 I think we have to do is approve the agenda. So if the planning commission members could take a look at the. Agenda. And let me know if anyone doesn't have the agenda. Do we have a motion to approve? Move to approve the agenda. Okay. Motion by Barb. Do we have a second? I will second. Okay. Second by Marcella. All in favor of approving the agenda. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. I'll take that as unanimous. We're going to move along. So the next item on the agenda is the comments from the chair. I just have a couple of quick updates are really there for Mike, but the first thing is that there's just let everyone know there's, there's been no movement movement on the, on the record review stuff that we talked about last time. You know, there's furloughs and there's not a lot going on. So the second thing is that the DRB is also been really busy. So. When we can connect with a DRB, that's kind of the next step. As far as what we're going to do there. Sweet. It's going to be important for us to talk to them. So whenever there's bandwidth in Mike's office and also with the DRB, we'll, we'll. Revisit that. So that's just an update on that. And then the other thing is I thought we should just touch in with micro briefly to about the city plan. The big item that we've been working on long-term. And so to not lose momentum, just have Mike remind us about where he is on that. So we've finished up two of the chapters. And I went back and I redid economic development based on. The comments that we got. And I was going to try to get that out to you today, but that didn't, didn't make it out. Unfortunately, as, as Kirby had said, we're. We're, we're normally at a five member department. And we have two of us left. So I've been doing a lot of. Work for a couple of people. So haven't been able to put a lot of effort into the city plan, but. Oh, July 1st, we'll start to get back. At least one member and hopefully part time of another member, but we'll see. Depends on how the budgets go. So it hasn't been forgotten. Neither has the other zoning changes, which we'll kind of comment on when we do 190. When we finished up the 190 river street discussion, because we do have the design review that's ready to go. We just need to set a date to have the public hearing. On the record review is another one we were hoping to kind of. We'll get back to that. We'll get back to that. And the last one would be if, if we do anything for 190 river street, but we'll talk about that when we get there. So that's what's going on at our office right now. Okay. So hopefully things will return to normal. We can get back to where we're need to be on that then. Okay. Well, that's, that's all I've got. So the next item in the agenda is general business. Is there anyone on the call that has some business for the planning commission that's not related to the CVRPC confirmation process. Or 190 river street. Is there anything else? Okay. Can I just ask who is our iPhone? Nope. Our iPhone just disappeared. Okay. Forget it. Okay. Just making sure I knew who everybody was. Yeah. I didn't see. I didn't see that person. Okay. So that's, that's our general business. And the next item is to consider the minutes for May 11. Did we have those distributed? I just emailed them out. They, they were part of an attachment that went out with the agenda. But you'd have to have opened up the link to the agenda, but I sent it out a few minutes ago. If you guys have a time to look at them, otherwise you guys can table into the next meeting. Yeah, I was able to pull them up. Okay. Okay. Everyone else is going to take a look. So Kirby, I see that you had mentioned that there was going to be a meeting for late June. Is this in place of that meeting or in addition to it? Let me find. Is this under the discussion of the O, O, R. No comments from the chair. Well, I think that was, um, that was kind of tentatively our goal for rescheduling the hearing. We'll have to look at the next meeting potentially. But we'll have to, we'll have to look up with Mike to see how practical that is. Okay, fine. It doesn't look like the, um, Oh, our, our hearing will be able to take place just two weeks from now. No, the, the hearing would be July the second Monday, July 8th. July 13th. Sorry. Okay. I think we'll have to wait until we see the earliest we could have a hearing. We're. For our. For. Either one. On the record review or the design review or. I think we were, we were kind of planning on combining them. I'll move to approve. Okay. Okay. Okay. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Okay. I heard some eyes. Any nays. Okay. Minutes from May 11 are approved. Moving on. The, uh, um, we're going to. So it sounds like we should do the CVRPC confirmation and planning process first because it's brief. Okay. So we're going to do the CVRPC. And that way we can let Claire go and then we can spend as much time as needed for the river street issue. So I'm good. Okay. With that, I'll, I'll hand it off to Claire. Great. Thank you. Um, so I, I do know many of you. Uh, but for those who I don't know, uh, my name is Claire rock. I am a planner at the central month regional planning commission. And I'm a member of the regional planning commission. We have a staff member. We're all working remotely above the Walgreens. Uh, but we are all working remotely these days. I am a Montpelier resident and, um, I also serve as an alternate on the Montpelier, uh, DRB as a side note. Um, so as the role of the regional planning commission, we have a statutory responsibility to consult with our member municipalities. And as a result of that consultation, information of the local planning process. And as I mentioned, that is a statutory responsibility that the RPC has. In 2017, we consulted with you and at that time there was a formal review put together of your municipal plan. We do this two times during your eight year planning cycle and this one is more of, not as formal, I don't have any formal presentation to provide to you or any kind of written report. It's more of a check-in for me to share with you the services that we provide and then also to be able to hear from you if there are any projects that we can help you with or if there are any training needs that you have. So I'll just start off by doing a super quick review of the types of work that we do and then I'll touch upon some of the work we've done specifically with Montpelier. And then at the end, if you can think of anything that any way that we can be helpful to you, we would love to hear that to help us in our work that we provide to all of our member municipalities. So as a regional planning commission, we undertake both regional and local municipal planning studies. So just as you have your municipal plan, we maintain a regional plan that is required to be updated every eight years. We do assist local municipalities with their municipal plans and we do that through our land use program where we're able to offer assistance as kind of general assistance. And then at times we have been acting as a contractor where we act as a consultant a consultant to write a plan for a municipality. Our main core areas of the programs that we have are the our land use program. We have a transportation program. We also have an emergency preparedness program and we are looking to become a clean water service provider which would formalize our role in helping to meet the state's clean water requirements. And so that may be an area in which we end up doing more work into the future. We implement projects. Some examples of those are some of the storm water work that we do where we've helped municipalities undertake storm water management plans. And then we also build partnerships. One of the examples there is a recent project where our staff helped work with a group of organizations in Barrie City and applied forms successfully got a working communities grant that was through the Federal Bank of Boston where they're looking to alleviate poverty in Barrie City. And so in our capacity, we've been helping coordinate and facilitate meetings, helping with the further defining of what that project might look like and also help with some grant writing assistance. We do provide and offer data services and that comes predominantly through our GIS program where we are both helping gather information to then provide to the state to maintain their databases. And so that could look like us digitizing zoning districts and then making sure those are being inputted into the statewide database. So there's a comprehensive database