Arlington Redevelopment Board - Dec 1st, 2025

Meeting held at 27 Maple St. Materials were available from https://arlington.novusagenda.com/agendapublic/MeetingView.aspx?MeetingID=2377&MinutesMeetingID=-1&doctype=Agenda.

Review Meeting Minutes

The board approved minutes from their November 10, 2025 meeting.

Docket 3869 - 9--11 Robbins Road

This is a site plan review hearing for four dwellings in the Neighborhood Multifamily district.

(Rachel Zsembery, ARB Chair) Ms. Zsembery outlines the hearing process. Staff will provide opening remarks, the applicants will give a presentation, and the board will ask questions to the applicants. Afterwards, the board will take comments from members of the public and resume discussions.

(Claire Ricker, Planning Director) Ms. Ricker says the applicant proposes to demolish a two-family home and a garage, and build two duplexes. They're proposing six parking spaces and four EV chargers.

(Mary Winstanley O'Connor, Attorney) Ms. Winstanley O'Connor tells the board that this is a 7800 square foot lot. They were originally planning to do a nine-unit project, but scaled it back to four units after discussions with the neighbors.

(Charles Cochran, Architect) Mr. Cochran says that each duplex will be 24' by 26' in area. They'll be three stories and wood framed, with Hardee plank siding and composite panels. The roof is designed to be solar-ready and there will be two EV chargers on each of the two driveways. There will be a 10' patio between the buildings. Trash storage and condensers will be between the buildings. They're also proposing a shed for six bicycles.

(Steve Revilak, ARB) Mr. Revilak asks if they're treating Robbins Road as the front yard, and the opposite side as the rear yard.

(Charles Cochran) Mr. Cochran answers in the affirmative.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak appreciates that the applicants have indicated the traffic visibility zone on their plot plans. Those requirements apply in the neighborhood multi-family district and Mr. Revilak says the applicants will need to do something about the corner of the building that protrudes into the zone.

The neighborhood multifamily district doesn't provide regulations for accessory structures. He thinks it would make sense to apply the accessory structure setbacks from the underlying R2 district. Mr. Revilak also says the applicants will need to provide a 2.5' vegetated buffer along each driveway.

(Eugene Benson, ARB) Mr. Benson doesn't think the applicants are required to provide bicycle parking. Bicycle parking requirements start with apartment buildings, but they're proposing a pair of duplexes. He thinks the shed likely violates the dimensional regulations for the multifamily district. Mr. Benson asks if there's a 15' setback in each of the front yards.

(Charles Cochran) Mr. Cochran answers in the affirmative.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson says that bylaw section 5.3.9 applies in the multifamily districts, so the board will need to see dimensions for each porch that projects into a required yard setback.

Mr. Benson thinks the applicants do need to provide a vegetated buffer, though the bylaw is vague on that point. He says the rule is one driveway, but two can be allowed based on criteria.

Mr. Benson says the bylaw requires the tree warden to approve each type of street tree.

(Shaina Korman-Houston, ARB) Ms. Korman-Houston questions whether the applicants need front yard setbacks on two sides.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson believes they do, based on the definitions for lot lines.

(Shaina Korman-Houston) Ms. Korman-Houston asks the applicants to explain why two driveways are required.

(Mary Winstanley O'Connor) Ms. Winstanley O'Connor offers to provide an explanation via a memo to the board.

(Shaina Korman-Houston) Ms. Korman-Houston says that her colleagues already flagged the need for a landscaped buffer. She says there are functionally two front yards, but the aesthetics of building A don't reflect that on Higgins St. She's interested in ways to enhance how the property will look from Higgins St. She suggests widening the kitchen, and checking the locations of the washer and dryers.

(Kin Lau, ARB) Mr. Lau thinks the massing and architecture is a nice fit. He asks the applicants to coordinate their civil plans with the architectural drawings, because there are some differences between the two. He agrees that the applicants don't need to provide bike parking for duplexes, but he doesn't want to discourage them front doing so. He asks if they're planning to save the existing garage.

