 I'd like to welcome everyone this evening to the Planning Commission meeting. If you haven't, if you could make sure that you sign in to the clipboard as you come in or some point before you leave, that just helps us keep track and keeps you as an interested party. Tonight, we're going to be doing a presentation on the ATC Next project that's in play and in flight. Dana, would you like to have any sort of a lead into this? I don't think we have much else going on except for that. There's nothing else on the agenda tonight. Not for, because we're not taking testimony on an application, so this is a presentation. We're not taking, we won't be taking action on anything tonight. This is literally just a presentation on what's happening. But there is room for some Q&A. Q&A, absolutely. So Dana. So this is the first time that the Full Planning Commission has seen the draft ATC Next plan. And it still is very much a draft. We haven't finished the last chapter yet, which is the fun part. And it's been guided along for over a year right now, over a year, first by staff and then by steering committee. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Paula. Thank you, John. We met with the steering committee about four times. And oh, and Ned, RPC Rev. Thank you. No big deal. No stop. And so we felt that even though it's not complete, it was definitely time to bring the Planning Commission in on this process. Because they're going to be the ones that are going to be making decisions and adopting it. And so with that, before we get into the introductions, I want to, because I don't want to completely blow the agenda out of the water, because somebody will get mad at us later. I would like to ask if there's, if anyone would like to offer any public comment. There's an opportunity for pretty much anything. This is open forum to bring to us anything you might want to say to us. Hearing none, now we'll move on. I'd like to introduce our super duper planning consultant specialist. Oh, pressure there, huh? Mark Kane and Sharon Murray. Mark is with the SE group in downtown Burlington and Sharon is with Front Porch Community Planning in Bolton, and they are a really good team. Thank you. Thank you for the invite. It's also nice to see a bunch of the steering committee members here. And as Dana said, one of the things that when we began this project about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, an earnest about a year ago, we wanted to do is make sure we had a good steering committee that actually brought some varied perspectives to the conversation. So just to buy a little backstory, you obviously have a current master plan for Essex Town Center. And it was done in 1992, 91. And one of the things I believe that was even mentioned in the town plan update that was adopted a few years ago was the need to really look at that master plan and ask the question is, is it still serving the purposes of the community adequately? And that was one of the things that when we first became engaged with Dana and staff it was really evident was we didn't want to completely throw out the existing master plan because there's a lot there that was actually good and I think this plan tries to pull in some of that goodness, but also understand some of the things that we heard were really driving the conversation. And as you go through this document, what it's trying to present in draft form at least is a picture of here's what you've got today. Here's what the situation is maybe differentially from the earlier master plan is what is the regulatory structure you can create within the community to allow that process to happen in the way you want it to happen. So just I am going to do my best. Can you folks in the back see that second screen okay? Do we need to turn the lights down at all? We can turn that monitor a little bit. The lights need to go down. Is that okay? Nobody's asleep now. I'll try my best to keep you awake. Can we turn these up? How does that work for video? Can people see? We have to strike a balance between our... Is anybody going to come in? So are we good? Yeah, I'm going to highlight the point. So it's not a matter of reading this. I think hopefully you can get from the presentation enough of the context. So there was really three big goals that the project started off with. One was trying to understand what has influenced the pattern of development in the Essex Town Center. That was one big thing. Second was to establish a new vision. What was the vision you wanted to have there? And what kinds of development? Where kinds of uses should go on? What's working today? What would you like to have? The third thing was what determined the set of tools that you wanted to have support that. And if you want to make one critique or criticism of the earlier, the existing master plan, was that its tools to steer development in the way you wanted it probably were not robust. They were robust for the time, but a lot has changed in the last 25, 30 years. So one of the things that we're trying to do in this process is introduce some additional tools that the community can consider to nurture the evolution of the Essex Town Center in the direction that achieves the vision. All right. So just for those on the Planning Commission, you probably are familiar with your zoning. It's a... I've never seen this before. We were asked specifically to make the colors match the existing maps, so hopefully it matches up with the effect. So just for reference for the audience, we've got at the top of the images, and this is going to be pretty consistent throughout, the top of the images is the intersection of old stage road and tower roads. This is the Golden Triangle, which has been called the Golden Triangle for a long time because it's golden and a triangle. Then at the intersection of 289 and Route 15 is Butler's Corners and then obviously the Historic Centers. That's sort of the ends of the triangle for the ETC as it has been originally contemplated. As you can see from the different color coding, I'm not going to detail here, but there's a patchwork of different zoning districts that define the ETC. And some of these zoning districts are residential in focus. Some of them are more mixed-use in focus, but they all have a role to play in sort of evolving the land uses, the land uses that have happened. It's a fairly complicated set of districts. There's lots of variations there. And one of the things that we were thinking about at the beginning of this process is, does that make sense? Is there some way of looking at the ETC more holistically so that the districts that might be created in the zoning that goes along with them really dovetail together better? And that was one thing we took away from that initial analysis. I shouldn't have to do that. The other thing we looked at, and this is obviously more detailed in the document, is we looked at the pattern of growth over the last 30 years since 1992. And we had available to us landsat information, satellite information that sort of mapped those three time periods we could look at that gave us some good information. And bottom line is the pattern development, the ETC has not changed that much. Not much has changed. Now, things have changed for sure, but the pattern, the overall pattern development, around 289 is still where development has occurred largely. There is still a, ah, this thing. I know, I just can't. Being French Canadian would be really horrible. But the pattern development around 289 has continued. The open spaces, the more agricultural land uses have also continued to be in the northern part of it. So what we recognized in that analysis was whatever is happening externally to Essex has not resulted in a lot of fundamental changes to the master plan in terms of the evolution of the ETC. It's kind of gotten to where it's gotten. One of the things that the plan also talks about is some of the forms that have been built out and what you have been seeing over the last decade or so has more been more residential development within the Essex Town Center. So that's introduced some new forms, some new challenges, some new opportunities for sure. But overall the amount of growth that's happened has not been robust. It's just kind of been flat. So just to give an aerial perspective here, one of the things we looked at, a really important part of this project was sort of understanding the views. And we know, you know, the community has done a lot over the last few decades to really try to understand its views, protect seed views. We heard a lot from the public engagement process for this project about the importance of preserving views within the Essex Town Center area. Route 15 has got some tremendous views in Mount Mansfield and those are really important. But we also wanted to understand, you know, how do those views relate to some of these corridors. So obviously 15 is really critical to maintain that long-range visibility of Mount Mansfield. But even within some of the ETC, where the shops are, for example, there are views of Mount Mansfield, the views of Campbell's Hump. So that was information that helped inform later on in this process some of the conversations around height and some of the conversations around building types that might make some sense in terms of making sure that you can encourage more development and watch some growth happen there but not lose some of the things that actually make it a very valuable place to be from a view and aesthetic perspective. We also, as part of this project, we had the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Lab drone over the whole corridor, over 15 corridor. And that proved to be useful information from a number of perspectives. There was a good imagery that came out of that. There was certainly good context that came out of it. But they also shot elevations of everything, the heights of everything in the ETC. And one of the things that we were able to do is really look with more detail about the change in terrain within the Essex Town Center and how that relates to what's happening on the ground. So in this map, for example, the lighter blue-green colors are lower in elevation than the darker blues and purples. So the ground elevation is dropping down. So just for reference, 15 is there. Old Stage Road is right here. This is that intersection. So you can see that in general terms, the grades are dropping downward from Old Stage Road down to the 289 corridor. That's really important, we thought, because one of the things that your current regulations do is they say height's height. It doesn't really matter how it relates to terrain. So in this case, one of the things we've discovered and talked with the steering committee in several instances about is, well, if the terrain is dropping away, would taller buildings be okay closer to 289? Because the net effect of that might be to not have as much impact on the Route 15 corridor. That doesn't excuse buildings for being poorly designed or doesn't excuse them for not, relating to other viewpoints. But as a general discussion point, we thought, let's look at this from a three-dimensional perspective and see what that might do. And this was really helpful, and I think this was particularly helpful in this area where we really saw this most pronounced change in elevation. The rest of the ETC, as you can imagine, is fairly constrained to a narrow band along the 15 corridor. So there's not as much of that going on. This is the one area where it really opens up for that conversation to happen. So the water and sewer, and I had to correct this in the draft. The first draft with the staff is that your sewer allocation policy is not a de facto growth management tool. It is a growth management tool. And came into the discussion about maybe the ETC is too big. Maybe it needs to be a little bit smaller because it should line up with the sewer core boundary so that those things work together to encourage growth to happen in the place where sewer and other infrastructures available. So that was another thing that came up. Obviously, on the real positive side is you have a sewer core area and you have water infrastructure here, which is great. You're not trying to build something from whole cloth. You actually have a lot of infrastructure to work with. The biggest problem, and this is where Dana was alluding to in chapter 8, which will be in there, is that the amount of allocation for sewer is not enough to support a significant amount of growth in the ETC. There's a gap, a fairly substantial gap. And one of the things that will be a recommendation in the chapter is can we work, can the community work to look at its allocation policies broadly and say, can we reallocate? Can we go to find some allocation that's not being used and can we re-adapt it, re-purpose it so that it serves the Essex Town Center and allows for growth to happen. Paul, Larry, I'm sure Paul's here tonight, Paul, Larry was on our steering committee and as you probably know, because he probably shows up here frequently, Paul's a great resource to understanding some of those issues. Paul was at the last steering committee saying, give me five minutes on a map I can give you 100,000 gallons of capacity. And I think the point being is that he knows and I think that Dennis knows that there is an unallocated sewer capacity