Planning Board approves 29-unit affordable housing project on Cedar Street

[4:21] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Welcome, everybody, to the remote and hybrid planning board meeting for July 14th, 2026. Before we begin, I'd like to address some housekeeping issues regarding public comment. Any written comments received prior to this meeting remain available to the board for review. In order to provide public comment during the meeting, it must be provided verbally. Members of the public attend the meeting remotely through phone or computer. Not have speaking privileges enabled when joining the meeting. In order to provide public comment, members of the public must indicate their interest in speaking at the appropriate time. If participating in a meeting with a computer, you'll use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest. This is toggled on and off with a hand icon located at the bottom of your screen. Please ensure you are logged into the meeting under your real name, not an alias or username, so that we can call on you properly. If you're listening to this meeting on a standard telephone or cell phone, you can indicate your interest in speaking at the appropriate time by pressing star nine. In either case, after you were called on, please wait. The moderator asks you to unmute yourself. Once I'm muted, please state your name and address. You will then have three minutes to provide your comment. At the end of the period, your microphone will be muted again. You experience any problems during the meeting, email planning. Portlandman.gov. Staff will try to monitor this email and respond as appropriate. That Andrew, can we have a role? Absolutely. Federally, you and me here. Austin Smith recused. David Smith, sorry, David Sultan recused as well. Nicholas Basina here. Eric Din here. Chelsea Robertson here. And Jose here. Thank you, Andrew. We have communication and reports of decisions at the meeting held on June 23rd, 2026. That was 1871 Forest Avenue, 0 Dalton Street and 16 Pierce Way. Anybody have concerns, thoughts, edits? Not hearing any, we can move to new business. And so tonight we have a major site plan, 15 and 19 Cedar Street. The Vesta Housing Corporation is the applicant. And Planning Board is holding a hybrid public hearing consider an application for the construction of a five-story 26,086 square foot multi-family residential building at 15 and 19 Cedar Street. The proposed development includes 30 dwelling units, of which 100 would be de-restricted affordable dwelling units, along with community space for residents. If project and plan summary are available for viewing on the city's CSS portal by referencing plan number PL003553-2026. And that, I'll pass it off to the city. Thank you. My name is Sean King. I'm the city's urban [7:11] Unidentified speaker (Project Architect/Presenter): designer and planner for this project. Thank you, members of the Planning Board. Tonight's review is for a major site plan application at 19 Cedar Street. So the applicant is A VESTA HOUSING CORPORATION REPRESENTED BY BH2M AND INDIVIDUAL ARCHITECTURE. THE ZONE IS RN4 AND IT'S TO CONSTRUCT A FIVE STORY MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD OF 29 FLOORING UNITS. THIS CHANGE CAME IN AFTER THE LEGAL AD AND I'LL BEGIN TO SPEAK about the changes to the floor plans in later slides review criteria with site plan standards as well as design review in RN4. There was a previous Planning Board workshop held on June 9th 2026 where the applicant introduced the project. Members of the board provided comments and requested clarification for the proposed ground floor program, landscape open space ratio, and the visibility of the rooftop occurrences. So I'll go into the resubmitted plans. The applicant has resubmitted plans to address these outstanding review comments to meet the city's technical manual standards, sub-plan standards, average grade calculation, and has provided additional documentation included in the Planning Board's packet. Some of these are indicated on the, on the site plan. Additionally, the applicant has adjusted the number of proposed residential units to 29, and has reconfigured the floor plans, to account for additional two-bedroom units. Some of the revisions shown here include expansion of the street pavement replacement on Cedar Street to account for the number of utility trenches proposed. Closed, replacement for brick as the internal walkway into the property site, and additional landscape screening in the adjacent side property transformer location and the stormwater focal point system. So moving on to the resubmitted architectural plans, these plans reflect the adjustment to the number of proposed bedroom units. The applicant was had indicated to staff that they wish to provide additional two bedroom units within the proposed building footprint. So that the floor plans indicate on the first floor a reduction of the originally proposed community room to include four studio apartment units on the ground level, and then a mix of one bedroom and two bedroom units on the upper floors. Second through fifth floors to account for the addition of two bedroom units. Also the roof plan is shown here that indicates the screening around the appurtenances that are located centrally within the roof plan. The applicant also resubmitted elevation plans to indicate the proposed facade materials that include brick and storefront windows facing Cedar Street. In addition, seven-inch reveal composite plank siding in a red tone throughout the upper floors, pronounced cornice, and integration of a four-foot height mechanical screen. The applicant has resubmitted plans to address the city's comments for life safety and fire access that would restrict on-street parking at the property frontage down to Oxford Street. The diagram on the left indicates approximately nine existing on-street parallel parking spots with one-way travel to the south side of Cedar Street. The diagram on the right indicates staff recommendations to reconfigure the on-street parking spot to the south side. A one-way travel would be on the north side of Cedar Street. This reconfiguration of on-street parking would maintain the current amount of parking spots. The applicant has provided a signage plan for parking