 Thanks everybody for coming to this community day-to-day session, kickoff our winter sessions here about the redevelopment opportunities at the Country Club Road. Hopefully you've been up here before, and it's great to see the cross-country ski meet happening today, and my Norwich kids helping for the ice and fire event in a couple weeks. Thank you. Welcome, and I just want to introduce Stephanie Clark from Wayneburg Real Estate Advisors, our lead consultant on this, and she's going to walk you through some of this presentation and then bring in some of our other consultants throughout this process. Thanks. Welcome everybody. Welcome back. If you were here in the fall, if we met before. I'm Stephanie Clark with Wayneburg. We have also Evelyn Prem with communications coordinator for the city somewhere around. Well, Fraser is here from the city. And then other consultants from the team that are here today. We have Mike Beatty from Black River Design. We have Mark Hamlin and Mike Willard from BHB back there. You'll hear from some of them and they'll be circulating during some of our activity time. So that is some of the team that's been working on this diligently since the fall. So I just want to get us started and talk a little bit about the meeting structure so that you know what to expect. We have two hours, which sounded like a lot of time before we started planning what we wanted to accomplish. But we appreciate you being here today and giving up part of your Saturday to do this. So essentially, I'm going to go through some of the process just to reorient anyone and educate anyone who doesn't know how we've been putting this together where we're going with this master planning process. So we'll recap the piece we just did in the fall and some of those findings. And then we'll hear from BHB about the due diligence and the site analysis that was done and also about the test sketches that we're all here to kind of talk about more today. And then Mike Beatty will be talking a little bit about some of the view sheds and some of the more specific issues to think about as we frame out the whole conversation. We have then a little bit of time to have some questions on the actual due diligence that was just done anything we presented on. We're going to really restrict that time to questions that are going to help clarify things before we get into some of the activities. And then we're going to do some activities. And then at the end, we're going to have time for folks to have a minute at the mic. But a minute to speak and share some further thoughts that you didn't get out during the activities. So there'll be a few opportunities for input for out loud contributions. There's going to be other opportunities to give your input during the activities. So I'll go through what those activities are as we get a little bit closer. But why don't we start with talking about process because the process has been very intentional and all of us have had this conversation internally about how to do this right and continue to be transparent as we go. So as you know, the city acquired the property last spring. And that was when the conversation began the input period began the consultant team was hired in the fall beginning of fall. And we had a series of meetings and small stakeholder meetings, big meetings time for input from the community throughout the fall. And concurrently the due diligence was being done by the BHB team and other specialists to look at the findings of the site itself. We're now in what we're calling the winter stage, which is the time to give feedback about opportunities and constraints, which means we are not looking at concept plans. We are looking at opportunities and constraints and testing what the site can do as well as talking about the priorities for the uses here. So the intention of this phase is to get direction. We're not making decisions at this point about any concepts that will be coming next. So we're having a series of public workshops, including this is the kickoff of all of those workshops. And the last stage will be in the spring and that will be the concept planning time and feedback to those concept plans. And that will be the chance to vote more or less and give your vote to the city council who will ultimately ultimately be making the decision. And the end result of this this whole phase one process is called an actionable master plan, which means that's not even a final final development plan, but rather a list of actionable recommendations for next steps because there will inevitably be more research, more due diligence, more vetting to be done that needs to be done after we come up with this concept that's going to guide the next few steps. What we're very aware of is that time is of the essence. We have a housing crisis that's statewide and national housing crisis that is being felt here in the community. And there's funding available now that may not be available for many years to come. So there's a there's pressure to to act quickly, but we're balancing that with a intentional transparent inclusive process. And we've heard lots from the community how important it is to get all the feedback and to take the time to be responsible for this legacy planning. So this winter process, it is composed of several different elements and several different ways of providing input because as we did the research in the fall. We found that a lot of folks were saying they don't have time to come to meetings. Thank you all for taking the time today, and not everybody can or wants to so we are doing this via public meetings that have a variety of different ways to give input. And I'm telling you this, even though you're already here because I want you to tell your friends and your neighbors, there are lots of ways to plug in. We have a hybrid meeting coming up. We have a virtual entirely virtual meeting coming up that are going to be following these exact same, this exact same structure. We also have a video. It's a five minute video running through the what I'm going to run through today just condensed. I had to speak a lot faster than I'm speaking right now. And then a survey and the survey is what we're going to encourage all of you to take and to encourage anyone you know to take because it is going to be our way of really collecting this data and looking for patterns and consensus. And there we've been distributing flyers we've been distributing the survey as best we can so if you can help us with that would be more than appreciative just to be able to make sure everybody's voices heard and we're hearing from a variety of stakeholders. During the fall we held a series of public meetings, we had multiple state small stakeholder meetings, we distributed information throughout all the different distribution networks. And we received a ton of feedback, and we're prepared to talk a little bit about what that was today. But we also surveyed the business community and surveyed high school students so some of the feedback we heard is going to reflect some of that. This is really a representation of the types of feedback we heard but I will point you to the main points being the priority to three priorities people identified were environmental sensitivity housing and recreation. Those three were the top three priorities for this how this site should be laid out. We heard the top planning concerns being transportation and site access, and we heard that the top procedural concern was a transparent inclusive process. So, with that, I'll ask Mike Willard from VHB to come up and talk through what we found during the due diligence process relative to the natural resources and then also hit on the test schedule. Hi, everyone. So the first part of master planning is typically, you know, this is a very large parcel. And so our environmental scientists went out here and basically took an inventory of what's out here for natural resources. So that's looking at streams, ag soils, wetlands, and so all of those natural resources have sort of constraints associated with them. There's buffers, there's setbacks, there's regulatory process and considerations. And so developing that sort of list of all the natural resources that are on this parcel really sets the framework and understanding where potential development or site improvements could occur if they were sort of voted on to sort of move forward. So what this map is showing here, you can see like this sort of light blue area, those are setbacks because there's a stream that runs down through the corridor. These sort of bright green areas, those were identified as map wetlands, and so they have buffers associated with them. This sort of yellow mass here that's considered prime ag soil, this upper area up here is sort of considered statewide soils. So again, those all have sort of constraints and considerations for permitting as the project sort of moves forward and division starts to develop and what can happen here in this site. So, and just to reinforce, there's a very extensive process, sort of mapping out all the inventory that's on this property. So we wear our way in the map? Yeah. Oh yes, orientation. So we are, here's this building here. So we are here parking lot in the front. Before you move on, I'll just speak to, there were other assessments done and this was presented at City Council as well as it's on the website. But there was also an archaeological sensitivity, archaeological resources assessment, and they identified six sensitive areas, which were all mostly located in the wetland areas or in the wooded areas. They were not near the areas where we're looking are the buildable areas. There was also a traffic assessment done which looked at the intersection and different points of access and capacity. Nothing that surprised us to hear things that the community had already told us. Transportation being a key issue, transit being a huge key issue. The capacity of the intersection will very much how that gets upgraded will very much depend on what the development plan is. So we're dragging some of the areas that we need addressed once we know what is to be developed here. And lastly an existing building conditions plan was done