Planning Board reviews 30-unit affordable housing plan at 15-19 Cedar Street

[4:25] Ryan Petto: Yeah, it was a filthy line, first of all. There was three other people voting when I was there in Gorham, so it wasn't that bad. [4:39] Chris McDonald: I think it was about 17th, or 18th. [4:43] Ryan Petto: Yeah. I mean, they said we have a competitive Senate primary there. Yeah, for sure. It's a big Senate primary. Yeah, they are. [5:24] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): Okay, to get started, welcome everybody to the remote planning board meeting for June 9th. It's going to be held in a hybrid fashion, both publicly and in person. Before we begin, I'm going to give some housekeeping business regarding public comment. Any written comments received prior to the meeting were made available to the board for their review. In order to provide public comment during the meeting, it must be provided verbally. Members of the public attending the meeting remotely via phone or computer do not have speaking privileges enabled when joining the meeting. 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Staff will try to monitor this email and respond if appropriate. [6:46] Speaker D (unidentified): It Andrew, you'll be having a role. Absolutely, Beverly dealing here, Austin Smith recused, David Silk for accused, and the most missing absent, Eric Din here, Chelsea Robertson here, and Joseph Zamboni here. Thank you. Just noting that we've got a quorum even though there's only [7:05] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): A few of us here just real quickly communication and reports. We did major site plan of 16 periods in way major site plan zero Dalton Street map amendment for 12 20 Bright Avenue. Any objections, questions, additions? Not hearing any, okay, so we will go to new business. And today we just have 15 and 19 Cedar Street. The best Housing Corporation is the applicant. The Planning Board is holding up hybrid public workshop today to consider application for the construction of a five-story 26,086 square but multi-family residential building at 15 and 9 Cedar Street. Post development includes 30 dwelling units of which 100 will be deed restricted affordable dwelling units along with community space for residents. A project and plan summary are available for viewing on the city's CSS portal by referencing plan number PL zero three 3553-2026. And with that I'll pass it off to Citi first. [8:16] Sean King: Hi, I'm Sean King. I'm the planner for this application. I have a brief presentation that I'll show. Welcome members of the Planning Board. This is the ninth workshop for a major site plan application. The applicant, Avesta Housing Corporation and in Vivid Architecture. The address is 1519 Cedar Street within the zone of RN4. For the construction of a five-story multi-family residential building with 30 dwelling units as 100% de-restricted affordable housing. Review criteria was for site plan standards section 13 as well as design review for the RN4 appendix 7 in the city's design menu. This is the neighborhood context and increasing conditions. The site is currently vacant located in the Bayside neighborhood with a mix of building types that range from single-family, multi-family, office, and place of assembly. Shown here are the adjacent approved major site plan applications by the Planning Board within a two-block radius of the site. This includes 89 Elm, which is currently under construction for 201 residential units. Next, the zoning context. The site is located within the RN4 zone. It's within close proximity to the B3 downtown zone. The city's height map allows for maximum structure height of 55 feet. Shown here is the site outlining red. This is the proposed development. It would be to construct a new multi-family residential building totaling approximately 26,000 square feet over five levels with 30 units designated as affordable for rent to households earning 80% or less of the area of median income. This is for the purpose of providing housing replacement associated with the Boys and Girls Club, Southern Maine, and their expansion project at 19 Cedar. The proposed building would be approximately 55 feet in height, include community space for residents and office dedicated rooms for trash and light storage at the ground floor. And there's a proposed service driveway way that would be accessed via curb cut on Cedar Street. I would note that the African has provided revised plans which were provided as part of the planning board packet in advance of this meeting that begin to address some of staff's comments related to site landscaping and buffering details within the public right-of-way, stormwater treatment, and architectural and site materials, and a photometric lighting. This slide indicates the proposed building and its side elevation. It includes a brick ground floor facade. It transitions to a composite material both in the rear as well as the upper floors, which I see there's some samples that the architect team might want to describe to the planning board. It also includes along the east elevation, entrance points for the residents, as well as doorways for the trash and bike storage. This slide indicates ongoing staff discussions. Staff continues to discuss the organization of on-street parking along Cedar Street between