2008-07-23-PB-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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PLANNING BOARD MINUTES MEETING OF JULY 23, 2008 A regular meeting of the Lexington Planning Board in the Selectmen’s Meeting Room, Town Office Building was called to order at 7:30 p.m. by Chairman Hornig with members Zurlo, Manz, Galaitsis and Canale and planning staff McCall-Taylor, Henry and Kaufman present. ***************************** HARTWELL AVENUE STUDY AREA********************** Transfer of Development Rights (TDR): Mr. Hornig asked the Board members to give their positions on the transfer of development rights. Mr. Canale: ?? TDR is strictly for the study area; ?? If TDR is workable on Hartwell Avenue it could be expanded; ?? Identify maximum development in the area; and ?? Define the upper limit and may get there sooner; ?? Need to right size development. Mr. Zurlo ?? Based on Mr. Smith’s chart .35 floor area ratio (FAR) has potential for development; ?? Three to four properties would need a significantly higher FAR to justify redevelopment; ?? That would open the door to more players; ?? Pick and choose where density should be in a master plan sort of way; ?? The advantage would be a quick build out and it could also be a disadvantage as well; and ?? What would be the maximum? Mr. Galaitsis ?? TDR could be fine, but keep dimensional standards, height and setbacks; ?? TDR and dimensional standards would both be addressed. Mr. Hornig ?? Don’t believe TDR would be particularly useful in this area; ?? Only reason to use TDR would be to implement a hard cap and a fairly low one for this area; ?? The effect of TDR would be preserving one-story obsolete buildings, not open space; ?? There would be just high density and low density buildings; ?? If wrong cap is set, it would be hard to move to a new level; ?? Set a soft cap based on capacity of parking spaces and then have developers contribute to a fund for improvements necessary to handle more development; and