 Welcome to the Monday, August 6th meeting of the month. Here is the meeting of the last staff member to introduce themselves. Liz Bridget. Mary Randall. Staff. Steven Abram. Eric Gilbertson. Benjamin Cheney. Unless anybody has anything else to offer. Initially, I hear the motion to approve the agenda. So moved. All in favor of the agenda, Richard. For anybody who's not been here before, we had an advisory committee to approve the 56th Color Street, Paris Hall. Are you here representing Paris Hall? Yes. Come up and have a seat. Ryan Neck. Yes. Last name. Neck, N-I-C-K. Describe your application and the signs. So we want to put up a couple of signs for attendance. So back here. So we want to delay the National Wildlife Federation. The monument sign up front and the directory sign near the main entrance. Tenant signs will have just the tenant names on them. The National Wildlife Federation has a logo on it. The monument sign will come with some landscaping around it to make it look nice. And the directory sign is pretty self-explanatory. Are those accurate colors for the signs? Yes. Do you thought of doing anything a little different for the background of the sign? The one, one... We can take that into consideration. We kind of just asked for a mock-up from the Kirchner sign people and they gave us something that looked like that. We thought it looked fine. Okay. It's just more of a maintenance thing. Yeah. We have a pretty good maintenance guy. We trust him. I like the H on this one better than the other H. Which one? The floral design? Yeah. I don't know which one you're proposing. I suppose we're proposing the floral design one. I was just putting all the signs on the same page and had to kind of recreate it. That was just sort of my recreation of it. Just to have them all on one page. Without the floral design. But that's the one that we would like. You're proposing the floral one. You have the one on that page. Yeah. Well, it's similar just without the floral behind it. Yeah. So the two of them can be related to that. We'll just talk a little bit more. So the signs? Yes. You thought about putting some kind of borders on the sign. I was pretty lucky to promote legal aid sign and it just tends to make the signs stand out. It works better if they have just a small border with the same part as the sign and it's entered. Right? Yeah. It makes the sign look more finished. There's a white board up there. Sure. Also, you guys are doing a great job. The building is beautiful. We're doing a nice job restoring it and painting it and taking great care of it. To be putting in final posts. It seems the little one can do it with. Out of character. Out of character with the building. To me. Okay. Take another look at that. I think it was more of a cost consideration than the maintenance consideration. Wood. I would assume you're going to maintain wood on the building and take care of that. That doesn't seem like it would be. Sure, if you're already in that world with a beautiful wood building. Yeah, I would agree. Of course, stone or something. Not final. Not final. Yeah. So tied to the street. That was just seeing their application. The posts read as wood signs on the windows. In that case, four by four wooden posts. I'll be with them. Thank you. Thank you. There was a missed email between the signed people at Cursor and our office. The original plan was wood. They came back to final. Yeah. I like the lighting. You need lighting on any of the signs. Yeah, there was existing lighting on the building that we installed in anticipation of the signs. But we need tenants first. So we've got tenants. The monument, I don't think will be lit. But there is existing lighting. You can see on the stand in the wildlife. There are a couple of food snacks down facing us. At least. Close. Close. Yeah. That's kind of also my job. So hopefully soon we'll be all these done. Criteria. There's a criteria sheet for each one for the signs. And I'll just read down through that. The same. Do you stand for preservation or reconstruction of the appropriate historic style of proposed projects in the historic district and across the historic structure? Central. Harmony. Exterior. Design with a local purpose of the district. And separate compatibility for those exterior materials with a local purpose of the district. Exemplary. Landscaping not proposed at the same level. Do you stand for preservation or reconstruction of the appropriate historic style of proposed projects at the same level for homespends? My trust. Discussion with the city, because every other municipality is one foot above flood plain, you're two. Which is going to put our bills, no, no, I'm not. No, I just. But so that puts the building six feet up, which if you're going. So, you know. So when we looked at the likelihood of a, of an access ramp, 60 feet of access ramp, I mean, that would just be offensive. We'll likely do something at grade, we'll do a half stop elevator at grade so that we can eliminate the, you know, we can't have a 60 foot ramp, I mean you just can't. So we know that the setback, well, until Jay tells me I don't know, but I suspect the setback will be something, you know, it won't be like the pavilion sitting right at the sidewalk, it won't be quite like Vermont Federal, it will be something that graduates the setback. We could actually be, by city zoning, we could be zero lot line on all sides. Yeah, but I don't see that in the front. I'm thinking that at the front, we