that would some process might be reallocated to serve the goal of allowing the Essex Town Center to evolve in a way that actually may be higher density. The other thing that we wanted to make sure was we're not sort of ignored in the process and we did it really early on and spent quite a bit of time was looking at some of the resources and on the positive side most of the ETC is free of a lot of the major ones. There's not like wholesale areas of wetland. Now there are wetland areas on Alderbrook that have a significant amount of wetlands and in this sort of north eastern quadrant of the ETC there's a number of wetlands associated with the Alderbrook as it goes north more comes out from south and some drainage as it supports it. So there are wetlands, other natural constraints but in large parts of the ETC particularly on the 15th corridor there wasn't a lot of map. Now again, working with our good steering committee that have a lot of on the ground experience the pattern of development will make it some difficulties achieving some of the growth potential but it's not as severe as in some places which is good. It also, as I pointed out remember the land use map a lot of the ETC, a lot of the evolution of the ETC is going to be adaptive reuse. It's going to be redevelopment in some ways and you've already seen some of that conversation going on as a community and that's an important consideration. Development is not going to be as much of an issue particularly if we take another hard look at this golden triangle and ask ourselves is that the right area to include in it? That is green field development the bulk of this is not so that was an important conversation we had. So through just to recap some of the key things and again the draft talks about these little more detail we did a number of community outreach pieces we had a focus group discussion in May at the and unfortunately we picked the best, nicest, sunniest day in six months but you know it happens. But we had a good crew there, there was all day and I know some of the folks that were there were here today and that was very appreciative. We had a really interesting two hour block session of keypad polling focus group discussions around different aspects of place making. We looked at the kinds of building forms, pedestrian connections types of uses, all sorts of stuff in that focus group. And then we kind of dovetailed that with a survey where we had responses from the community survey was well received, went out to a large number of the population and we had a bunch of partial responses and a lot of full responses. It was a monumentally big survey and I appreciate everybody taking the time to do it. I didn't know it wasn't a quick one. But we got a lot of good input from that same similar set of questions. And a couple of things kind of boiled out of that these kind of capture some of those key points. Sort of imagine a scenario where all of that shopping and retail kind of goes out of the window and there's also all this residential development. But I think the community was really around, you know, rallied around the idea that one of the things that makes the ETC different and perhaps is that it does have this shopping and entertainment element and can it be more mixed? Yeah. But don't lose that core of pieces and parts. Route 15 and traffic, I mean there was that's not the elephant in the room I'm not sure what is, but 15 is an important regional roadway that needs to be maintained for flow and traffic. And I think one of the things that we took to bear was like whatever we propose, whatever we're thinking about we have to be cognizant of that. So there's a couple things that are mentioned in the document that are really important I think to recognizing that growth can continue to happen and residential growth can continue to happen but don't do some things to exacerbate the flow. So don't make some changes that are going to create real big challenges to that. But a kind of commensurate to that is also the non-motorized connectivity with the ETC needs to be improved. Right now it's not cohesive from a pedestrian experience perspective. So you know if we're going to define neighborhoods in the ETC can connect them in better ways for non-motorized access. And that's an important part of the vision that's been talked about and talked about. Indian Brook, but you know as this place grows over time and gets more residential density, recreation becomes really important. And open space and recreation are related. So that's another thing we'll talk about in a little while. Again back to the idea of a shopping entertainment district, the retail piece, people like the fact that it might have a mix of local and destination retail. It's not like a Manchester, New Vermont where it's just all the outlet malls and it's not like Church Street where maybe just all the shops is a combination of things. And people felt that that was a good mix. Open space and views, again everybody, well not everybody, but huge percentages of people felt that maintaining open space and views are really important. So that was a critical kind of component of the vision elements of the vision. Okay, architecture. This is where it got hard and heavy. So not a lot of love about the architectural expression in the ETC engine. But I think what people felt through the process, the outreach process we took, is that trying to create something that was distinctive and unique in character, trying to promote some more unique characteristics would be good. Give it some identity. Making sure that the height and mass of structures don't impede those long range views. That's an important consideration. Keep things at the human scale. Promoting a design, a building design, a relationship between buildings and people that's a little more logical. So one of the things that the vision ultimately suggests is more of a grid orientation, for example, in the mixed use area so that the pedestrians can feel like they're walking down the street and it's just not a assemblage of diverse parking lots. There's a relationship between those things. And also encouraging higher density. And a lot of people felt that, you know, if you're going to put density in Essex, this is a good place to do it. And if you don't put it in the ETC, then you're just putting pressure elsewhere. And you have within the ETC you've got a reasonably good transportation infrastructure with good access to 289 and the roof 15 quarter, which is phenomenal. You've got infrastructure of watering sewer and other facilities. You've got access to schools on which is really good. You've got a diverse already diverse mix of uses. So, okay, double down and let's sort of see if we can get a density that actually may actually increase the vibrancy of the area by adding people because that's actually one of the things that you sort of look at the overall ETC that's missing is the number of people. So there was a lot of discussion with the group and I think the diverse, you know, looking at a diversity of forms is actually really important. So what came out of this process was a, you know, a vision statement. I'm not going to read it verbatim, but basically it really is talking about trying to create some neighborhoods within the ETC that have some distinctive characteristics that you can look at like the historic center, for example, has some characteristics that are important to preserve and you've already taken steps, regulatory steps to make sure that's the case. But keep those, keep some neighborhood distinctions that actually provide some value but try to find a way to link them together and try to find a way to give them some common reference and common connection between them. And also to shape the architectural expression more formal. Use some tools and that's what this a lot of this project has really evolved towards is figure out some tools to find some tools that help you promote good architectural outcome and site outcome so that you're not, you know, as new applications come in you can clearly communicate some of the things you want to try to have to potential developers so they know what they're getting into. So there's a clarity around that as opposed to well, what's your pitch and we'll see how we like it or not. And that's one of the things that when working with staff early in this project was really clear. It's like we wanted to have better guidance towards the evolution of ETC as opposed to leaving it too open-ended. So with that one of the first things we came up with was sort of block diagram, diagram if you will, of where the boundaries are. So just for references the big dashed line is the outer ETC, originally ETC boundary and the colored areas, the sort of toned in areas are the different districts or neighborhoods that we're talking about. So we shrunk it by about 25%. So it was 930 acres and it's now 780 acres roughly. And so it shrunk and you'll see where that shrunk shrinking happens is it basically gets rid of the golden triangle. So no more golden triangle as part of the Essex Town Center. Ironically, no not ironically with great vigor we tried to get it to match the sewer core boundary. So there's a connection there. So if you're in the sewer core boundary you're in the ETC as it stands at this point which is important and sort of courage that development and density. We also defined a bunch of districts and I'll kind of walk through those just in highlights. We have a residential district which largely includes where the residential is happening now. So that's makes sense we've got. We have a mixed use two mixed use districts mixed use north and mixed use south. The distinction between the two is we'll talk you'll also see in the document or think about in the document is this is this mixed use south which is where the shops are which Essex Atlas are to look at its business over time. There'll be a residential to build around it. It'll create a neighborhood with a commercial core to it. And there's obviously a lot of buildings a lot of uses in here that are home occupation type uses or what were residential uses in our business uses. So it's going to continue to have that. And then the historic center continues to have a much more consistent with its current. Basically its current zone. We don't really anticipate. But the big takeaway here is this recognition that there are these distinctive areas that we wanted to sort of catch. The other two are so the area around Alderbrook and the town forest is recreation and conservation. That's what its function is now and we fully expect it to be going down the road. And then this other third last one is this residential recreation. So as we'll talk about in a minute we've identified obviously this is that transitional land between the you know some more mixed use environment and sort of the more rural landscape of the rest of Northern Essex. And we saw that there is residential potential there. There makes some value to make some it makes some sense to have some residential development there. But organizing that residential development around with consideration of open space and recreation would be really important because it could offer up an opportunity for the whole ETC to have access to some recreational opportunities there that you don't have. Indianbrook which is up here doesn't have you know it's a passive recreational environment. So if there's an area within the ETC to have a little more active recreation that might help with that. And this is just a different flat view barge that you sort of sort of see. But one of the things that we want in this obviously has the existing infrastructure out so you can sort of see you know a large majority of the mixed use north episode south area is already developed and as I mentioned that's one of the things that's going to need to happen is it's going to have to redevelop around in an adaptive way it's going to have to infill. And so whatever the regulatory structure you create it's going to have to be supportive of guidance towards that kind of development. The mixed use north has a little bit more opportunity relative to undeveloped properties so that's an area where there could be some more green field development. So this gives you sort of the basic pattern. So this one's going to be a little hard to see but I'll do my best. So one of the things, one of the tools we used to study this was we did some build out analyses of a plan. This is by no means meant to be the definitive planned outcome for the ETC. So the caveat being made. But was meant to explore some of the opportunities and some ideas around this vision. And I'm just going to highlight coming to some of the key points but you know in the mixed use north area the idea would there be some, maybe some higher density mixed residential development here towards the interchange because that could be a very attractive location for a hotel for example. Potentially. And then as you go towards the north it would actually transition to sort of more single family cottage style uses. So there's a little bit of a transition there. But still a largely residential focused with an enclave perhaps of commercial. A key component of this is to make sure that the access off 15 is maintained in a way that doesn't create some problems. So one of the things we've recommended is that