 Thank you all for coming. Stephanie Clark of Whitenberg. I'm a consultant hired by the city to help lead this master planning process. I'm joined today with Mike Vidi from Black River Design, the architect hired by our team. And Dave Saladino, who you can see up there on the screen is from BHB who has helped us with a number of the natural resources and traffic assessment. I'll get into that in a little bit. And we also have Kelly Murphy here on the city team, the assistant city manager. And I think that's all our city team. Oh, Arnie is in the back from recreation. So that's the team. Tonight we are going to run through a variety of different pieces of the presentation because I'm doing this hybrid. And this is a little unfamiliar. I'm just going to be going back and forth to advance my slide, but I don't have that many slides, so I won't be doing that a ton. But essentially tonight what we're going to talk about is I'm going to review the process that we've been through. I'm going to go over the due diligence that we have been working on for the last six. Yeah, six months or so, as well as review all the community conversations we had in the fall, and talk about the buildable areas what we're here to talk about tonight is really the site and the structure of the process that we're doing around getting getting direction not making decisions at this point around the buildable areas and the uses on the site. The buildable areas show opportunities and constraints. We have maps there are map copies small copies available here in person for everybody. They're also online for the online participants we put a link in the chat that is to the city website where all the buildable area and test sketches are. Also here in person we have a copy of a memo that we sent to city council that recapped a lot of what we're going to be talking about tonight, but also another memo that recaps all the public feedback from the last almost year now. We're going to go through the test sketches we're going to talk a little bit tiny bit about cost magnitude, and then we're going to open it up for questions after the presentation. But from the present from the questions we're going to break out into activity, and we're going to do an activity here in the room, we're going to do an activity online to different activities with the same end goal. And we're going to finish up with what we're calling a minute at the mic with whatever time we have remaining, we're going to have people be able to come up to the microphone and on zoom speak, whatever's on your mind, and we'll be collecting all that feedback, and you'll see where that process is going. So we'll go to the next. So this is phase one of the master planning process a master planning process takes a really long time because this is a really important site, it's also a large in progress. And so we this started last spring when the city acquired the property, then the city hired our consultant team in early fall to help with the due diligence and the master planning. We held community conversations over the fall we had concurrently a bunch of natural resources assessments archaeological assessments done on the property. And that brings us to the winter phase winter stage of this phase, and the winter stage is really an opportunities and constraints assessment period, which means it's giving us more, more opportunity for feedback because now we have known at qualities of the site for the community to respond to. And what we're looking for out of this stage is direction on the whole wide range of uses in the whole wide range of possibilities and start to narrow that a bit. Come the spring, we are going to have concept planning, where we're going to have more specific concepts for folks to respond to and really narrow down even further, and then present that to city council ultimately makes the decision, and city council will provide all of this data from the year of or nine months worth of community input community conversations, and including the survey that we're putting out right now which I'll talk about, but putting all that together to then make a wreck, make a recommendation they will decide on the actionable master plan. So keep in mind the actionable master plan is not your final land plan, but rather has action steps for recommendations for your for the city's next steps to take things further, you know you can't do all your due diligence, one time and be done it's iterative. See if I got all my notes here we go. So this does take time. And we're, we're in an interesting tension between the pressing nature of these needs. So there's a housing crisis we know there are recreation gaps and needs in this community, and there's funding available now that may not be available in a year two years four years. So we have that that we have to balance with the integrity of the process. We heard loud and clear from our fall communications and conversations that a transparent and iterative and inclusive process were really important. So during this phase, this stage of the phase, during this stage, we are hosting a series of public meetings, we are collecting data from a survey we've, we've been publishing publicizing this survey that we prepared far as far and through a variety of different sources for folks just take the survey I include everybody here encourage everybody here to take the survey and tell your friends, I'm telling everybody here at this meeting to do all of these things or to encourage anyone you know to do these things, there's a five minute video online on YouTube that will help educate someone who wasn't maybe able to attend the meetings. So lots of different ways we've been firing lots of ways to get the word out. We encourage your, your participation and appreciate if you can help us spread the word. So in the fall, we held a variety of meetings we had small stakeholder meetings we did interviews, we did a survey of the business community a survey of high school students, and we gained a lot of information a lot of intel that has helped us get to at least this part of. We had a very high level recap, you know, word cloud of what what we heard, but the trends were very clear, housing, recreation and environmental sensitivity were top of the list for priorities. So transportation and access were the top planning concerns that we heard, and procedural process concerns, again, to be inclusive to be transparent, and to be as, as iterative and engaged as we could. So that's what led us to this point today. I'm going to turn to Dave Saladino who's online to talk through the due diligence and the site findings. There is a map on the screen I'm aware it's a little I don't know if we want to kill the front lights for folks in the room. Again, there are copies over here if you need a hard copy but he'll walk us through the base map the natural resources existing conditions. And these are all online so you have an opportunity to go on afterwards and we also have them posted in the back so when we do our exercise and get up, you'll be able to go out and see. So with that, Dave. Okay, great. Thank you and welcome everyone thank you all for taking the time on this chilly evening here. Stephanie if you. All right, can you see my you can see my mouse now. Okay, good. So, so what we're looking at here, albeit small is kind of existing conditions map showing natural resources on the 130 133 acre site. This yellow border around the outside and this will show up this the same view will show up in the next few slides so just to orient you the, the, the yellow boundary here is the, the parcel outline so 133.7 acres here. Down here this little stem down towards the bottom is the access drive out to that's that's country club road accessing route to so this is the primary access into the parcel. The existing building is here, you can see just under the yellow. I'm just to orient you and then the country club itself of the golf course kind of extends out out in this area. So, as many of you are familiar with this, this property it is, it's kind of set in a bit of a bowl. So we've got fairly steep, steep slopes both on the north and the south side. And as the golf course took advantage of this kind of terrace here this this flat area so we've got some some nice kind of flat land where the country club was. Now what we're looking at on the map itself we've got kind of running north south we've got several stream channels and the buffers those are buffered those are kind of stream channels that there's some protections within those buffers. You can see those all running down towards the new ski river, what's shown in green here are the delineated wetlands so we do have some wet areas, particularly kind of primarily along those river river corridors. And then these yellow you can see the yellow swabs off to the left kind of one here in the middle and then this bright yellow. Those are all identified as prime ag lands, two different designations but their prime ag the soils here have been classified based on the the NRCS mapping. So we do see the a lot of the area is covered in this kind of prime ag soil land. And I guess just one final note just kind of the overall kind of terrain here both the West and the East sides are are very challenging for any any building so this kind of Western side is very raviney we've got some pretty steep slopes and drops. And similarly on the right hand side is a very steep drop off with these channels. So as we get into the next slide here we'll start to look at the buildable areas and you'll see we're not really looking too much at these kind of external that the Eastern Eastern Western borders but primarily focused on the kind of the, the more level terrain. Thanks, Dave, I'm going to hop in while we're still on site findings and due diligence. There were three other assessments done beyond the natural resources during this phase during this stage and traffic was one of them, although Dave I'm sure you'll talk about that actually. And the archaeological resources assessment was conducted there were a few sensitive sites identified, but mostly within the wetland areas are the wooded areas that won't be affected by development, most likely they're not located within our buildable areas, but if they if there was development to be proposed and that would impact those areas we would be doing further analysis so that we have pinned, if we need to come back to it but it seems unlikely, given where they are located that they could remain undisrupted. It's, I'm just project there's no this isn't volume for here this is volume for the computer so I can speak louder though I can try. There was also an existing buildings assessment done by Black River designed to assess the condition of the Elks Club building that's there on site, and it was deemed in good condition. There are some limiting factors about the building itself inherent factors that make it less desirable to expand for any use, specifically recreational uses, for example, like high ceilings wouldn't be possible in certain areas, and maybe the low window to floor would prohibit certain uses to break up the space, but it's in good condition, and so that may be a factor in how we want to see the building repurposed and used for any number of these different scenarios. So Dave if you want to touch on traffic and then we can go on to buildable areas. So we did look at kind of an as an initial pass, kind of the traffic conditions and so right now the site is not really generating much traffic and so at present time the traffic issues are not really present. One of the things we did look at so for this main access point, kind of a kind of a threshold question is at what point, what level of development would trigger the need for a traffic signal at the entrance. And that's, you know that is kind of a threshold thing at which you know there's there's costs associated with the signal and you know obviously that would have some disruption to the flow on route to. So we wanted to kind of take a look at what level of development would get as close to the need for a traffic signal, and kind of based on that preliminary analysis we're looking at about 300 housing units. We were focused on residential so anything in the 300 plus range of housing units probably puts us into a place where we're looking at a traffic signal, anything below that or any mix of things that generates less than you know what 300 houses would generate. We're probably fine as is right now there's for those of you are familiar route to has a middle left turn lane out here right in front of country club road. So there's one lane in each direction and you've got that center kind of also known as a suicide lane. And so that could be repurposed as a left turn lane into into country club road without significant expense it's really a striping exercise. So really anything up to that point we've got the capacity at the intersection to accommodate those trips as an existing just to stop control on country club road. So we've looked at and I think this is has been noted previously but the accessibility for transit service, the closest stop is over half a mile away and right now there's not very good pedestrian accessibility to that to that transit stop so that's certainly something that we want to be including into the, the assessment so we've got full accessibility to any of the uses that are here at the site. Okay, so then. So going from the kind of existing conditions to this kind of blob map as as we refer to this shows some kind of designated buildable areas and apologize for the small scale here. But you can see here so we've got kind of starting from the entrance coming up from country club road we've got this this kind of first blob here which is the existing developed area where we've got the building and some parking. So that's kind of that first area. I mean, I'll note here just in later on in this evening we're going to be will be asking you some questions about the types of uses that you'd like to see in each of these buildable areas. I'll come back to this map at that point but just to know there will be an ask of you at at at a future point to start thinking about, you know within each of these different colored blobs what types of uses would be your your preference within each of those, each of those blobs. So anyway so so we've got the existing building here this is the purple. And then we come in this red is probably the most easily developable, developable piece of property. So your mouse, your mouse isn't moving so you might click. Oh, there you go. