 All right, so technical challenges and then we're going to be ready to go. It's our clock. Big crowd from well, Larry Burke tonight. Good. Yeah. And, uh, all right. I can do the, well, let me call us the order first. And then you can do that. So. Welcome to the May 18th, 2023. Uh, Essex Junction Development Review Board meeting. Uh, 631, we'll call it to order. Uh, Chris, go ahead and read our hybrid statement, please. Uh, the meeting of the Essex Junction Development Review Board has come to order. This meeting is a hybrid meeting held at both two Lincoln streets and on Zoom. Because there may be technical difficulties or reasons that otherwise prevent or interrupt remote public participation. It is important to note that the open meeting law only ensures the public's rights to participate and comment at a public meeting by attending at the designated physical location as posted in the notice and agenda. If a member of the public or the public body has technical difficulties accessing this meeting remotely, please alert us by using the chat feature on Zoom. Or by emailing C, Y, U, E, N at sxjunction.org. And in the event of a technical difficulty that cannot be resolved, we may continue the meeting, if necessary, to June 15th, 2023 at 630 p.m. at two Lincoln streets, Essex Junction. Please note that all votes taken during this meeting that are not unanimous will be done by roll call vote in accordance to the law. As required by the open meeting law, let's start this, start the meeting by taking a roll call of attendance of all members participating in the meeting and have those members attending remotely identify themselves to ensure that they can hear and be heard throughout the meeting. So are we starting in the room or are we starting online? Well, let's start online because there are not that many. I see three participants who have joined us online. We have Erica. Will you please unmute yourself and introduce yourself? That's Sayla, you're here. Okay, well if we don't hear from Erica, it's Christine. Will you please unmute yourself and say that you're here? Hey, this is Christine Cosmeter. I am here. And Alexis. Yes, I am Alexis Sucker and I'm here. Okay, awesome. And let's try Erica again. Erica, are you there? All right, that's it online. All right, good. So the rest of us are physically here, so we're all good. All right, any disclosures or conflicts of interest to disclose tonight? Any additions or changes to the agenda? Chris, any additional changes to the agenda? I don't have any. We've got a few pieces of paper here that you distribute and so we know it. Oh, they're related. All right, so we're looking at public to be heard. Anybody in the audience that wants to say something about an item that is not on the agenda tonight? Now's your chance. Yes, sir. Date your name and come on up. Good evening. Thank you for your time. I know you have a full agenda as it is, so I'll be as brief as possible. My name is Jason Struthers. I am the founder and operator of Pricone, Vermont, which is the city's first cannabis commercial operation. The main reason I'm here tonight is to inform you that come July 29th, my license is up for renewal. Despite a number of communications with the city council, I do expect that there will be some pushback and that they will deny my license renewal should that I don't foresee any problems getting approval from the Vermont cannabis control board. However, from the city council and the local cannabis control commission is another story. So it is my hope that the city will have learned its lesson with passion fruit farms, but should they deny my license, I will be asking for your help in the same regard to intervene. We'll wait till that happens, but I will apply the rules as we see them when the case comes. Yeah, just to clarify, Act 164 is the legislation that allows me to cultivate with a license from the Vermont cannabis control board and Act 158 is the legislation that protects me as a tier one outdoor operation that is exempt from local permitting. So with that said, I also just got approval from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets to operate as a farm. And so I came here today to see if you guys any questions about that and any concerns. The when do you trigger the next tier is it when do you become like a commercial operation? I am a commercial operation. I could I was going to apply for a tier two this year. However, if I go up into a tier, then that Act 158 no longer protects me. And in that case, I find it highly unlikely that the local cannabis control commission would approve a permit. We will act on our own rules as we see them if the state has something going on, they can do their own thing. I think we act separately, although we have to follow their rules. Okay, I'm confused. Can you reiterate that please? Well, if there's an act that protects you, then we have to follow that. In other words, when the state says you can't deny this for these reasons, that affects the way we judge, but we also have our own rules in the municipality. The other item that you mentioned, we didn't see it the way the administrator saw it and a lot of it comes down to what's acceptable, what's normal, what's and frankly, since it's legal everywhere, we consider it normal now. So that was kind of the gist of what happened there. But every case deserves to have its own set of facts ruled on and we'll wait for you to come in. Sure. I just wanted to make you guys aware of it, seeing as you guys only meet once a month and my application process is due. And I wanted to see if you had any questions or concerns. Without knowing where it is and what's really going on, I don't have any questions. Well, it's in the city. Other than that, I don't want to disclose exact location for security reasons, but it's in the city. Well, we're glad you're coming in. We're happy to talk about it whenever you're ready. Sure. Thank you. Thanks. Anybody else? All right. Public meeting on a request to change the roof material at 10 Pearl Street from Slate to Shingles in the Village Center District. The historic preservation review criteria apply. Anybody here in the audience for that? And when you come up, we're going to swear you into so you can speak. After me, repeat, I do, I hereby swear that the evidence I give in the cause under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth under pains and penalties of burgers. I did. Great. And do we have to approve the minutes from the meeting? We'll go back. Thanks. And stay your name and then we're ready to speak. My name's Alexis Anderson. I'm here on behalf of Lake Point Property Management. That's the acting owner for Linden Street Property. They own 10 Polk Grove. I'm here to ask to replace the slate roof to use Shingle versus Slate. And the owners have used a vendor that had reached out and responsible. They don't need permits, but then we pushed a little bit harder and realized we needed to come in front of all of you and discuss it further. So thanks for squeezing me into this meeting. The slate roof has surpassed its lifespan. It's failing. The building is hard to currently rent due to the failure of the roof. We've tried patching it. It's just done. It's had its life. It's right to move on. The cost of putting slate on compared to Shingle is just astronomical. It then impacts us being able to pick other things. The building needs painting and you need some other love. And you want to be able to spread the love across the entire building and whole structure. The other buildings that surround 10 Polk Grove currently do not have Shingle. They have asphalt. Shingle is not slate. So we're just coming to the board to ask if it's possible to use asphalt instead of slate. All right. So we got a lot of material in the package. Does anybody have questions about it? The applicant is, in my opinion, done their homework. They've gone through the state systems to find out that they are, in fact, eligible if not listed, which is one thing. And then it's really a money trail. So if there's federal or state money involved, they may have to satisfy the federal requirements. In this case, they don't. I understand they don't. So it's really up to the municipal authority. We have interesting rules here. We may require them to do it, but we don't have to. And I would agree with everything that has been said by the applicant already. The actual section of the text in our rules deteriorated historic features shall be repaired rather than replaced where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a distinctive feature. The new feature shall match the old and design color texture and other visual qualities and where possible material. So I would say this falls under that criteria. The material in question is slated. It is astronomically expensive to replace if it's beyond its lifespan, which can be long, but it does get to a point where they get all soggy and punky and, you know, it's a bat. So I don't have a problem with this application. The criteria besides material indicate color, texture, visual appearance, I can so I would, I don't have a problem with it. What I would request is that you work with a qualified slate roofer to salvage the material that's up there so they can use it because they will pick out the ones that are still fine and they'll reuse them somewhere. And so the historic resource can possibly continue, even if it's not continuing on that field. Anyone else on the board? No. Did you just have a carry out so you get a quote for slate roof? We didn't get a quote specifically for this roof. So from the beginning we've been using Champlain Roofing, Ryan Horton, he's been contracted, permanent was in his contract on his end, and we were getting ready to start. And you know, something doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel right. Something doesn't feel quite right. And so that's when we got a hold of your office and said, hey, we were ready to start something we just wanted to make sure we were following the rules. We want to make sure that we're not impacting the community in a way that we don't want to. And so we had, we do have and manage other buildings that are within Essex and the neighboring counties that have the exact same amount of roof. And those rooms were between 100,000 and 125,000 between hauling the slate off and then hauling the slate back on and making sure we can match everything correctly. And that's a comparable bit that we've received in the last year. Anyone else on the board? The lower roof is at fault. And there's some membrane up there or some other? Yeah, there's a membrane on the top and we've fixed that as many times as we can. That will be rubber membrane as well, but that all of it together is failing at the current moment. And the building is at 50% capacity because we've got offices that just can't any longer be patched. And we're worried about the inside structural parts. So you'll be changing everything, including the roof on the porch? No, the room, the porch will stay at this. So will you match it? We were trying to stay as close to the color of the slate versus that porch color. Yeah, there should be some, it's pretty light, but there should be some materials, you know, some asphalt shingles that are pretty cool. There's a proposed color here. Yeah, it looks. Yeah, just put it in. I saw the thing. I didn't see the circle. Go on with the heart on it. It's almost red in there. It's almost closer to the driftwood color, but you might want to get a couple of actual, you know, they have them on ratchets. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And we brought them on site. There was the one that matched the closest in terms of also keeping in mind that the slate up there is incredibly warm with sun. Yeah. All right. Awesome. So do we need a motion on this? Yeah, I've got recommended motions set back. All right. One of you, Wither, want to make a read the motion? Ready? So, and we all agree, I moved that the development review board approved the proposed change in roofing material at 10 perl strength in accordance with the historic transportation review criteria outlined in the land development code. And the friendly amendment to have them salvage as much of the existing slate is and salvage as much of the slate as you can. All right. Any further? Oh, any second? Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Jared unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your time. Have a great night. We look forward to a dry building. More important. All right. Let's see. Let's go back and do our meeting minutes from April 20th. I'll take a motion to approve the minutes. Motion to approve the minutes from April 20th, 2023. Anybody want to second that? Okay. Any discussion? Quick point of question. I was not present for that meeting. You don't have to. Apparently not. There is a typo at least one on the first page. Brad Rubman has a few extra D's on his name there. That's all I had. All right. Any other corrections? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. All right. Now we're back to, we're up to public hearings and we have three of them. So maybe I'll swear everybody in at the same time, assuming that you're all here. So I'm going to read this and you all need to raise your right hand and say I do. I hereby swear that the evidence I give in the court caused under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury. Thank you all very much. All right. Up first, final site plan to remove an existing duplex and construct 18 residential units with parking at 161 Pearl Street in the HA district by 161 Cheeseman LLC probably over there. I think it's the target seat and introduce yourself and then make a statement about the project. We've seen it before. We did have this come in. This is a final. Yes. My name is, my name is Brian Herrier. O'Leary Burke civil associates representing 161 Cheeseman LLC. As John previously mentioned, we're into you folks. Towards the end of 2022 with a concept plan for this application. It was in quite a bit more detail than you typically see in a concept plan. We had full staff report done, engineering review comments and it was essentially a preliminary patient and we got a lot of good feedback from the board and we tried to implement that and we're here tonight looking for final site plan review. So the application is a 18 unit multi family structure located on a 0.32 acre lot at 161 Pearl Street. The parking, we're proposing five new parking spaces in front of the existing duplex on the parcel. The four story building, four stories facing Pearl Street, five toward the back. We had a lengthy discussion last time about what constitutes a four story and five story building according to the city of West Junction. That has not changed and still proposing a four story building. The reason we can fit or proposing 18 units on a 0.32 acre lot is the lot at 159 Pearl Street. It's co-owned by the applicant and we're looking for a shared parking agreement from the development review board. Some of the things that we've implemented since last time we were here was the front parking lot has been reworked according to the city engineer comments. We've added a pedestrian bench. We've extended the sidewalk on the rear of the building. One of the comments was to provide an isolated pedestrian area in the exterior of the building and we've done that. Another thing is we've proposed a gravel path in between the post structure and the existing structure. One of the comments we had was if anybody does exit the back of the building we don't want them to have to walk all the way around both properties to get to Pearl Street. So we're showing a gravel path in between the buildings with a stairwell where we break grade from the first story down to the ground. Another thing that was mentioned was adding lights within the area that's being used for the shared parking. Obviously with the rear entrance we're sharing the parking spaces in the back of the 150 property and we've added two light poles LED fixtures and proposed LED fixtures for the existing poles in order to bring the rear parking lot lights to current buildings. Those are mostly the big changes that have been implemented towards site plans concerned. I'm not sure how you want to go through the staff report John. I think we should let's just keep it to the items that Chris had comments on if they're bold. If we need a variance or anything we should be keeping track of that. So I'll have you go through that and and we can comment when we need to. I can say I don't really have too many issues with you know what was going on. The height situation seems to be in the story count is fine. I did in my version of this strike the word marginally from the staff notes. In that we've all played this game before you either are or you're not in compliance and in my opinion you're in compliance. Even if it's just by a hair you're still there and that's the way it goes. I find that that the building's four stories and especially since it presents that way from the street I think that's perfectly fine. So and it's four stories or 58 feet in height whatever is less. So we meet both of those criteria. Good. Did everybody catch why it's not as why it's only four stories? Okay good. All right so moving through that then what the first one is the parking and and you're asking for a waiver. So can we just make sure that we're all fine with that? Anybody have a question? We went through this before right? So the parking's on the other side. No is it a waiver because we're you're sharing spaces with the other building that you I think that I don't know if that's necessarily a waiver but we are so we need the BRB to allow us to use a shared offsite parking agreement with the adjacent property but