and has indicated that this signage would be installed during construction. Staff recommends a condition of approval that the applicant purchase parking signs for public works and coordinate the installation to ensure all design and content standards are met. Neighborhood meeting was held on April 29th, 2026. Staff received three written public comments and a full documentation of public comments are included in the planning work packet. it. Staff recommended conditions of approval that includes prior to issuance of building permit that the applicant submit a final selection of the HVAC equipment that meets the city's noise standards through the satisfaction of the planning authority. Prior to issuance of certificate of occupancy, the applicant shall establish a public easement for the portion of the public sidewalk that encroaches within the property boundary. This easement shall be reviewed and accepted by the planning authority and corporation council and be reported in the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds. And the final, which was not included as part of the report but for the board's consideration, the applicant shall purchase the Cedar Street Orange Street parking signs. From the Department of Public Works sign shop, the applicant is responsible for installing the signs and must coordinate with the private and public works to ensure they meet all design and content standards. And with that, thank you for your time. [13:43] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it. [13:48] Unidentified speaker (Project Architect/Presenter): Looking for me. Sure. [13:52] Ryan Begto (Avesta Housing Development Team): I'm the planning board. My name is Ryan Begto. I work at Avesta Housing on the development team. You've already heard about this development once before. However, there have been some changes since the last time we were before you. I think a number of those changes, the biggest change, obviously, is the bedroom count in this proposed development, really driven by a couple of things, and we'll talk more about it if you all are curious and want to dive into that more. But I think first and foremost, as you probably know, Vesta has a number of developments that are happening at the same time or are in either the planning phase or actually being constructed right now in this neighborhood. Zeros and ones are predominant, the predominant unit configuration in those proposed developments. A, we thought the property management, their concerns about not having enough two bedroom units to be offered to prospective residents was a very clear communication to our team on. The development side, I also think that this is more in alignment with what we heard from the neighborhood. There's definitely an interest from neighbors and seeing more family geared housing in this in this neighborhood, places where families could live with children. We're also, as you know, working on this project in collaboration with Boys and Girls Club, and so having a building that would not have, that would be predominantly zeros and ones and not really geared towards children felt a little. Strange. And so by reconfiguring the programming, we get a better balance of unit composition over the development that we have proposed in Bayside. We also have a development that's more in alignment with the overall partnership we have with the Boys and Girls Club on this particular development. And we also would be responsive to Mayhazen's Q&P, which studies project peer support, and we had a real choice to make here, and the choice that felt best was making this a project that had more two-bedroom units rather than a project that only had zeros and ones, which was the choice we were faced with in terms of those stories. So that's the update on some of the changes that we made on what Chris and talked about how we reflected those changes. Some thoughts on this for you, thank you. [16:23] Chris Mcconnell (BSUM): again my name is chris mcconnell from bsum thank you all very much for the time this afternoon if we could go to the first slide please i'll just give a general walkover of where the projects located some of this will be repeats from the workshop meeting but i figured that would be helpful to hear the project is located again at 15 and 19 cedar street the video you see up there is an aerial photo that shows kind of some of the landmarks around there including portland high school avesta's headquarters and the project itself is right in the middle the figure shown in the yellow box. Currently the project site is a vacant lot. There were two buildings on those lots previously that had been raised by the Boys and Girls Club in anticipation of development of this project. [17:20] George Rowe (Public Commenter): BH2M's involvement on this project has been [17:22] Chris Mcconnell (BSUM): in for survey, civil engineering, and permitting. And the figure we have up here is the boundary plan for the project. So again, you can see the property located in the middle of this plan and 15 and 19 divided by kind of the gray line in between. The project area itself we have to the east of the project. There is a property that is a building that's located almost directly on the property line. I'm sorry, to the east of the project. To the west of the project, there's a driveway and then another building. To the north of the project, there's the back of the Boys and Girls Club and then a garden area. You can go to the next slide, please. Site plan showing up on the screen now is, again, what it shows here is the building proposed effectively moved to the western side of the property to try to get as much space as we can to that building to the east. We have a 10 foot wide driveway on the eastern side along with a five foot walkway that goes effectively the length of the building to the last door on the building. And this site this plan also shows some of the landscaping improvements that have been made as well as shows some of the surface issues of the stormwater treatment system. This project is proposing to use a focal point stormwater treatment system. It's a biofiltration system that has a high efficiency media and also has some plantings on the surface. Underground it features a i tank array. Our tanks are about a two foot to three foot tall