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Coy LetterCarolyn Misch <cmisch@northamptonma.gov> For the Planning Board for upcoming meeting Oona Coy <oonamia@gmail.com>Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 12:56 PM To: cmisch@northamptonma.gov Dear Planning Board -- First off, thank you for your service to our community. My name is Oona Coy, I'm a resident of the broader Williams St. neighborhood that you are this week considering a proposal for a new development at 107 Williams St. I want to start by saying that I think that an 8 half-unit condo building at 107 Williams St. makes no sense. I hope that all of you have already visited our neighborhood, but in case you haven't and won't be able to before you discuss and vote on this proposal, I would like to give you a sense of the context of where this property sits. To begin with, Williams St. is a slender street with slender sidewalks. Most of the time it is a one lane street because parking is allowed on one side, and most of the time people are parked up and down the street. Maybe you have driven down Pomeroy Terrace into Williams St. as a cut around as many people do to avoid the traffic of downtown if they're getting on the highway or going to Easthampton or Holyoke. My understanding is that because of how narrow Williams St. is, it's difficult to repave and make new sidewalks that will comply with the ADA so the street is bumpy -- it's been cut up and patched a bunch of times -- and the sidewalks are narrow and cracking. We have some unimpressive speedbumps -- like they're not really big enough. If you're heading down Williams, literally right before you get to 107 Williams on your right, Montview Ave. heads off to the left. This is a road I travel daily and that I have had near misses of crashes at the intersection of Williams and Montview. Sometimes it's a near miss with a pedestrian or someone on a bike, but more often with a car heading quickly down Williams or turning onto Montview. It's a really tricky spot. It's hard to see what's coming unless you pull out far enough that you almost get hit. This is because there are pretty much always people parked on the other side of the street right there so the street is more or less one lane. Imagining the construction of an 8 half-unit condo building right there is alarming to me. I've actually imagined that if this development goes through that the city will need to not allow parking right across the street from Montview anymore and/or make Montview a one way street or something else. I understand that there will be 8 parking spaces for these 8 units which doesn't factor in guests, visitors, or a unit's second car. The neighborhood can't hold all those additional cars parking on the street. Finally, I would like to say that I really understand the need for more housing in Northampton especially affordable housing, and that, in principle, I believe in infill. I believe in not carving out the woods on the outskirts of town for new developments that require city services stretched further and further out. I believe in multi-family houses and own and live in a 2 family house. That said, I also believe that if neighborhoods that are already densely settled with aging infrastructure (like ours) are the obvious places for this new infill construction, then we should benefit in other ways. Our streets should then be bumped to the top of repaving projects. Prioritizing affordable home ownership and/or rentals in our neighborhoods by whatever means should also be a part of the deal. And developers should have to include an affordable or moderate income unit in their proposal. Doesn't that just make sense? Is that not included here because an 8 unit building is too small? Isn't that par for the course in new developments? I know that some of these decisions are out of your purview and need to be decided by the City Council, but I also know that you serve on the Planning Board because this is your expertise. Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this. I hope that you will decide to reduce the number of approved units in this proposal based on the capacity of the neighborhood and safety issues of the street, and I hope that if this proposal moves through even at a reduced number of units, that Williams St. should bump to the top of the list of streets due for repaving and rebuilding. Best, Oona Coy 1 Venturers Field Rd.