there. We also provide those mapping services to municipalities and if other organizations or individuals want to utilize that service, we provide that at a fee. We manage a variety of financial and technical assistance resources. We have acted as a grants manager. We've also provided those grant administrative services and also help with writing grants for member municipalities. We do a variety of data collection and inventory types of projects. Mostly that's through our transportation program where we're going out and doing inventories of municipal infrastructure, bridge and culverts and so forth. We do provide education and training. We have a series of planning and zoning roundtables that I know stuff from Montpelier have participated in and we do that on a fairly regular basis. We also offer meeting facilitation services and we also undertake the municipal plan review function which is one of our statutory responsibilities where a municipality is seeking the regional planning commission to approve their municipal plan. We will do that to make sure it's meeting statutory responsibilities and the primary benefit to municipalities to go through that additional approval review is so the municipality can have access to municipal planning grants which we have heard that they will be available again this year so we are on track and those will come available to be applied for in September. And also as a regional planning commission we serve as that local link between both state departments and local municipalities to share information about new statutory requirements and then also help our member municipalities meet those new requirements. And of course we also foster that cooperation between member municipalities to work on those regional issues. So kind of down to kind of what are we doing now? Some of the things that we are working on right now is that we will also be working to update our regional plan. We are looking at a kind of comprehensive rewrite of our regional plan. That plan has been kind of updated in pieces over the past year so we are looking to do a complete rewrite of that. In the interim we have been, we were actually going to hold an amendment on making a couple of minor changes to our current plan but when the pandemic hit we put those on hold but we anticipate doing an amendment soon. Those amendments would be around changing our regional land use map to help better reflect and bring in alignment our regional land use plan with the city of Montpelier's growth center area. The other piece of the amendment that we hope to have done fairly soon would be have approved fairly soon once we get back to some more regular business would be to remove the housing distribution plan aspect of our regional plan. That was a additional requirement that the regional plan had imposed upon our member municipalities. That aspect of the plan was based on some now outdated demographic information. So we're looking just to remove that to make it so that municipalities aren't gonna be required to meet a requirement that is no longer applicable. So in the short term, we're looking to move that amendment forward in the next year, year and a half looking to do a rewrite of our regional plan and how that applies to the local context is when we do reviews of municipal plans we do look to see if there is compatibility between those two plans and also if the state has various plans that they are issuing we do conformance reviews there. So some of the recently there was a basin planning work done by DEC they recently issued a draft of their tactical basin plan for basin 14. We have a responsibility to review those state plans and make a statement on whether those state plans are in conformance with our regional plan. One of the areas that we're looking to venture into that was a fairly recent opportunity and this is primarily in light of the pandemic is we will be seeking grant funds to undertake a comprehensive economic development strategy and this will be a partnership between a handful of other regional planning commissions. It'll be a partnership with Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, Addison, Lomboyle and I think there's one other regional planning commission there and so if that proposal is funded we will be embarking on doing that more directive economic development component piece probably starting as early as the fall time so I could imagine that we'll definitely be reaching out to all our municipalities, letting them know and I could see there being a definite partnership with your local economic development corporation on that. When and if that is completed that would be basically kind of enveloped within our new regional plan. Other news on the regional front we have in the past had Brownfields funding unfortunately we don't have any of that right now but we did help provide Brownfields grant assistance to way back to the transit center. We did provide some funding there we were able to fund the assessment work that was done at the Union School Elementary Union Elementary School for their playground redevelopment and also provided upwards of $70,000 towards the assessment work that was done on the granite shed that is on granite shed lane that's gonna be redeveloped by the Conner Contracting Group. So those are some of the functions that we do some of the things that we've been involved in recently. At the local level we have been working with the city of Montpelier in development of the local hazard mitigation plan. My co-worker Grace is responsible for that. I think maybe she will be looking to reach out to from what I understand, I believe this is probably in the purview of potentially your fire chief or police chief but that local hazard mitigation plan those efforts will start ramping up soon. I know Stephanie Smith, that this is her area of expertise but that will provide the city of Montpelier with identification about the hazards that the city of Montpelier faces and also provides an opportunity to you to access funding to help mitigate those hazards into the future. That can also be used as a reference point when you're updating your municipal plan you can be referencing that plan to fulfill your flood resilience requirement in your municipal plan. Other items we're doing at the local level that may be of interest to you we did recently collaborate with the parks department on the submission of a vorac grant to help with increasing recreational planning in the city of Montpelier. Our role in that project will be to help convene some regional trail organizations to come together to think more broadly about the interconnection between Montpelier's recreational assets with those in our neighboring municipalities and throughout the region. So we anticipate maybe hopefully starting to do some of that convening in the fall time. Other areas that might be of interest to you that we're working on locally. Late winter, we did have a meeting with Let's Grow Kids and Ann Watson, Mayor Ann Watson was present at that meeting. We understand that there's an interest from the city to be able to kind of work a little bit more intentionally towards addressing some of our regional child care needs. And there's an intersection there with the municipal plan requirements. And so Let's Grow Kids has some ideas on how that may be applied at the local level whether that is identification of strategies that the city of Montpelier as an employer can do to help with ensuring that they're safe and available quality child care available. Also looking at maybe identifying some other siting requirements that a child care center may need. And there may be an intersection there to be able to identify here some criteria that some child care centers may need as far as space requirements, outdoor space, interior space, proximity to employers and the Regional Planning Commission can definitely be helping in undertaking some of that level of analysis with our GIS functions. So we'll probably be looking to explore what those opportunities are with working with Let's Grow Kids. But as I mentioned, I understand that Mayor Watson has also expressed an interest in helping to identify what those are to help address that critical issue. The other item I guess I'll just touch upon lastly is energy planning. That's something that we've been doing a lot of work recently. We've been helping member municipalities draft enhanced energy plans. This is a component, a voluntary component of your municipal plan in which your municipality can choose to basically have a more comprehensive energy component