them as well. And it's more common than not where the need and desire is for two bedrooms, people with different sleeping patterns, different health patterns, but things that affect their lives. And so two bedroom unit is nice. For seniors, not just the one bedroom you have, but also a two bedroom and possibly even a third bedroom. That way they have a study or something, or they can accommodate Crane Children's stay overnight periodically, stuff like that. So, and some people from town, if they want to vacate their large home, sell it and basically do their retirement years in a rental, if the income from the sale of their house, they can stay there and still stay in the community that they love.
So we're trying to do that. Okay, so I just covered all that. And also, we still have, we're still pursuing 40,000 square feet of self storage and also to have a retail or office building along both of those along Route 6 and also accessible from the interior roads system, which will all be private as of right now as we discussed, so that they'd be responsibly work for, so for Gavin and Sean and Leslie would be responsible for the maintenance of those and not the town. And then the drainage systems related to that and the sidewalks, which we talked about side of the road, accommodate needs for pedestrians. And so we're still pursuing that. And we have a few modifications in here to enhance that a little bit. Worked extensively with John, back and forth a number of times, sent him drafts, came back with comments. I've seen comments from Wayne. He's been very helpful as well. I like those comments as well. Worth the discussion, a good solid one. So without further ado, I'd like to just get into the meat of our recommended modifications. And also Laura Mello was on, she may chime in if we need to have a presentation
of a exhibit or something from past, but I'm not planning on showing the layout we did from before. Anything else? We haven't advanced the concepts enough so we the architectural so we're really ready to present those to you. That'll be done with the master plan. Although we will review them with Wayne and John ahead of time, their input on the layout. But this is all predicated on you adopting the changes to the regulations so we go forward. So Peter, would you like me to
put the proposed amendments on the Yes, Okay. And so, yeah, and just as I do that, just as a reminder, again, to reiterate the very last thing you said, this is not a proposal for any particular development of any particular site. Obviously the applicants have interest in a specific property, but this is a proposed zoning text amendment that would be of general applicability to any eligible property. So I would encourage the commission as Mr. Damali does this presentation to focus on the wording of the regulations themselves and not on an actual development.
I agree wholeheartedly with that. I've been a town planning in multiple towns on a consulting basis and an employee. And I agree that a 100%, John's correct. We're looking at this, we need to look at this perspective of the overall regulations. This one, my clients are planning on going forward. They've taken a lot of initiatives, spent a lot of money already, tried to go forward with this development. We think it's consistent with planning conservation development, otherwise, but we need some modifications. But we need to look at perspective. There could be another one come along at some point, even though this is the first one come along seriously since 2018, when the regulations were originally adopted. So is there gonna be another one right now? It's unlikely, but we still need to take it from that perspective. They're applicable in general to the town, not to this particular property. We identified the application that but there's no way to fill out that case in for presuming text amendment. We identified a property and the owner of that property would save an option, you know, authorized to sign it because it's the only way to submit the application because the form doesn't really accommodate any text amendments that we can describe as we were describing now. So we're gonna go, John, we're just gonna go through it. Yeah, I'll go through in order that they read.
And just one other thing, all the regulations apply to mixed use floating zone. Again, it doesn't apply to the development until you approve with master plan and you apply it as a zoning, this floating zone appears to the property fixed on your zoning map. Not not every single regulation that governs that that you have in your zoning regulations is in here. This is only the areas or some areas with text leading up to a decision, an area of slight modification. So I wanna go through it. So the first page and we're adding in here in the B zone because it references uses and applies to the B zone or the I zones are allowed. We want to add in all the retail grocery stores, retail building in your plan to conservation development. The community stress that they really want a grocery store. It's unlikely to get a big wire or a stop and shop here. Demand won't be sufficient probably to support that. However, it might be a bit of a boutique grocery store to be really handy, milk, eggs, deli meats, bean fish, whatever, fresh produce of all kinds. That would be really handy to have that in town. And so that and my clients would love to have that happen in the retail building in the front. But I want to express and put in there because if we're able to attract an interested party, if they see it says specific expressly states grocery stores, go, they check the box, they go, oh, okay, it's a lab use. Don't have to worry about competing with a
store that sells garments, for example. And so that's the first page. And the second page, nowhere to even though you had a definition, which we were modifying later on, But the self storage facilities nowhere in the regulations was in place for a self storage facility, even though it's in your definitions. So we decided to put it in the B zone as new item 16. So we just put in self storage facilities. It seemed like there was a fairly good reception on the part of the commissioners last time when we discussed that was one of the commercial uses. And we think it has a it'll be served the community well at large and also people reside in this development in apartments. So there's always something that they wanna store, a bicycle, a motorcycle, you know what, winter clothes, seasonal clothes, things of that nature or things that are infrequently used. So freedom from the apartments makes for other purposes. Confirming with John, maximum floor area section 8.2, you have in the regulations, again, they date back to 2018, 15,000 square feet is a maximum square feet of any group of stores or commercial buildings, pardon me, of any one building. 15,000 square feet is relatively modest in size. We can probably accommodate a little bit bigger than that. And a lot of this is tenant driven. If we can find, for example, a grocery store, a boutique owner wants to come in and they need a little bit more space, you have maybe one tenant and they want to go in the balance of it, need a little bit more space. We, Lauren, in their preliminary look at the concept, thinks we can do better than 15,000 square feet. So we're
orienting ourselves to maybe do that and talking to Johnny. So, you know, what's the reason not to put down 25,000 square feet? We think that might be okay, such for your edification, your consideration, but we think going up 25,000 is still a small building by normal standards. Route 6 is a busy thoroughfare, even though there's not a lot of commercial on it in Andover, but maybe we can track a couple of tenants, one or more tenants would be good. And if we have the flexibility to go up to 25,000 square feet, that'd be beautiful. Maybe we can find and make that happen. And then also 25 of that, with our 40,000 square feet of sub storage that brings up to 65,000 square feet would be the maximum gross for area of the buildings, for the entire complex, of the commercial buildings. So I thought we'd do that. Section 21 enforcement, we're conferring with John. This has in the old regulations it says the applicant has to commence construction within twelve months of effective date of the approval and it must be completed and a certificate of occupancies issued, and that's assuming just maybe one or two buildings, within twenty four months. There's no way our proposed development will be done in twenty four months. It's going have many different buildings, many different certificates of occupancy. The construction of all the road system may not be done all at once fell swoop because it's a long road system and expensive. So we're be done in phases as we go along.
And then there's also acquiring financing for this type of development. They're very confident they can get it. They wouldn't be going forward if they didn't, but the regulatory requirements and lending requirements for profit development of this size are pretty significant. And may have to phase it as you build, for example, apartment buildings and they fill up, then the bank says, okay, you can go on to, you can go do this phase, maybe a couple of buildings, then you go on to the next phase. And so it'll get filled in the next phase, the next phase. You don't wanna get too far ahead of yourself. You've built all the units at once, you've a lot of empty units for a long time. So you can't afford to do that. So it'll be done in phases. In twelve months
to guarantee that you have everything wrapped up in twelve months to get started hiring contractors and sourcing elements of the buildings and stuff like that. Get that all done in twelve months. Hopefully that'll happen, but it's a challenge. And then to get all done in twenty four months is not gonna happen on their development and it would be very difficult, if not improbable, to do it on any other. So that's why we put in there and the state regulations cover it, the timeframes. And John and I can bring on that. He's an expert as well. And you should not be, again, your regulation should not be at variance with the statutes, Connecticut General Statutes for zoning. So I'm recommending, and John will give his report, but I'm recommend, strongly recommend you just delete that button. If we go into section 23, special permits exception and site plan review, It also says about when milers are filed and all that, and that again is inconsistent with the it says within ninety days. It's something that's a relic statute dating back to when they established the subdivision law in Connecticut and modified it. So the subdivision plans approved ninety days basically from effective date of your publication, you notice it's been approved unless you get two ninety day up to two ninety day extensions. You gotta record those follow ups. It means you have to post bonds and all stuff. That's a relic that doesn't apply to site plans and special exceptions.
So it's inconsistent with state law. So I'm recommending, and I think John may agree with me on that. You can hear from him, that it be deleted as well. Simplify it, make it bring it up to today's modern times for a while. With respect to section 24 definitions, most communities and I deal with a lot we've dealt with since we started business forty years ago, we dealt with about two forty communities in Southern New England And most of them do not have a height limitation, which is the ridge is the height. You usually go mean, they're almost all cable roofs, you know, so it's halfway up the mean height because people, the slopes of the roof changes and the buildings tend to be getting the greater the slope, often the more aesthetically pleasing they are and people like to have a greater slope on them. And those if you go with, if you don't, if you go with just a ridge height instead of the mean height, you it's people have to adjust the design all over the place. I'm dealing with that all the time, but for particularly for single family homes and also for multifamily homes developments,
multifamily dwellings that becomes a problem. So I'm recommending that you go with what the trend is for defining height, which most people deal with, which is the mean level of the, of the roof. Relative to parking spaces, you say, you allow nine by eighteen's park spaces, which are 162 square feet. And in the regulation adopted in 2018, it says, you know, not less than 200 square feet, but it's really 162. It's conforming to your other regulations. And I know Wayne alluded to that section. I think it was 20.1 or whatever where you specify amount of 18 spaces. So just be consistent with that. Yeah, in fact, we put right in 12.1.1 also refers to compact spaces, which could be varied from that as well. So I'd recommend you do that. That would be appropriate. And then we define the definition of self storage facility. A little bit better definition here. We incorporate some of the language from your prior regulation, but I'll just read it the way it reads now. A facility, including your existing language, a facility designed and used for leasing of individual self contained units of storage space to occupants. I don't know Wayne has suggestions on maybe that would be changed to another term, could be lessee, the public, to occupants, whoever occupies that space, whether commercial or for residential purposes occupants is standard term, generic, but, poor to have access such usage units for storing and removing personal property only. Maximum unit size 300 square feet, our clients are comfortable with that, that's existing.
Also such units shall not be used for residential purposes and shall not be used for work areas or to conduct business, making parts, welding, manufacturing anything, maintenance or repairs, that type of thing, and outsourced storage of any kind is prohibited. So it means there's no activity inside the building. It's self storage unit. It's just meant to store things. People come in, they drop them off or they pick up and then they come back and drop off or pick up later on and they lease these things and they're very much in demand nationwide and we think they do quite well here and it doesn't generate any traffic at all. Occasionally people are going in and out, but you don't have any traffic or maybe a lot of parking spaces. Know, maybe two parking spaces is the characteristic thing, but people just pull up in front of you get it, download or load and then they're out of way. So it's a good use and they're not, and these we're not talking about climate control. So that's a whole different animal, this is mostly self storage. They're not climate controlled. Well, there's no air conditioning and humidification or dehumidification, that type of thing, we're heating. Well, next item 26.4, top of the next page, which really gets into the meat of the master plan requirements for mixed use floating zone. And so we're proposing in the master plan to do a complete engineered site plan, which is what your regulations really pretty much are calling for. Stormwater drainage, all complete comprehensive review today, which you have to do for the site plan anyways.
