 Yeah, they would choose. They haven't chosen this. The thing they want is that they take room. And I've been told this by my mother-in-law who didn't start because of school. And they still say that it takes a lot of time. So he's already out of the grammar school. Now it doesn't matter. They're trying to sell the grammar school. It's still sitting there. So it's up to the definition of middle school. I figure by ten of you, you set it up. It'll be a good one. So that's what they say. But it is something that we're going to wonder around. But where, yeah. It's going to be over on Market Street, isn't it? It's on Market Street, right next to Cross City Senior. It's right across the street. Which one? Who knows. I don't know which one to eat. I know that at the library there is a model. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the problem. We should just show you one now. Big one, right? Put an X on the tooth. Well, that's not a big one. You're getting on the area. It's like this, you know. Oh, that's why we're here. That's the first place I've ever been to this. I mean, it's kind of real. I mean, they had that ad in the other paper that said, you know what, they started listing a bunch of things and I got a bunch of them. They haven't decided. I'm going to show up. Well, I just put in somebody wrote along. Yeah. Oh, I know. I said, thank you. Because I would say the word would be cool. No problem. That's fine. Okay, what do you got to just put in? I can't say. There you go. I just put it in. Okay. You need more. I need more. Oh, he lived in... Well, we had a place. Then we moved down here in June. And then the summer started. Right. We came up. Oh, geez. There's tons of schools. Every school had a school. It's the only place I've ever been to. No school. That's right. You're right. You're the edge. But no. I'm coming and it's not a public school where kids can go just the right way. You got money? Yeah. Is this the end of the week? No. The day after, they can't keep it up. It's fine. It's fine. Okay. I'll return to the office. Okay. How about this week? I'll answer this. Okay. Okay. No. Okay. You're right. Yeah. There's the promoter. Okay. I'll answer this. Okay. Next week. No, we could see the water, the pool was in our yard, let's see, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. It's about half the size of my house. So I spent most of the summer staring at things going here and here. Should I throw this out or should we put it in storage? What should we do with this thing? If it has to go to storage, throw it out. That's not a bad idea. What nice things here go, it's like it doesn't fit in. I hope they don't make it into the store. I have to deal with this. It's goodwill. Yes, it's been working. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. Thank you all for coming tonight to this open forum on the needs of recreation in our community. Tom Hubbard has been with the city for 40 years. For many of those years he was director of the department. Tom, how long has the community been talking about having some type of indoor recreation facility? The earliest I remember of really normalizing the process was back in the mid-90s. I think by 1998 we had our first proposal that went to the council for the consideration of an indoor rec center. So it's been a while and a good 20 years. More recently back in about 2013 we had another committee set up that Bobby Maynes chaired that looked at public facilities in city center to include a city hall library and recreation facility. That study is available for any member of the public to look at. More recently we began to talk in earnest with the driven by the recreation and parks committee about finally getting down to understanding what the public might want by way of an indoor recreation facility. And Jennifer is here and Jennifer has been the chair of that committee during this time when Jennifer Copeland. And it's with the, under the auspices of the committee that we're here tonight to talk about this. Our focus tonight and the object of this meeting is to hear from members of the public as to if we were to have an indoor recreation facility. If we were to build this in this community, what is it that the community would like to see by way of programs? What are those things that you would like to be able to do in an indoor recreation facility in South Burlington? Obviously there are some private commercial indoor facilities that are very fine facilities. But the space for South Burlington residents to do indoor recreational activities in a public facility is quite limited. Holly struggles, Holly and her team struggle to find places for adults to do adult basketball, adult sports activity for preschool folks to be able to find maker space and do other programs. And so we're really trying to find out what is it that the public would like to see if the decision was made to move forward in an indoor recreation facility. We have retained with the, with the approval of the city council, we have retained Freeman French Freeman, a local architectural firm to help us with this discussion and with some preliminary designs. That work will be ongoing and will be informed by what we're going to talk about tonight. We're very pleased to have Joel Bergman with us tonight, BHNA out of Boston. Joel has spent many years doing exactly this type of work, helping communities to really understand what the recreational needs are and how they can be accommodated in facilities either indoor or outdoor. Holly Reese is with us tonight. Holly is the current director of the department of recreation and parks and also has many years of experience working in the department because she started when she was seven. 16. 