 Commission, and I'll be presiding over the hearing today. And what this is, and we're going to go around and introduce ourselves in a second, this is what we call a show and tell. The applicant is going to show us what the project looks like and what they're proposing to do. And if there's neighbors here, we'll find out in a second, they'll be showing us where they live and possibly we'll even go to where they live and whatnot, depending on what they would like us to do. Okay? So I'm going to start with Rod. We'll go around this way introducing ourselves. I'm Blake. Suzanne Butterfield, Commissioner from Stockbridge. Linda Madison, Coordinator. Karen Colby, I'm Colleen Kessler. Heather Ray. I'm Brian Linn-Carnes, I'm the Civilian's Mayor for the Project. Mike Fenrods, the Residue. Hubert Dingle Dean. Steve Roy, Women and Fair Architects. Tom Apple, Owners Representative. Dylan Kelly, Stafford of the Herald. Amanda LaFrance, of Property and Joining. Roger Shavad, I'm Paul Ramar, the owner of the Hotel Project. Paul Kendall, and I've led the RQ process of reviewing the downbound hotel. Greg Wobble, I'm the General Counsel for the National Resources Board. Pete Fellows, Tour of Residue, BG Regional Commission. Ari Rackamiller, Agency of Agriculture. Well, I think I'm turning it over for you now to show us around. Great. So as everyone is probably aware, the project is a hotel, restaurant, and conference center. A 79-year-old hotel, 152-seat restaurant, and 400-seat capacity conference center. So generally, the buildings are arranged in sort of an L-shape. And so we've staked out some things on the site to just sort of help people get a sense of what's happening here. So the stakes with the pink flaggings are sort of rough corners of the building. In order to make it a little easier to understand, we sort of just turn them both into red handles. It's not really how they're configured, but it gives me a sense of where they are. So the hotel you can see over there, the two pink flags are the west end of the hotel. Just a way to get up there. Yeah, we could walk down this road. Let's go up there. Do you have anything a little bigger than that? This is what I have for the site. With all the rain stuff today, I wasn't sure what we were going to be able to do. But I'm happy to hang this around if anybody wants to look once we get over here. Over here are the west end of the hotel. And then that flag and that flag here to my right are the east end of the hotel building. And then further to the east, the two flags that sort of go closer to the trees there are the end of the conference center and restaurant. And then there's two pink flags over there. And then on the other end of the conference center and the restaurant. The orange stakes that are sort of further out are generally the edges of the various parking areas and whatnot. There's also a couple of orange stakes by those large trees over there, which are the sort of back edge of the grassed tent and event area that goes in that corner of the site. You can see. Can we get over into that tent area? As far as they're going to be? It's just going to be like this here side. I mean, everybody will get wet feet, but we can go over there. That's okay, let's go. Yep. The west end of it. And that one over by that. The first tree there. You guys have really taken to heart this concept of you're cutting these trees down, but you don't cut down. It's hard to read this stuff before I'm trying to get out. There's no paper. So these trees here will be removed. Is that correct? Yep, because they're interfering with the slope. So generally the earth works for the site because of the slope, the native slope of the site. Earth is generally getting moved from this corner over here to that corner down there to sort of get everything to flatten out to where it's developable. So this is the area where there will be the most removal of earth. And then over down in that, when we get down over by where like the stormwater system is and that end of the site is where this most placement of earth is going to be. So this area is actually going to be 10 to 12 feet of cut in this area. So it'll be quite a bit lower than where we are now. This is your mitigation land up here? Yep. So generally this portion of the site back into here is the mitigation. And I have exhibits and things we can look at when we get back to the hearing. But I'll take a look at all of that. So this large field here is split between the project owners and for France the owner. Yeah, that's my, I'm the owner of half of that field in the hillside up there. I've been paying taxes for 35 years planning to build a home up there. Interviewed in New Hampshire yesterday. So the home I would love to build a home up there. I would not like to be looking out over the whole town. So you hear my steps. Where does your land start exactly? I see a grassy area there. The grassy area is one part of it and in five acres of this bigger field here would be the other side of it. So like where that draw is? Yeah, roughly. I don't know. You guys have staked it out. I think we're recently going to know exactly where the market lines are. But roughly. Yeah, that'd be great. Woo! Those were shorts. Good climbing in there. Yeah, right? They've been there a while. Yeah. This is the story of the trees in front here. We're getting cut down there. So there will be some tree cutting in the front in order to see how long it will go from the road. So everything behind him is yours? This is the mitigation land. Can you show them more of the scope of it? That field there? Yeah. Yeah, it comes in sort of behind the hotel and up into this wooded area on the hill. The flagging that goes up into a tree right there at the turn. So the clearing would start there and then you don't think there's a stake on the other end of it which you can't see because of all the cars. But just along the front is your butlin' buffer and then to the edge of the stream buffer. Yeah, I could ask you to repeat that down when we get back to the cars. And then I think that wouldn't be bad to look at from back here. If you look that way you can see the two orange stakes closest to the tree are the back of the parking area that's behind the whole style. So that'll be behind it. There's a little bit of grading back there but not much. That's pretty much the limit of the development of other tools that this makes and styles. Do I have it correct that some of the mitigation land is actually yours? Who else do we have here? You're up right behind where the stakes are. You want us to walk down? Can we see up in there? Well we can walk back this way anyway. Let's walk back that way. Is the owner of that home there? They're not. Alright, well let's swing that way then. Yeah, so why doesn't that have the name Wild? I'll ask you at the hearing but that's over that way then. I'll be freaking with that. Alright, so we're right up in that area. I'll walk you up. I'll walk you up. The property line is a little late up. What cutting is proposed here? The tree line will be as you see it today. Is there any other sound mitigation or anything else planned? No, we can talk about sound more when we get to the hearing but generally the hotel is the least impactful part of the site for sound and so that's part of the reason why it's located in this portion of the site. While we're here it might be good to get it in mind where the event site is and try to in laying out the site keep it away as far as possible for many of the existing residents but also you have to imagine that ten foot drop on the continent will be a bit of a surround on it in addition to the trees. I assume those trees will stay? Yes. Look at the independent living from here. And then the nursing homes. Looks nice and horrible. And drawing. Sound carries here. Anyone else want to point out anything here? Did you hear the interstate? Yeah. Sure. Yeah, it's more or less level. I mean you can kind of see how long the building is. Pink stakes are the ends of the building so from there down to there. So essentially all around the hotel is more or less flat. Let's go back to the entrance and you can point out those trees a little bit more. The landscape architects here today? The landscape architects not here but we can discuss the landscape. Okay, good. Can you have a little bit bigger blow-off with that I trust? Yeah, well we are sorry. And then look this way. In the corner of the trees you see that flagging that's kind of tied to a bridge there. So in both of these they sort of like it's cut in towards the road still because it's not with a straight cut back to the road. This one is following the edge of the wetland buffer and then this one is following the stream buffer so it sort of curves around a little bit. But those will bring it as they exist on the inside of the tree line. Let's go over the stream. So I just wanted to point this section out because there's a very number of maps and things that show this area as a perennial stream. Just what's coming down at home right here. So this is the area that when the 15th file just left, I lost his last name, came out just to make sure that this is not a perennial stream here. So it comes down from the wetland area, comes to this culvert and this head wall. So it's across the road. I'm not sure it looks like a new sort of road to be honest with you but that was also not considered a perennial stream because it's crossing the road again down by that part of the road and back from the top of the road. So we can go look for that in the front. Yeah. On the green time to the front. It's just, it's maybe just a bit past me and then we'll go look at it in a second. How are you going on the road? I can run down through it. If you go up, if you go up, if you go up, if you go up, if you go down this