use that with residential uses and that places the driveway to the project right next to the
resident at number 20 west uh highland uh to the right of the driveway there it places then a
series of garage doors so everybody would have to walk down past 10 garage doors to get to the
back of the property to visit their neighbors and the building at the top
is so close to the property line, it's two feet and change from the property line, we cannot put
any new windows in that whole side of the building. So we'd have to either take down that wall,
send it back to make windows or live without them, which we can't really do. So Larry, the key
question here is, and the committee work speaks for itself, but you and your client worked very
hard to try to accommodate the existing stone building into either adaptive reuse or some
other incorporation and it just didn't work. We looked at it for both commercial and residential
use and just it's just you know it's a two-story building in the midst of what's going to be a
three-story plus area and just given the density of development these days it's just we would have
to modify this building to a degree that would be the building would basically be unrecognizable
and it's as it's what it is currently and you're going to save the stone and incorporate it into
the design what we're doing so I think we can move on down actually past the next several to
the site plan so there well Steve let's just go to the illustrative one
Oh, sorry. Go back up to 48. So 48. Okay. So this one, if you could just make sure everybody can see that on the screen. So this one is, so our scheme is we're going to remove the building, the existing building.
we're going to relocate and so what we're going to do is organize these townhouses along a garden
walk so there'll be gardens for each of the units facing towards 20 facing towards the east towards
germantown avenue the vehicular traffic will be taken around the outside of the perimeter of the
property via new pervious driveways that will actually and then basically most all the traffic
will be using the new driveway here on the left side of the drawing. There are two units that are
served both by this new driveway around the back of the site and do have a way to use the
existing alley to exit the property if they need to. So Larry, let me interrupt. So on the right
side of this, which is really facing or toward Germantown Avenue, there's an alley or easement
And that's shared by the people who have commercial buildings fronting on Germantown Avenue.
And your client has reached an understanding that he will not only improve the oil surface,
but take responsibility through the Homeowners Association for maintaining that and keeping it safe and good repair.
Yes, we have some slides where we can show those.
All right. And then let me also ask a little further.
So this is basically, so what we're doing is we're taking out, currently the site's 86% impervious, we're going to end up with it being about 56 to 58% impervious, so we're taking out 30% of that, we're replacing this with over a dozen trees in the interior.
30% of that, we're replacing this with over a dozen trees in the interior of the site,
individual gardens, plant, and then we're doing screen planting along the west side
of the site.
As you can see here, the row of trees to the left of the wide driveway.
And our general idea is to place vehicular traffic and our parking spaces, our garage
doors, adjacent to the public parking lot, so we're putting cars with cars.
And then on the other side, we're replacing the driveway and parking spaces for our neighbor at 20 West with a pedestrian walkway and numerous trees and garden spaces.
So, Larry, let's see if we can do this.
And maybe Steve has the pointer.
If we go to the left of the site plan, you'll see a home.
We're actually twins.
And they're homes, correct?
And then you see a green area, which looks like a border.
That's their property.
Right.
And then you see what you've described as the public parking lot, which leads to the back and ultimately leads to the back of a shopping center.
Am I correct?
Yes, it does.
All right.
And then as we move to the right, it's our property now, and that's the new driveway.
And our site is basically an L with limited frontage on West Highland at the top.
And then the L does not connect to Germantown Avenue as it once did for, I think it was an Oldsmobile dealer.
well well basically our with our driveway we do connect via the alley to
to uh yeah so we make basically a u-shape right and then we come out on highland avenue right
right and then what do you have on the right side of that you have killians and the other
commercial buildings we have basically the alley is that existing alley is uh you know is the is
the delivery zone for Killian Hardware, Artisans on the Avenue, the actual town hall, the community
associations offices. All right. And in the middle, in the white area, that's residential.