(Charles Cochran) Mr. Cochran answers in the negative. He says they were planning to demolish the garage and build a new bike shed. He thinks they can provide a 6' setback on the side, but not in the rear.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau asks if it's possible to push the building up slightly to create the vegetated buffer.

(Charles Cochran) Mr. Cochran says he'll have to tighten things up. There is a buffer now, but it's only a foot wide.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau says there isn't any fencing shown on the plans. He asks if they're planning to install any.

(Mary Winstanley O'Connor) Ms. Winstanley O'Connor says they're planning to have vegetation around the edge of the property.

(Applicant) One of the applicants says they're going to put hedges in.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau suggests evergreens, to keep headlights from shining on adjacent properties. He asks if all of the parking spaces are full-sized.

(Charles Cochran) Mr. Cochran says they are.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau suggests making two of the parking spaces compact, which will save a little space.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery asks if the porches extend into the setbacks.

(Charles Cochran) Ms. Cochran says the front porch on the Robbins Road side does not, but the rear porch on the opposite side does.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery thinks the porches are undersized for the buildings. She says the design has strong bones and relates to other buildings on the street. The buildings feel a bit flat and tall, and the overhang at the roof line is a bit odd. She asks if there's a way to pull the top story in, and rectify the roof line with a less steep pitch. She suggests some kind of belly band between the first and second, or second and third stories. Maybe consider widening the cornerboards. She'd like to see a rendering from the Higgins St. side of the property.

Ms. Zsembery suggests adding newel posts at the corners of the balconies -- something with more mass -- along with using metal or composite railings.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson says it wasn't clear from the plans whether the porches extended into the setback.

The chair opens to hearing to public comment.

(Larry Werner, 16 Higgins St) Mr. Werner thanks the petitioners for scaling back from nine units to four. He appreciates the comment about the building not being so tall. There are six parking spaces for four units, but other homes on the street have two parking spaces each. He says there are issues with parking on the street. He asks how parking spaces will be worked out. Mr. Werner thinks people will have more than one car.

(Palat Casey?) Mr. Casey says his sister lives at 9 Higgins St. There was a renovation at 6 Higgins, and they put in a two-car driveway next to her house. He says this will take away sidewalk parking. He's also concerned about the fence, and there will need to be a place to shovel snow. Mr. Casey says it's a beautiful design and he appreciates that. He asks if there will be two different addresses. His concerns are really about parking.

(Susan Stamps, Grafton St) Ms. Stamps says this looks like a great project. She has comments about the landscaping. Grass won't be very cool during the summer and more greenery would be nice. She suggests planting some small fruit trees on the Robbins Road size, and moving the shrubs further away from the building.

There are no more comments from the public.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery asks if there's a strategy for assigning parking spaces.

(Applicant) One of the applicants says that units one and two will have one space each; the others will have two spaces each.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery asks about snow removal.

(Applicant) The applicants say they can designate space for that. There's also no issue with putting a fence in the rear yard.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery says the board agrees that bike parking would be nice to have, but it's not a requirement. She asks about the second driveway.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson notes that Ms. Winstanley O'Connor offered to provide a memo to the board,

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery says the applicants will also need to address buffer requirements and corner visibility.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson says the zoning bylaw requires one parking space per dwelling, and the board can't require an applicant to provide more than that.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau thinks that a larger porch would be nice. He suggests looking at the setbacks of other houses on the street, to see if taking the average would be beneficial.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery would like to review a list of things for the applicant to address at their next hearing. These include:

• Looking at bicycle parking, the size of the accessory structure, and the setbacks.
• Corner visibility
• The size and scale of the porches
• Vegetated buffer requirements for the driveways
• Providing a memo explaining how the requirements for a second driveway are met.
• Coordinating the civil, architectural, and landscape plans.
• Addressing the issue with the roof overhang
• Changes to the materials and articulation of the railings for the third floor balconies
• Providing a rendering of the Higgins St. side of the property
• Adding a belly band or window header to address scale
• Providing an explanation of how snow removal will be handled.
• Taking measures to improve the facades facing Higgins St.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau suggests that the applicants check with the building inspectors, to verify that they'll have adequate fire separation between the duplexes.

The board votes to continue the hearing to January 12, 2026.