way, I'll show you where it's headed into, the opposite, in other dribs. Yeah. I just wanted to look here, it's not over there, it starts down there in the other bottle. That's where you need to have a 50 foot. Yeah, yeah. Let's grab a picture for you, that'll be with you up there. Okay well, when we go back up here just show us the absolute. Yeah, and then the back of those guy wires is here, so the monument sign will be pretty much in between the pole and the back of those guy wires, but on this side of it. Yeah. So these trees are coming down here, right? Those trees are coming down there, yeah, and those, I mean those trees would need to come down for the driveway anyway, you know, and then you can see what happens on these conifers. Most of that is staying, some of that is coming down, majority of those conifers are in the buffer, so we're going to leave all the trees in the stream buffer. The stream buffer, if I understood correctly, the stream buffer doesn't, you said that green sign down there, didn't you? That's where the culprits go in after the road sign. All this on the right side, okay. So it strokes pretty quickly, almost right in front of the fence, all that green. Yeah, I mean it's, the stream buffer essentially comes up to the end of the well, I can see where it goes back across. Yeah, it comes down by that drive, that private road, it comes across right there. Where that cone is pretty accurate, where the stream is cornering the fruit 66 and along. So, you know, yeah, and we can go look at it, it's easy to just walk on the block. Yeah, so the first one, we went to 750 feet and got 12 gallons a minute. We need 26 and a half for the project, so we're building something. And here you went how far? We were 165 feet and 150 gallons a minute. And I shouldn't point out what we're talking about it. That well does not have sufficient yield to serve the project, and this one has way more than sufficient yield, so the well that's on that side of the site is not going to use full potable water system. This is going to be entirely from this well. Yeah, we can't stop this. Yeah, they need to get their water from out. They get it from Roger's road. Oh, no, no, you won't, you won't. No one needs to point out anything else, and we will head back. I'm sorry, I would like to just, to the event that some of my property out there has a gorgeous view to the west, which not sure if you're a high hotel, we'll do anything, but destroy the proper value of that road. So just while we're here though, I mean, I know we were up there, I don't want to make people walk up onto my property to see what the impact would be. But having an event tent out there, there is noise that's going to be right next door. Well, that's all. See, I think we've seen pretty well what we need to see. You need to come to the hearing. I just want it's easier to visualize us here. The proximity of where it is that my property does, you know, when you're standing up there where the hotel was, I pointed out then the mode area, the green area up there is a beautiful house site, the attack, you know, whatever. But, you know, the value of that looking out over a hotel is different than looking out. As I say, we will address all those issues and you'll want to value the criteria. And I think we've seen it. We can. I don't know if we'd go from here, but we could drive around and I think these are socked in, but I think we know the view pretty well. And another number of people who couldn't be here today. So in terms of the hearing that is about to convene, is that the only opportunity people would have to participate and ultimately ask for intervention in this or have interventions that have already passed if you could just give us procedurally where we're at? Yes, pretty much. Well, yes, for which one of those? They need to be here today. A notice went out. It was noted in the Mountain Moons and the Rutland and the Randall paper did it just last Thursday. So I don't see how they could have missed it, but nobody called me. No, no, and I was just trying to establish, you could represent them if you wanted to. I have my own day of events that have already been made. But just so that, for example, the neighbor understands that she needs to speak and articulate her issues and have the hearing to stop them. You take good care of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The commission listens quite carefully to the neighbors. It's concerned, sir. And then in terms of obtaining intervention or interested party status, is that something that needs to be filed by motion after today? After today at the hearing? After participating or today at the hearing? And verbally, they'll probably be. Verbally is okay. You don't require a written motion. But only today? Yeah. Well, you can't make it today? Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, well, let's head on down to, down and down. Yeah, very good. Or you can ask that question, and you can ask that question and get a... Morning. Here we go. So we've just returned from a site visit of the proposed hotel and convention center, and we will now start the public hearing. This is Friday, October 4th, 2019, and we are the District 3 Environmental Commission meeting at the Randolph Town Office. The application is seeking to construct an operatable... Okay, no, it's not. That's what's on my script. All of it? I had to bring that. You did that. No, just joking. The applicant is seeking to construct... That's just a little insight joke. Two buildings, a 79-room hotel, restories, 47,975 feet gross square feet, and an adjacent 152-seat restaurant. Um, 400-seat convention center, 14,739 square feet, with associated drive, parking, stormwater treatment, utilities, landscaping, and outdoor event space. The project is located on 25.9-acre parcel of land off Route 66, just uphill from exit 4, I-89 across from the park and ride. So I'm Tim Taylor, and I'm from Fedford. In post-mills, I'm the chair of the commission, I'll be presiding over the hearing. And to my right is Suzanne Butterfield, and she's from Stockbridge, and she's one of the commissioners. And to my left is Rod McClain, and he's from South Stratford, not Stratford, South Stratford. And then further down is Linda Madson, and she is our coordinator, and all communications go to her, whether they're in writing or email, you know, whatever you talk with her, and she will give you the answers that you need. So what I'd like to do is start right here, and we'll do our introductions again, going around the room, and you might just mention, you know, who you are relatively, we don't need a big speech or anything, just who you are relative to the proceedings today. Thank you. I'm Steve Roy, with Wiener-Lampier Architects, a project architect for the buildings. Paul Ray, I'm one of the owners of the project. Tom Apple, I'm the owner's representative. Brian Lane-Carnes, I'm the civil engineer for the project. William LaFrense, I'm a joining property owner. Sir? Oh, okay. You're in the row. My name's John Kelly, and I'm a staff member at the Carroll Community Center. Okay, thank you. Steve Rubin from Wiener Technical College. Heather Ray, I'm Karen Polday, and Paul's wife. Joan Sacks, landowner and brand-of-center. Nice to meet you. Nice to landowner and brand-of-center. Brooke Dingleding, I'm an attorney who is entering my parents today for Joan and for Nancy, as well as Ex-Support Open Spates. Greg Bobol, with financial resources for it. Jen Molder, with the Agency of Natural Resources. Blaine Chabot, property owner, Jason Paul Kendall, member of the brand-of regional re-energized, that's the question. Could you just explain what that is? Sure. About two years ago, Paul Castello and the Royal Monk Group initiated a process here, a process in town here, to have the general public participate in a series of conversations and discussions around ways to re-energize the local region. And it covered quite a spectrum of interests and activities, everything from arts, to culture and arts, to energy conservation, to local redevelopment, and so forth. And then we broke into four different task courses to pursue a number of specific suggestions and concerns that had been raised through the public hearings and discussions that we had held. One of those issues had to do with this hotel and its relationship to a concern that people had about a downtown hotel facility. And it was in that regard that I was participating in the review of that aspect of the community's concerns. Kind of like an ad hoc DRV? That's right. Exactly. Michael Penrod, I'm the chairman of the resident. Pete Fallows, tour-a-resonically chief regional commission. Amy and Dean Nicola, one of the co-chairs of the Randolph Regan re-energized economic development committee and tourism committee, which Paul and Kendall just did a great job of explaining. Thank you. Dan DeVoe, landowner, also a member of the Randolph DRV. You're on the DRV? Yes, not here in any of the official. Hi, Ari Rockman Miller, agency of agricultural food and markets. Okay, well thank you. So in just a second, the applicant will give us a general overview of the project and then we'll but I first wanted to just give you a little explanation about the process and how it works for some of you who aren't real familiar with this. So we're here quasi-judicial capacity to collect evidence to see if this application meets the standards of our law Act 250 and as you've seen with the green sheet going around, there's quite a few criteria, some of which will be of concern today and some of which won't and we'll address those of concern today and so we may need additional information at some point which we can ask for but this is the start of the process. I should say really the start of the process was when they filed their application and when