 Thank you. Hello everyone. Everyone in the room. And everyone online. My name is Andy Simon. I live on Locust Street and I am on the word five and paste during committee. And welcome to our, our meeting tonight. So glad you come. We'll start with a little introduction. Actually, well, let's start, let's introduce everybody introduce themselves. We're so cute tonight right now. Until more people show up. Let's have everybody introduce themselves. Maybe Charlie, if you could sort of. Point us and start from down here and we'll go, go across and then we'll do the people online. Okay. All the steering committee members present are here. So I'm one of them, Joe dairy from Ferguson Avenue. And I forgot what we're going to do. I've been on the street for two years. Yeah. Hi, I'm Nancy Stetson. I'm on the steering committee from Locust Street. I've been on the steering committee for one year. I also work for city planning for the city. I'm Nancy Simon. I'm already introduced to it. Passing along. I'm Laurie Tucker. I live on South Pole. My business out church street for 40 years. And it's on the commission. So I. Yeah, I invite you up to the table. Yes, I thought that we're going to be lots more people. We always hope for that. Let's keep moving around. Over there. Oh, sure. Hi. I'm for read. Let me just read. I'm a volunteer with the people's kitchen. And I just want to say that read also brought a large amount of food here. I'm sorry that people online cannot. But I come down to next month, 45 months next month and there'll be more food starting at six. Sounds good. Yeah, so we're there. Carol. Hi, Carol dates. I live on Caroline street. I've been here for 50 years. Hey there. My name is Daniel. I actually don't live in ward number five, but word number three on Cedar street. And I am a volunteer with people's kitchen. And food not cops. And I also serve on the DPW commission. Anyone else. Right. No, no, no. There's a microphone. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I should have gone right for that one. Sam Heinrichs. I work with Cedar with all the NPAs. And our. And our cameraman. Alright, let's go. Let's go around the online. Participate. The names. Yeah, why don't you start. I'm Pauline bold when I'm living here with. Oh, I am. We can hear you online. Oh, okay. I'm Pauline bold when I'm living in Colorado, but I'm here with my mom. Can't hear me. Can't hear you. Let's see. Is that on your end? Try again. Hello. Yes, there you are. My name is Pauline bold when I live in Colorado Springs. I'm here for the winter with my mom. Go ahead, mom. Yes. And I'm, my name is Lily. Of course. I'm here with my daughter. She's taking care of me. What do you live? 14 linemen. The last house on linemen before you get to all the. Construction and things for the project. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. You want to go. I'm Mary Danko. I am the library director here at the Fletcher free library in Burlington. Thank you. Where she live. Yeah. Where do you live? You live. In the north end. North end. We're not xenophobic here. Go ahead. Is that. Is that. No, I was just trying to unmute. I get pushed in the wrong button. I live on pine street. Welcome, welcome. Lena. Hey everyone. I'm Lena. I live on maple street. In the little notch of maple street that's in Ward five. And I'm actually interested in joining the steering committee. Sorry. I couldn't be there in person with you tonight, but looking forward to continuing to be at the NPAs. Ray. Who's with you, Lena? Hello. I'm Maris. I live on home Avenue. And. Hello. Hi. Welcome. Thank you. Cool. Joan. Do you want to say hi? Whoop. This is great. There you are. Hi, I'm Joan Shannon. I am. The South district city councilor. And I live in lakeside. Thank you. Hi. Hi. Hi. Come on in the teeth. And just. Introduce yourself. The third time. Hi. Laurie Smith. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Laurie Smith. I live in Queen city park in South Brilington. Right across from the. Burton campus. I'm Gil Mathias. I live in Red Rocks condos. Great. Thank you. Anybody else? No, I think we can start. Okay. Let's start with those slides and do a quick introduction to the NPA. Sam, can you bring them up? I don't know. Okay. Next. Agenda. There we go. So. Welcome to the ward five NPA. This, this. Wonderful colorful logo is by Amy Radcliffe from Gotham city graphics in word five. Move along. Let's move along. These are guiding principles. We try to create a safe space for everyone. We want to make it accessible to everyone as well. And we insist that everyone in who participates be respectful. Because of cultural economic racial differences. And different perspectives. We try to make it fun. And certainly for Reed is, you know, helping us with that with lots of food. Makes it more fun when people aren't starving. And. We do not endorse political candidates. So it's non partisan. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. This is still in committee except Billy who hasn't. Appeared yet, but Billy Clark, Joe Dairy Terry rivers who said she'd be zooming in and I expect she will she's out of town. Me and Nancy Stetson. We have a website and P five. Org, or you can get to us through the CEDA website. access connection thanks to CCTV and especially Charlie who shows up every month. Next slide, please. So I'm assuming that after all these years of pandemic, we all know our way around Zoom, but if you don't, if you want to say something and you're online, please raise your hand with the little function that you have. If you can't find that, you can also wave your hand on the screen. Remember to unmute when you want to talk and we like to see people since we're so few, so let's keep our video on unless you're chewing something and don't want to be seen. Next slide, please. This is the agenda for tonight. When we get done with this, we're going to go to public forum which is open to anyone who comes and we're going to do a brief announcement about upcoming NPA steering committee elections and we would love it if you would put your name forward. That's next month. Then we go through a series of presentations about the various changes in the south and that are proposed to Champlain Parkway. Norm Baldwin should be here. Charles Dillard from Planning and Zoning was going to talk about the Innovation District and the Multimodal Transportation Center. Jovial King is going to come and either here or online and to talk about the Bath House proposal at the Barge Canal and possibly Kurt Shuler who has proposed building a food court on the Barge Canal as well on Pine Street might show up. Then Laurie and Gil have come to give us an update on what's going on with the from their point of view with the lawsuit and various other aspects of the higher ground from citizens for responsible zoning. So just a quick word about public forum. Next slide, please. When if you want to say something in public forum, please identify yourself, who you are, where you come from, if you're with an organization, please identify that and limit your comments for four minutes. I'll try to time you and give you a prompt after three years if you're going on and on. All right, I think that's all. So public forum is open for business. Who has something to say? I know you do, Mary. Why don't we go with that? Great, thank you. Thank you so much for having me and I am here on behalf of the Fletcher Free Library. I work there now over into my sixth year and we love, you know, providing our services to the community and this is a time and I think I've been here once before where we're looking at our strategic plan and we would love for everyone to fill out the survey as we're trying to get as many people as we can and it's a very basic survey. It's four questions and it's FletcherFree.org slash survey and we use, we really do use this input that we get from the community to help us prepare our next strategic plan. What are the services people want? What do they like what the library is doing? What don't they like what the library is doing? What are the needs in the community that you're seeing and how can the library may be able to help? How might the library be able to help with that? As you know, libraries are continually changing and growing and we're here for you. So that is really all my plug for today. Thank you, Mary. I also did pick up some paper surveys from the library and they're over here on the table. If you don't want to do the paper survey, you can use the QR code and do the online survey. So thank you for doing that, Andy. Appreciate that. Great. Thank you, Mary. All right. Who else for public forum? For me, hi everybody. I'm for you to be late in your street. I'm branding this class election and I just want to congratulate consular Shannon on her re-election for the city council for the 11th term. And I want to thank everybody who supported me and everybody who has participated in the town meeting night. So and also on behalf of the Provision Zero campaign team, I want to thank everybody for their participation. We didn't pass it this time, but we have gotten a lot of very valuable feedback and you can be sure we'll be back. Thank you. Thank you for anyone else for public forum. I did have one thing that I wanted to share and Sam's going to put the screen up for me. I just wanted to share the figures of voter participation in the recent election. And I, it's not a separate, yeah, it's a separate slide. It's just a link. Yeah, there we go. I don't know if you can see that, but these are the numbers from the city clerk's office about how many people voted in this last election. And, you know, I think because of the, thank you Sam, because of the discussion, the extensive discussion around Proposition Eight, Proposition Zero, the ballot question eight, there was a lot of talk in the various discussions about representative democracy. And I do value representative democracy, but I, I despair of our representative democracy under these conditions. The conditions that you see are, Word Five was actually the third highest ward in terms of practice participation, but we were third highest with 38% of registered voters. And not just 38% of residents, but 38% of registered voters. The lowest ward was ward eight with just over 11.5%. The total cumulative total for the city of Burlington in the last election was 30% of registered voters. I just want to point out that 70% of registered voters in Burlington did not cast a ballot in this last election. And I think that's something that I'm alarmed at that. And it's not unusual. It's not an unusually low number. It's sort of typical. And I think that we as a community, we as an NPA, and people who care about democracy, we need to address that in the coming year and see what we can do about it. Thanks, Carolyn. Yes, it's possible to get to the holiday. So people who are working can come. I think we need to come up with lots of ideas like that. I think that's a great idea. But we need, we need a lot and that we need to question ourselves about why 70% of people in Burlington don't think it's important to vote or can't vote or have trouble voting or especially when we have mail-in ballots, you