Those of you who are as bored with Austin Street as the Tab seems to be (no coverage of the March 1 community meeting at NNHS) can skip right over this if you want, but for anyone who’s curious, here’s a sampling of what people were hearing. I’m sorry I didn’t manage to shoot more than these 12 minutes, but frankly, the cacophony was exhausting. It sounds about like what you’d expect a high school cafeteria to sound like at lunchtime. Or being at a wedding where the music is too loud.

The good thing about the format was anyone could ask their own question of anyone. The bad thing was no one who wasn’t standing within about arm’s length got to hear the answers. Alas, I did not happen to witness any parking stacker discussions, but did catch a bit of the outrage over (mis)representation of the building footprint.

FYI, the reference to 30 Haven Street in the first conversation is to Oaktree Development’s GreenStaxx building in Reading. That unresolved question about maximum occupancy seemed answerable, so here’s my attempt:

The state Sanitary Code section 410.400 says this about minimum square footage:

(A) Every dwelling unit shall contain at least 150 square feet of floor space for its first occupant, and at least 100 square feet of floor space for each additional occupant, the floor space to be calculated on the basis of total habitable room area.

(B) In a dwelling unit, every room occupied for sleeping purposes by one occupant shall contain at least 70 square feet of floor space; every room occupied for sleeping purposes by more than one occupant shall contain at least 50 square feet of floor space for each occupant.

The unit sizes in the ASP proposal (pg 79) are as follows:

sq ftqty

STUDIO

530/ unit

8

ONE BEDROOM

720/ unit

40

TWO BEDROOM

1050/ unit

32

It appears sleeping area requirements would be less of a constraint than total area, so I calculate theoretical maximum occupancy at 592 (4 per studio x 32, plus 6 per 1BR x 40, plus 10 per 2BR x32), but people would probably drive each other crazy at that level, so density at Avalon is probably a better predictor of what to expect. Whether anyone would catch violations if they occurred is another question.