our coordinator looked it over to see if it was complete or not and so if you want to participate in this process, there's a couple of good reasons for you to want to participate. You get to, if you are deemed a party then you get to introduce evidence, you get to cross examine the parties, the applicant and whatnot and you can testify yourselves and then if you're not happy with our decision you have the, because you have a party status then you can appeal it to the environmental court where guess what? Starts all over again from scratch as if we didn't exist. Well maybe we existed a little bit but by and large as if we didn't exist despite all our efforts. You can note a little frustration there but that's the way the law reads. So anyhow, so it's pretty important if you want to participate today to do that. Now there's two types of parties that you should understand. There's what's called statutory parties and this is decided by the legislature and those are parties by right and they have an absolute right to participate and that includes all the state agencies that includes the town planning commission, includes the regional planning commission, obviously the applicant and whatnot. Then there's the rest of us and I say the rest of us because we are just citizens like many new landowners and we have to show that we have a particularized interest that's above and beyond the general community and that this affects us in some way and so that's what we will be doing now is to go be granting what's called preliminary party steps and after the applicant gives us this little overview you will have an opportunity to say who you are once again and address those issues that you want to have and say why you should be considered to be a party on a preliminary basis. If you can't be and don't want to be a party and appeal you can still help us out as a friend of the commission and that doesn't allow you to go forward and appeal our decision but it does help allow you to participate in some capacity for us. So with that being said would you like to give us just a quick brief over of all I think many of us were at the site visit which I should add everything we mentioned and did at the site visit needs to be put on before once we can be in the hearing as we go through it we need to get what we talked about at the site visit on the record. I think what we'd like to do is start out with the sites it's it's fresh in everybody's mind and I think most of the concern is going to be the site so Brian can give us a quick overview of that and point out some of the things that we talked about and we haven't convened the hearing yet so we really just want to get the rough idea of what it is you're doing pretty much what I've just spoken to and introducing you and then we'll turn to the neighbors and whatnot to that chief party status so great. So in case anyone wasn't at the site visit this is just a sort of vicinity map showing here's route 89 here's the Detrends Park and Ride this is the former Vermont Pure facility here this is the open field area where the proposed project will be located so the budding landowners are here, here, here and here. This right here and you can see this this Minnesota has taken the different independent facilities under construction so that's this sort of white building here route 66 runs left to right and Randolph Center is located over here so that's a general overview of the project location here's an overall site plan that shows the majority of the project property so property lines are run along here there's a portion of the property over here that isn't shown but we're not proposing to do anything along the west side of Oak Ridge Lane so this is the entrance which is you can sort of see right here is the existing barn drive that we would all came up at the site visit this building is the proposed hotel this building is the restaurant and conference center this is the tent and event area which is regressed there's a few other small outbuildings there's a gazebo and utility building here and so parking is there's a parking field in front and to the west and south of the building and then one to the east of the restaurant and conference center and stormwater treatment will be over here in the northwest portion of the site that's a little brief one yeah no that's good I think that's good uh we'll let's start with um um well the first one on my list here is live in la france and um you have written down here you would um um my understanding is you live up on the hillside right you show this the hillside and you'd like to have your criteria of interest is three seven eight and nine um well seven is already been taken care of um at the town level so we won't be doing seven eight and nine are definitely of interest to you from what I could see and I'm not sure why necessarily three would be um being uphill um I believe that's um water um but um is there any objection to granting um granting party status to her on those yeah do you know which nine you were referencing we will be discussing nine b prime agricultural soils okay that's there's probably a couple um um some some is a as well okay what it'll bring to the community of brand off center yeah yeah um well we can talk to someone about that um good all right thank you um would you like to uh thank you mr taylor um Joan sacks and Nancy Rice are individuals that seek party status in this matter and I am here representing them for purposes of today um and will notify the commission if I will be continuing to represent them and uh I am also uh here today entering my parents on behalf of exit for open space who um similarly we will notify you if I will continue to represent their interests or if they will remain uh as an interested party if they receive party status um Joan can you describe where you're located in terms of your property I am located on at 4142 Lamont Route 66 which is at the top of the hill um my property of butts the cemetery and uh VTC it's not it's it's a little far to the right it's not on that map oh it's not on this map it's probably a couple miles or a mile it's about a mile and a half a mile and a half away yeah okay um and how do you feel well my main interest I mean I I will be affected by in terms of traffic and so forth that's a narrow road I don't know if it will require to be widened or something because it's a narrower road on a curve so you drive by there you're saying I drive by there all the time but my actually my main interest I mean is far more fundamental it's water um the aquifer I was part of a um water first group that was concerned about Vermont pure as a matter of fact taking a lot of water from our land and my understanding is that the water that is sucked out of the ground for the uh for the project 19,000 gallons a day was what was put in the paper last week um leaves the aquifer forever it goes down the sewage and down to the sewage treatment plant goes out to the river and down to the sea does not come back to uh to Randolph center and Randolph center has had three large water using projects built within the last five years a nursing home which is a big user of water a uh an independent living and a state lab and I am concerned that my well will be drained from all of this it's just just you know it's going to be this all that breaks the panel's back so I'm I'm concerned about that most of all yes I yeah I mean I'm also concerned about light pollution and so forth but more fundamentally the most fundamental thing is water um at Randolph has not had a well I understand you're concerned we'll get into the details of that and that criteria during the hearing and I think I understand you know why you want party status there so um that's good at this point so just in summary she's asking for uh standing on three five and eight Nancy could you describe um to the circumission where you're located um I'm on south Randolph road 539 south Randolph road just past its VTC orchard on the same side and we have a well and I'm concerned about the quantity of water available in the future uh for the same reasons Jones was just speaking of and I remember years ago when VTC was putting a swimming pool in yet I'm adjoining VTC um someone came around and pulled the pump out of our well when we were at home to check the water and we had not given them permission it's odd now that something far bigger than that we're not consulted I mean I'm not adjoining that but when it is and our our aquifer is underneath there and I understand there's a large quantity of water that has been found with the second well but I'm wondering how that affects the water supply for Randolph center and people with wells around there I also think that the road past there is potentially dangerous um I often go down that road and this seems like it's not not appropriate so I might if I understand correctly you're off from that this well I'm what you're not located on this map either right you go you turn at the churches and you go down half a mile so I'm thinking yes and it's about a mile as the coast lies turn at the churches um I'm not as sort of in the bottom of where VTC because where you see it kind of go out there on the area yeah right there there's a camp a mile I live on the south randolph road myself yeah okay thank you so you're asking for is that correct three five and eight is that correct yes that is true and then lastly um on behalf of exit four as you may recall it was a grassroots citizens group that coalesced for the exit for proposed by mr samus two years ago to turn that into a variety of things but you may recall that mr samus and exit four and others reached an agreement so that the property was able to be conserved by the hoopers as well as by exit four raising a million dollars to be able to a part of the 22 acre portion that