Planning Board edits Village Center design guidelines without taking formal vote

LINCOLN — February 13, 2024 — Lincoln Planning Board walks line-by-line through Village Center design guideline edits. The Feb. 13 working session produced no votes on the guidelines themselves but reached consensus on several substantive changes ahead of the Feb. 20 zoning hearing and Feb. 26 bylaw-finalization meeting. Members agreed to write grocery stores and drugstores into the 60 percent ground-floor glazing requirement as exceptions after concluding the Donelan's storefront could not comply. Co-Chair Lynn DeLisi and member Margaret Olson clashed over a sustainability bullet encouraging "lower parking ratios," with DeLisi saying "this is Lincoln, where you need to drive to the mall" and Olson countering that walkability "should not be necessary" but should be possible; the board struck the parking-ratios phrase. Resident Susan Legat told members the developer Util's Codman Road concept designs do not meet the draft's building-orientation and parking-screening requirements, and resident Deb, a landscape architect of 34 years, pressed the board to replace "wishy-washy" qualitative language with dimensional specifications. The board approved prior minutes as amended by unanimous roll call.