might relate to like the porch at the pavilion. The State Street side of the pavilion isn't right up to the side of the pavilion. Correct. The steps come down. There's about 12 feet and that's from the porch forward and that's kind of what we might think of doing similar. And even, you know, and even going to, you know, setback one of the things that I've discussed with, you know, Jay, this is the existing building here. We could, I mean our property is here, we could build all the way to here. I don't think that would really be a great idea because, you know, looking at this very large parcel back here, someone's going to have to get to it someday, maybe not during my lifetime. So I told Jay, look, you know, why don't we pull the building back to allow two-way traffic here, if it's ever needed, and six feet of sidewalk. So from building to building, you'd have two travel lanes, six feet of sidewalk. If anyone ever needs it, we can easily, you know, trade. We'll trade you our land for some parking spaces somewhere. You know, but I mean that's what we've done for decades is kind of look beyond this project and think about how other areas might develop. I always call it the thrush building that I used to set up. I understand that. That's, it's kind of interesting. There will really be anything to put that back up on the street. No, listen, believe it or not, we looked at that. We actually spoke to our neighbor who, you know, and it's his property and I absolutely respect someone's right to, but he wasn't interested in looking at that. And we actually discussed it. It was just cost-prohibitive. I mean, and even looking at the, I'm sure Mr. Russell was proud of his building, but even looking at the condition of that building, and we even had a house mover, the one who actually lifted the old Jones Brothers shed in Berry, which was the biggest lift in North America when they did that one. We actually had Norm go down and take a look at it and he just said, you know, I just can't guarantee that I can move that building. He said, you know, I might lose it on the way over. It's just not, so we didn't look at it. So don't think you're, don't think it's a bad idea. I thought it was a neat idea until people started putting a cost to it, and then it wasn't that so great. I watched them move an eight-story brick building in Indianapolis. It's cool. The way they do it, it's art form. It's not all science. That you can leave the dishes in the cupboard. So, I had a quick question. What's the difference in the grade between the sidewalk and the back corner of the property along the side street? Well, I would say it's probably a foot total from foot to back. Maybe a little more. I walked around it. We've had a lot done now. It's very low for the street. It's only a foot from here to the back corner here. I don't think it's a lot. Okay. It pulls up stuff, but I'm probably about that. I was just curious. Yeah, it really isn't a lot because when you're in the, when you're in Mr. Russell's parking lot, you know, it's not a big curb. I mean, it's, yeah, I know it's not more, it's not more than a foot. So, I think Jay's estimate of, you know, approximately a foot would be about right. Starts to change really rapidly after that as it goes on up. And there's that ramp from the state park. Yeah. So, in general, I'm enthusiastic for the idea of a new building there, but I don't fully understand the rush to remove this one. It doesn't seem like you have a solid plan yet. Well, it's difficult for us to develop a solid plan until we know that we can remove the building. And then that really, you know, I mean, everything costs money. I mean, to date, we're between having to deal with the, you know, tank removal expenses that even though they weren't ours, we got stuck with them doing things the right way. You know, you get tens of thousands of dollars into it. So, I simply wanted to make sure that we were able to remove the building before I turned Jay and his creativity loose and, you know, told him to design me a multi-story building. And certainly, aspects of timing, there'll be a way to look at soils as we go through that and such, and do not have any of those things sort of become hold-ups or if they can. What is the timing? You know, I'd like to think that we could program the building in the next 60 days, get on the permit schedule. I think our permits could be issued, I think, in as little as 60 days. You know, that's four months, and summer's gone. You know? I mean, it's Labor Day. So, that literally puts you through the end of the year and then we're mobilizing the way the construction seasons have been. You know, we could have the building down this fall and then we could start construction in April. And that would be our intention. You know, we plan on starting construction as quickly as we can in the summer months. You know, we're already notifying contractors that and in speaking with, we did enter this property in the Brella program with ANR, and that is the schedule that we've submitted to them. Construction will start this spring. Is part of the reason for moving the building sooner than later, the property cleanup as well? There's going to be some remediation. You know, it's really just site management. There's, you know, even the demolition, we would likely do that. Everything's got to be done in stages. It's not a big site. You know, we respect our neighbors. You've got a restaurant out back that depends on that egress