Cumberland and Oxford. The diagram on the left indicates approximately nine existing on street parallel parking spots with one-way traffic, one-way travel on the south side of Cedar Street shown with the arrow. The diagram on the right indicates potential reconfiguration based upon comments shared by the City's Fire Marshal for public safety and fire prevention to remove on street parking along the property frontage shown here with the crosshatch in red down to Oxford Street. Staff from public works suggests that on street parking spots relocate to the south side with one-way travel to the north side of Cedar Street to maintain the current amount of parking spots. This is shown in color. Public comments The applicant held a neighborhood meeting on April 29 9th, 2026. Two written comments were received in advance of tonight's meeting, and full documentation of public comments are included in the planning board's packet of attachments. With that, I'll [14:08] Speaker D (unidentified): conclude my presentation. Thank you. I appreciate your work on that. The applicant. Yeah, good [14:16] Ryan Petto: evening members of the planning board. My name is Ryan Petto. I represent Vesta Housing. Good for you once again. We're excited, and I'll hand this off to the experts on our team here at Tech, our official team, and the civil engineer, but I just want to briefly just comment how excited we are to be working on this development. As you know, having already dealt with the extension of the Boys and Girls Club on Cumberland Avenue, this project is intimately tied to that development, as we are providing the replacement housing for the units that are being demolished off along Cumberland and Cedar Street. We are providing, as proposed in the site plan, more housing than is required to be replaced, and so the net gain for the city in terms of housing stuff here and just I think a really good opportunity to fill in a site that you all know is vacant and has been left vacant for quite a while now in a relatively dense part of the city. [15:22] Chris McDonald: I'll leave it there and turn it over to Chris. Thank you. My name is Chris McDonald. I'm a civil engineer with BH2M. BH2M has been tasked in this project with survey services, civil engineering design services and furniture. And maybe if we could go to the first slide for the existing conditions. That's it right there. And Sean, thank you very much for the detailed introduction to this as well. As Sean had described, the existing site is two properties, both of which had the single-family homes raised on them prior to our involvement in this. We went through and we provided a boundary survey of the property to get a better idea on exactly how much property there is there. As far as proposed conditions go, again the project primarily proposes the five-story building. We've positioned that building so that it is, as we look at the plan here, to the left or to the west of the lot as much as we could up against the building envelope of to try to make keep as much room between the existing property that's on the east side in general with the project position to the west. The east is really the only place to have a driveway, and so you'll see on this that the driveway is a relatively narrow driveway at 10 feet it's proposed, and part of that is just given the size of the building compared to the size of the lot with it's and not very much use for or need for parking on sync, so the driveway is really there to serve more as a service vehicle entryway, and you know it's con it's conceived right now that the service vehicles will really just be pickup trucks or small vans, something like that, something just to either service the building, do trash removal, that sort of thing. If you go to the next slide please leave us a utility plan. What's that? Yeah, thank you. very much. So again this view takes in and rotates the bill the view 90 degrees, so Cedar Street's actually on the left side of the plan now. What this plan illustrates is that as part of the project of course we need to meet stormwater regulation, and as part of that stormwater what we've proposed is that there's an underground storage vault where it's really a storage gallery of Ferguson biotanks, which are basically these two foot tall or multiple tall reinforced plastic structures that are highway loaded and all that sort of stuff. And so basically the water from the roof and some of the water from around the driveway area flows into that storage area. It allows it to build up and then slowly be released into the city's combined sewer system on Cedar Street. We've been working with the DPW and engineering on the storm water and sewer connections for this, and one thing to note is that we recently got a approved storm water capacity authorization from DPW. The next slide, I believe, gets into architecture. Oh, thank you. You have the full plan set, I see. And now I'll hand it to Ginny to explain building architecture. [19:03] Ginny Stanley: Hi, I'm Ginny Stanley. So we were allowed to do a maximum of a dozen units on the site, which is resounding. So we decided to go with a five-story building to kind of get units in there. We have one bedroom units and two bedroom units currently. On the first floor we put the public spaces towards the front so we have a community room right