was of most concern which is right across from donald's and as you may have noticed driving into town we now have the amazing gymsard donuses new whale dance figures there I have not come home from a from one day in berry where my office is without seeing a number of people at that location taking pictures for yearbook and enjoying those amazing whale tales that is conserved land now and there are a number of people within the exit were very concerned about light pollution from this proposal particularly because it exceeded it exceeds the height restriction in the zoning ordinance I understand that there is some sort of waiver that was imposed that allowed them to go higher but if it's higher there's more potential for light pollution so there is a concern on number eight and they would seek party status because they think the interest in ensuring that those amazing views remain able to be enjoyed and that the area does not is not burdened by undo adverse air light during the night sky is very important to those folks in addition they are also concerned for the trafficking areas many of them travel daily back and forth and want to ensure that there are conditions that are protective of the traveling public and there are also a number of folks that similarly have wells in the area so to ensure there's no undue adverse impact to the existing water supply so we would seek the party status for exit for open space on 3, 5, and 8. Are there objections from you all at this point or anyone who wanted to comment on that aspect of do you can I just mention something they weren't at the local DRV hearing well that's and they're just sort of showing up now nobody has spoken to me yeah um excuse me I wasn't you are yes but not the open space group yes well I'm talking about open space that she so you intend to leave though right so who's going to be here to participate for exit 4 I was notified as I told you the site visit yesterday about this so are you only holding one hearing on this I don't I don't know but I mean this has been properly noticed and I don't want to get it to a date of it the debate about that I've been a lot of the clock appointment yeah and I think I'm back and try to participate as best I can on their behalf well I mean but that should I hadn't expected exit 4 here either and we will need to do some research on this because as you probably well know a party status for a group has the latitude for that has been narrowed and you need to have participants and individuals and individual names that are part of that group and they need to be represented in so I'm not sure you know who is part of that group who is here today to participate are any of the neighbors members of that group well I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself because well you're asking for a little party status and one of the issues in that is participation usually in order to get final part of the status okay but we're dealing with preliminary it's a request I think it's incumbent upon you to determine in person instance a is there an objection to it before you're we're not at the hearing yet and just make your determination if you're going to deny a group to have party status Nancy and Joan are members of exit 4 but they are also here representing their own personal interests okay so that's what I've been trying to get an understanding of is are there members expected for here today yes so whether I come or go and then back later I will try to help the best that I can but that shouldn't have anything to do with your determination as to whether or not they should have party status or not whether they then participate is sort of the second step and if they are granted preliminary part of status and then fail to participate in questioning I don't think there's any obligation that they cross examine people or even that they present evidence they can make legal argument they there's no laundry list of requirements that they do that they give you proposed findings or any of the other aspects of representation okay I don't want to cut you off but we have members from exit 4 here that's what I need to find out that's good are there did you um do we have other folks me just go go back so we didn't really get chance no no we'll we'll okay I want to gather everybody here and then we'll let you think about this for a while sir um you did you and let's see you're missed are you proud of that exit 4 group? uh I really didn't know about the group too much so no not yet okay so but you're asking for party status on five three five and eight yes and if I understand correctly let's try it like yeah my house is right there so you're in a butter yes um so that's really all I need from you and um I will for the record point out that he's in a butter uh he's a little uphill from the project the project the fact something behind he's relatively near the in my road goes right this time yeah this is the the uh private road share right away it's a lot of air we have any other neighbors here that I've I see Dan Duvall it says resident okay you don't have any criteria down yeah the rv yeah have I covered everybody then the once party status as uh uh with a particularized interest okay well we're gonna listen to you folks say what you want to say about that relative party status yeah relative party status so I'm uh I'm not claiming to make a decision for the owners about whether they object or not but uh I I'm not sure particularly for the two leads from Randolph center who live more than a mile away from the project whether that really demonstrates particular rights and interests under traffic which they'll have no more impact than anyone else in general public to drives by the site um water supply um whereas there's uh you know a significant process from the state to uh ensure that the proposed water supply won't be uh unduly affecting uh adjacent water supplies and the based on the amount of withdrawal that's proposed for the hotel the radius of investigation for interference into other water supplies from the proposed water supply for the hotel and the rest of the project is 2000 feet um so we've notified everyone within that 2000 good let's hold all that for when we discuss that criteria okay and then um on the exit four group um I'm less familiar with how things work uh in terms of getting party staffs for a group but I I'm curious to hear how we establish um who is or isn't a member of the group and who is authorized to represent the group as a whole in this discussion I wouldn't um our general counsel you can come out at the recess with us can't you good I thought so we'll avail ourselves of having a general counsel here so you understand he's uh he may want to introduce himself better than I would but he's our chief legal expert for the natural resources board and we can have legal issues or questions we turn to him so we will um at least you have something else I think they're just a little shocked that open space to show up when they haven't been involved at all no one's contacted me or um first of we've heard about it this morning yeah and it's a little disheartening to be honest we're going to recess and uh we'll discuss this and if general counsel wants to come with us that'd be great Mr. Taylor can I just say one other thing on behalf of uh the entry of uh exit four um because this is I just want the applicant to know that um the people are concerned about some particular issues this isn't some kind of gauntlet that's being thrown to try to um create difficulty for the applicant or to try to um you know cause this this project to be denied these are just issues that we want to ensure are taken care of if there are wells in the area that may be at risk um like the pike quarries the pike quarry in Williamstown one of the resolutions there was to promise to drill a well deeper and to ensure that the water supply did not was not diminished so I think we understand that well I understand um this is last minute in terms of any informal conversations previously um we just want to ensure that uh the folks that are do have a particular interest are protected through the process okay thank you so um gentleman sacks we are granting party status preliminary party status on three five eight and eight nancy rice on three five and eight linda la france on three five and why soon she was eight and nine b which we'll be discussing anyway we have discussed that ourselves um wait yeah should go um three five and eight and exit for open space three five and eight and just understand this is preliminary party status like I should mention that um were we not to do this um they could take an immediate appeal from our decision so it's better usually from an applicant's point of view for what you're having to say uh which is good because it's an open it's an open forum we think we can adequately address their concerns good um so um now I give a oath to you all who might be testified and uh do you solemnly affirm the evidence that you shall give relative to the clause now under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perker the hearing is now convened uh the application was originally originally submitted on august 30th 2019 the application documents and any documents submitted since then have been posted on the public database and if you need help locating that database then there's more than one to help you through that um we've reviewed the application and determined that we will take evidence and it is expected um on basically one we'll be taking evidence from on one a two and three headwaters uh water supplies one e streams one g wetlands um and then three i mentioned three already water source and wells um five traffic safety and eight aesthetics and nine b prime agricultural soils uh and then 10 in so far as it relates to uh the