know, but... Well, also we have a lot of people who've gone around to individual neighborhoods. I know I've done that and I go to every door, but I can't always get to talk with everyone. But when we're doing the door-to-door campaign, we bring up how important it is for them to vote. And if there's some... I mean, I used to do that, remember, and I asked to register them for voting and I'd ask if they needed a ride. And I know we got three or four people that we gave rides to. So maybe we need to start asking some of those questions to get them there. Maybe we have a party. Joan? Thanks. I just wanted to kind of note another... I agree that we really do need to work on voter turnout. But at the same time, there's another piece of that that I don't think is shown in the numbers that you shared. And that is how poor our voter registration lists are. And as an example, you might remember when the building on King Street burned, I tried to reach out to the folks that lived there. And because they were tenants, it's a little bit easier to find an owner than it is a tenant, at least in the city records. And so I went to the voter database to find out who were the voters at that address. And there were a lot of people listed at that address. About 10 of them had phone numbers and I called them all. None of them lived there. And some of the people that I called had lived there eight, 10, and more years ago. They didn't even live in the state anymore. So we can't judge it. The voter registration list is unfortunately not completely reflective of eligible voters because it has a lot of people on there who shouldn't be on the list. And I know I have a friend who moved from Burlington. I registered him to vote in Burlington. He then moved to Florida. He then moved to Rhode Island. He then moved to Massachusetts. And all the time he remained on our voter list, which I don't understand what's going on with that. But that's another piece that should be dealt with. Thank you, Joan. Danny? It'll be really quick. But in the United States of America, I think there is universal suffrage. You don't need to own property to vote. And I'm pretty sure if anyone's there on town meeting day and wants to participate in what we're doing here, they should. And it should be all the time kind of thing. Just to be clear, I did not say the tenants shouldn't vote. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Read something else. One thing that's really interesting to me is like seeing like the number of people who voted for ballot questions versus candidates. Usually there's always more people voting for ballot questions than can't usually is 200 to 300 for elections. This last time it was almost 900 people. Didn't vote for candidates but voted for ballot questions. So that's something interesting. I think we have to move on. When I've worked campaigns, we have these lists of all the people that live there. And so we're pretty thorough when we go through those lists to knock out the ones that don't belong. But I don't know whether after we've dealt with that list, what happens to it. And if anyone, and yes, I did find the same thing, Joan did, people who had lived there 20 years, 20 years ago, still on the list. But I don't want to think there should be some coordination with the candidates in the list. Thank you. Do you want a ward clerk to say something to that? Ward clerk? Yeah. We know. Okay. So I think this is Charlie Giannone. He's the clerk in ward three. Right. So what Joan is referring to and what Carol is referring to is something that existed probably pre-COVID. Is that fair to say? Because since the city instituted this mail-in ballot thing, they're sending ballots to everybody. And when they don't get returned, they get challenged. So in other words, it's either being dealt with or it's already been dealt with. So I think that what Joan and Carol are referring to is something that happened before the city started mailing ballots to everybody's home. And when those don't go back, they get instantly challenged. They do not get sent another ballot. Now getting them off the voter list is a separate question. But as far as the number of registered voters, see that it has an effect. But I think the Board for Registration of Voters is actually addressing that situation. And I think you'll find that the voter list is actually shrinking quite rapidly for all these people that haven't been here in many years. And how well is the challenge there? Like how many years? I don't know exactly. I'm not on the Board for the Registration of Voters, so I don't want to answer that. But I'm just saying that it is being addressed, but it's a long process. So thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you for all the comments and questions. We have some more people showing up, which is great. We are starting our agenda with just an announcement. Do you want to do that? One of you want to do that? The announcement about the Board election? The steering committee election? Yeah, so Joe Darry again with the steering committee members for a couple of years. So next month at the regular meeting, we're going to have a steering committee election. Now, I wish I had checked my notes, but we have somewhere between six and nine members that we can have on according to our bylaws. I can't remember the exact number. Nine. We've had nine. We have fewer than that right now, so we could maintain our membership and take on a few more. Actually, Andy will be stepping down that I know of, so that leaves several open seats. So Lena raised the hand. I heard one more time. We heard an email earlier in the month, so we may have one member, but if you know anyone else that might be interested, it's not a huge time commitment. And be sure to get to learn a lot about what's going on in the community, if not have much political power. Yeah. Well, I would add also that we don't really have an application process as such. Every year, everybody's on the steering committee is up for reelection and can put their name in. So basically it's you can send a note to us as Lena did and express an interest or you can show up in April at the April meeting and put your name in the ring, basically. And then all the people who are at the meeting will vote and we will have a new steering committee. So the steering committee organizes this monthly meeting and occasional community events. Last summer, we had a dinner catered by the People Kitchen over at the Soda Plant and an outdoor movie showing. So we've done that a couple of times and it's really fun. Taking notes. I'm pretty sure it raises the animal. Only a question. You have a question? No. Okay. Okay. Great. I thought Mandy knew joining the steering committee five years ago. I feel like now is my turn to like step up. I agree. Thank you for your little speech. All right. Thank you, everyone. Everyone is welcome to think about helping organize these meetings and we'd love to have you. All right. So let's start with Norm on the Champlain Parkway. Grab a mic. Now I'm going to play myself, Norm Baldwin on the City Engineer, but I'll support you then. So please, yeah, please introduce yourself again. I'd like to introduce myself. So, Norm Baldwin, Burlington Public Works and the City Engineer also the Assistant Director of the Public Works Management and Services Team and a member of Capital Projects and then Corey, I'm the Senior Public Works Engineer with Burlington. I'm project manager for the Champlain Parkway project as well as the Raleigh Yard Enterprise project. Welcome. Thank you for having us. My understanding is we're presenting two topics of discussion. One is the update to the Champlain Parkway and the other is an update to Raleigh Yard Enterprise. Okay. Great. And if you could, if you could time it so that we can have some questions at the end. I will try to move through it fairly quickly and then name it for questions. I'll start with the Parkway. And I think if I could share. See if I can. Should be all set too. Okay. Okay. Looks like everybody can see that. So this is just a basic slide of kind of the introduction of the project. You can see the Champlain Parkway logo. We're partners with the Federal Highway Administration in Vermont Agency of Transportation. They are our funding partners in the process. This is a slide that represents the project limits of the Champlain Parkway from left to right. You see the interchange from Route 7 through the south end and to the terminus at Main Street. So just to give you an of course north orientation on the right side. So the Parkway itself has been broken out in two phases. Phase one and phase two. Phase one, you can see in the blue begins at the northernmost or central edge of home avenue and continues along Horse Place, Lyman, Ferguson and Flynn. It establishes really kind of a new connection through to Lakeside Avenue to Pine Street up until Kilburn Street. So that's phase one. That's currently under contract. This is a slide that just represents that we've awarded the contract to SDR on the Caprickey Joint Venture, which is we call SDK. It's such a large product that the two contractors have partnered together to advance the project. The project contract was executed this past May and work began this past June this summer. The contract is anticipated at this point to be complete November of 2024. Yes, that's for the initial construction contract portion in blue that Norma shown a second ago on the other slide. So what happened this past summer is the list of things that are here. This establishment on the corridor, the clearing and grubbing, the Engelsby Brook box culvert, and stormwater conveyance system and conveyance of treatment. All this stormwater systems need to be in place to start to prevent against any sort of sediment moving off the site. And then construction of subterranean utilities, water supply, sewer, stormwater, power, communications. A big piece of this project is really to improve significantly the stormwater system within that south end. There is in the Morse batch elder area, there is a combined sewer. And for years, there's been challenging situations where you had surcharging during rain events. This project is looking to address that. And much of that work is in that area is complete. And we should be seeing some of the dividend of that work being complete just to prevent against those types of events occurring again. Management regulated soils. This project has spent a considerable amount of effort time at the front end, identifying the types of soils within the area of the project, understanding the volumetrics of it, how that soil needs to be managed, and how that soil will be responsibly managed going forward through construction. So that's been an important part of our element of the work to make sure that we're meeting all our requirements under our permit and really protecting the health safety of the public. Given that there was a considerable amount of opportunity to complete some of those stormwater elements, this past winter and fall, as you know, winter was fairly mild up until February. Temperatures were fairly warm and it wasn't we didn't have as much frost