between the 289 corridor and basically just past Essec way right around here that that would be a median put in to limit access points on to new properties. And obviously there's already some good ones. You've got definitely got some good intersections right now, Billy Butler etc. and keep those there but put a median elsewhere so that those interchanges become really defined access points to some of those properties. I don't think that affects, that's certainly not affecting what the current situation is in the town center proper. But I think it would help to make sure that as the north side develops or if there's any redevelopment on the north side that it's done in a way that understands that it should be careful about too many curb cuts on 15 keeping the flow of traffic through there. The other kind of important part of this I think was the notion that again there's a diversity of uses and one of the things that we're suggesting is you'll sort of see in this plan a much stronger grid. It's a grid that actually starts to relate between what's there today don't touch it Mark what's there today and what can happen around it. So one of the things as the concept sort of illustrates is having a grid can help define where building envelopes go can create a better relationship between those building envelopes in the street and allow for some better interaction between pedestrians and architecture. The other one of the other ideas is that and this is something I know that's been sort of talked about is there's a big green for example down here in the center of it. So the idea is if it redevelops can there be some public and civic space can the open space of it be a very functional open space so it actually provides just the leftover land for example but a fairly functional piece of open space and that was something in the public process we talked a lot about and people were really excited about that idea about having open spaces in the sense that not just the 15 subject to wetland issues and all of that there are some fairly deep lots there and there is some potential to develop land on that backside and one of the ideas that came out of our process was can we connect a road back there to the price dropper property to allow that intersection that light to function as the access point to some of that development on the back versus providing 14 different curb cuts on 15 which would really be defeating the purpose. So it seems to make a lot of sense now obviously it's wrought with development challenges we know that and at least not which is to making sure there's not constraints that would preclude that but the idea is that again thinking about adaptive reuse of this over time that shopping center starts to be integrated with the neighborhood around it those are customers those are people that might use that facility to walk down the grocery store so it really starts to give this neighborhood commercial area a real sense of use and gives it some connection to some residential properties that doesn't really have so instead of just being simply a drive-thru destination it may actually allow for some walkability there which is really kind of cool and obviously sidewalks and other things would be part of that and then obviously there's the land the residential land that could be accessed off of here and off of Towers Road we also felt that a connection off of Towers Road would be really helpful in some portions of this part of the the ETC to allow for some a different access point and obviously for emergency egress and also just for flow so that it's not all dumping out after 15 so those are sort of the highlights of the build out plan I think we'll just sort of walk through a couple of these things so again one of the things we're looking at is a mix of uses and this is the ETC North area and the residential is the brown, the orange is non-residential and open spaces and I'm not going to worry about the percentages but you can see it's largely residential that's the key that we see as largely residential whereas in the mix use south you can see it's a lot, there's about half of it's residential but the other half of the land allocation would be divided between some open space and commercial uses so there's a, I think there was a recognition in the vision that keeping a vibrant commercial enterprise going on in the ETC mix juice south area would be really helpful to keep that active and vibrant the neighbor commercial has a much greater residential growth potential and the mix would imagine would be over time if it builds out kind of like what's anticipated would be a larger percent of residential there but still a very neighborhood-scaled commercial enterprise that would be there to serve that community and then open space is important oops overlap here just kind of moving on to some of the other parts that the plan discusses mobility and connectivity so we I think went to great pains to make sure that Route 15 was not turned into a main street you know one of the things we heard we talked about this early on in the project was well it's turned you know 15 into main street put the buildings right on the front of it it's like we didn't hear that we didn't hear that from the public that was not something that sort of came out it's like let's do that you've gunned some things well into the green belt for example in portion of the ETC to kind of create some buffering between 15 and some of that development and we think that's a great idea and the recommendations are to continue that on both sides of 15 in the mix juice core so that it actually creates sort of linear park along that area which I think would be a huge asset but we also recognize that we want there are some really important plates you know things to do in terms of crosswalks and defining those better so that people really know they're there what they do they're clear they're you know it's a very very appropriate thing so we've identified in the plan you know some really important crossing points for example and we think those should be a focus of attention to places on it one that's really I think particularly important is over by the price chopper whether you know the crossing is now and one of the things that we see again as if that evolves into an axis point into a neighborhood that becomes a really important crossing point the other thing is we have articulated in the plan is the idea of actually creating a larger side path basically a wider 10 foot wide bike lane which you've already started on the south side of 15 and actually have the crossing point over to the north side happen at the price chopper which would allow you to take advantage of a signalized intersection for that crosswalk to allow people to get over to ultimately getting to school eventually so the idea is that that side path could keep going on the north side of 15 and get to the school cross towers road eventually really important piece there is an old railroad bed too that kind of cuts through there and one of the ideas that was communicated was maybe that's something over the long haul could be looked at as another alternative multiuse path to allow folks to get around this the rest of 15 and the interchange there the intersection excuse me and eventually get over to the school which would be an interesting combination of options but that may be a little bit longer term but this is the kind of thing that in terms of mobility is to weave these neighborhoods together the other thing is the plan discusses internally sidewalks throughout it's that's a really important part of the idea is that you want to be able there should be sidewalk like there's a good linear path to do that better you know better the idea of a side path on parallel to 15 and then crossing over was also a recognition of you don't have enough road diet in the route 15 to put all the bicycle accommodation to do all the things you want to do you can get a 10 foot wide side path it does allow for at least some bicycle accommodation road bicyclists John included will still be in the road and they're always going to do that and that's fine but for the sort of the neighborhood bicycling needs having a side path might actually be a better longer term strategy and it actually would dovetail with your existing bike path that's kind of happening already the other piece that was really spent a lot of time out as open space and really starting to look at open space not as I said just the leftover land from a development project but how does open space fit into different types that might actually serve the ends of the community and this is a really this can be a really challenging thing for a community to get their hands around because you know traditionally you look at open spaces open space has been the purview of the developer they say okay we've done our calculation 30% open space and here it is getting into some of the process we're talking about what you try to do is you try to steer the conversation open space to what kinds of open space makes sense within certain parts of this overall area relative to what the community needs so as an example in the mixed use areas for example the types of open space bank might include things like plazas and outdoor pocket parks and you know almost streetscape elements as opposed to large vacant fields and that's a really important consideration to sort of think about because it gives you as a community opportunity to say to the developer we want your open space we love the open space but can it look like this more than this and that's a really important thing that the plan is trying to articulate is that there is a palette of open space there's a series of types of open space we haven't defined you know some communities do we have defined some really specific parameters around you know you have to have one park bench for every five people but we there's also open space that serves the public realm that serves the public in large if you're building open space down here in the mixed use areas where there's a combination of commercial and residential uses some of that open space should be really public accessible it should be just an enclave of private development it should be like I said a plaza or a green for example whereas in some of the other or infill residential developments those open spaces might be more low neighborhood serving they might be a community garden or just a field for that matter and that's okay I think the plan tries to articulate some of those ideas around the definitions of those districts and that's one of the big things trying to promote is this idea that open spaces are palette and you pick from those and also then this aligns with that connectivity plan to make sure that you know if you're providing spaces can you connect them together so can somebody go from this plaza down the sidewalk to another place and they go from this park on the bike path to another place that builds a network you know we spent a fair amount of time talking with people about this idea of you know right now what is the ETC and there's a visual in the report that shows all the different signs in the ETC that say Essex Town Center like there's five different fonts and all such as signs common unifying visual expression and whether or not you need a common unifying visual expression we don't have a fully strong sense of that from people but there is some recognition and I think we're trying to suggest there is some recognition that working towards a better cohesion across the ETC may help with identification who you are as a place and that doesn't have to and the plan talks about this it doesn't have to be okay we have one sort of wayfinding and signage piece here we have one wayfinding and signage piece here maybe there's a common thread that can be woven throughout them that sort of unifies the whole place but still allowing each of these neighborhoods to have some maybe some of their own expression historic district for example probably has some architecture has some character has some attributes that are unique to it and you don't want to lose that necessarily but how does that relate to the bulk of the ETC the mixed use environment because there's something that can be done and a good local case study for that and you've been to Stowe you sort of see they use the same font throughout so it doesn't matter if you're at the mountain or at the village there's a visual motif that actually weaves it all together so that is an element that could be explored we were going to recommend it that's something you think about doing is what can you do to bring this place together so when somebody says hey head over to Essex town center right now they think of just this and is there a way to make that experience maybe a little bit broader and give people a sense that this is a place within Essex that actually does have some connection to each other so one of the the big parts of this document so far is chapter six which really brings together a lot of information about these districts that were describing and we're really concentrating on sort of the main district we didn't provide this for the residential recreation district or the conservation district primarily because the conservation district doesn't have a lot going on to it and residential district is meant to be a little bit lower density