regional commission in randolph uh they are in what we call an act 250 town I guess you would say and criteria I believe it's six seven and ten as it relates to the town have been already litigated in effect okay so what we do now is um we're going to let the applicant go ahead and proceed um we're going to direct ourselves in case jen has to leave early um she doesn't but uh we'll start down in the ones anyway because that's simpler and then we might actually jump up to the eights um up to eight um but um we can pretty much proceed as you as you all want to do that's fine so what happens is they give their presentation uh we'll be speaking to the particular criteria as we go along and uh we'll be addressing them and then we'll offer you an opportunity to address them too as well okay so now we're on the record thank you so if we could pick up on the site and just real quickly go through that we'd like to present that material to you and then the um building elevations so that people can um begin to visualize the massing and and so forth of what we're proposing and and keep it to that and then go on in with the criteria we've got we certainly have plenty of other materials too that we can bring up when we get your questions and the public's questions okay so do you have anything else finish up on I mean I think we have covered this site um relatively well one thing I did want to mention was uh relative to the site is if the stakes we were looking at for the tree clearing were located here and here so I was trying to describe there um that the the angle of the end of the clearing angles in as it goes over towards the road so um visually from the road the amount of tree clearing will be a bit less than what it looks like from the inside of the site because these two areas are you know angle towards the road so um just if I get that so we're talking about on the entry way to the left and to the right yep yep so that the this sort of dark line here is the limit of tree clearing in those areas and so the state we're looking at is here and then here is the culvert and where it comes across to the city so that it's angled in I mean roughly 45 degrees to the front of the tree line um both on the left and right of the driveway okay and Jen um in the state and whatnot I get a little special treat here so if you need to pipe up and ask questions please do okay thank you well otherwise unless there's any specific questions about the layout of the site at this time we can move on to that where is the drill well right the drill well that we're going to serve the project from is located roughly there along the tree line so there was we did see there's a second drill well um back at this end of the site um that well didn't have adequate capacity so we had done that one first at the south end of the site and um as Paul was mentioning after we uh the site walked through the first well we had a drillers yield of 12 gallons per minute which was inadequate to serve the needs of development so we drilled the second well um which isn't unusual when you're doing an exploratory uh well drilling for to support a public water system um the second well has drillers yielded 150 gallons a minute which is about five times the um rate that we need to support the project so only the only the second well at the north end of the site here uh we were going to propose to use to serve the portable water needs of the project is that what you would call a true artesian um so they're both artesian wells um really all artesian means is that the aquifer that you're using is pressurized and so it's if you picture um this sort of you've seen that the sort of youtube it's like a u-shaped glass tube and the water level goes evenly so if there's pressure down in the watershed uh water aquifer um it just the water level rises up to be to equal out the amount of pressure that's in there it's isn't really particularly indicative of the amount of water we can withdraw from the well happens here it's more indicative of the fact that there's a restrictive layer that water can't move through between the surface and aquifer they're actually withdrawing water from we'll get into that a little more later okay so is that that's generally the site and not like i said unless there are specific questions on the layout the general layout of the site can move on to the building uh design okay let's do that for now see do you want to go to the sketch up model first or yeah do you want to flip through the slide yeah absolutely um so this is an image essentially from the point where brine was standing earlier with a red flag at the bottom of the street so looking up the driveway there's a monument sign to the west side of the driveway the landscape architect has proposed a split rail type of very intense uh and some practical keys along the entrance side um looking up this is the hotel building it's three stories uh this is the main entrance and court brochure area that is partially hidden by the green this would be the restaurant and conference center building uh on the left as you enter the space a little bit further uh into the site this is approximately where people were parking for today's visit from there we were looking to the left at the corner the flags that were in corners of the building as well as the hotel corners that would be over here here the path was essentially cutting through this area this is kind of a bird's eye perspective looking from above the parking lot towards the conference center building this portion here on the left is the restaurant portion we've tried to really break down the massing using gables and porch elements to help make it feel like a a series of smaller buildings as opposed to with our building this this would be the main entrance so taking left into the restaurant or right into the conference center this would be the indoor event space which has a capacity of about 400 people uh this is the corner of the hotel as seen from the front and the images we're seeing here are they um uh for us to are they in other words will there be that kind of planting we'll I know we'll go through a planting diagram at some point but just so that we kind of visualize this as we see it now yeah um is that the kind of thing that you're proposing to have in the middle and whatnot or is that just to make us feel good this is done a little bit in tandem with the landscape plan yeah it may not be 100 accurate given the types of plants that are available and it's somewhat representative and the landscape plan should be used as a final determination but in general tree locations etc are meant to be accurate so what we're looking at here is the hotel itself is three stories high we've broken it up with some of the similar gable elements that we've that we've used on the conference center building we have all of the siding materials I have as samples if anybody's interested in looking at those closer is there a stone a manufactured stone material at the first level and for example a vertical siding cardboard type products that will be used when we brought the stone up along the center as well and I might just point out while you're sort of getting your head wrapped around how the hotel looks we um the the product owners requested a special permission from the national franchise that it's going to be a Hampton Inn so um Helton is the national franchise owner they requested special permission to deviate from the standard look of a Hampton Inn so the way that they usually build these this would be a four-story hotel they would have a flat roof the colors need to be white and white gray and blue and it would be metal panels with a stucco finish and it would be denied probably well so and that's that's what I'm saying is that during the design process the owners were trying to be sensitive to the local architectural and then also just the setting of the thing so that's the color selection being an earth tone color selection using materials that look more like a typical wood siding or stone on material or all intentional things that were done to try and improve the aesthetics of what this hotel would have been if the national brand had kind of just built their standard yeah yeah we did go in front of the design review committee too with the time there's a dry board they all supported this concept but a peak roof not a flat roof and a pretty no the landscape one one of the other points too on the landscaping a direction to the architect or the landscape architect um wasn't we wanted to avoid having too many medium to tall uh plants and trees and so forth and you see how what she's done on that and it allows for even at maturity to have um it became a security issue said you've got line of sight instead of creating after 10 years dark areas or hidden areas around the parking area so that's why this is uh one of the design elements that we have in it again just um this one's more of an eye level view looking towards the hotel again trying trying to kind of minimize there are several steps of the building both horizontally and vertically within the roof just to help kind of bring down the scale and get a little bit less obtrusive to the environment kind of a look as if you were going to be entering the Fort Rocher area the entrance in the background uh shows the scale of the conference center and that's okay well let's um let's focus on some criteria now um and let's start down with um uh the agency and natural resources um concerns um and maybe Jen you should speak to those uh introduce yourself and and you can have a conversation back important about them I'm Jen Rojo with the agency event resources I work in their office of planning and our office of work makes their review of activity applications amongst the agencies three departments so uh the comments that I