 of our zoning staff. So thank you for being here. This meeting is being recorded and there are a couple of ways to participate in the meeting. One is to attend as many of you in front of me are. Another option is to attend virtually and people can also call in and listen to the meeting that way. Regardless of how you participate it's important that you sign in and give us your contact information if you want to be considered a participant in this meeting for any future action. For those of you in the room there's a sign-up sheet out back and those who are on the attending virtually you can sign in and provide your contact information on the chat box and if you call in and you want to sign in you can send an email to Marla at Marla M. Keane M-K-E-E-N-E at SouthBerlington-V-T.gov which is the new email. If you're attending virtually we ask that you keep your microphones and your cameras off until you are acknowledged and invited to speak and if you do wish to participate, pardon me during the public comment period raise your hand and we'll acknowledge and invite you to speak and we also ask that you do not use the chat function to chat amongst yourselves because it's not part of the public record and it can be fairly distracting for us so thank you for all of that. Item number one on the agenda is emergency evacuation procedures. There are doors in the back corners on each back corner of the room in an emergency you could exit the door and either turn left or right and you would be outside. Are there any pardon me additions deletions or changes in the order of agenda items tonight? No. Okay seeing none. Are there any announcements or reminders? No? Okay. Are there any questions from the public that are not related or the applicant that are not related to the agenda? Seeing or hearing none. We're going to move ahead with our fifth agenda item which is our only project tonight that we're reviewing and let me read to you what that is. This is a reopened preliminary and final plaid application SD 2128 of Beta Air LLC to consolidate five existing lots ranging from 1.53 to 736.2 acres into one lot of 747.92 acres and to construct the first phase of a new concurrent application for a master plan to include 344,000 square feet of manufacturing and office building improving approximately 2,400 feet of private road and constructing associated site improvements at 3070 Williston Road. Who is here for the applicant? Come on up. Good evening. And are you the only two who will be representing Beta tonight? Actually we have some of our technical experts and design team available also. Okay. Are they attending virtually so I can swear them in? A couple of them might be virtual and then we have some here in the audience as well. Okay. So maybe anyone who might be providing testimony tonight or virtually could you raise your right hand please? Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth under penalty of perjury? I do. Okay. Thank you. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to be back. Really? It is. Yes. It's been a long road as I'm sure the the DRB and staff will attest to and it feels like we're coming to the end of that journey and so yeah, any chance we have to come back and try to answer any final questions. It's always a good sign. Okay. Well, thank you for your patience. Yeah. So I understand we have we have probably all read the staff report. I'm sure you have to and I understand that you sent an email this afternoon to Marla that we have not yet seen and I wonder if you could summarize that before we start to go through the staff reports? Certainly. So the the email that was sent out to Marla was really talking points for tonight's conversation. It took each of the staff comments and provided a written response to those comments as we've done in the past to one help the DRB have some notes Marla have some notes and really make the process a little as smooth as possible. So would it make sense art to have you give a few opening comments and then go through the staff report and you can provide the comments you're providing in that email as we go through the report. Fantastic. Okay. Absolutely. All right. So why don't you give us a little brief overview of what you're thinking is now and what we'll be looking at tonight. Okay. I suppose first off and I touched on this a little bit and appreciate the the acknowledgement that we've all exhibited a lot of patience here in the process and want to thank the DRB and staff for the openness and the willingness to allow this special hearing to try to bring this application to close. Also really want to recognize I know they're not here tonight. They may be watching but the effort that City Council and planning and zoning staff made in recognizing the hardships that exist in the land development regulations and even though it does not apply to this application tonight it certainly will help further applications in the future to move through the process more smoothly. We believe we've designed a fantastic project everything from the way that it sits contextually in the site to the way that it fits within the neighborhood to the sustainable features of the project and and tonight's hearing hopefully will be the culmination of those examples and and getting us to a decision here. Also just wanted to say that we we believe that the project as it was originally conceived is permittable could be permitted under a couple of different options that were in the staff comments. We're not going to talk about option one and option 2 tonight because I believe that the in order for us to be consistent with what with what we conveyed to the City Council what we conveyed to you to staff and the DRB is that time is of the essence. It is the most important thing for this project that we are setting aside options one and 2 and we'll focus on option 3 a redesign of the parking if you will some elimination of parking that we believe will allow the DRB to move forward with this application