residential so not as much of an issue but the the defining district's pieces are helping you start to think about your zoning as a form based code this is not form based code yet and I think it's really important to recognize that that's one of the steps that this project will ultimately have to kind of go into is a regulatory process to turn it into a zoning code but it was really meant to try to get you to think about the really like the relationships between these districts retail but just in general terms I sort of would come in the high points is it really is I think for the first time at least in Essex's experience starting to connect this idea that that its uses are really important and you know as a planning commission you spend a lot of time you know debating you also start to look at the form that use takes so a commercial enterprise is not a commercial enterprise it's not a commercial enterprise the form does matter and if you go back to the where was the ETC evolved from one of the common refrains from people was the forms that have developed today have not done it they've missed out some opportunities to really create interesting place they don't really relate to people that well there's just some things that if we can go back and magically redo it we would do it if we definitely heard that loud and clear so I think one of the things that we were trying to do in this draft is to start to introduce some tools that you might consider to help you get those development applications and hopefully before you get them and have those conversations and say use is really important the use is really important but the form those uses take is also really important so let's talk about that too so back to the density so one of the things that that build out analysis did is it resulted in we did a bunch of calculations to determine if we apply this as a general rule how many units we're going to get and this is the residential build out as you can sort of see the orange bar represents if everything happens as it magically can happen and the brown bar is what's there today roughly and you'll see what we've cut is like 1272 residential units within those districts in the ETC that's up about 700 and some odd units and it's a lot it's a big increase in density for sure now as I think the planning commission entertains and for the public's benefit what you can get through the zoning process and what you can get in the real world don't always align up there's obviously things that affect that we have made some provisions within the build out now just for things like adaptive reuse versus green field or is it really constrained that but it is important to recognize that this would represent probably a maximum condition certainly we've also made some assumptions in this and we'll get to this in a second about height okay well if you're going to get to this density you're not going to get it with one story buildings in the ETC so there is a conversation this is part of this discussion is to get to a level of density within the ETC that actually is supportive of the area height is an important part of that conversation because all of a sudden that gets you allows you to achieve this but just in general terms there is the mixed use south and the mixed use north have the highest densities associated with residential development in the recommendations and those are 8 units per acre and 12 units per acre and those are densities that are consistent with sort of a good more I'm using urban in a very loose term but a much more urban type density when you get to that level of density you can start to do you'll start getting some things you'll start getting some opportunities to make those other things you want like streetscape and place making happen because there's enough value in density to actually support that it's also a rule of thumb that that's about the minimum density you need to support regular transit service that conversation about transit and Essex is still evolving and the market there's lots of changes that are active that basically means the highest level in migration than anywhere else in the country more people are moving here doesn't feel like it but that's what the moving companies tell us here is a migrant from New Jersey yeah I knew that already that's why I asked but no it's a really good point one of the things that sort of backdrops of this project and I think that's reflected in the build out is you have an opportunity within the ETC from a physical planning perspective to enable more development more residential development, some more commercial development some more mixed use development and if you look outside of the area there's a lot of other competitors for sure obviously Burlington is going up significantly there's a lot going on but you do have some attributes that are different than other places you actually have this established commercial core which is actually a good place to start from so you're actually trying to diversify your portfolio of uses within the ETC and one of the things we've been working closely with staff on is looking through the existing zoning and saying if we take the existing zoning as a starting point within the ETC what uses really would we want to promote and what uses don't make a lot of sense and we've been working with staff on that and that's going to continue presumably as you go forward but the overall emphasis is is to allow for a higher density of residential uses because we feel like that's going to give you commercial enterprises to make some sense it will allow you to let some other non-retail commercial like live work environments actually happen because you need people there to live and work so those are some of the things and I think the other thing that is really important to recognize is that even this number is not that scary relatively speaking it's not like come back and when you're 5,000 residential units 1,200,1,300, whatever the number ends up being 1,200 number is not so out of scale with the scale of this area that it creates all sorts of exacerbates transportation issues it doesn't create the possibility of a real catastrophic outcome and I think that's important again we wanted to make sure things like 15 don't get pooched because the densities don't make some sense and this is a level of density our expression is it feels like it's achievable, it's doable it's supportive of the goals and the vision but it's not so aspirational that you would never a million years get there I'm sorry if my voice is starting to go I've been fighting a cold all week so one of the things we looked at spent a lot of time talking with people about is height and I want to just I have these images on here just for reference to explain it a little bit more in detail after but you know in some of the ETC now some of these buildings are based on the existing buildings that are there and we kind of used the 3D model to figure them out so buildings in the ETC right now 35 40 feet some cases so sure certainly zoning allows for 40 feet as sort of a baseline but one of the things we really thought about is that what a building looks like is also important in addition to the height just because it's 45 feet or 40 feet tall doesn't mean it's a well designed building it doesn't mean it does all those other things you want it to do we're suggesting that height can go up in some spots and I'll talk about where we think that makes some sense but what does that height do do the goals and aspirations we have as a community so you start getting out of this sort of rote discussion around 40 feet never and if it's 35 feet it's awesome because it's under 40 I think that's one of the fundamental things we're trying to introduce is a change in discussion is that it's not you can't divorce those two things it's got to be connected together that's what a form-based code ultimately does is all it's a community say okay well if you are looking at this architecture you are checking off these boxes in terms of attributes of the building and relationship of the building of the place you know the height can be taller than we would normally allow because you're doing the things you want to do with that height you're using it wisely cooked into this would be things like view cones for example or important sight lines so if somebody's if Mount Mansfield is behind this building and that's the critical view that's a problem but if Mount Mansfield is looking this way with this building on the side down the street at Mountain Hills at the end of it that may not be a problem that's one of the things I think is really important to think about as you prove before with this process and just as a sort of side note we've looked at the all the districts in the ETC and as I said we've got the mixed use north we've got two height maximum height recommendations 40 feet as you go to that more residential area sort of towards Old Stage Road and 55 feet as you get to the interchange because again it's dropping down in elevation and also it's behind people there's not a lot of obstruction of view from there you're not going to see anything from the quarter there so it does allow we think it will allow for a taller recognition height there because of that similarly as you go from Route 15 towards 289 in the mixed use south district 40 feet up along the road because there is obviously those concerns about those long range views and the impact on those long range views from 15 but when you start heading down past where the where the Panaffords is 65 feet can get you of a higher density and over that distance actually the grade drop about 30 feet so the net effect is essentially about the same height relative to the 15 quarter this discussion though I think in isolation oh gosh we're talking about making everything really tall this comes with also with going back to the form based code it comes with consequence you don't just get to build a 65 foot tall building you get to build a 65 foot tall building that actually relates to the street and has good presence on the street has step backs at certain heights because then it allows for the views to maintain the building doesn't look like a big solid plane things that come along with it so getting to these heights is not simply just a guarantee of you know you don't just get the height get the height and the form that comes along with it well there's a suggestion too to keep a district height limit but to also define the buildings by form of the building so including both of those in the regs give you some wiggle room at the top in terms of your roof styles and other things that you have on the top of the building right so when it comes in this is the maximum district height standard oh I touched it sorry this is the maximum district height standard okay but how are you what's how many stories are you doing what kind of building are you doing how do you fit it into that 65 feet can you vary the roof line to actually make it look better those are the kinds of things that gives you some tools and toolkit so we also have you know a big issue in any mixed use environment is parking I'm hoping it goes away someday I'm gonna be 50 this year so I'll probably not see the end of that but it'd be nice if I did see the end of parking conversations but I wanted to introduce the ETC conversation was this idea again not for every district and if you look at the document you'll see that parking is identified as a type 2 and that structured parking you know being able to put a parking deck in now a parking deck is not a cheap proposition very expensive proposition but it also should relate to the architecture around it so that it's not standing alone by itself with nothing surrounding so this is kind of an example of a wrapped parking garage this figure illustrates a couple of really important components of it and again the plan talks about this in a little more detail but there's this again there's the parking garage is back here at the end of the garage where number 2 is the frontage of the building the primary street you'll see doesn't look like a parking garage and that's important so that your primary street is invigorated and vitalized the primary street also has what we're defining as this primary built-to line so where you have now been working with setback requirements like 30 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet whatever a built-to line says you gotta build you can't go past that line you gotta bring that building close to the road we want to build we want that building here we don't want that building 100 feet away and a parking lot in front of them we want to put that building here close to the road so you actually start to create now these can vary by district so depending on the district you're in they can vary between primary roads secondary streets so it doesn't have to be consistent and you can provide some variety but that's a really important aspect of allowing the form to relate to the public is to take that idea of a setback and sort of flip it on its head and say no it's a set 2 you gotta set that building to this point you also can allow and do people do allow for articulations of the building so there can be talking about this or we're working on this as we move forward parking is also an over time that there's a lot within the ETC where the