 September 6th meeting of the DRB to order and we will start by introducing the board members starting on my right. Sharon Allen. Have a little cuddle. Meredith Crandall staff. Rob Goodman on the chair. Abby White. Joe Kiernan. And we may have Michael Azorchik joining us later on on the Zoom platform, but we do have a quorum in the room tonight. So the majority of this meeting will be right in front of you in the room. So at this time, I would like to turn it over to Meredith to review some of our remote meeting procedures, but we don't have anyone online. So do we have to do that? Well, I'm going to do it because we're streaming live over Orca media. So somebody is watching and wants to plug in. We need to just do this little bit. I think it's, we haven't ever had anybody do it, but just in case. Yep. All right, so this little bit I'm going to be sharing my screen here. And this is for people watching at home over Orca media. If you're watching this live, you can participate in tonight's development review board meeting via the Zoom platform. You can join getting video and interactive access by typing this link into your web browser. You can also call in using this 929 phone number. And then once you're in on that once that answers plug in this meeting ID, and then you'll be able to hear everything over the phone as well as ask questions. You'll be able to participate in tonight's meeting. If you are trying to log in and you're having problems, please email me. Here's my email address. It's mcrandle at Montpelier payphone vt.org. I will be monitoring my email throughout the meeting. And if anybody does log on, please know that turning on your video is optional. And we ask you to remain on mute, unless you are have been called on, and then you can introduce yourself. In the event the public is unable to access this meeting and I would find that out via my email, then the meeting will need to be continued to a time and place certain. I'm going to hand the meeting back over to the chair. Thank you, Rob. This time I'll accept the motion for approval of the agenda. Nice meeting. So move to approve the agenda. Second. Second. Okay, who was to move that was that Joe or is it Sharon, which one did you hear ocean by Joe second by Kevin. Now I'm going to do something I learned just recently from Steve Everett, you're all in favor state your name. Kevin. Abby, Rob. I think that works. I've never heard about that. I just saw it. But they both work. We're all ready person so we'll say hi. All right. Okay. Comments for the chair. What was that? I said it's quick. We can all say I at once. Exactly. It works. They test that one out. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank everyone for coming this evening. And we will. Try a little abbreviated version of motions for the smaller business. This evening, like we just did. Eyes will be it. As we discussed. And. I think this time we'll welcome. Nope, nevermind. Okay. As folks got a time to review those minutes. I did. Make a motion to approve the minutes from eight 15 meeting. We have a motion by Sharon to approve the minutes from August 15th. Second. Second by Abby. All those in favor say aye. Aye. That is approved. Minutes from August 15th. Alrighty. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to our. Main order of business for this evening, which is 57 maple lane. And is it Steve. Alrighty. Welcome. Thank you. Network. Key. So I could log into the. Yeah. I think on the end. Sorry. I don't have it. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry about that. So. This is the sketch plan meeting tonight. So it's relatively informal or not. It's very wind and there's no. You know, it's not really a necessarily a formal record, but if you want to just introduce yourself. You. I guess the way this work, we'll have Meredith give a little brief overview of the application. And then I guess we'll leave most of it to you because. You know, a lot more details about it than anybody else. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So. Yep. It's not like there's a whole big audience here. This is a sketch plan subdivision. And the proposal is to divide it into two parcels. And then there's, as you saw in the staff report, there's some sort of complications we have. Really it's an existing private roads that goes through this parcel as it stands right now. It was recognized under E 911. And that was sort of a lead up to. Building a six unit residential building that's there on the side of the road. And then there's some sort of, I don't know if you can see that through a quote unquote PUD process, but there was no subdivision of land involved in that. This is under the old regulations. So there was no flat filed showing the bounds of that right of way of that private road. Under our regulations. Street boundaries. Actually naturally subdivide. And then there's some sort of, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know how to sketch and final so that we don't have a floating triangle of, of a third parcel being created. Whether that means that the, the road right of way gets expanded to encompass that or it gets merged in with the Joe's kitchen parcel. That's all going to be, be discussed as to what, what makes the most sense. So that's the one, one sort of complication. That's the one thing that's been, that's been, that's been, that's been, that's been, that hasn't really come up before, even