16. And so there's a lot of expertise in the room, but the real expertise lies with you. And so we hope tonight that you will share your views with us as to what you would like to see if the city were to move forward with such a facility. So with that, I think we're going to go right to Joel's had a full day starting at 8.30 this morning and multiple groups he's met with already. Joel, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go through some pictures quickly and then I'm going to come back to the beginning, but I think the pictures will help frame some of the questions that we're hoping folks might begin to answer for us. What we're doing is was just to repeat it a little bit is what is it that people are telling us but also how do you put a metric on these needs. So when people are saying we need a court or we need courts, how do we determine how many that that is and that's what's going on in the next couple of weeks and months. The project site is Veterans Memorial Park. Here's the ice arena that's there and the site is envisioned to be on the sort of leeward side of the ice arena. That's a bit closer view. You can see where the existing turnaround is in the park. This isn't a design, but it's just to show you what we're trying to work with a little bit. These two boxes are the ice arena and the concept is to put some sort of a new recreation facility that would connect to the ice arena at its existing door and make a more comprehensive solution. And we don't know how big this multi-court area is and that's really part of the discussion along with some of the support areas that go around it. But the trick is to define this and then figure out how to put it on the site so that when you put parking in, you don't as a building grows over the next 20, 30 years. If it ever gets expanded, we don't have to take out parking. And you can think about the future because obviously today people don't afford everything that you may want to do 30 or 40 or 50 years down the road. So it's a matter of thinking about this today, but planning for the long term. So I'm just going to go through these quickly. The core of a rec center and we tend to call them centers for active living or active living environments or they're not just recreation centers. They have a stronger mission of dealing with the community from the child to the oldest senior. And there's not an excuse for anyone to say the facility is not designed for me. Our job is to find out what those needs are and adapt the design so that all those age groups can use it. So it does start with a sort of practical basketball court and we've identified today a huge, huge need for basketball courts in the community. There's been a lot of discussion about having an indoor walking. We call them indoor sidewalks. And what it is is it's really a wider track that looks down over the basketball area. It's an area in the wintertime. You can have strollers, wheelchairs, joggers, but it's not a competition court. So that's sort of the core of the program that's been decided, discussed. And the trick sort of is how many of these do you need and what different kinds of courts do you need? This is an example sort of showing two things. We're not doing the super large 200 meter competition track. It's that indoor sidewalk. But you could do courts. A lot of what we talk about is what's the floor in these surface in these gyms. Here's a wood floor. There's a synthetic floor. They have different purposes, different needs. And what we're trying to do is figure out from the community what those different needs are. I said we want to serve everybody just because we put a cord in for the basketball folks. Doesn't mean you can't play pickleball in it for youngsters or senior citizens or any age group that wants to use it. So it's a multi-use floor by definition. But you can also do pickleball on a resilient floor that's not wood. And now you can play, you can have preschoolers come in here on hot wheels. You can have preschoolers play street hockey. You can have adults play broom hockey, street hockey, whatever you want. You have a more flexible, different kind of floor that's not a wood floor. So we're trying to understand with these flashcards what folks think about the programs that should be in this building. You can also do truly synthetic floors that are forgiving. You can even play tennis on that kind of a floor. And finally, one thing that we're doing a lot of is these turf facilities. See, it's the same size as a basketball court, but you just put astroturf from edge to edge of the room. And now you have a lacrosse area, whoops, sorry. You can play lacrosse, you can play indoor soccer, you can play golf with nets. You can have batting cages. What you want to do is it's really easy to think about the turf facility. What we're trying to do is what goes in the building for storage? What goes in the building for nets? What goes in the building for other things so that you can use the rooms that we create, the core rooms for as many different age groups and as many different programs as possible. So you take that square room, you can play lacrosse, you can put a wall ball in there for lacrosse practice. You can really make it flexible. A gym floor is great, but it's also nice to have a room about this size, maybe a little bit larger, that's acoustically separate, so you can have dance, you can have aerobics, you can have Jazzercise, you can turn up the volume and you don't bother the entire rest of the gym. So you're going to have a high volume activity, a high intensity activity, and a nice floor so that it's a very forgiving space. So this is something that's been talked about over the years of adding to the gym program. One community that we worked with just recently sort of thought outside the box. They took exactly this room and said, well, I do want to do fitness, I might want to do wrestling on there, but what if I put a lighting rig, I could also use it for some performing arts programs. So it's a matter of saying, well, we have these rooms, how do we adapt it so it can be the most flexible, most efficient, most cost-effective solution for South Burlington. Another way to do this community type room, the movement studio, is to make it with a synthetic floor, it's still a sprung floor, resistant, resilient, but it can also be a classroom. So now when you have a basketball team, you have a basketball tournament, at halftime the garage doors can come up, the teams can run in here, have halftime, whiteboards. You can close these partitions, have two teams in there. So again, it's how do we take a room? How do we take a gym? How do we take your facility and make it as efficient and flexible as possible? The last image is a makerspace. There's been some discussion. We've heard what's the new arts and crafts room? New arts and crafts are digital printers, digital media. You can still do painting, you can still do sculpture, but it's a more robust arts and crafts type program space for a recreation department. And then last, on the inside program, we'd love to hear, when you go to the rec center, do you want to go to