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Minutes Thursday, March 29, 2007
Regular Meeting
Planning Board Agenda for Thursday, March 29, 2007

Scheduled: 
8:00 PM  Board of Appeals and Planning Board

Continuation of Hearings
Samuels & Associates, 349 Lincoln Street
Major Amendment to the existing Mixed-Use Special Permit and    Site Plan Review at the Hingham Shipyard

Central Meeting Room North and South         __
Present: Planning Board Members, Susan Murphy, Chair, Paul Healey, Clerk, Sarah Corey, and
Judy Sneath.  Also present was Planner Katharine Lacy.

This was a continuation of the joint Planning Board/ZBA hearings on the proposed modifications to the Hingham Shipyard proposed by Samuels and Associates for the western portion of the Hingham Shipyard. ZBA members Tod McGrath, Steve McLaughlin, and Victor Popp were also in attendance.

Present for the applicant: Leslie Cohen and Joel Sklar, Samuels Associates; Dick Cook, BSC Engineering; Jeff Tocchio and Kelly, McCarthy, Drohan, Hughes, Tocchio and Morgan.

Present for the Town: John Chessia, Chessia Consulting Services; Jeffery Dirk, VAI Inc.

Ms. Murphy and Mr. McLaughlin opened the public meeting at 9:15  P.M. at the Hingham Town Hall.

Leslie Cohen reported that Samuels had met with the MBTA with Katy Lacy and Betty Foley from the Town, to discuss the proposal to change the intersection of Shipyard and Essington Drive from a four-way stop condition to an urban roundabout. Marc Boyle of the MBTA gave verbal approval of the plan at the meeting, and it is anticipated that formal approval of this modification will be forthcoming. Ms. Cohen noted that discussions with the other development partners at the Shipyard are still ongoing.

Town consultant John Chessia provided an overview of his review of the civil engineering at the Shipyard. Mr. Chessia had reviewed the plans and summarized his comments in a memo to the Board dated December 11, 2006. Mr. Chessia's peer review focused on compliance with the Zoning By-Laws under dimensional and use requirements, consistency with the prior decision as applicable, and conformity to general engineering standards. In particular, Mr. Chessia's review the proposed site grading, drainage, and the placement of buildings and utilities. Mr. Chessia noted that he did not identify any major red flags in his review, though he had made several recommendations requesting additional information, and had identified a few minor errors and discrepancies on the plans. In particular, he noted that there were discrepancies between the inverts listed in the drainage calculations and those indicated on the plans.

Board members asked if the location of any of the utilities had changed with the proposed redesign of the site. Mr. Chessia responded that, within Shipyard Drive, the utilities were in the same location as they had been on the 2003 plans.

Ms. Murphy asked where the applicant was in terms of completing a water balance plan from the Aquarion Water Company. Cohen responded that they had an approved water balance plan. Ms. Murphy asked the applicant to provide their most recent letter from Aquarion indicating satisfaction with the water balance plan and committing to provide water for the development. In terms of sewer, Ms. Cohen noted that final approval from the Hingham Sewer Commission was still outstanding.

Mr. Chessia stated that he had met with the applicant to go over his comments, and had received a response letter from the applicant's engineer, BSC, two days before on Tuesday March 27. This letter was submitted to the Planning Board and is in the project file.   Mr. Chessia noted that, based on a cursory review of the response letter, it appears that the applicant had addressed the majority of his concerns, and provided whatever outstanding information he had requested. As of the date of the hearing, however, he had not had time to go over the response in detail, and still needed time to check all of the drainage calculations.

Ms. Corey expressed her displeasure that the applicant's response letter arrived so late that Mr. Chessia had not had time to review it before the hearing. Ms. Cohen responded that the delay, in part, was due to the fact that the final site layout had not been resolved until quite recently.

Ms. Murphy asked that Mr. Chessia, when he had completed his review of the applicant's response, prepare a report for the Board identifying any outstanding issues and, if there were any issues, whether they required full board review. She also asked him to identify any situations that would require ongoing monitoring so that they could be noted as a condition of the permit.

