ORDER-2019-82 : AN ORDINANCE REGULATING THE REGISTRATION AND MAINTENANCE OF VACANT COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES IN THE CITY OF MELROSE

Transcript (~25 min @ 27:40)

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▶ 27:36 Manisha Bewtra: public comment is now closed so again there's one order before us this evening order 2019-82 an ordinance regulating the registration and maintenance of vacant commercial properties in the city of Melrose sponsored by non voting member alderman Kate Letter Garabedian sir motion to suspend the rule so that we may hear from the sponsor of the order so move second Alderman

▶ 28:00 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Lippert-Garabedian thank you vice chair Bewtra and members of the committee and thank you Bob Eric and Deb for coming tonight it's really an honor to have members of the public speak as with other ordinances that have come before us in our first term as proposed I'm certainly open to and excited to hear

▶ 28:21 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: from you all about this issue and would welcome refinements to this potential solution to an issue that we face here since I've lived in Melrose there have

▶ 28:29 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: been a number of commercial properties that have set vacant for months and some even for years many residents and our constituents were frustrated by the inactivity and have asked the city to do something about it so over the last 13 months I've completed extensive research on the issue of vacant properties and assessed how other municipalities handle it including through outreach to some in Massachusetts as you've noted tonight. I've also talked with a comprehensive

▶ 28:56 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: set of stakeholders and city officials here at City Hall to strive to craft a balanced solution that strikes that right balance and

▶ 29:09 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: acknowledges various perspectives. So the proposed ordinance before you would provide the city with a new tool to address long-term vacancies which pose multiple challenges to our economic fatality and it would do this by creating a centralized online registry to assist with filling vacancies and it would create an opportunity for Melrose to showcase our amazing arts community and beautify our city as mentioned at least 40 towns and cities in Massachusetts have enacted vacant commercial property registration requirements including with the Express approval of the Attorney General's

▶ 29:44 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: office in the case of Arlington there are various causes for vacancies including land speculation tax write-offs unrealistic rent setting and overwhelmed or disinterested owners regardless of the cause even temporary vacancies do pose challenges for our city there is the potential for lost local tax revenue if we're talking about a restaurant space there is lost foot traffic for neighboring retail lost amenities for a neighborhood and potential public safety and security risks a vacant commercial property can repel would be customers and patrons from our commercial corridors and possibly reduce the quality of the consumer shopping experience it also can place an undue burden on city officials including police inspectional services and DPW the proposed ordinance before you aims to address these challenges in a mutually beneficial manner in the following three ways first by requiring the commercial property owner to register a vacancy 100 days after it begins we ensure that each owner is known to our city and can be reached if necessary consistent with many ordinances and bylaws around Massachusetts that have these vacant property ordinances I've defined vacant property to be a commercial property or a portion of that property that is not occupied that is abandoned or that is not used for a period of at least 90 consecutive days and is not subject to an active building permit by opening a channel of communication between the city and the property owner we can help with identifying strategies that lead to tenants a strengthened line of communication also will ensure that owners are generally aware of their obligations and meet minimum standards of maintenance in Arlington which has four times as many commercial properties as Melrose the city official responsible

▶ 31:33 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: for oversight of its bylaw and she mentions this takes up about 5% of her time and I've modeled this draft on Arlington's she shared that the town now knows so much more about what's going on with the commercial properties in its district and the first year that Arlington passed its bylaw it saw the number of vacant properties dropped from 17 to 5 so first we have the requirement to register second by creating an online inventory of available commercial properties the city provides a one-stop shop for eager business owners and practitioners looking for commercial space think about the difference between an online inventory that includes information about the size of a property what it is zoned for what the asking rent is and how to contact the owner compared to a sign in a building window that you're driving by that has an anonymous phone number and a for rent sign the property owners with whom I spoken are particularly positive about this aspect of the ordinance this aspect being the online registry of the inventory and so I've written it in such a way that any commercial property owner could register with a city even if the 90-day trigger hasn't hit and third by including an opportunity for owners to

▶ 32:49 Speaker 1: display art in their windows which I liked the word that Deb used to call it

▶ 32:52 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: a privilege we beautify our streetscape we spotlight available storefronts in a positive way and we highlight the work of our local artists as you can see from the ordinance and as you've heard tonight there are partnering organizations with capacity and expertise regarding art who are ready to support the implementation of this proposal and if an owner does not wish to display art in the windows or there is not space for art he or she can pay an annual $400 vacancy fee covering the costs up to the city of maintaining the online registry and ensuring appropriate maintenance of the vacant property meanwhile any owner can apply for a waiver of the fee at the time of registration on the grounds of demonstrable financial hardship and with respect to waivers I also want to note that there is a provision in this ordinance that I'm not sure I've seen in others that I've written it in a way to provide wide discretion to city officials except for the requirement that a property owner must register with the city with once the vacancy hits 100 days city officials can exempt an owner from all other provisions of the ordinance when in their judgment the failure to use or occupy the space does violate the purpose of this ordinance I shared with you the memorandum I received last week communicating the mayor's administration does not support this proposal and like you at the very end of today I received the city planner similar memo I am sympathetic to the concerns about capacity which is why I included this provision in the ordinance that allows them to exercise their judgment and implementing it and it's also why I worked closely with the arts community to ensure that the city has support for the arts component of the ordinance at the same time at least 40 cities and towns in Massachusetts including and as varied as Medford Gloucester Arlington Bellingham Long Meadow and Walpole have seen the value in this approach and have figured out a way to make it work our constituents have understandable frustrations with some of our vacant commercial properties and the good news is we don't have many to me that means our city officials will not have a massive undertaking on their hands if this ordinance is implemented instead we will be adopting an ordinance