But to do the comprehensive thing, it's a lot of money, a lot of effort. And what if the commission wants to make changes and then they throw that all away and start all over again when you go to the site plan. So it's a it's a tremendous expense. If this juncture just for whether or we're getting a zone change, you wanna see a layout, you wanna know what we're getting. There will be tweaks in it when you get to final engineering, but in landscape, artificial elements and stuff like that and final architecture, but you don't want to have a final architectural plan rate for a building permit. Well, the plugs and plumbing done, you don't want to have structural people already involved in buildings, and you don't wanna have a lot of things done. So for example, conceptual contours we know they will work is all we need. So we're proposing to for the topography, we're proposing it'd be just conceptual at this point, it intervals adequate to generally indicate drainage and grades for not only for our staff, but also for the engineer and planners who are reviewing this, this application for master plan. And then same thing with respect to phasing of the residential and commercial components, including not a precise phase, but general phasing of public and private improvements and conceptual provisions to address construction traffic. All that stuff gets worked out when you get into the final details for the engineered site plan on the second round.
This is the first round actually tax amendment update. You don't always have to do that. In this case, they've been a little bit old and they need to be updated to today's market conditions. And then, and so we'll have a zone change in master plan application, which is your conceptual advanced concept with some preliminary grades, that type of thing. And then we're gonna go through a site plan use. And if the uses they're in it, the commercial uses require a special exception in the VRI zones, then they would go to a special exception or license a site plan, but has to be consistent with what you've approved in the master plan as part of the zone change application. So going to the next area, the parking study. Again, you don't have an exact parking study. You don't know who the tenants are gonna be. So we conceptually look if we have adequate parking and what is the norm for these types of developments so we can do that. So it'll be a conceptual analysis of that including there may be some shared uses. And then we get on the next one, preliminary stormwater drainage study. This is a huge part of the engineered site plan. We can do a scaled back version of that so we know it will work. But the exact details on it.
All the engineering analyses are not done. That's hugely expensive. And you also do it consistent nowadays with a recently adopted twenty twenty four December twenty twenty four erosion sedimentation control plan manual and also the stormwater manual for DEP state Connecticut, which is a guideline. And it's very detailed. You have to do what five storm events and run through all that. All the pipe analysis, every catch basin is analyzed, capacities, if there are any detention basins, water quality basis, we call it an infiltration basins, all that stuff. It's very detailed. This is one of the most expensive components of doing the engineering site plan. We can do it enough to know that it will work and we'll have enough information, some soils information to know it will work, but we won't have the final plan because we don't fully have a project at that point. So there's no point going through all of that. And we will identify the standards for meeting municipal standards and the state standards that are accepted in engineering practice, such as the 2024 guidelines from DEP. We will meet those requirements. In fact, we'll have to go to DEP for a permit because we'll be disturbing over five acres of land. So with that alone, we'll be going to DEP for a permit and I call it stormwater discharge permits along the term, but we'll be going to them anyways. So we will have to meet those standards and body in the guidelines that they promote, they have promulgated. Next item 26.65, approved master plan zoning amendment. So we will be recording
the master plan map, the advanced concept map, what the site plan have to adhere to comply with and the zone change map going to the mixed use floating zone. And it'll be, and then the town will identify Amazon the map as a pretty original language. Then we go into the site plan or special permit requirements. It's only a special permit if you have a special permit use, maybe many times they can be balanced with the drive through type thing, a fast food restaurant that would maybe do that high traffic generator, something that may be offensive. But in this case, we're just talking about normal retail or a sub storage facility. So those things normally would not require special exception, special permit,
but the we'll, let's get down to the next part as we get into, we get into the section VII of that which is six point ten point one secondtion two VII with seven comprehensive storm drain study, we go through the whole components of that is very comprehensive. And with this a good description of what we're going to be doing. And, you know, the five storm heads to ten, twenty five, 1,500 storm, we have to analyze all those. And we have to do that for the state as well. And in fact, we'd have to do that for we're going need an encroachment permit from state of Connecticut for drainage going down into their system and also going under the road or six whatever. And also DEP will require that. So we're going meet all the standards anyways. And we do that with every development we do. VIII proposed contours will be we have good slopes here. Lauren and staff will probably engineering staff probably use one for contour intervals, but you don't need them where it's pretty steep. You get enough lines to tell figure out what's going on. So that'll be up to her judgment and John Wayne and your engineer, whoever's doing the engineering review. But I, we've never had objections. So when we select, it'll be standard engineering practice. And nine IX proposed project phasing. That's when we get into the actual phasing of it.
You know, how many units will be done in each multifamily? When the commercial will be done? When the roads, what part of the roads, train systems, landscaping elements, if there are any common elements, if they get into some common buildings or something sort of community, that type of thing. We'll outline when those will be done and that has to be done for also for the bank lending institution too after approval of the site plan, but they'll be talking to them all on as they always look your developed relationship with your banker and they move forward. Also, a parking study, this is unusual. Most towns do not require comprehensive parking study,
but we'll have working with a traffic engineer and planners and engineers and the team and the clients will present a stock talkative study about how much market we think we need for a commercial. As I mentioned, self storage doesn't work directly anyway. And any other development that comes in under this zone, love to justify the parking they have to make sure it's adequate and you don't want excessive parking. So they'll, you don't want to pay paradise, keep it as parking lot as minimal as possible to get the job done.
Ask a question. Yeah. In terms of the one bedroom, so you're thinking about, they've got a new garage, right? Correct. But again, factor in like some parking space, some parking lotted
for them. Yes, there there there will be the we don't we haven't determined yet whether or not have a sign parking. The floating concept, you float your parking, that means every space is available to everyone who wants to use it. You don't need quite as much parking, but they could also, hey, you're rentaling this unit and you have one or two parking spaces, for example, and they're yours. But then you need to have some float because they may have visitors, they may have overnight visitors, guests for Thanksgiving or whatever, you know, or holiday, other holiday and so they are event. So they they need additional parking. We're gonna have additional parking throughout the development. But this question is how many assigned spaces you want per unit? And it may be a reflection of, of course, the two or three bedroom units will have a lot right there, but we'll have additional parking besides that. But that has been worked out, but we will have to work that out. Then we get into 26.110.3. We're suggesting a height of 40 feet. And the question is, if it's a two story commercial building, it depends on the architectural design. You want something that's really attractive and meets the needs of the tenants and is marketable. That meant that often goes over 40 feet, not a lot, but if you have it 42 feet, you know, you have it done, excuse me, it's gonna be 38 feet high and
35 didn't work, you know, it'd be a real problem. And you have to adjust the architectural. So I think there's a little bit of flexibility for the for the builders and, you know, our clients and also for the architect. I recommend one thing I did not recommend yet, and that's the, very next sentence here, existing language. That's item B 26.11.3 B, a minimum height of buildings. I don't think there should be a minimum height of buildings. It's very unusual to have an regulation to have a minimum height and they're requiring two floors in order to do the one story, excuse me, the one bedroom units, need to keep the cost down. And we also, the benefit of having one story for one bedroom units is you don't have, I've done many of these where they're units above one, and in this case, there'll be nobody above me. So if we can go with the basically branch style units for the one bedrooms in their own buildings, then can accommodate that. It'll be a nicer unit for the occupants because that'll make money above them and they get a noise. Then in the two or three bedrooms are gonna be two stories and there'll be people in their family or guests who are upstairs making the noise, you know, kids jumping on the floor or whatever. But in the case of a one bedroom, it'd be really nice not to have a second floor above them with another unit. So this gives people more privacy and quiet
peace to enjoy their life in their building, in their home. So I recommend that we just eliminate that. Someone else, the waiter or John also may have something to apply to that, but I recommend you consider removing that part because I don't see any need for it. And I think having some one floor buildings, for example, the commercial may just be one store. Why put a 2nd Floor unless they need to have a little office upstairs to get a little grocery store. They often have a little mezzanine or office on the 2nd Floor, they oversee everything. But, you can do that in one story building is put a little mezzanine into. So two stories, I don't see it being mandatory. I don't think it should be mandatory, throughout whether it's residential or commercial. So I suggest you eliminate that provision. And there's a thought I came up with today going through it for last time.
Would you be wanting to eliminate the minimum ceiling item eight feet too or your That's building code.
Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna you're gonna all all your residential is eight feet. Eight feet minimum. I think in a for residential and the commercial be the same. You're not gonna get less than eight feet. Okay. At all. So I think the building code address address that in the marketplace to say, we're happy to remember, you know, like seven foot ceilings. Right. The cost of focus, you know, so and in fact, sometimes they get a lot of builders go a little bit higher than that. And and it you you have the cubic footage, which is very nice. I don't know what you're planning on doing, whether it's eight feet or nine or whatever, but that's not unusual, we'll a little bit higher.
Yeah.
If I recall back in 2018, I was finishing up my term on planning and zoning. The intent of that regulation was if there was commercial on the 1st Floor and residential on the 2nd Floor, that way it would ensure that the one floor wouldn't get smaller than the other and we cramped apartments. I think that was the intent of that at the time, but this is a totally different kind of mixed use kind of idea.
And I don't see less than eight feet for anything, commercial, residential at all. I've never seen it. The only thing I've seen is self storage facilities that we talked about going higher. I mean, you can create a little niche market if, and we've just had a brief discussion that we don't know what they're gonna look like yet, but if you go a little bit higher, people wanna store more things in them like a ladder or you can have a little storage, you know, shopping that goes a little bit higher and that's unique. Some people can't store those little tiny things, but some of those things like public storage. So I think they're, you know, maybe seven feet high. Some of them, you can't get anything in there and anything odd shaped you can't get in there. So it'd be really nice to be able to store just your ladder in there that's a 12 footer or something there. So without having to lay it on the floor and trip over or whatever. So that is,
that's a thought on that. So going down to next item is so it wasn't abundantly clear, even though John had our informal discussion indicated discussed indicated that he thought that the three acres applied, there was a minimum to have a floating zone, it had been on three acres, but it didn't tell you what the size of any parcels you may create within that that floating zone area development that you'd be approving. So we in items D one and two, we're just suggesting the minimum parcel is is three acres to consider the floating zone. I can't see the one much smaller than that anyway. I think that's a good one area from the original rig. And then also that the you get a one acre parcels within it and that's a lot of that's for financing. Banks want to they're financing this part. It's on one acre, you get one or two buildings something and they're only their exposure is only that. And if anybody didn't pay for the loan, and they need to call it, they can't that's it only exposure. So we reduce it down to sizes, we don't know what the size are, maybe three acres, but for each phase
that we get approval for from you and from the bank and this work again for any development under the floating zone, having that flexibility is very important to make it so they economically feasible and and it lendable. Minimum frontage, 50 feet on Route 6 for parts will be considered eligible for this zone change. E2 within the development, all actual minimum of 100 feet project on a public street or on a private street with a payment width of 24 feet or greater. Because as you know, we're going to be, the commission was more inclined in favor of not being a municipal obligation with it tough to make the budgets work these days. So our clients have agreed to build and own and maintain the street system even over the long term. They have to replace it, repair whatever. It's not an obligation to the town. So we will create lots off of those that new street system which will be technically a private street system. So that's what we have that. Maximum floor area. So we're saying that a retail business, it had 5,000 square feet for one, but if we want to try it to a boutique
grocery store, eight, ten thousand, 15,000, 20,000 square feet. We certainly at least that, I'm suggesting 15,000 square feet for an individual tent. If we have to, we have to come back, at least 15,000 square feet I would suggest is good so that these guys can actually find a tenant or tenants, plural. Just a quick question about that.