though we've had. Subdivisions of commercial properties before. Is that here. The parcel that has the six residential units on it. It's theoretically getting small enough to impact. Total site landscaping calculations. And we don't know what the total Lumen output is. We don't know what the total Lumen output is. So we're making that parcel so small that it then violates. Site plan regulations. Now, you know, there's multiple ways around this. This is why we're here at sketch plan to sort of discuss things out to see what the board thinks about it. This is just one of those things where. The regulations say site plan applies to any development. Other than single and two family homes. And development includes subdivision. So technically we're supposed to look at that. Whether that actually makes logical sense. Is a question, but here it could, you could, you know, is it okay to approve a subdivision where. You're now making the land so small, but it's emitting more light than it's supposed to on that per acre limit. You know, are you suddenly taking away so many trees. You know, you know, You know, You know, You know, You know, you subdivided those off that you now no longer have enough trees to meet the ratios that they're supposed to have for trees to impervious surface. So. It's a little hiccup that got thrown in here that we haven't ever had come up before because our other subdivisions were parcels big enough that those questions did not arise. Those complications did not arise. So. How does that affect. I mean, In the riverfront, it, it, it. It changes the. For river. I think it really does. The, I mean, it changes what, what zone lighting zone it's in, which changes your light allowance. But we don't even know how many, how many total extra lights are on that building right now. Cause that wasn't something that's factored in with built. So, so it could potentially have too many lights. Great. But if already has too many, right? It's a previously existing non-consummate. As long as the subdivisions that make it worse. Right. to previously existing non-conformity, as long as the subdivision doesn't make it worse, right? Because normally we think of those as all dimensional, right? If you have a building that's too close to a boundary, as long as you don't move that boundary even closer to the building, you can improve subdivision. This is not a dimensional items with regards to like setbacks or total impervious surface, but it's still technically dimensional because changing the size of the parcel changes your calculation of how much impervious surface you have on the parcel compared to how much, how many trees, how much grass. You know, your total lumens per acre, everything you take away is stuff that doesn't have lights on it and you're left with a smaller area with lights. We made the total lumens per acre more that ratio number. So it's just something that'll need to be answered before we get to the final. Orgah, too far into the weeds here. Yeah. We're about to hear about your project and what's going on here. Okay, so the piece of land as it is now has the apartment building that was built in 17. And then it has this 1,600 square foot cement block building, something like that. Maybe it's 1,200. That's 57 maple ain't? That's 57 maple ain't, yes, correct. And so what we're doing is subdividing that off from the other one with the whole stuff. We have somebody that wishes to purchase that building, the person that's been leasing it for the last 10 years or so. That's the soup factory. Yeah. It is served by a private road. And so the space mayor that's just talking about that's on the left of the roadway between that and railroad tracks that does have some outside lighting on it. That's for the parking lot. That I don't know what the lumens are on that without chaplain that was part of the original application back in 16 for the building. And then outside it just has porch lights. I think on each floor, I think there's three. I think there's three because there's two apartments on each floor. And so there's a light outside each apartment door and then one set in the middle, so for the stairs. Is that gonna stay a private lane? Is that that? Yes, yeah. So when you talk about the access from private road, I mean, that's Maple Lane or is it, it's called Maple Lane now? Yep, it's Maple Lane. So the Maple Lane comes down off of Berry Street and then makes that curve and basically goes all the way till it hits 57 Maple. What would be the new boundary for 57 Maple? That building is currently numbered 57 Maple. For E-911, like in their records, it continues actually till it hits like the boundary with Patnam, but that width starts to get so narrow that it doesn't leave the zoning street standards. So I think for this plaque, if it were filed as is, it would show Maple Lane ending where it hits 57 Maple at the end of the end, yet ending there. And that's, there's no department of public work stuff. It doesn't have any issues with that. And neither does the fire chief because it's all a resisting use. And both buildings are sprinkled too. Yeah, that helps for the fire chiefs. So the only access point you're proposing in the subdivision is basically along Maple Lane, sort of that shown with that right away, where one railroad tracks it in and not coming the shortest distance from Berry Street. That's not proposed to the access point for the new parcel. Is that