community says you know what we want to have this build out as dense as possible we may need to put up a parking lot so we can actually allow that to happen so we're taking some stress off of those other lots to develop more vigorously you could have a lot that is a use for parking that's again it could be a public lot it could be a private lot it could be a quasi-public it could be anything and that's important that's an important change in terms of the structure thanks CK another key point of the structure of the plan is to look at some variations on the street profile you know your current street standards do not fully accommodate the kinds of development that the ETC is thinking about so I know this is going to be part of the process going forward but the idea of looking at street types as again a street different kinds of streets as types and applying them differentially in different parts of the ETC and that's actually something that's really important to have a portfolio of streets now that has to be worked out with public works it has to be a thoughtful conversation around there but I think one of the things that this plan is trying to introduce is this idea that the relationship between where that public space is and these buildings is really important and how much the community wants to control versus how much it's willing to let the private sector control is an important debate that needs to happen if you want to shape the outcome of place as forcefully as you can then the more you control the better if you don't want to have that and there are reasons not to costs and all those sorts of things then you can sort of bring that in but having that conversation is really important so that the development committee understands okay when we're talking about building something and I have outdoor space associated with what's my responsibility what's the community's responsibility there's clarity around that that's really important but you know in order to achieve the vision here you can't just show a 60 foot wide road with no parking on it and then no street trees in some places you need those things to make place you need those things to make a inviting pedestrian environment so the plan introduces those for sure it also starts to introduce the open space types into the mix so again just to go lay it out so that it also starts introducing you know how these streets might the kinds of feeling and imagery that might sort of support those things it talks about versus a you know a larger commercial a larger mixed use building does make sense there this goes back to that idea about the public realm so you know where what is the public realm how does that relate to the architecture around it this is an important part of the you know the conversation with the ETC is what do you want this to do this is you know community responsibility developer responsibility and or maybe shared responsibility in some cases it's not an all nothing proposition Burlington is spending 23 million dollars on a bunch of improvements that actually are here and spill over to here so they actually are doing that using any way shape or form that needs to spend 23 million dollars on that but it is start to start thinking about the relationship between the street and these buildings and have that conversation about what you want to do and what your expectations are happens outside of that is really kind of the main point of this and again back to I just mentioned you know quickly the open space types but for each district you know we're looking at different types of open space within each district so in this regions and pocket parks and community gardens and playgrounds are the kinds of open space that make a lot of sense so that would be the pallet if somebody comes in and says I have a 20% contribution open space I need to make what can I do to do that well come back to the green and the pocket parking we're good as opposed to I don't know what do you want what do you want to do this changes that conversation the chapter 7 of the document gets more into detail into the the different forms that are contemplated and it's again really important to understand that these are not you know we're not creating a pattern book that every house every structure in a six-town center needs to conform to that would be kind of an interesting thing to try to do but we did not dare try to do that but what we are trying to do is communicate you know some parameters some fundamental parameters about the relationship between buildings and the surrounding land so for example in this particular you know this case it's a single family home and you'll see the build to line there is bigger it's got a bigger front yard that just makes sense it's going to have a front yard but it also has some ideas like can you put the gable facing to the build the rows it actually makes inviting it actually has a character to things like that that are really important elements that you can communicate this is a this is a larger mixed-use building and again it doesn't apply that corner and one of the things that came you know as identified as put some screening some architectural character on the front yard it actually looks like part of the building and you can wrap that around to the corner so it actually doesn't appear as a you know seems good I don't know if you've ever been to Winooski and you've seen you know the Winooski the main block in Winooski it's kind of like that where the building you know there's a parking garage inside there you may be looking at that building you're not going to see the parking garage that's an important thing to make that building feel like it's connected so that's where we're at I think about this there's going to be a couple big things in there obviously one of them is going to be I don't want to skip to know the second bullet but one of this is going to be making sure that the sewer core piece aligns with the ETC and really trying to make sure that there's connection the other is identifying some key community infrastructure and so we think that there's there are some things the community should be doing as a community and again it's a short term long term it's a question but the community should be thinking about doing in terms of promoting the vision and that could include things like starting to get the idea of the sidewalk improvements on 15 sort of vetted and put to the process another big thing is right now 15 is a class 1 state highway and so if you want to start doing some of these intersections actually it's not it's class 1 state highway class 1 town highway no it's a state highway it's a recommendation to convert it to a class 1 town highway I thought I was saying but maybe not most of what we talked about would be a nightmare with v-trans if you control it as a class 1 town highway you can have the ability to have those conversations look at speed limits look at crossing points the median becomes a function v-trans will still want to make sure it flows for 15 because you're connected as part of regional transportation infrastructure but it becomes a really important thing to consider and again at the lead time on that is a while so it's one of those things that is a community investment right let's start thinking about that again going back to what didn't the regional master plan do that would have been something the regional master plan presented a median to gov in a boulevard too you can't do it so having the accessibility to do that would be a important consideration the other things are things like parks and open space we talked to a little bit of staff about are there parks or are there open spaces within the ETC that it really would be a great thing to have can we identify what those are and start getting them on a map and start identifying them as priorities so when a development project comes up or a piece of property comes up you're ready to move on that you can move as a community the connection some of these areas for potential paths or recreation paths or roadways can you start looking at those on your official map and start bringing those into the conversation for your long term planning or coming ready to move on it so those are some of the key things I don't know Sharon you want to talk a little bit about the zoning process that we're going to be going down are we going to go down? yeah you've actually covered quite a bit of it so my presentation won't be pretty short in part because we would be interested in feedback from the planning commission in terms of what you're thinking but when we got the RFP part of what we were charged with doing was looking at more form based codes and regulations and what you see tonight reflects a lot of that that we're really looking at a lot of design elements that don't exist you know as Mark noted the previous master plan your current zoning is a very conventional approach to looking at zoning and regulations and so we were in trying to got was that the current business design review district is really hard to apply as it applies across a bunch of different types of development areas and it hasn't developed in a consistent fashion so we were specifically charged was looking at the design review overlay district but also looking at another option which would be a pure form based code you know and again a lot of what we've talked about tonight are the elements of a form based code I don't know how many of you are familiar with that process but it's a much different approach to local regulation that a lot of communities are considering but basically it would be taking this master plan taking all those forms attaching a lot of numbers to them and saying this is our zoning it's very prescriptive there's not much of a role in the planning commission or the if you had a development review board or the zoning board you have to meet these forms you have to meet these dimensions if you check off the list you're good to go certainly developers, architects like that because it's much easier to get permits that way but it does not architects less so they're the ones that came up with it the bad ones did so so it's a very much expedited permitting process at that end but hopefully it would still get you with the form of development for public input into the process but again a lot of the tools that Mark was identifying that come out of the form based code are very useful in terms of applying to new development one of the other things we're considering the current zoning is based really on old tools as Mark said it's conventional zoning a lot of it at the time the first master plan was done was green field so there's a lot of reliance on things like master plans and plan unit development in anticipation of big projects and you've had a few of those but as we've noted the best potential going forward is more for infill and redevelopment more incremental forms of development so the suggestion is taking some of these forms as Mark said in chapter 6 they're defined by district and hardwiring them into your zoning districts so part of updating the zoning would be taking a look at the current districts updating them to match the vision in the neighborhoods or the districts that were redeveloped as part of the master plan but putting those kind of form-based design standards right within your your zoning district codes and so that might include updating the purpose statements again there's a lot of vision statements that are tied to each of these districts that would go into the zoning and updating the purpose statements here make sure that it can happen elsewhere so a good example that if we redefine a use that makes sense to achieve the vision for the ETC we don't want that to have a consequence down on Pearl Street or someplace like that so it's going to be and that's another reason why looking at the districts within the ETC kind of sort of separately from the rest of the community might be valuable so you don't create as many of those unintended consequences of a change here ripples through to some other part of town which you definitely I mean one of the things to be honest and car repair things like that we're looking to make sure that they're allowed somewhere but not necessarily within the town center if they're there now obviously they can they can stay right and also as Mark said tying those uses recategorizing them so that they relate to form so we're basically taking uses in the tables and saying well these are the types of residential we want these are the types of commercial we want these are the types of civic uses and each of those types have form types associated with them and it's also to make sure that mixed use is easy to do almost by right I mean not without any review under the current regulations the structure everything would at least probably go through site plan review so part of this would be making sure your site goes as he said there's things like one of the things we're going to suggest is that you look at minimum and maximum as well as minimum setbacks maybe look at minimum densities as well as maximum densities to make sure that you maximize your capacity and then as we said looking at height differently too not just as a district height limitation but looking at building stories as they relate to building types and building forms so it's trying to introduce a lot