the locker rooms? If you go to the Center for Active Living, do you need to change, or are you going to go home and change there? Because every square foot we spend in the lockers is a square foot that's not spent in the activity space. So there's been a lot of discussion about this today. And then the last thing is there's a huge opportunity being in Veterans Park, which is just beautifully maintained, that the building doesn't have to just be enclosed. In summer time, with your summer camp programs, it can open out, so that if there's, I understood today, there are 50 different summer programs for kids. You can come in and inclement whether the building has sort of a connection to its outside. So with that, I'm going to go back to the beginning and we can sort of go through these and we're interested in hearing what folks have to say about what you want, what you need, and how we might adapt this facility. So do I have any takers on that? There's one here and I think there's a front one as well. So let's maybe go through it from the beginning again. How do folks feel about whether we make it? You could have four basketball courts, so it becomes a very basketball-centric facility. There's a huge demand we can see in the community for recreational basketball that's not currently met. But we can also do a range, of course. I'm thinking, are there thoughts about how that's done? Yes, sir? I'm sorry. Just a question about the basketball courts. I guess I'm not a basketball player, so bear with me. We have five schools and five basketball courts and that's not enough? That's a question tonight, but the question is, that's a decision to be made between the school district and the city council. What we're here tonight is, assuming that it's not enough, what would you like to see in this facility? If you're not a basketball player, maybe you do something else and there's a floor that works better for your activity than wood does. And the other suggestion I would have, I like the idea of a walking track. I belong to a racquet's edge, I use their walking track, I use their tennis courts. And the only question is, shouldn't there be a shield? Otherwise, people will be stopping just watching a basketball game on the track. That's something that people actually like to do is stand up there and watch the basketball game. Well, they're not going to do it at racquet's edge. So it's a good point. I mean, one thing you want to do is you always want the track to be available even when there's some sort of other activity below because the track is meant to be open and accessible to all. You know, I will say that part of our job is to answer that first question you had and we did meet with the school groups today and we'll be getting to understand that scheduling dilemma of why there are more courts required than are currently available. Are there any thoughts about the different floor surfaces, you know, versus yes ma'am? Okay, so I'm a pickleball player. But I'm not convinced that wood is the best flooring for any of those sports because wood gets dead spots and it gets warped. Can you tell us a little more about this? This is an acrylic floor and it's tile and it goes on the same subfloor that the wood floor would go on. So it has the give to it. It doesn't quite perform the same way for basketball as a wood floor does. It's close. You can see they play basketball in that facility, but it's a little bit more slippery. The ball doesn't bounce this quite the same because it's not exactly the same magnitude of density in the material. So you can use it, but for a good number of sports, the wood floor is sort of the most forgiving of all surfaces for intensive activities. Yeah, there was a third one. What was the third one? The third one is the synthetic, so this is grass, synthetic grass. No. And that's on a rubber mat, so it's a very forgiving floor as well, but that's more for soccer and field hockey and lacrosse and other types of indoor events. Locally, a good example of synthetic floors over at the Ross Sports Center at St. Michael's if you happen to have been there. Not their main gym, but they have three courts similar to what was shown here. That's a synthetic surface. So if you're looking for a local frame of reference, there's at least one floor. I mean, the wood floor has been in place for 33 years. The synthetic glass for 50 years, I mean. It's for the camera and the audience as well. So it's important that people hear what you have to say. So my concern was the cost of these floorings. I mean, are some much more expensive? I'm assuming wood would be the most expensive and have the least shelf life, I would assume. Well, the wood is more expensive, but surprisingly there's not a huge difference in cost. In other words, the communities that are making the decisions don't generally make it based on cost. They make it based on performance because, you know, it might be $2 or $3 a square foot difference. The wood floor will last 30 to 50 years. It does need to be refinished every several years. So somewhere between two and five years, you'll resurface these. The trick in this is to design adequate mud rooms. And we usually have viewing corridors. So parents and visitors can see into the gym without bringing their dirty shoes. And you want to keep only athletic shoes in here and keep all the other traffic out. So we can extend that life. The synthetic floors, for example, this one, this has a 10-year life cycle. So it's not nearly as good as wood, but in that 10 years you don't have to refinish it. It's just there and then it begins to deteriorate. The acrylics have about a 20-year. They're synthetic, so the emulsions in them will dry out and that'll need to be replaced. And synthetic turf, generally, when you see it outside, it has about a 10-year life cycle. Inside it'll have a little bit longer because it's not getting ultraviolet light. But if it's heavily used, it'll have to be a 10 to 15-year life cycle. You've met with some other stakeholder groups during the day. I'd be curious getting back to the locker rooms. What kind of feedback have you gotten on whether to have great locker rooms or not because they are pretty expensive locker rooms and showers? So could you share some of the feedback that you've received so far? We'd love to get more tonight. The feedback in general is that there's a group of folks that are some pickleball players, and it's not all