the waiver I believe is for the village requires two or sorry the city requires two parking spaces per unit plus one for an additional 10 units I believe. What we're asking for is to have 18 shared parking spaces with the legal agreement with the southern property same property owner to the south and we're also proposing five new spaces in the front. So the 18 shared spaces we're asking for a parking waiver just above a one-to-one ratio. The 18 units proposed as mentioned previously are all one better units and we did provide a parking table for all the current tenants within the commercial building and their requirement is 54 parking spaces strictly out of the parking table in the in the city land development regulation. And did we ask if you were using the shared parking overlay from I forget who the that's a regional or federal or state? No so we we didn't propose any shared parking. We're not proposing. As you know residential and commercial typically mix well if we did do a shared parking analysis we do believe we'd come up with even more parking availability. We chose not to do that as there's 84 spaces available 54 allocated to the commercial use 18 are for residential there's still 12 extra spaces for so you need a waiver for the count that you're and then somewhere in the paperwork there's a shared parking agreement that doesn't expire and and after that we're also yeah there'll be a approval condition staff out of it. Any questions? Who parks on the front the five does anyone park there those five new places? There's an existing parking lot in the front now so it's just being reworked and it doesn't connect this doesn't connect to it. It does the parking lot in front of our building will connect to the one with that one property. Probably wants to have at least one or two of them tagged for visitors or deliveries or something. Yeah there's an entrance in the front there's an entrance in the back there is a common hallway that does connect them both so it'd be at a first come first served basis. When Domino's shows up where do they go? When Domino's shows up where are they going? All right any other yeah. Are you envisioning parking spaces being assigned to the unit or is it kind of free for all? I don't think we'll need to I think there's plenty of parking as a shared parking analysis would likely show that that back lot is basically empty at night when you'd expect the building to be fully occupied so we don't expect much competition for the spaces in the back of the building. And the front of the building is disallowed from tenant parking? It depends how the legal agreement is drawn up and approved by the by the city attorney. I would imagine that the rear property or the parking lot and the rear is what would be shared primarily. You're talking about in front of the retail space? Yeah yeah there's commercial space in the front and there's also commercial space in the rear of the building. The ones in the front are mostly the restaurant more visible businesses the ones in the back you wouldn't know they were there unless you drove back there much less parking need. Yeah. This is probably a question for Chris. Do we have the city are we going to be requiring I think for electric cars? It is not electric cars are not in the LDC right now but it is probably something that we will be considering pretty soon in the future. Yeah. Some large developers have voluntarily put those in but there's not a requirement. You're not envisioning any charging stations? No. Anything else on parking? That's something that you can recommend to the planning commission. Yeah okay. All right next item I have is under seven. The waiver request to allow a portion of one parking space to be located in in the setback which in my opinion is more of a technical issue since the both properties are under the same ownership. The maximum approach is four feet. I don't have a problem. It's the most sound. Yeah. No I think under the spirit of shared parking and the joint arrangement I think that that's not causing me any trouble. Anyone else? The next item was 10 pedestrian access and there's a I had to dig into this one to really figure it out. Chris has put a nice map on it and I am a little concerned about this and I'd like to get some more opinions. The front door is not accessible and that kind of I'm not sure I can deal with that and I'm not sure it's well I don't want to get into whether it's illegal or not but it it's one of the light safety exits and and it's also the street door for anybody coming off the street and and it's it appears to be up several steps a number of steps but it's not accessible and Chris noted that in the staff report that you know if you're happening to be along the sidewalk or you're something that you you can't get in the building you have to go around back which means you have to go all the way around the other building because you can't go down the stairs along the side. So I kind of have a tough time with that because it feels like it feels like you need to be able to get in the front door. So I would I also noted that if you're not looking at at wheelchair accessibility use there's still the the issue that you would have to squeeze between two cars to get to that so yeah that the fine entrance gotcha you're saying with like a structure emergency services or anything like that or if you're just carrying large bags yeah you get one of those you get the last one of the five spaces and you've got a bunch of stuff yeah I just see them and I can see a little striped area on the corner of the other building but you know there it looks like there would be a way to do it but but I'm sort of fundamentally struggling with an inaccessible front door and I think uh it I couldn't quite tell that the architectural elevations suggest that it's that great but I don't think it is no it's a few feet above a few feet above it's a few feet above and you're right ADA access is in the back we're proposing an elevator and the parking in the elevator and all that are in the back so so functionally the building works as long as the people that need that accessibility know and go back there see we're not we're not showing an ADA space in the front yeah so anyway I'm I'm struggling with that I'm not my understanding of the building code suggests that it needs to be accessible but but they kind of stop at letting you get out the door and stand there on the landing and kind of you know call for help so it looks like you might comply with that but but you know those steps are kind of it's not in the spirit of an accessible entry and and I'm I'm struggling with that so maybe anyone else on the board have a comment about that is there a possibility that you can do something to make that more accessible in the front yeah I think what we could look into is doing a potentially an ADA ramp you know an eight percent eight percent handrails I mean it's not a big great difference the current drainage does go down in that area so we're trying to maintain the existing drainage way you see the catch basin is located on that side so we're trying to get away from tipping the parking lot up and putting our runoff towards Pearl Street that's why it's lower so yeah I see the catch basin can you I mean since you kind of have control over both lots I'm suggesting that there's a way to park next to the striped off area already and ramp yourself up there maybe without I don't know if you can do it without railing it's only a couple feet but that's 24 feet and one and 12 years you're probably there but yeah it might be on the sidewalk work too you know like I don't think you have to solve it from your own five front spaces because you'd end up losing one yeah we are over parked obviously we'd like to keep as many spaces as possible but if the drb feels that an accessible front door is you know something that's important and you can definitely take it on as an improvement that's my feeling I'm only one person but I that's my feeling and I'm not going to tell you how to do it I'm just going to say that you know it needs to be accepted but other than that you know the building I think the building works great I like the rest of the improvements that were done I just that was a yeah thanks for pointing it out to Chris because I didn't really catch that on the first round all right updated lighting plan is being requested uh appropriate illumination along the sidewalk that's the one up and down the side of the building is that not on the uh lighting plan we're not going to disapart that sidewalk okay yeah so we started with uh ballard lighting there we had two ballard lights I think there was a little miscommunication between our office and the uh city engineer we thought the ballard lights were the issue I think it was that the city engineer didn't feel they were downcast enough to meet village standards so we're amendable to putting the ballard lights back on and selecting a fixture that is purposefully and intentionally downcast so is there a reason why we wouldn't use a wall pack or something on the building there we could explore with a building man and like to we started with ballard like the back corner there are some neighbors behind you but they're across the yep ravines so and we are grading down a few feet too so there's a natural berm there or will be all right so since that's your functional main door I think that's probably important to get some lighting up yep all right this is a gravel path gravel path is not is the gravel path maintained in the wintertime I would imagine it would be it's right in between a fairly narrow corridor between the two buildings I think there will be plenty of lights on in the residential use I mean there is a front exit of the building there's a common hallway the gravel path is one option to get to the front but it's definitely not the only option at night I would suspect some walk down the common hallway and go up front use the gravel we um we did have a path on the previous on a recent application that was unlit right and it was more of a convenience or a sort of a circulating exercise path more than um all right I guess I'm not overly concerned about that so there are stairs to the right of building there yep and so those won't be left nope not it's not intentional you know if you were gonna do something you might light the stairs off the building and and let that light just kind of spill off and then the most dangerous part of it which is the stairs are illuminated in the gravel which is relatively flat wouldn't be I might be a compromise anyone else I agree like the steps steps are inherently nasty um all right so we're gonna get a lighting plan it's gonna pick up the stairs and it's gonna pick up the back walk and otherwise we're okay there is a curb cut that looks like they need us to grant an exception anybody have an issue with that no okay greening and buffering again this kind of falls under the usually you're trying to screen a residential a commercial building from bothering its residential neighbors in this case you have a new residential building the commercial buildings probably not gonna care I don't know if it we decided last time we can't reverse engineer that no that buffering situation right so I don't have a problem with that I agree no issue okay performance standards I had underlined the circulation and the pedestrian things but that's done now the building DRB should evaluate the proposed building relationship the site and adjoining areas building design architecture and finishes I will say that I thought I actually went back to read the section on that and it said one of the things that they kind of look for is creativity and I have to say you know it's a that's the back yeah it's it doesn't look like everything you know almost anything else I've seen except for a little bit like what the playfulness of the one that went in that on the maple street there I think it's great myself so I wasn't going to challenge it bother it I'll say that we've had some issues before with the detailing of this particular architect's work and then having it not followed through on during construction that doesn't get you any C of O right so if if we're going to show this kind of detailing we're going to want to see this kind of detailing and I don't want to have people back here again saying well we didn't really build it that way you know that was it's it's not about that architect it's about the people executing the the work so I just don't want to have any uh mistaken agreements in place this time we're seeing drawings we want it to end up looking like that well that's all all we're saying I just yeah okay uh and and it's pretty interesting so um we don't we don't really have purview of our color material all that kind of stuff but we do kind of have this overall sense that it's uh within the realm of breathing work further yeah yeah uh anyone else no I agree I I like the dark contrast between the different shapes of windows unique yeah definitely appreciate it all right um I'll mention one change to design that I've noticed uh from the earlier concept was the balcony on the uh on the right side over here which now looks like it's in closed space is that is that the intent that's correct that's correct um and that sort of takes us through anything that was bold does anybody have any other comments or questions on the application I know that there was I know that there was a concern on the side um the neighbors on the other side they were concerned with boundary and the trees that were there and I mean and retaining as many trees as possible yeah on the west side yeah I think that I'm hoping that name is that was taken is that a residential no so there's a there's a restaurant there there was a I was at the last there's an existing theater head so you'll you'll see it in the the kind of wavy okay right there so that's what's already there yep and we're supplementing it with uh trees on that okay so that yeah I think they were concerned about retaining that as much as possible yeah okay awesome all right any further discussion on the board then anyone in the audience yes hi i'm nick monitor from the 28th pleasant street and dare we name a good lab just started to see this uh this project um a question regarding is there any kind of outside amenities for the residents who are living there whether it be local space you know picking table or something of that we did ask them about that at the previous meeting and I I guess that we end up selling anything there we thought they might have some opportunities in the rear of the building the sidewalk used to stop at the existing front door the six-foot walk back we extended it to the other opposite side of the building and we're proposing a park bench we also talked about it being a less than four miles from Pearl Street Park um just down the street and in terms of the landscaping in front of the building what are you proposing there parking space is right and then between that and the sidewalk is there anything uh that is not correct we do know the landscape yep there's a landscaping so as part of a site plan review there's a requirement for the amount of landscaping that has to be done it's based on the construction budget uh so ours was done by a licensed landscape architect uh Mike Lawrence and we do need the required uh landscape budget you can see with all the shrubbery and trees proposed in front of the building a lot of it's been uh proposed up front or as much as will fit in the limited green space that's there any large trees you know I think there's some uh decent sized trees uh that are in the front there represented by the larger surplus up front it's like there's three um does the um tree committee get a review do they provide any review on this yet is it that's uh we don't have recommendations or something they don't tell we don't have that as a part of our process yeah yeah so those larger ground trees are maple trees sienna glenn freeman maple three and a half inch caliper it's a pretty nice tree and then uh the other ones on um uh we have ivory silk lilacs out front along the street as the taller trees and then they're underneath planted uh with more shrubs it's I'm not familiar with this one sienna glenn freeman maple be a good choice for salt yeah color do they get it's not like your autumn blaze right we see we've seen a lot of those planted recently um all right well uh I would say uh I thought the landscaping I've worked with like before and he's excellent uh and and I didn't have any real concerns or even changes to the landscaping plan um I guess if the tree committee studies this more carefully and finds they have any recommendations or comments they should file them with chris and we'll yeah yeah they're for vehicle and available and we'll do it we are trying to use them a little more but I know it's not really in the regulations yeah we could yeah we could try to integrate that into our processes but we've been trying to figure that out for a number of years so it's not uh not a it's a lingering conversation we haven't gotten the right answer yet all right um any other comments from the the audience on this project hearing none um and board you're all set so we can close the public hearing do we need to have motions on all that to close public hearing I think I think I should most clear them closed I think it's supposed to all right so I need a motion to close the public motion to close the public hearing sir all in favor nice here's public hearings closed thank you all um I think we're deliberating uh each one of these as they come um I would accept the motion made by staff and all the items on it with the changes that we made regarding the accessible front entrance and lighting right yep and are there