to your municipal plan. And this would give the municipality greater standing in the section 248 proceedings. We do have some data and some mapping that we've already done for the city of Montpelier. If the city would like our assistance, we are available to provide that. We would likely necessitate kind of probably updating some of the data as the time in which it was done has been a few years, but we've had some interest from our member municipalities in doing this. And we actually expect to have barry town, more town and middle sex all go through that process of adopting that enhanced energy component into their town plans within the next six months. And so while it has yet to be tested on the effectiveness of having this additional level of planning in your municipal plan and that standing in those state proceedings, we're obviously getting a lot of interest from our municipalities to wanna undertake that work. So that's a summary of the type of work that the Regional Planning Commission does and the type of work that we are providing. And so I guess what I just wanted to end with was to hear from you if you either had any questions on any of the information that I shared or we would definitely love to hear if there are any projects in which we can assist you with or if there are any training opportunities or areas in which you feel like you would like more information on and we can definitely work with you to help bring you that information. See anyone have any questions for Claire? I had one quick clarification on something that you mentioned. I was aware, I've been aware for a while that the Regional Plan didn't quite match up with some of the most recent things that we've done in Mopulier and some of the development planning that we've done. You did mention though that it was already underway to sort of update the Regional Plan to kind of match the current reality, is that right? That's correct, that's correct. So yeah, we actually had a hearing scheduled for I think it was either March or April which we did all of the paperwork for but then we ended up cancelling it. So we have everything ready to go and I hope that we can then just proceed with re-warning that and then those changes would be adopted. Great. I don't really have anything further. I mean, we know that there's a great relationship between Mike and the CVRPC. So he can pass things along though, says he does. Great. All right, so if anyone has anything else, go ahead and speak up. If not, we can let Claire go. Alrighty, thanks Claire. Thank you. Thank you Claire. And with that, we can move on to the proposal from the property owners at 190 River Street. So Mike, why don't you go ahead and catch everyone up on what's going on? All right, so this, we received a project application for at 190 River Street, which for those of you who are trying to figure out where that is, this is on your way out towards the roundabout on River Street. You would go past the Pioneer Street and you'd have the car wash, the next property up, which has the trading post building and down over the railroad tracks are self-store units. And what we received was an application to add more self-store units into the vacant parcel that's next to the trading post building there. So vacant parking lot has been a car dealership from time to time, different uses, but they wanted to come up and do that. What happened in 2018, they are currently in the Riverfront District and what happened in 2018 is that self-store units no longer became a permitted use in that district or an allowed use in that district. So they can't add more units to that district because it's not an allowed use anymore, which brings up one of three options. One is everything stays the same and they can't move forward on their project. Second option would be that the Planning Commission, we would have to go through a zoning change adoption. There are no use variances just so everyone's aware, there are no use variances under Vermont law. So we can't simply issue a variance to allow them to do it. So if we're gonna allow them to have the option to do it, we would have to amend the zoning and make it at least a conditional use in that district. So that would be one option would be to say within the Riverfront, we're gonna allow this as a conditional use. The third option is they also, this property also abuts the Eastern Gateway Zoning District where it is an allowed use. So the other option would be to change the zoning to say you're not gonna be in Riverfront, which is the same as Berry Street, you're gonna be zoned the same as Route 2 and Route 302 out that way. And that would be a third option that we could look at. So because it happened to come in in time for this Planning Commission meeting, we had a quick meeting last week with the property owners and Brooke, who's representing them to go and have this conversation about what to do. And we thought it would be just a good opportunity to get in. You don't have to make any decisions except to decide whether or not if we have a public hearing on July 13th, would we have this as one of the items to discuss on July 13th? And then at that point, there would be a decision point to say yes, we're gonna move this up to city council or no, we would not. So, but I did want to give them an opportunity to come in and kind of make their case. I don't know if you guys have questions for me first or if you want them to kind of explain what's going on. This isn't to approve an application. This is simply to have a conversation about whether this use should be allowed in this zoning district or to amend the zoning such that it would be allowable. The DRB would ultimately make the decision on the application. Mike, I need to understand exactly where we're talking about. I've got the self-store units that exist. Are we talking about further upstream, further away from town, that property that sort of got the big building on it already or somewhere else? So, Brooke has a picture of it. So, Can I get the right place? Yeah. Let me see if I can share the screen with, or pull it up on my screen. Yeah, the drawing is, I just can't tell what I'm looking at the colors there. Yeah, just give me a quick second. Are there adjacent buildings shown on that plan or just the building under discussion? Is it in addition to the existing storage units? Yeah. Sounds like it, yeah. Well, yeah. Okay. It would be. It would be, but right now the zoning is prohibiting any more storage units to be placed there because since the zoning change, it eliminated the ability even as a conditional use to construct a self storage, mini storage build. Now, seven of the 12 buildings on the parcel are self, what, nine? Can you guys see that now? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Nine of them. Yeah. So. Oh, it's that, it's that they're right adjacent to the receipt. There's parking lot in here. Oh, okay. So there's your car wash. There's the railroad tracks down along the bottom. Okay. Is that correct Brooke? That's where you guys are talking. Correct, yes. So the other storage units right now are down to the right of this photo on the other side of. Yeah, they're adjacent. They're up against the river. Right. This is on the other side of the tracks from. Right next to Vermont patients, patients, the lines. Oh yeah, there it is. Yep. Yeah, they own on this building. Yeah. Okay. So the railroad track splits their property, but they have that in this. So it's on the other side of the trading post from where the units are now. Is that right? Yes. There's the trading post. There's the parking lot. So it's not in addition to the existing building. They would be on the same property. Okay. Yeah, cause Mike, there are actually 12 buildings on the property that's owned by my clients. Nine of the 12 buildings are many self storage unit buildings. And I don't know if you can see this or not, or whether it's helpful at all, but what you see here in the pink that I have passed with my pen, the property is a very long property. And so the storage units, if you come from the ground about, which is over here where my hand is, you're driving on a very motelier road, River Street goes to where we get to the property that begins on the right. What all you see at this point is the guardrail and some trees and troperies. You don't see many of the buildings because they are along the back property line. So you have several buildings here all the way where the trading post is. And then you see what you're seeing in the picture here. That's actually a large property, which is