Alright. Good afternoon. We will call this meeting of the city plan commission to order. Today is Tuesday, November 18. It is 04:55PM.
Let's start with a roll call starting with Noel.
Charlotte Lipchef. Rachel Dotson.
Shoyan Mantrik, our DPD staff. Bob Ezar, DPD staff.
Megan DeSanto, CPC counsel.
And I'm Michael Gazzako, chair. The minutes of the October 21 meeting were circulated prior to this. Hopefully, everyone's reviewed them, had a chance to read them. If there are any edits, now would be the time, or we could take a motion to approve as drafted. I didn't notice anything when I reviewed them.
Yeah. I'll make a motion to approve. A minute.
K. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Alright.
Motion has been made. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?
The minutes pass. Next up is director's report.
Okay. So you will, the last item today is a series of zoning changes that we're proposing in part to implement the latest round of zoning enabling and subdivision land development enabling changes at the state level. We also need to amend our subdivision and development review regulations. We've been working on those in house. You'll see those at the next meeting.
We're required to hold a public hearing on those, so we'll start the advertising for that in a week or two. So just, to let you know that that, there's more coming. Hopefully,
be it for a little while, until and unless the, general assembly decides that they wanna do more in January. But, we'll hope we're hopeful that this will be, the end
of it for a little while. Okay.
Thank you, Bob. Without any further ado, we will go into agenda item number one, which is a minor land development project request for extension. It's case number 22Dash063MI322WashingtonStreet. Attorney Stolzman? Thank you, mister chairman and members of
the board. This will be very short. Just a quick background. My name is Rob Stolzman. I'm at Adler Pollak and Sheen.
I represent the applicant, Lincoln Avenue Capital, technically LAC Northeast developer. Mister Scott Shaw may be on Zoom. He's at a national housing conference today. Lincoln Avenue Capital is a national affordable housing developer. We were before you, some of you may recall in December 2022 for 322 Washington Street.
It's a vacant lot, approximately 20,300 square feet, and it's across the street from the Public Safety Building in Providence. It's in a c two zone, and the city council in 2022, designated it in the Transportation overlay district, a TOD, approval, so which was upon your recommendation. On 12/13/2022, you gave us preliminary approval with some dimensional waivers for a 76 unit, 100% affordable project, and that project has been moving forward. It's difficult to obtain for a 100% affordable. We're using a variety of capital, tools, to finance it.
Rhode Island housing, low income, housing tax credits, LITEC credits, LITEC investor. So all that's coming together, but it has not been, fully financed yet. In 11/26/2024, about a year ago, you gave us a one year extension on the approval. We're looking forward to resubmitting for the, competitive, LITEC and Rhode Island housing approval. That submission will be made in two or three weeks, subject to your approval of an additional extension tonight.
One other exciting factor you may have read in the paper or you may be aware from staff reports is the Rhode Island public re the Providence Redevelopment Agency. I'm sorry. The Providence Redevelopment Agency, the your PRA acquired the property, and we've entered into an option agreement to to acquire the property for this project. So that's gonna help facilitate the public private partnership points that one gets it in the capital stack approval. So I think this is one of those white hat situations.
Nobody's objecting. There are very few neighbors that's on the transportation corridor. We went through extensive discussions about improvements along the bus stop, etcetera, and those are all conditions to the approval. So that's the background. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them.
This has had your support. I wanna thank you. The chairman has occasionally asked to reach out and said, what's the status of this? We're interested in helping as an approval body. The city, of course, is helpful.
The PRA has been helpful. It's just the the difficulty of building affordable housing from a cost standpoint. But it's going forward, and we're here to to to make it happen.
Commissioners. Commissioners, do you have any questions for the applicant? K. We want this to happen. We we want the capital stack to line up.
So, any anyone care to make a motion?
I'll make a motion that we'll grant the extension. K.
We'll go around and do a voice vote. Noel? Aye. Charlotte? Aye.
Rachel? Aye. And I vote aye.
Thank you. We appreciate it.
Moving right along to agenda item number two. It is a major land development here, project, public hearing for case number 25Dash075MI. It's 195 Nelson Street or commonly known as the RFK School.
So thanks, mister chair. And a quick introduction. This is a request for major land development approval of the master and preliminary plan combined for the construction of the new RFK school following demolition. The applicant is proposing to construct a 59 foot tall k through eight school building in the PS zone with ancillary parking and other improvements that you typically see for a school. They are requesting a dimensional adjustment for the height of 59 feet, which exceeds the 50 foot height limit of the PS zone.