and ingress, you know, for their customers. So, it's really just project management. And that's why we wanted to remove the building first, so that if they're, you know, not aware, you know, interestingly when all of the readings except for one directly under the tank were within permissible levels. So, we don't think there's really going to be a lot of site remediation. But one of the things we don't know, we don't know until you remove the building. And we can't test in the basement adequately until we get the building out of the way. We don't expect to find anything. I mean, you know, remarkably, considering it was a wall cementing site, remarkably, I was pleasantly surprised, you know, remediation will probably be in the, you know, $60,000 range. It certainly was a garage as we all know. It sort of takes one of the aspects of the particular path that could be an unknown and a hiccup out of the equation to allow us to move forward in the near fashion of the spring. We can deal, I mean, we know, you know, I've got prices assuming that we had to excavate from grade to a depth of 12 feet, 50% of the site, which would be pretty extraordinary. We know that that, if we take the building down first, that wouldn't put us off critical path in terms of construction. If we start in the spring and we run into a problem, then it's going to be a real problem. Then it throws the, you know, the construction critical path off and, you know, this is Vermont. So now we're into winter construction, cause escalate. So that's, we're really just trying to manage the site. We used to get contractors to hold bids for, you know, 60, 90 days. Not anymore. Steal. Seriously, steal. You get it for 24 hours. And that's it. Do you have an example of a building in Barrier like this that you've removed and then built? No, we really tend to, you know, most of the buildings that we've done in Barrie, you know, the Reynolds House that Karen is doing now on South Main Street, you know, the Cornerstone Building 47 and 59, North Main 100 North Main, which is a building that doesn't get much attention. The Spa Building, which we actually saved from demolition. You know, most of the buildings, if they're candidates, we did take down a building on Elm Street. But we left out a parking lot that was to support 47 and 50, you know, the Cornerstone Building. So that supported that. Well, you know, we really tend, we tend to rescue all buildings. Unfortunately, this is, you know, it's the use. We've never we've never purchased a gas station before. And we've learned a lot. We've learned that, you know, when you use a use a concrete slab to accept petroleum products for 50 or 60 years that literally it leaches into the slab such that you know, it's going to off gas for decades. So it's not, it's fine to have a filling station in there or a repair place. It's just, you couldn't rehab this building. I mean, when they pulled the tank, they buckled probably don't have a picture of the building, but they actually buckled this corner of the building. When they pulled the tank, the tank was actually under the building and they weren't careful about pulling the tanks and weren't really careful about the building and they actually buckled this corner. So, you know, some buildings can be saved and if we can save old buildings, but you know, a building like that, you could reuse it as a repair facility, but to try to get it to accept humans, it just probably wouldn't work. And it's not the best use of that piece of property. Yeah, so, you know, the, I mean, one that I certainly took an active role in developing, but it's not my building contrary to what a lot of people very like to think was the city place building in very where the Department of Education is. We took a very active role in taking down a number of buildings and I actually owned the property and was the lead developer until, you know, obviously at that time being mayor and pushing the state to sign a long-term lease is a little bit of a conflict, so we did the right thing. You know, we had DEW construction who's done a lot of work here in Montpelier as well. They took the project over and that project worked well. You are very much a part of making Community National happen. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one. Yeah, Community National Bank in Barrie, that was we actually purchased, that was an auto parts store. That was a long time ago, no reason as good as yours. That was an auto parts store. It was a Napa store at the time and we leveled that building. The buildings were similar in size, but that was a one-story building. We leveled that building. We had the distinction of being one of the only people who successfully negotiated and purchased property from Jeffrey Jacobs and we purchased the property from Mr. Jacobs right next door at a price of $1.5 million an acre equivalent, but I knew who I wanted my neighbors to be at the time and then we built the Community National Bank building in Barrie. This property will not be on, no matter what we do, I've already made the decision. We won't be asking for a tax stabilization. I admire what you're trying to do in Montpelier with your TIF district. I know how they work. You need the grand list. With the Community National Bank building, that was a 10-year tax stabilization program worked really well with the city. That's over. It was about 15 years ago. So thanks for that, because that was what example of when we took one down and built