Have you already talked to potential tenants for the grocery store? Do you think you have any problem finding an interested vendor? There's certainly interests.
We think the proper set up, the proper incentives, could get the right tenant to come in. Would would be a very net positive to not just the the development side, but the town in general. Yeah. Yeah.
The storage, would that be also, would that be owned by you or would you look for somebody outside you? So we would own a storage facility.
And they plan on owning the whole. They're not a working home. They own it for a long haul. Right. And also I spoke to an entity has multiple grocery stores already and I just got thinking about it so maybe there's a possibility. A reputable grocery store chain. They're not the big wide, they're not the stop and shop if they have, they've done smaller stores and we don't have a large population base here, but we have a good, I think it's around 11,000 vehicles that we bought. I think it was, they looked it up by 11,000 vehicles staying in front of the site on Route 6 and a lesser degree on 87.
So we should be able to find somebody to do that. I just don't know what size, but I think and my clients are convinced that we should be able to, we have a good shot at getting grocery store here, which is really a high value item for the that survey you did and then playing fast fishing well. So that's that's that's why I put in here a repeated grocery store down in Item F Floor area. I said including your grocery store. So any prospective tenant to grocery store, they can check the box. Yes, it's allowed. Yes. It's black and white. You can do a grocery store here. It won't be big, but you can do them. I know how some of these things, I deal with these guys over time, the real estate committees and all stuff, and they want to be able to check all the boxes and we will. Again, the next page, residential use. We go down to, okay, this is where right now you have a maximum 66% residential. We have a provision here. You could go up to another five, up to another 4% or 70% if the commission is convinced that you've determined that the change to help meet the housing goals of the plan of conservation development and the town including a variety of housing choices
and that said increase is otherwise consistent with the regulations and the applicant has proposed minimum of 50,000 square feet of commercial buildings because you need the tax base even the commercial. Expanding the green list commercially and also residentially and helping address unmet housing needs of community. And then we add in the next paragraph, add in, it only allowed for efficiency one bedroom, two bedroom in the regulations. We're allowing three bedroom. We're not proposing at this time in our development any efficiencies. One bedroom is close to it. They think the market is good, sufficient for that. Most efficiencies I've seen, been touring somewhere beautiful, like right next to the Dunkin Donuts Park there at Yarra Goats. That's they're beautiful, but that's Downtown Hartford, you know. In the Andover, I don't know how well over, I think they'd be taking a greater risk to efficiencies out of Route 6 in Andover. Okay, so this is regarding sidewalks. We're not going be able to meet on the slopes of these properties, this property on our site. Others may be applying, you you talk about maximum 5% for ADA required for handicap. So I think you're not gonna get just not gonna get that. So if you want go along roads, you want have sidewalk, we're gonna go along with the road. And if it goes a little bit higher, you have right now, think 9% your regulations, when you mentioned them, but most towns are going with what the state does. And it's maximum is 10%. And there are certain circumstances type of steep to high case, something going up to 12%. I think that's what they say. So I would suggest that's really the standard we look at when we're designing it for project where we have some relatively
steep slopes to deal with and we have to traverse them. So first and that'd be for short distances, but it works. And I think we should do that. Just to clarify, because the last
time I think we met, you were talking about not having formal psychological painted line along the street.
Has that changed? No, no, we're still considering a 24 foot wide two way street where the vehicles go and adjacent to that six feet. So we're at 30 feet of pavement, which is more than ample for people, pedestrians, bicyclists, whatever people walking, you know, a couple of breasts, you know, two or three breasts and walk down. Whereas a lot of sidewalks are narrower than that and it's hard to have any group to walk along. They don't accommodate family walk along stuff. And we're talking about residential streets. They're not gonna be, as you're getting into the development of the residential part of it, you're not getting a lot of pass through traffic. It's gonna be the immediate residents there. I don't see an opportunity for other people. Some people may come in from they come in from Columbia, wanna go down to the patronize of little retail development we have there. They may cut through there, but I don't see it. We're gonna have curves in it. We'll meet except in engineering practice, but these are curvilinear streets. We're not having a straight shot. It's not a thousand feet long. You can see how fast you can go by the time it can get to 60 by the time you hit the end of the rain. It won't be, it'll be early, with some great changes and stuff. So we don't expect to be high traffic speed. So we're having this adjacent to it and that accommodates a wider sidewalk to normal
and it's cost effective to do it and then we can have sidewalks throughout the entire development. And it was still sidewalks to the buildings and to the units. Perhaps even to the, we're going to some separate from the buildings with some parking areas in between buildings. There'll be plenty of those and we'll have sidewalks interconnecting the buildings and those and the main sidewalk system. So we can get to it. So we've got a lot of sidewalks on top of these six foot wide one adjacent to the roadway. If there's to run Route 6, I wouldn't propose that because of the speeds and the volume, 11,000
vehicles, that which will again will help us attract tenants for the buildings, but then But your site plan is going to take into account any residents that wanna get to that grocery store. Oh, absolutely. Just
walk. Because in the timing of their grocery, you know, the tenants for that, we may not be able to help find the tenants who want to go in there for our first six, eight, ten year building or whatever. Right. Residential building. They're going to want to go in there once we're well on our way, you know. So it's half done around, don't know what that will be. But the market is such that I think they want to come in before we finish the development, but they want to see substantial, they all, they like seeing people get walked through the grocery shopping or drive, you know, 100 yards to pick up the groceries and go back or they're doing a, they're coming from work in Hartford, Manchester, whatever. Well, they're coming in and they drive in, they go in the grocery store and then they go to their, their, their home and they'd like seeing that. So they're wanting there. It's going be a selling point for the commercial.
Thank you, Patrick, the zoning agent for Andover. It's my understanding ADA applies to sidewalks and egress ingress to the buildings, not to a sidewalk necessarily along the road. Generally speaking, yes. So I don't think Tom can the way you have this worded, it almost sounds as like sounds like you're asking the town to waive ADA standards. Streets may have slopes exceeding ADA slopes, which mean Andover Street standards, which sounds like Andover Street standards, than PDA. I'm wondering if Well, this is referring to sidewalks.
The way that that's, if I might, the way that the current regulation is written, it says newly constructed sidewalks shall be handicapped accessible. Right.
That's the current regulation. And I think this proposal, as you say, Wayne, is that sidewalks don't always need to be handicapped accessible as ADA does not require that in general streetscapes. This
regulation does require that. And so I think the applicant's proposal is to give the commission some flexibility to loosen that under certain circumstances.
Yeah, I do have some comments with the commission at some point concerning streets and roads standards for streets and roads, we may or may not have.
I think that pretty much, you guys have any other comments? Not now. Okay, so that pretty much concludes what we were recommending to you in consultation with town staff and Wayne has some suggestions too. I like them. So that pretty much concludes that presentation, but available for any questions you may have, further questions, you already had some, be glad to do that or answer any questions from the public if they have any other time. But I think that pretty much concludes our formal presentation. But I'd like the opportunity to respond to Wayne Leskies getting in his comments if I may. Thank you. Any questions for zoning amendment change request?
I have one about the height of a building and I know a discussion that we had during some approval on one of these things suggested that the 35 feet was the maximum that we could have because that's how big the fire department ladder truck can be and that sort of thing and I'm not an expert on any of that. Yeah. The only thing I remember is you can't go higher than 35 feet because of the fire truck. I've never heard that in any community in the state of Connecticut as low as 35 feet. I must have been in the same vein. I heard the same thing. Yeah. So, I I guess that would be for, you know, us to check with the fire department guys or something but I I remember that very clearly, you know, and
100% of the towns I've ever been associated with the planning and zoning had a 35 foot because this is joint down. So, that's the only rule that I ever do and. Oh, okay.
I I I know a lot of people in the fire department. Yeah. Least one sheet. And if you have a you know, hook a ladder. I don't know what's available. What what do you have for? You just said bumpers way ahead or?
Not really sure. We don't have a question. It was just that was presented as a fact and Okay. Didn't question it. You know, 35 feet, nobody wanted to hire. So, that's just the way it went.
The region. Well, I think it was a mean. I mean, we'll fight. Do we? Do we know what? I don't I don't think we're not we're not to to Okay.
Not a big issue with us based on what we're going for commercial or for residential. So. Right. If, yeah, that that's that's I that's a first time I've heard that in a long time. Right. And it was out of Squirrel Island in Maine at Boothbay Harbor visiting a relative that's in August and yeah, theirs would there might be a two to the second story would be a problem but that's it. They don't know the normal vehicles that it is. You can't pass for the fire at rest. Very small ones.
So what's your final comment on that number then? Keep it at keep it at five. Keep it at thirty five.
Unless you hear the contrary from somebody who's in the fire department, they can handle a higher but just keep it at 35. Right now, based on the architecture you're working with, lots of asplane, we can live with that. So, yeah, by all means.
So the maximum floor area, why why is the change needed there $65 would it be? That's a pretty big building. Grocery
building. So, you won't have any one building that's $65. It will have a little, how many buildings do you $25. Very big also.
Yeah. So, what we're proposing is, I mean, the self storage will be a whole bunch of different buildings and I don't know whether four, five, or whatever. They won't be that big and then and then the the the retail building could be up to 25, zero square feet. And we're we're suggesting that might be a good thing to do. So, we have flexibility for the tenants. And and therefore, a 25 and a and a 40 brings you to 65, zero square feet because the intent of the regulation is also to broaden your tax base.
Essentially, we're building approximately a 132,800 residential square feet and for us to do 65,000 commercial square feet, we will won't be under 65%. We'll be at almost 68%. So we need to increase that number. Yeah, that is consideration.
Mr. Chair, I don't want to interrupt the commission comments, but after the commission is done, I just have a couple of comments.
On that same paragraph, and this is not for you guys, it's for being understanding our own regulations. I wasn't sure what it means when it says, no one building shall exceed either 15,025 square feet. But then we, you know, when we had the discussions about Dollar General, it's one building up, you know, 50,000 square feet. I've, it is, I don't understand what that first sentence is pertaining to when the second one allows us to go up to 50,000 square feet down. That didn't
pop into my head at the time we were doing Dollar General.