a pedestrian way? Right now, can you go from Joe Bule's building up to Berry Street? You can. You can. You've got like Kismet. There, it's... Now Kismet's up the road. It's further down. I guess that's the other question. It's good. Would it continue to have pedestrian access through there? So the current parcel, parcels one and two together, the current parcel does have access through that private way to Berry Street. What are we calling that? So are you talking about... They come up Maple Lane. The paved driveway. Yeah, I mean, technically, I mean, that's a whole separate private property. So pedestrian access is actually over here. Through Maple Lane. From Maple Lane. Yeah. Because there's sidewalks there. This sidewalk, you can see on the back, connects to a sidewalk on the other side of Maple Lane. Yep. Yeah, crosswalk. But none of that is proposed to change... Nothing. Nothing means the existing circulation's going to be the same. Yeah. And then it looks like the Putnam Street... Well, 8 Putnam Street does have access through Maple Lane as well. That's correct. I mean, I don't know if it's needed right anywhere, but we'll use it that way. Yeah, I think the way Don's drafted this, there's a private right of way there because there's a... It's like a loading dock there at the back of being Putnam. That's the access to the rear of that building. Right. Versus Putnam Street's on the other side of the building. So they have a front access on the other side. So it's not changing anybody's access to anything. This is part of this is how to memorialize what has been happening and allow Steve to sell this building with a little bit of land. Yep. What more is there? Any questions on the general plan or concept here before we dig into the staff report? That's about my wheels on this one. I'll be honest. I mean, one question I had is whether you saw Meredith's staff report. Yes. And so looking at the sort of complexities of not leaving that hanging parcel there, she gave, I think three different options there. One, which was to expand the private road setbacks so they encompassed everything. And it sounds like basically anything you're gonna have to do, you're gonna have to have some kind of shared parking agreement. Is that correct? Yes. There was a second option, which I'm not remembering. Oh, one was to have that triangular piece of land go to 57 Naples, but that starts getting weird because most of that parking is actually for activities. It seemed like that wouldn't be a good solution. Yeah, I just had to throw out all the options. And then there was the option of doing the condo thing, which I also thought was like, I didn't know what you thought about it, but I'd be interested to know. Well, at one time I thought that was a good idea. And that's how we started all of this. It wasn't me who told them no on the condo thing. Okay. But it was recommended to me by somebody in city government that we should subdivide, it would be a cleaner way to do it. So that's how we started on that. Yeah. It seems like it would be cleaner, so you would have to have less agreements. I hate to say this, but just try to get closer to the microphone. Just because the minute taker will actually listen to the recording. Okay. So did you have a choice between those first two options? The first one is to expand the roadway, to put the right way so that it just creates more. Private on-street parking. Private on-street parking. Yes, that was a tool. That would be the preference. That would probably be the cleanest way to go about it. It does seem to be the cleanest. Yes. So if that were to go forward, what are the issues? Does that change the issues that we have to consider? How does it? That doesn't, you still end up with the whole site plan questions, right? But that resolves the potential floating parcel issue. So you're still doing a subdivision into two parcels and memorialization of a private road, right? So we still need a on-file, some sort of road maintenance agreement and a shared parking agreement. And it's not like the city would enforce the terms of those, but it shows that the requirements of the zoning have been met, right? And that somebody's going to maintain those. It doesn't become the responsibility of the Department of Public Works to enforce any of that. Oops. Sorry. I don't know how long it's been waiting. I don't have beeps on here. But then we still have to deal with, yes, the technically creating that private street pulls that land away from 42 Maple, right? Which pulls away the trees that are in that little island and the lights. So you don't have to worry about the road meeting site plan, but you still have to say, okay, does what's left of the remainder? And so that would be what's labeled on here is which parcel. Parcel one, mop one. Does that have enough landscaping to meet the total light scant, landscaping requirements? You know, are we making those things worse? Same with like street trees? Like, and it's also a question of, do we actually, does it really? We've never had that question about does that really subdivided enough so that those trees no longer count as street trees for lot one? Dude, they are don't like, because they don't become city property, right? It's still owned by Steve. It's just, it forms a subdivision line, right? Six street streets or a lot. I mean, if there really made my question that there's a subdivision. So there's street trees