any others lighting the steps and then the change of the lighting yeah right yeah could be asked to review or they're they're gonna do it anyway and but they only they have they can make recommendations that can make them to staff it ends up being a discussion with the applicant you know there may be a reason why the applicant would want to do something you know uh but I don't think we can enforce uh you know what they say it's we're all friends all right um so there's a motion motion to accept staff recommendations along with our proposed changes yeah any further discussion all in favor all right any opposed nobody seconded my motion I thought oh sorry I didn't hear you you did it really quietly all right motion carries unanimously thanks okay next up final site plan to remove existing residential buildings I construct a new building with 34 studio apartments with parking at 227 to 229 pearl street this is in the MFMU one district applicant is 227 pearl street LLC I believe that's Brent and anyone else with oh okay yeah yeah good good you don't like to send them up alone uh all right let's um get to that one on the screen and let's uh I would love to hear just a little bit about the project we have the project in front of us that's my pile this I'll go this way all right great what we're doing here is there are three existing residential buildings at 2729 pearl street there is also an old lodge on that property too so four buildings our plan if you move all four buildings and you construct a single 34 unit apartment building all 34 those units will be studio apartments and then at the same time we're proposing uh parking trash storm water all the things that can wrongly building in supporting motion we were here for the ZEP pool I think almost a few months ago now when we discussed that this good view the plan didn't at that point we're pretty far along so kind of what we haven't changed all that much uh basically what we've done since then is refined the project obviously there's a lot more detail to the project a lot more storm water infrastructure detail there's a lot of details in general uh in the meantime we also have gone for a thing called state permit we are waiting on our water wastewater permit we have a draft permit for active 50 um already in hand that's just waiting on town approval and wastewater approval and a few other portions of A&R it's uh the pretty basic project we built fits in with the existing environment and I guess that's all I have to add but you'll be happy to chat and discuss the project all right um staff do you want to walk us through the report and talk when you get to something sticky sure but I think that's some filing issues okay um if you if you I already know I know what I yeah yeah I I love the project I have I have only two concerns um one is I think I think we were talking about the dry vial with uh we're requested to squeeze them down to 22 feet and I thought we were going to try and leave at least part of one either the front one or the back one or something that would accommodate a you know a couple of extra trucks so yeah if you look at the way the site is actually laid out um we've we've uh there are there are spaces straight so like if you just go straight in then you're right there you got it yeah also just because the way the parking is laid out um I think it's either three or four of those spaces closest to the trash just because of the angle there is actually more space in front of those okay um we are designating those truck spaces uh we still feel uh that this sort of the the parking itself will sort of bring in the type of tenant who wants to live there um so a tenant who looks at the parking width and parking amount and has a giant truck might decide that this is not the the place for them but we did decide to put in uh sort of driving straight in Chris if you kind of go up a little bit near where the trash is you can sort of see where those are yeah yeah I mean this this would be completely contrary to anything that you actually see that we will actually label parking spaces for large vehicles only I thought it was a brilliant idea because I I don't know if I've really ever I've never really seen one of those signs but we can we can get one made there a couple of cars when you know they aren't going to fit in so why wouldn't you label them for trucks when so we'll be more than happy to label the few in the back for large vehicles only okay that looks like you've got EV charging but yes yeah that's good we are proposing uh to put in a minimum of the conduit to have those ready to be hooked up green mountain power is actually offering I believe they're offering the not necessarily incentives but they're you know basically obviously promoting anything electric obviously GMB and GMP is promoting that's great you're out in front I know there's a lot of debate over increasing the requirement but they haven't quite gotten there yet some of it's a little scary around department complexes but we'll take whatever is the minimum or whatever you're willing to give us so that's great I have a question about that so in the discussions of GMB is the conduit that you're contemplating running would it accommodate more than two spaces so we're not we are we are putting that in yeah we're not contemplating it I think at this time it would just be those two there's obviously a lot of parking spaces and close proximity to the building I think there's a very I think we could easily change that to add in the future I'm thinking specifically probably those eight in the back could easily be reconduited in the future to make more spaces for more EV stations in the back there as well as looking even at the 12 up front I just think the proximity to the building would make running additional conduit very simple yeah that conduit's not required the required depth on that's not very extreme and the conduit size is not extreme I think there'd be plenty room to put more in I would recommend just discussing that with your electrical engineer because the changes to the service size can get out of hand pretty quick well this this this whole building is being provided as electric yeah so our service to the building is going to be pretty large like to the tune of 12 to 1400 amps yeah and it's pretty big that's what I'm getting at you're going to see that more and more because people don't really understand what happens to the infrastructure when you start saying I want a lot of EV charging stations they draw a lot of power are you so you're you're using heat pumps versus gas so it's going to yeah so the only gas it's going to be used in these buildings will actually be for hot water right now and that'll be basically two possibly three direct fired hot water hot water heaters in the basement but other than that all the heat in the units AC everything will be the the heat pump mini split type units and obviously standard to this this building will qualify for the the highest efficiency levels for for efficiency Vermont and so it's you know r31 and then walls are 60 on the roof you know basement walls obviously this will have a full basement for storage so we'll all the basement walls will be insulated r30 between floors they're you know it's it's a the whole zip system and not only is it the zip system on the walls but it's actually a zip system on the roof as well so it's it's a very very tight building and so because of that every single unit actually will have its own fresh air delivery and return to each of the individual units instead of typically it's just been to the common areas so this will actually have individual return supplies and returns to to each of the apartments as well fantastic that's they're struggling to implement that in many places so this will be it's it's admittedly it's actually going to be built very similar to 11 park next door as far as the efficiency goes and and there's an efficiency Vermont actually has what I would consider some the incentives that they're offering in past times the incentives didn't really meet up with the additional costs because obviously the return on the efficiency is it's it's slow and it's definitely out in time so what you're seeing now is the efficiencies that that the efficiency Vermont is actually offering now it does meet up with you know it it blends pretty well with the additional working costs that go into actually you know building buildings of this of this quality a couple of years yeah it's gotten better over the last couple years there's actually also federally there's actually some good programs out there as well for building these sort of buildings also so there's there's a lot of programs that are slowly making that for developers are making buildings like this more more palatable it's still stunning when you think that uh what the so-called clean heat standards and other things that you're going to end up with a building that doesn't burn any fossil fuels for you which you know yeah this is also gonna I added there this will also this also have an array on the roof as well okay I only had one other comment if we're still working on comments and it can yeah so if you go back to the bird's eye view Chris and it has to do it has to do with the side setback and the scale difference between this building and the next residential building over and I'm a little nervous about that it's it's substantial under residential yeah well we're not quite ready for you oh you can't see it okay and you haven't probably seen the drawings at either so the part of this that bothers me is that there is a buffer requirement between multifamily district buildings and adjacent single family homes and it and it's required at 15 feet and I don't know that we can wave that I I know that we can wave the buffer uh materials and trees and so forth but I'm a little nervous about the the the setback being 15 feet and not 10 and you're kind of right on the right on the 10 line there are pretty close to it well the building is actually greater than 10 parking lot actually is right at 10 but the building envelope itself is actually greater than 12 and a half well but now yeah we did that so hopefully the well we did that so all the overhangs would be outside of the tent as well yeah and we are proposing a fence along that property line well there is a fence right now there's also a meeple tree bigger than three people to get their arms around yeah they were preserving um and then actually uh the garage of the of next door is actually built almost on the property line yeah I saw that I was wondering whether that was um a living unit or not so if it's a garage I'm less worried about it but it's it is a garage yeah um do you have this one Chris oh yep really kind of shows the anyway um I'd love to hear some input from staff or other board members but I'm not I'm just not aware that we have the ability to wave the 15 feet I know we can we can wave some things but I don't know if I can take it yeah as far as I know you can only wave it in uh in the village said yeah so um anyway uh I that we'll come back to that but I think that's going to end up being a little bit of a sticking point um in that we really don't have the ability to change um yeah this is not brought up by this this wasn't brought up by staff at the original meeting we thought it was it was always proposed to us at 10 feet because we had a lot of discussions in regards to the 10 foot setback yeah and and this is this is newly newly proposed to us yeah let's let's go through the meeting a little bit here and see what else transpires and um those were my only two comments actually about the rest of the project was very well put together and and nicely packaged up um anyone else have a something they wanted to talk about that was in the staff note their comments so right now the buffer is you you're at the building itself is like we talked about it's about 12 and a half and what is the parking lot and over here pretty much right yeah okay but can't you just not build yet can't you just move it over yeah we can I mean we can we can look at a lot of things yeah um anyway we were trying to preserve a little green space in between the parking lot and the building um at that spot I guess we would we would have the ability to shift it again we're sort of just hearing this right this second then if you shift it don't you make more green space we make more real not in between the parking lot and the building in between the the two buildings yeah it would kind of be not you not green space that anybody's going to see I mean no one's going to be behind that building right now it's just like a very low swale in the back of the building that would be used for storm water infiltration if you want we can we can go through the rest of it yeah let's go through the rest of it because it is what it is on paper at the moment and you're you're pretty close but um I just before it gets out of hand I want to make sure that we're you know like I we have some leeway in some things but if we don't have leeway then uh then that's a thing so um all right so any I don't have any more comments from the board staff did you want to touch on anything that's in your uh thing we do have a landscaping plan from tj Boyle so I'm sure Nick will have a something to say about that in a few minutes I do know one aspect that uh Mike and Chris talk about today was I guess there is an additional waiver uh the the light posts are at 16 feet and not 15 feet um I think that Mike was saying that it just produces better light and made more sense to him um so that that was a waiver that uh Mike and Chris talked about pretty much this afternoon I think sort of the the light post itself is 15 feet and then it will sit on a concrete pedestal that's a foot off the ground so yeah and I was told that the uh the lighting plans that we see with the the lighting grid is reflective of 16 feet uh if you force it down to to 15 dot that the numbers will change into the brighter spots different spots I don't think the foot would make it a drastic change I can't imagine anyone would notice myself but again if it's right this is where we get into the thing do we actually have the authority or ability so modify that or not right so lighting is different lighting uh in the ldc it's it's you have to meet those standards unless approved by the city engineer city engineer has has looked over it uh and he's fine with it as long as you're fine as long as the dfp is right so at the 15-foot pole we just happen to stick on a one-foot pedestal so it won't get whacked by the essentially that's a way that Mike described it in the communications with me all right well I'm not worked up about that um all right uh so board nothing else I have one more question there's so in all the drawings I don't see any uh any HVAC uh equipment sticking out the side but we if you up to the side setback uh you there's a limit of how much you're allowed to encroach I think two uh like two more I think one more foot in with HVAC equipment if needed and at the top uh it can be two feet I don't see any over here I just want to confirm if there's any visible you're you're not going to see any of it it's all going to be on the roof okay so but and on the roof is it going to stick out more than two feet no no perfect so it's got solar up there I've got equipment up there usually like if you think of a hotel a lot of the the when you're in the room there's something in the room with you that has the um heating and cooling equipment in it or the ductwork or the fans or something but but you don't actually you might see a grill on the outside but it doesn't stick out right you have a transformer in front it's on all the on the side plans yeah that's on the side um we screen that no yeah yeah as as best we could um as you as we discussed obviously the power load in the building is going to be quite drastic so it had to be a pad mounted transformer so you've got a tree and just as long as we're talking about that you've got a big tree in front of that which I'm guessing you know it's going to be a beautiful tree but the canopy is going to be up here and the transformer is going to be sitting right there you've got the shrubbery behind it so it's screened from the building but we probably want to screen it from the street and the sidewalk so maybe we need just some more of the shrubs there to all I know is one side's got to be open yeah so just for access yeah so so you can basically screen three sides but with whatever you want but gmp's pretty insistent about having access to yeah I think we're saying it's the public doesn't necessarily want to see it and if it's on your site you it might be something that your site people are gonna feel like that so we can just flip flop oh yeah that's fine you're just talking flip flop did yeah that's yeah or what I don't know which side it's an end or a side or whatever I mean those transformers can spin in circles so we can just have the access side be into the parking lot and put the bushes on the uh front side I don't see that being an issue at all okay um all right um anything else I'm trying to get to the members of the audience because I know there uh so I don't know anything else how about members of the audience that would like to speak about this private I will see if I can figure that out uh it is not closer than the duplexes that are there right now which are practically on the property line so that's the second building back it will be closer than the duplex but it's the house but it will not be closer than the garage right now right now you have the the duplex that is there you uh you obviously have the driveway it's in the right so that that that driveway that curb cut goes away so the driveway is gone yes and the building's there