plastic box h20 loading. And the so basically what happens is that storm water comes into a catch base and pulp point flows into the underground array and then is proposed to outlet to the combined sewer system on cedar street. That system has also been designed to accommodate the sewage flow from the building so that during rain events the capacity of the existing sewer system is maintained. Just as far as updates since the workshop, I'll let Ginny and her team explain some of the architectural changes in the unit. As far as civil changes goes, relatively minor details and comments. We had a few curb details that we had to update, providing an LID narrative. And then also are now proposing a full width pavement repair across Cedar Street, where before we were just showing repairs on the individual trenches. The line work for the trenches is still shown on there as there will be trench repair below pavement for each one of those. [20:20] Ryan Begto (Avesta Housing Development Team): Go to the next slide. [20:23] Chris Mcconnell (BSUM): And again, from the details I was sharing before about the stormwater system, You can see on the right side, upper side of the pavement area, you can see where the focal point system is, and then all those boxes and those eye tanks that we described. There's a catch basin that's kind of in the middle of that also helps collect and store runoff. And again, you can see some of the details of the pavement restoration. One thing, too, that this plan highlights kind of nice at this scale is that we're proposing a brick sidewalk along the building rather than the original paved sidewalk. And then also showing some repairs and upgrades to the sidewalk along Cedar Street, including two street trees and wells. Go to the next slide. And over to Jinny for potential details. [21:14] Unidentified speaker (Project Team/Architect): So like Brian said, it's mostly a unit town. We had one two-bed units first and for the exterior doors we tried to keep the doors in the same location so even a front door stayed the same location and the only problem we lost is an open kitchen which is sad to let it go and so yeah, elevator and stairs stay at the same location, and I completed the first floor as a typical floor first and try to make them all ADA units, so in every, like, if you go to the next floor, and any of the unit can be ADA and all meets the main housing requirement as well. I think that's pretty much all for the architectural side. The interior design has not changed. The [22:33] Ryan Begto (Avesta Housing Development Team): One thing I'll say is, as you may recall, before we had actually kind of like two community rooms because the zoning only allowed us to have a maximum of 30 units here. We had more space in this building than we know to do with, so what we did was we ended up having a sort of entry kitchen community room and then an additional community room in order to accommodate the two-bedroom count going from four, I believe, in the first iteration to 21 in this iteration. We obviously had to eliminate this secondary community room, you know, try to get to as many two bedrooms as we could, as well as making sure we didn't eliminate most of the units for, you know, didn't want to have, we wanted to stay close to 30 as possible, knowing that we wouldn't be able to, given the constraints of this building footprint. Footprint but so we ended up with a community room at the front of the building as we had before losing the one that was on the on the west side of the of the building one other addition I think is quite helpful with this redesign is the laundry room is now located across from that community room and you can see maybe you can't see but there's a there's like a seating area in the community room that I think will be a really nice space for people to do their laundry come across the way sit down And do whatever they're going to do, maybe read a book while they're waiting for their laundry to be done. So it kind of creates this nice symbiotic relationship between the community room and the laundry room. So those are the only additions that I have in there. [24:15] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Happy to answer any questions of what they have. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. So preliminary questions from board members, we do comment. Okay, let's move to public comment. So again, please keep your comments to three minutes. We'll start in the room. Is anybody in the room? And it looks like no, so we'll go online. [24:46] Unidentified speaker (Project Team/Architect): George, you should be all set. Time here. [24:53] George Rowe (Public Commenter): Yes, can you hear me? We can, George Rowe, Hanover over Street. So I had submitted a comment about the fact that Avesta has been open in some other public forums about a very large financial gap for this project. And whether they are explaining that gap and the consequences of it to the planning board and whatever we're being shown here, whether that's actually going to hold up or is this going to have to come back for a minor site plan review when they value engineer, you know, the exterior components or something else. I think that's really important for the public to understand what we're getting. Just wanted to congratulate Mr. Efecto. He's moving on from Avesta shortly, but the neighborhood is going to have to live with this building for a long period of time if it gets built. And we'd like to make sure it's successful. I have raised in the past issues about, you know, whether this, the trash, area, was basically in the one public outdoor space that this community is going to have to share and whether that's a good idea. And whether there should be some provision for some outdoor amenities in the back of the property, whether or not their grade changes, there should be some money in the budget because the grade change is not severe, at least not in my opinion. And there should be an opportunity for people to be able to spread out on the perimeter of this property a little bit without having to leave the property lines and, you know, enjoy, you know, when the days are nice and they want to have a little fresh air, they don't have to leave the property and go somewhere else. A lot of people are going