one. Interesting things in Montpelier. This used to be a real service station that served people who weren't from the state. You could drop your car off there and get your muffler entire. Then the mobile across the street was that where the county courthouse had its parking lot with a service station. There was a bank, the branch bank for if that was a service station, and a dry cleaner and the M&M beverage bar were all service stations. So we should have a service station downtown, but I think it's great for state employees to be able to drop their car off. It is a real service. I think the only there's only two left to do that in Barrie is to have an option of more than half. So walkable from state employees to drop their cars off. And Perry still puts your gas in. Probably the last one left in the state today. We have the same thing in Barrie. We've got one. Summer Street Auto. Great guys, they do a great job, but what it boils down to is it's a different industry. Who would have thought when I was growing up that my car would go 50,000 miles before it needed an oil change? Because of synthetic oil, I'd be like, there's no way. So it's a different business now, and unfortunately as we've found out in a lot of our downtowns, probably a more appropriate use to get them away a little bit. It was when they were a really service station. The convenience store that pumps gas is maybe not so much stable. Not our business model. Oh, I'll pay a $50,000 penalty if we don't build it. I mean, I know we didn't purchase this. We purchased it to do something great. And that's absolutely what we're going to do. It would be in the filled area. It won't be maintained. There are a little... I mean, we would be happy to work with the city to come up with something. If the city would like us to barricade it so that people can't park there, we're happy. There was their bolder suggestion in the spacing that cars not drive through it. It seemed fine. I was amenable to just letting people park there today. I haven't charged anyone to park there. Few people have figured it out. If that was a possibility, then you have to manage it. So we could even... Like you said, it's a short period. The city said, Tom, can we sell parking permits there? I don't care. I'm not going to police it. We're not going to plow it. We're not going to police it. But if there's a higher and better use in the very short time between demolition and construction, or we can do something better than rocks that are more visible in the winter, I'm open to anything. To be able to park there. I think you could get some good money for parking places. I'm a creative guy. I'd have citizens of the month. I would look around and say, who really does great things in Montpelier? You get like a gold star parking lot. Parking space for free for 30 days. People at Houston have their business in there. They had a plowing business. I wonder if they'd be interested in leasing and managing the park. They plowed from the state. What I heard is that there was a plow truck there over this winter. We've been talking to them since January of this year. There was a gentleman that had a big bucket loader there with a big plow in the front of it. That would be amenable to most anything. If the boulders are preferred, that's what we'll do. The only thing I didn't want to do, I didn't think of just a chain link like Barricade Fence with no opening. I thought that would just look weird. And then putting a lot of money into a fence we looked at real fence. It looked a three real fence. It looked a little out of place and honestly it seemed like a waste of money when it's going to be snow covered hopefully in November. It gets shot, but jersey barriers would probably be the easiest thing to do. Because they're easy to move with a bucket probably sell to somebody when you get time. Like I said, we're open to most anything. I don't think it matters, but I would chat with the people that do the state and see if you can piece it to them and leave it open. I sort of hate to see it put money into boulders and whatever else for some short period of time. City would feel about that. It would require a conditional use of permit. But detail. Maybe if we're not the applicant like they are. We're happy to do whatever is reasonable and makes everyone happy. Seems like a wonderful piece of property for some sort of exposure or something for that short amount of time. Art piece, whether that's some sort of pop-up restaurant or business, I don't know. You might see the cornerstone guys over there once or twice in the fall. I think that would be great. Like I said, I realized that this requires approval and that's understandable so I'm not sure if it could be a condition assuming you'll approve it. It could be a condition of approval that we work something through with the city that they're amenable to. We're happy to install whatever kind of barricading they want. If the city would prefer to have us not install barricades for whatever reason, we're happy to do that. If we have to come back here for another permit because it means we're going to let people park there, we're happy to do that. We don't want to upset anybody. We don't want to upset our neighbors. We don't want to embarrass anyone. I'd be certainly willing to just whatever you want to do there in the way of barriers, rocks, Jersey barriers, some kind of offense or leaving it alone. We can give you those alternatives and we're happy to have American