connected to the Eastern Gateway. And basically all we're asking in terms of a rezoning is to change the road, the dividing line between Eastern Gateway, which is the pink, no, I'm sorry, which is the green. And we just want to continue the Eastern Gateway until you get to Pioneer Street. And the only change would affect the trading post property, which is quite large. And then the other properties that at Border Pioneer Street have the car wash. And then I guess the offices down there and what are they? Oh, the car wash is the only thing that the Barrett's do not own. So all we would be asking for is for the Eastern Gateway to be continued because we think that this is more like Eastern Gateway as opposed to the purposes of the riverfront. And all we're asking is for that dividing line to be considered to be placed at Pioneer Street. So in other words, green is going to continue into the patched area. Instead of it starting on the right is riverfront, we wait until we get to Pioneer Street and then it becomes riverfront. Does that make sense? So that makes sense for everybody. So that's the, so the question that came up, when we did the comprehensive rewrite of the zoning, we tried in most cases to align zoning districts to not have a lot of non-conforming uses and non-conforming parcels. Now, occasionally we have things that exist that we may not want to have continued into the future, but I don't remember us ever having a specific conversation about the self-store units. But as it turns out, the self-store units are now all non-conforming. And it's worth at least having the conversation of is that what we intended and recognizing most of us, most of you on the planning commission, we're not necessarily here when we had all those conversations, but what would be the thought going forward with that type of review? So we could change this to be zoned a different zone. We can go through and keep it as riverfront. And as I said, at this point, most of the conversation is really whether or not we should schedule, include this within our public hearing so we can have a broader discussion about it. Well, Mike, I think one consideration for us is going to be about design requirements. As in, if we make a change here, can you tell us about, I mean, what kind of design requirements apply to Eastern Gateway, as far as like the design of this? Like, you know, things beyond just the use as a self-storage, but how it would possibly look or how the appearance would be allowed. So the, we would have to get into some of the, I'd have to really dig into some of the specifics, but I can say that our design and our architectural standards were stricter as we got closer to the downtown. So riverfront is really close to the downtown. So that would have very strict design standards. It would have to be multi-story. It would have to have 24 foot minimum height. So it would have a lot more architectural standards because the riverfront was really designed to be a district to support the downtown through, you know, commercial office and residential uses at a high density. The Eastern Gateway does have design requirements because it is looking at, these are the gateways to our downtown, whether it's route two, route three or two, river street, they're all gateways to the downtown. So we do want them to be attractive, but at the same time, most of those uses are allowed. I think, I don't think there was a minimum height requirement. I think that was removed. I know there was a discussion of having that in there. I think that was removed when it was recognized that there were a number of properties that didn't have those height requirements. So I think that was removed as a condition, but there are still design requirements to make sure that, you know, they would have to meet a higher design standard than they would have had, they tried to build these in 2017 under the old zone. So there are more design standards, but they wouldn't be prohibitive compared to riverfront. If they were a riverfront, they would be, you know, even if we allowed the use, that would still be difficult considering the design requirements are that much stricter. And most of the buildings here don't meet that riverfront architecture requirement. So the architecture requirement of having a two story building is what you would expect for riverfront. These are all single story buildings except for the trading post itself. So can Brooke tell, by the time Kirby, by the way, nice to meet you. Brooke, can you tell us, would your client be interested or do they think it would be feasible if the use were allowed, but the property were to remain in the same district it is now and not be part of the Eastern Gateway? Yes, I'm not sure how that would be accomplished because right now the riverfront does not permit in as a conditional use or a permitted use and application for a mini storage building. So that's what I'm getting at. Like, would it be considered feasible to do it if all we did was change the zoning so that that use is allowed in the riverfront? Yeah, I think that would be fine. What Mike was just saying is the design requirements would be quite strict though in that case. Well, okay, maybe I'm confused about what the question is because if what we're talking about is changing the use to allow a mini self-storage building to be placed instead of having this requirement of a two or three-story building, they wanna be able to put two more buildings up that was part of their master plan only they didn't apply for it. Let me just back up a minute because I got a little bit, I jumped ahead to try to talk to you folks about where it was located and I didn't get a chance to say a couple of things that I think are important if I can just backtrack for a minute because I wanted you to make sure that you understood what the Barrett's have there and what their situation is. Barrett Enterprises is a three generation family business that has been operating in Montpelier for over a hundred years. Paying tax dollars, employing local men and women to help in their operation. Now the present location of the business on River Street at 190 had its inception, including the buildings that were built there to help people store their goods for other businesses within the Montpelier area. And they have nine of the 12 buildings on site which are used for self storage units. And the kinds of businesses and people that are renting these units include National Guard members, doctors, dentists, the co-op, Washington County mental health, nursing homes, local police personnel, local sports teams, restaurants, electricians. And so having these facilities near the downtown is very important for the clientele who are renting these units. For example, needing to go and get supplies or equipment during the day, not having to take time and waste a half an hour an hour going out to a more remote location. So these storage units began to be built in the early 1970s. They have been very well maintained. The security is excellent. They have a very clean operation. And the Barats didn't understand and weren't aware that the zoning was going to be changed in a way that eliminated and made non-compliant nine of the 12 buildings on their property. Now change in uses and the resulting non-compliances typically are when you're trying to eliminate over time through attrition the use of properties in a certain way. So, but the reality of this particular property and this business that's been in the family for over a hundred years is they're not going anywhere. They will continue to maintain their non-compliant business buildings for the uses that are not allowed anymore because they're entitled to do that. So I wanted to just suggest that while I understand the notion of over time eliminating non-compliances, it's we're wondering if this was looked at to understand what the current use of this particular property is because this not only creates a non-compliance for all these buildings but this isn't going to encourage this property to be developed for multifamily housing with three stories. That's not what the Barrett's will be doing with the property, even if the zoning changes to that. And they're trying to make use of that parking lot area that's been utilized for different things over the years. They are very willing to comply with any aesthetic screening, other kinds of requirements. For example, the Eastern Gateway wants it to look a nice presentation when people come into the city from the east, from the roundabout. And they're very happy to, they've always kept a tidy place