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, thank you. So, so this red area here is kind of the, the most, I guess, readily developed area it is it's flat it's adjacent to the existing developed area easily access access from route to and is relatively flat. And then we move on to some of these other areas that have slightly more moderate or steeper slopes. But then as noted here as you can see some of these have some like 57 people on here. So, obviously, so we've got, we've got different characteristics within each of these, many of these to the south and the west. And, but, but obviously getting back to some of these buildable areas further back are a little bit more a little bit more challenging. It involves more infrastructure to get back from this access point on route to back and so we'll we'll get into that. You'll see in the next couple of slides. So we've essentially, you know, so a through F here in terms of buildable areas. And so just keep that in mind as we're going forward and we'll be looking for your thoughts on kind of the types of uses. The next three slides will show some test layout sketches here as shown here. And kind of going back to what Stephanie had mentioned early on what what what the sketches show are really kind of we're trying to bookend the possible range of options these are not by any means intended to be the answer. What we're going to do is kind of at one end of the spectrum look at kind of the maximum housing perspective you know how much what would this look like if we fit reasonably as many homes as I really don't know who's speaking right now. Can you can you can you hear me. Not sure if you can. Can you can you hear me Stephanie. Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you we just we're just turning up the volume a little bit here in the room. We're asking all the other participants to mute during this section while we listen to your presentation and then we'll open it up. Okay. Oh, okay, that might help Dave requested a slowdown speaking just a little bit just because of the audio here in the room. Thank you yes I've been known to talk fast so thank you. So yeah so these next three slides so they are bookending so we've got a maximum housing we've got a maximum recreation and then in between kind of a, you know an intermediate option. And again these are really just test sketches to kind of see how things lay out on the site. So we'll go through those and then we'll get into kind of you know how do those resonate with you how did the you know the layout of the different uses on the site. So how do those, you know aligned with your vision. This would have ice cream sandwiches do you want some. So, man, I want to mention. I want to mention that these are not exhaustive sketches. So, when we had our conversations in the fall, we heard a lot of suggestions a lot of options and possibilities for the uses those are not all represented here by any means. This is going this is testing scale and massing of the two most land intensive uses, recreation and housing. So things like solar arrays and maintaining wildlife corridors, very important will absolutely be incorporated if, if the community, there's, you know pieces of how to get engaged and to promote those things. But when that gets in accommodated would be in the concept phase, not in this set stage so just didn't want anyone to say we didn't pay attention to all that we just focused on these two. This is really again just trying to do a scaling and a direction for this stage. Did you advance the slide stuff. I'm still seeing Tesla out sketch. Oh there we go. So this is the first one you can see down at the bottom this one is the maximum housing test. And so again with the orientation is the same so we're down here in this corner this is route to and this is the access point off of country club road. You can see the existing Elks Club building here in white. And so just kind of driving through this this test sketch here as you come in from the south. The building here rings around a community green. Sorry Dave you have to click your button again I button so it got it. Thank you. Yep. Thanks Steph. Okay so as we're coming in, we've got the existing Elks Club building here to orient you. Then we've got a new community green with these five story multifamily units. And again this is we chose five story to kind of step back you'll see kind of stepping back density. This is all nothing here set in stone we're just again testing this but the idea here was to have kind of the highest density again in this maximum housing scenario around a community green and this existing building which could be repurposed for you know various uses. And then and then heading back you can see you kind of a loop road an initial loop road here so these the number two is here this kind of salmon colored are the three story multifamily units. These orange ones back here are triplexes or townhomes. You can see an array of those and so we've got 138 units shown here. 232 units here in the dark red, and then 108 units here in the in the salmon. And then all the way back if you follow the roadway all the way back we then have, we're showing a 35 single family housing units, all the way back. With you know individual lots shown as shown here. One thing I also want to mention on each of these test sketches we do show the you 32 trail here kind of running along the northern property boundary and, you know want to make sure that that is integrated into all of these kind of planning sketches as we move forward. So that's, you know that's a potential layout if we wanted to maximize housing in the kind of the level terrorist area of the property. So this is the other end of the spectrum of if the spectrum goes from you know no housing to no recreation to full recreation so this is the other end of the spectrum maximum recreational uses. So again coming in from the south here, we've got some, you can see in the gray is the parking we've got the existing Elk Club building. So here we introduced two new buildings here where one is a community center and one is a rec center recreational building. It can be, you know, purpose with lots of various uses pool indoor tennis and so forth. The programming is obviously a separate discussion but those those buildings seem to fall logically kind of here along around the entrance. So those are kind of connected to these suite of athletic fields. And so different size and different uses here are shown. You can see kind of pull offs with parking areas here, but the extent of the kind of program space is much smaller than in the maximum housings. So the roadway access only goes about a third of the way back. The remainder of the site is left open for, you know, kind of less program sites whether it's trails or this could present some possibilities for some, you know, energy, you know, renewable solar solar facilities have an ackee heritage features. So this this does kind of preserve a little bit more of the space but really concentrates the recreational uses closer to the existing Elk Club building. And then this is was an attempt to kind of balance between the two so between the two bookends. So in this case we're coming up from up from route to here we've got the existing Elk Club building. This does retain both the community center and a recreational building. A few rec site recreational fields as shown here. This does bring back the community green concept that's ringed by some multifamily dwellings here this is showing 70 units. So if it's if these are three story, if they were to be built to be five story be about 140 units in this location. Nothing comes into this kind of buildable area here we just have the single access drive back just to 90 units of townhomes and triplex units here, and then 13 single family housing units here at the end of the of the access road. Thanks Dave. We'll have time for questions for him in our next section after the presentation but Mike BD is going to speak to these next few slides. Hi Mike. So the first slide the slide we're looking at now is just a gen. Yeah sorry. So the slide we're looking at now is generically showing the view quarters from this site, the northern end of the site, the uphill side. You get great views to the south a lot of great exposure. That's represented in the blue highlight there. So, from almost half half the distance of the back hill, you get great views to the south. As you start to tuck out to the west area there, you start to be able to look further back to the east, and you still get to see rolling hills. Lots of great daylight. The one of the important things to notice is the yellow corridor there are the views to camels hump, which really don't come into view until you're near the top of the hill. Half two thirds of the way up the hill and halfway along the back stretch is where you really get a chance to see the view of the camels on State Park. The next two slides you'll see here represent site sections through the entire through the entire site. What we tried to do is show scale of different size buildings and bring the human scale into it. Please note that these forms are just representative, trying to show different size buildings three story five story multi family housing scale. The biggest takeaway from this slide is that the proposed you 32 trail is on the northernmost end of the site. And what we tried to show was that being that high up on the hill. We have opportunities to push the housing down push the buildings and structures down into the ground. So you still get views to the south and to the west. When you're up along that elevation. These again are available online and welcome to have some questions for for Mike if you have any after this but they are available online as you kind of absorb this. And if you have further questions and want to put information into the survey that'd be much appreciated if you have time to sit with it afterwards. The survey will be still open for a few more weeks so we understand this is a lot of information all at once. Our last slide before we get into questions is a very, very high level cost cost scenario costing magnitude exercise, which essentially at this stage we cannot put any numbers to any of these scenarios because they are very high level nebulous in terms of the scale of the recreation the scale of exactly what kind of housing units those would be. But as we think about the city's investment so as a taxpayer. You may be thinking what is the impact on the city what's the impact that the city would have to be contemplating when thinking about the three scenarios. So we tried to do a little bit order of magnitude here. The next stage of this process with the concept planning will dial these in a little bit more to make it more granular and a little bit easier to understand but essentially with the three scenarios there's going to be infrastructure costs for the city. And those include roads, if there's any buildings like in the recreation scenario be and see if there are fields, if there's parking, especially public parking. This does not actually address utilities that that question came up at our last public meeting and I was unclear if that was included or not it is not those this does not include utilities. Again, we're thinking high level right now but we are thinking about the overall cost Well, if you look at test scenario a you've got the most roads. So that's going to have a some cost but no building and building