submitted to the commission yesterday are the comments from our staff who are reviewing the the project in the context of whatever their um property scheme may be or under a different action criteria uh the comments I provided yesterday um I received a comment from Laura Riker who's in the division of the agency straight from water groundwater protection division and the program is seeking additional app information um regarding uh storage of hazardous types of materials and potential sources of contamination with respect to projects location in uh the Royalton surface water protection area so um as mentioned at the site visit it was surprising that this is actually within Royalton's district um surface water protection areas uh surface water source protection areas excuse me tend to be larger than your typical groundwater protection area so the program is seeking additional information that acknowledges the the location within this spot and some little information about what are the potential sources of contamination and I'm happy to provide an additional fact to the commission which outlines what uh the different zones represent so zone one of the spot is the actual source and a 200-foot radius and then zone two um for surface water sort of protection area is 200 feet within any perennial um surface water and then zone three is the area beyond that 200 feet so the project is within zones two and three and uh Laura within the program is available to review the supplementary information of the right comments but at this time we're not requesting any additional conditions just acknowledge that not a public project location within the spot and understanding what are the different materials that are stored here in the practices okay under criteria two and three by understanding is that um they are the project is still uh pursuing the source permit um and as discussed with the site visit there was two sources which doesn't have sufficient mail and that's um well um also one he streams was a concern too right but and that was um if you want to bring back that picture that shows uh stream yeah the stream and I think we put that adequately on record if I have yeah I'm just going to mention your undisturbed area yes this is probably the best sort of overall picture of it um as we discussed at the site visit there's a number of maps that show perennial stream that just runs all along the south side of root 66 to this class identified across to wetland the visit with the fisheries biologist identified this what is essentially a word side ditch along root 66 here with swine the stone then goes into a culvert to the other side of root 66 and then back under another culvert onto the project property only identified the stream as perennial starting from the culvert where it returns to the property over on the west side so based on my conversation fisheries biologists were showing a 50 foot buffer from essentially what is the bottom of the bank right adjacent to the stream so this this these two dark lines are illustrating that bottom of the bank there and then this lighter line which is a little hard to see but this is the 50 foot buffer a significant portion of which is actually contains root 66 right here on the north side but we are limiting the disturbance of the project to be outside of the 50 foot buffer as shown with possible section it's really hard to see on this plan so let me call it a different one so again here's here's the culvert and then here's the beginning of the stream here's the edge of the buffer and then the tree clearing um so right now there's an existing sewer main hole for the municipal sewer system so that's where we're planning to make our sewer connection so there may be a little bit of temporary disturbance just in the edge of the 50 foot buffer to allow us to connect to this main hole dislocation but certainly once that's done that could return to be on this area unless something happens with sewer line and it's ear repair what are you doing to make sure that that does remain undisturbed um well i'm sure the applicant would be happy to accept a commission uh condition from the commission um to maintain the 50 foot buffer it's undisturbed area but um generally the the way it's going to remain undisturbed is by not clearing the trees so it and visually we saw that that is in fact grown up to trees right now yeah they're quite tall yes yeah so it'll be it'll be clear by the limit of trees where the edge of the buffer is not exactly something that you can have to mow and continue to mow closer no you never yeah and beyond the fact that the mowed area the proposed managed area for the hotel really ends shortly outside of the parking um because of the way the landscaping was designed one of the um the landscaping was really designed um based on a very specific set of local criteria that are part of the specific zoning district that it was implemented around the interchange the interstate interchange um and one of the things was trying to maintain as much as possible the sense of the agrarian character so a lot of the open areas that are outside of the parking um and outside of the area that we need for snowshoes and maintenance utilities are going to be meadow areas anyway and not really intensely managed like well on the agrarian culture okay um um besides the fact that there's also quite a large uh slope that's going to be created along this north side of parking here that's really going to prevent the creep of that mowed area towards the towards the river all in there um I think that covers that um the wetlands um the lineation what not um just wanted to touch on that because that's until I'm happy to address it so um Paul had a site visit with she was at Shannon where Shannon Morrison um to review the the wetlands was delineated by airwood environmental uh last fall before we really got going on the project design so um Shannon reviewed the wetlands delineation um and agreed with what air awards work um she walked around the rest of the site with Paul and didn't identify any other wetlands that he would be protecting so essentially we are uh limiting our disturbance to the 15 foot wetland buffer um I know that because some of the streams is kind of close to achieve request of the condition that we mark out the box in this field before construction and we're more than happy to do that so on this plan um this darker line is the delineate wetland and that was surveyed the flags were surveyed when we did our site surveys it's quite an accurate location and then again this this outer line here is the limit of the 50 foot buffer right along there okay you know this shows with the squiggles that you have some wooded area there but I don't that's that's existing existing wooded areas so we'll leave the trees within the 50 foot buffer okay slide in in this area right here yeah and so there the the existing it's not shown on this plan it's shown on this plan the existing trees that was the corner of the trees we were looking at where that flagging was so they'll leave this along the edge of the buffer here these trees will be maintained and into the east of the sorry west of the buffer as well we're planning to build them for the dry play area okay so we've got trees on that buffer too yes and they're all all the trees inside are quite in chair and easy to see so coming downhill at the 66 there is a portion and we can we have a view shed study that will go over when we get to criteria probably there is a place you can see the project limit 66 but generally you don't see it you see it from what we can go over because it's more illustrative to show you the pictures while we're talking about it so the the weapon just following that back the wiggle the way that wiggles right up top here so the wetland it's sort of right along the root 66 right away here and then it cuts back to the southeast along this line sort of noses out here and then so there's more wetland to the east here but we're not showing it because we delineated along the edge where we're having closest disturbance but now you round circles right there those trees going in or coming out these are existing trees yeah they're staying there but we're still in the wetland there I mean just on the edge of it the buffer yes different buffer yeah yeah and um again we kind of down in the lower corner there we kind of lose yeah just to your right a little more here yeah right there where it says wooded there now we're no longer in the wetland you're just outside the buffer even yeah the buffer so yeah the corner of the existing tree line there is outside the water buffer by the time you get down that far south is some of that been chopped already or no not matter kind of back to that this all right so the tree line as you see it here is that exactly the same as what you saw on the site that the site was today oh despite the broader source well whatever chop it up all right oh yeah so that the area that you saw was a lot of that area was um lastly brush your stuff yeah that was really done for the property before we were started to explore for and stuff like that so all right all right good okay very good could I could I ask you on the um condition that's proposed and we assume that that's going to be conditioned that language yeah it helps with the contractor because then we put that in the plans and it's easier to manage the construction when it comes from active oh you'd like to see all the players themselves I'll put them on the plans if it's in the permit I did mention um to Shannon that you know I would manage you know putting up the so fans make sure it's in the right spot and stuff like that not allow no contractors or anybody to touch an active two-foot buffer so I'm taking that responsibility to make sure it's done correctly I'm the one for