of these design elements into your zoning district cables and then also incorporating a lot of what Mark covered again site plan review to make sure that parking and all that's located as intended one thing on park and just think of the one thing we did the plan talks about parking at this level and says you know one thing that we think is really important is we talk about different types of parking so there's surface parking and structured parking and integrated architectural parking and all of that and those are all I think appropriate to certain districts certain types of parking make sense but the other part of parking is the idea that shared parking right now where your provisions work is you can apply a shared parking analysis where recommendation in the master plan is to say in the mixed use districts it's not it's not you're going to apply shared parking you're going to be looking at that's going to be a part of the calculation with the goals of you shouldn't be just building extra parking for every single use you should really be thinking about as a parking system particularly in the mixed use north and south so you know it's going forward there's still these options that are open to the planning commission again we can work from a more conventional approach or we could try if you're really really think you want to try we could go for a form-based code but again the recommendation out of the report I think based on our discussions with staff in the steering committee is going to be a more of a hybrid approach but that does mean that there's going to be a lot more individual decisions as you go through that process less so than now yeah you know in terms of what is into the zoning districts so that they don't float out there separately since they are much more integrated in terms of uses forms and types there was really three rationals that I had and Sharon just talked about related to the use of a hybrid approach one of them obviously is this the notion of flexibility and I think that flexibility is really important particularly here because so much of it's infill one of the things that form-based code doesn't have as much it's harder for form-based code to address some of the complexities of infill and redevelopment because it's not a green field, it's not a blank slate you're starting with constraints related to adjacent architecture or site and all that that you have to deal with so that was another consideration another element of that was understanding the capacity of the community to to regulate relative to a form-based code and I think as you point out Sharon it is a different animal and it's sometimes very tough for communities that have had a very traditional approach to sort of just give up some of the control they have relative to what a form-based code does because a form-based code does it's almost administrative if somebody does exactly what's in the plan they don't even need to go to the planning commissioner DRB to deal with it also can be tough for staff too because it makes it harder to have those conversations about unique circumstances and things that might come up within the community that are priorities that weren't necessarily put into the plan when it was adopted so I think that was one those are some other reasons why I think the recommendation is the recommendation in terms of other things we've already talked about waste water but there's a lot of other things to think about and connectivity a lot of that's done at that stage and also looking again at plan unit development and how it might be applied within this new context again it's not a lot of greenfield development but there may be instances where you still want to allow those kinds of modifications and waivers to have something fit into the context better so it'll mean taking a look at some of the things under your subdivision regs as well looking at things like development agreements I know you do some of that through your public work standards now what's privately going to be developed are there like some of the parks and open spaces that Mark pointed out and maybe the planning commission and the town select board to kind of codify who's doing what and when and who's responsible for that you know we're getting much more into public-private partnerships in terms of financing a lot of things these days so that's one mechanism for allowing for that that parking garage example is a good one where it maybe you know maybe makes some sense for a development agreement to sort of capture the relationship between the private entities and the community and that development agreement would provide a mechanism to do that and also public work standards Mark mentioned that right now all your streets improvements are in your public work standards which is fine it's just making sure that they relate to some of the types and form and also one of the things we may suggest is potentially adopting an official map especially for some of the bike, ped, connections sorts of things up there our understanding is right now you've done that on your town plan maps that you have very detailed maps that you consider in development review which and that might be the way to keep doing that we'd have to update those maps to include some of the things in the master plan and you just did it well I will say that if we're going to use the master plan as a basis for new regulations you're probably going to have to amend your town plan to at least incorporate it by reference or have it attached to the back so that there's some basis in policy for some of the things that we're suggesting but you can do that at the same time as you amend your regulations so it doesn't have to be a huge stretch we'd like some feedback from the planning commission since you're the ones at this point that really do administer and enforce your current regulations and will likely have the responsibility of administering anything that develops out of the master plan so I think I think we should go up to some commentary on the question but I think for them this is the really the first time that we as a group have seen this so I think we're probably not going to be giving you a whole lot of feedback tonight and this will be something down the road as we get a chance to digest and discuss this at more meetings and this up to questions or comments from the audience at this point if anyone has any thoughts or questions this is a great time just be recognized and state your name for the record and ask away yes sir if you could just for your name for the record David Gottlieb I live in Essex near Essex way have you thought about impacts on schools in other words I'm not familiar with the town school planning process but obviously as you determine how the given area is going to be developed there's going to be impact on projected school care how do you handle space allocations for new buildings for schools not specifically in detail on that but just as a general reference I think the amount of growth we're suggesting within the ETC is relatively low and my understanding is that obviously things change but there's some capacity in the community especially to look out the next 20, 30 years and I think it's really important to recognize that this build out is probably a long range build out it won't get to 1200 and 1300 residential units probably for decades so I think any of the impacts that would be associated with a development every development that comes in is going to have to address its own impacts anyway at the time but from an overall planning perspective I don't think there's a huge red flag in terms of being able to address that with the incrementalization that's probably likely to happen when you look at the type of structures in given areas I don't know if the town I don't think the town has yet decided to promote certain energy clean energy aspects and that would affect the architecture and given plan if you're planning a community say with a central courtyard and maybe some recreation facilities everything needs power and maybe there's a smart way of doing that and the third is infrastructure that gears toward again smart use possible charging stations for cars or make a projection of that things that would impact important things that people will need in the future not current but maybe projected for the future. Yeah that was a great point I think a couple of the things that the plan does talk about it seems like Sheriff talked about transit and parking ride that's been talked about for a long time and I think the charging station actually there was a grant program out today for charging stations the state's definitely is very hot on promoting those on your point about the roof amount of solar for example one of the things that's in the plan is a menu of different roof forms we didn't come back we heard certainly some comments we have flat roofs generally speaking and certain parts of the ETC they probably don't make as much sense but in some parts of the ETC looking at the different roof forms may allow for that consideration of solar and I think that's a really important thing to make sure that the community as it's looking at the forms I'm alluding to is it's much more complex this type of structure belongs here or could belong here there's a lot of dimensions thank you yes sir my name is Jeff Lyon I've been in Vermont I grew up here I went to school here and I'm now raising a family here and I bought land in Essex to raise my family it's a little over 28 years and it's part of this school here and so I have a concern that I've been trying to get addressed to ask the planning commission for your support to address my concern and the fundamental concern is on property rights and my concern is through this process my property rights will be reduced and I'm pretty sensitive to that point and so what I'm looking for is some support to assure my property rights won't be reduced so I'm currently in the center district or center zone being carved out of that zone and I'm okay if part of this initiative is to do more in the piece that's along 15 but the implication of carving my land out is that I will be able to do less and I will lose some rights and I have an issue losing rights in this process and so as these changes are coming forward I find out about them after the fact and it becomes very difficult for me to assure myself that I'm not losing rights in this process and so that's my biggest concern so I feel like when things come out I've got to chase I'm constantly working to assure I'm not losing rights so I'm okay with the rights I have today I don't need any additional rights I'm happy with the rights I have today I just want some assurance I'm not going to lose rights in this process and so that's what I'm here to request the planning commission for what I've been told is the direction comes from the planning commission and so that's why I'm directing this request to you frankly I'm okay just taking my land out of this process it's about just over 20 acres in the center zone today we can just take it out and just leave it as is no changes required I'd be perfectly comfortable with that in discussions I've had the other option I see is to just ensure that I don't lose rights in this process my preference is let's just take it out I'm using a family out there I have certain rights I bought the land with these rights I don't want to lose these rights and I don't want to have to continuously chase this process to ensure I don't lose rights and it's taking frankly a tremendous amount of my energy and effort to assure myself of that I'm able to get that assurance so I'd rather just carve this out leave it alone don't change anything which I'm very comfortable with and if these other areas that are focused here are getting some additional rights that's fine with me as long as it conforms to the guidance coming from this organization so it's appropriate rights is my concern and I'm asking for your help to ensure I don't lose any rights have you been able to provide the opportunity to provide a written commentary to the staff to be able to be included tonight it's an advisory this is a presentation tonight we can't say to you we're going to do this but if we have your commentary as part of this process so it can be included basically every step of the way that your concerns, your questions what you want addressed is clearly laid out I'm fully expecting that those would be included in your review and your review and in our review but that's as we move forward through this and to me that's the best way to make sure that your voice is heard is to make sure you're able to outline for us what does that mean to you when you're looking at this vision what are you seeing as your loss you've talked about an option maybe to carve your stuff out you know if you've had that opportunity to either sit with staff and draw that up or draw it up yourself and present it to them I would completely expect it to be included at every discussion point I think it's important that Dana could outline the process that happens this is a study with recommendations we have to go through zoning and bylaw changes before any of this so that will all get its due process public notification voting, select board hearings so this isn't get the study make recommendations and it happens the next day I fully