penetration as you would normally expect. So we took the opportunity to really complete some of that just that disruptive stormwater work that this past fall and winter. So that's a really good thing. So we shut down on the 10th of February because it did start to get at deep temperature and frost. So what's going to happen this coming construction season? So the restart is scheduled for April 17th of this year. The activities that we're going to advance this spring is the redevelopment of Flannab rail crossings, the redevelopment of Flannab rail crossings. Those locations have some limitations in terms as it exists in terms of the signalization and control. The positive is it's going to be significant improvement in terms of safety with quad gates that are directly opposing each other, which seeks to contain vehicles from crossing into that area where the trains pass. There will be concrete, precast concrete panels replacing the asphalt solutions that exist for a much better, more durable solution. There will be signal preemption that connects the rail crossing controls with the proposed signalization at Flannab and the parkway. So there is clearance of vehicles when trains are going through. There has been an increase in activity on the rail system given that Amtrak is now in operation. So in the morning they depart and come back. We're working on sequencing that construction work to avoid any sort of impacts to their Amtrak schedule, which is not a small feat when you talk about the construction that's going to be proposed to go forward. You may actually see some work occurring there in the near term, water resources doing a force main for sewer at that rail crossing in advance of our work to do that rail improvement at Flint Avenue. So I think water resources put notice out to let people know that this is coming. We are also working on a strategy to communicate to the public when these rail crossing work will begin for our project, which I think it preliminarily we're suggesting that the work would potentially start mid to late May. So they're going to get their force main work. We're going to do our work at Flint Avenue mid to late May. Once the contractor completes the work at Flint Avenue and for the rail crossings they'll move to home Avenue and do the same similar work. Home Avenue has a little more significant work in the respect that they're redeveloping or installing box culverts that will improve stormwater conveyance from north to south at the home Avenue crossing. Norm, does that mean that people who live in those neighborhoods that are accessed either from Flint or from home will always be able to, because you're doing one and then the other, you'll always be able to. They'll be able to see what's in that work and we're having deep dive discussions with the major industrial uses there, global citizen cider, Burlington veer company, switchback, all are aware of the work and their contractors don't work very closely with them to try to figure out the sequence of that. The thing that we that they're looking to find a single a day and a half of time to do this this Flint Avenue rail crossing work where you don't have passenger rail passing through, you don't and you're getting the rail bed itself reestablished in other words the rail, the country pads, all that have to be done within a day and a half and all the other ancillary work that's along the edges approaches so and so forth is expected to take in total probably two weeks but the most disruptive thing to rail operations is this idea of putting these reinforced concrete pads. So it's a construction detail but what's important for the public to understand is that there's traffic control and there'll be a rerouting of traffic around this site. Yeah it's anticipated that it's going to be maintained one lane traffic flow during these operations except for that window of time that the closure would have to occur and that's at Flint. Home Avenue is slightly different. Home Avenue there's more significant infrastructure work that's going to be occurring and so they're anticipating that the Home Avenue rail crossing is going to be jointly scheduled with other significant work activities that it would be a longer closure period of Home Avenue at the rail crossing area between the new Champlain Parkway Roadway and the rail crossing so but that's still being coordinated and being trying to get detailed scheduling of the contractor for this upcoming work. And when one of the others is closed will the commercial traffic be going through those neighborhoods is that? We'll have to for that one day and that's like Saturday, late Saturday, early Monday. Yeah and so that one day for global and I think global's trying to avert any sort of pickup or deliveries of fuel during that day but we're trying to figure that out. Yeah so that's what that coordination meeting is going to be kind of working on is talking with all the players in the area and kind of determining what traffic flows they would anticipate seeing during the time frame and what operations or deliveries that they could potentially reschedule to minimize that sort of traffic in that window. But again it's it's a that late Saturday and Monday so you're looking at generally lower traffic volumes for those operations as they would not tend to have as many. Thank you. So moving on Home Avenue there's a water spy work that moves from Batchelder into Home Avenue that is not insignificant work as such it will require that Home Avenue be closed for extended period of time. The contractors indicated to us that it's going to require six weeks of closure that's not insignificant to the public and then their daily disruption but is necessary so we're we're trying to minimize as much as we can and let people know be aware of that change as we go ahead. Brick Street redevelopments some of that sub-train work is underway or complete but it will require us to obviously put curb, pave the road, those sort of things. Colisec construction that is most of that will be assembled that there is we have obligations to continue to allow connections and access to Brick Street from those Colisecs until such time as litigation makes a final determination. We understand that we're respecting that and then continuation of Stormwater system improvements we've met today with Flynnab Co-op there's a there's a swirl separator that's being this proposed to be installed at the end north end of their parking lot that effectively slows the volume of stormwater being discharged to the angles be a brook and limits the amount of sediment loading within that brook itself by that swirl separator so we've met with them we're working through the details of how that contraction will occur without minimizing disruption to their their home their use of that site and then finally as you're I'm sure you're aware there's ongoing litigation and there's limitations to what we can or can't construct it's an anticipated that sometime in mid to late June hopefully a court decision will be determined what we can and can't do moving forward beyond that to keep complete the balance of the project the balance of the project would focus on potentially focus on Lakeside Avenue redevelopment Lakeside Avenue is proposed to be underground utilities, Pine Street redevelopment, which is curb work, some stormwater work, significant pedestrian improvements, bumpouts and resurfacing of the road and without saying these road segments cannot work without signal redevelopment and then when I say mainline paving I'm talking about the new segments of the perk way that have not been paved as part of the ongoing litigation it's been that work has been suspended as part of an agreement of understanding but if the courts decide that we can continue to proceed that will proceed as well and then finally this is our contact information on the project we have weekly construction updates if you are interested in following the progress of the project I would encourage you to go to the website sign yourself up via email and you will get product updates on a weekly basis so that's been maintained throughout the construction process to date and that is that the perk way I guess I'll leave it to questions questions comments on the on the parkway project or Norman Corey could you I wasn't aware of like the issue from even like could you would you mind coming up a little closer to a microphone so that you can ask that question everybody can hear you thank you could you just elaborate on the litigation issues like is it holding the even the paving at this point deep dive on litigation because it's ongoing but just understand that there's been an injunction filed and there are obligations on the city's part and a contractor's part to meet those obligations and it will be lit against to limit the amount the type of work and activity that we're doing until such time as a court decision is issued so we're we're working under those limitations other questions comments gill yeah um since I live in rid rocks condos on austin drive um I have to say that so far you guys that I shop at city market and you guys have done a really good job so far as far as I'm concerned I would love though for you guys to fix the hulu it's in hulus that are in front of pool world that didn't you go and and the and the stormwater or whatever the water stuff that was done earlier never fixed those yeah there's this product does have which yeah the intersection down there for the pool world that queen city park road comes in that that whole thing will be redone also as part of this project so yeah that area will be getting addressed and there will be some improvements to the drainage that goes across there as well as the culverts that there's a couple of them that you replace so carly you might want to ask the people online if they heard the question people online hear the question that that gill had about yeah okay yeah lina you wanted to add something yeah i haven't i haven't had a question indy as well um i'm wondering if you can give us a sneak a sneak peek of the next stage i'm curious about what's going to happen to pine street and i would love to hear about how the the kind of blue phases of construction as well as whatever is happening to pine street are going to interact with the um rail yard enterprise construction so uh as it stands right now the final construction contract is what was designed originally for the champlain parkway project and so with that the current contract has the installation of a 10-foot shared use path on the west side of pine street running the length of the of the section of pine that's being done which is from lakeside up to kiln so that portion of the contract the that improvement is planned to be completed in the initial the final construction contract would be continuing that uh improvements not the shared use path the the rest of the improvements from kilburn north to main street and in that it includes signalization of the maple and pine street and king and pine street intersections it includes bump outs it includes designated bike lanes both north and southbound along that section and then on the south end it would be the