medical in terms of very good um okay um let's jump to criteria eight can I just back up and address the comments on the source protection area um so we'll come we're definitely coming back to oh okay criteria three yeah oh so you'll you'll okay yeah just yeah I just want to get you know while people are still not falling asleep yet and whatnot I know that's yes uh can we do uh criteria again real quick sure yeah absolutely yeah the regional commission feels that I performed through the regional plan so we're all set there I did have one general question to the applicant about the access and their access permit for detrans to they plan any what shoulder widening or um any slip lanes or anything like that you know there's no traffic proposed you did have traffic study done and detrans had a chance to review it so it didn't be any of the criteria thresholds for widening or turning lanes or we will discuss that further yeah okay that's all I have okay thank you so let's go to eight and uh start talking about um all the issues that come with um potentially eight with respect to noise light uh aesthetics does it fit um that kind of thing this is where we would expect to see participation from the neighbors and members of exit four that's right sure um so uh let's start with the view study because I think that's actually really helpful with understanding how the project fits in the context of the area generally so um this view study was actually a requirement that the uh the local zoning regulations have for the like I said again the special zoning district that they have at the inner state interchange um so this this was aimed at both illustrating the uh visibility of the project also satisfying the requirements uh for the town uh zoning process and um just to get this on the record I'm sure everyone is probably already aware but the project has already been approved by the Randolph DRB so they've been through all of these uh visibility and and criteria themselves and found the project to conform with their regulations so uh what we did was um we flew a set of three balloons uh right at the main entrance to the hotel so um I realized this is upside down from the rest of the views we booked out today so just to orient everybody here's 89 here's the park and ride here's the entrance where we came in hotel and conference center um so right at the main entrance to the hotel we flew a series of three balloons the first balloon was at 50 feet which is roughly the highest height of the hotel right at the peak of that gable that's over the entrance there that you saw when we were looking at the the elevation views then we flew a second balloon at 75 feet and a third balloon at 100 feet just to get an idea of how tall something would have to be before you have to see it from various vantage points and then drove around to different spots to see where you could see the balloons from um so there were one perspective flows from down here uh at the general area where the samus project was produced the provost right across the street from the mcdonalds um so you could get a sense of what you can see um from this concert plane down here um both of the interstate uh off ramps to get a sense of whether the product be visible from the interstate or not um here at the park and ride and then from a couple of vantage points up the hill um this is right on 66 so this is the wetland area right here so this is looking across the wetland area um this is from the independent living facility which isn't shown it wasn't built yet on this already photo but that's where that photo is taken and then another vantage point further up 66 um to illustrate views as you get up closer to randolph center you don't have one from miss le france's we don't but we can discuss that as we go through these views so starting from starting from the independent living facility and just before we look at this i just wanted to point out relative to a france property so these are i think these are 20 foot contours on this one but you can see that this is the mode area here uh where mr france was telling us that she's proposing to construct a residence and if you follow the contour it kind of goes along here and right this is the same contour that runs right along the edge of the independent living facility so this is where we took the picture from essentially the same elevation um as the reference property just to point that out before we start there oops but further back just from a different perspective i mean essentially the same distance from the project between here and there i mean if you're thinking of like a circle from the projects they're roughly the same distance away so this is the view this is the end of the independent living facility um and so this these are the three balloons so this yellow balloon here is the one that actually represents the the height of the building um yeah thanks you did not see my yeah so there's a blow up of the three balloons you can see them but this is where it is in the picture um and then so what um steven and his folks did was that they took the model of the hotel three-dimensional model of the hotel they placed it in this picture using the actual height of this balloon to place where the top of the roof line is so here's the same view with the with the hotel placed in it um so this is the back of the conference center this here is the roof line of the hotel so you can see they're having some lights a little bit in their minds i don't know if that's i think behind you in the hallway there top yeah try the other one and you could flip that the other way around if i think oh yeah that's that's good i think yeah i knew great you'd be so so again um this right here is the back of the here's the conference center here's the restaurant and then this is the hotel going sort of away from you so you can see the couple of steps in the roof lines the highest point of the roof lines right there um so you can see that you see it from here um but it's not interrupting the views so right here is the top of the existing tree line that's to the west and downhill from the project so all of those pine trees that you see along here and along here those are the same trees you can see right here in this picture so while the hotel is 50 feet tall it's not taller than the existing tree line that's beyond it in the view so from this point yes you can see the hotel i mean i think it's reasonable to assume that if you build something you can see it from somewhere but it's not interrupting what most people would consider the view which would be the view of the the foothills and mountains beyond the project so we would expect that that relationship between the building and the tree line would be very similar at the lafrance property as it would be from more than once because it's at the same elevation regardless of the angle that you're looking at the project from if you're at the same elevation the height relationship between the roof line of the building and the height of trees beyond will be the same if you're at the same elevation um okay Linda yes is it okay call you Linda yes my name lots of people call me that so um is can can we see your property here to the left there you can see part of um on the left down just you know a kind of above the a is sort of a lower part of it um it continues to roll up and there's a hill see you can see that tree line kind of heads up and so there's a top of the hill up there but when you get beyond the trees um kind of here in the foreground that are around a wet area there's a lot more open space i tried pointing that out today while we were up there that there's a more of an open space and a direct line of sight that would go right over the top of that or right into the top of the hotel again i think you're you're referring to this area up here yes and just the angle down so what you can see from over here in that picture is kind of this part of the hill um but again if you if you look at these it's a little hard to see on here but this elevation contour goes like this so the elevation here is essentially the same as the elevation that uh where that picture is looking from so the picture is taken from right where that cursor is sitting right now but you don't have any trees blocking your view down that way in the field right it looked like we could look right up right you can look straight down and there are the two big trees that are planning on coming down where the party tent's going to be so and then that i find very ejectionable from the aesthetics point of view if you want to move around some more yep so um this is the view from route 66 um so the project right you can see this car sitting right here that's about where the project drive is and then this is the existing wood line and then the where you're adjacent to the large bottom it's it's pretty open there so again here's the balloons that were flown yellow representing the actual top of the hotel um so there will be a um when you're driving by the wetland on route 66 from the north you will be able to see the project from there um one of the things that's not shown well on this rendering is that and what came out of the um the local hearing is we added some additional trees along this back of the hotel here to sort of break up that um long wall that you'll be able to see but um again if you go back to where this picture is taken from so you can see you're sitting right here um and you're looking over the wetland so that's a very brief view for travelers that are going along route 66 um and then let me just skip down this is this is the view looking towards the project from a little bit further up the hill um so this right here is the drive to Morgan orchard so it's just up the hill from there um so by the time you get to this past this cops of