expect given the make up of the commission that some of the recommendations that are put forth to us are not going to be left as is in the first place this is anything like this this is the best attempt this is going to be the starting point it's going to hopefully be more than just right at the very beginning this is pretty well formed to give us something to really look at but I don't I haven't been involved in any process yet that we've accepted what's come across us as written planning process or development pretty much so to answer your question I have been participating in the process pretty actively and more actively in the last couple of months and frankly my concern is that understanding what rights are potentially leaving being reduced as part of this process is not clear it's clear something's moving away that is very clear of what is not clear and it requires a tremendous amount of polling on my part to figure that out and so frankly I'm okay with the zoning as is and I'm at a place where it's very easy just to say you know what we need to do more here just leave it as is carbon up and so I have made that request and today I'd like to make that request of the planning commission to take my land and just carve it out of this process leave it as is because I'm comfortable with it it's very easy to do that so that's the simple request and that's what I'd like to leave you analyzing the recommendation that comes to us that would be the point at which we would look at that and say and evaluate that and actually be able to make decisions on that I don't know that we've gotten that I mean you haven't completed the draft yet so I don't know that we've really got a timetable worked out yet part of this I think our intention is to put Chapter 8 together within the end of the month just to wrap it up and then that would go to you guys as the final draft and then obviously you'll have your chance to as you pointed out correctly that chance to digest it and I think it's really important to echo what you just said that we fully expect I fully expect for sure that there are things you probably will take on and move forward with in some way there are things that will not find their light of day in the regulations and that's exactly what this intended to be and someone could just give you a sense for when that is it's not their when will this decision be made just a month even well I mean we've been working with staff in terms of the process going forward we're working with staff I think we're talking about a year between this getting wrapped up and you adopting whatever regulatory model comes out because it takes that long to do and I think you know Mr. Lines your concerns we've heard you I want to make sure that you're clear that the draft that we have in front of us today actually reflects some changes based upon Mr. Lines comments about density and what was originally recreation conservation has been changed to residential recreation so we actually have increased the density allowing residential development there so there's been certainly some movement understanding some of the issues that were raised but the point I was making is that we expect the it almost to be a year-long process to go through the process and I was expecting there will be other changes that will come around as other landowners look at the plan and say I wish you could move the boundary here and there so I totally expect the district boundaries to be fluid for a while because that's how this process usually works just to be clear my specific question was I'd like to just leave it alone and carve it out from Mr. Baruso once he gets your recommendation which will come in the coming weeks that would be a time for a decision at least in terms of my initial request to me that sounded like weeks not a year and so I'm just trying to gauge is this a march? I think realistically we're looking at probably a few months because our discussions and work on this is going to be fit into the existing schedule so if I without looking at what you without really getting into the meat of this I would not really anticipate getting too much going for probably three months and that might be conservative I don't know what the planning schedule is at this stage we haven't seen that that's something that we have to talk about I don't know that we can give you a time frame just yet Jeff, given your level of concern can you kindly stay in touch and let you know when we've decided a date that any decision even a date for a date is helpful but you know I'm trying this process is pretty intensive in terms of the amount of investment I have to make to follow every change that's being made and every iteration is coming out so if some time table could be set that would be I guess my next request how we're going to make these decisions if you don't know today that's fine a date for a date would be great as well so then at least my time management can be I think it's too preliminary in the process to really be able to give you a framework know that it's overall we're looking at year or year plus for the total process and it's going to be pieces and parts there's going to be stages in between there so give this another month probably can actually come up with a time table or we would know whether or not we can come up with a time table we will let you know still consider and talk about it absolutely so it's we need to get this thing over to Dennis and have him input and we're going to go through your process and then the regulatory process and that's going to involve the select board this master plan is 25 years old it wasn't updated since 1991 so it was a big deal in 1991 and it's a big deal in 2018 too I mean communities just don't do this stuff over and over and over again it might be a long time till we do this again and so it's important to take it thoughtfully and slowly with a lot of community input so what I'll do is I'll keep coming back and I'm going to make the same request until we're able to get an answer that's fine that's stay with us on this or call staff and say what do you anticipate the planning commission doing at the next meeting or whatever I mean use us too to give you a barometer to get a better sense we'll have to get that earlier what's your worst case scenario just keep coming and asking sorry that's not a worst case scenario that's here we'll keep coming back until we have a time table for the process that being my final request I guess for the team here I think we really need to define what's going to happen at these various milestones along the way so that the public knows when to weigh in and when it's not necessary next steps which was on the agenda for tonight so we're going to start talking about where we go from here yes, question our friends up here we're not migrants many generations I love the idea of the bicycle pass I think the connectivity there is really exciting I think there's a missed opportunity to connect Saxon Hill to Indian Brook that's the real giant benefit something for you to consider as you're going through phase 2 my question for you is it looks like based on what you're saying you're going to reduce the footprint for the ETC by 20-25% what were the key elements that led you to that recommendation we've kind of articulated some of those but one was more no time aligning the ETC with the sewer core and the infrastructure really the infrastructure which really sewer drove your vision access to roads probably the most cost it was a big component so that really restricted your vision no we started off in the planning process with the community talking about the ETC as it existed today the Golden Triangle in that initial conversations with people at the focus group and through the community survey there was a recognition that a lot of people felt that the northern part of the ETC just didn't have a lot of connectivity and then going back to the goals of making sure that the ETC is a walkable environment you start going all the way to the top of the Golden Triangle that gets really problematic because it's far it's a long walk from Peter's project to the intersection of Towers Road and Old Stage Road so that was another consideration that got into why the ETC was no changes to zoning there the smaller you make it the more concentrated things are going to be which is forcing you to go higher on your density requirements on the buildings which is probably going to be an issue for the community on the height so just something to think about the more you shrink it, the higher you got to go otherwise you will not hit your density which is exactly what led you to your plan so that infrastructure really drove the height effectively next just something to think about as you're going through the next question was I like preserving the recreation areas, I got three boys I'm raising here ten nieces and nephews I think that's awesome what is the appropriate ratio of recreational land versus developer land so for example I think Indian Brook is 80, 85% of your recommended ETC is that a huge ratio is that a small ratio what is that right ratio you got five to six hundred acres of Indian Brook property and your ETC is seven hundred acres so that ratio was pretty high in my mind so you keep talking about adding more recreation space between Saxon Hill, Indian Brook how much more do you need for balance yeah that's a good question I think as you look through the different districts it varies where do we lie in the districts where does wheat, where are you I think we're in the town the districts within the ETC the percentage of open space is not consistent, it's variable relative to recreation the point we made in the document the draft was that look at Indian Brook as the closest recreational asset to the ETC that Indian Brook does not provide the full spectrum of recreational opportunities that the ETC might want for example it's a very passive recreational environment with canoeing it doesn't necessarily provide a ball field as an example, so one of the things that we're recommending is that as the community looks at the development of the ETC going forward and tries to understand where recreation is an important piece when it starts to do its parks open space and trails planning process that's where the town should be thinking about okay is there a place within the open space requirement for a new subdivision to instead of it being just a fallow piece of property is a ball field a better open space use there would it make more sense for that open space to be a functional open space that serves a broader community value than just open space that is associated with a PRD or a planned unit development for example, so that's what we're not suggesting in any particular place it has to be a ball field we are suggesting that when you're looking at open space you're looking at recreation the community should be asking those questions about what's our long range recreation plan what's the town plan say about recreation how does open spaces that might need right now any development that happens in the ETC has to provide open spaces a requirement for open space development so what does that open space become is really the question that we are trying to add trying to get the community to think about can it become something more than it's left over can it become more of a functional piece of open space that serves both a neighborhood use and maybe a broader community use and then looking at open space we actually went back and looked at the open space plan that was done a few years ago to try to match up some of the recommendations and that actually articulated quite a bit of that process about looking at open space more from a broader perspective so it's not so it might yes well because again there's a good question so we don't we don't know if it's going to cost you much what might I said I didn't say no there's a big difference you might know no not necessarily no it's two different words it might because it depends on what happens in terms of development forms for example if right now you know does the road networks and all of the infrastructure in the city and the community pay for itself you have to pay something to be part of the system and I would suspect that one of the conversations going back to Dennis for example will be looking at those street standards what is the community willing to accept as part of the street and that will affect the value of it no that's not that's done again the vision is meant to be the sort of the trajectory you're trying to go so let's keep this in mind that what this is a proposal for a plan for us to look at this is what we get in so once we start looking at this and we start digging into the proposal then we look to the economic development committee we look to the landowners we look to everybody in the community to help determine whether or not the aspects of the plan that is presented to us are viable and all these things are going to come into play as we start moving as we look at your draft so it's the vision that we start with and we have to move from let's be clear this is not my vision this is a result of the recommended vision based upon community process you got to step back and remember the surveys that took place the community workshops they're presenting a collaborative view that consisted of