retirees, so they may come play pickleball in the morning and go to work. And those folks tend to want to have a shower or a locker room. There's a basketball component that may come before work or may come at lunchtime. Or there are other groups that may come during lunchtime and use the facility, and it's thought if they're coming from work that it would be good to have some showers. Having a huge locker room to serve 100 or 200 kids at a tournament wasn't really felt to be needed. Most basketball teams that come, if it's local city or AAU teams, they'll come dressed, ready to play, and then they'll go either back to the hotel or back to their home if it's a tournament or a local game and change there. I know some sports are a little different. We find in hockey there's a little bit more changing of after an event, but in most of our community centers, recreation centers of this type, the locker rooms are relatively downplayed, and that's what we heard a lot of today. So I think what we also heard a lot is that there needs to be some private changing rooms for seniors, for disabled users, for the most accessible facility, gender-neutral facilities, facilities that a referee can go in and change and not be in a group facility. So what we heard most of is the need for smaller independent changing rooms to serve a variety of special conditions in the facility. And I would say that there's a big push to make the building universally accessible, and I know there's an adaptive sports event truck at the ice arena for making the ice accessible to those that are disabled, and the goal would be to make these programs fully accessible as well. If I may, and I don't mean any criticism here, but it seems to me that we're putting the cart before the horse here if we're talking about floors and locker rooms. Instead of talking about, what do we really want in this facility? Because what you want in the facility is to a certain extent going to dictate the other things. It's a great point, and the core of the facility is sort of dimensionally a court. And so we know that there's a demand for a court, so what we're really trying to do is what types of courts that demand is for, and that's why it tends to sort of get into a discussion of flooring. But the discussion is, you know, we know that we could put four basketball courts in, and they'd probably be fully used as much, but does that really serve the needs of everybody? So if we want to put in something that can be used for basketball but also be used for something else, does that give the facility more range? So I think we're trying to address it, and I understand what you're saying. We've probably focused a little bit too much on the material and not the use that comes with those different materials. What would you like to see? There's one there in the corner. Well, the only comment I would make is I'm a pickleball player as well. And if you were to canvas some of the other towns and villages around here, a lot of them are making extensive investments in more pickleball, could be either building new ones, or in the case of Cascade, they've just converted, I think it was three or four tennis courts, to double that number of pickleball courts because the demand is so high. Pickleball is like a fire in this community. When we came back from the village just 10 years ago, we had to put a note on the fence to see if anybody wanted to play pickleball. These two people in front of me have been the two people we found. But Kentwood is clearly behind in terms of... pardon me, South Bronx is clearly behind in terms of responding to the demand for pickleball. We have two courts, and they have dead spots in them, and they've got cracks in them. And people are going all over it to get into better courts and more courts with less waiting time. I think that you're not alone in that desire to have pickleball courts. It's sort of universal. These pictures I'm showing are upstate New York and Massachusetts, it's everywhere. But the beauty of pickleball is that the nets can be moved relatively easily and it can work on a number of variety of floors. And if you have a double gym, you can all of a sudden have, you know, a lot of pickleball courts set up in the morning. And that's what we're sort of getting at is if we want to really accommodate flexibility, now we need a place to put those and we need a good quality net that can be brought in and out easily. We need to get the lines down so you don't have to take those out every day. And we need to figure out how to make that room the most adaptable that it can be. And that's sort of what, trying to understand these different events means everybody knows that a high school basketball court is 50 by 84, right? But what do you need to put around it to make it usable for things that are not basketball? Yeah, you kind of hit on the topic I was going to mention about the adaptability and the utilization. You know, I belong to the racket's edge, the edge, and it's tremendous to use the basketball in the evening but that's the only time. The rest of the time, you know, it's like the courts, that's kind of your walking space is on the courts and stuff like that. I noticed that only one of your photographs had any natural daylight in it. You know, it's like we're kind of start for sunshine up here in the wintertime. Boston's probably not a whole lot better but it's a pretty serious problem up here. So a lot of artificial glaring lighting isn't really going to be too popular with older people in particular. That's a consideration. So far as the surfaces, I don't know about everybody else in here but I've got bad knees. And hard surfaces, even if they're bouncy, it's like I'm one trip away from, you know, not being able to walk. And so I'm always very concerned about the hardness of the surface and, you know, even when you have yoga exercises and stuff on a hardwood floor, I mean it's painful. It's really painful to use the flooring. And, you know, so the bigger spaces wouldn't appeal to me very much but I know that there's sort of an evening crowd that, you know, evening teams, team basketball and stuff like that. That's probably great. I think a lot of the winter time, you'd be amazed at how many people jog and walk and run in the winter time. So the whole need for an indoor track to walk to me seems ridiculous because, you know, there's maybe 20 days a year that you can't walk outdoors if