connection of the 189 to home avenue um roadway segment uh resurfacing and completion of that in anticipation for receiving traffic so that would be the final construction contract would be those two portions that northern most portion and the southern most portion so you can find all these details on that project website there is uh individual renderings and graphics that would be probably answer a lot of your questions yeah and then your second part of that that you asked was about the rail yard enterprise and that being a separate project and it's still not being determined at this point which we'll get into when we talk about the rail yard enterprise here next but the configure uh intersection configuration um isn't finalized as we're still early in or we're still in the process of uh the NEPA process and spending the EA and making a the formalized determination of the preferred alternative and I will talk to you that point more uh in a moment so Mindy thank you um hi yeah I so I also had a question about pine street but my question is really about the south end of pine street so everything south of flin avenue are you planning to do any pedestrian enhancements or bump outs in that stretch of the road uh south of flin at this point as not as part of the jambling parkway project um that would be more uh to look at per speak to the transportation group as to what improvements they're looking at in that order so our our intent is once the parkway is fully complete and operational that there'll be an opportunity to examine what we can do to mitigate some of those issues and concerns that residents have about speed and and volume of traffic but we we at the stage cannot kind of pursue that okay so that's that's a post that's a future opportunity that we're going to explore once the parkway is complete okay thanks I had been in touch with dpw and just hadn't hadn't heard back anything on that for a while so thank you um Laurie quick question is the funding in place for all segments of the parkway or just for the segment that's under construction right now so um you know I'm sure you're aware that the parkway project came in exceptionally high in terms of its cost and uh the funding that was established for the full scope of the project uh had to be made use of at this phase the balance of the product is not uh high dollar but yes there will have to be we will have to figure out how we fund that next phase of the project and I believe that uh both the state federal and city well the city has a very favorable local match of two percent much of the cost that we talk about in terms of the city's assuming is soil liability I think we've probably assumed a good portion of that in this space yeah this contract is going to be the biggest the initial contract we have right now is going to be the most costly for the city as far as the non-participating expenses so the funding is not in place for the entire project at this and my understanding I'd like to know if this is locally yeah my understanding was the original price for the entire project was 35 million and that the budget for this or the contract for the section that's under work right now it came in at 45 million is that correct no I think it was like 41 million but 51 million would solve costs okay so it was this section cost is over what it was for the entire project originally yes okay thank you never the Bowdoin family has has a question yes my mom lives in the last house I'm an avenue and there's a lot of construction going on there and we would like to either talk to someone or have somebody come uh she's got a lot of questions and concerns she's lived here for how many years mom I've been here since 65 since 1965 she never thought she'd see the day where this would happen yes and my biggest problem is high water table at the end of my loss and every meeting I've been to I've mentioned that and they say oh we're aware of it we'll take care they champion the sudden connector will take care of it now we're aware of it the champagne pathway we don't take care of it so when will this if they still have water coming into the she just wants to meet with somebody is there anybody what I call this uh four nine six eight six five six number uh rather than taking any everybody's time well should I ask for a particular person well you know those are the public information people you probably want to talk to someone a technical expertise either Cori or myself I'd say if you call the DPW customer service and ask for me uh Cori Mims Cori what's your last name uh Mims M-I-M-S okay Cori Mims okay we will do that and that's the four nine six eight six five six number that was on uh no that's I think that's the public information number you're referring to but you want to call a six three nine zero nine four the public works number oh okay a six three nine zero nine four that's correct thank you thank you now um I as as moderator I'm going to have to make a some difficult decisions here because we're we this is um obviously we should have left more time for this but I'm wondering if you could come back um next month and talk about the rail yard enterprise project and if that's what you prefer yep I think that that would be better because that's a big topic as well and um and I don't want to short it yep it's fine yeah all right thank you got the slide ready again okay we'll slide you over cool thanks for coming thanks thank you um all right so um next on our agenda is another big topic of changes in the south end several big topics charles you're there I am here can you all hear me yes we can can you introduce yourself and we'll uh say what you're going to be talking about sure I am charles dillard principal planner in the office of city planning the city of burlington I'm going to talk about a few things the proposed zoning amendment for the south end innovation district a related coordinated redevelopment effort um that is within the proposed district and a study that was completed last year uh by the titanin county regional planning commission to look into the feasibility of constructing a multimodal transit center and parking structure combination they're all within the proposed district um and I've got a quick presentation I'll try and breeze through it so that we have lots of time for for comments and questions andy am I going to be sharing my screen or are you all going to be I guess same we'll be sharing it okay I want to say to the people who are here at at dpw that we have lots of food and um please partake we have some drinks and food that the people's kitchen provided us and um we'd love to have you eat something if you can get there of course you know on that that side of the table all right charles I'm sorry I can't be there uh for the treats really I think you people online are missing out you really should come down to the dpw next month all right uh you can next slide same so again uh these are the three the projects I just mentioned just the only other detail I'll add here is the addresses of the three properties that are within the coordinated south end redevelopment uh 68 sears lane is owned by the city 125 lakeside is a privately owned property um at lakeside avenue directly it's the large parking lot that I'm sure you all are aware of across directly across the street south of the innovation center and then 175 lakeside avenue which is the property uh owned by sampling college that includes their own parking lot and the miller center building that was completed not too long ago uh so next slide so the south end innovation district I'm going to breeze through this I'm sure most of you are familiar but again the key question here is how can most of the sort of land in this district proposed district which is sort of vacant or large underutilized sites be re-envisioned to become a vibrant new district that is a place for makers jobs and homes and also to increase the areas environmental and economic resilience because most of the district today is surface parking lots it is very impermeable not producing good water quality or quantity conditions for this part of the south end or the lake in general so I would like to improve that as well as sort of economic resilience and productivity of this part of the south end uh next slide so this is a map uh shown in red is the proposed south end innovation district and in purple uh is the enterprise light manufacturing district so the proposed south end innovation district will will be a zoning overlay which is a technical term but it's essentially means that the the properties will remain within the the enterprise light manufacturing district but we'll have an overlay placed on top of them that will allow a different set of regulations to govern development in the future and the proposed district accounts for about 25 percent of the existing enterprise light manufacturing district this includes everything from going up toward the rail yard enterprise project and all the way down south to queen city park road where there is a cluster of industrial and manufacturing businesses so next slide uh breathe i'll breeze through this so the intent of the district is is really to create a new neighborhood a new urban neighborhood with many homes that is urban in nature but that does respect the character of the south end including the lakeside neighborhood and pine street and the neighborhood's adjacent up the hill uh from pine street it's an area that from plain btv south end the community has envisioned as being a place where art slain light manufacturing and office uses can coexist and after that plan was produced i think the the lack of housing in burlington generally and particularly in the south end which is one of the more desirable places in the city has come to light and and the need for new housing uh has has been added to the sort of goal here of this district uh should go without saying that as a 21st century innovation district in burlington which prides itself on its uh sustainability goals uh the district is envisioned as also being one that is uh protecting and encouraging a more healthy ecosystem next slide so um the the zoning framework i'm going to fly over this at a very high level and happy to take questions about it later so there's two sort of main branches of the zoning and this the first is the land use uh component and so uh here at the top in this first box are a list there's a sort of list of permitted use categories everything from residential uses to arts and making office community uses which we're sort of broadly defining as things like child care health care libraries schools elder care facilities that sort of thing uh convenience and service so all those sort of uses that make living in an urban environment convenient uh and enjoyable as well as entertainment amenity and hotel uses so light manufacturing in many cases is included in that making category um what is not permitted is uh heavy manufacturing and logistics so think large warehouses or uh industrial uses that produce particularly noxious waste or output that simply aren't compatible with the residential neighborhoods that exist up the hill today or that will exist uh in theory