and the building is so closer I want to I want an eight-foot decker because I need privacy on my property and I need protection I mean it's me there there is an existing ranch house and I don't want anybody to have any way of accessing walking across on at all so we we are showing a fence no but we were showing a fence on the plans right now so we we do on your point yeah um I don't think we specified that but if eight feet oh we didn't want it decorative um if you look at my property it's very very very welcome yeah and I'm trying to keep me looking good and safe I need to be safe I gotta make sure people can just walk on my property all right well they can't lighting as well back there there's no reason I'm lighting back there so I'm I'm thinking you don't really want lighting back there because then you'll be seeing the lighting but let me just respond to the fencing and I don't know you still have a screen on that if I can't really see the it looks shaded that's the way it's supposed to be all right so so would you like I can put on google if no that's fine so the the fence there's an interesting thing with the fence and I think the village has a limit on fences at six feet unless you understand it so you got to be the part of the department now the difference between the six foot fence and an eight foot fence um I don't uh but uh we're extremely close to that property line and uh it should be 15 feet with buffering and we're a little less than that which we're going to deal with separately um I think we have to because the code says 15 feet uh but we also have a buffering requirement which uh would require that 15 feet to be additionally buffered with vegetation to help screen right so now you can start to get some taller vegetation in there uh you know not go right away but it'll take a while you'll get this uh you know we can look at that on the landscaping plan and see where we are with that and there is quite a bit of uh material there it looks like we're screening the garage more than the house and so we may want to move some of that around but the materials there I think uh the reason we it's because of that massive tree that's there now big tree yeah I think what Mike was thinking that if he plants anything under the canopy of that large tree is just gonna die yes so that's that's why we added the fence as well there is an existing fence right now that's on the property line it goes from I'm pretty sure the back corner of our existing garage um out pretty much to the edge of the bank yeah I do I just want some because right now I've got the garage that's about to escape but then it'll be all open you know for I just want to make sure nobody can walk onto my property yep and so go ahead and so 15 feet is not going to be a problem we can explain what we're going to look at 15 feet 15 feet yeah from the property line to the face of the you know the the the major face of the building I think is what's going to end up being 15 feet without the o-ring so the over the overhang is allowed to encroach and and there's some little ribbon detailing on the building that probably is also going to push in there but it wouldn't read as the face of the building it'll read as little projections so it's flat roof so there's no ridge so water the water is internally collected in the building and goes yeah yeah they need to manage all the water so you won't it's not going to pour off the roof for example no there'll be no water that goes from our property so anywhere besides into the back I actually I did a storm water review of this it actually could probably go all the way through state storm water just because of the soils that we have on site it's very sandy has great infiltration we are adding some some deep catch basins that will also have holes in those catch basins to allow for more water we did a few soil test pits on this site as well as we've done borings and found that the water during the borings which was done in kind of late late march early april which you normally expect to see a pretty high water table and we found water about 30 feet so we have plenty of room to get water into the ground and expect it all will go into the ground so so the three trees that are proposed right there you can see on the landscaping plan those are strong maples as are labeled I see six of them right because they're three up front and three back for the garage and they're on either side of the big yeah exactly they're on either side of the big tree yeah yeah I mean the Julie's garage on that side is it's right I mean as you can see it's pretty close to the property line what's the height of those trees I mean I think they're between two or three inch caliper no they won't be very big when they're planted we just bought one there they a two and a half three inch caliper trees about well be high plus or minus that it's growing 15 yeah they'll be they'll be taller they'll be taller than the fence I think we were gonna have to probably discuss that with you because it didn't make it didn't make a ton of sense anyways to have two yeah it didn't make a ton of sense to have two fences right next to each other I don't understand so we have to put our fence on our property I understand but at that point I think your fence you can decide but we had intended on running the fence the entire line okay because the only other thing I do is roof break towards that side of the garage gets a slanted roof in the winter I have to roof break the snow so I assume the fence will be 10 15 feet back no it's going to be right on the property line prop which is almost on your garage I mean your garage is is about that far from the property line so if I have to roof break can I go on your property to put my roof on the roof on the roof they're really in all honesty I mean it doesn't in our and we can have this discussion off you know it doesn't have to be done yeah it doesn't have to be done here because in all in my opinion or I mean your garage is so close to the property line a fence in that location doesn't serve much of a purpose right because I don't have now I understand exactly so I mean we could certainly come to a side agreement where that garage was ever eliminated for whatever reason then we could certainly add a fence at that time but maybe a fence going like this and like this almost attaching to my garage so nobody can come around yeah I mean that makes sense with a gate and then I can at least well I mean right yeah I mean we could we could we can we can we can talk about that yes we can talk about that for sure and because in all honesty it probably doesn't make a lot of sense for us where am I here okay it probably doesn't make a lot of sense because right now here's the big tree there you have a fence from the tree to here correct I do okay so so so it I mean we can very easily propose a fence that eliminates your fence and it's a same fence basically I would I can't my husband build it when he had cancer the deer died I back in that fence can't okay that's fine too that's very very sentimental yeah I understand okay I know the story that was all back to the yeah anyway okay and that's we'll talk about that yeah yeah just to protect me okay we can meet out there and we can walk the site we can figure it out let me ask friend he's helping me here okay yeah no problem I think we're set then okay thank you yeah thanks so it's Brett I'll get you on here yeah and you spoke you know Kim Kim Kim works with me she went and talked to right after we bought purchased the property used to work with her okay yes you did yeah okay all right so I'm going to summarize we have a we have a setback issue from either 10 12 15 feet from the property line to work through and we have a fence agreement that may or may not happen outside of this format and and when you come back I think we'll enjoy hearing how it all worked out but it sounds like they're both willing to talk about it which is the best and so I'll leave it at that are there other members of the audience that have something to say I'll go up Gabe first and then we'll come we'll come to you back on word my the building and my building next door please uh the this one so it's gonna take a moment to render yes the big rendering coming in Gabe with the property owner on the other side yes I have on the building on the outside I got built in 2009 and after I got approved at this board we discovered it was only a four inch water line when 190 started all the way out dated through the Wilson road yes so I couldn't build the building unless we put an eight inch line so I came so out of there proper at the time of the town manager I'm gonna fix this problem he said we have no money so if you want to build you put the water line in I said if I put the water line in am I gonna be compensated one said uh we're asking uh uh Marcus the uh city councilor is asking that attendees get up to the mic to speak so that's yeah okay I'll go back to the beginning and 2009 I got approved for the 38 units at 235 Pearl Street after approval prior to doing the sprinkler system testing we find out there was only a four inch water line coming down Pearl Street all the way to the ends of Susie Wilson road and at the time was a yellow hydrant in front of the building I thought we had that was a fire hydrant come to find out was only a flushing hydrant to flush the four inch line so it was no service for fire service on the whole section of the road so at the time I came visited with Dave Crawford as a town manager and he informed me there was no money to invest putting a new line in so I said how about if I take the initiative cost myself and do it can I be a recompensated somewhere down the road as people hook onto this eight inch line he said possibly well since then from 2009 till now I'm the only guy hooked up on not eight inch line three times like three buildings there but now Mr. Robotsky is hooked onto it and at the time it cost me 330,000 that was in 2009 today it would cost over a million dollars to do that same water line but I'm so I'm just asking if anywhere I get maybe some compensation for that eight inch line because nobody has hooked onto it he'd be the first one now besides me so just leave it at that well that's all new information to this board and and I'll I'll have to pass that along to Chris and the the city officials to sort that out but it it sounds like a wonderful gesture on your part many years ago and I wish you all the best you got my vote but I don't know how it works yet um all right uh any uh anything else about the project game no I think that building is the the great addition to the street and I'm very happy to finally get out of these old houses and yeah better than the crack denser there yeah definitely a plus good uh nick landscape yeah or anything else I'm wearing my tree hat yeah and I like the project a lot too we're focusing on that big tree and it's beautiful now unfortunately the construction is probably going to quite have a half the root system on one side by the time you do your foundation working there so I would be looking at having other materials in there put in after the after the project is completed and not to rely on that as being big screen and hopefully it survives but maintenance don't take too very well and you're going to be probably like five feet from the trunk by the time you do the excavation we'll have to see what the over dig is we can do we can do some things to to not have to do a typical over dig close to the tree is there a full foundation underneath yes there is I'll also quickly mention that right now the card garage is against the side of the tree yeah so right right now there's already a building restricting some yeah I mean we'll do everything we can and in regards to well it sounds like we might want to preserve some of the landscaping budget to account for some of the some replacement plantings there that works but can I speak a little about the tree but it does it does save my part and I don't have enough conditioning but we can't say that I really would like oh we want to save it there's no question about I had it trim this spring I spent money to trim it and trim your side too but I did the poultry I thought you know I want to do it for the neighbors to hang in on your garage so I took the initiative to keep it up we will have to on our side we will have to limb there some though some big large limbs it'll have to go from our side which is fine it's you know in all honesty it'll probably help the tree in the long run as far as it's dead smack on the proper yeah it's it's it's it's dead on the line it's it's it's like I said three of us three people couldn't wrap this it's a 60-inch oak it's a five-foot oak yeah so you're going to talk more about the 15-foot issue at some point well we'll comply with it I mean there's no question about it okay but that is fine we have room to shift the building it won't affect any of the ADA access as you can see kind of in that corner we it's a little bit thicker to give a little bit more outside space to the front of the building but there there's room in there to shift it if we just in a couple feet I think we just didn't know about it until right now so I'm happy to do that all right so um I'll summarize the there at least in my opinion they're they're really only there there's only the one issue of the property line on the edge and the fence and all that I think everything else has been we talked about the dry vials and the parking of trucks that we're buying with we talked about the light posts that are the right height but they're on a flint so I think we're okay with that um I don't have anything else on my list we talked about the waiver for the parking spaces as an account I don't think we talked about it we didn't we discussed that pretty heavily uh we provided uh provided a you know a parking scenario or parking yeah yeah yeah study all these units are single bedroom units um so and so there's like 58 spaces that we're proposing 48 48 spaces sorry about that I didn't have a concern I was just bringing it up because it was bolded all right anything else you're progressive yeah and then I I'll just bring this up too in regards the way it's written so in this design of this building that there there's 34 units but six of those are actually one bedrooms so it actually has a separate bedroom with a door rather than a studio then rather than just an open studio just for clarification yeah I I was fine with it after the last meeting I think and the counts were well documented and I know that pretty much every time we see your requirement for it and I meant to actually talk to you about this we'll get to the PC but the parking requirements that call for two two cars per unit are kind of outdated and that is in the next room yeah that that's in the current the uh changes that are currently being considered yeah okay uh so yeah I just I see that we keep ending up ending up with waivers for parking and and so at some point we can probably out of fix yeah we ended up next door here with the 48 studios we have at 11 park we actually has we have less than one carpet unit yeah and you know frankly the the notion that you're on um highway arterial or a transit line or all of the and you're serving that population there's there's uh I'll I'll waiver those all day long so yeah great uh so I'm ready to close the hearing everyone uh so I I would suggest if there's still such a continuum right table right I would continue if we're looking for potentially needing major changes like shifting the building I would suggest um keeping it open yeah I mean I'm not sure I don't major I don't see that as a major change either as long as the these guys can we can work with staff and show staff the final plan of the building if we're just going to move it through we're basically going to move it two feet I mean right now we're at or maybe two and a half feet because right now if you look if we were put a measure on where the building is in the property line you can see we're already basically you know probably 13 and a half or 13 so we're really that building's going to shift two feet to the to the whatever it's that southeast west west it feels like a major change even though I I know it's technically not I mean we can all conceptually say okay we're just moving the bill I know it's an engineering wise it's kind of a big thing but but conceptually it's not to me a big thing because if they say they have the room to do it and then it's not bad so normally I would say well they have to come back but um the only two things we have are the actual placement of the building so satisfying the 15 feet and working the fence out with the neighbors and having the landscaping um you know I mean really it's it all possible protection given to that massive existing tree I think are the only outstanding issues that I have and make sense and if staff once or the board wants we can even have Mike you know uh you know TJ Boyle come up with a you know more detailed plan in regards to protecting the tree yeah on the tree committee is that anything you guys have the expertise to do is is Warren still on that does he have yeah similar expertise essentially outlining the area where no construction in place and probably if you're going to be limiting some of them that'll take some of the stress off the root system on that side I think if you work with TJ Boyle that would probably be the best good guy to come over and look at so I I think we have the expertise on both sides of the table here we can uh do our best right yeah is Warren still Warren still well he's on the tree committee yeah but he's hunted yeah yeah I think he's retired he's he doesn't but he's he's you don't lose the knowledge you just you know use it differently