you buy a pair of ice bugs, or, you know, shoes with spikes on them. So for me, I mean I live right next door to this facility. If it was there, yeah, I'd probably use it but I'd like to see people have to pay something, you know, maybe like a private public partnership because I don't feel like paying for basketball courts for, you know, the guys. You know, I'm never going to be able to use it. So, you know, I don't feel like 100% this should be public financed. When you asked what we wanted, I can only speak for myself and my husband but we've been playing pickleball at the Miller Center and I don't want this to be just a discussion about pickleball. The Miller Center in Burlington is a nice size, a doable size I think because I know that a lot of my neighbors share the concerns about ever-increasing taxes but that's a facility that's been in existence since 2008 and I believe the square footage in the main area is 7,000 square feet. It has a synthetic floor. It has basketball hoops and it's also set up for pickleball. For pickleball courts, they have a separate room where they keep the pickleball nets and a lot of pickleball players in here are already familiar with it. I would be delighted if we could get something like that up and if it had an indoor track overhead that would be an absolute bonus but I think that's a doable size. I think it would come in at a price point that we could swallow. Thanks. Is there going to be a charge for all this or is it a taxpayer supposed to pay for everything and the people who want to use it for free? I don't know if that's gotten to that. I don't know if someone from the city wants to talk about that. Thanks. So part of this process, we'll kind of be talking about the operations of a facility. We don't anticipate that people will be using it for free. We would anticipate user fees and those might be nominal like a drop-in fee if there's an open gym or if we're running a six-week program that might look different. I think there have been some conversations about whether the track would remain open and be free to South Burlington residents or not but those things will kind of get flushed out in the process along with Joel who will kind of be building out the operational pieces. I'm just concerned that the taxpayers are looking at replacing or consolidating some of our schools and then getting hit with a rec center when some of the school consolidation might be including some recreation at the schools too. So shouldn't we just kind of wait with the rec center until we figure out what's going on with the schools? We didn't know the city council had the school board to make and then ultimately the voters to make. We are having these discussions with the school district. We had a great meeting with about a dozen or more of staff this afternoon about what their plans are across the street and about when they want to take those discussions to the voters. I will say to you that the activity level of the schools and what they're anticipating building is quite high. The usage of a facility that they're considering which would include an indoor, an actual indoor competition track potentially is utilized for a very significant portion of the day and on many weekends. And so we need to continue those discussions but exactly what you're talking about, city and school working together to figure out what the total demand is and it's very significant. So we are having those conversations. Yeah, I think one way we can think about what the schools plans are moving along and this kind of planning is you can think about it in terms of facilities and schools going to have basketball courts. We're thinking about basketball courts and pickle ball. I think the other way you can think about it is in terms of the demographics and in my experience being on recreation and parks committee it has been clear that two populations are not served by recreation facilities in this city and that is the preschool population and everybody after high school. Because the school facilities are used all the time and the reason that we're even considering this is that Holly tries to program for people of all ages and the facilities aren't there. So you might think well we've got track here, we've got track there, we've got basketball here, we've got basketball here but that's not the only way to look at it. The other way to look at it is who is in this community and who has needs for recreation and are these needs filled by the facilities that we have and our committee has been feeling for a long time. No, we are not serving everybody and we can at least study what the community wants and what the needs are and try to design around that. So there isn't a duplication. If you look at in terms of people and not just facilities there isn't a duplication. I'd like just to say that I've been to facilities that have had four basketball courts set up and they're multi-use. There are two courts being used for pickleball, there's a court being used for Zumba, there are preschool programs used in one area, some of them have weights. So you can have four basketball courts and do multiple different functions at the same time. All you need is a few screens in between the courts and so a basketball court is really not, that's the wrong word to use. I would say a facility that you could use multi-purpose at the same time would be the perfect thing. Whatever the floors are made out of and another thing is half the people in here probably won't be here by the time this is built. I think that it's a moot point about those things. I think it's more important to go. Well, yeah, anyway, that's what I have to say. My question is, say we go with this, what is the next stage? I'm someone that would think of a pool. You know, you're talking pickleball, you're talking basketball, you're talking a track. Now where is this all that you're thinking? What is the future? You know, I've heard a lot of people talk about pools. I mean, I even asked my son and my friends, and they write the first thing I said, it's a swimming pool. I mean, they're in school, so they do use the courts, they do, but they're, you know, like they're saying, you know, as an adult here, I'm thinking the same thing. Once you're out of high school, there is nothing beyond. I think that the trick with the next stage of the planning is to put this component in so that there's flexibility for the next 15, 20, these