by BRD for this building we're in now. And that was concluded that it is in good shape. But there will still be restrictions about how it could be used and repurposed given the, as you can see here, a lot of interior space. There's a low ratio of, what's it called, wall to window to square footage ratio or something like that. And ceiling height restrictions that will dictate how it could be repurposed, especially for a rat building. But those are all online if you have more questions about those after this meeting. Please feel free to review them and get back to us because we'd be happy to answer those questions. So the next step in the process after the natural resources are mapped is to then evaluate where potential site improvements could occur. So this sort of purple mask down here, this is sort of the low, you know, this is the developed area where there's parking lot. The existing building is here today. Then as you sort of move up into this part of the site, it's a little bit flatter. So there's considerations about what could be developed there. There's not many steep slopes right in this area. And then again, so other pods were identified that are sort of in between the different natural resources. And so that sort of starts to set the framework about where site improvements could happen on this property. You know, there are considerations, you know, this side is sort of on the northwest side. These are, there's some steep slopes over here. There's a ravine that's moving through the properties. That's predominantly wooded right now over here on the east side. Again, this is predominantly wooded as it is today. This path that's up here on the top that was seen as sort of a potential sort of like wreck trail connection on the property. And sort of looking at other linkages and how to sort of create connections in the surrounding area back to this land. Okay, so the test sketches, so these were taking a look at what are the opportunities that the site could actually like support. That's not to say that any of these would ever happen, but it was really saying like, okay, if we wanted all housing here, what would housing look like? If we wanted all recreation here, what would recreation look like? And then there's sort of a hybrid plan. So it's really just exploring what the uses could be, how it could be laid out and just creating sort of an initial vision. It's really sort of a capacity study to understand what this parcel could support. So this plan is what would be considered, we call it test day. This is like maximum housing. So if your vision was list, put housing here, how many units could this land support? So again, we're down here at this building. Because of the topography, this is the general flat area. So high density housing was proposed here. So this would be like multi-family housing. It could be three to five stories of housing here. And then as you sort of start moving into the site and going, climbing up in grade, the housing starts sort of breaking down in mass. So these orange squares were considered sort of like townhomes. And you can see the roads sort of connecting through, again avoiding the natural resources that were identified. And then as you keep moving up the site, the sort of yellow defined areas, those were shown as potential single-family housing as options. So you sort of have higher density residential here, then it starts breaking down in scale as you sort of move into the site. So this concept, I think it was supporting about 513 units of housing on this concept. Mike, I'd like to add one thing we did during the study was to start from somewhere. We tried to utilize existing stream crossings. So we didn't just say, hey, let's just put roads here. We tried to find something to help guide any discussion. So that was just kind of a starting point. So there was a path there now. That's how we were easily turning to a road. Let's let that sort of dictate something. Yeah. So again, it was just, it was all based on the disturbance of the natural resources. So the question, where's the boundary line? Is that the red line? Yeah. So the parcel boundary is this yellow line. And then that red line is basically on top of it. Maybe we can shut off these big lights. And these will be, so let me clarify too. There's going to be four stations that we're going to send you to in the second, in one of the activities, in the first activity. So you'll have a chance to zoom in a close stand in front of them and actually look at them a little closer too. We understand the clarity on this. It's hard with a room so big and it's one of the limitations of an in-person meeting. But when we get into the smaller rooms, you'll get a closer view. Okay. So this one is again, this was the max housing. How much housing could this parcel support? This idea was just, it remains all recreation. So this was looking at what are the opportunities for site improvements that were specifically targeted to outdoor recreation. So again, we're down here by the building. You can see some more formalized parking was sort of mapped out. Some additional recreation facilities here, some buildings, outdoor pool. And then you can see some really sort of defined outdoor recreation, you know, courts and fields were sort of mapped out. And then taking the rest of the parcel and just having it be sort of passive recreation, whatever it could be, trails, like, you know, connections, cross-country skiing. So basically, by and large, the rest of the site was seen as undeveloped for the most part. So the density and the site improvements, again, were focused where the terrain is favorable. So these are the flatter parts of the site where you could do larger ball fields and that's where they would be supported. So this plan is sort of the hybrid. It's sort of combining the two ideas, having housing and recreation on the site. So again, sort of improved recreation facilities here around the existing building, some new ball fields added, some high-density housing here. So these would be multi-story buildings, could be three stories, possibly five stories. And then, again, moving up into sort of townhomes up in this section, and then sort of a small pod of single-family residents. And then, by and large, leaving the sort of the eastern and western sides of the site undeveloped for trails and connections and paths that these sort of explored. Great. Thank you. How much housing is in doubt? That one, 173 or 240, depending on if you go three-story or five-story in some of those multi-family. So one of the things I wanted to mention is that when we had the fall sessions, we heard a lot of feedback about a lot of different elements. These are not exhaustive plans. These do not incorporate all those elements. We know those elements are important and we're starting here with these most land-intensive uses to start. And then we know when we want to incorporate other pieces, connecting wildlife corridors, for example, looking at ways to incorporate solar, various pieces that need to be addressed. But that has to happen and there's a sequence here. But we did hear, you know, something that could be shown early on and that were important to show early on, like the connection of the U32 trail, that red line, and also what Mike is going to speak to about view sheds. And that's important to consider at this stage. So we had to make some judgment calls about which stage these would be evaluated. One thing I wanted to mention as well is that in the max housing option and even in any of the options, the buffers for the streams and the wetlands, those are, you can do, you can still walk in those areas. You know, those are not restricted. So when you talk about max housing, it's not like it's going to be pavement everywhere. There's still those setbacks. Not that, you know, I'm advocating for that, but pointing that there are different elements of light rec to more intensive rec or just usage, land usage as our human impact on these areas. We wouldn't be able to program anything in those areas and it would need to be light impact. But there is that within max housing and in this seed. Can you explain where the roads are here and parking for the housing that's to the north, orange blocks? So roads, all the roads here in the dark gray and parking for units like that. I believe the assumption was underground parking. Is that the assumption? Right in the unit. Right in the unit. And we're going to have, I could take one more question. We're going to have more time for Q&A before we get into more, but yeah. I'm wondering about additional, in terms of exit to this parcel. Yeah. Right, we do have, and again, sorry, you can't see that from where you're sitting at all, but when you get closer, you can see there are some identified points here and here of how could we maybe explore connecting to a budding properties that that would need to be considered as well. Absolutely. We don't know where those would be depending on the land plan and that would have to be conversations with the butters to see what's feasible. All right, let's move on and then we'll come back for more questions when we're done, but Mike can speak to some of you, Shed. Sure. I don't know if people have a chance to visit the site very often, but this is quite a great piece of property. You know, a south facing hillside that stretches along a kind of a large ridge area where once you get up towards the back of the site, probably the northeast corner considered here at the top of the hill, you have some really great views to the east over towards Countless Home. And what we did, we sort of took a walk along this property line along the tree line there and sort of scouted out how far can you see, how far can you go to still get a very beautiful view out towards the mountain there. And it's a pretty expansive view from the northeast side where that yellow line represents where you can see the mountain profile out in the background. Now, it's not to say you lose all views from everywhere once you're past that. It's just that is the specific mountain area. The blue area here represents the southern view corner. A lot of great exposure. I believe that's the old fourth or