yeah okay um all right so uh all of that said uh I'm comfortable closing the public hearing if the rest of the board thinks this is gonna you might want to check it but anyone on zoom has anything to say I don't think they haven't nobody said anything is there any hands raised there any uh there are no no hands raised all right I'll take a motion to close the public hearing second uh any discussion all in favor hi hi okay public hearing's closed I think we already have a motion available to us unless there's any further discussion on this which probably reads something like Daph's recommendations plus uh compliance with the 15 foot setback um and update a more clarified fence arrangement with a six foot or taller fence um and I I think that we heard that the applicant is willing to talk to the neighbor about about the fence and I don't think we want to end up with two fences along that line but it looks like the existing fence has to something has to happen to the existing fence so uh I would suggest that staff has the ability to sort through the fence we know that the future fence will likely be on the property line with possibly some interference from the garage and some ability for the neighbors to be able to continue to clear snow uh I don't know exactly what that looks like but snow's gonna it's right the snow will fall off onto her side of the fence she just needs access to be able to do it so uh good neighbors should make that work but staff's gonna approve whatever language they come up with for that that's fine with me okay um any other do we have to specifically note that the um light poles that are uh set on a base and we're still fine with it uh well like if the base ends up four feet high I'm not going to be happy but you should state it yeah okay uh the 15 foot poles on a one-foot base are acceptable in the parking waiver and the parking waiver is the parking waiver already in the north parking waivers in the house all right um anybody want to actually make that that was a lot of words well you don't have to reshate it just say it's still moved so moved all right anyone second all right uh any remaining discussion all in favor hi hi oh should gary thank you very much thank you great project couple of wrinkles to iron out and they're off the off of the race all right uh one more tonight we have a conceptual site plan a constructed three-story mixed-use building with commercial on the first floor and 34 residential units with parking at eight railroad street in the village center district by franklin south llc owner uh gave and we've got uh some um civil and architectural support tonight okay awesome uh take it away team you're uh david berke from oliri berke as you said this is a concept plan for eight railroad street eight railroad street had a four unit apartment building on it um to the north is sx agency and to the south is another small apartment building uh the four unit apartment building had a major fire and was since removed the parcel as you see uh at the frontage is 66 feet wide at the back it bumps out and it's 90 to 135 feet wide almost a half an acre in size 0.49 the um the zoning for the parcel is village center uh in the village center uh it's a minimum 5 000 square foot lot size uh so we're at 21 400 about 400 400 plus percent over the minimum uh there are zero setbacks in the um village center district there is no maximum density in the uh village center district however the board has the jurisdiction on that to make sure that all the land development codes are being met um with with the density that's proposed um and there's no max lot coverage again the the board has the uh ability to look at everything being met in the village center district uh four-story buildings um up to 58 feet in height are allowed and it actually states that buildings have to be at least two stories um it's uh it's kind of the amped up version of what you just heard on the last two proposals the village center as you've seen across across the street here uh that's what the the zoning is intended for uh this proposal is for three stories um it's 34 and a half foot high structure so it's about the 14 feet i'm sorry about almost 24 feet uh less than the uh the maximum the proposal is for 34 residential units all those units will be on the second and third floor uh they are comprised of 27 one-bedroom units and seven two-bedroom units underneath the building it's structured parking and uh you've got uh 25 spaces um under the building and nine spaces outside of the building where that uh lot you know gets wider for a total of 34 spaces so there's there's a proposal for 34 spaces and um 34 units at the front of the building um the access is under the building on the north side and the south side of the building is both a small uh commercial space as well as the lobby entrance to the stairs etc for the for the building so it's a combined space uh it's approximately 1600 square feet uh about half and half of that about half of it is going to be commercial and half of it is going to be lobby etc for the residential units what doesn't show on the plan now is a entrance door for the residential units from the street and Gabe is going to have that added to that lobby area so there will be a door directly from the street the zero setback the reason the reason this building is well i'm kind of jumping into the staff notes john and i've got them i've got the ones that uh that staff is looking for comments on and or suggesting that the board look for comments on and i'd be happy to start on those and if i skip one that you wanted to talk about or if i'm not talking about one long enough um just let me know that work uh section 604 a um staff points out that uh we are in the village center district you do have design review and that uh staff is suggesting that the post three story building is in line with the intent of the village center district i know there'll be more comments on that and um there'll be more detail on that also at the next step on 604 c on setbacks for clarification um it's two things we want to have we want to have some uh space in the front uh of this building a little bit of space in the front of the building but the real reason that the building is set back and not right on the right away line is there's a major um power transmission main and green mountain power told us how how close we can get to it and the building is right at that line so the building is as close to as close as we can be to railroad street because green mountain power will not um change that line uh that was a meeting with uh gabe and i and green mountain power on the side uh staff notes uh suggests that it's as you know zero setback at the very back of the building it's almost on the line but uh it's generally two to three feet from the south side the gains court side again it's a zero setback zone here on the north side it's 30 feet at the back of the building and much more in the middle of the building from the uh the north uh north line on section 606 e we acknowledge that this is subject to design review and um you know we pointed out that uh per 604 a staff's initial look at this feels that it is on section 606 f on parking um both our cover letter and the submittal that i did which was an update to previous parking study um that i did on some of gabe's buildings on pearl street i went back out because uh we met with terry haas and jeff fusner on this project a few months back probably more than a few months back probably six months back and um they liked that information but said it was outdated um if you can update it that'd be great so i went out every morning at six a.m uh i think four mornings in a row and i went out about 10 p.m at night i live in the village um so it wasn't far of a drive and i counted parking spaces um counted cars and parking spaces and the numbers came out uh slightly less but pretty much the same as they had five years before it's it's it came out as a high of 0.95 spaces per unit and an average of 0.88 spaces per per unit and he's got a mix of ones and twos in those other locations um the those locations as john mentioned in the previous application they're on the transit they have all the benefits of of not being uh car-centric um the building that gabe is about to open he's got 30 units rented um seven of the folks have no car um that's a 0.77 ratio on what he's got so far there and i think it'll be probably less here because this is more central than any of those locations you can certainly get anywhere from from this location um and uh you've got everything that the other locations have but you have much more commercial use around here in places to eat etc by walking um so i was incorrect in the cover letter and my information that we're asking for a waiver in fact we're not asking for a waiver in the village center district there is no parking requirement the parking requirement is up to you um so there is no two spaces per unit plus 10 you know plus the one per 10 uh visitors it starts at zero and it works up from there so we're proposing 34 which is one space per unit we feel that the 800 square feet of commercial space at this time the person across the street may be renting that location the ice cream shop um they're interested but it's going to be walk up walk up business for that so we don't expect that that's going to people are going to pull in to this parking area to then walk back through um to enter a ice cream shop or whatever small commercial space will be there um the building because it's 800 square feet we would like you to look at this as a residential multi-use building we felt it was important to have some kind of a streetscape with that you know commercial component at the front rather than just be an entire because of this location we think it's appropriate to have some kind of a storefront look at at that location um but uh so that was 606 um again we don't need a waiver but we do need you to acknowledge that the existing parking is is okay um to the board on 703c um staff uh states that the entrance has to be a minimum of 24 feet uh we're showing 20 uh the architectural plan actually calls off 19 feet 11 inches i think we would certainly make sure that it was at least 20 um i'm not sure if there's any leeway here i looked at the regulations again um i think staff is pulling from the correct sections the regulations at first i thought that the 24 foot was associated directly with your parking lots in the 24 foot aisle which is a standard aisle in the parking lot we have we have a 24 foot aisle uh we do 20 foot entrances throughout chitening county 24 feet is wider than most of your streets in the village and it's absurd um but i don't know if you have the ability to wave it if you do we would like the 20 feet if you don't we'll we'll make the commercial space that area a little bit smaller and we'll get to the 24 um when you go to the other section that it came up in when i looked at your regs it talks about well i guess i'll take that back i think you you might have some wiggle room if if you want to use it the uh this the commercial and industrial for driveway talks about two-way traffic requiring 24 feet this is not a commercial or industrial use it's a residential use um so we do meet the 24 for your for your parking would like consideration for the 20 foot for the axis i think it is would be much more attractive and it's certainly adequate i believe that we have in the past interpreted the the ldc as allowing waivers for that width um and i would i would support 20 20 feet for that it's more pedestrian exit pedestrian friendliness great great thank you um section 703 k9 um the commercial space will i wanted to just clarify that the commercial space which i already did will include a lobby for the residents and will will be revised to have that front end entrance for the red we think that that address is the pedestrian question um they're either going to pull in in their car and they have access to their units from the interior or if they walk up they're going to have that door at the front of the building and they're going to walk walk in walk in that way so is there so is there another entrance at the back there is entrance from underneath and there's also elevator underneath right i guess so this over here is a is this an entrance as well that is a that's is that where the elevator is the elevator is in the lobby there needs to be a we can we can if we want to if i want to concede here for a minute to the architect uh hi uh dan goldsmith i'm the i'm the architect on this project the very uh so the touching the ground at the at the i guess it's the west side there is that very small square that has the commercial space and the lobby the lobby has a stair and the elevator in the back is the second uh stairway so you can uh if you i'm assuming with if the tenant has a key they can access the stairway from the back if they're in the lot so the handicapped spaces are next to the stairs not next to the lobby um i the i'm in the back we can we can yeah the this is conceptual but that would have been something that that our office did not knowing exactly what was going on until the handicapped spaces will be by the small lobby ultimately by the elevator got it yeah so is there an elevator in the back to or no just a stairway just the front yeah is the the only handicapped spot is in the back there though there's two currently there three back there three two aisles in a space uh yeah there yeah we will switch the locations but for the amount of parking we're proposing we're required to have two handicapped spaces and those are underground parking spaces under the under the at grade yep yep seems like it would make sense to have those closer to where the elevator is right yeah we are going to move we're yeah we we agree so those those will get moved um the section 705c as i stated is specific to commercial and industrial but i'm hearing from staff that the uh 20 foot is supportable i hope the board agrees with that section 705d4 staff supports the existing the drive location it's a widening of the existing drive location as far as the 25 foot setback um i would suggest in any future i know you're doing some now but you might consider in future land development code revisions that that's not a very good thing to have in your village center district with zero foot setback to have a 25 foot driveway setback it would create would create a lot of problems if if a different board felt that the 25 foot was important um section 7082 uh the proposed this is getting into the buffering the proposed building's multifamily it's got that very small commercial component but it's multifamily so i feel that this section 7082 does not apply to this proposal um i also suggest that 7082 the second sentence is the clarification that it talks about adjoining residential district the adjoining district is village center not not residential um and city and the adjoining when it talks about residential it talks about residential use the residential use is on the other side of gains court so i think there's several things here but the main thing is that this is a residential building and on the other side you've got the sx agency which is commercial uh building section 7083 this section also clarifies a buffer zone of not less than 15 feet from the single family use by stating to minimize the impact on adjoining single family districts again there's no adjoining single family districts it's uh it's again it's referring to single family uses and then the next line talks about the district well we're going to have a lot of conversation about this piece because it seems to be the crux of the issue yep yep um 7085 it talks about that the if if the board feels differently than i feel that the buffer does not apply to this to this proposal uh you have the ability to wave it using the undo adverse i assume the undo of adverse there's nothing that i've seen in your regulations so i assume you kind of look at the state standards adverse first and then if you feel it's adverse the two-part test of is it undo adverse um this is this is a three-story building that's 24 feet 23 and a half feet less than can be allowed at this location i don't think that's undo adverse i think that this is what's expected for redevelopment in this area um expected and encouraged uh the there was some language in 7085 and the staff notes this building does have residential units on both sides on the second and third floor so they will be windows on the second and third floor i found nothing in the regulations about light and air and it's a zero foot setback and as anything that's first come first serve if gains court area got redeveloped it may not be appropriate to have buildings two feet apart um but uh i don't see anything in your regulations on on light and air and we're up against uh gains court and we're meeting the greater than zero foot setback on the uh proposed stipulations the only one that i would like your consideration to change is item nine which is the 24 feet to 20 feet if the if the board doesn't have heartburn on the amount of parking um the 20 feet and the drive aisle i suggest based on the staff notes that the crux of the conversation is the the buffer and as stated in the last hearing you you have the ability to waive buffer if you feel it's appropriate in the village center district yeah i i've got a lot of heartburn about gains court and i i don't understand some of the staff notes about uh the legal part of that like it's not a real street it's not a public right away it's so i don't quite understand how we deal with that um because it acts like a street and it it serves as a street to the neighbors on it which are all smaller older houses that at some point will probably