if this district is is approved and uh low density residential uses are not at the moment contemplated for the district next slide charles could you comment on what um as of right means oh yes this is sorry um this is planner speak for as of right means uh one would be able to develop any of these uses um without meeting any other conditions uh of the let's say the development review board or the design advisory board it essentially means that all of these uses are allowed um easily and without any constraints uh next slide please the other large branch aside from land use is dealing with urban form and so this uh this zoning district takes what we're calling a form code light approach uh informed by form code we mean typically if you're if you're familiar with the downtown zoning uh regulations they are what we call a form code that have very prescriptive design standards for the way that buildings and landscapes must be constructed and built and maintained this approach takes a little bit of a lighter touch we are looking to regulate the sort of masks and size of buildings the the arrangement of buildings on lots the amount and type of open space and the way that buildings are sort of organized within the district as well as how uh parking uh could be uh situated and constructed in the district uh next slide please um this is a list of questions that we received uh at our first city council summary of the proposed zoning district i'm happy to answer them later if you'd like me to answer them now i can do that as well but this is just to say that these are all things that are on our minds and that we are um looking forward to continue discussing with the city council and i'll get to the next steps regarding this zoning framework in just a bit but there's all sorts of questions here about the amount of housing that will be provided um what sort of uses will exist in the district how can we guarantee that the district will be affordable and sustainable and achieve the sort of lofty goals that the community has for the city and its in its future um and um you know what does this mean for manufacturing and industrial users in the south end specifically in burlington generally as well as an overarching question about the boundary of the proposed district andy i don't know if you want me to go into more detail about the answers here now or just save it for later i'm happy to do i want to want to focus on any of those questions right now well before charles moves on are we going to talk about the height at some point i will yes i will i will get to height in just a moment actually at a high level uh no pun intended so um any other questions about this one comments okay next slide i will happy to come back to this one um so these next couple slides are going to talk about some of the more recent discussions we have had had at the planning commission and have had with the city council and expect to continue to have uh with the city council and its ordinance committee uh so the land use framework that i mentioned earlier so this is how the planning commission proposed it coming out of their deliberations and so this is the the land use framework as in the draft amendment today and that will go in front of the city council's ordinance committee next month if you go to the next slide this is the initially proposed land use framework that staff feels more strongly adheres to the vision of plan btv south end we respect the planning commission's perspective and um look forward to having this discussion but what this framework would have done is created uh actually three categories of use so permitted so going back to that as a right definition so these permitted uses would be permitted without any sort of conditions or limitations and those are residential uses arts and making uses which includes some light manufacturing office uses and those community uses like child care health care library schools etc uh and then there's the second category of limited use of permitted uses that are allowed but in a more limited way and the way that we proposed to limit them uh or limit their development would be to say that let's say if you know if one wanted to construct uh or implement a 1000 square foot restaurant which would be within uh this limited category they would have to do half that amount or 500 square feet of one of those non-residential uses in that first bucket so for example a 1000 square foot restaurant or a tavern health studio would require 500 square feet of art studios or office or child care again ultimately the planning commission decided to combine these two categories into one permitted sort of as a right group we do suspect that this is going to be a topic of conversation um we've had questions about this from from a few city counselors already and so we're keeping this we're presenting this to you tonight not to say that we disagree with the planning commission but to say that if you follow along with this amendment over the next few months you're likely to hear uh this come up uh next slide so building height um building height was one of the other topics that we discussed uh with the planning commission at length and that the city council has already raised is something that we'd like to get into we've heard a lot of feedback and input from the community both for taller buildings and in opposition to taller buildings and so what the zoning amendment does is proposes a map that you see on the right that would regulate height so all of those areas that are depicted in red would allow buildings up to eight stories or 85 feet all of those in yellow would be up to 65 feet six stories and all those areas in blue four stories 45 feet so everything along kind street uh up to a depth of 100 feet would be limited to four stories if you go beyond that the next 100 foot layer can permit up to six stories and then once you get 200 feet into the properties at least north of lakeside avenue you can go up to eight stories south of lakeside avenue where the Champlain Parkway will be coming through eight-story buildings are proposed to be permitted right along the parkway and then stepping down toward the lakeside neighborhood in the rail corridor you go from six stories to four stories in addition to height the zoning amendment does regulate building bulk and there's a few ways that it does that so one is by limiting the floor plate or footprint of a building to 15 000 square feet just for reference the Miller center building down there on lakeside avenue within the proposed district is about that it's just under 15 000 square feet for more reference if you're familiar with downtown the new the Champlain's building at 194 st paul street is about 30 000 square feet so a building about half that size would be the maximum within the district and the goal there is to produce multiple smaller buildings rather than a small number of very large buildings which increases the visual permeability of the district allows more sight lines through the district allows more pathways and passageways for pedestrians and cyclists and air as well light and air into and out of the district next slide before you before you go on can i just clarify something about that map yes so i'm seeing the barge canal i'm seeing jackson terris um callahan park that that piece that sticks up along the barge canal and by jackson terris you're talking about four or six story buildings where would those go so that's a great question andy you're you're probably familiar with the institutional controls or for some of the super phone sites or the brownfield sites the contaminated sites for those uh accustomed to these planning terms um residential uses are very tough to develop on those brownfield sites because of contamination issues and the infeasibility of construction residences on brownfields but yes the the say that the that sort of top leg that you mentioned the the top half of it i think jovial king is here to speak later to her own development proposal for that site and obviously assuming her development goes through there won't be any uh four or six story buildings on that site um you know haven't seen her most recent site plan but i i suspect there's no such buildings because they're not allowed today um but yes um it would be that top half the the the lower half of that leg is included in the proposed district but we understand the development there particularly taller development is unlikely there are other sort of engineering and geotechnical reasons why taller buildings would be very difficult to produce on these properties uh they're very heavy and they could push down some of the contamination and help it leech out into the soils and water which nobody wants here so that's i hope that answers your question andy thank you charles can i do another map question yeah why did you even include it i don't understand why you included that part on mine street when you can't build on it with residential or heavy buildings well one reason is that we typically don't like to produce sort of spot zoning or leapfrog over properties with the same zoning um so that's why it's all one contiguous area um there are many portions of the city whereas zoning will allow things technically but the feasibility of development is quite limited thanks no sense thank you can i do i don't know how long the answer will be but i'll give 10 seconds but the the bottom of the red section of the map is there any particular reason why that little Idaho shaped piece doesn't have any height that's the Champlain Parkway okay it's just wider in one area okay thanks yeah we put a 20-story building right there on top of the park no that's not it all right i think we can move on yeah we've got barriers down on the bottom on series line there all right so the recommendations for height are based on a few things community input and so this is a board uh that combines the input that we heard at our in-person public meeting and our virtual public meeting last summer uh the green circles are first priority or first place votes um blue and yellow or second and third and red are votes that are to say that people did not prefer that item and you can see that a mix of four six and eight stories was the sort of clear winner here and so that's why the proposal includes that height map also contemporary best practice a mix of building heights does produce a more comfortable micro climate within urban districts i mentioned earlier the permeability of districts for light and air and passes ways that's one reason and we'll also say that that interplay of some of those other bulk standards and height standards well are intended to create a walkable and ecologically sensitive district and so it's really trying to get at this mix of building heights uh that you see downtown that you see in many new districts uh in north america europe and and asia in particular next slide so next steps here the city council's ordinance committee will be taking this up uh at at a date to be determined in mid april i want to say that maybe april 19th is the most likely date although again that's not certain um if you're not already uh on our mailing list for the innovation