▶ 34:59 Speaker 1: divorced from any particular crisis or particular set of facts that gives the city an additional tool to be proactive with respect to the health of our

▶ 35:05 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: commercial sector meanwhile if an economic downturn comes to Melrose we'll have a framework already in place that can help us deal with an uptick in vacant properties thank you for your consideration and I'm really interested

▶ 35:28 Manisha Bewtra: hear your perspectives I just want to acknowledge that Alderman Wright a chair of this committee has arrived for the record thank you at this time I'd

▶ 35:36 Michael P. Zwirko: like to move to attach the two memos that were referenced by Alderman Letter Garabedian one dated May 13th 2019 from Denise Gaffey the director of planning and community development as well as a memo have it here dated May 8th 2019 from city solicitor Robert van Campen second those orders will be attached are

▶ 36:05 Manisha Bewtra: there any further comments at this time alderman Rita thank you I apologize for

▶ 36:17 Francis X. Wright Jr.: being late meeting at work I'm generally in support of this concept I can think

▶ 36:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: one property in particular that has been vacant for a number of years and has become more and more run down and yet has been viewed by many traveling through our city based on its location there's been a lack of desire by ownership apparently to do anything to make it more presentable to the public and to the residents of the city

▶ 37:02 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and I believe that if this is structured in such a way that the owners of property and storefronts have the ability to avoid paying a fee by including local artists or perhaps the high school program that while the properties may be vacant and while the owners try to figure out either how to tenant them or await an economic downturn to to adjust that they can at least be presentable they can the the blight that comes from rundown properties is contagious in my opinion and can hurt business districts and I think anything we can do to keep up the presence of a business district where there is one or more empty storefronts is is to the benefit of the city and its residents I don't think that the overall effect of this on the day-to-day operations of the city is considerable as Alderman Lippert Garabedian noted there probably aren't going to be that many of these but when there's one and it's or two but one in particular I'm thinking of that has been here before it has drawn that one has drawn a lot of attention through the years and has you know I've even though it's not in my ward I've heard a lot of comments about it so while this isn't focused on that particular property it's indicative of what can happen when a property uh is vacant and and lays unattended to for a number of years so i well i believe this deserves some attention and work with the administration the concept in and of itself i think is worthwhile in pursuing thank you

▶ 39:11 Monica C. Medeiros: any further members wishing to alderman zero thank you uh thank you very much and thank you alderman Letter garabedian for bringing this up i think this ordinance proposed ordinance attempts to address a couple of issues one being properties that lay vacant for a while and are kind of unsightly and to the need I would say we actually have to incorporate art into our downtown and more so into our public life and I you

▶ 39:47 Monica C. Medeiros: know I know you've worked hard on this to to bring this forward I do share some of the concerns that this sort of crosses over into public you know into

▶ 40:02 Monica C. Medeiros: private property rights and a little bit outside of our scope I think if this

▶ 40:12 Monica C. Medeiros: were to move forward I think we could well I think we could probably

▶ 40:23 Monica C. Medeiros: accomplish the same thing with a voluntary system and which I think would be laudable to move forward and push forward if the administration would be

▶ 40:35 Monica C. Medeiros: amenable to that there's a number of things if we have a property that is one of the things we have to really make sure that we take care to do when we're in public life is to be fair and equal all across the board and in this a building or property owner that doesn't have streetscape would be forced to to

▶ 41:01 Monica C. Medeiros: pay this fee where property owners that that do have public window space wouldn't they don't have any option but other than to pay this fee and I don't think that that necessarily treats everyone equally in that some have the option and others don't I think there's also sort of a question of the subjectivity of of art and who says you know some of the questions are I would have is do the artists who put their art in the windows would they have an opportunity to sell that art and then if we the city are saying that this artist has that opportunity but another one doesn't um are we going into an arena where maybe we shouldn't be um so some of these things are a little bit of concern again if this were to move forward i would suggest in particular the

▶ 42:01 Monica C. Medeiros: the definition of property owner I think you've tried to be very inclusive of the owner of record and the tenant and the mortgagee and and so on but I think that actually is a little bit confusing and you know would it be if the property owner is if there's a landlord and a tenant and a mortgagee are all of those people I didn't put my phone on silent today sorry guys perfect timing of course

▶ 42:33 Speaker 1: and it's spam which is another problem that we face and I wish somebody could