come down but they're not down yet so my i need to know how we deal with that and i i don't know chris if that's anything that you can can help with but gains court as a if it's not a public right away it's a property line of some sort it's a it's clear that there's single family use going on that that property which when you introduce a multi-family building next to it seems to trigger the buffer ease for me uh so and the only other question i have is more of an architectural uh building life safety code issue and that's if you build right up to your property line what are the implications for uh rating like i could have another building on the other side build right up to the property line and then no no one would have windows so that's and you'd certainly be closer than the amount of distance that you have to be a part to have no fire rating on your outside wall so we've had projects where the building itself was too close to the property line and there was no other building but the fire marshal required us to rate the the wall uh because it was too close to the the so i i'm just bringing it up because there's i think there's a little more in there than just we just the there's no setback right because we yeah we know there'll be a fire review and what comes of the fire review will we'll have to you know work with comply with i think uh you know as well as i know john that uh this this zone being a zero foot setback um we meet the requirements and and and and everything gets reviewed at the time it gets reviewed if the gains court area gets developed as i said it's certainly not appropriate for them to be right on the property line but that's something that the board will review at that time we can't well we can't we can't factor that in uh you may have to though that's right so you can't take away somebody else's rights on their own property like i have just as much right to come by and develop the gains court property as you have the right to develop that property so i'm not sure you can just say whoever gets there first that doesn't sound like a legal argument to me but well i'm not taking away their rights your codes are your codes are a zero foot setback i'm complying to your codes um section 708 b uh three when you read it it says any multifamily use adjacent to a single family use shall provide a buffer not less than 15 feet the buffer zone shall be landscape in such a manner to minimize impact on the adjoining single family district i believe the intent of that is it's for single family districts single family uses in single family districts and and that's why buffers can be waived in the village center district so that that's that's my reading of that as an ex zoning board chair i i think you're half right so um anyway um i i just want to keep going back to the what is gains court how do how do we it's a private street it's a private street so it doesn't really care to drive it just happens to be there it's on the property of all those different properties and they're used none of them have their own access point they all have they've all agreed to share it's an existing condition or whatever happens it's so i'll i'll mention this this is a little bit unusual in that usually when you have a bunch of residences that share the same private street it would be it would be a separate parcel which which come under common ownership and management but in this case at least according to the tax maps over here you know these are the way the parcels uh show up yeah so right like so gains court by this interpretation would like it's just pieces of gains court are part of each of these parcels yes and the the first half of our lot um on the plan that's up right now behind chris the the red and that's a poor apartment building um so that's not single family um so there's no question so are you talking about this one there's no yeah there's no question that the buffer uh discussion only applies um once you get beyond that parcel and i'm in my version of the land development code maybe i i think this is the right map but it's calling out what's in yellow there it actually um on mine is multi-film your residential three and not not a single family district not a single family district right it's just a single family use so i think it's up to uh i think your interpretation that will yeah will matter um right so you have something that's probably different zoning but but the actual use of it at the moment is single family now i will say that uh it is this issue is currently uh being discussed in the land development code amendments um and if passed as uh as a currently proposed uh the 15 foot buffer uh would not be required at all in uh in the village center zoning district but of course this yeah this that's is not it's currently under consideration what's the timeline for that forward uh they warned the public hearing on it right they technically had not warned it yet but it will be public hearing is expected to be uh mid-june uh and this has if it's to pass it has to pass by august um early august i happen to have an event coffee this would be under screening and screening and buffering it wouldn't it's not under the village center not under the village center all right well um i don't i still don't know that i still don't know that we're gonna answer the whole question today uh this is conceptual so we're supposed to give you our feedback and generally um you know see how many legs this might have going forward uh so i think that's the first question i have for for me is is just can we with a straight face say that this building belongs next to that many single family homes that are it's only next to two single family john it's a multi-family in the front and it's a multi-family in the back i gotta say there's two there's two abutting single family has anybody ever been up gains court uh and just tried to get in from the street with the bone pole on one side and building on the other pole is going to shift i feel like i'm he's he's he's i donated chunk of my land so they can take that pole and move it to open up the front so a fire truck could get in there yeah because the garbage trucks hit it on both sides is that the power line that's that's holding you guys back from there they'll allow us to shift the pole laterally um because they didn't ask us to do that but gabes hit it with his own plow you know just his pickup plowing yeah um it's rough and uh yeah um yeah it's a fascinating little best edge of something but uh and the building on the right is uh you guys don't want to take that one down too do you actually that was purchased not too long ago yeah that's owned by somebody else and it was purchased at quite a high price yeah um okay uh so what other concern i have some uh concerns about the building i know it's just an early rendering i think uh you know the brick is it's not the materials just the delicacy of the of the use i think there's some um there's quite a bit of language in the land development code about fitting into the general character of the surrounding buildings and trying to keep some rhythm and some uh you know balance between new and infill and and existing and character and i gotta say that whole street railroad street is is is a major hodgepodge of uh you know things that you probably wish weren't necessarily there but they're there right uh so what we we look to the next building to the north or west which is the handy building which is actually a beautiful building and we don't need them to necessarily look the same at all but we're we're trying to say you know find us a way to have the dialogue that is the streetscape of the village village former village now city of s6 junkton talk to each other like the you need to be using the same vocabulary and if you're not using this you know using the same materials is only like you have in the same letters but now i need the speech to show that the words are actually in the same language so i i'm i'm looking for a little more work on that part of the project the building itself um i kind of like the fact that it turns character and then becomes something a little different going down the back but it still looks kind of flat and um you know i'm imagining myself in one of the buildings on gainscourt leaving my front porch every morning and going you know i've got this new building in front of me and and it's it probably should be a little more detailed along the side so you know you've got neighbors to attend to the building itself is kind of interesting because uh you know it also the the code talks about having a certain rhythm and pattern as you go down the street this building is is narrow at the street but it goes back a long way which when you're on the street it's going to look pretty normal because the size of the facade facing the street is about the same as the other one so that probably is easier to deal with that if if we can get the delicacy of the building itself sorted out i think having commercial on the ground floor is great because the street fronts along there are all trying to be a little more active and and residential doesn't always do that the moving a door of some kind to the front i think is a big signal that hey we're being friendly and in street spacing so that's that's a i'm glad to hear you say that you were planning to do that but i would still kind of go back and look at some of the other um architectural clues that are present in many of the village buildings and and start to play with those as the design progresses and i think the more recent buildings along maple street are good examples of you know it doesn't have to look the same but but the parts and pieces are there and they help everybody read the building and they provide some interchange and some some fun that you can have there you've got a little bit of a tricky um uh you know path for yourself in that you you've also got to leave a hole for the cars right so you've got you've got this vehicle access and you know i again i'll go i'm fine with 20 as long as you know uh it's wider than gains court i think yeah so um i had some other questions and i wasn't sure if i was reading it but um there's a it feels like with all the other driveways in the area that there would be a tremendous advantage to have in some kind of an easement where you're not having to drive under the like with the fire truck shows up they're not going under there they don't want to but but they're gonna probably go down one of the neighbor streets the park and do their thing i i wonder if that applies to garbage and uh you know any other kind of major vehicles that would need to get in there in ambulance or something so it says potential easement uh access easements right here right so i'm just saying that for me that would you know when you start talking about reasons vehicles need to show up at your building and can you accommodate them and are you by default using your neighbor's property uh i just wonder whether there's some other agreement that's in place and and you know that says okay we don't mind if the fire trucks have to come you know you're naturally you can get in there but where is the uh how does the garbage truck get in there to empty the dumpster you know i really have to enjoy it interrupt you an an easement for my cousin next door so you have to use the drive but like you say the rubbish truck and yeah so that that's not the potential easement that's some other easement that you have in there so to bring the power and do i think on concept planning at the time we put potential easement but since then you know gave us at the discussions right we would have to have a written we know we need a written uh easement if it's part of that just ticking off my concerns right um so i am i am a little unhappy about the setback from the street in that um it's actually wouldn't be bad if the building on the corner against court wasn't added on to in front you can kind of see and and you know if you guys are reading the screen there you can see where the original building was and then the next building down uh they kind of line up with the face of your build yeah and if that property ever gets redeveloped they're going to run in the same thing as we did yeah remount and power it's going to say you have to be that far yeah and we're right at the i mean we argued it right at the minimum yeah but on the flip side it's only 12 feet and it offers us the opportunity to do something unique there you know as far as benches and different things for the residents and for the commercial space yeah so i think i think it could be a feature this is a negative yeah it it just it because the neighbors are i would call them non-conforming like it's the biggest mistake i've ever seen that they you know what wooden building they're gut added on to yeah uh but uh most most of the time you just sort of shut your eyes and keep going but hopefully that gets straightened out and then i think the face of your building will make a lot more sense so that now john john just for for dance purposes here i'll stick i'll stand up for the conceptual work that he's done so far because i'd like to a little further clarity the input that we receive from staff former staff and concurrent staff was that the s6 agency as you said is a prominent building and that's why this is correct that's why this is flat roof that's why you know so it's it's trying to not deviate that much from the s6 agency rather than you know it is i'm just saying it you know stylistically and all the other things that we get to look at in in the review that talk about not subtracting from the character of the village but but infilling and maintaining the village character city character and we it's hard to do that so it's been a village versus how long right that i think if you read that language you'll be uh and there's like two pages of it so there's a lot of stuff you know talked about many things i think it's it's pushing you towards being a little more historic in the treatment and a little less modern and and that's i'm not saying that necessarily we're saying you can't do modern but i think you've got to just be careful to have enough of the language of the historic in there whether it be trim or detailing or you know doing things with the brick or something you know you've got to play a little bit of the game there that to be friendly to the neighbors and you know you don't have anything to work with on the games court side but um you know the the view is a little wider than that in in the big picture so um and then after that i think just the building is along i mean you're you're abutting three properties going down games court and and a couple more on the other side you've got churches you've got uh you know village vernacular uh there's there's some good things to work with there and i just it's going to mean a little bit more detailing i think on on the further development of that but but uh you know the material selection you know clabbered brick you know that's that's right down the middle you can't you know you you want to be there i think but but the treatment just needs to start showing a little more so do you you want the building to look more old-timey as it were more i i don't i'm not trying to say exactly that but but if you think about the parts of the length of the if you think about the language of those buildings there it's more than just where the openings are and how much brick versus whatever it's you know if you look at the column that you have out there on the outer leg of that uh uh parking thing it's really thin right so that's like you know corbusier meets uh you know Olmstead here or something if you've got you've got to work on just getting the balance right i think so uh you know at this conceptual stage i i'd say that it was very intentional the desire for it to look a bit more contemporary yeah uh you know in contrast to the building next door and in contrast to some of the ones across the way there by the train station so the the hope was to highlight the new building and the existing building in that way now if that if that's that that was the scheme at one point if that's not going to fly with the board uh well you may find so so here's the thing so you're doing things with the with the fabric that brick doesn't want to do right like it doesn't like being unsupported across big spans with no visible support right that's a very modern technique at the bottom there you might be better off without the brick you know or all the brick you know like just be a little more visible in what's happening there because right you take away all those support lines and all the things that you you come to know as these are how brick buildings work because most of them were built before they were just veneers it doesn't look like that i mean the language doesn't look like that even if the building could so you're showing me a more contemporary view that that isn't necessarily what brick does right so the other ones that we've seen mostly people are using metal panels and you know fancy wood looking siding and and that and and it's easier to believe those because you know it's not brick and it's not supposed to do this you mean the the car opening well and you had the whole the second floor is looks like it's projecting out over the first floor right so um i'm we all love brick but brick has its own features unless you you know what happened was when they made it more contemporary and more modern they they started to play games with what rick looks like you know how does it work so um you this this being sensitive to the sx agency is a great idea but then changing the whole language to being very contemporary or modern is is it it comes back to balance for me if you can pull it off great if you