but they're happy to comply with those requirements to ensure that it's a nice presentation when people hit the gateway area of the city. It would allow the self-storage units to stay in compliance. If they chose to put another building or two in that area that they're considering and had planned on doing, it may require additional screening, trees, items to make it look aesthetically pleasing because that's one of the purposes of that gateway is to make it look attractive and to create an area that's the initial first impression overall aesthetic entrance to the city. And they're willing to work with the city and to accomplish that. One other thing I just wanna say about the Riverfront District is that the purposes and what you're trying to encourage for that area simply isn't going to happen. It's not gonna be turned into a recreational area, redeveloped for amenity or greenway corridor because there's a large investment in this property of those commercial facilities that are being used on a daily basis many, many times. And so it's not likely that that's going to go away anytime in the near future. So ultimately, whether it's a change in the district or a change in the chart that says you could have many storage buildings there. The Barrett's are more than willing to work with whatever constraints there are to make it look aesthetically pleasing. They just can't build self storage units that's more than one level. And they would like to be able to finish the property as they had to hopefully intend. So I'm not sure if that answers all your questions Kirby. I'm not quite sure I'm understanding what the changes it's being proposed, but from a conceptual standpoint, they're totally on board to cooperate in whatever way so they can continue to develop the property with the many storage. Yep, thanks, that's helpful. What I was really getting at, whoa. So okay, my sound was a little funny there. Yeah, what I was getting at was just to sort of start to learn what kinds of solutions would be acceptable and what wouldn't. And I think we learned a lot there about what projects they have in mind. So that will help. Barb, what did you have? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what particular use within our use table that we're looking at. I'm assuming it's under industrial warehouse or storage. Is that correct? One more below that, the many warehouses what the zoning folk and Mike told me that it was classified as. Many warehouses, is that right, Mike? Yeah, that's what I think Meredith said it was. Why would it not be storage? Well, I think the many warehouses are defined as self-store units, those multiple. But the warehouse or storage is a conditional use in the riverfront, whereas the many warehouses not allowed. So clearly we saw some distinction between those and I just don't quite understand what that was. I think warehousing comes in more with some, usually it comes in as an associated use with if you think of some of the granite street, if you think of some of those other buildings, Allen Lumber, what could happen with those two granite sheds that are now not being used? I think there was some discussion of warehousing would be a large single use. Or the storage would be for a single use. The minimum, yeah, the many storage is these smaller individual self-store units. I usually just thought of it differently. The classification is many warehouse. Yeah. That's the one that you're applying here. And the only two districts that it's, it's a conditional use in Eastern Gateway. Is that still correct? Yes. And it's a conditional and you are, but that's, those, oh, there's one, right, rural, that it's even conditional in. Is that correct? Yeah, you've got the, I don't have my zoning right in front of me. I gave it to somebody to look at and haven't gotten it back. Uh-oh. Okay, that helps that. So at least I know what classification we're looking at here. So they would still, they would still, even if it got changed, it would still be a conditional use. So it'd still be a conditional use. So really, you know, you at the Planning Commission would simply be making a determination if it got through you guys for a zoning change, you went to city council and they approved it, is simply to make this an allowable use. They would still have to go to the DRB for a conditional use and site plan and all of those other requirements. This is just, right now, they can't even apply. And they need you to be able to say, yeah, you kind of, you know, we can change the zoning to make it possible. And again, you have the right to say no, but it's also, this is just an opportunity for us to be a little bit reflective because I don't remember, and you know, we talked about this for four years to change the zoning. I don't remember this ever coming up as a discussion. If it had, I would have said, you know, no, we talked about this clearly and they didn't want these ever again. And if that was the case, but I think this was just a zoning change. It was never really contemplated that at the edge of this zoning district, when we went from Riverfront to Eastern Gateway, that we would have this create a non-conformity with this parcel in the way that we did. And I think the only other piece that I think we, when we were talking about it in the office that we made note of was Eastern Gateway in its description is designed to be auto-oriented while the Riverfront is not auto-oriented. And I think the existing uses you see over here do tend to be, we've got a car wash, we've got self-store units, people don't generally walk to self-store units. It's gonna be generally a little bit more auto-oriented than pedestrian-oriented. That's not to say we don't wanna make it more pedestrian-oriented so people can bike and go there, but there were a couple of points that we made when we argued both sides and one of them was it does tend to be auto-oriented, which would tend to perhaps favor it as an Eastern Gateway district as opposed to a Riverfront district. But that was just another point of fact to throw in the mix for discussion. I'm just looking at the map, oh, sorry. I'm just looking at the map. So were you saying it's all one parcel between Route 2 Pioneer Street and the River? That's so very good, Grahler, Vermont Patients Alliance, that's all in the same parcel except for the car wash? Except for the car wash, correct, yep. And it goes quite a ways. So it's really just two properties to move the line all of the Barrett property and then just the car wash to make the new dividing line on an actual street, which I think tends to be preferred. It's kind of curious, I don't know why, but the notion of the, there seems to be three categories. There's warehouse or storage. That seems to be sort of the middle size. Then you have a large warehouse or distribution or transit facility. And then that's the big one. And then you have the little one, that's the mini storage or mini warehouse. So in Eastern Gateway, you have the little size as a permitted, you got mini warehouse conditional and the large one a conditional, but mini warehouse is actually only allowed in two districts in your entire city, which is just Eastern and Western Gateway. I don't know if that was intentional, just seems, if they were going to allow the big warehouses, why wouldn't they let the little ones in? I don't know, but whichever fix is warranted and could be considered as being appropriate. We're not asking for spot zoning. We're not asking for anything other than consideration of how this creates a non-compliance that may be sort of an absurdity in a sense, because if right next door, or this really is more like the character of the gateway as opposed to being able to be redeveloped in a way that would reach the goals and the purposes of the riverfront, we may have a tough seller, a tough argument about it, but here, I don't see this property realistically being redeveloped that could attain the goals or the purposes of that riverfront property, because since the 1970s, it's been utilized more as what is now gateway property with the orientation of the auto, the road, now we have the car wash there next door. Mike, can you speak to something really quickly? Maybe you're into this, I could have gotten confused, but the two-story architectural standard that you're speaking about, does that exist in both the riverside and the Eastern gateway? Just riverfront. Okay, just riverfront, and can you speak to, do you know why that architectural standard is in place at Riverside? So in the initial zoning, as it came out from our consultant