on the left. The entrance we have two entrances into the building, so one is off right off the street, you have three steps to go up into this entrance, and then we have the accessible entrance of the driveway. We have just central corridor with units on either side floor plan, so office on the right bottom right corner, community room open kitchen on the left, another community space out there. There are two egress stairs, an elevator, a trash room, utility room, bike rooms, shared laundry, and then two units in the back. The upper floor. The floor plan is kind of the same on all floors, so on the roof we are working, most likely we need to put the generator on the roof, mechanical equipment just to do the siphon screens. We have, I'm not sure if it's going to be part of the project for sure, but we show the solar panels. After a bit comes up, a little bit to kind of type some of the solar panels and bits like that. And then we have a screened area for mechanical tools. And if we want to go back to the sand range, do you want to talk a little bit about that? [21:59] Speaker G (unidentified): So we want to add some durable material in the base. We stick a very darker color and a very brief in the bottom. And between the upper floor and the brush floor, we have a big band with brick cast. We haven't brought the material sample, but then upper floor, we kind of wanted to pick something similar to red brick, so we picked this red color with siding and combusted insulation inside. Side and public corners we are envisioning some black cornice design for the top. [22:59] Ginny Stanley: It will just be what our brands are going to be synthetic. [23:27] Ryan Petto: I mean, the other thing I'll add is we, I think, as part of our submission, we did name this development. You may be wondering, Dash Away, why that name? It's actually a reference to the original naming of the Boys and Girls Club, so it's kind of a nod to the partnership between Boys and Girls Club. [23:50] Speaker D (unidentified): And this site development. [23:51] Ryan Petto: So kind of a nice way of tying all together, if you need me. Any questions on the board? [24:05] Speaker D (unidentified): A lot of comments. [24:12] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): I don't think we have a lot of folks here. We'll do in the room and then online. So if folks want to comment. [24:23] Ryan Petto: Yes. Can I sit here or should I? Sure. [24:27] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): Whatever is most helpful. Okay. [24:28] Ryan Petto: That's fine here. I'm John Egan. I'm the director of real estate development at Avesta. Worked with this great team here, put this project together. We're just going to make two small comments to add to the presentation. Thank you very much for the teeing it up, Sean. We plan to actually maximize the number of accessible units in the property to the space that we have available to us within the footprint of the property and the floor levels. And that helps enhance the opportunity for us to serve the broader population in the downtown area. There are very few apartment buildings being built with an excess of the minimum of accessible units, and so we're trying to really push that forward. It's an opportunity for us to reflect what Main Housing is also looking for. That would be our primary source of financing later this year, and then the other thing is that Sean mentioned that the target of 100% of these units is for affordable housing below 80%. That's a true statement, except that we're actually going to be, all of the units will be affordable at rents that are affordable to 60 and 50% of the median. So we're going to be reaching down a little bit lower with lower rents as a result of the financing requirements and the [25:47] Ginny Stanley: the investigation. I [25:50] Speaker D (unidentified): want to get those two points. I appreciate it. Appreciate you being here. Other folks? [25:56] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): Just note the record, we only have three people in the room. We'll go online and I say hand up. [26:04] Ryan Petto: George, you should be all set. Great. [26:09] Speaker H (unidentified): Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So the reason behind the Dashaway name didn't quite come through on the audio very well. Seemed to be some kind of historical reference to the Boys and Girls Club of the past, but that didn't quite come through exactly what that meant. But I appreciated understanding where that came from. So I do appreciate also the fact that Avesta is being quite clear that this is intimately connected. And we at least finally, unlike the Boys and Girls Club application, which the city hid the joint development agreement from the public, here we actually get to see it. And one thing that's still unclear to me is there were, I think, at least four units of housing that because both of those two single family houses, I believe, had two units each. But that's not clear because they're gone. But basically, this is happening within the five-year period of the contemplated demolition of the other units, and so it should be considered all one thing. So it's not clear how those demolished units that happened in, I think, June of 2021, which were almost at the five-year mark, but not quite, how those were