So that regulation basically puts an individual cap on buildings currently and a collective cap, right? And so what they're proposing is to increase both the individual building cap and the collective commercial cap. But so individual building currently in this mixed use area cannot be or in commercial cannot exceed 15,000 square feet. That goes from 15 to 25. And then if you were going to do multiple commercial buildings on a single property as part of as part of development, the collective is currently capped at 50. They're proposing to go to 65 as part of the full commercial development. Okay, but Dollar General is one building in 50,000
square feet. No, Dollar General is not 50,000. It's closer to 15,000. One-five thousand. Is that okay?
Fifty, fifty, zero is a is a big grocery store. Let's scratch over an acre quickly.
Yeah. No. Just try it because the feedback I remember from the public hearing was, you know, in Andover, we didn't want any big box stores. Yeah. And when we had the regulation, whether Dollar General's 50,000 or 50,000, you know, they consider that a big box store
and. Yeah, big box. I mean, your standard Dollar General, O'Reilly's Auto Parts, CVS, Walgreens, those are about 15,000 square feet. Larger than that, you know, a standard Stop and Shop, small Big Y, those are about 65,000 square feet individually. A Walmart goes up to maybe 100,000 square feet. But yeah, no, this your current cap is reflected by the Dollar General. It's about 15,000 square feet. Okay. Yep.
So, John, in 2018, when we did these regulations, why did we, why didn't we put twenty five thousand and sixty five then?
You do you want me to come up I with didn't join you guys until about 2023. I
didn't join you until about 2023, so I couldn't say. Good question. Have that question. I mean, we
decided that that was a good number, right? It gives it down one small, you know, small
things. I mean, we had our, you know, went over all these documents. It's just curious why why we have to change that forever. That's what we're going to go to. Wayne, is that what your opinion is? It's the commissions. I know but it did stack is going to change to 65,000
for a group of buildings. I know but forever. Yeah. Well, until the next time you change it.
That's what this does. It it changes it for buildings that are allowed in the business district and those buildings are allowed in a multi use district. So, not only does it change it for a multi use district, it changes it for buildings that are allowed in the business district. It's it it it won't change
Family Dollar want to increase their building size to 65,000. They won't be able to do that with this chain.
No. There'll be no one big use. They can't be.
This would allow you to put up one big 65, zero square foot building. Right. Which is a big super money for example.
Yeah, that's a big one. The big building. Yeah. But you can't do it in these regulations. In fact, it says for retail, you know, we're restrict, we're restricted. You know, like a grocery store, you know, max of 25, zero square feet.
Okay. So, then the building, the height of, we can go back to that twenty four three that 35 is irrelevant now, right? Yeah. Change that. Now, space is 20 by 10, isn't it? I mean, that's, we we improve them every, you know, once a week. 18 by nine. Nine by 18, the regulations say. 20 by 10, I think. No. The regulation says nine by 18.
So we're just trying to change that to be consistent with your regulation? State statewide, the standard is nine by eighteen for a regular breakfast. Ten by twenty is really a real high volume locations, you know.
Here we go again. Yeah. It's really for We're going again. Here we are. This was written in 2018. It was 200. Right? Yeah. Said it said it right here.
Right. But in section 12, off street parking, it specifies a parking space. I just don't know what you're It's inconsistent with the parking space size that's specified in Section 12. Is that how you read it, John?
Yeah. The regulations are internally inconsistent. And so the question is, which way do you want to change it? You know, if you believe that 20 by 10 was more appropriate overall, you'd want to go back and change the other section that Wayne referenced, because that's, it's internally inconsistent to this current twenty four point three secondtion. So, yeah, it's you know, and and as as mister Damali noted, generally speaking, the state standard is is a nine by 18 space. But, again,
these are your regulations. You make them what you want, but it would just be better to make them internally consistent. I'm just saying that in 2018, it was 200. I know it was done by 02/20. It was. Period. Right there. Okay?
Now, which point There was a time years ago, I've been in this business for fifty years. 10 of the, the first ten of, in a regulatory capacity as a planner. And, you know, 10 by 20 was very common back then. It's no honor. The common space is now nine by 18.
Okay. On self storage facility, it says occupants designed and used for leasing individual self contained use of self storage space to occupants. Now, what? You're getting occupants of an opportunity. I'm
an occupant in an office building with six different occupants. Yeah. It's six different tenants.
And so, I've been, it's not So, occupants the tenants? Yeah. Because they're less you can call them lessees. You can call them Okay. Incubated as Wayne's against I'm just curious about that. That's all. Because in the next line, it says, these units shall not be used for residential purposes. At all. Correct. You can't live in No. We don't want somebody looking at storage.
No. We really don't. Or you can just sit in an overnight having fun. You know? No. They're not staying overnight then.
I think that word occupancy is gonna be changed to something different.
I think the proponent would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Leslie or Wayne's vacation. Yes. It's a Yeah. Let let's let's see is clear.
Yeah. Just change it to Leslie. We can do the last. Residential purposes is misleading. I don't think people sleep in those things.
People are occupying whatever they can right now. Yeah. With park benches, they're we're we're really lucky here. This town particular, I don't if you have any homeless, but they occupy absolutely everything. They set up a tent in your backyard. I mean, it's parks, anything that's they can occupy, storage area, whatever. Any of these open, they get it. Unfortunately,
in. Sorry, I'm talking. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's existing language. That that's not changed language. That's true. When it talks about not being used for residential purposes. Well well, yeah. The plan plant is existing.
And the new one which it says rather than the purposes. That scripture probably just can be written so that No. That's existing line.
Line. Good. Yes. Language that's on in our regulations as they currently exist. Sabbath day men, people sleeping in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Having an overnight party, sleeping bags, whatever. You don't want anybody to take your little couch out there. Yeah.
You wanna be clear about that because there's risk of entrapment, lack of ventilation, a whole lot of issues.
The only meeting you are gonna Okay. Over to the master plan says conceptual. Yeah. When will they not be conceptual?
At the time when the site plan is done, engineered, it has to be consistent with that. It could be a variation of a footer or so to a panel, come through where the road goes and stuff like that, the elevation, but they have to be consistent. The overall layout would be consistent. Minor modifications. It will be the engineered site plan. So you first get the concept plan, which is a master plan done. And with all the documentations and you approve that and you approve the zone change through the mixed use floating zones. That's step one. Record the mylars
and if everything And the mylar, they will not be conceptual, they bleed actual contours.
No. There will be the mylar of the proposed conceptual for the master plan. Master plan map will be conceptual grades, conceptual building locations, all that stuff. But when you go in to the final site plan, this final application where everything's engineered, the architectural plans, have exact footprint, they have exact locations, words, they know the width of the doors, the windows and all. What you're bringing to the committee here, then it's gonna be not conceptual anymore. No, it will be engineered. Will be an engineered standpoint. This is where it's gonna be built. And the buildings will be, the footprint of the overall buildings will be consistent with the architectural standards. They won't have for your application, they won't have done a a building a set of plans for each building, which the building official will be reviewing at the time because they have to figure out the plumbing, electrical systems and all that stuff, the structural, they do that afterwards. But once they have the pool, but at the time of the application, you will have a plan that's gonna be built, you know, where the streets are, you know the width of them, their elevations, the training system, the size of the pipes, how they work, erosion control measures.
Maybe that should be added to these documents then.
Well, they're already in your regulations. These things are just the changes. Your regulations are much more comprehensive than this. We only took the sections that were changing. There's site plan regulations in your thick it 100 pages or whatever? Zoning zoning regulations. Listening. Got section 23. Yeah. There there are all kinds of regulation. If you look at section 26, it has discussed the master plan. Then you go into the sections on the site plan starting twenty six point nine and it could be a special permit review process. All these plans have to meet that. There also has to have a indication statement item on page 173 is under regulations. It's section twenty six point one zero point one in parenthesis four. It says statement of consistency with plans, studies and guidelines. The statement shall be provided demonstrating reasonable consistency with the following documents that were approved as part of the mixed use floating zone amendment to first application. The master plan,
the parking study. Okay, so that will include the parking study and the
Yeah, detailed parking study would just be then, yes. It's in your regulars. Yep. And the storm water drainage study, which would be thick, you won't read most of it, most of you, but be very thick document, all kinds of attachments and studies and analyses that will be submitted and design guidelines and that will all be in there. A landscape architectural plan, architectural plans, meaning the overall layout of the building, the floor layout and the architectural elevations be done, but the final suitable for building permits aren't done yet until you get your approval. Then you go for each building, you go to the building department, you show them a plan, they review it for consistent with this. So when we approve this document, just hang on. Okay. When
we approve the document, the parking study, the contours, grades Yep. All the phases Yep. All that will be before that'll be conditional
approval. Absolutely. Yep. And so when it gets built, it has to be built with that. If they ever wanna modify it, they have to come back to the planning and zoning commission. The mod I've got to fight for example, the bank human bank says, no, we want smaller faces. How many may come back for that? That type of thing, but changes to it have to go through the town for approval. I don't know if you have a change order process or second line modification process. I'm not sure what the what you have on your application forms and your regs, but you would have to come back for approvals to make changes. But this is what they're building. They're building that product as represented in the first application and in more detail on the second application. And then it's fixed. That's what they're approved to build and they have to build the whole thing. And that's what they have to live with and hopefully the market will hold up. I guess the way that works is
you come in we approve the master plan and you come back and we approve the site plan. Correct. Then you go up. But with the master plan, you also approve the zone change.
So that we're in that zone and then the site plan has conformed to the zoning regulations. Okay. Just like the master plan does those early intelligence. And who is the storm water study gonna be signed off by? My engineer.
That's either Lauren Mello who's on, she's the director of operations. Again,
this is a regulation change. It's not Lauren's not gonna do this for every single application of That's the right. It would be a professional engineer.
It will be a licensed professional engineer in a state of Connecticut who's competent at doing that. We have it at multiple in our office. Any other mission questions about the
resilient One more question for John, and this is, I know when we did our BOCD, we talked about resiliency and the changing climate and all that stuff. And so in this comprehensive stormwater drainage study you know it's talking about two, ten, twenty five, fifty, and one hundred year storm events. And so watching the news over the weekend you know just this past weekend we had the five hundred year storm down along the Southwest Coast. The year before that we had the you know five hundred year or a thousand year storm someplace else. Did we do anything in our regulations with planning that would require us to go more stringent on that? Do you plan in the future with the ever increasing storms?
No, no, no, no. The regulations haven't changed, but the design storms will have changed. And I don't want to put Lauren on the spot, but the state of Connecticut issued new stormwater management guidance a couple of years ago, I think two years ago, and they changed their assumptions for design storms. And so to be obviously more conservative and in certain circumstances, and I'm not sure exactly what one I'm quoting, but it moved from like, you know, a two year storm moved from, you know, one inch to like 1.4 inches. And I'm maybe butchering those numbers, but the design storms in the stormwater management guide provided by the state of Connecticut did become more conservative so that you're designing to a more intense, volume of rainwater management. And Lauren, correct me if I botched that.