and what was talked about by the Planning Commission early on, was that there was gonna be a two-story requirement in both districts. When it came to the public hearing and it started to be discussed, there was, I think Fred Conner and I wanna say, maybe Pat Malone had comments that basically said, look, most of these buildings out here in the Eastern gateway are single story. We've got a lot of warehouses, we had Cabot, we've got just a lot of uses where a two-story requirement doesn't make any sense. And I don't know if it was the Planning Commission or if it was the city council that said, agreed we should remove the two-story requirement from Eastern gateway. It was kept in the riverfront and it was the intent of having the two-story requirement is that it helps to build density and it helps to build an amount of use, whether it's two stories or three stories of residential or whether it's got commercial on the first floor and residential on the upper floors, whatever the mix of those uses are, it just adds to a density and that translates to a vibrancy of the neighborhood. In a lot of communities, just miles of single-story buildings just make it impossible to have those vibrant downtowns because you don't have a mix of uses. It's gonna be not gonna have that liveliness all the time. When you've had multi-story and multi-use, you've got people there during the day who might be working in there at night who might be living there. So we wanted that, especially for places you think of Berry Street, they're all multi-story buildings. Stonecutters way, mostly again, all multi-story, downtown is all multi-story. So there was just a requirement that said, if somebody came in, we didn't wanna have somebody tear down a multi-story building and build a single-story auto park store. It's like if you're gonna remove something, you're gonna replace it with something that's multi-story. So we can keep that vibrancy, keep that activity. It builds a better grand list. There's entire conversations on how multi-story dwellings are better for the grand list. They hold more value, they retain their value longer. So there's a lot of economics that go behind that as well. But it doesn't always make sense in an auto-oriented, you know, to try to have a two-story tractor supply or a two-story agway doesn't make as much sense once you get out to there. Unless we were gonna have a transformative change to Route 302 and say, we want 302 to be just as urban as Berry Street, in which case you would say, yes, you've gotta have two-story, but that wasn't what was voted on by council. Mike. That's helpful. Mike, isn't the requirement 24 feet in height, not necessarily two floors? Is it? We're talking about riverfront now, right? Yes, riverfront. I mean, yeah, if you wanna have a 24 foot, because it is 24 feet, and I think you can use a mezzanine to give that appearance, which is how Caledonia spirits got through the rules by having a very large mezzanine front to it. But for the most part, that's not gonna be how most places are gonna, you know, it works when you're a big commercial distillery, but it probably, for the most part, most places would not put a 24 foot mezzanine in there. Or if you're, well, if you're a warehouse, you could have a 24 foot height without necessarily having two floors. So, you know, it's to be clear, it's not two floors so much as it is a height requirement, dealing with the massing. But the hope was to have two stories, but they put an out in there. It still has to go through design review in some areas, and it gets architectural review in other areas where you can argue two stories versus mezzanine. So it's not a guarantee that you could be approved for mezzanine. In reading through this, it really rereading the descriptions of the two districts, it really does seem like this parcel fits more into the Eastern Gateway. And in terms of what I remember our discussion being at the time, it seems more appropriate because of its car orientation. I was just concerned to make sure that the massing is appropriate and doesn't end up just appearing. I mean, the trading post is a pretty significantly massive building. So I'm concerned about seeing a one-story building adjacent to it on the street. So that's the only concern that I would have with extending Eastern Gateway to include this. So I have the district map pulled up, kind of looking at the riverfront as a whole district. And to play a little bit of devil's advocate was what Barb was saying about how Eastern Gateway makes sense. I'll just make the case a little bit about why riverfront might make sense. And because what I'm looking at is, the Pioneer Street leads over to Berry Street, which is also part of the riverfront neighborhood. And we anticipate as a city that there will be residential development that over there, like on the other side of Pioneer Street, right? So right now the riverfront, the zoning envisions it as a mixed use area. So you have the commercial mixed with the residential. And we've heard that there's no plans to have this parcel ever be residential, but we know that nearby parcels will be residential. And having that mixed use sort of transition from Eastern Gateway, which is commercial industrial, to mixed use into the downtown, I think it all makes sense. And I think that's the logic of why the riverfront is the way it is. So I mean, in some ways, I see that it all kind of makes sense. I mean, I'm not speaking strongly one way or the other, but I would encourage everyone, if you can, to Google and to pull up the- You want me to try to share the screen with you? Well, I haven't pulled up on this other computer. Oh, okay. But I mean, you can pull up the final zoning district map and look at 4-3, which is the riverfront area we're talking about, neighborhood 4-3, which is mixed use. And I mean, I'm not saying that to, to dig into any position or anything, but I do see how it transitions into Berry Street. Does anyone else have anything to say? Barb's muted. Oh. Yeah, the thing is, Kirby is, where does that mixed use really appropriately come if we're looking at residential? And I think we were always considering the residential to be east, that would be east, the west of Pioneer, because clearly if this is one parcel owned by one, we won't be seeing residential on it, was the point. And I just wanted to mention, if I could, because Jim wanted me just to let you know, he has the property spent for sale since the 1970s, and no one has ever been interested in purchasing this property. They've had nine or 10 real estate brokers over the years listed with no interest whatsoever. And so they really have invested in what they believe is the highest to invest use, and have tried to make, you know, tax revenue flow from the use of the property, which understood that another building of single story may not be as desirable as possible. But like I say, they truly are very interested in making whatever aesthetic additions so that it is palatable and that it at least accomplishes the goal of the district that it's being zoned as, whereas not only are they not going to develop it for residential, if the ultimate goal of the riverfront district can't be accomplished, then it doesn't seem logical to make it riverfront. So that's, you know, while I understand that it abuts and then, you know, the street, if you turn right on Pioneer, that road does have a lot of folks that live there in residential buildings that are multi-story. I don't ever see any significant change for this property to be used in any way that would accomplish what that riverfront district is trying to make available for Montpelier folk. So I guess it does come back to if it can never be developed in that way or won't be, in reality, is there a point to handcuffing them so that they can't do any further development on what they have, so long as they're willing to comply with all of those requirements? Yeah, this is such difficult stuff to figure out without having unintended consequences. It's a really tough job and I give you all a lot of credit for all the time and effort you're putting into it. But, you know, these are the kinds of situations that call out for some adjustment because they wanna continue to help provide tax revenues and be good neighbors and employ people in Montpelier and feel like this would be a great way to do so without doing any violence to the plans for Montpelier. So whatever would help information-wise or to talk about how it might, we might go about accomplishing it. We're happy to help in whatever way. Any more questions