and approve it if you a decision in a timely manner that will allow us to roll out on the project. So in a nutshell that's kind of the framework that I see happening tonight we're going to focus really on option 3 quick update for you on the technical permit side we did receive notification from the state today that the last technical permit that was outstanding the operational stormwater received no public comments and that permit will be issued tomorrow. So the last remaining permit is actually the zoning permit required for us or the decision which is required for us to pull our act to 50 permit. So as soon as we can answer your questions as soon as the DRB can deliberate and issue a decision we can move forward with construction on this project. The building department chief Francis and his team have already issued the building permit pending issue into the zoning permit so that's also waiting in the background for the outcome of tonight's hearing. Our goals for tonight the biggest goal as you might imagine is to get to a yes. We think we have the solutions and the answers to your questions that will allow the DRB to close the hearing issue with decision ideally in a timely manner so that we can continue the project and move it forward. There have been significant this is probably no surprise to anybody. There been significant increases in pricing and challenges on subcontractor labor market that are impacting the project currently and the longer that this goes the more in jeopardy we are in actually being able to complete the project in a way in a time that allows us to meet the commitments to our customers. So we want to close tonight and then issue a zoning permit in an expedited manner. Okay. So did I miss anything or just big picture there? That was very helpful. My question is, Art, you said don't focus on one and two. You'd like to focus on three. What about four? Four? We won't be focusing on four either. We don't believe it's a viable solution from a time frame and get us to three. Yes, in a way that meets our project schedule and project needs. Okay, great. So it's all about three. It's all about three. Okay, good. Try to take the funnel, narrow it down to the most critical, what we believe is the clearest path forward. Okay, great. So with that, the staff comments, if we move to the board, have any questions? No, I was just going to say before you, I wonder at this stage, does the board have any questions for the applicant before we start going to the staff report? Okay. Did you, you look coysed? Well, it can wait till we go to the staff report. Okay. All right, good. I want to move it. All right, good. Your mic is on. No, it's just not on. There you go. Okay, good. And just to be consistent, I should ask Blaine if anything on the big picture side we missed here. No, I think you hit it well, Art. I mean, the biggest thing at times of yes. And so all the other options we think are viable with time, we just excuse me, could you speak more directly? Yeah, sorry, you know, I what is your name? I'm Blaine Newton, chief operating officer at Beta. Thank you for taking the time to spend with us tonight. You know, I had the opportunity to join a few month or so ago. I think you touched on everything. We think all of the options have viability. But it's based on our internal discussions and discussions with others. We believe option three is our fastest path, hopefully. And so I don't think I can stress that enough. We're kind of we're out of time. And so we're going to focus our efforts on option three tonight. Thanks. Great. Okay, I'm sorry, I just realized I forgot to turn my phone off. Okay, let's look at staff comment number one. And this actually slightly before we go there, just back up to just above parking staff notes that the staff considers that the applicant wishes for the board to consider options one and two, the board must make a determination on those options before considering options three and four. That note is what drove us into the direction of only pursuing option three for tonight, because it feel felt pretty clear that in order for us to get to yes, that's where we needed to focus our efforts. Very good, just for some context. Okay. Staff comment number one, the staff recommends the board asked the applicant to generally describe their planned approach. If the board approves the plan submitted on April 9. While the approved plan must stand alone, staff considers an understanding of the applicant's plan timeline will facilitate the board's discussion. And so under this parking piece, a had three items that it really wanted to share with the board and that were communicated to staff earlier today. One is a planned approach and timeline to actually let me back up for just the public and anybody that may be listening. So option number three is a recalculation of the parking based on the rear inside yard formula that's provided in the DR in the land development regulations. Essentially, what that does is it reduces the amount of allowable parking or creates a number of allowable parking spaces of 42 or 41, which reduces what the designed parking from roughly 200 and and somewhat spaces down to that 41. So we eliminated those parking spaces, eliminated the infrastructure that was that was part of that curbs, the paving sub base, all that stuff was taken out. And that was what was resubmitted. So when we go through this parking piece here, we're doing that under that design that we've submitted. So the planned approach and timeline, what we propose is to construct only the parking shown in the documents included in the packet. The parking will accommodate a portion of the initial parking required to operationalize a build phase of the project. The parking that was submitted was 41 parking spaces of which 12 were ADA parking spaces. Those are exempt from the DRB side yard or side and rear calculation, which leaves 39 or 29 general purpose parking spaces that will be built based on that. Weren't there actually 42 spaces? There was. Staff comment, there was a slight discrepancy in terms of the way that we calculated the dimension. Staff noted that we needed to remove one parking space in order to be compliant. So we've removed that one parking space, reducing it from 42 down to 41. Okay. Thank you. And I'm sorry, I didn't I haven't looked at the actual plan. So the 12 handicapped spaces will be in front where they're allowed to be. That's correct. And then 29 spaces on front, side and rear. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Marla, what's on the screen? What was submitted today? Or what was in our packet? This is the packet. Yeah, we can pull up the other one. It's only as much different. Right. Sure. Well, that that that makes the whole parking discussion a non issue, right? It complies. That would be our view as well. Is there any reason it doesn't? Yeah, it seems to work. The numbers work. And I assume the ultimate plan is when you get around to red face, it comes back in because you're going to need the parking eventually. We will need the parking eventually if we need that parking before the red phase of the project, we have an offsite parking agreement that will allow the balance of the parking to exist offsite. We've established a shuttle plan that will be using a 23 person electric zero emission bus that we have on order to move people back and forth between the parking and the site. There's nothing like exigency to produce innovation. I congratulate you. Jim, did you have a question? No, I was just wondering if we could see the plan that we're actually talking about. Yeah, the difference is just one spot. I did have a chance to look at it myself so I can put a little. Yeah, if you have the that's great, Marla, I was going to say, if you have the write up electronically, there is a circle that was submitted one that does make its way to the DRB that shows this exactly where that parking spot was removed. Oh, we do have that if you prefer. That would be great. I think that would help everybody. Do you know what page of the memo that was? I do. That would be page four or five of the men, the memo. Right. And so in the insert there, the blow up, you can see in the red circle, that is where the parking space was deleted. So there was one more in that area and that parking spaces now. OK, are you going to tell us more about number one? Well, I was going to just try to close that with any discussion or questions around traffic impacts. Just wanted to let the DRB know that the offsite parking is associated with the airport in underutilized previously permitted parking lots. So the traffic, there's no traffic impact because those calculations had already been done. There's no traffic impact to our site because we're actually removing parking. So we have fewer trips there and just wanted to give the DRB the understanding that we had looked at that and that we understood that there are no traffic impacts. Questions from the board? OK, thank you. Great. Moving on to number two, staff comment. Number two, staff considers that pedestrian movement is adequate, but that the board should require the applicant to clarify what elements of the previously proposed sidewalk are proposed to be constructed. And so on page three of the memo, there's a diagram that shows the sidewalks in orange that will be constructed as part of this phase of the work. There you can see that the sidewalk along Williston Road, the sidewalk, sidewalk along the main entry drive, the sidewalks that surround the parking that will be constructed, as well as the sidewalks that lead to the entry and over to the sidewalks along Eagle Drive will all be constructed as part of this phase of work. OK. Questions? Number three, this addresses that do we need any additional information regarding the adequacy of the provided parking? Questions from the board or do you have any comments? You want to? I don't. I was just going to note that we believe we've answered this question as part of staff comment number one. OK. Yeah, I kind of feel like we've covered it, but any questions? Yeah. OK. And question, staff comment number four. This is about removing one parking space. Seems like you've taken care of that. Thank you for that. Thank you. And number five. And number five is an unrelated matter regarding offsite. Oh, actually, I'm sorry. It is not unrelated. Number five relates to the stormwater management system and what would be constructed under this phase of the work. And what we're going to construct are the four bio retention basins, the one subsurface sand filter and one of the two 40,000 gallon rainwater harvesting cisterns. So that infrastructure needs to go in both to support phase one of the project as well as to support future development as would be consistent with a master plan and the work that you would do in the initial phase of the work. Thank you. Questions. OK. So that's it for staff comments. And thank you for responding to them. But do you have anything to add before we go to public comment? Not related to the technical permits, I would just close with with the staff comments. I would just close again with timers of the essence. And I think you can see from tonight we've set aside two of the options that we felt were very viable with the clear intent of allowing the D.R.B. to get to a yes and issue a decision in a very quick manner. Sure. You know, if there's any questions that the D.R.B. has that we haven't touched on, want to make sure that we give the board the opportunity to ask those questions so that we can close tonight with a yes and move on to the next part, which is the writing of the decision. So I think what we're going to do art is ask for public comment. We've received a number of written comments and those were all in the packet and we've all reviewed those, but there there have to be more comments tonight. And then we will probably go into deliberative session and either we'll leave or ask you folks to leave