fifth hole on the backside there where it's, there's just a great view to the south from that elevation. Given the flatness of the lower side here and the increasing hillside, there's really, there's views back to the southeast, the northwest. It's just a really great spot. So this was something we surveyed as we tried to help influence just our generic discussions about where you can see it. I mean, it's not to say that when you're way out on the old 7th, 6th or 7th green, that you really do have nice views everywhere here. But I think when in terms of, we're talking about open spaces and the expensive views, these are sort of the ones we felt that people would feel they would want to see. And you see we included some photos. It wasn't the greatest day when the photos were shot, but they're still on the ground. So we went for it. The next slide here could be a little confusing, but I'll walk you through it. This is a small plan of the same orientation as we were looking at on the other plans on the other drawings. What we did was we tried to show what the scale of the site would be if one were to take a knife, cut it right in half and give relationships to different pieces. So we turn it here. You can see the existing building in white. Is there a year? Same thing there. The white square is the existing building we're in now. The bottom corner of the site here represents Group 2. So you can see just how much elevation we gained to the back of the site. The red lines on each of those sections represent the property line at the top of the hillside here. And again, these forms were just something we were presenting as trying to meet the square footages that were discussed on the other sheets. So it's a little hard to see. You can see there's a line of elevation gain from front to back. And as we get a blow-up on the top of the page, it's hard to see at this scale what you'll be able to see on the pages. You can see some vehicles, some people up on the upper trail. We need to put the connection trail up there. So really to demonstrate that we will still have views over the top of structures as you traverse the north side of the site. Yep. And so we did two sections here. Thank you. So this one is cut through some of the townhouse residential per se, and then the larger multi-families with the green space in the front, which is sort of this area down here. The next section here, the white square still represents the existing building. We're showing a larger-scaled purple building to represent a recreation or community building, which requires more volume just to meet the needs of the activities that would be proposed there. And you can still see as the gradient changes along the backside of the hill, you can see just different forms where the people up on the top of the hill there may be some rooftops in a way. But this was the assumption of the existing gradient. There wasn't a lot of thought given to, well, bury this house a little bit, bury these buildings a little further to get better views. That's sort of part of the next study, but it shows that there are opportunities to really have expansive views from the north side of the site because it is the high area. Thanks, Mike. So, these are on the website, and I know that that's a lot to absorb, and it's something you probably want to see a little bit more up close. We'll leave this particular plan up on the projector when there's free time to move around so that if you want to get a closer look, because those are not printed up on the walls. But that just gives you a sense of the scale and massing that we're talking about. So, the last piece that I want to present on before we get into the activities and some Q&A is we are not at any stage because these are not concepts. This is not a time to talk about costs per se, but I wanted to give you a sense of just the order of magnitude and the scale. So, from a cost perspective to the city, so what would the city be responsible for? For infrastructure, which includes roads, buildings, parking areas, fields. When we look at max housing, that's going to have the lowest cost for the city. It's mostly roads, and then the developer, whoever the developer would be, because you put this out to an RFP to have someone else in the city would not be responsible for building housing, would be building the rest of the infrastructure, the rest of the development. For max recreation, the city would have more cost. That would be the buildings themselves. In these cases, in these tests, we've shown about 60,000 square feet of building. So, that's a lot of building, that's a lot of cost, and in the rec scenario, there would also be the construction of the fields, construction of the parking and public parking. And in the balanced, we're calling it the hybrid of housing and rec, that's going to have the highest cost because we're still accommodating a 60,000. We're still putting a 60,000 square foot building on it and doing all the support of public parking, but also doing roads out to some of those housing parcels. But what we need to take into consideration is the revenue side, which is that in both max housing and the balanced test A, test C, some of those parcels would then go back on, would be taxable again. And those would start generating tax revenue, which would offset the cost of the infrastructure. So what you see is, if you were just looking at cost, it looks like the most expensive is to do the balanced. But when you factor in a return on the taxable value, you see that switched. So it now would be the lowest cost would be to do max housing, the highest would be to do max rec, and in the middle would be now this does not give a scale in terms of how close is this to this, you know, in terms of, you know, what are we talking here about spending a million dollars and $10 million every time. And that's a much harder question to answer when we're talking at this general scale, but what that's just to put that basic concept because most people don't spend their days building infrastructure. So I thought this would be helpful just to be an educational point to keep in mind as we go forward, you're going to be thinking about that as an ultimate, this is not happening in a vacuum, it would have to be paid for. It also doesn't take into consideration the funding sources, there will be funding sources available, if we do housing here, versus if we do rec different houses, different funding sources available. So this is not a complete picture, but a little bit of a data point. And there was one question here. When you say roads to set include water, sewer or power. Yeah, it could be utilities as well as roads. Yes. Thank you for asking. So what I want to do from here is to walk you through what the rest of this session is going to look like in terms of the activities, and then we're going to take questions. So I think we can pull the lights up. So what we're going to be doing is three different activities, if we have time. So the question we have for everybody here today is now knowing the site limitations, which is something we didn't know in the fall. And knowing the communities identified needs, because we've been widely publishing what people had been saying over the course of the fall you've probably heard it being in the community, knowing what you know now. How would you lay out the site what's your vision and what would you want the what do you want the planning team to know as we go into the concept planning phase. So what we're going to do is ask after the questions after we take some questions just to get clarification on anything we presented is we're going to ask people to split up into four groups. They're identical stations. So no, no better station than others just a matter of proximity we have two in this room and two in other rooms. And what you're going to do is based on the test sketches. If there's test sketch plans up on the wall and buildable areas map on the wall, you're going to get eight dots. And there are eight areas on that buildable areas plan that we showed you so the buildable areas and the natural areas. And for each buildable area, you're going to assign a dot for what use you want it to be, you would vision it to be. So there are rows on the chart that show multifamily housing, single family housing, outdoor recreation, conserve conservation for abnaki representation, abnaki use. There's solar arrays, all the different uses, and then an other category for people to to specify what other might mean. So we ask that you take us. We're going to give you a sheet. There will be someone at each station, you get a sheet of eight stickers. And after you've had a moment to absorb the plans, put a sticker in each column for what you think that build that particular area should look like. After we're done with that exercise, which may take a little while and we recognize there's logistical challenges as there would inevitably be. We're going to come back here and we're going to do what's called 124, which is a chance to talk amongst yourselves about what's important. Again, answering this question and answering the question, you know, what what strikes you as the most important thing that the planning team should know. So one, you're going to take one minute to think about the question to yourself. Two, you're going to turn to a buddy and in pairs, you're going to talk for two minutes each. And then you're going to take two pairs are going to create a quad, and you'll have eight minutes as a quad to discuss. And from that quad, we're going to be distributing index cards for folks to write down their suggestions. So when you come back from the stations, if you situate yourself in a place that's comfortable to be able to talk to your neighbors would be very helpful. Because we'd like to then have those index cards come back to us with these thoughts that come from your group discussion, which may yield something different than what you came into thinking today, because we're hoping that this is an evolution. This is an entirely iterative process. And with our time remaining after that, we'll have everybody raise their hands as as we'll call on folks for a minute at the mic. We don't have