facilities last 50 to 100 years. I mean, it's not that it goes away. And 15 years ago, no one asked for pickleball in one of our community centers. There's going to be something in 15 years that we haven't thought about that folks are going to want. So the trick is to figure out today's needs and then adapt it so what I was talking about in the beginning is, you know, maybe the way that you expand on the building is off of a view that folks don't see from coming in and out of the park, or maybe there's a way to extend the building in the future that doesn't eradicate the parking lot that you put in and have beautiful trees growing around. So the next phase is to do exactly what you're saying is, well, what would people want in the future? I could think of a lot of things that people would say today like an expanded turf center or, like you mentioned, a pool or there are any number of things that you might want to add on in other generations. Well, it sounds like they have a place to go for soccer in Essex. There's people that, you know, the kids do other places but there's nothing here. Right. I mean, we don't have a pool. I'm not from here. It's the first city I've been to that doesn't have pools. Not even in the schools. I mean, there's one. Edge. Edge. I'm talking in the pools. I grew up with every school have a pool. Indoor pools. Indoor. In the school. You know, they weren't pretty. They weren't Olympic size. They weren't, you know, I come from Buffalo where they're old schools and, you know, like here but there should be something. We don't even have a Y here. You know. Yeah. In Burlington. I'm talking about, there's nothing here for, you know, that should be more than just, you know I know everybody loves the outside in the green but there's times, you know, when I was doing things with my son we're traveling for, you know, away for places that we should have here. So I mean, this is a great step. But like they said, I don't even know if I'll be here when you guys decide on this stuff. You know, I mean, yeah, I keep kidding about my son being in college by the time you guys decide what about the schools? Just a quick follow-up on Gary's. When we first started playing pickleball over at the edge in Essex Junction we played in the gym with a curtain drawn a course and the basketball players were on one side and we were on the other side. So it, that's the multi-use I guess is what I'm saying just an example. And just a little follow-up. I brought, was brought up in Connecticut, Massachusetts Rhode Island to Hampshire and Vermont and I never had a pool in school. So Wes, thanks for that clarification. I think as Joel went through the slides I think we use basketball court as a frame of reference for size. I think there's not an intent in anyone's heart to build something that's isolated to one sport but that there would be a multitude of lines as many as we can get on without having to have a manual to figure out what the lines are for what sport but that we would anticipate multiple activities and sports going on on each of these surfaces. At the same time, yep, absolutely. So let me just make sure I'm clear with all this. All we're talking tonight because in the advertisement it was looking like we can talk about pool, we can talk about multiple different things that we wanted. Is it just talking about this one building right now? Is all we're talking about at this point? You can raise other recreation-related needs in the community if you'd like. I know it's very expensive to go off to the edge and a lot of families can afford it and it's small and my mother-in-law swims at the edge and it's something that's always breaking and something that's always happening but you have to travel. Why shouldn't we have something in South Burlington for seniors to swim at or young kids to learn how to swim? Instead of having to pay an outrageous price for the edge, to me it's an outrageous price. I can't afford it. This is great in multi-infection, indoor basketball, if they want to play anything, you can do that, fine. But what are we looking at tonight? Are we looking at that we could put a pool in that we could have some activity to be out? Especially in the wintertime. And I love the track. People come in and walk, that's beautiful. But are we looking at just this building? It sounds like what I'm seeing from the slides are we talking about multifunctional that we can't put a pool in possibility that everybody can use it, teach young kids how to swim as older people want to come in and swim but you've all been talking about this for 20 years. It sounds like nothing's been happening yet. Well, we're trying to change that. I've been here for five years already and been watching the school trying to get built and it's not happening yet. So it's, you know, things have got to move and every time it seems like there's a sandstorm and then nothing gets moved. So there's a big plot over there and I've been into the hockey ring over there and I'm like, wow, this is a huge place. Very huge. You all were able to put that big building up there. Why can't we put a big building up and have a multifunctional place here as well? Well, I think that's... That's what the reason is. Well, they are... West they are. They're actually city-owned. I thought there was a big rattle about that because the committee that owned them didn't want it. They were leasing the land only? They were given to the city and their lease... there brings their lease back to the south where we've been skating in those cases. So what we're here tonight is to talk about the entire range of community desires. So hearing that there are folks in the community who want to pool is fine to have that discussion tonight. So there has been a lot of discussion over the many years about having a facility like this. So the baseline, let's call it, using a basketball term, the baseline here is to start with that discussion but then hear from the rest of the public about other things. It's all good. I don't know that this consensus act really reaches the majority of the citizens but it seems to me that that's the kind of thing we need. We need to know how many people want to pool, how many people want this other kind of facility because I free for years and I don't have a real dog in this fight, I don't but for years I've been hearing from people in my neighborhood why don't we have a pool? I think the pool question