and then we'll come back together. OK. So great. So are there any members of the public here in person or virtually attending virtually who would like to make comments? OK, please. I do have one online. OK, why don't you it's Roland, isn't it? Why don't you come up, Roland, and state your name for the record and tell us your thoughts. Good evening. I'm Roland Grunewald and I just want to make sure that to express that I think extremely important that we move this forward. Beta has done everything they can to make this happen. And I think they have a plan here that that makes it work. So that's it. OK. Thank you. Could we back up a second? There is we didn't talk about phasing at all, did we? That was not in the staff report. That was that was for four, probably right for option four. Yeah, option three didn't propose any changes to phasing. From what I didn't mean phasing, I meant, well, I meant, I meant total timeframe. Yeah, they weren't proposing any changes to what the board had previously discussed. I can wait till deliberation. Thank you. Any other public comments? I do have one online. Don Peter. OK, Peter. Um, could you turn your camera on? I can. Thank you. Please take your name for the record and tell us your thoughts. Surely, my name is Peter Sharoney, C-H-E-R-O-U-N-Y. I'm actually not a lifelong Vermonter, but I've lived here over half my life after coming up here to UVM in 1972. Leaving for medical training, I then came back and went up through the ranks and retired as an emeritus professor. In the meantime, our two boys grew up, one of which went to UVM, worked for Green Mountain Coffee and then left for the West Coast. The other one couldn't find his satisfaction and in the states and is currently in Norway. Well, back to Matthew, who's actually an employee with with Beta. We are actually after his wedding out West, we were considering actually moving out there. And these are some of the incidental things that happen. And maybe states don't always appreciate my wife has a business. I have a business. We have 30 years of retirement savings that we either not get taxed or get taxed at another state. Fortunately, Matthew called us and said, I just took a job. Guess where it is? It's in Burlington, Vermont. So we after picking our jaws up off the floor, we were able to settle down and realize they were coming here. And with the demographic boost in the 50 to 70 year old age group, it's pretty clear there's a lot of people like us whose kids have moved away and we've never it never dawned on us that they'd be able to come back to Vermont. Well, he was able to come back to Vermont because because Vermont is supporting an avant garde high tech competitive business in data. The bottom line, I would say, is time is of the essence for them. You know, they're competing with 15 different international companies and we need to give them those capabilities to bring back these to keep these jobs here. The last thing to say is since they've been here, they've had two grandsons for us. And obviously, we're going to follow them wherever they go because that's what what grandparents do. So I just underscore that we're thrilled to have one of our sons back in Vermont because we honestly never thought it was going to happen. And this is the reason it's happening. And I'd certainly encourage you to support this. And thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public who would like to make comments? OK, hearing hearing none. I would entertain a motion for us to go into deliberative session. So moved. Second. Second. Any discussion? Questions? All in favor of proving the motion to go into deliberative session. Say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, so let me talk about logistics because Mark is online. What I'm going to do is I'm going to create a breakout room. Recording stopped. Wait, leave it recording for a minute. Recording in progress. I'm going to I'm going to create a breakout room. I'm going to shift Mark and myself to the breakout room. And then I'm going to pick up my laptop. We're going to stop recording. And me and the board are going to take Mark up to a different room and have a conversation. And then we will come back down. You all can talk amongst yourselves. It's not going to be recorded. We'll bring Mark and myself back into the main Zoom room. Everyone else who's online is welcome to stay online and wait for us to come back. We'll do it as quickly as possible. But I'm not making any promises and we'll see you shortly. All right. So I'm going to start that breakout room and even stop recording. Recording in progress. OK, thank you. Welcome back to the Development Review Board meeting for April 25th, 2022. We have just returned from deliberative session. And I think we believe that we have all the information we need to make a decision. But let me just say a few things that I probably should have said at the beginning with all the comments we got that the role of the DRB is to adjudicate the land development regulations that are in effect when an application is submitted. It's not to judge the value or the merits of a particular project from an economic standpoint or a social standpoint or whatever. And I think that, unfortunately, not everybody understands that. So our job is to be consistent in applying the regulations. So thank you for your patience as we did that. And I think with that, we are ready to entertain a motion to close. We'll make a motion to close the hearing on SD dash 21 dash 28 beta error LLC preliminary and final application. I'll second. Thank you. Is there any discussion? Okay, all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, the motion is carried. Thank you. Thank you. Go in peace. Thank you. So we're going to go deliberate. You can stop reporting. I guess other business, right? Oh, other business. Yes. I don't have any other business. So no other business. The meetings ended at 743. So you can stop recording and then we're going to go upstairs.