And in addition to that, they are requesting some waivers from particularly from submission of city and state approvals, a lighting plan, a signage plan, as well as a stormwater management plan at the preliminary plan stage. And we should note that when the applicant is requesting waivers, they aren't asking to completely do away with them. They're just asking that they be deferred to a future stage of development. So I guess the applicant's here, and they can provide more detail.
Thank you, miss mister chair and members of the commission. My name is Christopher Menahan. I'm with West Group Law, and we're here tonight on behalf of the city of Providence. So we have two more, school projects this evening, and this is the first one, RFK School. So, this project is located at 195 Nelson Street.
This is, so this is the site of of the the current, RFK School. And so the existing building will be fully raised, and there will be a a brand new school going up, which will be pre K, through grades eight. And and this this site is zoned, p PS, public space. So this is, a by right development. So tonight, we're seeking to, combine master plan and preliminary plan and also seeking a dimensional adjustment under section 19 o four e one, subsections a, b, and c.
So so that's that's for building height. So there's going to be an average building height of 59 feet, and and the the maximum allowed in the PS zone is 50. And, also, as as was mentioned, waiver, of of certain items, at at at these stages, and the items, will will be submitted later on, during permitting. So those are, state and city state and city permits and approvals. So, those include RIDEM, Narragansett Bay Commission, and also as was mentioned, waiver of submission of the lighting plan, signage plan, and stormwater management plan.
So tonight, I'm joined by Joseph DeSanti of of Downs Construction, Justin Hopkins of Tekton on architecture, Brett Neelyn of GM two on engineering, and Jonathan Scarab of GM two on traffic. And I'll turn it over.
Here. Thank you, Chris. For the record, Justin Hopkins. I'm an associate principal at Teflon Architects with offices in Hartford, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island. So summary of the overall project.
This project is is part of a district wide effort to, provide new pre k to eight elementary schools, within the Providence Public School District. So RFK is what's called a three track elementary school, pre k to five, and a four track middle school, grade six, seven, and eight. And what that means by tracks, it's simply the number of classrooms per grade level. So pre k to five, three classrooms per grade level, six, seven, and eight, four classrooms per grade level. Total of 858 students.
We're a four story building. This project is on track for occupancy at the start of the twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight school year. So there's an illustrated site plan that is to the right of the screen just to orient you you. North is at the top of the screen or top of the site plan. The the street boundary at the north of the property is Eaton Street.
Nelson Street is to the West, and Jastram Street is to the East. We are positioning the building within the setback lines of of the property lines and trying to orient the building footprint as far to the Northeast on the property as we can in order to get faculty parking, to the southern portion of the site, as well as getting some, age appropriate playscapes, to the south and to the west of, the the building. So, let me see if this works. So we would have our pre k and k playscape, our elementary playscape to the southwest portion of the building, some hot top way directly to the west, basketball courts, Foursquare, that type of stuff that we know that our students do. We will have a loading area off of where our commercial kitchen and cafeteria is.
That that is off of Nelson Street on the corner of Nelson And Eaton. Primarily, the the way that the building is positioned, the support pickup and drop off, we contemplate having parent pickup and drop off on Jastram Street or to the east of the building, bus pick up and drop off to the west of the building. The floor plan is arranged in a manner that we have entrances administrative areas so that we can help facilitate bus pickup on the western portion of the site, parent pickup, and drop off at the eastern portion of the site. Pre k entry will be down in the southeast corner of the building for those pre k students. In terms so this is the orientation, we shifted a little bit just to make sure that we could get it a little bit larger on the screen.
The building footprint and the direction north is now to the right hand portion of the screen. So you'll see the boundaries of Eaton Street, Jastrow, and Nelson there. We've superimposed, the the property lines as well as the building setback lines, to indicate the compliance with the building footprint. Landscape plan, you'll see in a little bit more detail, some of the hardscapes and the building access. We do have a great differential predominantly on the eastern portion of the building, from Eaton Street.
We are going downhill, towards the south. Nelson Street is predominantly flat or reasonably level. So where we have an approximate, Brett, seven foot Seven feet on Jaystrom. Yep. Seven seven foot grade differential on Jaystrom Street.
Approximate two foot differential on Eaton Street, more or less level or flat on Nelson Street. So the building positioning of the building and our the location of our play areas help support a relatively flat area for our exterior playscapes as well as our hot top play. In terms of the building orientation, we have 1st Floor on the left of the screen, 2nd Floor on the right of the screen. So predominantly, pre kindergarten, you'll see the pre kindergarten three classrooms towards the southern portion of the building with their separate pick entrances, administrative areas, and nurse are rendered in yellow. You'll you'll see our gymnasium, our cafeteria, and our kitchen to the western portion of the building.
