All right, good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

Looks like we have a few workshop items to take a look at.

So we will begin this evening with our first workshop item, which is 991 Portland Road.

This is map 63 lot 6.

And this is a sketch plan review.

This is for mixed-use commercial business development along Portland Road and Waterfall Drive and the Park North Contract Zone.

Emily, anything to add on this workshop item?

You'll be able to visualize what it looks like.

A model has been brought.

So that's what's on the other side of the room.

Okay.

We did have initial discussions through the PDRC group from city staff.

So we have given some initial comments to the applicant.

And that's what you're asked to do tonight as well for sketch plan review.

The applicant also hosted a focus group, which is similar to a neighborhood meeting, although he'll host a neighborhood meeting also, but a focus group to understand what residents in the area we're looking to have in this development.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Emily.

And applicant with us this evening.

Good evening.

Elliot Chamberlain, owner of Park North Development.

We're here tonight to talk about for right now what we're calling Cascade Village.

With me tonight is Matt Cummings and Joe Marseille from Cummings Architecture out of Ipswich Mass who put the model together.

As Emily said, we elected where this is a little unique, a little different.

We elected to have a focus group outside of what we know we have to do for a neighborhood meeting to get some very early-on comments from the neighborhood itself as to whether they like it, don't like it, things they would like to see, activities, so on and so forth.

Uh with all the staff at uh City Hall.

Uh we had another meeting today at one o'clock with the fire department to really get into the details where this is a little unique and a little different design.

We're trying to weed out all the things that we can't we haven't thought about yet, and I think we've covered a lot of the basis.

Um then we're here tonight and get your comments, and then the idea is to take comments from all of those meetings, make any adjustments, and then make a full uh a full application.

Uh so what I'd like to do is bring Matt Cummins up to talk about the entire project and why we did certain things and hopefully be able to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Well, Matthew Cummings, uh, Cummings Architects and uh interiors.

Uh Elliot approached me about designing uh uh the property and asked me whether I had any ideas to make it unique.

So we did a precedent study and tried to understand the town a little bit better and um come up with an idea that was not a shopping plaza where people park their cars, get out and go buy something and leave.

So our thought was was to create a a plaza and a place where people would have a sense of community.

And the first thing that came to mind was get rid of the cars.

So what we did is we designed um a sort of a European plaza in a way where people get together and they spend time with different uses and so forth and activities within the plaza.

It doesn't mean they don't shop within it, but we took the cars and put them in a parking lot.

So you have to walk your way in.

But I mean walk your way in, it's not too far.

There's a drop-off.

Um right off uh waterfall.

But again, you can enter from different points.

Um the idea is once you've entered it, you've entered this the plaza or that's a community of buildings.

There could be different uses.

There could be an ice cream shop and a coffee shop, you could buy a hat, of course, there's a brewery, uh, and other uses would happen inside the space too.

There's different scale buildings.

The buildings have different roof shapes.

Some of them have to do with uh historic context of of SACO in different areas, but it also has a modern flavor to it too.

So it's not so contemporary, it doesn't feel like the community, and at the same time, it doesn't feel stale and old.

It's a mixture of both.

Um there's also uh a rink in the middle, so in the winter, people can skate, or in the summer, the rink, of course, would get drained out on a 93-degree day like today, and there could be other really cool activities within that space.

But the idea is to draw people into this plaza where they don't see cars, they see trees, they get to see other people within the community and interact with them with scale buildings that have a human scale to them and activities that people look forward to leaving their house, not just buy stuff on Amazon.

That's my architectural story for the project.

Does anybody have any questions?

Board members, any thoughts?

Do you have more or are you is this a pausing or sort of turning it back over to the board?

Giving it to you guys to see where there's any questions.