There was a brief discussion about the requirement for a 3-dimensional model. The applicant responded, once again, that the utility of such a model was dubious in that the scale would be so small for a site of this size that it would be difficult to interpret.  Tod McGrath noted that he had asked the applicants to provide at least a large size elevation of the entire street, using foam core pasted over with images of the individual buildings.

Ms. Murphy asked the applicant to provide a plan showing all of the various easements on the property (subsurface and surface) that could be included in the final approved plan set.

Dick Cook gave a presentation on the parking plan for the Samuels portion of the Shipyard. The applicant used a "shared parking" analysis to determine the appropriate number of parking spaces for the project. The Zoning By-Law allows for a shared parking reduction of more than 15% with a Special Permit A3 from the Planning Board. This approach allows for an overall reduction in the number of spaces required by identifying uses that experience peak activity at different times of day (a cinema vs. an office building), as well as uses that might share customers (a restaurant and cinema, for example), and factoring this information into the overall determination of how many spaces are required. In an effort to be as conservative as possible, all restricted parking is taken out of the shared parking formula, including parking reserved for residential and office use. BSC also did not include parking in remote locations (Lot 9 where the day care will be located); parking reserved for the marina, and on-street parking on Shipyard Drive. With these spaces taken out of the mix, there will be 1,039 shared parking spaces available during the summer months, and 1,018 shared parking spaces available during the winter months.

Tod McGrath asked why only a small number of the parking spaces for professional offices were restricted. Dick Cook responded that these were generally reserved for a CEO or delivery vehicle, but that the bulk of employees could be reasonably expected to use the shared parking area.

The proponent has calculated that, if normal parking requirements were applied, the Samuels project would need 1505 spaces for the whole development.  Based on this, a shared parking reduction of 466 spaces or 31% is required for the project. This reflects a parking ratio of 4.4 spaces per 1000 square feet, which is well within industry standards for a mixed use development. Leslie Cohen noted that Samuels also had an agreement with Sea Chain to use the private supplemental commuter lot during nights and weekends, which would further supplement the amount of parking provided.

One aspect of the parking scheme involves a swap between Sea Chain and Samuels so that boats associated with the marina can be stored in a portion of the Samuels lot in exchange for the use of the marina spaces for Samuels' tenants during the winter months. The justification for this was to prevent the residents in the Residential South and Residential Middle buildings from having to look out over stored boats. Steve McLaughlin noted that he was opposed to placing boat storage in portions of the parking lot close to 3A, saying that the view of the shrink-wrapped boats from the public right-of-way would be unattractive. Susan Murphy said that the swap concept did not appear to benefit the Town, and needed to be reconsidered.

Ms. Murphy asked how many parking spaces were reserved for the Marina, and Dick Cook responded that there would be 236 parking spots for approximately 450 slips and moorings.

Town consultant Jeffery Dirk confirmed that the shared parking analysis was done correctly, and that it appeared that there would be sufficient parking. He said that  he, like John Chessia, had also not had time to fully review the response to his peer review letter provided by BSC on March 27, but that, in general there did not appear to be big problems with the parking analysis. That said, he had identified a few concerns and questions that he would identify in a subsequent report to the Board. He noted that he was concerned with the location of the boat storage parking, and the "swap" concept. In particular, he noted that using the marina parking area for the Samuels uses would create problems for pedestrians trying to make their way from this area to the main shopping area because there were no sidewalks, and that fences around the boats would create obstacles.  He also noted that in order for the overall parking plan to work, the applicant should develop a clear snow storage plan to ensure that no spaces were taken up with stored snow. He noted that another critical thing to ensure the success of the plan was to clearly designate employee parking. Finally, he said the parking management plan should be developed for any special events that could impact the parking (boat show, for example).

Jack Gamache, 29 Governor Long Road, asked whether it would be possible to provide decked parking or underground parking to reduce the overall amount of pavement. Dick Cook responded that the water table was too high for underground parking. Susan Murphy and Tod McGrath noted that decked parking would not necessarily be more attractive. Tod also mentioned that the Board had worked hard several years ago to get the MBTA to construct decked parking, and that the T was not interested.

The next joint hearing was scheduled for April 9 at 7:00 PM.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 PM.
 
Respectfully submitted,

Katharine Lacy
Town Planner