is where a lot of your costs are going to be no city building. So that would have the lowest infrastructure costs for the city test scenario be having a big community center that's we contemplated about 60,000 square feet and and fields and then public parking associated that would have about kind of the middle of the three cost. The third scenario would have the roads and the infrastructure plus the building so it can be considered the highest infrastructure costs for the city. So what revenue we can control or predict as the city. So limiting that just a taxable revenue, what kind of taxable revenue would we see coming back on the site, and with test scenario a if you're doing maximum housing. It's not a scenario in my mind as a consultant that would recommend the city be the developer of the housing themselves. So it would be subdivided off or sub land leased off to a private entity, and that private entity would then become taxable. In this in test scenario a is going to be your highest return for taxable revenue test scenario be is max recreation assuming none is privately owned now it's completely still taxable non taxable for the city ownership. It's going to be your, your lowest, your none scenario in terms of taxable revenue, and in scenario see if you're subdividing some, you're going to get some return. So what that does is it me it goes, it switches things a little, and it means that the lowest city cost at this high level for these three scenarios, the lowest cost would be test scenario a maximum housing. The highest would be test scenario be maximum recreation. What this does not include it is not exhaustive this is just to give kind of a little bit of education about how to think about this is it does not include possible grants we could get. If we were to pursue more recreation on this site it does not include any operating revenue that like recreation for example or a community center could bring in, which could also offset the overall cost to the city. So these are not factored in because it's very unknown at this level, given the scale of the recreation and the spectrum of what could happen within those areas. So we're going to park that there. We can answer some questions if those come up. But that again is a little bit of education. So, we're going to actually go to questions. So we're going to open it up for questions. And then we're going to break out and do this exercise and we're going to come back together, and that'll be the opportunity to share reflections, takeaways, things you really want the city planning team to know, between now and our concept planning. So we'd really ask if you can limit what you ask now to questions that will help clarify what we've just presented for the purposes of getting into the exercise, and then afterwards we'll get into more remarks, but we can start and if anyone from the audience wants to speak you do have to come to the mic so everybody on zoom can hear. And if you're in the audience online we ask that you raise your hand. So, sorry. Oh, we can do a wireless mic too. Oh, well maybe we could just do that. So people don't feel like they have to come up here because this is awkward. Do you want to take questions. Okay, let's start with a couple of in person questions and then we'll go to some online questions we'll try to go back and forth so we're fair to everybody. I saw Dan's hand up first I'm going to go Dan, and then john, and then get rid of the slide. Yes, absolutely good idea. Check. Okay, so check, check, check. Thank you disappeared he might have it. Dan why don't you just come up and speak at the mic. Yes, oh thank God you said something says so please identify who you are. And if you live in, or where you live, and that would be helpful. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Elm Street mob failure. Wondering a couple of things on their cost projections on infrastructure. Is that infrastructure install installed on the is that infrastructure installed on the parcel, or is that all in for that build out. Meaning, are there upgrades to the city infrastructure beyond the parcel that need to occur for these buildouts to happen? And as I have been considered. Are there upgrades to city infrastructure beyond the parcel that need to be considered for the buildout? Okay, I kind of heard two parts to that. Stand over there. I've worked with Dan for a really long time, so I can boss him around like I won't do that to everyone who comes up here. So, so he asked a question about infrastructure. There's two pieces that I want to clarify. One is the, when we talk about roads, for example, we're not talking about in the maximum housing or the balanced housing. We're not talking about internal roads to the individual parcels. We would assume those parcels could get subdivided and then the developer would do their own infrastructure. We'd really be bringing utilities and the roads to their property the way that we do in the city everywhere. So that doesn't include individual, you know, cutoffs to individual properties or houses. But then he also asked the question about does that include upgrades to other infrastructure and no, basically that's that's exclusive to just this parcel for now. But it brings up the point that if we're talking about this costing at the next stage, there's going to be implications if there's sewer upgrades or water needs to be run down. You know, either Barry Barry Street somehow or to route to those types of improvements, just like the traffic improvements would need to be considered if we trip over a certain threshold of units. There would be need to be infrastructure and traffic transportation upgrades at that intersection. You had another question. My second question is related to the housing needs in the community and whether or not there has been a housing study performed to indicate what types of housing are necessary or needed. The question was about, is there a housing study that has been done in the community. The last housing assessment for my player was done in 2011. So, but we know that we, we do need housing of all sorts in this community rental ownership starter homes. It is a need senior housing we have an aging community right now. And there is a lot of elderly people who would like to sell their house, because they no longer need a house with three four or five bedrooms. There's not enough inventory at the one to two bedroom category. So that's that's a real desperate need. Also, the one in two bedroom studios are also preferred by young adults and young families just starting out. So there is a, we know that we need a lot of everything. And we will get some better census data in May, when the 2020 decennial numbers come out. So we'll have some really good information to go off from instead of the ACS estimates, which, if anybody's worked with that knows that it can be really not accurate. So, you know, I think that's something that we're continuing to monitor. Also, we know just from talking with people around central Vermont Montpelier is a desired community to live in. You could virtually build anything and people will come because we are the capital we are centrally located on the interstate. And so, because of our school systems also it's a highly desired community to move to. So, we're working on getting some more concrete numbers, but until until we get some of the more census data, we won't be able to dive a little deeper. Oh yeah. Also, if Vermont Housing Finance Agency just came out with a report last week saying that we need 30 to 40,000 units of housing in the state of Vermont to meet our demand by 2030. So if you just look at a per capita basis, what that means is Montpelier needs to create 400 units of housing by 2030 to meet our share of the demand in that state, state of Vermont. Because we are a desired community, you could even push it further. We could create 600 units and there wouldn't be, there wouldn't be a problem with finding people to move into them. Standing there, and then it was Alec, and then we're going to go to the online community for a minute and come back. Thank you. John Snell, I live on First Avenue. I like the fact that there's an assessment of the view scapes. When I was up there looking at the beautiful views, it's also noisy up there from the traffic and I wonder if there's any evaluation of that. No, not yet. It's a really good point, though, and absolutely something. You know, one of the things we're aware of is that this is an iterative process, so we're learning so much more once we're out on the site, once we're out on the site in the wintertime once we're out on the site and we're not city team is not on the site as much as a lot of the residents are we had one resident on Saturday saying he walks the site like every day so those kinds of that kind of inputs really invaluable and maybe one of the recommendations that comes out of this phase to do more follow up for example to do more follow up study on transportation impacts now that we would have a better sense of scale and so forth so that might be something that we'd want to put in that bucket. So, you can come on up. Yeah, yeah, come on up and then we'll go to Alec and then we'll go online. Okay, my name is Darian McElwain, and I went to the thing on Saturday, which was really great. And I guess that what my question is is I've been thinking about the intersection as you come out. And I remember, you know, I've lived in this area for 30 years and I remember where the roundabout is. There used to be a light there does everybody remember that. And that was a quagmire I mean sometimes I would be backed up for 1015 minutes. You know, the traffic there is building up quite a bit like right across from Casellas, you know, and sometimes you there's long lines, especially from the Barry Montpelier road, waiting on that roundabout. So I feel like, you know, the expenses, you know, I don't see that in the when you're talking about the expenses of high, you know, and you can tax it with all these, these things I don't think that the expense of putting in yet is that there was another light which didn't work, you know, in front of the roundabout, which is already kind of overused has really been taken into account. And then I just want to emphasize what this this man said that yes, we know that we need housing, but it's not really quantified. And then my third thing I want to say and I can't remember who said this, maybe it was you you were talking about that Montpelier is a very, very desirable place to live. The Montpelier will place because we have Hubbard Park, which everybody goes into and they really love it. And the river corridors now being developed and the bike path is being developed. So I just, you know, I kind of want to continue that into the future. I would say Hubbard Park's almost overused. And I really want to, you know, put in a plug for recreation. You know, we used to have first person fitness years ago like right downtown and now that's that's no longer there we have to drive up to Berlin. So it would be nice to have another reservoir recreation thing here. Thank you. Thanks that was a good segue. Shout out to Hubbard Park. I'm like elsewhere at the parks director for the city. I have just a very small question which is on the natural resources inventory there's some streams that are sent underground at the top of the property and then daylight again on below on the natural resources inventory there so they're just shown as sort of like ending as streams and then reappearing is that you sorry. I'm wondering if the streams that are sent into culverts would sort of reappear as streams. If we were to develop them for housing and roads and things are how those are represented. Dave, this one's for you. All right, all right. Thanks. Yeah, we, you know, I, depending on the scenario that's chosen so like the maximum housing scenarios we utilize the kind of cart path that's out there now for the country club. Because there are as you as you know there's some existing culverts where the streams go kind of subsurface. And so we utilize those existing culverts or stream crossings for those access roads on the residential parcels. That's primarily to kind of streamline the permitting and cost estimating as opposed to daylighting those streams all the way through that you know there's certainly other alternatives or options that could be looked at from the housing perspective. So now for the kind of the recreational options if they're if we're not looking at putting any roads or infrastructure out that far, for sure, I think the best approach would be to daylight to pull those culverts out and make those full, you know, restore those stream channels through their back to their kind of natural state. We're going to turn to the online community I think I see Steve iPad to Steve. Steve sees and that would be me. That's you. All right, you're up and then Paul is after you. Thank you. Steve sees here I'm I live on North Street. I was at the meeting on Saturday and I have one