2026 Warrant Articles

The board has scheduled this agenda item for members of the public who wish to discuss potential warrant articles. Ms. Ricker says she's heard from three article proponents.

Home Occupation

(James Fleming) Mr. Fleming says the he and Andy Greenspon are working on a follow-up to last year's home occupation article. They want the article to have some degree of substantiveness, but the question is what that should be. They'd like to allow more things in some areas (such as allowing more than one employee for a home occupation), and address some factors the bylaw current does not. For example, consider the differences between wood carving, making unfinished furniture, and furniture finishing. Making unfinished furniture might entail more noise than wood carving, but it wouldn't involve the paints or solvents used in furniture finishing. Mr. Fleming says they wanted standards that address things like that.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak thinks it's worth revising by bylaw. While working on the comprehensive plan update, we've learned that a lot of people in Arlington run businesses out of their homes. They can't find suitable spaces in town, so they work out of their houses.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson agrees. A lot of people do remote work and the bylaw is silent on that. Mr. Benson has a friend that runs a business out of their home and stores clothes in their garage. That kind of things seems acceptable.

(Shaina Korman-Houston) Ms. Korman-Houston also thinks this is worth looking at. She encourages Mr. Fleming and Mr. Greenspon to be judicious and not to over-regulate. She notes there's a risk of accidentally limiting what people can do. She'd prefer to regulate by clarifying, rather than by ruling things out.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery agrees with Ms. Korman-Houston. If other towns have thoughtfully looked at this, there's no need to re-invent the wheel. She suggests checking in with the building inspector.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau concurs, and agrees that we are over-regulated. He supports clarifying and simplifying. He asks for the main reason for bringing this proposal forward. He wants to understand the purpose.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery says she'd like to stay within the bounds of home occupation, rather than allowing commercial uses in residential districts.

(James Fleming) Mr. Fleming says that one question is what's the distinction between a home occupation and having a commercial use in one's home.

(Andy Greenspon) Mr. Greenspon says he's talked with (Building Inspector) Michael Ciampa a lot. He's also heard from people who are living in gray areas. The current practice is "if no one complains, then it's okay", which isn't particularly fair. He thinks the rules should be clear to people.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau encourages Mr. Fleming and Mr. Greenspon to reach out to individual board members for feedback.

Notification Requirements

(Barry Jaspan) Mr. Jaspan says that one of last year's warrant articles was about allowing two-family homes in what are currently single-family districts. Mr. Jaspan is a town meeting member. He spoke to a number of constituents who all said they were unaware of the article and felt it was a really big change. The bylaw doesn't have notice requirements when one isn't changing district boundaries, and Mr. Jaspan thinks that's a loophole. He'd like to close that loophole in some way. He thinks there should be a notice requirement for anything that changes the nature of the district. He has some ideas about how to do this, and would like to have a notice requirement for changes to the use table.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson says he has concerns over how much this would cost, and who would give the notice. Maybe the town could just send out announcements. He notes that the home occupation proposal the board just discussed could involve changes to use tables. Mr. Benson says the idea is that town meeting members are suppose to know about these things. He thinks the notice needs to have a minimal cost associated with it.

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker doesn't think we should make it harder for citizen articles to proceed. She's curious about digital supplemental notifications. She's also concerned about the staff time needed to do mass mailings. We did a mass postcard mailing about the MBTA Communities zoning, and that cost over $10,000.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak says that, in some parts of the country, state legislators have been concerned about citizens proposing ballot petitions that they did not approve of, and they tried to respond by making it harder to get questions on the state ballot. Mr. Revilak thinks we're talking about the same thing here. Mr. Revilak recently had to send a certified letter, and it cost just over $10. A certified mail requirement for use table changes would be a huge financial burden. He doesn't agree with creating barriers to discourage bylaw changes.

(Shaina Korman-Houston) Ms. Korman-Houston agrees that barriers are problematic. She wonders if we could change the notification requirements.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery says the map change notification requirement is on the board's radar. She thinks part of the board's job is to prevent citizen petitions from going forward if there hasn't been enough outreach.