can't pull it off just as soon not see the brick there i don't think you know the sx agency demands that the building near it has to be brick but you know maybe the base is brick and maybe that was the input from yeah yeah i i like the idea so let's see what happens i'm just giving you my comment um let's see um how are we dealing with the buffer zone in gainscourt that's that's really worth down to i can't imagine you know it changes life so much for the neighbors right what are you guys talking about the building so when you look at the building are you driving into park underneath like that yeah so so you where you see there where you drive in and then you see the first airspace underneath there that's where it turns to the nine outside spaces and then or it or it turns turns in this way into the 24 foot aisle for the parking underneath underneath and so if you were on gaincourt and you're coming out are you looking at you're looking at that fence a fence is proposed along that side so they won't they won't look they won't be seeing cars okay but if you if it wasn't there that's what's there yeah you would see the cars yep because it's it's support support structure down through there and then it you need to have the air under yeah okay yeah but that's all and then it looks like there's already vegetation on gainscourt is that staying or going we haven't located um existing vegetation yet so um we'd have to look at that closer but just i'm talking about yeah right here yeah we'd have to we'd have to locate what's there certainly as proposed now anything that's within a few feet of the property line would have to be removed so the first that first building again is a is a multi-unit building so the um it's just the second lot and the third lot those are single family uses those you know those are the two abutting single family uses so john uh if uh if we're if we'd like to talk more about 15 foot buffer i think the related issue that i that i've mentioned here about uh easements for air and light i will mention that is not a requirement of the ldc um do you uh but i have looked at some precedents from other places where there have been uh such an issue where uh where you brought up a thin line and uh basically if in the absence of uh of uh any rules that prohibit it there's um it's not first come first serve it's uh it's there just no right for anybody you can you can uh you can hope for the best but if somebody wants to build and redevelop the parcel's long uh gains court they can build all the way up to the the edge as well and with the proof with approval of the board sure right but our if our rules don't prohibit that which right now it doesn't um that's uh that's a risk you would be taking unless you have an easement for your so what you just said is what i'm asking you to do your rules don't prohibit it we we are beyond the zero foot set back i'm saying just conform to your own rigs uh what we're saying is that's fine but if somebody comes along then both buildings were going to end up i mean now you're like the tenement at that location gay bones the building in the back if that area ever got redeveloped i'd say there's a pretty good chance it's gay the the building the building here as you know on these large buildings the way they work is they have to be 61 62 feet so you can accommodate the underground parking that you have standard parking so so what you're talking about is in the zone where you want these buildings and you have zero setback if you feel that that the second the second sentence of that what you're saying is the second sentence of that same section does not apply because we don't abut the single family district so maybe i'm picking and choosing from that section but you're also picking and choosing from that section if you just talk about single family use i i just want to look at the updated ldc and it does modify that language to kind of it's probably gonna it's probably well if it gets approved it's going to solve itself because when we come back we're going to be under the new regs but what but well you've received this right so some of the there are definitely some concerns yeah i'm not so i was looking for so i i know uh mary joe's in the audience so we're gonna get to her momentarily um because i think we all need to digest this but the the fact that you have a zero lot line setback doesn't give you the right to put windows in it for example right so you can do it but if the next parcel gets developed and they want to go zero lot line then you guys are both right so you you can it's why you see kind of when you go through the city and something gets torn down and you realize that you know looked like all these row houses and now there's one missing their blank walls on either side there aren't you know nobody's got a window so it changes what happens in the use of the building so long and skinny doesn't work if you zero a lot line and you built right up to it uh that's i'll leave it at that but but you're right there is no setback and you can do it now until something else happens um but i want to go back to the neighbors there are two single family uses and uh i have one of the landowners in the room so uh unless the board has additional questions at this moment i might go to the audience well i should i think it's a question for the letter that we received but do you have any plans for maybe for i noticed that there's some space behind where the dumpsters proposed is what do you envision in that back corner there we really haven't at this point you know of her conceptual um i think there's a big opportunity in that front 12 foot strip uh that back area to be honest most of the time it's going to be snow storage in the winter um so we hadn't really thought about it beyond that you know the building to the back there is is owned by Gabe Mary Jo would you like to address the room at this time thank you Mary Jo Wengel i in the house with the green roots there um i've lived there for 30 years and um i have to say that i'm not unhappy that this property is being developed because it's as long as i've lived there it's been a subject of neglect uh very very bad neglect at some points in time and um it hasn't proved since Gabe purchased it and removed a bunch of the dead trees and you know cleaned up the area as far as a hangout for folks in the community who just looked at it as a an available space to work on their cars etc so i'm not opposed to it um i didn't see any rendering on the game's court side so it's hard for me to visualize what it might look like um you know i'm i'm trying to scale my my vision to say okay 34 feet high what that's going to do to the light and the air and of course i'll lose the the view of the congregational church and you know it's it's a nice view right now so a building being there of that height is going to make the court dark and depending on the siding or whatever i this is the first i've heard a better offense but again there was no rendering on that side um it is pretty close to mine and my neighbor's house i think christine is still on the call she's um my neighbor um the court is a one-lane driveway basically um when that house my neighbor's house burned 10 years ago they could not get a fire truck down games court and it was bought from the parking lot as it exists right now i know gape has generously offered to move that darn pole that looks like it's been jumped on by beavers because it's been hit so many times um i'm still not certain that the fire truck can get around that corner um the crescent connector is going to go by there so all of the traffic is going to get rerouted there so that's going to become a lot busier um i've always been concerned about the triplex and the fire the the way a fire would be fought back there particularly in the winter because there's the the fire access that was granted uh when that building was built in the winter has 10 12 feet of snow plowed against it so there's no access there that's another issue where's the access for you know where does the snow go where's where's the snow get plowed to um a long gains court there is not just that one pole there are three other electric poles or utility poles rather um i don't know what the rules are for proximity of building near utility poles what the setback from a utility pole might be so uh let me just ask a quick question yeah chris here i think um has uh for conceptual plan review have the fire chief and people looked at it yet they don't probably see it at this level yeah yes they actually have uh i got comments today it was later than what could come into the report but uh the fire chief says that uh this would only work from a fire fire perspective if they have access to the back over here so so i believe there's a there's an easement for access over here which i hear it's the northeast yeah the northeast so it should not be blocked by uh with snow and that that is uh that that's uh would not work for what um and it's been like that since that building's been built right yeah um yeah so so that that's uh that's an issue that that we should be fixing um but they they say they just they need to be able to get a truck back here uh and they expect that if it can be through the easement that'd be fine uh gains court they think it's too narrow but they also say like technically they could they could get a truck through there um if needed uh well the the normally the fire department i think according to NFPA wants 30 feet and you know you don't have 30 feet you do not have 30 feet but um it's in existing conditions they'll do whatever they need to do and i don't know why one gains court why they said they couldn't get to it but i i would i would submit that the common sense approach to a lot of this is if if there are easements in place that would allow the emergency vehicles to access the buildings that are in the back there then probably a lot of the those type of concerns can go away um but and it sounds like Gabe has the resources and and um uh connections to make that happen and i think that would be an important part of moving this forward so that the newer building that he has back there and the other proposed buildings are maintainable and you know that they can be reached by fire apparatus and so on um i i don't know that there's much that prevents the building that is being proposed from happening but i think that there's some sensitivity that should be in place uh around how it interfaces with its neighbors and and how its neighbors are uh you know what i mean they could build a taller building if they can figure out how to get the other things done the building can be taller but um i still think that the building could be nicer to look at and you will be looking at it um and the privacy i mean that there's going to be windows there that's looking right in my window or my neighbor's window or down my driveway into my yard you know yeah so it's very close that the zero setback and the lack of uh ability to and it's on purpose right so that that in the village center some of those you know this isn't being developed like a suburban neighborhood where everybody's got their own little you know house on a land you know that's that's not what happens in the village center the village center is is on purpose um plan to be denser and have no lines up race then so there's a lot of stress when when something like this is proposed because the existing land use around it especially in this spot is is totally old school it's just so old that it doesn't um match what the language says is is encouraged so uh you know there we're we're hearing that from the applicants you know your language says do this and and they're right but but the balance is that there are little pieces of the code that says we we promote that but and that's what the pages of uh you know all the regulations that go into what the architecture of that thing has to look like and how it interacts with its neighbors and all those things that are in the historic section that's what that's in there for it's to create a way to bridge from the new to the old and and that's why i'm saying you know like okay brick might be great but but that's not the end of the story it's just the beginning you know you have to really look at what it takes to belong to that neighborhood and it's okay to push the neighborhood forward a little bit but you can't do it to the point where the older things that are right next to you are kind of crunched you know you don't want to go over a year of some game yeah somebody wins and everybody else loses yeah you don't want to do that so it it's uh you know it's it's almost like politics you know you're gonna horse trade for a while and then you finally come up with the deal that works and Gabe's a master at that already so i know he's gonna pull it off i i think for me it's it's really how does the sensitivity of that seam right along games court how does that get handled and i think if the building itself is exciting enough i think uh you know and and we really figure out what it means to those people on games court to put something right in front of them uh even if it's on the lot line i think that can be successful i mean there's no i mean we did a building down on the waterfront in burlington it's on north avenue and it starts out small and then we left the old piece in front so everybody you know got to see the same thing from north avenue and then there's a base and then there's actually three buildings going down so there is light and there is openness and you get this rhythm that's happening even though it's sideways to the main street and you know it's a little more successful because you have some openness so maybe it's not just one big chunk of building maybe something else happens that creates more of a neighborhood feel just making stuff just saying yeah but it's it it would be really neat to see a building slide right in there and look like it belongs right that's kind of the message all right uh i'm not really sure how to shut this place down there are a couple of things i feel this is just being shoe-orange into a lot you know i think it maps too much and uh it was backed off from that lot line uh gains court that would help it really isn't any green space i notice not necessarily they can take the landscape money and put it into a landscape on a piece in that house see a building um you know a little greener a little nicer um i a question about the crescent connector and the amount of traffic that's going to be going down there and you're gonna reduce the three-way to 20 feet i believe is that what you're considering yeah i don't i don't have a problem with that because you're what 12 feet back from the street now yeah plenty of plenty of yeah yeah it's not like gains court where you you show up and you can't get the nose of your car out in front of that building without something swiping the front of it off right you won't have that so i think that's that you know we're all going to see a new traffic pattern but it's sight lines that are going to be how will FedEx and UDS service building i like those are things right on the street on the street there likely we're a 35 34 unit building well it means residential it's what they do for every building it's gonna build it right so i have to say if route 15 or main street is going to be cut off and all that traffic is going to be on railroad street i don't see u p f stopping in front of our tones and blocking the traffic no i mean they wouldn't be allowed to just block the traffic it's if there is it's uh it would be on the uh when there's parallel parking available i mean they have to work around that they and they there is no there's not going to be any parking all the parking is going to be removed on railroad street the parking street that exists right now right i think the traffic situation needs to be evaluated with the new trash pattern and i don't know if i don't know that that's a traffic study i think the traffic study is showing how many cars are going to be using that's already been done you already know and so the question is what's reasonable to expect for 34 units to you know how many FedEx trucks a day is that you know i mean is that three or is that 40 you know i don't know but um there are requirements for all of these buildings already that say we we need delivery somebody's got to have a plan for deliveries for garbage for fire trucks all of those things so i think that's that's the challenge i think the modulation you know you could imagine that um you know maybe uh you know the the bulk of the building can be softened by articulation it's currently rendered as a big square and it's going to end up being generally a big square but that doesn't mean it has to just be a flat thing right um you can't tell them that it's uh not allowed to be that because it can't right so zero lot lines in the village center where we really are asking them to fill it up and i understand it but it is the boundaries too about neighborhoods and this is the most historic and buildings we have located with the Brownville block congregational church the insurance agency cemetery across the street we pay attention and i'm not saying should you break i agree with you that as the design as there brick doesn't work and let's we look ridiculous and i just try and bring on the materials i'm not willing to say concede that yet either but um i i just think that there's some delicacy that can be applied that it's going to make the make it feel more comfortable so uh the point is it's that balancing it you've got a site you've got neighbors you've got character you've got allowances that let you do things like have zero lot lines but the success of the project is going to be in how that gets handled you