question stemming from that meeting and then a related question. I was at that meeting that 70 housing units would trigger significant intersection changes that route to we just heard that 300 was the number so I'm curious about the discrepancy there. My second question let me just shoot it out there so you can answer them both. What have you heard from the railroad about this project and what are their concerns. Thanks, Dave. So the first on the first one, the 70 units is a threshold be at which traffic impact study would need to be done. So V trans. Well, there's certain thresholds and so about 70 units is the threshold at which when this goes if this moves forward has to go to 50 a full kind of traffic impact study would need to be done that looks at how many trips are generated what the impacts are on the adjoining network, anything less than those 70 70 or so units, a formal traffic study would likely not need to be done. That was that threshold and then when you get up to the kind of 300 units is when you start to look at a need for a signal. Is it true to say that at 70. There may be some mitigation that does need to happen. With 70 units or more, depending on what the traffic study yields but that there may need to be not necessarily a signal it sounds like but but other kinds of maybe mitigation. It's possible but probably not the first thing you would likely need to do is put a left turn lane in on route to and since we already have those three lanes on route to you already have that left turn lane essentially there so I don't think anything beyond meeting a left turn lane would be needed until you get significantly more units. Okay, Steve, that's a good that was an astute observation because I might have misunderstood that and Dave wasn't available on Saturday to be my backup as the transportation expert on this so I know that there will be varying though need for different types of mitigation and the high, you know the high level is maybe signalization but there's other types of, you know, different types of not mitigation is maybe not the right word but other kinds of accommodations that we know we need to consider in terms of access including things like transit which is part of the bigger picture. Steve, your other question was about the railroad. Yeah, what do you hear from them. We haven't quite engaged with them yet because we don't know what's being planned here. So, when I say quite what I mean is that we flagged it as a thing we know we need to do in the next stage, but when we're talking about these very large extremes. What we're very aware of process wise is we cannot predict how this public process will go like we can't presume to know that everyone's going to vote one way or another or give us direction on a B or C, because if if there was a big response for something like Max recreation, that's going to yield a very different transportation impact that would affect the railroad conversation so I will say that it's on our radar as one of the steps we need to take approach that that answer. Thanks. All is it next. Yeah, Paul, you're up next and then Ben. And then Peter and then we'll come back to the audience here in person. Okay, thanks a lot Paul Carnahan from Sabin Street. Quick comments since we seem to be talking about transportation a lot. I'm surprised that the planners are talking about signalization is the highest level of traffic mitigation there. There's been a big effort to put in roundabouts in this city. I think it would be dreadful to put a signal there I would urge you to look into roundabouts. And not a signal as the highest level of mitigation for traffic which I think is going to be inevitable. I don't think a left hand turn lane is going to help the people trying to get out of this development in any way shape or form. You guys really have to look at putting in another roundabout there if you're talking about the type of housing that you seem to be talking about. The question is, there were several mentioned several references to the you 32 trail. Without explanation of what that is I know you 32 is nearby but it's not adjacent. It seems to me it might be a little difficult to get to that property from you 32. I'm not sure why there's a high priority on connecting to you 32 we've got the cross Vermont trail running along the bottom of that property. And there are right now under construction trails going up to you 32, I would think a higher priority would be providing cross country ski trails on that property for the residents of Montpelier. I can answer the you 32 piece again Alec Ellsworth Parks director. So the you 32 trail is a project that started before actually the city bought the property and the vision there was to create a trail that went from you 32, all the way to the college college fine arts do it in two phases one to do it. Across the golf course and then come down on the west side of the golf course and join the bike path. And then the second phase would be if and when anything happens with Sabin's pasture to go through there and up to the college. And the idea there is to create it what it would create is a six mile loop. That would be universally accessible. It would go include the current rec path. It would include part of the cross Vermont trail. It would include the cross Vermont trail connection up to you 32 which is currently being built. And then it would come back across the hillside. So with link downtown Montpelier with regional high school, it would also go through a number of iconic Vermont landscapes including the riverside, cedar forests. I met us with beautiful views northern rich northern hardwood sugarbush through this golf course with the views of camels hump and then back to town so sort of being envisioned as our version of the stove bike path, a place I would really draw people to Montpelier because it's an adventure that starts and ends downtown, which is one of our key strategic goals for trail building so obviously with the city now owning the property. There are changes you know they're there. We had a certain thing planned out with the previous owner that is there's now a lot more options with the city owning it. And also, the process is longer so the U 32 trail is sort of sketched in there is something along the northern border Paul to address your question and that's sort of a brief, a brief explanation of what it is. Okay, thanks. And just to clarify I thank you Paul for clarifying I said signal but I meant to say some kind of control. So V trans requires for every every time you, you need to do a signal to also look at around about so so both of them have to be evaluated in in a certain direction. And I think you're right because of the proximity of the other roundabout this would probably around about would work better just from an overall traffic flow perspective. So I missed it when I when I said signal I really meant signal or roundabout in this location. So thank you for that appointment. Yeah, and I think a point about access that we, Dave might have mentioned briefly but I want to really reiterate is that we understand that the importance of access and connectivity between sites. So on a couple of the test sketches you'll see connections to abutting properties now, we don't have agreements with those property owners we haven't had full conversations we have been speaking with the owners of the savings pasture, but those are by no means final locations it's just showing that you would want these connections for best practices in design to connect a budding sites together to create integrated neighborhoods and connectivity to the other parts of town. So, and that would also then have impact to the intersection, you know have would help alleviate some of the issues with that as well. So we have. Oh, yes. Yep. Right, not for the sorry yeah that's a separate this is about the roads with when what Alec was talking about you 32 trail those agreements are in place. But the road connections we're only showing showing them as conceptual right now just to show the idea that that would need to be connected. So we have been Peter and Linda online that have had their hands raised for a while we're going to get to them and then we're going to come back for questions in the audience. Again, we're limiting this to questions we're going to take questions for about another 10 or so minutes, and then we want to break out into our exercise and then come back. And that's the open time for more comments and feedback so I'm going to go ahead and bring in your up. Hi everybody. This is Ben block I live up on George Street and also the co chair of Montpelier Conservation Commission. So I had two, two questions kind of somewhat related one being, what is the ultimate limitation to the maximum housing. So, I'm not too sure who mentioned the actual units that per capita we should try to build a Montpelier be at 300 or 600. There's a limitation of building only five story buildings on the site as opposed to three story or single family homes, I understand that that's for different uses some some people would prefer one or the other, but if we're considering just housing size is the limitation traffic or just view scape or something like that because we have tons of views in the state. The secondary component is considering just Stephanie were you just talking about just now about trying to build into the other adjacent parcels, and what that has on just increased infrastructure that would be increased infrastructure costs the city. Some curious how you will handle that, especially with the habitat that's already there I see there's a 50 foot buffer on those on the streams but the practical restoration goal for streams is actually 100 foot buffer. So I'm curious if that's been considered as well. Okay, good questions. Yeah, I will definitely. I'm trying to think of them hold on. So the first question is, I have a clarification been when you because when you say limitation. What do you mean by limitation. I guess I'm not sure. The maximum housing map shows a variety of different housing types, some being three story versus five story versus single family lots. I understand the differentiation between like apartments and houses but why would you not just build five story houses, or five story apartment buildings. I see, if you want to map if you're purely considering maximizing housing that's true. That's true maximum might be a misleading term so his question was. If you're really showing maximum housing, why wouldn't you show all of it as five story multi family. And that's a fair question because that really isn't then maximum, but it is maximum within moderation and and reflecting back some of what we heard during the feedback in the fall, which was that we really want lots of different product type and different price points, and that this not be a strictly low income space or a strictly single family suburb. So showing a variety. So within that that was the directive we gave to VHB to do the test sketches so I should have probably clarified that too, but so it couldn't it could have been, you know, yeah you probably get like 1000 units I don't know but with five story buildings but within moderation, especially considering the topography of the site, taking into some taking in some of the considerations of the natural resources and the buildable conditions. So that's the answer the first question the answer the second question is taking into account adjacent infrastructure absolutely that's going to have to be a factor. If we go to if we are connecting properties then we have to look at the capacity of those streets that we're connecting to. So that would be a consideration in the next phase with the costing exercise to try to get some order of magnitude to understand those impacts, same with if we had to upgrade, you know, a water line or a pump station or anything like that. So offsite infrastructure costs have not been factored into that chart I said earlier. Thanks for the question Peter let's go to you next and then to Linda. I'm going to go to Mountain View Street. I've got to clarifying questions and they're slightly rhetorical. Every time I've heard anything either this year or last summer, people when people talk about transportation, they seem you seem to be assuming a fixed route bus service. I hope you will be talking to Green Mountain Transit about my ride, which is an Uber like service which would, which would change the whole question of accessibility. So that's a question and a statement. And the other is that I was at the session. This week, and that Michael Sherman made a very interesting point. And I think you probably should clarify it before that point has to be made again. The question is, why are you clustering all the five story buildings or the lower income housing in one place, the moderate income housing in another place, and the single family homes in another place. Is there, is that necessitated by the terrain, or what, because it would seem that the sense that we've all had when we've