I am writing this out of my concern regarding the process in place to change the zoning status of property in Chestnut Hill.

On March 16, via Zoom, I attended the DRC meeting to understand the plan for 30 West Highland and the zoning variance and special exception requested by the owner of that property.

I anticipated an open and informed presentation and discussion from the interested parties and advocacy for the community concerns from the DRC.

I was very disappointed that there did not seem to be a dialogue. From my observation, the owner of 30 West Highland and the presenting architect seemed to be dictating their plan without any evidence of willingness to compromise or respond to the community’s principal concerns-the building’s height and density.

I understand that there is an ad hoc subcommittee of the DRC working on these issues, but there was little discussion from them and the lack of discussion seemed to confer agreement for the variance.

Community input/questions on the Zoom chat were not clearly answered or were disregarded it seemed.

I had expected but did not observe advocacy for the community’s perspective from the DRC.

Susan Roberts