a mic but a minute to speak and say anything remaining that you didn't get to get out on the paper on an index card. And that will take us entirely till noon. So in the interest of time, we're going to take about 10 minutes or so for questions. Again, keeping in mind this is not a chance to vocalize an opinion. Let's hold that for the end and for these exercises. But if you have questions that would help you in those exercises, we'd love to hear them and clarify them now. All right, I'm going to start here and then go to the back. I am one of the individuals who has spent quite a bit of time studying this, including I've walked the entire site and prepared a statement that takes about four minutes, I would say. Which I would like for the entire group to listen to as well as you. You know, I'm thinking there are undoubtedly other people who have done something similar. I wonder if we'll be able to communicate with those of us who have that kind of thing. I'm not sure there will be enough time for folks to give that much feedback for everyone to hear. But we'd be happy to hear your comments as a team, as the planning team. We'll be sticking around at the meeting and can hear all of that. If we have time and there's extra time, we absolutely can open it up to that. We went in the back here and I saw over there. Hi, thank you. I'm curious, up in Burlington, Robespai, and that whole area is, and there's been a lot of housing, looks like apartment housing built back in there. Is that what you're envisioning for a lot of housing? I'm going to ask either Mike or Mark to speak to that. I mean, that is multi-family housing. Yeah. The concept sketch had the sort of the higher density. That would be the multi-family housing, like three to five stories similar to what you see at the end crossings. Are those three or five up there? They're mostly three. That's a good question in terms of scale, because I do think. We have a question about that on the survey that talks about massing to kind of help visualize, because there's some images there that you can respond to, because it is hard to imagine. But it's wonderful to go up everybody and look and see what's up there now. Sure. Because you'll really get a great idea of what they've done. True. I'm going to go over here and then to you. I just wanted to comment on the slide that said no revenue from with all the recreation. Recreation facilities do actually generate many kinds of revenue. So my question is, did you take that into account? But also perhaps my request is to look at that more carefully, because how does it scale with respect to property taxes? It's a great point. That was purely taxable revenue. So it did not take into account operational revenue that would be a piece if the property were being used as a community facility with operating different users. If it was being subdivided as a piece that gets sold to a private entity to do a piece that's private, for example, then that would become taxable revenue. That's not what test B showed. But you're absolutely right that there are other sources of revenue that we will consider when we get to the bigger picture into dial actually less of a picture, dialing in more specifically on some concepts. Because you're right, any kind of revenue stream should be considered as much as a point would be considered as much as taxable revenue. But the piece, the reason we focused on the taxable piece only at this time is because it's the only thing right now that the city could count on, that the city is in control of in this kind of land planning at this scale. There's a ton more variables that would go into whether or not the city could, at what scale would you be doing operational revenue? There's a ton of different options. You could have an entire wing that's being rented out or used for different types of revenue or just one small space. We're going to go right here and then into that. My concern is timing. I mean, it could be done in stages. The money would have to be figured into that. And that would be something very hard to make decisions on when you're just putting points on that. That's a fair point. We don't know exactly how the timing is going to go with this in terms of phasing out. And that's somewhat going to be dictated. We can't prescribe how the public input is going to shape this process. Because housing might be the most important right now for taxes, but that's fair. I think we should go back here and then here. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate over here that I've found that value about the taxes thing kind of misleading. Not including all the costs of putting that in and the cost of having sprawl. And I've gone up to Williston to see what those places look like. And they almost look like community deserts. You don't see people out there doing things. It doesn't have a nice feel to it. And you look out here and recreation adds so much to the community. And I really feel like that was not emphasized at all in that particular slide. Did you have a specific question relative to these slides? No, I just wanted to know that it was, I felt that it was misleading. And we're going to go here. So I listened to Jostram's interview on the BPD on the website. And one of the things that really struck me, surprised me a lot, was that the average household size in Montpelier is 1.9 people. Which means there's a huge amount of people living individually. So my question is, how did the occupancy of so many individuals living factor into how you decided how many housing units to do? That's a good question. I would say, you know, the tests, specifically the housing tests, were informed in two different ways. One is in a bubble, like in a vacuum. What could the site support and doing a representational exercise to show the varying product types? Because what we heard a majority of the feedback actually, which may be slightly contrary to the data, is that different price points, many different price points and different options, not just single family and not just many families. So showing a variety so that there's a mix of people living on the site. So that was kind of one way of shaping a company that informed that sketch. The other that informed the sketch is to highlight how, specifically how the different sizes could look on this site. I mean, you can do pretty much anything still. You can move the multifamily housing up on the ridge. You can put the single family down below. You can make it all multifamily. And that's exactly what this stage is for. We want to hear, do people have part of the reasons for locating the multifamily at the bottom is so that you reduce the number of trips that are going up through the site. You know, as you get further up, if there's only single family, there you see fewer cars going all the way through the site. Same with recreation. But if the community felt strongly that really multifamily should have the benefit of the views, that's where this is going and the city council agrees. So it's an iterative process. We chose this to start as a representation. Well, and I just think that one of the questions we want to hold going forward is, there's a huge demand for not only single family, but single person housing. Yeah. All of the data is there. For sure. I think, what did I say after? I said right here. I'm sorry, thank you. I was recently on the planning commission. One of my concerns about this site in general is how does this fit into the master plan? And how about access back to the city? I mean, the plans are still showing a single access onto the site. And I don't really see that there's any connection back to the city itself. And so I'm concerned this is just going to become a seller. The second question I can answer, the first question is going to go back to Josh. The second piece being we haven't addressed transportation here. As I said earlier, we know that's something that would absolutely be critical. That's going to be critical in the next phase is how does it get connected? And is it, maybe through one of those other access points as well, different factors we have to consider. What we haven't had is we don't know what the demand is because we don't know what the intensity is. So that will drive how many trips are appeared, what types of users. But to your question about master planning, that's out of my realm. Josh, do you want to speak to that? Yeah, I mean, I would say it does come back to the application we're still trying to determine how many units can be up here. We're just one way access. So that's what we are exploring, whether Avenue is going up to the Town Hill Road and through Savings Bastion. The attention was for this not to be a satellite of the downtown. We want it to be connected to the downtown. And I think that it will be, in some degree, whether that is pedestrian, bicycle, infrastructure to connect, and hopefully we hit the other also. So questions that we're, yes, questions that we're all still trying to answer. We're going to take two more questions because we're running out of time at this stage. We have time at the end to contribute, again, thinking, contributing opinions and your perspective will come in the next three exercises. We really want to hone in on answering any questions that might help you get a better sense of how to participate. So, in the back there, and then you have your hand up for a little bit of time. Sure. A point of clarification about the areas that are being kind of external developers to develop. Would those be actually subsidized and sold to them? Or did you have them at the city? Like, what's the plan for the property? Good question. Mostly, if it's going to be private development, it's going to be housing development specifically, we would recommend, the planning team would recommend subdivision. If it's going to be city use, more likely not. We'll go back question. This is getting back to transportation. I'm curious about the impacts to the intersection and necessary changes to the access road. You alluded to having done some work on that. Yeah. I'd be curious to know if that work is going to be available as we do this work and give us a sense of magnitude of costs associated