Can jump in a little bit on that. In 2024, Connecticut DEEP issued the Connecticut Stormwater Quality Manual that all civil engineers follow in the state. It covers the large storms that you were asking about for pipe capacity for stormwater detention for the up to the one hundred year. And then what, John, what you were were referring to is the water quality consideration, which is considered like the first flush of water. So it used to be just the first inch of water that hits a site. Now it's either 1.3 or 1.4 inches is treated for every single storm event. So those are updated. The actual rain values in Connecticut were updated around 2016. We started using more intense storm events and that's put out by NOAA. All engineers across the country use it. NOAA is constantly getting data and issuing new updates. So I'd expect one soon within the next couple of years to capture these larger storm events. But to put more boots and suspenders on
Connecticut systems in that storm water quality manual, the 2024 issue, a lot of the detention basins, a lot of the infiltration systems are requiring to have more freeboard in it, have larger capacity for what we consider like an overspill if there is that really big storm event. They reduced what we can use for assumptions for infiltration. So we're being monitored for infiltration. We're not able to account for as much. So there are a lot more considerations and kind of restrictions on engineering that are in this new updated manual that will need to be followed for the ultimate design of this site.
Thank you. Yeah. So in other words, the regulations, the standard, the model storms are getting more conservative based on what's we're seeing in the actual atmosphere. Any questions from the public online or present? I have no question. Go ahead.
You commented that nobody does parking settings anymore. Why did you say that nobody does parking studies anymore? Well, most regulations
we deal with tell us there are few towns. For example, Manchester does that. But most most of the other towns they tell you for retail, you need, you know, one for every four, you know, four spaces per thousand square feet or five to thousand square feet. A lot of it's driven by tenants. A lot of tenants say, I want five spaces per thousand square feet. I want my my clients, my customers having their fight for space. So, but the towns usually spec more towns specify it out. With some of the towns in Manchester as an example, we do no business there. They they they do require parks. Most towns now require parking 30%. Is there regulars to spell out how many you gotta have for dental office or medical
office? We have that. Yeah. And in fact, the traffic engineers have studies, national studies that they deploy to tell them how many often should based on case studies. So that sometimes there's enough examples where it gives them good indication, but parking studies is most towns, we traffic engineer or civil engineers do not do that. Not required in those towns. However, sometimes such as Manchester, they want you to justify your part. I don't think they want you to do too much also.
We have parking regulations. So they're just gonna adhere to those parking regulations? Correct.
Alright. Yes. We'll meet your requirements. Yep. Absolutely. Just, you're just not gonna do a study. No, we are going to. Initially really conceptual one, we're going to do a study as required in your regulations as we're proposing modify. We will be doing a parking study for the site plan, a full one. Good. Private street, you mentioned that. Yes.
All those roads are gonna be private. Yeah, so the town doesn't have to maintain them. That was the consensus, I think of the commission at the last meeting.
We'll give it to you if you want. But again,
to be clear, Scott and everyone to be clear, this is not about a specific development. This is about changing the regulations to enable a variety of uses. And this enables both private road and public road.
By allowing it for any of this development or any other development, it means that the burden of building and owning and maintaining the drainage systems, which is a lot of money by the way, or having to replace those and the overtime, some towns are spending millions of dollars every year replacing pipes for utilities. And the town does not have that obligation. They will not be responsible for that. It's of the private sector. So it saves a lot of tax dollars. You don't have as much personal equipment
and stuff on the equipment. If I want to, if I might chime in on the road issue. Our regulations only specify road specifications for public and private roads that are constructed as part of the subdivision. We don't have anything addresses roads that are constructed as part of any other development.
Well, this case, Wayne, again, we're not talking about a specific project, but in this case, this will be also a subdivision.
Right. Any other development that's generic. I'm not talking about this development. I am wondering if the commission should consider looking at that requirement. I'm just throwing it out there specifically because in the new development outside of a subdivision, even if it is a private road at some point, the owners of that can petition the town to take over that growth.
Like Ridge Road right now, we're redoing it because the contracting that did it did a very bad job with it. And now it's gonna be deferred to the taxpayer to pay $200,000 to get the road redone.
So I'm only I'm only putting it out there. The mean, is
there a language about that? You know, is it for the building?
Where how does that go? This is a private road. Adam does not own it. The entire development is predicated on the private sector owning it and maintaining it. So it's gonna be some kind of HOA or something like that? No, no, you're skipping that. Instead of being like a condominium, these guys are gonna own the whole complex. They own every building and they're going to have financing and mortgages and all that stuff to pay. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if the banks are lending money on are gonna require it to be properly maintained. They seem to cover every base and all the lending documents I've seen. So I think that's, there's gonna be a giver. So yeah, there's not no homeowner association because that means that when people residing here, not only they're paying taxes on their units, these guys are paying the taxes on all the units, the real property taxes. They're not paying the motor vehicle taxes for the residents, but they're paying the real property taxes. And there are no personal property taxes in each of the units, But they but they'll they'll be paying the taxes on all that and they will be responsible for maintaining the whole thing. And and if the streets deteriorated
and people need to get to the units, they can't rent them out anyways. But the lending documents, I mean, they're going out of how long, how long it's like, like twenty years or twenty five to thirty years, they'll be taking out a loan and the bank will require that they maintain the whole system because they don't wanna have the value of the building space they ever had to foreclose,
go down and they end up with nothing. When they build the road, are they gonna be inspected? Yeah, by who? So, I mean, when we get to that, as as we work through those developments, we'll concur with the DOT and depending on the size of what we're putting in, they may have to look at it, but I'm assuming that somebody would. I mean, even if you just put in a parking lot or apartment complex, it still gets inspected before people get started. They're gonna have to pull a permit from the town and the town's gonna have to inspect the job. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah. Whoever we hired to do the payment will have to pull a permit from the town.
And the road will have to be designed in accordance with accepted engineering practice. So it's there for the long haul. So you're have the base on it, drainage and all that stuff to meet requirements, the accepted engineering practice. And that's good. How many miles of road is gonna be here? Or
Does she leave? No. No. No. She's still here. I have a number. The original We talked about
this Yeah. Specific 6,000 something like that. Project. Couple 100,000. These regulations are
apply to any mixed development. Any mixed use development. And then, John, I have a question for you on terminology. Sure. So in essence, they would Any applicant of any mixed use development would have to comply with engineering standards first and foremost. And then as whatever the town, maybe that's it's maybe it's our since this has never been done as there's never been a mixed use development yet in our town, Maybe that's just an oversight of the original language that is this technically would be considered a private drive in a sense, not obviously engineered differently than a driveway. But would freezing like that make this Yeah. Would make regulations more understandable or
confusing. So within a mixed use, all lots shall have been in front of something on a private street with a pavement width of 24 feet or greater. Yeah. So, I mean, if Yeah. Because we As Wayne pointed out, there are no road construction standards in the zoning regulations. The only road construction standards exist in the subdivision regulations, because again, you don't necessarily envision building new roads without a subdivision, without a residential development associated with it. So I would say if you wanted to clarify that, you could add language in that proposed section, which is section E2, 26.11.3. E2 could make reference to pavement width of 24 feet or greater, and in other ways, conforming to the town's road construction standard as expressed in the subdivision regulations. So basically just make an explicit link to that standard, which already exists in the regs.
I don't know if we should be debating right now what the standard should be if there's going to be a standard. I'm I'm just I think we're we're just pointing out that I believe there's a deficiency in the regulations not associated with what these guys are proposing. There's a general deficiency in the regulations. Something like this could be proposed for other properties on Route 6. And if it involves a road, does the zoning commission want to establish a standard to which a road is constructed? You said there's there's state standard?
There are state standards from Connecticut DOT. Most town engineers and private sector civil engineers, they adhere to that standard.
And other towns have written conformance with the state DOT highway management. It's pretty common. Yep. Yeah. Standards.
I gonna shoot. I should the engineers. I know in our practice and I'm sure all the other practices do this type of work. They will make sure it meets accepted engineering practice and they will reference all kinds of DOT standards for connected fire and transportation, the manual and other accepted standards so that the building contractor and the site contractor adheres to those specifications that the civil engineers get their stamp on a plan is prescribed. The engineer you have who reviews it, I don't know who does that in your capacity in your town or a town engineer or you have a consultant who does that, but they will require something like that. Reference. In fact, we stated here the standards we use for storm drainage and we should just, it should be applicable to the whole development or in accordance with accepted engineering practices including DOT
connected fire transfer manual and stuff. Like I said, I'm just pointing out what I believe to be Wayne, a suspicious
I think what could, again, as I noted, I think what you could do is include a direct reference to the town's road standards as may exist in the subdivision regulations or public improvement standards as may be amended from time to time. And then that if you or anyone else believe that our current road standard was somehow insufficient, we could change that road standard without having to change these regulations. And that would then be built to the new revised standard.
Or DOT, or the DOT Or whatever, sure. DOT would be more up to date common.
DOT has standards for all sorts of road treatment, you know, depending upon what their purpose is. And they can't Right, exactly. And so what you're just saying referencing DOT isn't not necessarily
sufficient because we'd have to first determine exactly what type of road is being proposed.
Right. They they brought the local road. Yeah. It's it's a pretty I did look at it. It's a pretty comprehensive document. I'm not an engineer. For the engineers around here, it probably is a good read.
Okay. Under twenty six one four, it's mentioned soundproofing between, you know, two hundred and sixty thousand. Well, actually, that's pretty broad. Soundproofing. Which one are you looking at? One six point one four. What kind of soundproofing? Well, they're not That's for the original regulations, current regulation. It's not proposed for change. Well, that's horrible.
Well, feel free to get rid of it. You can just say sound proofing. You could change that to sound attenuation.
Okay, any other, go ahead. And I'm going to go back to the section 8.2 of the maximum Florida area just because we were asking for a 40 foot height and then we said well let's make it 35 okay. I'm concerned when again my standard is the size of the Dollar General and the pushback we got allowing that to go to 15,000 square feet. So we're proposing that we go to allow anybody anywhere up to 25,000 square feet or 65,000 for a total. I look at that in comparison to what we got now. That's big increase. And I'm wondering you're the applicant asking for the change, how important is that change to you because that is out of what I think people expect to see in the town of Vandervliet. Are you talking about the regulations state 35 feet right now
And we were proposing to go to 40 feet. We do No. No. I'm talking about 15,000. We're going to Oh, 15,000?
Yeah. He to the He went no. So he was he was saying because you guys were okay with keeping 35. Are you okay with keeping 50,000? How
big a deal is it? If we left that at 15,000 to 50,000?