district i can share a link in the chat when i'm done and you can go to our website and and ask to be uh added to that mailing list uh and then following the you know uh ordinance committee could talk about this for uh some time and then the city council the full city council will take it up uh likely through this early summer at least uh next slide so the coordinated south end redevelopment here is a is a i'll show the properties on the next slide but this is a an initiative the mayor announced last month in a press release uh the goals of this are to to coordinated development across the three property owners those being the city uh sampling college and a group um uh rider bike llc which controls 125 lakeside avenue and the goals here are to try and get it an optimal land use mix across the three users uh wastewater and stormwater infrastructure decisions and implementation as well as those for streets paths parking and then also to come up some strategies for a range of building types which i think clearly as you saw from the last slide uh is the sort of objective and intent of the community next slide uh this next slide shows a map of the three properties in blue here in the middle so on looking at this map on the right um the 68 sears lane is is that property that sort of looks like it's split in half by wooded area and then sort of piles of of gravel uh and then 125 lakeside being the larger of the two parking lots and then across what is what is planned to be the parkway is the sampling college property with the miller center there the sort of top corner so that that's the site of the coordinated redevelopment next slide so um next week we will be uh introducing a public engagement plan and a project website uh there will be a public open house uh for the projects uh in mid april sometime a date also to be determined within the next few days and we'll put that on the website and then this summer there will be another public workshop on two to three development framework scenarios that are being produced uh just now um some early work finished up last week and now some consultants uh in the city and each of the parties are going forward in developing some some conceptual development framework scenarios that might guide development in the future and then fall early winter is a final development framework and potential development agreement there will be another public touch point um at that point so the summer is really the time to for us to collect input on on the development framework scenarios next slide just real quickly on the multimodal transit center so this was a feasibility study that the chitin county regional planning commission completed in 2022 uh that looked at the physical and logistic feasibility of combined transit center and parking structure and right now we're really just processing this study and determining what the city's needs are regarding transit and parking uh and will if necessary and and uh deem desirable incorporate uh some of that work into the ongoing MOU work around that coordinated redevelopment uh that's all I have um I will share in the chat the links to the multimodal transit center website that's on cc rp's website as well as the south end uh innovation district website and again the the website for the coordinated redevelopment will be up uh next week all right thank you Charles questions heroine it's uh 68 series lane where you planned but the multimodal the multimodal center uh there are no plans today to construct the multimodal transit center that was just a feasibility study um it's can't I don't think anybody at the city is ready ready to commit to constructing either a transit center or a large parking structure Charles what in what way does um a hotel fit into the I saw a hotel and and keep popping up as a as a permitted use in this um innovation district given the pressure on housing given the sort of pressure toward um or sort of inevitable pressure toward gentrification in this new redeveloped area how does a hotel actually um fit into that yeah that's a good question Andy and that was a topic of discussion early on in particular um we heard both sides of the argument here and ultimately decided to include hotels but with a limitation I should have mentioned this earlier that a hotel can occupy or could occupy if this is approved no more than 80 percent of any building in which it's located um the the arguments for hotels are that there is a lack of hotel space in Burlington um with the uh short term rental legislation that was passed last year there is there are fewer places to stay um which I think many would agree is a good thing in the community it's protecting affordability and increasing the supply of housing for residents but one effect of that has been that it is placed even more constraint on the low supply of hotel rooms um we also heard arguments that hotels are needed for recruitment of businesses particularly we heard this from Pula that when they're trying to recruit businesses or employees or employers they're having a hard time finding places for them to stay when they come visit Champlain College has also talked about a need for some hotel space particularly for things like parents weekend and some other times of the year when they have a particular sort of influx of visitors those are the arguments for hotels but yes I think the concerns about you know introducing hotels in the district given you know their likelihood to to be you know like you said encouraging things like gentrification and maybe not being completely consistent with the sort of arts and manufacturing goals the district those were raised ultimately the planning commission decided to include them with that limitation other questions we'll do one more go back to my same topic so you know I was embarrassed to not realize that the Champlain Parkway was in the middle of that height map but now now that you explained it I wondered why there wasn't any setback like for Pine Street with that particular road you're like you had like two levels of height setback from Pine and oh right yeah so um typically you know the Champlain Parkway will be a road where there is some traffic probably traffic like that exists today on Pine Street it is best practice and as practice generally across particularly in Europe on heavily trafficked roads to place taller buildings to protect the interiors of districts from noise and air pollution that was the primary reason and um allowing you know limiting building heights along the parkway would encourage noise pollution air pollution to enter the interior of the district the taller buildings could also in theory protect the lakeside neighborhood from traffic noise and pollution from the parkway and vice versa going up the hill there as well so that's why they're proposed there also to protect you know the the lakeside neighborhood the character of lakeside neighborhood uh that's why the the height steps down there and and to to encourage the type of density and the amount of housing units that the city envisions here uh encourage allowing those taller buildings at the core is one way to do that right not to say skyline other questions either online or here I my I have a question whether jovial king is is actually here for the next session I don't see her in the room or online so hi jovial okay just just checking in here all right thank you for cori um other questions for charles before we let him go so charles um just generally the next time that people uh officially have uh something to say about this um innovation district proposal is when so the ordinance committee will be mid april I think it will be the 19th but stay tuned on that date the coordinated redevelopment the open house will be mid april as well probably right around then and I would say that coordinated redevelopment meeting is also a venue to raise points about the district in general the proposed district and is the am I wrong in thinking that basically one of the things that we're doing is moving form-based code down to the south end uh yes a lighter version of the form-based code yes all right well thank you very much charles um thank you andy I will share those links in the chat all right thank you all right jovial hi it's your turn I'm here to tell you there's going to be no six-story buildings built by the barge canal so no worries there please please introduce yourself and and uh tell us what you're talking about awesome um my name is jovial king I live in the north end and I am the developer which is a funny title that I still haven't adopted for myself um of the uh bath house the Nordic bath house named silt that's going at 453 pine um across from the barge canal area so I'm just here to give um sort of a you know a quick update I gave a fuller presentation a few months ago and I'm happy to come back um if there is a lot of questions in addition but I just kind of wanted to loop folks in um about where we are with the project since this was the topic um of the evening for discussion so if people haven't heard about the project we're building a community gathering space and a Nordic inspired bath house um at 453 pine um which is the lot um just across from dealer.com that's been that open field for a very long time it is a brownfield and we are receiving six million dollars worth of state funding from the governor for his initiative initiative to re um you know to redo brownfields and to bring them you know create better community spaces and what have been sort of abandoned areas so the project is moving along it's a slow process with all of the remediation planning and we're working with the state and with a few different um engineering teams to um build out the plan for the development and and the remediation of that land um so I do have some news that's sort of breaking news for you guys this evening that we haven't shared publicly yet um and that is that the bowling alley is no longer going to be part of the development so it's just going to be the bath house um the surrounding kind of garden areas and a commercial building right on the corner so um for you bowling enthusiasts I'm sure there'll be a great amount of disappointment um I'm feeling disappointed too um and for the lovers of open space uh won't name names over there um we'll probably be happy with you know a more green open space that's a bit less developed so you know building it's very expensive right now um it's hard to kind of really make these projects pencil out and work and it's very tricky working with the city and the state you know really needing to have a very strong plan to be able to use these funds and push this project forward so that's really the big update um so we're sort of we've been in a little bit of a pause the last few months as we've had to re figure out the site plans for moving the um bath house a little bit more to the north to kind of center it on the on the site and then the little commercial building that is on the north end next to the maltex building is going to grow a little bit bigger than it was I think it was slated to be about 4 000 square feet and it's now going to be about 7 000 square feet so um we're going