(Kin Lau) Mr. Lau says there are always people who say "I didn't hear about this", no matter how much outreach was done. He's not sure how much we can spoon feed information to people. We did a lot of outreach for the MBTA Communities zoning and there were people who claimed they never heard of it.

(Barry Jaspan) Mr. Jaspan says that's a fair point. Every article affects some people's lives in some way. He says the warrant is hard to read and feels uninformative. It's hard to get a sense of what the articles actually do.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak says the certified mail requirements for map changes are part of Arlington's bylaw, but they are not a state requirement. He believes that provision was added as an amendment when the bylaw was rewritten in 1975. As originally written, the notice requirement didn't apply to the parcel being rezoned -- only the abutting ones. That suggests the original intent may have been to notify immediate abutters when someone wanted to have their own property rezoned. He doesn't think it contemplates the idea of residents wanting to propose changes to district boundaries.

Mr. Revilak says there have been articles which involved use table changes that were very well-received by town meeting. For example, the article that allowed accessory dwelling units changed the use table in most districts. The allowance for doggy daycare was another use table change.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery says the consent agenda is one way to distinguish trivial articles from ones that are more consequential.

Rezoning Around Norcross St

This citizen proposal would rezone several parcels around Norcross St. from R1 to R2.

(Steve McKenna) Mr. McKenna says he was asked to do an analysis for a client on Norcross St. Norcross has a mix of R1 and R2 zoning with a number of non-conforming parcels on deep lots. He'd like to propose changing Norcross to R2, along with a few related parcels nearby.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak says Norcross is an interesting street with a lot going on. He's not opposed to Mr. McKenna's proposal. Mr. Revilak believes the entire area may have been zoned R2 prior to the mid-1970s, when it was rezoned based on what happened to be there at the time.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson isn't sure how he feels. He'd be influenced if the owners of those properties were supportive.

(Steve McKenna) Mr. McKenna says he recently sent letters to those owners and is trying to organize a meeting.

(Shaina Korman-Houston) Ms. Korman-Houston agrees with Mr. Benson. She's not opposed to the concept.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery appreciates this, as our zoning map is Swiss cheese in a lot of places. She says there's a bigger discussion here.

(Steve McKenna) Mr. McKenna understands that has been a long-term project.

(Eugene Benson) Mr. Benson asks how many of these properties have 50' of frontage.

(Steve McKenna) Mr. McKenna says that many don't.

2026 Proposed Warrant Article Hearing Schedule

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says that staff prepared a breakdown of steps that need to happen for preparing the warrant, along with a timeline. The board will need to decide on a list of articles to submit. She suggests doing this on Jan 12th, because the agenda for Dec 15th is packed. Ms. Ricker encourages members of the public to come forward with articles, but there are statutory timelines that need to be met. She'd like to have the board's report to town meeting prepared by April 6. We may do public info sessions between April 6th and when town meeting starts on April 27th. Mr. Ricker thought that email notices were an interesting idea.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery would like to invite ZBA Chair Christian Klein to one of the board's January meetings, as they'd like to propose several zoning amendments.

(Shaina Korman-Houston) Ms. Korman-Houston asks how staff feels about having a one-week turnaround to draft the report.

(Rachel Zsembery) Ms. Zsembery says that staff generally tries to write the report as hearings progress.

Open Forum

There are no speakers for tonight's open forum.

New Business

(Claire Ricker) Ms. Ricker says the town received a $94,000 MassTrails grant to work on improvements to the Minuteman Bikeway at the Ed Burns Arena.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak would like to talk about 1080 Mass Ave. It's a 15 unit apartment building that was built in 1960. The building was purchased in October for $3.5M and the new owners have been giving it a facelift. They've improved the exterior of the building and appear to be doing interior renovations. Mr. Revilak notes that the property is in the Mass Ave/Broadway multifamily district, and he asks staff if they were approached by the new owners.

(Sarah Suarez, Assistant Planning Director) Ms. Suarez answers in the negative.

(Steve Revilak) Mr. Revilak says the new owners are advertising the apartments at $1750--1950/month, which is less than HUD's fair market rent for a studio apartment.

Meeting adjourned.