It's a big deal to the town. If we have if we want to accommodate a boutique grocery store, meaning not the big boys. We wanna have a small grocery store come in and they need that extra couple of that square feet or 5,000 square feet addition. So we go from 15 to 20 and then we get a grocery store. That is huge. And we can't do it if you change if you don't change the regulars. We don't have flexibility. And we don't know until we finish the engineering for this. We don't know how big a building can get right there. We know we can do 15,000. We think we can go bigger than that, But we don't know the exact amount, but it'll be tenant driven. And if the tenant says, I want to go to 18,000 square feet instead of 15. And, you know, and we therefore we don't get a deal. And then we don't grocery store. To me, to these guys, they they would like to do a use that talent really wants and desires as opposed to just some of the sales trinkets. Okay.
What, why do you keep bringing up 65,000 as the max size? I don't know. Because
that's that's all the bills. 50,000 to 65,000. Buildings. Yeah. I think the biggest, I could be wrong, but I think our general, probably the biggest building we got in town.
Know we won't have a 65,000 square foot building. Is like the storage units
is going to be 40,000 square feet right in order a bunch of small buildings. Gotcha. So why are you asking for 65,000 instead of just leaving it 50? Because because
because the total accounts for the cumulative side, the cumulative square foot. And has to do with twenty six one four where you guys set a total allowance on residential bill as a percentage. So now if we drop down our commercial square footage, we also have to drop down the residential square footage to come within the compliance path. So we almost need to maximize our commercial square footage so we can maximize our residential square footage. Mr. Chairman, may I speak to that? Sure, go ahead, John. So,
this is one area, and I can add more general comments later, but this is one area I would recommend more flexibility. And I had recommended actually loosening this regulation up much more significantly than going from 66 to 70%. Arbitrary percentages of residential to commercial blend I think are very poor ideas and definitely restrict the ability of the developer to respond to market changes, to essentially restrict them from providing needed residential development because they're unable to fill a commercial need in certain circumstances, or if they lose a commercial tenant, to miss their blend of something. And in this case, going to 70%, which is giving them some more flexibility, but is creating a situation where because in this circumstance, and again, we're talking about a specific site that they're designing to, but sculpting the regulations around it, that site sets up for a lot more residential use, which makes a lot of sense because most of the property is off of Route 6, but the increased residential square footage is causing essentially them to be forced to build more commercial development. And if you are rankling at the idea of more commercial development,
then what you really should do is be more flexible on the commercial residential blend. I agree with that.
I may add one thing to that, there's another perspective, that's it. Right now, what Leslie just mentioned to me, their size units, even a one bedroom approaching 1,100 square feet? Right about, yeah. Right about 1,100 square feet. That's big for a one bedroom. Wouldn't that be nice if people had a one bedroom unit in this town could have 1,100 square feet or thereabouts? I know some developments I've done and they're in demand, but they're eight eighty square feet. One of the bigger developers in the Hartford area does and might have done a bunch of them. Eight eighty square feet, two bedroom unit. And they're talking about 1,100 square feet for a two bedroom or one bedroom here. Those are very generous. If we get a problem with this, it's a square footage problem, John was alluding to. If we get into problem with that, we may have to reach so the over we may have to reduce
the square footage of those units, which means the living space for people in order to meet that threshold, that's standard of a percentage of the commercial to residential. So in other words, the square footage to go down or we lose a bunch of units and that means that many more people in town can't stay in town because they can't get a rental unit.
Did we address the lot coverage on the commercial launch?
We have we didn't change that. There is a I believe we have been pervious on this. Let me go back. That is in twenty six eleven. Right?
If Okay. Was a front of my bill. I've been '26, Which you are not proposing any changes to.
Lot Okay. Coverage is not more than 60% of life may be covered with impervious services. Sometimes they say life coverage is building footprints and others say life coverage is as much as our shade. 60%. Okay. Current. That's a footprint of all pavement and all buildings. Right. That's a lot coverage of building you're proposing are within that? Oh, yeah. 68% we can live with, absolutely. That's a reasonable standard. That means 40% of the site has to be lawn, landscaping, that type of thing. Wetlands. Wetlands.
Not developed with pavement or buildings, parking lots, sidewalks, whatever. Thank you.
And how did we end up with this ADA thing? Where did we end up with them? Just
because it's a private road doesn't mean that they can't adhere to the ADA.
ADA standards don't apply to sidewalks over the road. I think we all agree on that. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but broadly speaking, the federal ADA standards do not apply to sidewalks. However, your regulations currently would require sidewalks to be handicap accessible, which I would probably interpret to mean ADA standard. It doesn't say ADA standard, but handicap accessible, I would say does that, and that's what your regulations currently require. What the applicant is proposing is a little bit more flexibility wherein for certain sections, certain short sections, you could exceed the ADA slopes or what have you, in order to have a continuous sidewalk network. So you have currently imposed more restrictive standards than the federal government on your sidewalk, and this would allow some flexibility.
Unless unless someone thinks I'm interpreting that wrong. Right. I I would agree with that, John. I I think that twenty six eighteen probably does need some wordsmithing. It's the distinguish between sidewalks along a roadway and
Like the path leading to a building, walkways leading up to a building is different. That's associated with the building ADA.
Yeah. That has the ADA. Yeah. Regardless of what we think. So by the date, whatever percent, whatever. Why put that in? Because the current regulation says any sidewalk has to be ADA has to be handicapped accessible. All sidewalks. Sidewalks the town puts in along the road. Any well, any sidewalk in a mixed use would have to be handicapped accessible. All sidewalks. The way the current regulation on rates.
And sometimes, you know, with slopes, if you're thinking about, you know, '87 heading up into, oh, I'm sorry, no, was like, like the beginning of '87, like, you know, as you go up towards Columbia, it's fairly steep. And if you were to hold someone to that, it would require a whole bunch of switchbacks, right? To nail the slope, which is not reasonable. And the state wouldn't make you do that because, know, the ADA requirements don't apply to sidewalks along roadways, but this regulation would. As it reads today. So that's what we're monitoring. Are the weapons all marked?
They are all flagged and located by their service. Again, not about the zoning change. We
shouldn't be talking about a specific There is no proposal. We're talking about changes to the multiuse floating film here. Yes. Want to make that abundantly clear. This would apply to any development that proposes a multi use mixed use floating zone. Thanks Wayne. Okay. I'm sorry.
And if I may, and maybe John, you can help. So getting back to the ADA slopes, is there a way we can have this read a little more comprehensible? You know, like this is seems to be a sticking point as to our interpreting state, federal and ADA laws. So
You can, I mean, section of the regulations is raised for amendment? Wordsmith You this if you need. You don't have to take this or leave this. You can make some tweaks to make it make more sense. Okay. Thank
If, you know, again, the context of accepting the whole thing or portions thereof. Can I just make a couple of comments to set the context for your decision making on this? Yes. So again, this is a public hearing. You can leave it open as necessary. But so broadly speaking, what this proposal is meant to do is provide, first of all, some flexibility for both this commission and for the developers in making a mixed use development happen. The current regulations are a little bit restrictive and very front loaded in terms of the type of investment that needs to be made. The way that a mixed use development would happen is essentially a three component thing that happens in two phases. It needs to be a zone change, a master plan, and a final plan. And way this is currently, the way that our regulations are currently structured is it is very, very heavy on the master plan, basically forcing a developer to fully design, fully engineer, put all of their money into design upfront before they even get an answer of whether this commission is willing to change the zone designation from commercial to mixed use.
And then once that's done, once they've made that investment, and hopefully based on their investment, get a yes, then they would do the final plans, which which are gonna be almost exactly the same as the master plan plans because they've already done all of the investment. What this proposal would allow is for a developer to make an investment, but a lesser investment, so that if the answer is going to be no, if this commission, which has a tremendous amount of latitude to say yes or no to the change of zone designation, to get to a quick no and not spend 150, dollars 200,000 in design fees to produce something that the town is never gonna buy. And so the reduced standards for conceptual parking, conceptual design, conceptual stormwater allows this commission a level of comfort, should allow this commission a level of comfort to see if this concept, this master plan is realistic for this piece of property. And it would do so in a more quick fashion and a more cost effective fashion for the town and the developer, and a lot of money and time is not wasted on a project that isn't going to work. If it does work, if the master plan is of sufficient quality and sufficiently compelling to convince the commission that this might make sense and this is in the benefit of the town in enhancement of the plan of conservation and development,
then the commission can change the zone and say, yes, we approve this master plan, we changed the zone from commercial to mixed use, and we are permitting you to go forward, now do your final design, now unlock the rest of your investment, come back with fully engineered plans, stormwater design, slopes, all of the rest of that stuff, and come forward with your site plan or special permit so we can review the final plan that basically confirms and finalizes all of the stuff that we were convinced about during the master plan phase. And that's the sort of the high level analysis. And basically most of the internal changes that they're making to the mixed use regulation allows for the kind of flexibility that the developer would need to do a simpler, quicker master plan to convince the commission of their concept, and then to have the flexibility at the back end to do a high quality and workable, fully engineered design. And as I said, a couple of the changes that they're proposing are essentially doing us favors. So some of the completion of construction and submission of application stuff is actually in contravention of the statutes, and we should get rid of it anyway. So they're doing us a favor there.
But then some of the flexibility, increased square footage for individual commercial buildings, increased square footage for total commercial building size, and flexibility for percentage of residential to commercial allow for the development to respond more easily to the market and to provide the kind of commercial development and the scale of residential development that has changed in the eight years since this regulation was envisioned, which was envisioned I'll note before COVID, before the latest housing crunch, before the office market completely got upended. So building in some flexibility on that end, I think really is to the commission's benefit because it again, allows the commission to review a wider variety of development types. And again, at the master plan phase, before anyone spent too much time or money on it, say, yeah, this works in this location. No, this doesn't really work in this location. Yes, we'll approve the zone change. No, we won't approve the zone change. Go back to the drawing board, because you still have money left because you haven't spent $200,000 to get to no, right? So that's sort of in, as I read this, how this regulation would provide a little bit more cost certainty at a lower cost for the developer and more flexibility while retaining full oversight to the commission. Back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, John. All right, any other questions? I I have one point up there. Go ahead. So as far as this is developing, I know we're talking with the conceptuals a bit and this and that, but where exactly I mean, there's not much road frontage as far as this goes. Most of the properties behind the homes on Room 687. We're we're like, there's no natural plans all conceptual as far as traffic controls and all this and that. I live at 618 versus 6. I know it is hell getting in it. To be fair, I'm gonna hell get in and out of the drive for them. As it is, I mean, we're talking businesses and more partners that put it, what is the actual plan as far as traffic controls and for the residents that live there, again, when considering this whole zoning change from residential to a multi use, you know, piece property. Well, all all of the residential, we're looking at the entrance on 87. Okay. So nobody would enter the residential from Route 6. They would turn the light on the 87, and then they would take a lot to go into the property, which is gonna have its own roads inside there. Okay. The only property, I believe, that we have in the conceptual would be the grocery store will be entered from Room 6.
