By AUBREY HAWKE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
A proposal for a new five-story apartment building on Main Street went before the Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday evening, as the building developer sought to attain a permit under a state affordable housing law known as Chapter 40B.
The building would be located at 1362 Main St. on a 5.5-acre plot, with the development plans calling for 40% of that land to remain open space.
The project developer is Willow Bridge Property Co., which, according to its website, is a Texas-based residential real estate company with more than 200,000 developed properties around the country. Willow Bridge’s Boston-area office is located in the Watch Factory building on Crescent Street.
For this Main Street project Willow Bridge plans to have 369 rental units, including 93 affordable units at 80% area median income (AMI), a metric used to determine income eligibility for affordable housing programs. Of these affordable units there would be 10 studio units, 45 one-bedroom units, 28 two-bedroom units and 10 three-bedroom units.
The proposed development would include 554 onsite parking spaces, allowing for 1.5 parking spaces per unit. Parking spaces will be in an above-ground garage in the center of the building. This layout means the parking garage will not be visible from the street.
The building would have a bicycle-parking area for up to 30 bicycles.
The building has an all-electric utility plan, which Willow Bridge said is LEED certifiable. LEED is a certification established by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit that focuses on sustainability.
The development team, including Willow Bridge representatives and representatives of the project’s architecture, landscape architecture and traffic engineering organizations, presented to the ZBA for around 45 minutes before taking questions from the board and audience members.
As part of its presentation, Willow Bridge highlighted the fact that it developed two other major apartment buildings in Waltham: The Ridge, a 264-unit building on Lexington Street, constructed in 2008, and the Edison on the Charles apartment building,a 264-unit structure built downtown in 2018.
The Main Street project will require several waivers from the ZBA to be built. The project will need a waiver to build multifamily housing in a commercial zoning district. The project also will need a waiver to build with a floor area ratio of 1.75, as the current zoning only allows for a floor area ratio of .4.
Jason Targoff, a principal at Novatio Engineering located at 1395 Main St., just across the street from the proposed development area, spoke at the ZBA meeting. He voiced concerns about traffic in the area, saying it has been worsening recently. However, he also said he is not opposed to the development.
Ward 7 Councilor Paul S. Katz also spoke at the meeting. The development site is in Katz’s ward, and he made clear that he was speaking in a capacity as a ward councilor and not on behalf of the City Council.
Katz raised many concerns about the project, ranging from whether the area will have enough play structures for children to how the development will contribute to the area’s expected population increase with the city’s new MBTA Communities Act zoning.
Katz also voiced concerns about fire safety in the five-story garage that would be located in the building’s center and concerns about electric vehicle battery fires as well as electric vehicle charging stations, both of which he said are currently major concerns for the Fire Department.
“I think that the garage, while it is aesthetically pleasing by being in the center and not visible, is going to pose some issues with the Fire Department,” said Katz.
The ZBA continued the hearing to its planned Feb. 6 meeting. At that meeting, the petitioner will have time to respond to questions raised by audience members.
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