is up or is soon to be up. It was up but I think your point is that we have a little over 700 people who've downloaded the app and been answering questions and on that question I think we had a couple of hundred people. So again, that's a pilot, it's one way but I understand that. There may need to be other ways to get that but from my personal point of view that's what I've heard from people in my life in South Burlington. Why don't we have a pool? Pickleball is a relatively new thing compared to a pool so I'm that pickleball age so I have a lot of friends who play that but in my life here pool is what I've majorly heard about. So just to share on that a survey will be available for folks to fill out it's going to be online so that will be up on the website tomorrow and there will be opportunity for you to share that information so share that with your neighbors and your friends so we can get that feedback. That was going to be my comment. Is there somebody else? We learned in our committee here in Joel that there was going to be an extensive survey that was going to be gathering that kind of information. I have two other ideas for this. We have a very active dog park group in South Burlington. Would there be one of these spaces that could be used for puppy training kind of thing? That is one question I have. The other is that we have had very successful Sobu night out events that have been going on for four years that are very well attended. Would any of these spaces be used could they be used in the wintertime for comparable kinds of events big gathering kinds of events? Those are two questions. Would any of these rooms be adaptable to those two things? The first question was related to the dog park. We did meet in one of the outreach meetings this morning with the program provider for the puppy training and dog training and four different programs that are currently provided and what they might need to have an ability and how you adapt that to exactly what you are saying. Training for dogs could be provided if folks wanted to do that. So we are gathering that data and that is possible. In terms of the use you can put a cover on the main court and turn that into a different type of event. We have facilities like this that bring in trade shows lightweight boats things like that. You can also the really good floor is the turf floor for farmers markets and things like that because you don't have to protect it. That type of floor is very adaptable to what you are saying. Eventually this will be school property. The school will be located in this facility, the school offices that is part of the trade for 180 market street. The school has the use of this. Questions or comments? You will have a budget on this or what are we looking at? People are worried about how much this is going to be spent and everything. If we are looking at these two buildings I am still trying to figure this out is it going to be this one building where we are going to put a pool in or a basketball court or possibly whatever in there. Because you are saying continuing on with this, this is like the first phase. So are we able to if the public votes on it or what not however it is going to work out and they decide to pool in a basketball court or half court or pickle ball or whatever they want it. It is just going to be that one building and we don't know that yet. One of the things we are very early in the design phase the first question we need to ask is what does the public want? Something endures. For the winter time maybe. I am a letter carry so I know what is about outside all time. I would like to have something endures as far as activities and stuff like that later. For my senior years when I get the right to retire. Trust me I don't want to be back outside. So we know endures. Definitely endures for me. My son would like a pool. I know that much. So once we gather that information we need to understand what the consensus is of the community around the need and then we will work with our architect and with Joel to say if the need is X what can we build to meet that need? And after that we will get some cost estimates on what that would look like. Now there are I think all there were four of our five counselors here tonight and they have all been pretty direct with us about being respectful of and understanding the capacity of the taxpayers and they have been pretty aggressive actually with us saying that we need to be very mindful of the capacity of the community to support a facility. But we can't get to a number until we understand what the community wants. This is really step one. But the steps are going to come along pretty quickly. This isn't going to be a five year design thing. We're expecting to have a lot of this information by late fall. So I was at one of the stakeholder meetings earlier today but just to kind of voice my view in this forum I run Game on Vermont where adult recreational sports provider. I provide adult recreational sports activities for about 1500 people throughout Chittenden County mostly in the Burlington South Burlington area. I run a lot of outdoor programs during the summer and several indoor programs throughout the winter. I'm probably the largest provider of adult sports in the state of Vermont. I'm not aware of anyone that's bigger than me so I'm kind of assuming I'm the largest. There is a significant shortage in adult or in mostly adult availability to use gym time throughout Chittenden County. The schools run a lot of programs during the winter. Getting gym time in the schools is a huge challenge. There are some private facilities throughout the area. I utilize those facilities when I can but they are near capacity. My programs are limited purely by facility space. We have 1500 people playing with me throughout the year. That number could easily be 5000 people if the space was available. Having a multi-use facility where I could run basketball or volleyball or badminton or a pickleball program or another two dozen programs I could probably fill in a space like this plus all the rec programs that the city wants to run and then all the other private groups and clubs that are in the area that are just begging for gym time everywhere we can find it. There is a huge demand for a facility like this. We bring in when I run an event in Burlington or Essex or Colchester, wherever I am I'm bringing in people from not just that town they're