But we also have And they exit through Lindell's Corner. Yes. We also have exiting the grocery store if you go through the complex and out around the East Side. Those are the names for the grocery between 618 and 608. I believe that's a piece of property that get for the properties there. I don't know if you got it. I I I don't know the numbers, but you know, living home living homes corner? Yes. So that right at the end of that where the big circle is is where the grocery store will be. Okay. So you just talk about having an entrance from six to roughly through where that cul de sac is currently? Yes. Okay. So you take the cul de sac out and put an entrance there rather than just so that I know kinda add it from. There there would still be an entrance on Room 6 into the grocery store. No. I'm talking about the code set. I I don't believe so. I don't believe we have Wyndham Homes Corner going into that commercial space on the conceptual, but we do have being able to go up through the residential zone and back out on the 87 up top right next to the Columbia line. Yeah. And I I actually
live at 187 in Columbia. And just do you have drawings yet of where you're gonna put the so how?
So, I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, if I might, and if anyone's playing a drinking game for every time I say development. This is about regulation change. I'm sure the developers would be happy to share their plans outside this public hearing process, but this public hearing process has nothing to do with an individual property development.
Oh, that's fine. Just thought they said I had a public question. Questions. We had a question. Right. That's that's that's fine. But that's not a question about this public hearing.
Public hearing is a text amendment. This is a text amendment.
We're not looking to get a permit to build right now? I'm not talking about that either. I'm just I had a question about the development, which I thought was what we were talking you guys are talking about. So Mister chair, we have to talk to an outside public hearing. Say we're down here. Sure.
Alright. Commission, do you think we need to continue this or close the public hearing? We need to change it to this, sir.
You would be able to make adjustments during the deliberation section. If you have received all the information, all the public comment, you have all the information you need about this hearing, You're free to close it. If you believe you want to make some changes to the language as proposed, you can do that as a motion to approve or deny during your deliberation portion. And that doesn't need to be tonight.
What they've heard tonight is that do they want to make any modifications to what they're proposing?
Well, yeah, I mean, we can leave the 35 foot building height. The elevation, exterior elevation. And come back to the commission with a revised amendment.
We'd we'd be I think we'd be glad I'm happy. I I'm not yeah. We'd be glad to modify the regulations based on what we heard, and I've got somebody taking you've a Charles Bergman with John, and and we work with John and Wayne. Yeah. I've been I've been taking notes on a on a markup myself. Yeah. So, we could we could work with them about this come up with a market that doesn't seem that difficult and come up with so we have a clean regulation for you to consider at your next meeting. And the sooner the better we prefer to do it because these gentlemen to my right are already exposed quite a bit. Wire is good, right? They've got, yeah, the sort of boundary survey a lot of it. We we surveyed the entire over 50 acre site and then we've already engaged other architect and engineers and all stuff. So, a lot of and there are other costs associated with this project behind the scenes. So, they're already been quite an investment. So, we'd like to move it along so we can get as soon as possible get to a an application so you make a decision on the on the project itself.
Thank you. And correct me if I'm wrong. Well, I I I can't ask this question. Sorry for the little. It's too late. It's too specific. Okay.
Thank you. We get a motion to continue or close the service. Yeah, we have to wait. Out
there. Yeah. Is there any other questions, Leanne? One question. When might it be continued to? Would
be the next meeting or which is. Great. So. Well, you can ask, you can give a dash of the commission. You can leave your request to the commission to get it like. Yeah.
But the Commission can entertain a special meeting. I'm thinking I'm thinking, you know, we're we're talking about two weeks from tonight. It's the twenty ninth. I don't if that works for anyone, but
I think you want to pull this one's bad. Are we I think first we have to decide if the hearing is concluded or not. And then then we'll get this yeah. And then the commission can decide if it wants to take this upward over issue
at a special meeting. Is that what you're asking? Well, no. I know. I'm actually suggesting that I think the commission I think the consensus is they'd like to have some the modifications we've talking about, had those changes made, and then they can deliberate on it because we've already heard most of comments, deliberate on that, on the modified version we work out with zoning enforcement officers, Jeff Leonard. So, have a have an extended the public hearing. Look. To receive that document. Right. Did we confer with Tap Staff on? Resemply the language word of hearing And then possibly deliberate on that document at that public hearing. If it all at that, yes. After that, you you close the hearing and you go on to, well, you deliberate and then you go into deliberations for possible action. Right. Okay. You can do that same thing. Just try and make it clear to the commission what? Yeah. No, I I think it I think that hearing should be held open until they have this document. The tweaking of it. We started discussion tonight and then it'll be clean, and then you could vote on that document, and maybe you wanna still tweak it a little bit during your deliberations.
Sounds good to me. We just gotta check on dates here. We can we can on town website.
Well, the twenty ninth gotta work because that's the fifth week and there's no meeting scheduled for the fifth week. Oh. No. Let's
see. October twenty twenty ninth. September twenty twenty ninth. I'm sorry. September 29. This room is being used by, well, it could be used. No. Yeah. You're right. There's on the town calendar. For this room. Alright. No. No. No.
Then you just need to if if the commission is up for it, they you just need to verify that a that a quorum of members could participate. Do you have an an official meeting?
I can be there if you can hear me. I could be there on the twenty ninth. Yeah. You, Leanne. Well, to be clear,
any other members can inform themselves by listening to the YouTube video of this hearing.
Alright. Can I get a motion to continue the public hearing? Okay. To 7PM on Tuesday September 29. Second. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye.
That's why motion passes five zero zero. Well, five zero zero even though we weren't seated. Alright, thank you. Yes, thank you. Hearing is now closed. Well, continue to twenty nine.
Public hearing is close to twenty nine. And at that time, we're gonna have a special commission meeting. Special commission meeting in Wilson. The whole hearing and special commission meeting. Correct. I believe that's what you guys voted on. Yes. We can't add anything to the agenda. And you can't add anything to the agenda. You
can you can add whatever you want to the agenda, but you just can't change it on the fly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The agenda. Oh, I can change it. Okay. The public hearing is adjourned. Thank you very much.
Wait, I'm sorry. What do you you paused the recording for what? The recording for public break before
we start the meeting or Oh, yeah. I can do that. So are you you're you're adjourned for a couple minutes? Yeah.
Didn't know if that was good. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, John. All right. Call the September 15 planning and zoning meeting to order at 09:15PM. There is roll call, Vice Chair is Leanne Hutchinson present, Scott Persson present, Jed Larson present, and Jay Kamens present. Any additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none, moving right along. Public speak. Any comments, questions, concerns, topics limited to stuff not on the agenda currently? Hearing none, moving on. Old business. All right. So we're considering the application. You actually are not in your view.
We're moving on. Very good. Thank you. We're going to interview Jacqueline Lanigan and Biotic and Amsky. So you're up Jacqueline. Come on over, have a seat. This side. Yeah.
Okay, I have a little bit of notes just so I stay on point. Sometimes I look different. Okay, my name is Jacqueline Lanigan. Some of you know me, some don't. I grew up in Andover. I moved to Andover in 1980. I'm 55 now. I went to Andover Elementary School. I went to Rand High School. I grew up on Andover Lake. So I'm very familiar with the town inside and out, basically. Pretty much every inch of land I've been on at some point over the years. So I've outlawed it. So
Background, I have my paralegal degree. So listening earlier to regulations and trying to sort everything out, I think I would be strong with that. I have two years of real estate law, two years of business law, legal research. So I like I said, I think I can pretty much comprehend or understand not everything, but a little bit. I also just completed sixty hours of a real estate course. So I still have to take the exam for that. Hopefully, stay tuned. What else? So Andover. I've watched a lot of different things over the years with Andover. Route 6. Route 6 is always a couple brought that up earlier. Route 6 has always been an issue in Andover. There was gonna be a highway that got put in. Houses were bought. Houses were never lived in again. We found out the wetlands were a strong reason, and I agree with that. When I look at it now, as a kid, I didn't really know that much about anything. We have the Hopper event.
We have Andover Lake. We have Burnett Brook. There's water everywhere in Andover. So when we're making decisions, we are affecting different major issues of Andover. Things that we all love, places we all enjoy. There's been good, a lot of good. Good. Long Hill Field. Long Hill Field, when I was growing up, was a softball field, dirt softball field. It's nice. The soccer field, I, you know, that was a great start. The trail going around it, I've run it myself, so it's great. New addition, pickleball court, playscape, all great. Those are great positive things for Andover. I'm a mountain biker, the rails to trails and anything connecting it, and that's what we're doing, it's perfect. Perfect for families. It's Andover. So wait, Andover is a met It's positive, good, growing direction for families, even for our elderly in town. It's places to go, connect, community center.
So we are going in a positive direction. I'd like to help with that. One thing did stick in my head during the meeting earlier, and I wrote it down. It says, one, you know, I'm sorry, don't even remember his name. He was the main representative. He said, that's what you have to live with. So whatever we you do, or if I was to be part of this, it's like, that's what you have to live with. You have to live with every decision you're making, every regulation that's being made. You know. Sometimes, yes, we would love the money. We'd love the taxes. We'd love, but you always have to look at what it's gonna do to the town. What is the impact on the town? What is the impact on big development coming in? What does that mean for our public safety, our fire department, our one resident trooper? You know, what, how does it impact everybody? Our schools and then the lake, our water all around us, the wetlands. So, I guess that's what I'm mostly about. I think I'm a good listener. I think I can listen to everyone's opinions of everything. I can form my own, but I can also listen to the reasoning behind what everyone is saying and hopefully come to good decisions for the town. So I think that's, this, the job of the planning and zoning to me is one of the most important jobs in the town.
Especially right now when you have big projects like this. Yep.
Yep. It's nothing to be taken lightly. Yeah. I mean, not again, I'm somebody that's watched the town over the years. Like I said, so far, a lot of decisions have been great decisions. We just have to keep it that way and not rush anything. Just that's it. That's all I have to say. That's me. That's my personality. Hopefully, I can be a part of this. And did you have any questions for me?
Is that, I think talking about your direction and the time here and wanting to keep things on, keep things going forward, you know, cautious eye to it. Is that what is drawing you to join PNC?
What's drawing me to be here is, I guess it's so simple. I love this town. I grew up here. I have stayed in this town. This is, you know, there's a lot of, I have a lot of friends, family over all of these years. It's, I think that's why I'm here. I'm here because I just think that I would like to be a part of the planning of the town's future. You're gonna have time for I'm a sorry. You're gonna have time for meetings?
Of course, yes. I have time for meetings. I'm very flexible as far as that. I'm lucky where I am in my life. I can, a special meeting like this spoke about tonight, I wrote it down. I can do that. That's easy for me. I don't have any plans on neglecting the role is the best way of working at. This is something I want. It's not something, nothing you've taken lightly. I think anybody that noticed me knows that.