and all the streets for both blocks one and two, right? Yeah, but it's not, it's not becoming part of lot two. You can't count it for a lot two for sure. The question is, can you count them for a lot one? You know, do we even look at street trees? Do we only look at the street tree? I mean, that's really major site plan. This is a major site plan. So it's just really the total site landscaping, right? Have we had, has the subdivision reduced the total site landscaping for lot one or not? I mean, honestly, I would probably, if the numbers don't work out, not counting those, I would probably go to the attorney and be like, what do you think? I guess when I'm getting as we're evaluating this, it's like, you know, does it say, does it reduce total site landscaping for lot one? Or does it reduce the total site landscaping for lot one or two? Right, yeah, you have to look at both, honestly. Yeah, yeah, no, good point. I think, I don't know, I'm just looking at this plan for all of this, maybe this is more like specifics. It's like, you know, there's, take the buildings out of the picture, you know, you have surveyed lot one and surveyed lot two and like, those are wrong, those are on the plan. It's not like you're creating lot one. And have the remainder, you know, it's like you're drawing a line on the center and you're creating two lots out of one. So maybe, I don't know if you get there in my head. No, that's true. And do the trees and lights that are on that islands that is now going to be part of the private road count for either of those or not. They are their own little island separate, which is how you would deal with it. It was a city street. It wouldn't count towards either of those, right? In the staff report, you said that you recommend that we don't make the non-compliance worse. That's when, that's how we're supposed to deal with non-compliances in general, when we're, right, so it's already non-compliant. Right. This was all approved under the old regulation. And if we were to make this subdivision, it would make it worse. You're right. We haven't actually crunched the numbers, right? I haven't actually crunched the numbers to C. Crunch the numbers, which numbers would those be? So the total, I haven't done the limits. Okay. I haven't done, wait, I was like, I'm not even gonna give me all the information, dig down into that until we've all discussed it. So I haven't looked, gone and counted like the number of bushes and the other trees, right? There were some plans in there when it was built, as to the number of trees, but they didn't dig into the actual number of bushes and things like we would now. I think it would be helpful to just have that data. I mean, my sense is that if we're making, we shouldn't make it worse as well. And if there's anything that needs to be done to ameliorate it, that would just be good data to have. Yeah. This was a get-through read. No, that's people were like, oh, no, we don't care, we're just gonna go forward with it. Okay. I mean, like, I see, I mean, I think I see maybe where you're going from a little bit, like we're just drawing an arbitrary line. So like, does it really matter? I just, you know, I don't know from a precedent standpoint. Oh, I don't think I was trying to. Oh, you were saying that. That doesn't really matter. I was just trying to say that, like we're drawing a line and it's like, it's not just this Joe's kitchen that we are evaluating here. It's like we're subdividing this parcel into two. And so the apartments are as much of, in my head, when I'm looking at it, the apartments are as much of a point of evaluation as Joe's kitchen. Okay, that's what you were saying. Got it. You know, we, you know, just, it can be easy to get sucked into election. They're gonna use up the Joe's kitchen so they're gonna create a lot of self. We can't forget about the rest of the parcel because in a subdivision, they really are treated the same. Yeah, you're right. It both means that they're the same. Yeah, yeah. You're creating two reversals with Steve. That's very memorialized. Yeah. Did we, I know you talked about the condo-wise option here. That's not in the proposals. We're gonna have to discuss if you're not going there. Wouldn't you say condo-wise? I mean, that was neat. Yeah, I just started, so I'm just asking you Mary. Yeah. Was that, that's not throwing the route of doing this as a, as a planning development, is it? No, that was that. And he could do this. I mean, because he's, there's no addition of new buildings, no addition of new units, no addition of new anything. This, the sale of the building and rights to use the land around it could be done through a condo document that would get recorded upstairs in the city clerk's office, but wouldn't require any zoning permit approval whatsoever. Yeah. Right. You still would not have memorialized street boundaries, but you could still put it, I mean, you could still put in a private right of way and record that upstairs without the zoning permit requirement. And that was the selling building and not the land? Selling the building and a, how do you call it? It's like a limited common area right to the, he could, you know, Joe's kitchen could still have individual limited rights to the land around it. Because I think you're in uses for that, perhaps at seating or for grilling, right? So that the other members of the condo ownership wouldn't have those rights to that