percentage residents that participated in this process to talk about this plan that's 28 years old that needs to be redone so this is not a consultant saying hey this is what we want your town to look like this is the residents of Essex and as Dustin said we've got a process that's now just starting to and the steering committee that was part of that and even the financing but the financing mechanisms vary too they could be completely private they could be private and public some of it could be completely public so those are all the things that go into the mix in terms of how this gets implemented right absolutely and no tax dollars would be spent without a lot of analysis and review and public process you know it would be part of the town but it would be in front of the select board so this will not be the last you've heard of this discussion and certainly it will be factored into any decisions that get made so are we Ned did you have a I was just going to follow up and I think David said it people have been working on putting together a consensus of what this development area looks like for over a year and I think Mark and Sharon and the staff have put a lot of time just getting it to this point which is really a point that I view as sort of a stepping stone to a real great leap forward for the town as we pull these pieces together and try to make it all fit the vision that will be best for the area great any last questions great so Dana you're talking about next steps so we're looking to you guys are looking to do your chapter 8 I think that probably we need to get together and talk about and flesh this out a little bit more because we might want to go into a phase where we save like you know when we did the town plan every other meeting was planning yep and development review to the side side track until we got the plan done and that may not be possible for Sharon and Mark or it might not be achievable because of development pressure or whatever but this is what we need to talk about and as far as the next steps go what do you see? I'm curious what staff's perspective is on form based code somewhere you want to see us go and that's one question and then a follow up to that question as the case law survived any form based code appeals you haven't been any challenges that I'm aware of yet my experience starts and stops with the session we did in Richmond probably 10 years ago and I haven't had any experience with it since then well one reason why we went toward more of a hybrid is because the nature of form based code makes it more administrative and that's typically not where you guys come from you like to be more hands on we thought that that might be I think the hybrid is probably my personal feeling the way we'll go only because we look at all these various factors and I think one of the overwriting concerns with the design is a design that is comfortable for the people who are going to be there and that's a big mix of building sizes, land uses but then you toss into that all your street structures your street furniture lighting and those things so if we're going to get to this comfortable space I think we have to consider how we do it in regard to form based code it's new to me and I was just curious does anybody else in Vermont do it for one thing and then are there any examples of similar sized towns that have converted similarly to what we're looking to do any success stories to be honest with you most of them are hybrids some have developed form based codes that are under the back I think Lester and Jericho and our recommendation would be to more integrate it into your regulatory structure than having it stand separately out there on its own in terms of legal challenges I'm not aware of any I think the courts would view form based code as a type of design review basically and if you want to be safe on that front we can also do a master plan as a design review report which is required for that there's ways to address that as well but again a lot of the elements and it's funny because architects develop form based code the language around it again is different like they use build 2 lines we use maximum setbacks a lot of times we're still talking about the same thing we're just using different terms but the nice thing about form based code are the forms the types that they've developed that make a lot of sense and give us more guidance in terms of how to apply some of the design standards I think we all really appreciate that aspect of it so that's the part that we're trying to bring in to the regulations I think that's sort of one overarching from a regulatory perspective that we're recommending is that elevating your consideration of some of these factors from above where you are today will still provide you with a level of flexibility so you can adapt to that so that you can do a constructive conversation with a developer but maybe with a better shared understanding of what the objectives are and that's kind of what we're seeing that's where I think the hybrid code really makes some sense that lets you still have that give and take which can be really useful and beneficial to outcome both from the developer's perspective and the community's perspective but frame that up a little bit more clearly so that it's not all the vision of the developer policy to go all the way into form based coding and not do the hybrid well we've been working with South Burlington on some of their plan used by regulations and helping with that and they have form based code applying to their nascent city center and it's still challenging now they're trying to look at how to introduce flexibility into that process but they can't conform to form based code so that's a big challenge visiting John, any thoughts? comments? well it's really exciting I've had the benefit of listening to the consultants and going through the process with others for a year or whatever now so I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on where they're coming from I will warn you that this document is dense they have done an unbelievable amount of work material together so it will take you a while to get through and I would ask a lot of questions and hopefully there are a lot of people that can give guidance I would not be worried about form based code I've already as a designer been on the application side of that Newport has it had it for years they seem to work well up there and now has it in their downtown core area that we're starting to do projects down there with form based code and it's different and it does remove some of the basic elements of the review process from the planning commissions per view and generally says okay if you achieve these things and deliver what we said we wanted then it's a little more administrative so really it asks you to do some thinking and some coordinating up front but it really does help the conversation about what do you want it doesn't leave developers wondering what you want you told them what you want so it actually has some pretty good advantages for the discussion but it doesn't need to be the only way you do it I think the hybrid ideas interesting it could transition too allows the dialogue and the review process to stay somewhat manageable and in your control but it's not something to be worried about I would really look at it as a great opportunity for you to tell people what members of your community let's get it all out there and say this is what we want to see just another tool to be able to do that so Dana do we next step is potentially just to revisit that once you guys have the document is to for you guys to maybe come together and then decide what form we want to go through it again then we need some time to digest it so the end of the month sometime it'll be submitted so probably March is pretty booked up right now for development review so maybe the first week first meeting in April we start to have a more in-depth conversation don't know how that works with anyone's schedule maybe the second week in April I'm not sure but applications are starting to roll in so this is what we want to talk about yeah there's a couple pieces a couple ways maybe to approach this and obviously there's the draft in itself and there's the recommendations in themselves and obviously your perspective input on that would be as vital and obviously other staff inputs as well and then going from this to the regulatory piece the thing I've been thinking about I haven't really had a chance to talk to Sharon about this but you can break this down into some key parts let's talk about the district boundaries if we're accepting the premise that there's going to be districts of different character in those districts let's break it down and let's make sure we understand where those boundaries are and where they should be and if there's any adjustments we should make those that would be a good block of planning commission time okay you do that then you go on to okay let's talk about district A what are the forms that make some sense there what are the uses that make some sense there so you could kind of if you map out a year worth of time whatever you could break it down so you're starting off with that basically the spatial structure of the districts and the zoning and then you're breaking down each district and sort of working through each one and that goes back to specific comments that staff might have or the public might have I think it lets you do each of those in turn and then at the end you bring it all together as a unified thing that way you're not again I think one of the unique things that this plan is trying to communicate there are some unique things within each potential district having a block of time within each just to think about that what are the right forms, what are the right open spaces the street sections Dennis may not have any problems on some of those districts and some of them he might be like I don't want any changes on Route 115 so we need to deal with that so that's how I would suggest it happen and I think too though inevitably will be some housekeeping stuff we're running into that in South Burlington and that can kind of go along in the background as we go through the process and then if you look at the zoning it's like watching sausage being made and then there's lots of things that come out of it like okay we didn't realize that that was going to actually happen I didn't say cracker barrel that's a joke right that's a joke right thank you for having me well we should probably come back to you after we get Dennis's comments well let's take a first once the full draft is ready let's re-gather and look at that and then decide start carving it out we probably should work on if we agree to do these section by section we probably should work on them and not necessarily wait for Dennis's but work on them simultaneous at least start because it could take a while and I don't know that we should just sit back and do nothing and wait until he lets us know what he doesn't doesn't like about it it would be worth wiling to just start we have had some conversations with Dennis and staff has certainly had so he's not unaware of this and I think I don't think it's going to take him forever to give us his comment and a lot of the street sections for example I think a lot of those would be very consistent with the current street sections yeah public work standards so that's probably going to make it a little bit easier to have that conversation Ned? we're talking about Dennis I think it's very important that he becomes a positive part of this program he can sometimes tend to be more on the negative side so when we go with him we get him on board with where we're going forward with because I think he's a key part and it's a key part of whatever we do no arguments there no arguments there so given that I think this horse has been flogged enough tonight this has been a great presentation it's an amazing amount of work that we've done so far everyone that's here thank you for coming out and joining us this is definitely a process and it's very early on in it commentary if you have thoughts or questions don't hesitate to send them on to staff they can't respond immediately then they'll get it as part of the discussion we won't lose things that way any last questions or comments before we move on great thank you very much we're going to we've got other business in minutes to touch on and if you haven't signed that please do so I would take to do this while the crowd is emptying here I'll take a motion on the minutes of January 25th we approve the minutes as written on January 25th we have a second Ned minutes of the 25th are there corrections that anyone wants to offer minutes have been moved all those in favor of the minutes as written aye motion carries 6-0 moved by John seconded by Ned other business Darren anything nope that was all we had for tonight then I would take a motion to adjourn moved by Dave seconded by John John all those in favor John the first I don't know who this is we are adjourned thank you all I was trying to tell you we were still on the meeting and you were speaking to these guys with a microphone that was getting picked up by that's why I was trying to quiet you you know what I mean cause I'd hate to find out I'd still like to be called thank you Mark you're welcome thank you