Barriers make a sort of administrative decision when you come in and she feels it needs to come back to the design review that I wouldn't think so. One thing is with the rocks, you do get more options for pop-ups. You're not blocking pedestrians from getting them there with the rocks. So if you sound somebody who would want to use that in the fall or the early spring for pop-ups where you just tend to take it down the same day you don't require any other kind of permit. It's on private property. You wouldn't worry about cars. I'm a berry guy. I would have drawn granted anyway. I wouldn't have been stowing like plane field boulders or something. Some of the city cars are so small you're going to have to put the rocks really close together. Motorcycles. Motorcycle parking. Bicycle parking. I don't know if that's part of the parking lot. You happy with that? A little tough in the winter, but some do. There you go. So like I said, we're happy doing whatever is going to, you know, the city thinks is appropriate. You can put the rink on it. My worry and you've done it. Like I said, it's a vacant lot. Whatever you do for a long time. The Nelson brothers had a hole in the ground where you're building is steep where the capital grounds is. There's a hole in the ground there. The same thing is true. Two years. 74 to 76. Burned in 74. It was a discussion that where a city saw it, it burned it. The holes turned into a swamp in there. It was thought about having a limit on the time like a year and then if nothing happened you'd have to come back. I think that was. And we're happy with all of that as well. A time limit to come back with improvement. Yeah, it was totally acceptable. Alder and I have talked about that possibility already. I'm sure you want to get an income producing as quickly as you can. Be nice. If you're thinking about other projects they might have ideas. They might manage it. Just on some of the ideas where a building demolition is proved and once a building is removed an applicant has the option of surrounding block with boulders or contoured concrete blocks or subject to any city requirements can be used for temporary parking or cars. For me, thank you. Yes, I'm fine with that. Don't take that long. There are people in town that think of that as an historic building because of its gas station. We hear the national register nomination or some discussion about that. Yes, I met a few of them when the tank removal was happening. I think they confused that with demolition so I met a few of those people standing there. They told me exactly how they felt. I would feel very definitely about the demolition if the metal siding was still on it. It's really not an appropriate candidate for restoration. It's just not. Not worth the investment. I don't think you could create a safe environment. There is a significant amount of off-gassing. You don't notice it. There's a reason why they keep the doors open in the summer and when you go in that building now it's been shut up for about 6 weeks. There's a significant amount of off-gassing from that slab. I don't think you could create a safe environment in there. Devin did send to the city that does a non-contributing structure. It used to be a marvelous discipline in their disposal. They didn't care. They didn't know. You just let the plug out. I used to always wash parts in gasoline. I had a grease pit one of the gas stations had a grease pit. They spilled a lot of oil in that. I think any of us over 50 have learned a lot in the last 20 years. So we're making amends for it. It's all good. There's a short-noster criteria given this one. Reservation of reconstruction. Projects in the historic district. Structure and completion is acceptable. It's a non-contributing building. Being siphoned you does not go onto DRB. I think it's a real opportunity to put a building down. So we have high expectations. Quality design is a big deal with buildings in general. Losing a building has some historic value not enough to really save it. Particularly in that location. It's a mass-front steel building, I promise. You're going to see something with an appropriate cornice. It's not old. You try to make it a companion building to the buildings next door. We're going to do that. It's going to look great. To harmony and exterior design, compatibility of proposed exterior materials is acceptable. Compatibility of proposed landscaping is acceptable. Revention of the USMIC compatible designs. Location of appearance of all utilities is no change. There's a light bulb. And then Tom has given us instructions on when water and sewer disconnects. How he wants those done. We'll coordinate that with him. Tom McCartle. No, I don't know. There's nothing to be installed in this place. And recognition of and respect for new quarters. That's significant. The application. If you put the condition that they have to come back any year. Within 12 months. It's not on here. We'll be putting it on. It eliminates my worries about having an MPL on there. I worry about that too. You have a big investment in an MPL. Thank you very much folks. Pleasure seeing you and meeting you. And we do do informal reviews. I would think we'd probably do that. You don't have to apply. Make an application. That's worked well. I think for a lot of projects. For the hotel. Project. Good suggestion. Thank you. Thanks. I'll move them. All in favor of the August 6th minutes. Any other business? I'm going to move adjournment. Thank you.