to be living on this property, and there's hopes that there's going to be some family-oriented nature to it with kids, and kids like to roam, and kids need a confined space to be supervised if they're going to do that roaming safely. And this property doesn't have that. I also want to reiterate that this project has been allowed by the planning staff to be bifurcated from the Boys and Girls Club expansion. And that was a trick and a loophole that should not have been permitted by the planning board. You should have shut that down, and you should have insisted that both of these two projects have been reviewed together. That would have allowed it to be properly heard by all of you with Silk and Smith having recused from both of the reviews. And also the full housing displacement ordinance, housing replacement ordinance would have been fully vetted instead of this sort of silly outsourcing opportunity here that's been granted to the Boys and Girls Club. But again, the planning board has not really blessed in any meaningful way. You've looked away. You've ignored it. You've ignored the consequences of that. And unfortunately, that's probably going to have to end up in a courtroom to get settled because you guys refused to deal with it. Thank you. [27:53] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Thank you for your comment. Other comments online or in the room? Not seeing any. I will close the public portion. To the applicant, anything from the comments that you would like to respond to so we are the trash room is [28:12] Unidentified speaker (Project Team/Architect): located inside the building so it's not okay and then we do have a kind of a driveway that could be used at the end for seating for it 's not currently designated but I'm not sure make that into a kind of receiving area it just needs to be moved in the right to get to the [28:38] Chris Mcconnell (BSUM): transport little permit yeah exactly yeah and in that same area is also looked at as a small area for small storm snow storage so any better months those would have to be removed and as far as outdoor access goes you know we've addressed this at a couple different junctions in this application and really the only opportunity that exists is the back of the property in that 10-foot setback area it's not a very accommodating area given that it's at the back of all these houses and everything else And we've also received other the comments that having a area back there may actually be an attractive nuisance. And so there was other comments that were received from the public that actually requested that area be screened off passed off rather than. So again I think I think the project makes us good at usefulness probably this and so anything. [29:43] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): On the financial concerns shared by comment or. [29:48] Ryan Begto (Avesta Housing Development Team): I think I think George is referring to our tip application which is before the council. [29:55] Unidentified speaker (Project Team/Architect): Board member question. [30:02] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Of the city I did see that they the city had we put up the last slide that has the proposed language did you get it. I just wanted to check is that language agreeable. [30:15] Chris Mcconnell (BSUM): To you guys I'm sorry to discuss yeah the only part that was in addition I think Sean had spoke to was the coordination with DPW on the signage. If there's no issues. [30:29] Unidentified speaker (Project Team/Architect): Can I pick the color of the signs? No. [30:41] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Well, we did have a comprehensive meeting on this one before, so I'm not surprised. There isn't a lot of questions, but I'll open it up for questions one last time and then entertain motion. [30:57] Unidentified speaker (Board Member): I WILL MAKE A MOTION. SITE PLAN REVIEW BASED ON THE INFORMATION IN THE APPLICATION PLANS REPORTS THROUGH TESTIMONY AT THE PLANNING BOARD HEARING AND OTHER INFORMATION SUBMITTED BY THE APPLICANT AT THE PLANNING BOARD. ADOPTS THE FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS CONTAINED IN THE PLANNING BOARD REPORT TO THE PUBLIC HEARING ON JULY 14th, 2026 for application PL-003553-2026 for 19 Cedar Street relevant to the site plan regulations and finds that the plan is in conformance with the site plan standards of the land use code subject to the following conditions. Prior to issuance of a building permit, one as written. Prior to issuance of a certificate of occupancy, two as written, plus three the applicant shall purchase the Cedar Street on street parking signs from the Department of Public Works sign shop. The applicant is responsible for installing the signs and must coordinate with the Department of Public Works to ensure they meet all design and content standards. [32:01] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): We have a motion for a second thank you for the discussion not hearing any Andrew yes Beverly you and me yes Austin Smith recused David Silk recused Nick yes Chelsea Robertson yes and Josie and Bonnie yes that will entertain a decision on the motion. [32:27] Unidentified speaker (Board Member): On the planning board decision on the basis of the findings, conclusions, and recommendations contained in the planning board report for the public hearing on July 14th, 2026, related to application PL-003-553-2026 for 19 Cedar Street, which is attached to the draft approval letter and incorporated therein, the planning board adopts the findings and conclusions in the July 8, 2026 planning board report and the approval letter as drafted as the planning board's decision for application PL-003-553-2026. And authorizes the planning board chair to sign the approval. [33:02] Unidentified speaker (Chair/Presiding Officer): Letter is drafted. A second motion. A second. Any further discussion? Not seeing any, can we do a role federally unique? Yes. Austin Smith refused. David Silk recused. Nick, yes. Eric Ten, yes. Chelsea Robertson, yes. And Jose and Bunny, yes. That brings us to the end of our agenda. So do you have anything else? I just want to, on record, offer all our condolences to the community. [33:34] Chris Mcconnell (BSUM): I know we're all thinking about that.