How do you feel about the, our current plan of conservation development? Have you had a chance to read through it? It's, it's quite a lot. It's kind of like where all the commissions and surveys and the planning and all where we'd like to go as a town. What are your feelings on that? Is there stuff that you agree with, disagree with?
I'm not gonna lie to you. I have not read through all of it. So to answer that, clearly, I wouldn't be able to, but I'm willing to read all of it and then could form probably a pretty, an opinion. Yeah, because that's like the planning part and then the zoning part is all these regs, the regulations,
excuse me. So yeah, okay, thank you. Leanne, any questions? No, I think I'm all set. Okay, thank you.
Any other questions? Thank you for your time. You're welcome. Yes.
No problem. And I see Biana was able to make it in on the meeting. Hi. My service may not be ideal, but I am here.
Well, I don't have to play your video then, right?
Yes. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm in a public place, it's kind of hard to hear, but I am doing everything I can to ensure that I'm present. I hope you guys were able to see my video. Thank you for having me.
I have yeah. It's Wayne. I have not showed the video.
Oh, okay. Very good. Sorry. Seeing the side of my face so I can hear you. You're welcome to view the video and share that to the committee privately if you like or show it after. But I'm happy to answer any questions that commission may have. I'm not a new face, hopefully, to the commission, and you guys have all seen me present in person and on Zoom many times before. This is something that I have pursued for a few years now, and I am very passionate about, I guess, development and economic growth and the future of our town in general.
Yeah, I'm committed to the long term investment in this town. I plan to be here for a very long time, raising my children here and through my participation in economic development, PTA, the Veterans Field Playground Committee, I am trying to help make a positive impact on Andover, not just now, but in the future for the long term. So I would be honored to have a position in any respect on the Planning and Zoning Commission. I am a realtor by day, so I have a good understanding of what it takes to review the type of plans that we're looking at. I have a good understanding of what the choices are for families and committee, excuse me, commissions in town, making decisions that are impactful to long term growth. And I think that I have shown my commitment to the town of Andover in multiple ways. And I would just love to further dedicate myself to the growth and development of our community through the Planning and Zoning Commission.
Do you think you Would you have any scheduling conflicts? Would you have any scheduling conflicts making the meetings?
Typically, no. My apologies again for not being able to join you all in person this evening, but my video does show, and I did state in that, that this is a long standing commitment that I've had. I've been recognized for my work and my professional career this evening. So that is the reason that I am unavailable to be with you in person, but I have stepped away from the event that I am attending tonight to try to get on this committee and present myself to you as much as I can in person. It's a one time scheduling conflict that was standing, like I said, for a few months in the past. And no, typically I would not have any scheduling issues with the date and time that our commission meets. Great.
Thank you. Any other questions? Leanne? No, I guess not.
Okay. Thank you for your time, Viad. Thank you for making time to join our Thank
you guys so much for having me, my apologies again for not being there in person, but I appreciate you, seeing me on camera here and feel free to enjoy the video that I created for you guys tonight too. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Good night. Does the commission want to see the video? Sure. Yeah. How long is it?
How long is the video? The It's about sixty five seconds. Oh, we can see. Alright.
And I'm gonna give you I didn't want an hour.
Yep. I've already I've already enabled you. Go ahead. Alright.
Uh-oh. Wait a minute, ma'am. Sir, but I have a lot of pain in production. This is an exceptional Hang on. Okay. Perfect. Let me do something different here. My audio doesn't come through except for an echo. John, you got any ideas?
You could can you mute your own laptop and and just turn up the volume on the the the TV? Yeah. It's muted right there.
No, you don't wanna mute the feed, the audio feed, but mute your own computer. So Wayne, like in the lower right hand corner toolbar. I got that. Yeah, I've turned off my microphone.
Yeah, I don't know. That's And then if some setting, but we could Yeah, I don't know.
Let me see what this doesn't do. No. That was a a a
So we we could do it the other way is you could we can I could mute the Zoom, the big screen, and you could play it out of your laptop? So try that. All right. No.
Wayne, could you unmute the Zoom now? I'm going to assume you guys could hear that in the room leanne and I I don't believe could hear that but I think everyone else heard it so No, I could not. Yeah, so I think Leanne and I missed out, but it seems like everyone else was able to hear it, right? And Wayne, could you unmute your connection to the TV?
I'm still here and would be happy to answer any additional questions that the commission may have regarding my interest in the position.
I so mister Sher, we still can't hear you. Oh, you're you're muted. I don't know if if so the the Zoom login screen is is muted on your end. So, yeah, I I so I think the people in the room there you go. Thank you. Yeah, we can hear you now. Thank you, Patrick. Yeah. So the people in the
Hey, Leanne, do you have any questions for Viadah? Because, Viadah, she she couldn't hear your video. Were there any other questions you had, Leanne? It was it was pretty much the same as her, Zoom, but if there's any other questions?
No. I was gonna ask if it was pretty much the same as what she was able to tell us just before the video was shown. But no, I guess I don't have anything further. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Biana.
Thank you for your time. I'm sorry I can't talk with you in person. That's okay, thank you. All right. Patrick? Yes.
Maybe you're getting ready to do this anyway. It's the last time we had a contested position, we did it in executive session. Yes. So so we
can pop out to an exec executive session, John? You'll need a motion. Where's the there's a Lee Ann made the motion. Will make a motion. I'll second.
All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. So there's two ways we can do this. I don't know if there's anyone else in the room other than the commission and Wayne. No. And so it's really, we could go to a breakout room if Beata wants to stick around. If Beata is not in, if she's okay with not sticking around, she could just jump off and we don't have to do anything else other than pausing the recording.
I'm fine to jump out to make it easier for the commission. That's not a problem. Okay.
So we'll we'll I'm sure they'll reach out after the decision, Biana. Thank you. Very good. Thank you all again. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. So once she's out, I will oh, she's out? Okay. I'm gonna pause the recording. So this is a executive session. It's not recording. Here we go. Okay. Thank you, John. All
right. Thank you very much, John. Now we're going to vote on the candidates.
Or motion to appoint somebody, is that what you're doing? Yes, Bruce.
Who's going to make the motion? I'll make the motion. Go ahead. I'd like to make a motion that we commence voting on our ultimate. I would
like to, make motion to, vote for Beata for our ultimate. Second? I'll second. Thank you. Scott? Aye. Leanne? Aye.
Jay? Aye. Aye. And aye for myself. Motion passes five zero zero, be out as our new alternate. And we will thank everybody for their time on that. Moving on to new business, any new business?
Is this new business? No. There's no new business in that. Great. Are we officially back out of the Yes. Are. We are. And beyond, it's just been,
We were just going to appoint Viada as the Are you recording again, John? Yeah. Yes. Am.
I was just checking to see if we were back to the recording. Yep. Okay. No more amendments. Thank you. No administrative report. Sorry. Anything for me? Go ahead.
Yes. Sorry. The ordinance amending the zoning fees and what we had discussed at the last meeting was voted on by the board of selectmen last night and passed unanimously as Scott can attest to as he made that motion. Thank you, Scott. So what I've done is, I mean, it's it's gotta go to town clerk for publication. There's a few more hoops to jump through, but that's it's a done deal now. So no town meeting? No. No. With any attorney O'Brien because the original the original zoning fee ordinance was done by board selectman. This amended that ordinance. Okay. That's good. So attorney O'Brien was the hire will be able to recoup
for any project coming forward.
Good job. Thanks. There's still some more stuff that I have that I think the board of selectmen should be taking up, but
less important. It was a lot of work, thank you.
Inland wetlands. So at the last meeting, I did brief about the fact that we had some things going on with Lenton Warner's and I had asked if there was any discussions with the wetlands agent and she said no there's been no discussion at all. So I know there was there are concerns that there's a lot of weapons over there and I guess they are starting to recognize that fact now that they're seeing the flags. Yeah, we'll see how that comes out but they have not engaged at all yet with the wetlands commission. Okay.
And you know, I don't think they're compelled to engage with the wetlands commission until they are ready to present their site plan. Right. Right.
They should. But they should they should be talking to the witness. Yes. And they should have also talked to the fire department by the I'm gonna have that for I'm I'm gonna make that inquiry a call. But that's in my notes.
They're gonna have lots to say. Alrighty. Left. All set. Especially
for the fire department vehicle around that, it's gonna be looped shut. I know what that place looks like.
It's it's either like this or it's wet or it's a throat. Remember, you're on every reported,
and we had We don't want to be inlance wetlands? Nope. Mister Planner?
Not much of an additional report. Obviously, working with the with the applicants on this this text amendment, and hopefully, We can. We can make some progress over the next couple of weeks. I would also just report that the next step of the, housing growth plan discussion. There'll be a meeting at the Capital Region Council of Governments next Thursday that I'll be attending, and they'll be discussing a little bit more about their methodology for determining municipal housing need. But again, the big numbers have not been released from the state yet. We're anticipating those sometime in October or November, but continue to work with the COG at the regional level on existing housing needs assessment and representing Andover as well as Columbia at those discussions. So that's all I've got right now.
I've been in those meetings too. Are we in different meetings?
Are you at the regional planning commission meeting? Yeah. Yeah, those are the evening meetings where you guys talk about like inter municipal referrals and that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, this the staff housing needs meetings. Got it.
But yeah, thank you for covering those, the RPC meetings. Yeah, no, they're good.
Thank you. Any public speak? There is no vote. Thank you.
Approval of minutes. Make a motion that we approve the minutes from 08/18/2026. Second. Discussion? Corrections? Notes?
Under number five, I think in the last paragraph, it's just missing an S from Larson. That's the only thing I saw. Thank you, Leah. You're welcome.
Alright. Any other discussion of the minutes or you want to need another minute? Like to vote as all in favor of approval of the minutes as amended by Leanne? Aye. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes five zero zero. Next meeting is actually our special special meeting for Schedule special meeting for September 29. Alright, public hearing and special meeting. Thank you. Make a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you everybody. Oh. Who's second? Got a second. Jen second. Thank you, John.
Thank you, everybody. Go ahead. Sorry, John. Can I ask the, I think you you might have the the planner here was talking about that survey? I believe that he was using kind of to bolster his arguments. Patrick said you might have that survey that he was talking about and I'd love to look at it if you have it.
I'm not sure I know the one you're talking about. So the planner for Rosewood? Yeah, Peter DeMalley. Yeah. Very exciting survey that he was using to discuss stopping points. Are
you talking about a physical survey of the land or some sort of public data survey? Residents and their Oh, oh, oh. The Yeah. So that would be the POCD survey. Yeah. I can pull that out for you. Sure. Love to see that. Yeah.
I'll do that, right now before I turn off my computer. Okay. I'm just gonna stop the recording now. Thank you, John. Have a good night.
This transcript was generated by Deepgram from the meeting recording. Names, numbers, and other details may be inaccurate; the video is authoritative.