amount of land, right? There's a way to do this through a condolization, which it sounds like you had already contemplated. Yeah, I agree. It's been quite a lot of time about that. No, I got steered. You know, that is a way to do it. It as, as you said, it's not, in some ways it's not as clean in other ways. Yeah, depending on how you look at it, it's cleaner or harder. Well, you've already decided not to do that. I, I didn't rule it out a hundred percent. I wanted to see if this was going to work. If it didn't, we might go back to that. So it's always still in the option in my view of things. In which case you wouldn't see this yet. It's step back a little bit, maybe talk a little bit about the previous permit impacts this, or does it not at all? You want to go there? So the previous permit is in historical document, right? And we have to look at that in view of. We shouldn't be making changes that violate a very specific condition of that permit. On the other hand, we're now governed by completely different regulations. So if those conditions were in place to meet a regulation that has since then completely changed and revamped, and really has no place anymore, right? So if it said you needed X number of trees, but we now require more trees at the park. So sometimes it used to be required more parking, right? So, but our current regs don't require that much. As much parking as we used to require. So if part of this was to reduce the parking, and it's still not our standard parking requirements, they're adding more green space, we'd say, that's an acceptable change, even though technically it violates the old regulations, right? That's not happening here anymore. So that was just a theoretical idea I picked up, which where you ran into. But, I've gone back and looked at that. We're not going to be running into those issues here. It's not like a subdivision that is now authorizing building on an area of land that was part of an open space agreement, right? There was nothing in this prior permit that said you had to leave so much of the land as open space. That's not something that's going on here. I just hung up on like the fact that as recently as what, 2016, it was under different regs, but it was a planned unit developed. So what was required to go through planned unit development approval? Totally not what you think of that was planned unit development. It was just because it was six units. It was a density trigger? Not a, we're somehow dividing up the land. And it didn't, when I looked back and looked at the whole staff report and the decision, it was not because they were clustering the density in a weird way. The density required standard was actually still the same in this particular zoning. What the zoning district was then and what the zoning district is now have the same residential density standard. So they could have, they could have more units on this as personal than they do. Right, so basically you don't need a UPD for this to exist for the rest of the day. So the exemptions that they got by being PDA or the- They didn't get it. No, there were no density bonuses, nothing like that. It was strictly because there were six units being proposed. It had a extra layers of review. It was called a minor PUD that is nothing like what we call a PUD. Right, right, right. I mean, I just, and that makes perfect sense. I just wanna be clear on that because it's like if we have a PUD approved today in 10 years from now under our current ranks, I would be very cautious to do anything but keep it as a PUD because, I don't know. It's just one of those things where the units are in it, you're in it forever. But not under what, that's a good explanation. So thank you. You're welcome. Jesse, I had the same questions and I went back and I read the whole decision and they went, snap report. So it seems like it would be good to get maybe some information about what the street count might be depending on which, where those trees got to sign to live. And it sounds like the other issue is moments, right? Or what kind of light is out there? I mean, just to know, anyway. On both though. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah. Yeah, I think parcels. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's basically landscaping plan. So we'll, I'll talk to you about it, but we'll want counts of the trees that are there, including the sizes, you know, the bushes. And if we can find out what some of the species are in the heights, I mean, I'll go, we can meet on site too and go through it all because it's also anything that is even perennial beds will count towards the landscaping totals. And I think because this isn't something that triggers major site plan, I don't think we have to look at the actual street trees, but we need to know the total number of trees, right? We can't end up in violation of the total site landscaping or at least not, you know, that's something we'll look at, factor that in. And then, yeah, we'll have to figure out the lumen totals. We're not changing lights. So existing, like shade shielding, that doesn't really matter, but the lumen totals through each parcel will matter. That's the way I look at it. I think everybody agrees on that. And if that's where we'll steer and try to make sure we have that information. Yes, I think that would be great. I think that information really helps a lot. And at the same time, I also guess that little