or, you know, any kind of action? Just clarifying, Mike, does the Planning Commission need to make a recommendation before it goes to the public? Nope, it would just give you, if you said we should, you know, we don't know if we'll support this or not support this, but it's worth letting the public have an opportunity to comment on it and you can put it on for a public hearing with the other changes. And then the Barrett's can come in and bring some public. If there are neighbors or are butters who wanna argue against it or for it, they can. It would just put it to a public input and then you guys would have an opportunity. I think what we would need would just be a sense of what the proposal is. In other words, are we adding this to the use table to allow it in Riverfront? Or are we recommending considering and adjusting it to Eastern Gateway? I might think it's probably better if you were gonna look at one or the other option, I would probably think shifting this to Eastern Gateway is probably more appropriate, but you can put it on as a proposal in either way for public hearing and then make the decision on the 13th. You know, do we vote this to the city council for consideration? And then it's a whole new process again where city council may vote yes or no. They're a downside in putting it on the, anyone, I don't see a downside to putting it on the, lumping it with the other ones that we wanna do. I don't think. You mean including the change or just getting input? Getting input from the public. Yeah. But without proposing anything ourselves. Without proposing anything particular right now, I would appreciate hearing from the public about the change before making a recommendation. Yeah, I mean, I think that sounds fine. I mean, it would be technically warned as a change just so everybody knows it would be, we have to warn this as a zoning amendment. It would be a zoning amendment to consider changing these parcels from riverfront to Eastern gateway. And they'll be hearing on it. We would send notices to the property owners. Of course, they're already here, but we usually send the notices to the property owners and the car wash owner will get one because they're not here at this time. And then it would get warned in the newspapers and warned with the regional planning commission and warned at the state all the required pieces. In that case, I don't really love it because I don't love the idea of extending industrial uses that close to the downtown. We're trying to have a walkable mixed use community. So I'm not a big fan of proposing us to make the change and presenting it that way, but go ahead, Barb. Well, yeah, I see your point, Kirby. And that was certainly the intent when we rewrote the zoning was to make it more walkable. It's hard to argue that that particular parcel is very walkable. The sidewalk stops, I believe, at the other side of Pioneer Street. Is that correct, Mike? It does come off the Pioneer Street. I don't think there is a technical crossing of the railroad tracks, but the railroad's been upgrading those has been going along, but... Yeah, but I mean, on that whole side of Pioneer, there's no sidewalk. And because it's unlikely that it would be placed into that kind of a mixed use, I would be more concerned about extending conditional use for many warehouses into the riverfront district. I think that that would be a mistake. So that's why I would think that if we're going to get public comment on it, might make most sense to treat it as extending the Eastern Gateway to include this particular parcel. To basically include it, go all the way to Pioneer Street. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I agree with that line of thinking. If I can just jump in. I agree with Barbara. I mean, I don't think you want to change your mini warehouse into the river district, but Kirby, I want to mention one thing. I hear what you're saying about, you don't want to bring that warehouse stuff closer into the city, but the irony here is the mini warehouses aren't allowed in the river district, but warehouses and storage are as a conditional use. I mean, as a conditional use in the river, and as a permitted use in the Eastern Gateway, and yet a smaller thing is allowed in the Eastern Gateway still, but as a conditional use, and then it's not allowed in the river district at all. I find that the opposite of accomplishing what you just said, you don't want to bring mini warehouses closer into the city, but you have massive warehouses that are being allowed closer into the city. So to clarify, my concern isn't with the mini warehouses necessarily. It's when we make this change to, if we made the change to expand the gateway in this way, it would allow many other uses. It would allow a lot of uses that currently aren't allowed there. So the Planning Commission isn't going to have control over what's done in the future. So I could probably go through what's allowable in the Eastern Gateway and point out development that would be undesirable that close to Berry Street. So that's really my concern. It's the unknown other types of things that could happen. I think someone mentioned that before. It's the unintended consequences are actually my concern with expanding it. So I'm looking at the chart that Mike gave me and while there's, in some instances, a different difference between whether it's permitted or conditional. I see your point. For example, a river doesn't allow automobile sales or rental establishments in Eastern Gateway does. Heavy manufacturing is not allowed in the riverfront, but it is in Eastern Gateway. And then you have the mini warehouse, large distribution or transit warehouse and tank farms. And those are all the conditional uses. So I see your point. Yeah, I see your point. They don't have any intentions of doing that, but that's not what zoning is about. Zoning is about deciding on what areas and what uses that you want. It is the reality for my clients that they're not gonna build an automobile sales place, but absolutely I understand what you're saying. I think this is a good discussion and underscores why having public input at the hearing is a good idea. So I think we should just do that and then we can have a further discussion once we get a full range of perspectives. Okay, Barb. Mike, can you check and see what the situation is with that particular parcel and the floodplain? Because the back part of it seems very low. Just from my memory. The floodplain isn't bad back there. Okay, all right, good. I just wanted to verify that. Yeah, we're not in floodplain. Yeah, as far as we know, we're not in floodplain or river hazard area or anything. Yeah, I'm not the problem. Jim, let's say it stays in the bank. Yeah. Okay. We're not trying to throw a monkey wrench in here. We're just trying to figure out a way for these folks who've been such good neighbors and really pillars of the business community for an over a century. They're good people. They want to do this right. And if there's any way to see light at the end of the tunnel, we'd like to try to see if we can figure that out. So whatever we can do to help. And a hearing would be great. We would love the opportunity and we'd be happy to answer any questions of any folks that want to talk about it or we'll give it a whirl. If you folks are willing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the information you're providing. So my question is for the planning commission. Do we have any kind of motion to add a proposal to the upcoming set of proposals we have for design review? Is it the design review hearing that we would add this in with? Yeah, we have design review ready to go. We were hoping to have on the record review, which we'll see if we can get something to you to wrap up at your next planning commission meeting. If we have a meeting on June 28th, 22nd. But my numbers aren't even close this time. So 22nd would be the next June meeting. So if we had something that would still give us enough time to meet the warning requirement for July 13th, because we have five Mondays in June. That's why we're going to have the extra week. So I mean, this is really a zoning change proposal. So this is actually separate. This would be a third thing, basically. Yeah, you would end up voting three separate times. You'd probably have one single public hearing to consider three different items. We would take public comment on all three and then you'd probably vote separately, unless you agreed all of them and said, hey, I'm going to make a motion to move all of these forward and then you could do it or