announcement to those in the room and those online. We are still waiting for two members that we need for the quorum, so, bear with us. We're now waiting for one member.
can we turn our microphones on, please?
Alright. Good evening. Thank you for bearing with us. We now have a quorum, so we will call this meeting, a regular meeting of the Providence City Plan Commission to order at 04:55PM. Let's start off by taking a roll call.
So Miguel Casado, present.
And I am Michael Gazzdacko. I'm acting
as the chair. We also have two members of staff, Bob Azar.
Chayan, manager for our deputy staff.
Lisa Darren, legal counsel.
Three. Excuse me. Three three members. Alright. You all had your, you should have gotten minutes from three previous meetings, the September 20, the October 11, and the October 18 CPC meetings.
Can we take them all at once unless someone has any comments or corrections?
Well, if if if we keep if we're gonna abstain from one of
those Alright. Let's let's start one or one or the other. So the September 20 meeting minutes.
Make a motion to approve.
Thank you. Need a second? Second. Alright. We have a second.
All in favor of approving the minutes as drafted, say aye.
Aye. And abstain? Alright. The October any that's all that's everyone. Any the October 11 meeting minutes, you all receive them?
Motion to approve. Great. Second. Second. Alright.
We have a motion. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Abstain.
Abstain. I think I wasn't there for that.
You weren't there for that one? I believe that was the one. Okay. So Christian will abstain on that one. And then the October 18 CPC meeting.
Motion to approve. K. Second. I got a second. All in favor, say aye.
I will abstain from that one because that's the one I wasn't at. So we will move right into director's report.
Nothing really to report this month.
Alright. That was concise. We will go on to Maybe next month. We'll go on to our first land development project. This is a major land development project.
It's case number 22Dash057MA. It's a one fifty nine Wayland Avenue, also known as 230 Waterman Street. We have the applicant here, and, let's go ahead and, and hear from them. Oh, yeah. Actually, Shoyana, you're gonna introduce it.
Yeah. Sure. And thanks, commissioner. Just to provide some background before the applicants get to presenting. This is a request for a combined master and preliminary plan approval for a project that consists of commercial on the ground floor as well as residences on the upper stories.
And the applicant is looking to construct that project, and they are also looking for a waiver from submission of state approvals at the preliminary plan stage. And it should be noted that when they will be presenting, they will be talking to you about the building, its conformance with zoning, and the and speak about the submissions that they need to make at both stages. So the applicants are here to take it take it from there.
So, while you're doing that, I will start. My name is Andrew Teitz, t as in Thomas, e I t z. I'm an attorney with offices at 2 Williams Street in Providence representing the applicants and owners here today for this project, and we'll try to be brief. This is, however, a new project. You may recall we were here before.
We did receive master plan approval for project, 232 Waterman Street. It was a larger, more intense project. The master plan approval was appealed, and that was withdrawn by us. It has no legal standing anymore, and we are here with a brand new project. In fact, we even have a brand new name for it.
It's 190 it's 159 Wayland Avenue. We've changed the address. So that makes an easier shorthand way to talk about it. We're here about 159 Wayland. But it is a site that I think all of you know, the site of the funeral home, and you'll be hearing more about that in a minute.
Key thing here I wanna make sure you realize is that we comply with all zoning elements. We're not asking any variances, special use permits, waivers, anything at all as far as the substance. Key elements of, issues that were concerns before, height, loading, and parking. We are compliant with the height. We are under 50 feet in height, and you'll hear the details, but we are not asking for any relief whatsoever on the height.
As far as the loading, we are below the thresholds for the required loading no matter how you interpret it. So no loading space is required so that we are fully compliant with. And the parking, we actually have twice the parking that we need. So there shouldn't be any question about, parking impacts on the neighborhood. With people parking in the neighborhood, we're gonna be providing twice the parking that's legally required.
As to the, the waivers that were mentioned, we're not asking for any waivers of any substance. They're only procedural. They're asking for, normally, before preliminary, we would have other state approvals, which we are asking to provide for final, those being Narragansett Bay Commission, RIDEM, and Providence Water Supply. They're all in process. This is an urban site served by all the utilities.
There isn't any anticipation of any issue, but it's they're still in process. So we would ask that those be waived to be provided at final. If you have any questions about them, we do have our engineer. He'll be talking in a moment and address those issues, the particular utilities and so forth. And then finally, we would ask procedurally, as noted by Choi Yeon, that you combine master plan and preliminary.
Again, we've got an urban site. We've got a very low intensity use here. Everybody seems to be familiar with it. There's no there's no interesting twists or turns to it. It's pretty straightforward.
And so we were asking to combine those stages and also ask you at the end, if you do so approve it, to authorize staff approval for final approval. So with that, I'm going to start with our first witness, Eric Zwena, and I would just, ask you just tell him about your credentials. You're an architect. You're licensed in 12 states. Correct?
Hi. Eric Zwena, managing principal of CDS Architecture and Interiors, offices in Providence, Rhode Island, and Washington DC. Combined total of about 35 staff. I've been principal at my firm for seven plus years. Served on the AA as president, in '27 2018, on the board of advisers for the Broadridge University, actively, participate in our community as not only an architect, and business owner, but as a citizen of the city of Providence.
And, excited to be in front of you this evening.
I would ask that he'd be accepted as an expert in architecture.