with max, medium, and no residential. Right. Good question, and I'm able to answer most of it. There is a study on the website that's the transportation study or transportation assessment, and it did look at that intersection, and I think the threshold was 70, 75 or so units around that that starts to trip major improvements needed at that intersection. So there is a threshold at which number of units on the site is going to trigger major improvements, which leads to major costs or higher costs. What those costs are is the part of the question I can't answer yet because, again, if we're talking 70 new units or we're talking 500 units, that's very different. But as your point is well taken, that's something we need to dial in a little closer on the concept plans, again, if we're talking, we'll have a better sense of the scale and the impact. And once you know impact, you can start to assess the costs associated. So we're going to go here and then we have time for one more. I was curious how our responses in the next three activities will be analyzed and incorporated into this process. And also how it might relate to the feedback you get from a private developer, obviously, depending on how a lot of input on the final design and what they want to do or can do. Good question. So the process piece is very important and by the end of the week of the, I think it's February 17th is when the poll is closing, the survey is closing and we'll have done all of our stakeholder meetings and public meetings. After that, we as a team will be going through all of the data trying to understand where those patterns are, what's rising to the surface, where are some creative ideas and discussing them as a team and that will coalesce into some recommendations. Then we have a meeting with City Council at the end of March to talk about the recommendations and the findings. And that's going to guide putting together the concept plans that are coming forth in the spring. So there's a few different stages of assessment and analysis and that will be recapped out to the public in a document and back to the council. And then you're asked what about the developer is a good one. With the housing, there's a little bit here of what the city can ask for and request and dictate in terms of what they want. But there's also market realities of what's feasible and what's not feasible. And so what our recommendation will be is to show the areas where the housing is wanted. If there's housing wanted at the end of this process and there can be recommendations in there in the RFP that goes out to developers X percentage affordable or must include affordable housing and let the developer community come forward with the proposals. Because that's going to very much depend on cost. It's going to very much depend on what the city can do to help in terms of funding. If we were to reapply to get a TIF district extended out this way that could very much affect how much funding we can use for infrastructure. And so there's going to be a back and forth a little bit. But the city by being in control of parcel has input on how the direction it will go. But then it'll be a matter of seeing what's proposed and they can propose something that the city didn't ask for. And it may be more creative and it may be more in line with what we'd heard during the process. So then the city council could say actually this really resonates. This is very creative and is getting at what we needed it to be. So there's a little bit of back and forth and it's how public-private partnerships work and actually it's the beauty of a public-private partnership because the private sector has strengths that we don't as the public sector and vice versa. And the public sector can bring resources to bear with the private sector. I hope that answered your question. We're going to need to put a pin in any further questions. We can get back to anything else that needs to be said after our exercise. Announce chance to move your bodies. So we have four stations. Raise your hand if you're a station leader. So follow a station leader. There's two in this room and two in other rooms. Identical stations. And we'll meet back here at 11.20. All right. We're going to call everybody back to their seats and do a tiny bit of recap here. But we're also going to put this to a little bit of a group vote on how we proceed because it's now 11.20. Firstly, lessons learned for the planning team. Bigger dots, we hear you. To be fair, we expected twice this turnout based on the RSVPs and we didn't think there'd be enough room. Oh, sorry. My audio. Sorry about that. We thought there would be twice as many and not enough space in each box. So that's one thing. Not yellow dots. We had someone go back over there with a pen. And to reiterate, it should have been and I'm sorry if you didn't get this from the onset, but we will clarify again for our future sessions one dot per column so that it was what use per area of the site. But we will be taking that into account. We tried and each group wasn't sure exactly when they started. So we will take that into consideration as we evaluate this. But you can kind of see based on these four charts where people are starting to put their feedback. So with our remaining time we have a little over half hour. We could do our planned breakout groups where you are talking amongst yourselves. We did notice a lot of that was happening during the time at the stations. Which is great. So maybe it's not necessary and we can just open it up this entire remaining time for everyone to have a chance to speak. Raise your hand if you're in favor of the latter of the second option. Okay. All right. Done. So we'll call it minute at the bike. We don't have a mic and it may be longer than a minute. But best laid plans. We're iterating. We would like to ask you to raise your hand. We will do our best to try strategically as I did with the questions. Try to get to everybody and tell you if you're on deck. I'm going to ask you to keep your comments restricted to a minute if possible. So we give everybody a chance. There's more than 35 people here and there's 35 minutes remaining. We want to give everybody a chance to... Okay. Okay. That's very kind. So we would like to say, you know, use the time wisely and try to keep your comments brief. But this is also not your only time for input. Remember that we are available by email. We are available. You can call Josh. And then the survey is a great place to also download a lot of these thoughts. And when we recap this from the fall, like we did with the fall, we're going to be recapping what for the purposes of presenting that at the end of this stage in presenting it to the council in March so that the community will hear what was said by each other as well as what they contributed. Individually you contributed. This is a quick process. Can we have a little more Q&A before we get into the voice here? That makes a lot of sense. Yes. If there's some questions, first off the top, we can answer some questions and then get into some comments. I think that does sound good. If there are any remaining questions, people especially didn't get answered from the first time. Another process question? Question. What's that? Question about? Okay. Did you have a question first? He raised his hand first. I know there's a lot of interest under all pre-plans for daycare or preschool. I don't know if you've gotten into that level of specificity yet. If so, where are you thinking that would be cited? Right. We have not gotten into that programming specificity. That has come up and it came up in a couple conversations I think as in other use. When we talked about it with a few folks, they were talking about a community center which would be bigger than a rec piece and that would most likely be where your most likely daycare use would be. But if there was a desire to locate daycare within one of the multi-family buildings, we just haven't gotten to that level of specificity. And you're aware there's already a preschool in this building. Correct, yeah. Talked to the center director here somewhere. So another question here. You mentioned solar here. Is that sighted on the land or on the roofs? Well, a solar array would is referencing a field, an actual sighting. That's not to talk about what kind of solar you could do on a building. Right. That was just that question. Thank you. Is there another question back? Yeah, I don't know if it's a question or a comment. But yeah, the point about daycare just has speaks to my concern that not enough kind of attention is given to the concept of a more self-contained community that has shopping and has other kind of mixed uses that will kind of minimize the flow of traffic into and outside of the area. And that is my question. Has that been given consideration? Right. And that comment has come up a few times and we're well aware that is the desire of a lot of people, not necessarily an anonymous decision or anything, but absolutely people have said how because the very nature of this site being out of the downtown, there are services that may be needed here. There are maybe uses that need to be accommodated. But that level of programming and that level of detail is going to be dictated by this process where we're talking about that balance and that massing. So I think if we're getting into comments, I think we're kind of getting at questions and comments are going together. Is that a question? I have a question. We'll do one more question and we'll come to you in the back. Usually each city there's a number of housing that's needed, housing needs and usually there's a number associated with that. I mean, what's the housing meaning in molecular? In terms of building this and the other things? We need a little bit of everything. I know. But I think this past week when my housing finance agency came out with their report for how many units of housing the state needs by 2030 I think it was around 45,000. So simple basis if you do it on a per capita level and what does molecular needs quite a bit more units of housing and that is going to be a mix of multifamily triplexes duplexes maybe even single family. So I think we don't