counted in the housing replacement assessment, which, again, is still really not available to the public to fully understand the details of that, including the characteristics of the units. For this particular building, I am concerned because there was talk about Avesta prioritizing this in their main housing application, for, you know, the tax credits for the fall, but they're also supposedly trying to get tax credits for the Oxford Street shelter building, which was slated to be demolished, but is now going to be a full LIHTC project through Avesta. So we basically have literally two big projects virtually on the same block that are competing with each other for tax credits in the next cycle. So that should be understood exactly what the implications of that are. But if one wins and the other doesn't, how much longer we're going to have holes in our fabric of this neighborhood, which is already basically a pretty sketchy place to live because it's mostly empty. But I'll provide some more comments after the workshop. It doesn't seem like this is getting a very deep review because all the things have already been, T's have been crossed and I's have been dotted a long time ago behind the public and, you know, view. Thank you. [29:05] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): Thank you George, appreciate your comment. Anybody else online or in the room? Not seeing any, so I'll close the public portion. Board members, feel free to ask questions, but I'll just open it up to African if there was any part of that you feel like you want to respond to. [Speaker D (unidentified): City.] For the public hearing, their way to find out how many units were there in two houses. [29:36] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah, so the lots that are in reference were two families on two individual lots. At that time, those demolishers, they weren't part of any sort of future project, and because they were under the threshold of three units, they were not, they were deemed from the housing perspective. It's looking at a lot of respect, so it wasn't part of, it wouldn't be including what the Boys and Girls expansion did in terms of there was a letter that was provided at that time to the Boys and Girls Club from the previous planning director, Christine Romano. I believe it was shared, actually, at the last meeting, but we can provide that documentation that's requested at the next meeting. [30:26] Ryan Petto: And I'll just reiterate again that we're built for more than what was required by the demolition of the existing building. Then so even if you included those two units that were demolished in 2020, well we're still exceeding. [30:41] Speaker D (unidentified): The plan, the landscape open space is just like that strip around, is that 's about 20 or 24? Yes. Okay, you. [31:05] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): Know the only thing that I think could be more robust in the hearing would just be it sounds like you're doing a lot on the first floor for residents. I think you know you want to expand on that, and there's more of an audience here that would be helpful. Needs to be positive and [31:27] Ryan Petto: then if you do narrow in more on what the rooftop facilities are going to do on solar [31:34] Speaker D (unidentified): that would be helpful to know, and maybe some rendering showing the street view but the roof I [31:47] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): think the ready for hearing soon. Yes, we don't need to take a vote or anything, just want to make sure that everybody has what they want for information. Yeah, I think the staff questions if [32:01] Speaker D (unidentified): you're falling involved at like the turning templates or yeah [32:07] Chris McDonald: and just to clarify we have with the response that we had on the 28th we did provide additional figures for kind of the details of the reconfigured parking as well as that turning template. Okay, so the [Ryan Petto: review is working] yes yeah there was no on street on site for a [32:35] Ginny Stanley: public hearing. Do we need to submit a new package or could we go with this package and then bring the renderings showing the rooftop screen to the next one? [32:46] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): Well, is that fine, Andrew? Yeah,. [32:52] Ginny Stanley: Now that could be. The meeting? Yeah. [32:56] Speaker D (unidentified): So the next meeting would be – well, the next one we can advertise you for would be, I believe, July 14th. There's a meeting on the 23rd. today on those things yes July 14th so typically we you know would like to have like at least a two-week prior period to put together at least for review and then put together a report so Sean will work with you on the deadline for that fall this evening yeah and [33:41] Chris McDonald: if I may I know there's kind of smaller detail but as far as the public sign for that is there an additional sign it's put out for the final weather is it all in the sun yeah it should it should notice [33:52] Speaker D (unidentified): that it's for a quick hearing okay and then include the date yeah creating the date yeah I [34:01] Unidentified speaker (Board Chair): think everybody's got what they want anymore really needed beautiful day thanks for everybody really appreciate it thank you everybody