Those are, yes, there's some office on the lower floors of 14 and 16, I think, then there's
all residential above. All right. Fine. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure we understood the
adjacencies so but but but your question is good because it does show that our building is um uh at
the upper floors of our building we're 30 feet on an average away from number 20 and we're about 65
to 70 feet away from the face of our building to the next property to the left to the west
of our property so so our our project is uh is spaced it's not crowding the other projects and
it's there are trees on both sides of our project between us and our neighbors. All right and Larry
and then I promise not to interrupt but I don't mean it. There is a drawing that you did which
is a drawing showing a conforming structure on the site and I don't know if Steve can put that up
which would be far more aggressive in terms of coverage and in terms of impervious and it would
be conforming, 38 feet high, 60% coverage, and it would be a split zone, CA1, CMX1, retail,
including doctor's office, daycare, drugstore. And in your opinion, as a land planner and an
architect, do you believe that would be far more intrusive than what we're talking about?
I think it'd be worse in every way.
All right. And then in the record, I won't read it now, but there's a letter from Killian's Hardware, which I think is all the way to the right on Highland Avenue.
It's up to the top. There it is. Right there.
And he goes into great detail. The family's been there for like 100 years. And he goes in great detail about how this use and even the current use, however, properly maintained by your client, is really out of character and it needs to be residential.
Yes, that's what his letter states.
All right. And then, again, jumping around, we have other letters of support from people in the neighborhood, in addition to the letter of support from the community association.
All right. Let's go to the final issue, which is the changes, including the one that was just submitted to the board and the revisions that were in response to the 20 meetings of the various committees.
So, Steve, I think this would be just before the traffic study.
yeah okay just so we can move through these this is what we had so we started out with a building
that was at the location of the same front as the existing building back from the street and
since the adjacent buildings were brick and this is by the way this this shows the building 38
Since the adjacent buildings were brick, and this is, by the way, this shows a building 38 feet high.
In this case, the brick went all the way to the top.
Next slide.
We then went to, and this just basically shows that even at 38 feet, we're only 39 inches, one meter higher than the existing buildings at 14 and 16.
Those are the ones on the left.
The ones closer are two stories, but many of the ones then off to the right are, again, are three stories, which is in some cases in attics.
space. Okay, next slide. This is a southwest corner also back at fall and early February.
Next, there was the brick was all the way up. Same thing from the northwest corner.
And then we actually decided, okay, let's set the third floor of our building back and
let's create a cornice at 28 feet, six inches going across. So basically we would relate
to the two-story house to the houses to the left of us.
This top floor is set back three and a half feet
from the stone at the base of the building.
Oh, also the big move though
is that we moved the entire building back
so that our face of brick is in line
with the face of brick of those four houses to our left.
So that was one of the major things we did
is to move, is to compress the entire project,
shorten it by seven feet
so that we could make that alignment happen
And that created a nice park in front of the project, a little pocket park for people.
So there now are trees, not just street trees, but street trees between the sidewalk, the street walk, and the building, a seating area.
Now we have, we also revised, we placed an entry to unit one from the street.
And we have balconies now that wrap around at both the first and third floors onto the street from the building we have here.
Or the ground, yeah, first and third floors.
So then the next slide just shows that from the southwest corner.
We also created bay windows for the middle units and actually separated the end units from them.
So there's now, instead of six units in a flat wall, there's now one unit, then a group of four, and then another one at the end.
And those cars are in the public parking lot?
Those are the cars in the public parking lot.
And then there's all our screen planting and then really not seen much or the garage doors that to our project property, which, again, are facing the park cars in the public lot, which we thought was a good idea.
But you can go to the next slide, actually. So this is, again, from this shows the building is set back considerably at the top floor from the street.
And then, Steve, we keep going until we get to the sketch that shows.
So that's basically, that still showed a roof deck, a roof garden and a pilot house on unit one.
And I think the next, yeah, so what we did here is we finally removed the pilot house and the
roof garden on the unit one only and create it and and actually push the the top floor of this unit
set it back not only at the street but at the two sides and wrap planting around at the balconies
of this entire third floor of our building so now really our cornice and we drop the cornice down to
28.6 i think it'll be so really you can see that it's basically in line with even with the two
story uh house that's a fairly high two-story house to the left to houses to the left and then
the sketch below if you just keep right so this basically is the sketch then that shows how that
works and how the uh that is uh in fact the the kind of over sketch in front of the building is
the tree that's really there at the street at the entry to the public parking so we've been showing
the building with actually less of the planting in front of it than is actually there.