have good census data because we're still using ACS American Community Survey data the 2020 decennial data which is much more accurate is going to be coming out this May. So once that's available then we can start to look at from that data set and try to identify actual numbers of units for particular products of housing. We're going to go back there and then we'll go to the next person who is answering. I know that a lot of things that you propose are going to be associated with housing and the development is kind of long, long term planning. And these buildings when buildings aren't used or people are living in them and he did and they come up they tend to go downhill. So I'm wondering if these buildings can be used in the interim. I know that the hub has tried to do a lot has made a lot of proposals about trying to use these in the interim between this and the long term planning and I'm wondering if these buildings could be used for recreation for the community I guess there is a the I'm wondering do you have a plan for that in the short term do you want to speak to? Well I mean we do have two tenants in the building for now that use space but then also the community services department is analyzing existing space to see what they can use for their programming specifically this this room and possibly this room over here so that is being considered. So I would imagine that some of this will be utilized by the community services department. That's correct. Again I'm wondering why the reluctance to work with the group that wanted to do projects here right now the hub became so difficult when they were ready to go with recreational facilities some commercial activity that would really put some life into this this area at it but yeah whatever you know well city council voted not to that's a city council question correct Bill yeah I can answer that we had active conversations with the hub and I know representatives here about how it worked and once we decided that the city was going to purchase the property I think there was concern about immediately turning over a portion of it to a group without maybe a community that worked publicly on land would be useful and so this is the process that we committed to the hub that we would follow we were doing now we did the council did vote to negotiate a lease with them and we weren't able to reach a group that worked for both parties and that's fair and they are think or one of the stakeholders that are going to be spoken with as part of this process and as we do have creation options if that is where the public wants to go I presume what they are proposing to be considered but that's I think the city council felt that just turning over a large portion of this property to a group and I say a private group I know they are a nonprofit but a private group that is going to take more if you want to raise your hand I can go from you and then to back home I appreciate the process that you are going through I think it's well constructed and I appreciate your presentation today saying that I know that there will be things that end up here that I'm not happy with and I would invite all of you to recognize that for yourselves as well that it's compromise and I think we can come up with an amazing development plan for this property that said I'm really in favor of multi housing that that is creates a community I'm not in favor of single family housing this might take on it I'd love to minimize the impact of automobiles on this place I think there's lots of creative ways we can do that if we think about where we want to be in 50 years because that's where I've lived in Montpelier for 50 years now and I know that that is going to happen here too to somebody I think that it's a remarkable sight on the thrill that we bought it and that we have some control over how it's going to be developed not everybody will be happy comments which is what I've been telling myself since August thank you we'll go back here to you yeah I have to agree this is a beautiful property and a wonderful opportunity I also agree I'd love to see a lot of multi-family housing up here we have to build that housing and all the buildings here for the century that we're in it has to be net zero we can really think about energy systems possibly networks geothermal solar on the roofs the newly newly tightened ones yeah thank you yeah who's next we've got you here I could better I could better with open space but that is not to say that I don't support housing I do support housing but I want us to remember that this area has been used for active recreation for decades and for socializing in this space and I'm advocating for the use of this rolling open space to be designed for active use by our community to encourage all season recreation outside designed around cross-country skiing for all skill levels from beginners to school teams to senior citizens these same spaces can be designed for biking slatter is walking and other activities with flatter areas made appealing for strollers wheelchairs and other devices let's keep the beauty of this property with all plenty of trees roads should be designed around active recreation to avoid collisions and interruptions to provide access to housing for all income levels with as much passive solar design as economically feasible and community spaces with outdoor orientation more structured indoor and outdoor recreation and public transportation can be designed to fit around active outdoor spaces to make this resource available to the city as a whole solar arrays should be primarily on rooftops buildings outdoor resting places put things under the solar let's envision a place that invites our whole community to be as active and as we are able and helps us to remain so both for our physical and mental health let's invite the creation of housing for a range of income and household sizes and ages let's make it easy for residents both here and from the community to get outside to connect for healthy living and to connect inside when outside is not as appealing let's keep space for daycare and make space for after school and summer activity let's make this place with a history of outdoor recreation inviting inviting the people from all over town and their broader area to create to recreate outdoors and indoors and to continue to create community oh, I meant to take my mask off but I hope you to hear me let's enlist designers of outdoor spaces and of housing and of recreation that will be treasured by future generations and preserves and takes advantage of its beauty go right here and then, Jodi did you want to did you want to volunteer in time to him? I can if you'd like to speak after her I'm actually how do I end up next and then we'll go to you I'm holding you responsible we'll go here and then to there right there thanks thanks for doing this too I think this is a great process and it really does involve the public which is what I'm really glad to see this getting on and as a former architect and planning commission member there are a lot of elements of this that strike me that maybe would not strike other people one of which is I don't know how you can lay out the site unless you know what the access is going to be so the assumption here is that the access is through the single existing access point in which case I think I urge you to look at something called transit oriented design because otherwise we're just going to get a million cars going back and forth and transit oriented design does what someone in the back suggested about bringing in some of those basic amenities that people need on a day to day basis that they can walk to and get a quart of milk or something also I would urge the team to not show any more plans that don't show the connection to the city so where is the city in all of this how far away is it on the plan and so concepts of this isn't just a suburb out in out in Netherlands somewhere I would urge you to cluster the housing create community spaces that's what I really like about the mask the multifamily that was the way it was designed as they were designed around the central area no more cul-de-sacs cul-de-sacs were a 1960s design element that is not the way we want to design we want to create connected communities connect communities with access points not with endpoints and this is it thank you it goes here and then to back with purpose can I ask people identify themselves sure we could have done that I'm Ben Huffman and I'm going to take a somewhat different year than my friend Fine who is an outdoor reparationist this project presents Montpelier city government with a unique situation and thereby opportunity in my more than 50 years as both a Montpelier homeowner and as someone attentive to city affairs this project is the first time I recall the city owning and directing the development of a major tract of land the consultants work has thus far produced valuable information on the site's physical condition but at this point I believe the planning focus should shift temporarily from questions of what specific uses should go where to broader questions of city development policy that is should the city accept an approach for this project typical of standalone suburban developments or should the city use this project to articulate and demonstrate citywide policy more appropriate for meeting obvious 21st century challenges but I believe the latter approaches needed which in brief would include as the project's primary goals number one to enhance Montpelier's downtown as the social and commercial city rather than contribute to wasteful residential commercials for all and to track from the downtown what I know with secondly to eliminate rather than increased use of fossil fuels particularly in transportation and thirdly to address rather than ignore that in all likelihood Montpelier will continue to be an explanation of climate migrants and others seeking a better place to live so consistent with those goals I want to make a few of the following suggestions that the best use of the project's site would be housing with recreational use ancillary to that secondly that this housing should be as dense and plentiful as possible yet not