talked about this is a real mixed income not not to create ghettos so I'm curious about the reason for drawing it in that way and hope you'll say that you don't mean that in any sense to have to happen. Thank you. I can clarify one piece of that which is one design choice that was made just in this concept of test sketch phase is the consideration of how much traffic you're sending all the way through the site. Certainly having the highest density having the most cars having the most people trying to keep that closer to the existing entrance to where the existing parking and pay pavement is not sending them all the way through to the back of the site. That's tends to be how the density was laid out for maximum maximum housing for example. Some of the land use practices and and layouts were followed here by showing product type that is similar when builders do do developments they tend to do similar building styles together. Both from a static perspective from an economies of scale perspective, it's not to say that it's out of the question to blend the two in some way that's a little more cohesive. So that's absolutely on the table. I think we could say it's on the table for this next phase. This was again a starting point a placeholder to get feedback. So your feedback is noted Peter and Dave I don't know if you want to hop in with anything as the for the land planning part of it. I know I think you did a good job I think this is really valuable input and I think it would be good to hear when we get to the kind of more comment driven comments. Folks agree that kind of mixing the different housing stock makes more sense or kind of what is shown but but again this was just an attempt to kind of show as much density as possible in these little nodes. Yeah, thank you. And, and two other points on this which is that ultimately city council make the decision and we'll decide how to structure any RFP that goes out for a developer to do any particular housing development. And part of that will have could have specifications about what they want to see so if it's some percentage or some range of percentage of affordable units for example. It may be if there's lots of nodes for example the ABCD buildable areas, you know if it's we want it in A and C, I don't know just making that up but if we want to see it in A and C, saying we want someone to come and propose for both areas, one and then the other or maybe it's asking that we get a whole bunch of different types of proposals, maybe someone only wants to develop a and doesn't want to develop C. So it will be somewhat market driven so this if one of the, if the ultimate end of this phase the actual master plan is for something that is not entirely city owned, in other words having a housing component on it. It can be a public private partnership, and part of that is then giving over some of the control to the market demand and what is financially feasible, and then seeing how the city can be a partner to help make what we want a little bit more financially feasible. So for example, having a TIF district if we were to extend a tax increment financing district out this far, could we build all of the infrastructure at no cost to the taxpayer using tax financing, and then it thereby reduce the cost to the developer so that they have the flexibility, financial flexibility to build what we want. So there's a lot of that kind of trade off that that happens during that RFP process which would be the next phase. So that's really more by way of education. Thank you for your online comments we're going to come in person here. And again, these are questions and we're going to wrap this up in about five minutes so I think I can take about five more questions and then we'll have more time at the end. So I see your hand with the rose colored shirt, and then here in the front and then with the black baseball cap will do you three, and then you in the front here, and right with the red mask and then we'll come back. You're going to take my question. Oh, sorry, I did totally say Linda, I'm so sorry Linda, I, I'm so sorry. Yes, it's your turn. Sorry. Sorry. I have a question about the impact of has the cost of to the schools of an increased population base has that been considered or how is that going to be considered. Yeah, thank you again Linda sorry about that. Yeah, we have not yet because we don't know what the housing ultimate housing stock would be here it could be, you know, no units or 500 units that conversation has not yet been had. Thank you. Hi Phyllis Rubinstein, I live on College Street. I have two basic questions. One is the two site maps that show housing, both show potential roads, one going west one going north and I know you've said that you haven't spoken to landowners about that. But I'd like to hear a little bit more about the potential roads where they would come out. And I mean because you spent a lot of time talking about whether it's signals around about that there, there'd be a potential traffic needs down on the access road but you haven't talked about the impact of these two potential roads through otherwise undeveloped areas so that's one question. The other has to do with on all three maps I believe there's a note that wetland and stream buffers may be used for hiking, biking and like recreation. Although on all the maps you also indicate that in the passive recreation areas on the east and the west on the west that there's a steep ravine and on the east that there's steep slopes so based on the actual terrain, as well as what Ben mentioned that the better practices to have 100 feet buffers on either side of streams. Is there really, is it realistic to have bike paths and other significant recreational uses that might require some infrastructure as well. To speak to the impact of connecting roads again where you're not at that phase we don't know exactly where those roads will be we know we need to take into account what those impacts would be from a natural resources perspective as well as an infrastructure cost perspective so that will be forthcoming. Relative to the stream wetland and stream buffer that note is is when it says light recreation it does not mean anything with infrastructure that would be a buffer it would not be allowed to do any kind of you know bike path or any kind of actual infrastructure in those areas. So it's just akin to somebody walking down to a stream now in Hubbard Park or, you know, any, any park area. That area is to be used the note is specific to saying that those areas are not off limits with rope or, you know, gates that you can't use those areas. So that was what that note was intended for. I know that end you was it you next and then black hat okay sorry this is really hard to do your next your next and then black hat. We had red mask and my name's black hat I live in Montpelier. I'm DD brush I live on Liberty Street. And I have a couple questions one you talked about what funding. What is the funding that you said is available and therefore is somewhat time sensitive. I don't know what that is how large it is where is it coming from that's one question. And I also want to know to the point that was made earlier about the housing assessment. I also have two other things in the pipeline one is off of Northfield Street with possible 115 units of housing, and the other one is off of Isabelle circle with possible 50 units of housing, and I haven't heard any kind of coordinated discussion about those projects as it relates to what might be proposed here and I think that's very important for us to know. And I think you just answered it about the roads but somebody told me yesterday that a project like this needs both egress and entrance, which means, I think the egress cannot just be the existing road somewhere else, and the somewhere else is Saban's pasture, and we all know the history was Saban's pasture and how difficult that's been. So I believe that we need some more information about that. I'm going to take these in order. So time sensitive funding. I was speaking to many different sources that federally right now we have a lot of ARPA dollars coming down. A lot of that is for specific types of infrastructure. Some of that's still being allocated we don't know yet. But there could be various sources of grants that are coming out that could handle any kind of water upgrades we need here, and so forth so I didn't have a specific instrument in mind. So we know right now because we're coming out of pandemic so called and coming out of and that's created a lot of different funding streams that may not be available we don't know in the next few years. So from the housing perspective the coordination with other housing projects in town speaks to a good point which is that this site is not is not supposed to be the the one size fits all solution to every problem in the city that's absolutely clear. There are other efforts that are going to be continuing to happen in other parts of the city between now and when this project breaks ground or sees actual development and creation of housing units. So I don't know much about those other projects that Josh could speak to but in terms of the whole net housing gap closing. That's important to think about absolutely in terms of how many other units and other projects are being done. Do you want to speak about that before I talk about egress. So in terms of other housing projects to city planning department is well aware of them. I talked to the developers and actually out of all of the projects out there we only have one permit application that's for Isabel circle right so that's the only thing technically that has been applied for permit for development of 60 something units. This is going to go forward for a permit you know we don't know how much how many units this might be. But we're all in conversation with each other and trying to help one another move to the next step. So certainly like we could all be coming in to a pipeline of funding at the same time and we just create some sort of priority what makes the most sense for the community to invest in first. But those conversations are ongoing and they're happening. And to your other point point access and egress and ingress absolutely if you especially if you trip over a certain number of users or or threshold of units you would need to there's planning. There's zoning regulations around that as well so we would have to consider that and where is that going to go is the is a big question and it kind of depends again on the land play land layout and how that might play out during this stage. So we do have to take that into consideration. Okay, you're standing up. The next person wants to queue. Hi everyone. My name is Greg Fox. I live on Allen Allen row off of Phelps Street. I'm going to first address my black hat it is a central Vermont little league hat. Remember of the, the board of directors of the Central Vermont little league is a growing league we have about 400 kids. And we're experiencing a lot of success so as this project moves forward I would like the town and the community to consider increasing the amount of indoor recreation space for children to you know practice sports like baseball. During, you know the short of the winter season, because as of now there's really no place for for the kids to practice baseball and other sports during the winter. My question, it really dovetails with what was spoken before which is really whether this communication with the, with the VCFA, because I understand that there's proposals to convert a lot of those buildings into higher density housing, and whether that as that project potentially moves forward and this project potentially moves forward, whether there's pivot points as to the high density housing element of each project. Thank you. In terms of the VCFA project right we're well aware of it we're in communication with them. They're going through a process right now whether trying to get their their master their campus master plan their PUD approved by the DRB. Right. And so, I think their next meeting is next week. I anticipate an additional meeting for the DRB to review and decide on approving the PUD. So, there are there could be uses of residential development on that parcel of repurposing of some of the structures that's not being proposed yet. What they're just trying to do right now is just get some uses permitted, as opposed to conditional use, because in the, the process of development conditional use is really hard sometimes for developer to get a project because you can have so so many butters fighting it and you have to have certain thresholds so there's no housing development being proposed there, but it could be one of the uses permitted. So, I'm going to go to camera 11 core street. Just a couple of questions. In terms of so egress issue. Is there what's the threshold for the number of units that would really require an additional road access and ensure the fire department emergency service needs to be getting out of there. That might be not something to consider in terms of. Maybe we don't want to build out as much because it's going to trigger a whole nother road. The other, the other thing I was thinking about, and I've been talking with Josh a little bit about this. There's an existing ski trail right now that everybody really enjoys that's groomed now regularly but on River Nordic. We've got a coverage of that and I just sent it to you this afternoon. I think it would really be nice. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of changes to the site it's probably not going to be much golfing going on in there anymore. I think it would be very easy to build into whatever development happens, some kind of a loop that could be groomed like it is now. And that's probably not something we need to worry about this point. But I think as we get further along, it'd be really great to have that coverage and to see okay. Maybe a lot of that could stay because it's in areas that we're not going to be. They're not buildable. But how could it be incorporated so could be used by the residents that are going to live there and as well as city residents. To your to your first point to your second point noted and to your first point, Dave. Oh, yep. Thank you. The question was, is there a threshold for which egress a secondary egress would be necessary. And to keep in mind that then emergency services would need to be make sure they can be accommodated and that may be a consideration for the build out. Dave, do you have a answer for the egress question. You're muted. Thank you. Sorry about that. My my recollection of the zoning ordinance is that there's not a specific threshold but that there is a desire to have two points of access. One of the things that we thought about as we were considering kind of a layout of this of this property is that the potential for a secondary point of access as just a gated kind of gravel access road just for emergency vehicles. So not to over build, you know, the street network and spend money that's not necessary. So to have a secondary access to old country club road that's really just gated with a lockbox for emergency vehicles to meet that requirement but without building a full kind of loop road for all vehicles. So basically it could be. Yeah, there's lots of different options at different points depending on what the the ultimate ultimate impact scale is. We're going to take your question next and then we're going to hold the rest of the questions because we're going to move into the exercise we have another question online I know you have a few more questions here. In the exercise you're going to have a chance to talk to Josh and Mike here in the audience and I will be online with Dave to answer questions during the exercise as well and then we're going to come back with whatever time we have remaining for additional last comments so please. Hello. I'm Devorah Jonas I live on Luma Street. And I noticed that on the papers that the smallest unit you have is 1200 square feet. And my guess is that there may be single person households. They don't need 1200 square feet. 600 square feet is generous for a single person and even for two people. So one could also get a lot more units without more structure. Okay. Good point. Okay, so we're going to open it up for. So we're going to. Well, I need to share my screen. Sorry about that. Okay, so the question we have, and it's kind of the overall arching question of this stage, and it gets more granular if you take our survey and can give more input. But the overall question is now that we've had more we've had the data come in about the site analysis and the actual qualities of the site itself, and hearing from everybody and reading through the community feedback. So what would you desire to lay out the site? What's the most desired uses you see again at the big scale for each of those buildable areas. So we're going to do an exercise in person. I'm going to run through it a little bit high level here, and then Josh is going to take everybody to the back of the room for the in person exercise and I can walk you through the poll online. Okay, so in person. There's a chart in the back there are the test sketches and the buildable areas. You can visit the maps review the maps review the buildable areas there's a chart that shows eight columns and for each of the columns, each column represents one of the buildable areas. And that's buildable areas and also the natural areas. And then there's a list of uses. And I'm actually just. That's what the chart looks like it's also in the back. There's a list of uses, and you're going to be given eight stickers. You're going to put a sticker a dot in each of the eight columns, each of you puts one in every column make sure you hit every column, but choose from your list of uses what would you most like to see in that particular area. So you've got eight dots you can go through each of the areas what do you want to see there, and there are some sections there are some spaces to write in if we've missed a use that stands out to you as being missing. And it's going to help us kind of again, see what the consensus is for some of these areas, there may be some that are really obvious, and there may be some that are less obvious. Yes. Yes, yes, Josh is going to run you through this again when you're back there you can answer any questions about how, how to do the dot exercise or any other questions, or, or what the uses are yep. And so then I'm going to run through with the, the online community we are going to do a poll, and we will be having a similar activity up there, and then we'll come back together in about, Josh, what do we say 25. Okay. 25 minutes. Yeah, we did. Yeah, I think we have to yeah so 25 is at 10 of we'll be getting back together for the last 10 minutes of comments. Okay, sounds good. We'll just pick me up. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay. So, online community, you can hear me is that right. Okay. I can't see you let me see how I can see you. Here we go. There you are okay. There's everybody. All right. So, with the folks online. We have put the link in the chat to go to the buildable areas map as well as the other test sketches. For the next five minutes, up until a little after 730 we're going to take questions. I'm going to start with Phil his question hasn't been answered yet. And we're going to answer questions. And you can look at the maps and you can look at the test sketches, and we'll talk about it and then in a little bit, we're going to go. We have a great chance with a poll to vote on you type in what you see want to see for each buildable area. I'm going to share my screen here so you can see the buildable areas right on the map right on the screen now. But does anybody have a question we'll start with Phil, and then we'll go to the next person that has a question if you just raise your hand using the zoom feature that would be very helpful. Thank you. I just actually following up on the egress question. I remember a number of years ago there was a proposal to develop Isabelle circle area with over 200 units and they were required to bring a road down to read 302 on the other side. I think that was a fire department rule or concern that they didn't want more than a certain number of units at the end of a dead end road. Maybe the zoning is not specific, but I wonder if the fire department year has any rule on that. And just a comment on the idea of a gravel road to old country club road that would be there's pretty steep in there and you'd also need to flow it all winter to get to really we're going to keep that open. Gotcha. Okay, good. I'm wondering if the fire department's been consulted on this yet. Not yet, but I believe when he was speaking earlier. Chris, right, I think he's involved in emergency services to so Josh has been talking with him informally but we know they absolutely need to be consulted as we start planning and showing more of the transportation routes. Yeah, you have a little piece of information that switches that the absolute requirement is over some threshold of units might be a dozen or maybe even less you have to provide side by side passing access. So emergency vehicles like ambulances can leave while fire trucks are arriving. That's the only thing that I've ever seen regulations. Gotcha. Okay, great. Any other questions if you want to raise your hand and zoom to answer about the process or specifically that you heard tonight. Happy to answer them. Nat and then David. Nat, you're up. Hi. My name is Nat went through up. I'm a 40 year resident of Montpelier with kids and grandkids also living in town. So this is sort of a macro question for the whole group before we get into more detail. My impression is that there's a very broad consensus among everybody who has weighed in that we want some kind of multi use hybrid model, not all housing, and not all recreation. Is there anybody of the 50 participants listening who would advocate for either all housing, or all recreation, which is very broadly defined. I'm not sure we have the ability to kind of pull this entire group in this exercise. One or two people want to speak up. I doubt that there's anybody who would not favor some sort of mixed use model but I'm trying to test that assumption. I'm curious as well I think the survey will bore out a lot of that too. It'll be interesting to see. All right, thanks Nat. We're going to go to David and I put this in the chat but David Shayna and then Diane and then we're going to need to start the exercise part of this poll but we can continue to kind of answer some questions as we go we just don't want to lose track of time. So, David. Yeah, when you were talking about the cost earlier, I think I heard you say that you included roads but not utilities. Is there any reason for that I mean would that affect the cost. Yeah, let you I know it would but I mean does it change the, you know, in terms of the scale is the lowest right, you know, you're running a super waterline across the property I don't know what it would cost but it costs something. Right. And I think our determination was that it's, it doesn't affect the comparison between three for this scale. And that's why. Yeah. Shayna did you want to go next. Yeah, since you specifically asked for process questions to I thought this could be appropriate. I participated in some of the, you know, phase one, I think it was phase one or maybe it was phase two conversations about doing the outreach and I hear that you did outreach to the to high school students and I'm wondering if there's other, you know, students specifically that you are other groups, you know identity based groups, specifically that you did do outreach to, you know, including people experiencing homelessness and people experiencing substance use people with transportation issues. You know undocumented folks or refugees in just other key communities that should be centered and I think as part of this experience and just wanted to know if there had been specific outreach or focus groups and with with those specific communities. So the student and the business communities were surveyed in part because we had some some volunteers that stepped up, and we've been looking for volunteers to step up at a variety of different levels to help us connect with all these different stakeholder groups so we've reached out to a number of different groups organizations. Civic organizations and city counselors to help us connect. So we're still very wide open to having folks help us connect with those communities, but we had a student help stand up stand up and help actually do the survey for us which was amazing, as well as Montpelier alive. We're also reaching out to meals on wheels, all meals on wheels deliveries will get not only the flyer about what's going on but also a print survey for them to fill in and send back with postage paid for just to make sure we're accessing folks who might not have internet stability. So that is an ongoing process Shayna happy to talk more about that too because we're looking for more volunteers to help us get access and when there's been a few others that I won't even name right now but you, you and I can definitely talk more about it too. Thanks for sharing those other examples and you know I'd love to continue to say it. Sounds great. And then Diane, and then we're going to jump into the extra the poll real quick after this. I have a quick question. Good. Are there any natural resources limitations, or any other reason that the buildable areas on the left, most side of the map so E and F that would prevent, you know, more multi family housing like townhouse style housing. Are there actual site limitations that would prevent that or some other limitation that we should be aware of. No, no, the, you know, the thought was as we were laying this out that the, you know, the single family homes just fit best back there but there's no reason, you know, from a from a permitting perspective or a layout perspective why