bit of a feeling about this in the same way that there's, we're not changing the moment, we're not staking up any pavement, we're not moving. You know, I mean, this is, this is how, you know, however the lines get drawn here, it's gonna look exactly the same as if that's right now. You know, so that I've got a little leniency in my heart there somewhere, you know? Yeah, me too. Like I don't think we, I'm not... I don't wanna make this burden. Some of them I think would be good to... Right, or being like a stickler about it, but I think just having the information. Yeah. Mostly for the precedent that it could set. Right, I mean, once again, we're treading on new territory here. So that having the backup data would be useful even if in the end, we're deviating. Yeah, yeah. So you have something to point you to say in this kind of situation, we're okay. It gives us options as a board so that we can have a menu of solutions in the future. Whereas if we just do it and straight approval with everything being, what pretty much what's presented to us today, we wouldn't have that. Yeah. So after we did the landscape plan, then I'd come back for another sketch plan. No, you and I and Don will work together on everything. So that would be the landscaping plan, the lighting plan, the street maintenance agreement, shared parking plan, all the stuff for the final application. I don't think you could come back for another visit if you wanted, but I don't think you need to. I don't need to. And then then I do come back for a final thought. Yeah, we'll have to come back. That's when we apply for the final approval is this next round with all of this. All that additional information. But I was not going to ask you to do a landscaping plan before this without hearing from them. Right, no, that's a good idea. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for coming. Thank you. Maybe a little long one-second. We didn't miss anything. That's not quite done. Okay. There are a lot of details and I think we got through a lot of them, but I just, I think I wrapped my head around the big ones, but we'll make sure we didn't miss anything else while you're here. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think, so it's a subdivision. So ultimately you're producing, you know, a final plat of these. Ultimately the, you know, there's, we have landscaping, there's going to be some, once it splits into two parcels, you know, there's going to be some responsibility of like parcel, you know, one, or lot one and lot two to continue to maintain, you know, the landscape, you know, landscaping if we do go that route. Right. Similarly, like, where it's not specifically clear in our subdivision right, just like how much needs to be included, but when it comes to like utility access and, you know, just any of the rights at which are particularly shared between the two parcels, make sure that those are all very clearly on a final plan that comes forward. Maybe not so much for this process, but then when someone comes in for site plan review, we can easily, you know, look at that. Right, sure. Yes. Not negatively impacting any of those, your rights for neighboring lots. And it seems like a lot of the information is already shown here, but that's, that was my thought recommendation here. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Cause you have the water and sewer and stuff running under the road and all of those aspects of it. Yeah. Like, you know, the parking agreement, you know, it's like, that's not all specifically laid out in the plan. Maybe, maybe it is. I'm not really sure about like, you know, I think our preference is the more detail you show as far as like where the rights are and each makes it easier in the future, whether that's actually required to get into the fine, fine detail. I mean, that's a whole different story. But I don't know, I think just a really good subdivision plan, I think is appreciative down the road for making the rest of the permitting process easier. Sure. Yeah. I'm sure Don can do that for us. Oh, absolutely. Great. Anything else? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Michael, I'm sorry if you were on sort of pulled for a while there and I didn't see you. It's, I have to have the volume from my laptop off so that we can have the microphones on. So I'm not sure how long you were waiting to get in. Sounds like you all did well without me. So thank you, Meredith. Yeah. Sorry about that. When nobody else is on remotely, it's hard to remember to keep looking at the screen. Yeah. Okay. Get the attendance there. I did. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. Our next meeting is on November 19th and I believe we have a couple applications. November. September. September. Jesus. It's dark outside. It's not that. Yes, September 19th, we do have a couple of applications. I think they are both actually driveway parking related. The one asking for a second driveway to facilitate additional parking and one asking for a minimum parking exemption so that they don't have to build a second driveway that they got previous approval for. Oh, that's interesting. Yes. There'll be a couple of interesting stuff there. That's right. Okay, all right. Let's have the motion to adjourn. And second. Motion by Joe. Second by Sharon. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting is over. Thank you, everybody. I like the motion to adjourn.