in high-rise buildings but rather by taking inspiration from Montpelier's 19th century pattern of residential development including use of hill sites also that individual home ownership by all income levels including units within multiple family structures should be promoted possibly through habitats for humanity and other financial supports of modest income owners as the best way to foster social equity in housing and create stable and well-maintained neighborhoods in addition the street access to the project should be constructed in a physically most direct manner possible to downtown Montpelier using the city's eminent domain afforded where necessary rather than depending on the streets current the site's current access and add to the congestion of a longer route to River Street quarter also the public transit should be created with trip frequencies and personal convenience sufficient to achieve maximum reduction in automobile use finally that a large-scale development such design suggesting could benefit from a kind of scale and potentially influence the housing supply demand equation most favorably for individual buyers and renters thank you thank you again for the suggestion to identify yourself before you speak sorry we didn't do that sooner so there you are sorry they're all spot we'll go here and then we'll go over here I'm Dan Copic I've lived in Montpelier for seven years I I'm a homeowner but my most recent job which I just left a couple weeks ago was helping people with subsidies find apartments and whenever an apartment first of all there were maybe three that came up in the last year and when they that were at the affordable rate designated by HUD and when they came up there were 75 applicants for every apartment like I also am a relatively new parent I had a kid in 2020 right in the middle of lockdown my brothers moved my younger brothers moved closer and took them over a year to find an apartment and they eventually ended up moving in together in a two bedroom so I'm a bit of a housing maximalist for this site however I think the city really needs to consider having a stronger hand in developing the housing here the just looking over the grand list for the past six years the private sector has built a grand total of one building one apartment building they've developed I think 14 retail and office apartments apartments and formerly retail environments and homeowners have outdone that building I think 22 or something ADUs accessory dwelling units in private homes and the nonprofit sector has built something like 50 so the excluding ADUs nonprofit is out building the private sector two to one and I like I want there to be housing here I don't want the entities like the boves or other corporate landlords to be controlling what is now public land I think the city of Montpelier really should invigorate its public housing options and that doesn't mean that people outside of the affordability can't use it or that it just restricted to those of limited means but I would advocate for the city to be realistic about what private entities might develop here thanks to go with the white mask and then the green hat Hi, I'm Steve Sease I'm a 40-year resident from Montpelier I'm a one-time planning commission member and chair of the Montpelier Planning Commission I've kind of deep-interested community issues for a long time and this is a really interesting process and a good process I just want to share a few thoughts about I guess a vision for what might happen out here I think John Snell talked a minute ago about creating a community out here and I think one of the greatest examples of community a terrific recreational opportunity I think that's wonderful that's a great example of community and I think as we think about this property let's remember that among its other aspects it's kind of ironic it's actually a great cross-country venue that I think many of us recognize so that really brings up the question of what do these properties certainly housing is an issue and a priority in the city as we create a community out here of housing that also includes a continually strong dispersal recreation including skiing running dog walking and so on so that's my thought I think we can be optimistic and that's our move but we need to remember that here's a great example of community and that's got to be done so I'm going to see the only consideration that I would ask everybody to make is where are we starting when we're thinking about what should we do with this property and we're starting from the point that we need all these things and I'd like everybody to consider what we already have. We already have a rec center that we've let fall completely apart or the city haven't taken very good care of quite honestly and we haven't put any resources or money into those so who's to say that you know 20 years down the road we're not going to be in the same place with this community that we go we're not going to put any more money into it other than the initial funding and then it's going to fall apart and so just consider what you already have we have a lot of buildings downtown that could be used for some of these things that you say we need we have a rec center we have a pool we have things that we have streets that need work we have a lot of things already so consider that when you're talking about the let's start all over and rebuild it here just just to get that right I would like to address the issue of the fine agricultural land that kind of sparked my interest I have been thinking about the concept of agribusiness and I don't know what many of you know what they are but if you just google them you could find out but it's basically a working farm embedded in a housing community there is one located in South Burlington although that's the homes there are English upper end but there are examples of mixed income communities that have embedded a working farm so I'm talk about community the idea of having a productive well you could call it an enhanced community garden but using that at prime agricultural land actually be a serious producer of food for both the community and surrounding area as we approach a time of security and also work they said we're community of people who are very interested in the quality of the co-ops down the street so I would put in a plug for that also I'm being 78 I am interested in senior housing and would like to see that address possibly with part of the housing part devoted to section seems to be people don't really want to admit that there doesn't take much imagination so I don't know what form that would take I imagine maybe he wants to want to expand into with the they're wonderful they're wonderful space and they're wonderful staff maybe but they're kind of gonna dumb maybe expand here so that's one thing and another is oh and also making the housing designs accessible to seniors with the trifectants maybe having them some you know but I know so many seniors want to move into Montpelier somebody who want to live in a mixed generational community and rather than being just busted among themselves okay and lastly the idea of housing for workers there's a community that has could be a model for worker for worker housing and that's down in the white river junction area there's a group of businesses that were faced with the same thing that every city is faced with these things no housing for their workers that is affordable so these businesses including Hanover co-op are pooling funds and then those funds are being averaged by ever north which is a nonprofit to build cooperative or however do it but housing for workers that's affordable thank you sorry you and then you and then we'll go to the back and we only have 10 minutes left so just giving a head up I'm Chris Hancock I like my failure and I'm just and concerned with some of these plants where they're living out here whether people who live here will actually feel that that's where they live or perhaps they live in you know I live off a root 2 of them so I was really glad to hear the various people voices that have said let's work out more about the connecting roads so that if we're gonna build places somewhere to live let's actually expand our town as opposed to creating a satellite tour I noticed in the exercise that we had and there was a western most area that didn't even get a letter because it's just too far from this access road but what if what if we were actually there was access direct across to the town if that happened and I live in this area I'd rather live at the west end than the east end so to me one of the potential resolutions of this recreation versus housing is let's have the recreation out here which is so about soothed to it as people on the doubt and let's have the housing closer to the town so people feel like they actually live in the town looking ahead I also think yeah before we build some very conventional kind of neighborhood let's think a little bit bigger let's think about a little further in the future I think for this to feel more like part of the town let's move the middle school out here for example that's a miserable building that they've been stuck in for decades and so my hope of the recreation over here middle school senior housing sounds great and let's let people reside closer to me hi I'm Mary Alice Bisbee and I have to say I have no longer a taxpayer I live in subsidized housing so I do know there is senior housing here but a lot of us in senior housing live alone in an apartment in a building where we have no connection with anybody else and mainly it's because in my building there are an awful lot of people that are younger that are Washington County mental health patients and my friends are all at the senior center and I did want to say we have a recreation building on Berry Street that I have never been in because I could not get in and I want to know I'm 86 years old I grew up in Washington County out on a dairy farm in Watesfield so I think I probably in the longest living person here I don't know they're probably some other Montpellier residents too and I went to Montpellier High School but co-housing is something I want to mention down in Burlington they have