to have those that commercial building will be probably you know either artist space or retail space and we'd love to have it also focused on health and wellness so the whole site development will be a little bit more focused on that element of health and wellness so happy to answer any questions around that shift and I don't have a site plan for you tonight because we're redoing it right now in light of these changes um so you guys are sort of the first to know of these changes um and I'm happy to come back next month or in the coming months and and and give you more updates with the new site plan so right now um we're looking to get our first set of permits um around the first weekend may um and there'll be a lot of you know public comment period around that um and then we it's um and then we have to kind of go through the whole eco process this whole remediation process um planning process and that's going to take many many months um lots and lots of reviews and it's looking like our newest updated timeline is that we're going to be breaking ground um not in the fall as we had planned but most likely in the early spring so march april and that's actually you know very new news um that was just finalized at our weekly engineering call environmental call this morning so we guys have some fresh off the press news here um for the neighborhood so i'm happy to share it with you and happy to answer any questions but that's sort of the general update since my last update to npa so i'm happy to answer questions carolyn yeah hi jovial hi i'm just telling us some of the pieces and parts to this plan i am very very excited about it but just let him know some of the the ideas and i think are you still doing green roofs yeah we are great on the areas that we are able to do because some of the you know the roofs are angled but we're trying to do green spaces as much as possible so thank you for the inspiration around that um yeah so if you haven't heard of the project before it's going to be um there's going to be four saunas um there's going to be a you know a large steam room so one community sauna and then three smaller saunas a large steam room and there's going to be multiple hot pools um the building is a 20 000 square foot building and all the facilities are actually outside um so it's in the um sort of you know it's the inspiration from all these facilities that are up in canada so for those of you that travel up to canada um to visit these they're wildly popular there's about 60 of them actually in the cobec province alone which is sort of unbelievable seven days just did a feature story on sort of this giant trend um about a month and a half ago and they covered five different the five facilities that are just downtown um montreal so really a you know it's a they're just a beautiful place to you know meet with community health and wellness focused um ours is really you know my i was the founder and owner of urban moonshine um so i'm an herbalist by training and so that's really my my love and passion is from the botanical place um you know perspective so it's both nordic inspired and botanical inspired so we're gonna have a lot of gardens um in the back and there's going to be so again you kind of come into the lobby you know you check into your locker and then you really go outside and so you um experience the elements you know no matter what season it is there's you know you jump into the hot water you kind of you know run over the cold plunge you know get into the sauna there's napping rooms relaxation areas um and the big thing right now is that you know we really want this to be a community space that's accessible and at the same time you know we we are going to be relying on tourists too to really make the project pencil out and that's sort of how it is in vermont you know we're a small tiny population and we get 13 million tourists that come on an annual basis to the state so we're really kind of figuring out you know how do we work with membership how do we work with local discounts to make sure that it's accessible for folks and that we can make the project work and really take advantage of you know the busy times and and the you know the peak seasons and weekends um for for the out of town folks all right thank you thank you i can go on for hours but hopefully that gives you a little a little taste of of the facilities uh leon joney and then uh leena i'm wondering about the um heat source what we'll be fueling so we're so we're looking at geothermal um and it was a real question this is not my area of expertise so sorry if i butcher it but um we were concerned we're wondering if we could do it or not because of the brownfield and that there's something about kind of open wells or closed wells and it looks like they've been really spending a lot of time you know looking into it with the engineers and they think that we're able to do the closed loop system so it doesn't affect any of the groundwater um so we're really excited that that is a possibility for this facility so that is the plan it's not going to be able to handle all of our needs because i guess it you know geothermal only gets so hot or there's only so much sort of heat that you can get off of geothermal and so but it should be able to handle a significant amount of our energy needs and then otherwise we'll lean electric you know as much as possible um but we were given we've been talking to the fire marshal and there is going to be some wood use also because i would really would would love to have some wood sauna um ability you know that's just a very traditional way it's very vermont um so there'll just be a lot of mindfulness about when we would be burning wood you know making sure that's not going to affect the neighborhood in a negative manner but mostly it should be geothermal and electric thank you yeah you know hello um i recently read about a super fun site i grew up near in brooklyn the guanis canal um there is so much contamination the guanis canal it's a higher grade of contamination than what i believe is in the barge canal but similar situation and the brooklyn shuffleboard club which is located just a few blocks away had to shut down because they found out that they were exposing all of the people in the shuffleboard club which sees thousands of people every week to some airborne contamination because of the super fun site um worst were the workers who are in there every day i'm curious if you have plans to assess potential airborne contamination from the brownfield and how you're going to protect your workers and attendees from this kind of thing yeah great question it's all been assessed and there is no that i know of that i've been told of that the engineers have you know informed me of there is no airborne contamination so i've kind of went over this you know with them a number of times to have a better understanding of what the situation is and it's really the napple that's um you know down underneath you know it's in the it's capped um underneath that that barge canal um is really where the where the contaminants are so it's not just sort of floating around in the air um and actually they've done they're we haven't seen the report yet but they have um done an immense amount of soil testing as you might have seen you know driving by for the last six or eight months and the soils the soils are actually pretty normal so they were they we they we didn't really know what we were going to be you know getting ourselves into and they were like actually they're they're kind of just normal city soils like you know city park was a brownfield also just from kind of everything that is um content you know that the contamination that happens in in an urban area so there was actually less contamination and they had um i mean they've been doing testing for a long time so i don't want to say that there was less than they thought but there was no big surprises um when they did this this you know immense amount of testing there was one area that i think is the area in the southwest corner that is like that has a little bit more contamination than the area you know closer to pine street but that will all be public information um and and so and there'll be public you know hearings um and i'm happy to come back you know with some of the engineers in tow to really talk about that from but from my understanding different kind of contamination than an airborne situation other questions hi my name is emily piccarillo i live down here on scarf ab i have a question in terms of the remediation plans that you have jovial for the brownfield i mean if you're saying there's you don't anticipate airborne what kind of remediation is necessary according to your exchanges with engineers thanks so we don't have a remediation plan yet they have been taking soil samples and and sort of now analyzing all those samples to then present the remediation plan so we don't actually have one yet they're in process but what it sounds like is really just going to be pretty simple in the manner of removing contaminated soils and then making sure that we have a good stormwater plan and that we're not going to be affecting the way that water flows on that site and that there's not any excessive weight with the building so the way that they're going to build the foundations are going to be in a lighter manner than you might just kind of you know slap down a building and then the way that they prepare the parking lot is going to be um in a lighter manner than a normal parking lot so there is two different teams of engineers working on that um and it will be very much a public um you'll be able to sort of and and the public will be able to review their remediation plan my understanding right now is that it's really about soil removal and we're trying to remove as little as we can you know and keep as much sort of on-site um but anything that needs to be removed certainly will be removed and then we'll be bringing in fresh fill and then we'll just be building in a way that's very thoughtful um for that site and people have been really pleased with our plan for this site because it's very garden heavy it's very um it's a smaller building compared to some anything else that has ever been proposed here so and now that we don't have the bowling alley um we have half as much development as we previously did so um I hope that answers your question but basically there's more information to come is is the real answer Jovial when will those when will those um reports from stone environmental and western and samson be available um I haven't seen them yet so I I think that there's internal review I mean they're working on it right now um I don't know the date exactly um I think we're trying to go for our zoning permits May 1st and I believe they want to have those in hand for our zoning meetings um so I'm hoping by then and will they include what's going to happen with all this contaminated soil um I don't think so because I think that's phase two I think phase one is this is what we need to do and then phase two is you know this is how we're going to do it so I don't think that they're going to have all the answers um with this