coming in from all the neighboring towns and they're going out to eat afterwards and they're supporting the local economy as they come in. The other thing with a facility like this where it has multiple uses where you can set up for basketball courts and have a little tournament and bring teams from out of state in it's hugely important because there really isn't a facility like that in the Burlington area so I'm very supportive of this project and pushing it forward. Game on Vermont. Are you paying user fees to the facilities that you utilize? That's an income stream to the facility. I was one of the parents who went around my neighborhood stomping for the original current Serena and a lot of the feedback that I got from my neighbors was, well, I don't skate or I don't want to just support a bunch of hockey brats and they were kind of hostile about it and when I informed them that it was a multi-purpose facility for public skating for figure skating for ice dancing that you could take the ice off and use it for other types of recreational activities that there was such a huge demand for the space that it would end up paying for itself which it has. So to hear somebody say that he's looking for space that he's willing to support I think that addresses one of the concerns that a lot of people in this city have about ever increasing taxes. If there's a way of building a facility that's right-sized that's well-utilized and, yes, the Miller Center does charge for everybody who goes in there and uses it it's not free that we could actually make this work. Are there questions or comments or yep it's coming. This is very simple but we're wanting to get public opinion as to what people want and you're talking about a survey and all my question was is where is the survey or how can one participate in that? So the survey is going to be online and it'll be available tomorrow on our website. So the website is southburlingtonvt.gov or SBVT.gov Yeah, so they'll be, so I'm using social media you guys can share that information with folks it'll be there'll be an advertisement in the newspaper it'll be on front porch forum so a variety of ways to let folks know that it's there and if you know somebody who can't get online and fill out the survey if you can help them with that or if someone wants to reach out happy to take their information or print it out and get it to people in that way too. Correct. Like I deliver mail to the senior centers and they don't have a pool over there and I know they talk about that all the time as well is there a way that we can get them a flyer of some sort that you can get to them? Sure. I mean some places like they said a lot of seniors don't not have seen internet service or what not or use a computer. Correct. Correct. So is there a way that you can do a flyer up or something and get it out maybe to the seniors so they can vote of some sort a written ballot or what not that they can have their opinion? Yes. So I think that's a good point to have pool. In addition to that Corley and I are going to be doing some site visits to some of the congregate senior housing so we'll be spreading that as well later this week. Sandy Dooley, I attended the earlier meeting where I'm forgetting your name the consultant mentioned a recreation facility I believe you worked on in Randolph Massachusetts and I just wanted this is just an example because he mentioned that I looked up their website and they have membership fees and for adults the fee is $15 a month which would be $180 a year if you did year round family is $30 a month or $360 a year student is $10 a month or $120 a year and seniors is $10 a month or $120 and for those of us who are 70 or older it's free but I just wanted to give you an example of a center that you had mentioned that that they have membership and I don't know what additional costs there might be for programs but it's not as people have said it's not necessarily free just information. Any other any other questions we've gone about an hour now I think the input has been really valuable so we will be putting more information out on our website the survey is going to be out Joel is going to be back in mid September for another round a more refined round of what we're looking at we always welcome input on our website or to Holly's email which is on our website we always want to get input from the public about whatever the issue is please keep us up to date with what you're thinking is let me close with one last thing we've talked a lot about swimming and pools and pickleball and basketball and recreation facilities and programs but one of the things as a city council and one of the things as a nation that we've talked about a lot is how do we get people out of their homes how do we get mostly our youth off their computers and off their phones how do we create community in a way that brings those socialization skills and that just community building back four years ago Holly and her predecessor started Sobu night out was it three years three years ago the next one the last one for the summer is on Thursday we're averaging between a thousand and fifteen hundred members of this community that are going out on a Thursday night meeting friends listening to music with families playing baseball or soccer at one point we had soccer in La Crosse going on on the east side of the Cairns Arena we had hockey going on in the arena there was a baseball game down at the baseball diamond and we had twelve hundred or so people listening to some great music enjoying the food trucks that's that's our mission and to the extent that we can provide recreational facilities for those long winners and it frankly feels like we're back into it already so that people can get out of their homes and they can go to a quality facility and maybe they can meet friends and play pickleball or watch a basketball game that's what building community and helping support the growth of a community is all about and that's at the core of what we're talking about in the end it may be about pickleball but for us it's about building a stronger community and providing opportunities for people to get out of their homes you're part of that tonight thank you to all of us on the staff and I know our four council members here and our fifth would feel the same way thank you all for coming out tonight and helping us understand what what your needs are so thank you and thank you to Joel