a wonderful co-housing unit and and this is what I would like to live with people of various ages I mean I could help somebody with maybe some paperwork but I can't help them with shoveling off my car which I have to do myself you know and in a place where I don't even have a garage but co-housing I think is something that could be done through the nonprofit sector it could be done with different income levels different age levels you could have babies you could have people like me holding the babies and keeping you know being day care it could be a really good thing to do and I think we should look into what's happened down in Burlington with the housing it's near the medical center there I've been to visit it and and I really would suggest that you go there because and think about it and think about some ways of getting nonprofit money to pay for it too and that's it my name is Noel Horty I've lived in Montpellier for most of my 34 years I just want to say I probably see more of this property than you maybe, I like to take part of it and see all the people's thoughts and so it's a really fun property I just want to encourage us to consider not making a dichotomy between housing and recreation as much as we try and perhaps are if we can integrate those two things as much as we possibly can like the lives of people living here would be improved of people who come here and have a lot of opportunity because there aren't many places to take over there's housing so just consider how to integrate those two things and also I think it should take an advantage of these opportunities that really sort of enforce what it wants out of this property over the coming century sorry could you repeat that I'm sorry it should take this opportunity to sort of enforce what you want this place to become over the next century I mean we're in a world that's heating up and you know Nanjero would be great for all these buildings that get built here I like the suggestion about co-housing or the suggestion about the agricultural mix let's think alternatively let's not just build another clue in the most number of the students in anywhere in the US let's make something that actually makes Montpellier stand out and it's something that we can live with for the next century as well and then to promote and then wait just a quick comment probably more for the city if we're talking about really planning for the long term and making this a vibrant neighborhood maybe this might be the time to think again about the merger with U32 since that's just a history I don't know how much closer the pick is what did you say? or what's your name? Leslie Leslie Allen oh I said this might be a time to think about the merger with U32 white math care and then you're in the back of the group hi I'm Ari I've lived in Montpellier six years grew up in East Montpellier so yeah just a couple things I think one thing to emphasize the housing crisis is rough right now like pretty much yeah like my landlord is thinking of some of the apartments that I've had my eyes on Craigslist and it's like really depressing all my friends are trying to like buy or rent it's just like not a good scene so I think yeah it's really important to get more places so people can just like have I mean I just think people should be able to take care of their basic needs to like have a roof over their head and to like not have it be at the winds of like markets and things to like have some security and have to be affordable so that's like one big point I think also I want to echo up Dan was saying about developers and like landlords to try and like have it be intentional be able to hold them accountable for the profit like they've got a big profit motive and we want we want to take care of people's needs so just whatever we can do to hold the profit incentivize people accountable to what we actually want for the place let's do that and just another thing I think just thinking about community as a resource because in my like I don't know I'm with a generation where me and like people younger than me even like some people older than me too we're like what the heck is our future gonna be and I think like in just all these overlapping crises like having community and like being able to have like have this place set up in a way where like there's housing and infrastructure to like build relationships between people who live here some of don't remember your name but some of your ideas were really great for that like transit just like places where people get to interact face to face that you know like there's so much more resource sharing that goes on there there's so much more it helps with mental health to just like have people you're interacting with acquaintances you can like further blend or you know I think that just can help like with I think thinking of community as something that concretely helps people with resources as well so thinking if we can build places so people have their needs met in ways that keep profit-seeking parties accountable and also in a way that fosters community with like design and other whatever else you can do okay we're gonna go green blue jacket in the back and then we can take one more and we're at time so we'll go right here after I'm Tim Heaney here all my life I'm keeping this housing rental swirl that the last person that you heard too every day I'm a real estate broker again for after three months later and I've been infinitely involved in creating some of the last streets that were built in my place the neighborhoods that were created so there's money I have decided to run for city council and working on a petition for that this weekend because I want to be part of this conversation and listening to all the ideas here today it's really fascinating because we have a really good detail zoning code in place that was created with a lot of public input over a long period of time I think Barbara was part of it and those rules are all in the books and a lot of your ideas are accommodated within that zoning in summer but those are the overarching rules that you have to work with and I think we've got a great framework there that will help guide us as the process evolves and it's kind of fascinating because I think what's gonna happen I'm really surprised with this project we haven't done a feasibility study up front I think Barbara's mentioned of the road and access and what it allows the concept of putting a street going west and what that involves there's a lot to it, it's possible it should be looked at but that feasibility should be done we should look at water and sewer lines, communications lines what's it gonna take to get those pieces to this site will help define what we really can do with it because if you're talking dense housing but you really don't know how many units you can look at yet that whole engineering piece up front really drives the train which needs to be known before all these other plans can integrate so I'd love to see us do a little more front-end work this is a great process but I think it'd be nice to have some data to help drive it hi, here's the red hi, I'm Michael Sherman and when I got to look at the maps the first thing that I saw was those maps show three segregated communities three ghettos basically and I think if we had this opportunity to build a community as many of you have talked about and really create a community within a community we should forget about only all the tri-plexes here only the single families over here only the apartment buildings over there that does not build community I was on the development review board and I saw a bunch of opportunities for housing that would turn down because the neighbors would say oh there goes the neighborhood just think back about your own life I have been a renter I have been a small homeowner I'm now a retired single person who has a big home because can't afford to move where you place money by selling a house which works more and I still have to go to places less let's really think about this as John and others of you have talked about building a community and the first places to mix it up the late Richard Hathaway used to make the comparison about the American myth as the melting pot really it's a salad bowl and I think we have to preserve the idea of a salad bowl that there's lots of places for lots of people and they can be next to each other oh there goes the neighborhood we've got one more here first of all I agree with all of you I'm with Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity I'm still living in Montpelier and really a lot of great comments but two other things that hadn't been mentioned one is that really want to be intentional that this is a mixed income community we at Habitat for Humanity would not encourage having any grouping of just low income families by themselves or just affordable housing really it's a community that lifts itself up when there's all those ranges so really encourage a mixed income the other piece is we're so close to Berlin it's right there I don't know if there's anybody here from Berlin or Barry but you know we are I shop in Berlin I go to Barry all the time for all sort of pizza and I know there's a lot of folks in Barry and Berlin that come here too and it'd be really interesting to see how what the other communities are thinking about and how this is an opportunity to connect us I think public transportation really only works if we're also working with Berlin the folks here are going to want to go to Berlin so how do we work on those things I would encourage the city to work with to talk to Berlin and Barry and see how they can support this community as well Central Vermont Medical Center is the second-largest employer in our area besides the state in the area in Berlin so they will probably be the largest beneficiary of this project so they should be involved in the process which they probably are thank you I'm Zach Watson I'm the... yeah Thanks Zach alright well to be respectful of everyone's time we would stop at noon again please share the word to get out to the other opportunities whether it's a meeting or a survey we really appreciate the input and we'll see you again soon thank you so much