So this just gives you a sense of how much of the building you don't see because of the
part of the plant, pretty lush planting all around the entire property of the building.
So Larry, you've completed, I guess what we're calling now the final plan and it's
coming in through the submission I guess of a proviso form so that's currently in front of the
board so if it were to approve it it would be consistent with approval of the chestnut hill
association requirements as well as we'll call the final revised plan yes I just want to make
the point that at the the development review committee approved this project three to two
voted three to two to support the project with one abstention on the on the 13th of April
and and then we sent that to the board but even after that on our
And then we sent that to the board. But even after that, on our own, we worked, we looked at this and said, you know, we could actually, we could remove the pilot house and roof garden on the first unit on our own without, nobody was telling us to do this, but we decided we would do that as an exercise.
there was some concern about the pilot houses we said all right we'll remove that and actually
make sure that this building is the top of the building is set back and the impact is reduced
further all right so that's after 19 meetings with um with either subcommittees committees all
every chca committee voted to support this project and the board voted 13 to 4 to support the project
after hearing the neighbors' testimony and weighing the facts of our proposal against those concerns.
Am I correct when I said there were near neighbors on some of the subcommittees?
Absolutely.
The exhibit in our package, which has an asterisk next to all the meetings that were on Zoom, were public.
So there have been multiple meetings open to the public,
and the working committees had direct representation of their choice on the working committees?
Yes, and I will say that every design professional, with the exception of one,
on the CHCA committee voted to support this project.
Even several people on the HDAC, one of whom kept their vote for us,
even as they went back to their own organization.
So I don't have anything more of Larry, other than to say that, do you believe there's anything more or anything possible that could have been done to accommodate concerns or issues raised by either committees or subcommittees or individuals?
well you know carl i mean it's it's probably impossible to say could there ever be anything
more but you know we we have uh and henry and henry o'reilly the owner has has really uh
done a tremendous amount in terms of additional offerings to at the periphery of this project to
the community um there is obviously you know pressure with building today to to build a certain
number of units and basically according to the you know if you looked at the RSA 3 zoning
on an 18,620 square foot site you could build 8.3 units and we were proposing eight units so
in terms of the density in the area we believe that's an appropriate density even some of the
detractors at the board admitted that this was the this was not too many units for the site
All right.
Thank you.
I have nothing further.
You have, who else do you have?
Mr. Chairman, I have some cross-examination questions.
Yeah, that's why I was asking, Henry.
I just want to check with Carl.
I have five minutes with Henry O'Reilly.
And if you want, I can present him and then just rest.
Yeah, then we'll go to Mr. Clinton.
All right.
Let's have Henry O'Reilly, not Henry Clinton, sworn, please.
Mr. O'Reilly has been allowed to talk to.
Thank you.
Please wait to be sworn in, Mr. O'Reilly.
Thank you.
Are you ready to swear a minute?
Carol, are you there?
Yes, I am.
Do you swear for him to tell the whole truth and nothing about the truth?
And can we get your name on record as well, please?
Henry, H-E-N-R-Y, O'Reilly, O apostrophe R-E-I-L-L-Y.
I don't think Frank knows he's muted.
Sir, can you spell your last name?
Yes, O'Reilly, O apostrophe R-E-I-L-L-Y.
Okay, am I waving and stepping this individual, Tanya?
No, this is just a witness.
He can go through with Mr. Primavera.
Okay, you may proceed.
All right.
So, Mr. O'Reilly, can you tell us how you became familiar with this property and, very briefly, the current use?
The property was purchased back in 1971, my father and I, to house our business, E.B. O'Reilly and Associates, a heating and air conditioning business.
Over the years, it's worked out very well.
But in the recent years, as things have changed in our industry, the building does not serve us well for what the current condition is right now.