▶ 42:43 Monica C. Medeiros: stop but you know we tried to cover so we have a an owner a tenant a mortgagee in the section of the property owner shall register are all all of these people registering or are all of these people subject to pay the fee I believe the intent is to just one of them per property so if if this were to move forward I would suggest maybe using the owner of record that is that either the registry deeds or to use the probably more simple to use the owner listed in the assessor's office which they get their information for the registry of

▶ 43:31 Monica C. Medeiros: deeds the online inventory in you know in in the real estate business there you know there is something MLS which is a service which has you know people use for multiple listing service and real estate agents use this frequently it is a private service but they use it frequently and regularly to advertise vacancies both in for sale as well as for for lease so there are some of these things out there but I think if we were to create an online registry of vacant properties we may also be inviting some public safety issues that we don't already have because now we're giving the public a notice of all of these properties that are vacant that somebody might be able to use to to squat or to use um for some

▶ 44:24 Monica C. Medeiros: other purpose so i think some of these things we we might want to look at but i don't generally i

▶ 44:31 Monica C. Medeiros: and for instance also the demonstrated financial hardship so there could be a waiver if there's a demonstra demonstrable financial hardship and again i think this is something that could be very subjective and you know what does that mean in general people who are owners of commercial property go into this in order to make money so they i don't think they want vacancies and i think some of the problems that we've had with the you know this a few particular pieces of property that have had um some noticeable you know one particular long time noticeable vacancy which i know there were extenuating circumstances especially with trying to determine who the owner was as a matter of fact um i'm fairly certain that they would all

▶ 45:20 Monica C. Medeiros: be able to show you that they will are having a loss if they have a vacant property because if

▶ 45:28 Monica C. Medeiros: you don't have a tenant most likely your expenses exceed your income and i i just i don't really

▶ 45:42 Monica C. Medeiros: think that this ordinance would solve some of the problems as intended but i do believe there's an opportunity and i think it's one that we should pursue especially if there are many arts groups that are willing to participate in trying to set up a voluntary program so thank you thanks um

▶ 45:59 Manisha Bewtra: i will state my comments and i'm watching the time i will likely need to recess unless folks are ready to figure out how we want to move forward I really appreciate the intention and the level of work behind this ordinance both to support economic development as well as our arts community I think you know seeing again Melrose Arts Melrose open studio tours and follow your arts efforts have really made a visible presence in our community and this could be a way of supporting them as well as beautifying our downtown I've seen programs like this in other communities both in terms of public art but also sometimes just signage saying great things are happening in for example on Melrose Main Street as a way of again redirecting the something that may appear as blight without that sign edge at the same time I am concerned about our current capacity in the case of Arlington they have an economic development planner so although it's only 5% of her time and Arlington does have a much larger stock of commercial property we do not currently have that capacity and I think this is an opportunity for us to maybe think about how do we build economic development capacity in our community I also spoke with the building commissioner and planning director as well as the director of the Chamber of Commerce and I think there is sort of mixed impressions in terms of whether we currently have a vacancy issue in Melrose or not I think those with sort of looking back over time through different economic cycles feel that you know our relatively small number of the commercial properties and the quick turnover overall other than a few um problematic uh or problematic properties um is that we don't really have much of a vacancy problem but i think those in our business community particularly those on uh in our main street district are feeling the pinch right now um i wanted to share let's check the time i'm just keeping track of that um a couple of thoughts that i reached out also to some colleagues one who is a former main streets program director so again she was in a role where she was directly working as an economic development quarter coordinator for a nonprofit organization there are also business improvement districts which are more of a fee based organization that communities have and she had a number of thoughts on this as well as I reached out to some former colleagues at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council both from the arts and culture planning group as well as the economic development group so I will quickly summarize some of those questions that they raised from the Main Street director she asked is the art going to be provided for the building owner for free and would their existing liability insurance policy cover the art what if the art is damaged i believe the proposal addresses um sort of vacancy versus if a building is currently in a build out phase and noting that some buildings are just harder to rent what if the property owner is working to redevelop the site into mixed use and needs it to be empty while working on permitting and financing um and then again finding ways to distinguish between property owners that are legitimately trying to plan fill up their spaces and those that aren't and finally her point was which I think was also raised by some of the folks at City Hall is sort of relationships between business owners and local government where they're sometimes all me this may exacerbate feelings of frustration with working with local government by having fee system and then from the folks that MAPC again not not a final opinion on their part but just some questions that they raised are could a similar as a result be achieved by sort of separating out public art from the economic development ideas would it be more effective to generate a funding source for public realm beautification projects and should it be oriented to creating a disincentive for landlords to maintaining long-term vacancies perhaps we could consider a submission of a memorandum memorandum of an under understanding between an artist and arts organization and a property or owner as a qualifying circumstance so again sort of putting that decision-making outside of local government a little bit but still maybe under the auspices of an ordinance and again I think we're running out of time but questions regarding with the the mo mo you be required to stipulate payments to the artists minimum size of our percentage of the time period of the vacancy that the art would need to be in place things like that and then some of my questions for um would this apply to a completely vacant building and would it apply only to properties would it apply to properties that don't have a ground floor sidewalk facing storefront so for the moment those are my comments um i'm going to ask that we motion to recess excellent um second thank you so we are recessing um for the appropriations committee and we will be back