those could also be multi family homes. Yeah, so go ahead and stick your when you when you do your poll. That's a good piece to put into that poll. So, I do want to get to the poll because I don't want to run out of time we have just about 15 minutes. I can take Steve and it says Kimberly kidney as the the caption so I can actually take two more questions and then I can get, and then we can go into the poll since, since we have a little bit of flux here. So Steve, do you want to ask your question. And you're muted. I'm going to ask Steve cease again North Street. Two quick questions. First, I've skied that Western portion of the property and although the plan says the slopes are moderate to me they look pretty steep. I'm wondering if you have a detailed GIS contour map of that area of the whole property actually color coded so we can see what the actual slopes look like. That kind of goes to the question from the preceding questioner. Have you looked at technical feasibility of a road to the west across that big ravine, or to the north up toward townhill, given the slopes. Dave, do you want to take those. Yeah, the, you know, the, I'm sorry, can you repeat the first question. Yep, the slopes on the far western side of the property looks steep to me. Do you have a GIS that demonstrates what they are. We do and I think your question we don't have a color coded map but if you look closely you can see the contour lines so we do have you know existing topography. It would be easy to make a color coded map but we, it's not showing here but you can. It's it is I you know apologize it is hard to see but if you squint enough you can see kind of gray lines that show the contours and so where those contours cluster you know are this are the steeper slopes. Dude, I'm wearing trifocals and I can't see them. They are there but I that's a good point though I think it would be good. You know because I think I think the, the lay of the land is an important consideration here and so you know I think you know that might be good for our next round is to have some better visualizations of the kind of the shape of this of this property. Thank you. And, and then to your point, they would be a very my senses would be a very costly road, particularly the one to the west, you know, it involved the likely a bridge over that one ravine. It's, it's not a cheap endeavor by any means but you know, it's, it's hard to you know it's hard to weigh the benefits and costs you know it'd be nice to have that connectivity if something happens as a beans pasture to have kind of connectivity maybe all the way back into Montpelier, but there's there's a cost and all the natural resource impacts that go along with that. Gotcha. Great. And you're up. You have your yourself unmuted already thanks. Kimberly kidney is the. Yes, you're up. Okay, okay I just want to be clear this is David kidney Kimberley's husband, using her computer. And I wanted to respond to that who happens to be my neighbor, and you couldn't ask for a better one. I support wreck wreck and housing, but if, and I don't think I'm alone on this. I raised my children here I now have three grandkids in town my kids walked to the wreck center. Five days a week in the winter, my grandkids are now using it. I really think the wreck center itself should be in the downtown I mean I think it should be either at the bottom of savings pasture at the parking lot or Fort street where you keep parking and build a wreck above it, or if we're going to do fields wreck fields out at the Elks Club. I think that we should build a wreck center down by the pool. We wouldn't need those fields anymore. We could get new fields out there. I know a lot of young families because my daughter lives here with her kids who they all want the rec center downtown where middle school kids. It's amazing how many middle school kids walk to the rec center after after school. So, that's just with Matt's question I do want wreck fields out there, but I'd much rather see the rec center in town. Thank you. Okay. All right, thank you. Okay, we're going to move into the poll. So the way this is set up is going to be eight questions. I'm going to load them each individually as we go. First, it's going to go through each. I'm going to start it right now in fact so you can see it, but essentially it's going to show you a list and you can expand your box on your screen you can expand the box that has the poll in it so that you can see the full list, but the list is there of all the uses that have been suggested so far with a few places for you know if you we've identified there's maybe others that you're wanting to see. So at the bottom of that list if you scroll down a place for you to enter your answer. So this is going to go through every question we go through is going to be for a different buildable area or natural area so it's going to start with going through a through F, and then natural areas east and west. So this is the question is looking at the buildable areas map which we have up on the screen, buildable area a what do you most want to see there. And please type in your answer based on this list or another use that you can think of, and that's what you most want to see there, and you know understanding that there may be a blend at some point. And then hit submit, and we'll move on to the next area and I'm going to do about a minute and a half starting now for each question. Stephanie if you can hear me I watched this I zoomed into the buildable areas map. Now I can't get back to the poll help. If you hit the, if you hit your poll. If you hit your zoom icon does it bring you back to the to the poll. I'm out of the poll. There's a three dot menu in the bottom right hand corner usually. I'm not seeing it. My three dots are on top Steve look up top. Oh yeah. So we're all pulling quizzes isn't that interesting. All right, got you. Thanks very much. Thank you so much for the crowd, the crowd help. I'm not a dedicated zoom expert. Are we still in question one. We are now we're going to go to question to I was waiting for as many respondents as we could, we could get. I'm sorry is the polls going to show back up or it'll I'll pop back up the next question yep don't. You don't have to do a thing as long as you hit submit on your answer you're good. All right, so I'm going to end this one we're going to move on to to area a. I'm sorry area B. So this is same question you can scroll down and same list of uses. So it's just what do you see for billable area B. We may not meet need a minute and a half for every one of these because it may be pretty predictable. All right. It looks like we have the same amount participated open a little bit more okay. About 10 more seconds on this one and we'll go to the next one. We'll go to the next area. Definitely when you say the areas can you just identify them a little more clearly than yep we can. Good question Peter okay. All right so we're going to move on to the next area. Peter you can hear me yes. Yes. Okay. So this is area C. And if you look at the billable areas map that's on that's on my shared screen. I'm sorry I have too many screens open area C is over here on the east. Yes east side of the site. Stephanie that's not the sledding hill the sledding hill is off to the right of that. Is that right. Or is that the sledding hill. I'm not I'm not positive. I think it's part of it's part of D Dave. Okay. No she's got. See is wooded. You couldn't you couldn't slide there. Okay thank you. He is here and D is up here toward the back of the site. Natural areas over here. Okay I'm going to go on to our next question. So we have. Time here we're going to go to set. So that is the sledding hill. Yeah. Thank you. Everyone's getting a lot faster at this so we may be able to fly through the next four pretty quickly. I appreciate everyone being game to do it this way there's a lot of different ways we could try to replicate a dot exercise in person to do it online and this is one way. I don't know if it's the best way but it was one way. This is our best attempt. All right, we're going to move on to area E. Let me submit what. Oh sorry we're moving on to E but again feel free when you finish with this you're welcome to send us an email you're welcome to also take the survey there are similar questions in the survey but also emailing Josh directly, any feedback. We're happy to take that. And again you asked where that might be buildable area E is back here so again if this is the existing building you kind of head back through all those cart paths. We're really getting into the kind of the top of the site. Thank you for that. I'm going to close this in about 10 seconds and we'll move on to area F right moving on to area F and area F is back here really corner of the site almost before you get to the ravine about 25 more seconds on this area will move on to the natural areas. Why would I want to let me submit. Bottom of the bottom of the thing and you filled in some answer on the short answer. In the written section. Comment and then hit submit and we're going to move on to the next question for area F area or not area F sorry we just did area for moving on to natural area East. So that would be over here in this natural area where my mouse is all the way to the east wooded area steep slopes. You can see my mouse on where that area is yeah absolutely it's it's this natural area over here can you see my mouse now kind of south of just south of where the possible location of you 32 trail is mentioned all the way to the right of the site says stream and setback zones and steep slopes. There's not an option here. There's no housing shown on that in any of the test scenarios. There's a lot of folks will say trails. Outdoor rack, etc, but we want to leave it open to whatever else might be coming to people's minds. And I'm going to close this in about five seconds and we're going to move on to natural area West as people are sitting down here in the room. And now lastly, natural area West, which is to the very far left on the screen where the ravine is very difficult to difficult access across steep ravine, etc. Again, we will have opportunities if you would like to just email us or submit questions in the survey for these things if you didn't get a chance to write out everything you wanted on the excuse me on that area. You might mention there's quite a mature hemlock forest beyond the ravine. It is quite attractive and possibly a deer area. Making a road through there even more potentially problematic. Okay, writing that down. Yeah. Yeah, we did see there is a designated deer wintering area up in there. It's quite pretty big hemlocks. Leave it alone. My concern noted Steve. Okay. Sounds like we have enough responses here. Well done. I'm impressed with this group we did not know how this was going to go. Thank you so much for your patience, your cooperation your participation that was really helpful we have the results now. We'll be compiling that with the in person exercise with these dots for anyone who is here on Saturday you know the dot exercise, and we're consolidating all of that. And that will be, I didn't mention this in the full group but we will be going back to city council at the end of March and part of that will be the report out about the feedback. If you have further questions Dave will have to take them because I'm going to get up and try to get the rest of the room. I'm going to do some cat wrangling. I'll be back. I have a question. Yeah, I will. I'll do my best to answer. To the, the, to the left of the purple existing building area. Yep. Is that area not part of the property. That's right. Yeah, if you if you look closely the yell you can see the property line is there. Yeah. Yep. So it's a separate parcel. Do we do we know who owns that. We'd really like to have everybody come back and sit down. Steve, Steve Rivalini owns it it's a seven hour seven acre parcel, I believe Steve Rivalini owned the rest of this too. It's odd. It seems odd that that wasn't included. Oh well. It was already a separate parcel going in. I don't know why online community can hear me. Yes. Thank you. Okay, thank you everybody that was the dots I'm excited to go see the polls, the poll is done we it's the same exercise but done a little bit differently. And as I was mentioning to the online folks we are going to be compiling all of this data. The dot exercise was done at the Saturday event we also are doing the poll event at our fully virtual meeting next Thursday. So tell your friends please it's a daytime meeting for anyone who can kind of pop out for lunch but couldn't make an evening and we'll be consolidating these results. We're going to be meeting with city council at the end of March to bring back our findings from this period and to get some guidance from them relative to the next steps in the concept plans. We have five minutes six minutes left. We did have you got your question answered with black mask. Okay. Okay. Okay, we can take a few more comments. So we're going to be out