report but I think what they will know is how much soil they do need to remove right and so they're I think at that point they're going to say um you know this is our recommendation that X amount of soil is removed but I don't think they're going to say this is where it's going to go or this is how we're going to do it is my understanding it's like an important thing to include yeah totally and I agree but it's it's a really long tedious process and so it's very much this step by step by step I mean it's really it goes it's it's it's very slow and so they they don't really think that far you know it's very like one thing at a time um and I think I didn't you know there's been discussions of that but I don't think that's going to be decided until um the the set the next phase all right thank you jovial and I'm sure we'll have you back yeah anytime um all right thank you very much for coming okay thanks uh well our last um section of this meeting is uh has to do with another aspect of south end changes and specifically Burton the Burton higher ground development I did ask Justin Worcley if he wanted to come he's from Burton uh he said he didn't have much to report um so uh but we do have Laurie Smith and Greg are Gil from um uh Citizens for Responsible Zoning so give us an update okay and tell us tell us your names again and who you are and what Citizens for Responsible Zoning is okay I'm Laurie Smith and I live in Queen City Park in South Burlington um just over the border from Burlington and um Citizens for Responsible Zoning is an ad hoc group of neighbors in the surrounding neighborhoods that are have had concerns since first hearing about this project about the impacts that it can potentially have on a relatively quiet residential or a group of relatively quiet residential neighborhoods um for your for the benefit of people who might not know could you just sort of review very very quickly briefly even though it's not your project what is proposed for the Burton higher ground I will do that in talking about the current status Burton and higher ground have received um conditional use application from the city of Burlington and an act 250 permit from the environmental uh active 50 board both of those permits are being appealed the appeal is in the environmental court at this moment as permitted higher ground is approved to operate until 2 a.m 365 days a year with attendance of up to 1500 patrons uh the appeal of the conditional use and uh I said that one already April 18th uh is the scheduled beginning of the trial in environmental court and um after our last filing in environmental court Burton and higher ground reached out to discuss possible settlement uh discussions are currently ongoing but there's been no significant progress to date that's the general overview um I may have this written somewhere else but there have been conversations about how many days a week how many times a year how big the concerts will be etc and we can assume they will not have 365 concerts a year of 1500 people they have been unwilling to date to agree to any kind of limitation of concert size hours of operation or days of operation that's where it stands um I'm going to talk briefly about uh noise traffic and safety which are the primary concerns with regard to the project the current higher ground facility has had neighborhood noise complaints for over a decade higher ground's response has been these these are the people that are on this conversation about noise mitigation these are in email exchanges mic's off your mic is off we can't hear you on not for me but maybe others I don't know I can't hear it test test test can people hear me that's good thank you okay um higher ground conversation about noise mitigation the thousands of dollars that it would cost to soundproof this space would be well spent on lighting and video projection for both rooms which will be an asset over time to our income um and these are concerns that have been going on for over a decade in south burlington there's no indication that they will be significantly different in this new location um many residents are closer to the Burton campus than are to the existing higher ground campus the noise data provided by uh Burton's noise expert does not model breakout sound when the doors to the outdoor lounge are open which will be a common occurrence during performances um um and it is very clear from the noise data that has been developed so far that um especially the closest neighbors will have significant impacts from this in terms of traffic the Burton campus has 425 spaces parking spaces for vehicles according to higher ground analysis a sold-out concert will have a minimum of 500 cars for paid patrons plus vehicles for staff and performers added to vehicles for talent skate park and residual Burton employees proposed food court this will leave a minimum of 100 100 vehicles seeking parking in the surrounding neighborhoods and the federal highway estimates put vehicle minimum for 1500 person show at 600 or closer to 200 vehicles they won't have any place to park when they come to a sold-out concert um in the plan as it is now there are no sidewalks there are no dedicated bike lanes there are existing no crosswalks and the location is accessed via a one lane bridge that has had three significant accidents in the last year and a half with just the existing traffic as it stands without partying so that's a general overview of where we are um Gil has a few more things to add we'll take questions thank you the I mean there's a reason why this is a closer than I heard use the other one there's a reason why this is a combined group of um Burlington and South Burlington residents uh my neighbors in in Red Rocks condos there's what 20 units all of whom uh overlook the venue our bedroom outside wall is mostly windows and this time of year we can see where the venue is going to be um it's um I've been uh torn about this issue because I'm a musician and musicians deserve the opportunity to try to make a living as best they can but uh I've been struck by in terms of the the progress of this um issue I've been struck by burden and higher ground not showing us their decline to be the good neighbors that we would hope they'd be so I think that pretty much sums it up the one other thing I will add is I do have some flyers here for anybody that's interested that pertains specifically to the noise issues with the potential venue other than that we're open to questions Carolyn hi who are the owners who are the owners of higher ground the owners of higher ground are Alan Newman and Alex Carruthers wasn't Alex the one that was going to do the following yes I have I have a question for you um so in terms of city regulation um is your lawsuit and I'm assuming that it is a lawsuit from from crz right from a group of yes um is the is the only thing that stands between since the reg since it's been permitted it's gone through act 250 the only thing that stands between uh us and this project just going through is that right there's no other regulatory hoops that they have to go through they have received their permits um there are it's in litigation so I can't really speak too much to the content but there are uh strongly little grounds that are that are being addressed and it's very likely that if this goes to trial um if we prevail it's very likely that Burton and higher ground will appeal to the Supreme Court and likewise if we don't win it's likely that we may do the same so this may not be the end and uh it would be wonderful if we were getting good neighbors yeah yes Laurie I just have one brief comment can you hear me can you guys hear hear me okay I just have one brief comment um because I I I see both sides uh lover of the arts and music sad to see that building sitting empty for so long uh walk there just about every day um there are all of the other businesses on that that strip are good citizens they have lots of employees manufacturing it's very active and yet uh it it's it's a still a peaceful area you know business is not bad there I'm very sad very sad um that Alan and others that are involved in this uh mess can't come together that you're even discussing that you would go to the Supreme Court it's just it's mind boggling that after all this time that people can't get together and figure this one out it's a total waste for me um I would love to see um Burton and higher ground be better neighbors to each other it just it's I'm not involved with it and obviously you guys are um but I'm sad to hear it I share your sorrow now I'm uh Carolyn wants to say something is there anybody else because you've had a lot of opportunity to talk Carolyn anybody else with a question for uh Laurie and Gil Greg yeah good evening I live uh in the general area and uh more an observation than a question you hear a lot of people complain about act 250 and how it really uh is a stranglehold on development uh it seems kind of shocking based upon the traffic issues the sound issues the conflicting use within the neighborhoods that the act 250 permit would have passed is there any way that you can give a quick summary as to the the court's hearing or justification on that I'm assuming that they heard evidence uh which you've talked about already thank you um I can say that uh we and our attorney were very surprised by the act 250 ruling and um have some areas of strong disagreement with it and those are things that are being addressed in the in the continued process and one more thing I will add is um I hear so much bad press about act 250 and how it delays development I've been a developer in my life and I have seen act 250 work flawlessly for projects that are well designed and implemented and executed with the community and without act 250 many local people just have no voice so I I'm really appreciative of what it affords us Carolyn what do you want to say always I guess my mind just keeps going doesn't Burlington oh yeah sorry doesn't Burlington have have rules for sound I think isn't downtown you're not allowed to am seven days a week are you Burlington has a noise ordinance and in fact um that's one of the issues that's being discussed what what is the noise ordinance the noise ordinance as it is written is uh an organization cannot produce noise that is plainly audible at the property line between the hours of 10 p.m and 7 a.m that's what I thought so how did they allow this that's they're that's a long conversation um and I'd be happy to have it with you but it it doesn't make much sense it makes zero sense totally different rules yeah but we're in Burlington right with this yes it is Burlington and um I mean it sounds like Burlington broke broke rules that they shouldn't have broken it's complicated yeah I hear you but it shouldn't have happened I'm with Laurie thank you Laurie and Gil thank you everyone who has come tonight both online and in person I'm sorry that you online or didn't get to eat this delicious food but come down to 645 Pine Street on April 20th our next meeting um and we'll guarantee that there'll be more food and um thank you very much uh Charlie thank you Sam uh and um see you uh next month thank you Andy