may not take everything you can take you may have to you may have to do something that says okay well guess how we're going to do you know this for each person or each unit or why maybe the fence is playful or something so so for uh conceptual john as you said we're looking for feedback from you and and normally after conceptual lots of money is spent lots time is spent um i'm not sure where we're at i'm i think i'm hearing that if that side is unique enough interesting enough fits in for you does that you have the ability to do the waiver i'm saying that what's the waiver for the 15 foot i mean if the 15 foot you know that side of the building doesn't matter if the board feels the 15 foot applies and they're not willing to wave it because this building is not a 75 foot building that can become 60 feet and still 60 foot 61 is the small she can go on these buildings um to have parking underneath unless you went with one sided parking and that type of building wouldn't work so that section starts off by talking about single family use the very next sentence clearly says single family district so i think that can be read either way i'll acknowledge i'll acknowledge that but i'm choosing to think that that second part the weight of it is the single family district regardless if you feel the other way it can be waived so as we move forward to this next otherwise yeah i hear what you're saying that's why i said the biggest issue is going to be how do we deal with gains court because i i don't know if i have an answer for that yet and even if i had one there other members of the board that may have a different one and that that's kind of tricky and it doesn't help you guys move forward very comfortably so well we can keep in touch with chris as far as how the new regs are coming along or whether they get changed or whether they're in the current that may take that whole argument off the table may or may not um but it's just one more point on that um in some municipalities once the rules are warned and they're public that they take effect is that a yes once they're warned if the their interim zoning and we can apply under them uh actually you have to take the more restrictive of the two until it is actually passed but we have a deadline for passing these uh these are these amendments and that is that's the beginning of august because it's been sat down for so long uh so i wouldn't worry about that uh the the uh that taking a long time you know it's either gonna something either is going to change or it's not sounds like it's going to change before we see you then i guess what they're saying right well the council it is something that is that council is discussing and and they've had more questions and concerns about it so i yeah it's hard to tell what will come of it but i i mean if i i heard everybody who was who was interested in this topic to to speak to council about it and and to be involved good so the planning commission is probably answering questions would they come to the drb and ask us anything like okay in practice how does this work the planning commission well i mean no the city council if they want to know what's going to happen or how it works or what's the implication of changing this language right this project is a great example i bet i'm putting this on staff course yeah yeah um okay but i will say that the intention and and it's been in the code for decades and people kind of forget about it but it it's been to increase the density in the village center it's been uh to to try and hold on to historic fabric but not at the expense of moving forward and so some of these buildings we had the same handful of discussions and you know tiers and not in my backyard it's going to disappear kind of thing uh for uh over by the park street school and those neighborhoods in there where there's long established residential neighborhoods with village center properties right next to them and uh you know we've already gone through this a number of times and some of which are single family districts though some of which are so now we're sort of clear and taken that off as we had trouble dealing with that and and it didn't seem like the rules were really making it easy for anyone to figure out what was being requested and so the land development code is trying to keep up with expectations and help manage those which is why the language is tightening up to say okay what we really meant was right yeah i mean if we look at historic village centers throughout vermont you don't have 15 foot buffers between buildings you know it's so your zoning districts zero setback max coverage you know no no density you know no max density all of that and then okay let's how does a 15 foot buffer fit in a village center district how does it fit in any village if you were on you know pearl street in that nice little residential piece as you're coming down the hill or if you're in maple street as you start to get out of the village center i mean those are fairly recognized you know stable well maintained properties with a real pattern to them and and everybody gets that you get into you know gains court you're going how did this you know get here but it grew over you know centuries ago and it just never really in my opinion uh there are parts of the town that the village or now city that never really turned into a village or a city they were just there and they never never evolved and that density and and the nicer building materials and things just weren't they didn't show up so now a hundred years later you still have them now what do you do with it and and so it makes it really tricky to find the balance between the new things that are going in that meet the land development code and the old pieces that are still there yeah and and it's challenging for all of us and uh you know i'll just leave it at that but really it's finding the right balance it'll evolve it'll be slow it'll be you know a parcel at a time but the land development code is generally looking for progress uh anything public works had an important comment that's uh that's uh they're hoping that you'd be able to do something about uh so any connections to any new connections to uh water and sewer uh it's gonna obviously involve digging up the road uh but this road is also being reconstructed uh over the next year or the pressing connector so to uh so that if you want to be able to help not have to dig up the road uh right after it's completed uh it would really help if you uh put in the stubs right now um as soon as possible um if they'll allow us to put them in before the projects approved i'm sure gave us all for that right uh while for if you're just putting in stubs they'd be they'd be very happy with that um and it would mean that you wouldn't have to repair the uh the road to the same standards as you know we we're really making sure it's perfect otherwise so you hate to have a patch in a new road happens all the time if you wonder how could they do yeah well if you if you allow something like this but that it isn't allowance basically by the town to allow it to happen and it makes perfect sense also um marcus our city councilor has uh just asked on zoom can developers create green space on the roof they could all of these things are possible it doesn't mean they have to again but there was a big write-up from the brilhamton free press years back on the one for uh the airport and i think year two it went away so it was a big you know it just doesn't work very well in vermont it's um people are always looking for rooftop stuff and the pressure just isn't quite here for that just like going underground is not really quite here for that is he talking about the green roof board amenity space marcus uh if you're there uh perhaps you can just uh speak up yeah i was thank you so much i i appreciate it i was really more curious about what the options were because looking at this particular project and taking into account that this is a flat roof over a large space thinking about what the possibilities might be um whether it's a green space whether it's maybe solar or some other use that may be allowed um so that's why i was asking generally not just specifically for this project um as again i've been going through the through the the regulation and so i'm just asking the question so i have a better understanding of it thank you and we'll be looking at that more you know is solar ready like is that a structural requirement it'll be required to be solar ready i'm assuming we'll do eight months so there will be some mechanical equipment but it is a big enough room for that yeah let's have a hand up by christine yeah thank you um i am a resident of gainscourt which has been brought up a number of times in this meeting um i just wanted to have my voice be heard i think mj did a really eloquent job speaking to some of the matters of concern for the two of us who are single family residences on gainscourt um my my main concern is uh the same as mj sustainment that has already been brought up it is the width of gainscourt and the proximity of this new um three-story building to gainscourt i want to make it clear i am i am yes in my backyard i am please build residences i know that we need them in our community um i would just beg for thoughtfulness for a facade that is going to be so close to my front door um i also have safety concerns i live in the house that burned down 10 years ago and couldn't be reached by a fire truck uh i watched the previous building burned down um it was really frightening so um would really ask that thoughtfulness be paid to access for emergency vehicles as you guys consider to refine this design um i don't think it's been mentioned so i'll just bring it up currently the snow from gainscourt is being plowed into um an area abutting the fence on games games property near the triflexes i would ask that some thoughtfulness be paid to where the snow will go for gainscourt um and just one thing that really hasn't been brought up um and i don't know how much traction it will gain here but i respectfully disagree that there is a need for more commercial space in um in the city center in the the village center um i see i would love to see some of the other commercial spaces filled up before we start adding more um it makes me feel sad when i drive around them and walk around and see so many vacant surference um i think that they are you know rife for possibility i think that there are so many um wonderful things that we could see go up in game in um an s extension or town center and so i would love to see the existing space be used and um that space in this building be more thoughtful than just another commercial space so thank you for listening i appreciate it thank you um yeah the commercial space is a little bit tricky right now and there is let's say plenty and i just say that because it doesn't seem like it's all leased up but um traditionally that's something that developers are looking well municipalities are looking for from developers is to have an active streetfront which usually translates into commercial or something uh so it's it's easy to say that i i don't know that we have a requirement for that so if there is a better use that the developers got in mind like it's a fitness center for the tenants or something like that i i don't know that we would have wrong opinion plus or minus just wants to be active and again i'm not sure if if she was on i know she was on the screen at the beginning or whether she heard but it's only about 800 square feet of that space so it's a very small commercial component and those may be easier to rent than the larger ones that are vacant yeah but um all right um any final comments for anyone yeah so not to harp on the issue but just a point of clarity uh you know in our first meeting with staff with the city it was pretty clear they wanted a you know brick that's not necessarily the the wish of the board or the mandate of the board at this point i would say no that it wants to make sense with the rest of the village character and the one building that is really nice that's nearby is brick uh it's not all brick when you look at those you go that's brick building but when you analyze the material it's probably 20% wood so the creation of new facades is gotten to be really tricky as you know you can't just there's no formula anymore for what works uh so i'll have a more open mind but i think when i look at the streetscape of the village i i see more than you know just okay well that building is a brick building let's do one of those you know because one next to it's a wood building and you know but it still has the same language in it you know that's i guess what i'm missing on this the language of this is modern as presented now um you know the village isn't really a modern village so that that's the disconnect i'm getting um you know i have no problem with the brick but i want it to be of the same character uh as the rest of the village and if you break the rules you gotta break them and know know why you broke them and how the play is going you know we're not looking for uh you know private jokes in public places kind of thing it's just um it's it's tricky but i think your biggest problem is the wood building next door because it throws off any sensibility that you have for how to fit into your neighborhood because you got you know hint we're not going to try to fit into that i can assure you that good all right uh i would love to continue this uh conversation with you guys anytime you want to come back and keep showing us things i think that would be fine with me because it's a fascinating opportunity and and it challenges a number of us for many reasons and before you go spend a ton of money on it because we don't want you to do that and head down the wrong direction i'm more than happy to uh you know have more conversation um anyone else on the board all right question about i didn't realize it's just conceptual now but any contemplation of um ev charging spaces that just does more folks are getting into evs seems a good name since yeah i'll just i'm just writing that down because we haven't gotten there i will i will say that maybe at this location but the the rent gave has done a very good job of staying several hundred dollars below rent and his reason being to do that is he's had very long-term tenants and he finds that it's better to stay um below rent most of his rents qualify as affordable even though it wasn't affordable i'm assuming he'll try to do something similar um and the cost of ev cars are out of reach of a lot of us um so i don't expect a high demand for ev cars at this location or the previous application the same reason that a lot of these folks don't even have vehicles some of them choose not to and they want to you know some some choose not to some can't afford to but if they choose not to it's because the location of the structure it makes it palatable for them yeah that is a challenge i'll say that um you know along with additional refinement of the building comes cost and and we've all admired how Gabe can put anything and and actually satisfy the housing needs of of our community very affordably and that's that's wonderful so um that that says a lot because a lot of the big players in the market can't do that and all the other buildings are three hundred dollars plus higher than Gabe and and granted they might have spent a little bit more money but not that much more yeah so you know again it's it's it's challenging it's a balance we'll find it yeah um i think uh i would like to really understand the whole gains court legally just because i don't know that we can require a buffer there and certainly under the new language we can't require a buffer there um so uh that seems to have some impact on exactly what happens and so if there's anything from a legal side on on how gains court is classified like what is a private street really about and how does it fit into our ldc and and is there does that have any impact um that would be helpful because that's still a little bit of an open question um yeah and i'm sure Gabe and his attorney probably have some of the answers already because he's had to deal with that yeah previously yeah and so the Gabe your other building at the back there the larger one by the edge of the church parking lot is that served from gains court is that their primary access yes i yeah i share half the cost of maintaining that road yeah because i the street outfit then target three units of impact yeah so yeah so i mean it's an important access point for all of you and and i think we want to make sure it gets treated properly and certainly it would be great if it was wider but it's basically on everyone's property already so um i think half the problem is the building in the front and um the other half is probably just how you agree to go forward as a group of people sharing a driveway anyway uh thank you so much for this project uh i have nothing further so do we need to make a motion or do we need to just say those are our comments and they're all on record now i know you had a whole bunch of i don't know that we actually need to think technically there's there's no technically there's no approval at this point yeah is that conceptual all right so i'm gonna have all the notes typed up and and then we'll look at them as meeting minutes and and i think that'll be the direction but you've kind of heard the flavor of the the board here and hopefully that serves us till at least the next meeting we we are walking away with 20 feet pn okay for the entrance yes okay thank you thank you um is adjournment the last thing on our list again and if so i will basically i'll take the most i motion to adjourn the meeting i second meeting adjourned thanks brian