for online folks as well. Since we're just going to try to capture people who haven't spoken yet so let's start with blue hat, and flannel, and then sweater. I'm sorry, I'm going with visibility here because we're really pressed for time, you'd come up and if you'd queue at the mic. If there's questions we're going to have to answer them either later, but we can take comments. Can you use lose the slide again please. My name is Laurie Salekman I want to thank you for going through this process. It is a lot. Really appreciate it. I just want to speak up I think other people have been doing this. I'm involved with the ski club. I'm a volunteer assistant coach. It is an incredible resource for our, our youth. We had on Saturday, maybe over 100 kids there so we had a youth program like little little ones, and then we had middle schoolers and high schoolers racing and it's an incredible resource it is an extension of everything we do as a community. I understand that you haven't gotten to that level of detail but I wanted to speak up for it because it wasn't mentioned as a use case so just want to make sure it's there, thank you. Yeah. My name is Jessica Oprowski. I'm Montpelier resident. And I just want to say that we want skiing we want you wreck we want all those things, but it all comes down to housing, like, we want our community to be useful so that we can have ski programs, but we shouldn't be eliminating the potential for housing. But we can keep that smaller group of, of people that want to ski. I love to cross country ski. Yeah, no I'm just thinking about like the rest of the conversations like throughout the, the evening when we've talked about these things. So older people in the community. If we don't have housing for everybody with families, we're not going to have people to enjoy for kids to go out to the rec center for kids to go explore these trails like we need the housing so just as a thinking about, we have to check our privilege sometimes and and be more open to inviting everybody in all kind of areas. And then we'll just proceed to relate say we'll have your question and then Matt, and then we've got three comments online and then we're going to have to wrap up for the sake of time. My name is Malcolm Fitzpatrick professionally I've been an engineer and urban environmental planner. So I have some comments. I think this site is extremely difficult to develop. And I thank you for the maps that illustrate how difficult is to develop. Every dollar put into this to try to make it the valuable should go into housing on other sites. There are other places in my career. Look at the arrow flows online. Look at the land west of Territory. There's old subdivision in there of hundreds of acres undeveloped roads are there, at least they're laid out. And this has to meet Act 250 because it's prime land. I've not heard how you're going to meet that problem. The streams of wetlands are problematic. Every time you you cover some land under the present state laws, you have impervious surface roads houses. You have to infiltrate that land that water back into the ground. I've not seen any area to show where or how you're going to put that water when it rains into the ground. There are minimal flat areas on this recreation is probably the best use. You only have one way out now that's bad as people have said, and there's a need to get connect downhill road down to root two. However, this area, this lot, big lot has only one access and access and downhill when you get to it, try to get to it. And that is a busy road that you cannot get onto. As someone said the stoplight or rotary. That is a traffic persons engineers nightmare. One rotary after another. And you can't once you one rotary backs up. It is all comes to a standstill because no one knows who has the right away. Those in the rotary have the right away, but they can't get out. It's a nightmare. The slopes on this are horrendous. They don't tell you off on the right on the big maps. There's a scale of elevations. They don't tell you on the on the site map, the roads and what the elevations are. 5% is probably the steepest you want in the subdivision 10 for a short distance. I suspect some of these are 15 or 20% slopes. They're going to be nightmares to put in. There's no map showing depth of bedrock. Why do you need that? You need to know where your foundation is going to go. What you have to blast out of rock to put a five-story foundation in. Why do that when you can build on other land that is buildable. Save your money, Montpere, and invest in sites that can produce a lot of housing. It's available. It's out there. He bought that land. He's holding on to it for what reason? I don't know. But maybe money will talk at least in the main can be used. Maxim housing. You're not going to get, you know, if you have only 300 units on this site. That means if you probably two persons per household with cars. That means 300, 600 out in the morning. Double that because you're two person 1200 going out onto route two in the morning. Some returning immediately after someone going out to take the kid to the nursery school, whatever. That's about a thousand cars going out there in the morning. Come going out and coming back. That exit is not built for that traffic load. We need a traffic study. We should have done it before we bought the land. We need to know what is going on before we dream up uses for this site. I suspect when we get down to it, if you know the cost, external costs. They're going to be worthwhile to invest in an expensive piece of flat land, good building, good site. No rocks on the ground. You can't just blast for foundation. You've got to put water supply in. You've got to put sewage out. I'm sorry. More than four feet. And you've got to put good system in. You've got to connect it up. The capacity to get there's always more treatment plan. That should be cost. Evaluated. Before we do anything more decision on this site. Thank you. All right. We have one more comment in the audience, Matt, if you have a comment, and then we have three online. And then. And then David's iPhone if he's still on and Cindy. I have my time or so I'll try to keep brief. Hi, I'm Matt Wilson and I am the communication coordinator for the community service department. The community services department. So that'd be the senior activity center of the recreation department and parks and trees. I would advocate for a mixed use approach to the country called boats. Country club road site. Specifically favoring recreation, but also. Some housing. I'm a relatively new resident to Montpelier. I moved here last year and I recognize immediately how impossible it is to find housing within the city. And I currently live in Barry now. I have to commute every day. I would advocate for. Housing for volunteers and AmeriCorps members, especially. I've heard anecdotally from some of our AmeriCorps service members, how difficult it is, especially on their stipend. To find housing. Let's see here. I think that we should also look at recreation as well, because as I work in the recreation office, I see every day the need for public spaces. To do various recreation activities and because it's an, it's a hundred year old building. There is very limited use that we have. For recreation activities. Yeah. And I really believe that more place-based assets in our community can ensure economic growth. And drive innovation for different forms of activity at the country called roadside. And also finally, I would advocate for a space for arts and culture. Thank you. We're going online. And if you're ready, yeah. Sure. Thanks so much. Thanks for this process this evening. It's been really informative. I want to echo. I want to echo some common, a comment that was made earlier about the location of a recreation center. I have concerns and I know a number echoed this in the earlier process. This maybe it was this fall about locating, especially after school activities and things that kids need to do. So, I don't want to echo all of those comments, but I just, I want to register some concerns with how the survey that's open right now is structured. I actually went on earlier today. I'm glad I waited till this. I think a lot of it will be repeated, but there's a whole section of that survey about what amenities individuals might want to see in a recreation center before asking about where it should be located. So I'm strongly in support of a new recreation building. I think we need more recreation spaces for people of all ages and all abilities, but I just don't favor it being in that location. And so it's hard to even know how to answer the survey about, you know, whether I would want certain services in a recreation center, because I feel like that supporting them being at the country club site as opposed to just in general, or it's not, it's not actually clear from the survey is this specific to the country club site or in general in the community. So I just wanted to make sure that the folks sort of interpreting the survey results know, like, for example, I may say I don't want certain things, but that's because it's at that location as opposed to having those assets available in the community. So thank you for, again, for listening to all of us and having this tonight. That is the limitation of building surveys. It's just, you're right. I mean, that would be a question we could ask upfront that would then frame some of the other questions. And I think there is a place to fill in some other remarks. And so I would encourage you to put that context in there, but it's helpful for us to think about that when we review those. So thank you for pointing that out, Cindy. Hi, I'm Cindy McLeod, and I've lived in Montpelier since 1974. I just have three very quick comments. One is that I am so pleased that all the young people who have been here and expressed the point of view because this is your future. And I just really want to thank you for stepping up and expressing yourself. I wanted to second the other comments people have made. I'm all for recreation. I voted more for our trails and outdoor fields at this site, but I would like to see a great new recreation center downtown and downtown Montpelier. And third, I'm just very impressed with all the presentations you all have made and the work you've done and the way you structured this. And I've been a planner for years, but I do want to commend you. I think you've done a great job. So thank you. Phil, you had had your hand up earlier and we didn't get to your question. I didn't know if maybe that was still left over from when we did our session. If you still have a question or comment, you can unmute and we'll get yours because I did. I do have a couple of comments. I'll be brief. The, you know, there was a discussion about skiing versus housing. I think there's a way to have both. I think we could cluster the housing in a way that there are trails. The test sketches we've seen so far have an awful lot of roads cutting off potential trails. So I'm wondering if there could be a more creative design. To make room for, to leave the ski trails, even with the housing. I just wanted to echo someone earlier saying we need room and housing for downsizers, people moving out of larger houses. I was involved with a group that approved that was a lot of demand for that. So that I think condos would be particularly appealing to that group, but we need, you know, a mix of, of rentals and owned homes, mixed income. And another important group is young families that want to come here. If you're a teacher in Montpelier, you know, can you afford to live here? Yeah, I think so. I think that's a good idea. Hopefully there can be housing to meet, meet those needs. And the final thing I'd say is. This is difficult, uh, figuring out what we can really do here in a Ford. Without knowing some of these costs. Like if, if we have to build another road. Uh, how much is that going to cost? How much is it cost to bring infrastructure. Sewer and water up to the site. You know, what is the bedrock situation? So I, I'm hoping before the master plan is finalized, we can get a sense of, of costs and, and what's realistic. Um, because in Montpelier, we have a lot of other demands with, with our roads and water system and the cost of building a rec center. So, uh, just, just hope that can be factored in. Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Um, we had to, we have to call it its past time. And I know not everybody got to say things twice, but we hope we got some, most comments from everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time. Um, thank you so much. Please complete the survey. If you can, there's additional questions that might not have gotten asked here today. And, um, there's a meeting on the ninth. If you want to participate. Anything else? Um, if you, if you want to contribute a comment, you can email, uh, me, uh, your comments, J Jerome at Montpelier hyphen vt.org. You can find my information on the website. Happy to respond. Thank you.