you can vote them individually, up and down. We're not combining them. We're keeping them as three separate items for people to consider. The design review package, the on-the-record review package and then this would be a third, extending Eastern Gateway to Pioneer Street proposal. I move that we add this discussion to the public hearing in July. Oh, second. Okay. Who got the second on that one? I did. Okay, Barb. And the motion is just to clarify, Erin, it's too, I mean, in order, like as we were discussing before, in order to talk about this, we have to actually propose a change. So is your motion to propose to change these two parts or to change the zoning so that these two parcels we're discussing are included in the Eastern Gateway? No, I would say if we can do it this way, I move to have consider potential changes in zoning to the Riverside District at the public hearing. I think that allows us to contemplate a number of different changes. Ultimately, they'd all result in some sort of zoning change. I'm not sure. I'm sure. I'm going to withdraw my second. I didn't understand the motion. I thought the motion was as has had been stated that to extend the Eastern Gateway potentially to extend the Eastern Gateway to Pioneer Street as discussion. We could potentially do that under the motion. I just don't want to get into more discussion of Riverfront as a result of that. Well, that would. I think we need a specific. Result in a change to the Riverside District. So what Mike's saying is we need something like specific that could like one thing that could happen. Yeah, I don't think you can. I don't think we necessarily have to endorse anything. It's just this is the proposal. The proposal is going to be to add this use to the Riverfront Zoning District or it's going to be to extend the Eastern Gateway to Pioneer Street because the public is going to need to be able to look at something when they see it in the paper and say, this is something I care about or this is something I don't care about. We really shouldn't be ambiguous in our proposal. We can ultimately, you know, I think there's also a discussion in Robert's rule as you always make motions in the affirmative and you can make a motion in the affirmative and then go and say, and I'm going to vote no on my own motion because I don't think we should do this. I think this goes the same way. We're just putting a proposal out there and say, this is what we're proposing. Doesn't necessarily mean we support it. Doesn't necessarily mean we're going to do it, but this is the proposal we think we should consider. Fair enough. So Brooke, if I remember correctly, your initial ask to the group here was to extend the Eastern Gateway out to the parcel all the way to Pioneer Street, right? Right, right. I mean, if you want to put both forward, you could, but I do agree with Mike. I think you've got to put the proposal in the warning in order to be able to vote on the thing that you want to do. So I think the best proposal is to extend Eastern Gateway to Pioneer Street, but perhaps in the alternative, if other people think adding it to riverfront is the right thing to do, you could put it as, or in the alternative, we're gonna vote on the other way to do it. Either, if you want to consider that other adding it to the list of the riverfront, you should go ahead and put it in the warning, we're gonna consider this and or this. Is that way, then you are, you've gotten past the notice issues in order to take that up and use it as an agenda item where you could actually vote and move forward on it. So if you folks don't want to consider adding something to riverfront because you think that's fraught with problems, and we're okay with extending Eastern Gateway till Pioneer, if you think it would be helpful to talk to the public about one or the other, maybe you consider the other one a possibility, then you could notice both of them and vote yay on one, nay on the other, or nay on both or yay on both gives you more flexibility. But you do have to have like a specific, we're meeting to have a hearing about changing Eastern Gateway to encompass all the way to Pioneer Street. So, Erin, are you making the motion just to apply to extending Eastern Gateway? Sure. Okay, so and that is something Barb can second, right? Then I will second it, yes. Okay, so all in favor of making that proposal for our upcoming hearing that we expect to be in July, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, so it looks like we're all in agreement, we'll put that as an item for July with the intention of discussing it further once we get some public input, hopefully. All right, thank you so much. Thank you very much. And all your time, very much. Yeah, no problem, this is what we do and we don't get that many opportunities actually to hear feedback about the work we've done before. So it's very informative whenever any residents come in and wanna talk about something. Hey, it's really tough stuff. I think it's the hardest thing in the world to try to anticipate all of these things that can happen from the words that you're right. So, tough job, thank you so much for all your time devoted to it. Seriously, it's a thankless job often. So we appreciate all your time. Yes, thank you and good luck. Great. Anything else, Mr. Barrett? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate all your help too. Okay. You folks have a good evening. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, Mike, for the next on our... And just so you guys know for the, I looked up real quick. So once you guys have the public hearing, the Planning Commission may make revisions to a proposed bylaw amendment or appeal and to its written report and then submit the proposed bylaw with the amended written report to the legislative body and municipality. So we will warn it as extending the Eastern Gateway, but if you decided to go with changing the use table, you could do that without having to go back and re-warn another hearing. That wouldn't be the same for the city council. If the city council were to change it at the last second, that would be a substantial change and they would have to warn another hearing. But you guys have the flexibility of warning, you have to warn it for at least one thing and you have, we will. And then after that, if it gets voted through as something else, either slightly different or more different then all we have to do is make sure that that change is reflected in that required report that I have to write, which says what impact will this have and there's a required set of questions we have to go through. So I'll write it up assuming answer A and if it ends up being something else then we will have to amend that report to reflect that. Well, now it's not adjusting Eastern Gateway, now it's adjusting Riverfront. So we can have that conversation at the hearing. It's more process than it is anything specific, just making sure we check those boxes on what we're required to do. Thanks Mike for double checking that process for us. Thank you. Okay, well, does anyone have anything else before we adjourn? Okay, it looks like this is the new normal. So I think our next meeting in two weeks will be like this unless something changes and we'll let everybody know but you can expect we'll do this again in two weeks I guess. Sound good? Yeah, I'm hoping things will be a little bit more flexible once we get to July 13th. That's a little bit of time away. So hopefully maybe we'll be able to have a little bit of public, a little bit of public. I mean, that's why we delayed having this because our design review rules were ready but we didn't want to have a public hearing where we couldn't have public. So we could have snuck this through during COVID but we didn't, we waited and now we're coming into July 13th. Hopefully that'll give us room to at least go and invite people to say if you'd like to come in, I'll let you in the door and you can, I'll have a computer station set up where people can, it'll probably still be this but we can have a public option where people can go in and sit down at the round table and be on television to provide input. So, but we'll see, hopefully by July 13th we'll have something. Okay, all right, with that, do we have a motion to adjourn? Sure, I'll make a motion. Okay, Stephanie, you motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? I'll second. Seconded by Marcella. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right, so this adjourns our meeting for June 8th and we'll see everybody in two weeks. Thanks so much, everybody.