trees um you can't see the project anymore on route 66 so the view of the project on route 66 is only by the time you get down so this is that little cops of trees i was just pointing out you have to get past that look over the wetland and then be before you get to these trees here um to be able to see that view of the project could you go back to the v yep what so this is a that's a wall this is yeah this is the back wall of the uh the conference center here and the restaurant here so this right here is the roof of the conference center and this right here is the roof of the hotel it's not a separate wall but no no it's the wall of the building um the drb had expressed some concern about that long um wall of the building there in this particular view so the added some additional landscaping which we can look at in our landscaping plan to break that up a little bit more can you go back to the first slide please i think that this when you look at the entrance helps to explain better the cutting of the tree and how that entrance is going to be laid out when we were talking about how the the buffer came down the wetlands buffer and then ryan was saying how that opened it up on both sides it's a little better here in color to to see it so then there was a variety of viewpoints down here that were taken to illustrate the views to the traveling public on i89 or or folks that are accessing this conservative land down here um essentially because of this very tall very dense mostly confer forest here which is either owned by the project or part of the lute 89 right of way um you can't see it from any of these perspectives d e c d e or f and i can go through those pictures as well so this is the um the off ramp from the north side of route 89 looking back up the project i would note that you can't see any of the balloons including 75 or 100 foot balloons from here this is the here's the parking ride so this is the stormwater ponds on the south side of the park ride again looking back up at the project in this area you can't see any of the balloons from this vantage point either um this is the south bound off ramp and the project is up here this is kind of the trees on the hillside behind the project actually um but there's additional trees in front of the project and again you can't see any of those and this is the view from the conserved land uh to the south of the interstate this is the the trees um between the projects and this and again you can't see any of the three balloons that were formed from in this vantage point so other than um from the properties up the hill the lefrance property and um giford property and that where the actual entrance of the hotel is and that short section on 66 to the north um you really can't see this project from anywhere else those are the main vantage points yeah just to let you know i i could see the balloons on my property i i didn't get a g or h and i'm still there so you could see from your upslope from the yes i could see the balloons uh of course i'd have to the uh can i ask a question about where you say the balloons are it makes it seem like there's a lot of wood there is that the bolder picture or is that before or after you clear uh so the current the current tree line runs more like along here okay but this this does show the accurate location of the back before they cleared it i i i wouldn't have been able to see it now that it's cleared and when the leaves drops uh i are not there i can see the route 66 so i can see the balloons it's good can i ask a question um you're doing balloons but there's light coming the balloons were a dot but the hotel will be lit up so there will be some visibility through the lights and also from the giford property uh did you go to this first the second floor or third floor to see how much could be seen of the hotel because i have a feeling that if it's lit up it's going to be visible quite visible well do you want to talk about lighting now sure well um i have another question about sure um so if you go back to that last picture with the balloons um i wondered last time why a 35 foot balloon was it and i know that you've gotten permits to go higher than that but just to show the difference between what was initially you know allowed and what the variance went to to the higher level but my question right now is also further up in 66 did you do any studies further up in 66 to see what they could see down um you know further towards redraw what they could see down there beyond so steve you can correct me if i'm wrong but you drove around up there where the balloons were up but you didn't see them from up there so it wasn't correct g was illustrated as the you know you can't see it from g you can't really see it from anywhere further up anybody that might have a view of it uh from Randolph center like these houses here their views blocked by the um depending on the facility anyway well i was thinking even further further up g up um no g like down in this area take the point yes yes from that area so when i did the viewing i did go down this road and up past the intersection of vgc um with no ability to see any of the balloons uh for the site so you're showing me one plane yeah let's move on a little bit to lighting now excuse me for one second i'll just have to pull that one off right about well you're pulling that up i just wanted to mention to the audience and in general one of the things we do when we do uh criteria eight especially as it relates to aesthetics as we do um the first question we ask is does the project fit in the community in in the context with which it's being proposed um so you can imagine um a large hotel being offered to be built somewhere outside of town out somewhere outside of vtc sort of where some of your really big farms are for instance that you would have an issue there about context immediately and so that's the first initial question we ask and then um if we decide that it doesn't you know that there might be some issues and it might have an adverse impact then we start to ask three other questions about um whether um it's unreasonable if it would be the usual reasonable person standard does this so offend the the um sensibilities of a reasonable person that it shouldn't be um does it fit within community standards um and then finally has there been any attempt to mitigate this through um uh means in in such case we're about to talk about lighting um dark sky compliant lighting so that there's no trespassing on both on the light for instance so that's kind of just a shortened version of what we go through in analyzing this so it might be helpful in terms of trying to direct your comments then you think about whether this does fit um you know on the edge of a village you know community area like this or not or just off an interstate um because that's going to be the kind of balancing act that you know in consideration we'll be doing so unfortunately this is not a great presentation slide um but this is the photometric plan so you can see that the majority of the site lighting is provided by uh pull lights around the parking and um sidewalk areas um the pull lighting along the sidewalk is at 14 foot mounting height and the ones further out in the parking areas at 20 foot mounting height um all the fixtures are led led they're full cut off down cast dark sky compliant um even so far as there's a flagpole there that is the flag that's going to be lit but the light fixtures on the top of the flagpole pointing down as opposed to being on the ground pointing up at the flag like uh many of them are um average light i'll just zoom in on this section over here um fun um average light level over the entire site is just over one foot candle um and then if you take the parking areas in and of themselves it's right around one and a half foot candles um the one area that's generally lit up more than that is underneath the pork for share it's lit up to five foot candles um but that's completely uh lit by fixtures that are up inside the canopy there um so they are all only directed down right under the pork for share and that's just because that really um the appearance of that area is more like the transition into the building so it's a transition in light level between the much lower level generally on the site and the much brighter level inside the building and so if we take a look at some of the areas so that the the end of the calculation is where generally the end of the light is um so you can see there's pretty minimal light uh being cast outside of the area on the parking um and this is illustrative too the the distribution of the fixtures is all cast forward into the the parking area so you can see here on this side of the light we're at like two foot candles on the back side of the light we're at a half a foot candle um so the lighting design has been um done to minimize the amount of light that's cast anywhere that's not needed which is the parking area for those of us who are not familiar with candles is there any way you can analogize that to something that we understand better yeah i feel like you're something water uh well why isn't isn't really that helpful because that so the foot candles are um a measurement of the power of the lighting on a surface so in this case the surface of the ground um a foot candle is roughly but the amount of illumination you get from one candle on something that's a foot away which is a funny old english unit that involves candles but so it's just a standardized measure of the amount of light that is hitting a surface so one foot candle uh is i'm trying to remember the announcement well if we were to pull into just saying the mcdonald's parking lot at night here on exit four or the neighboring one um you're going to ask me what their lighting level is i hate to speculate um because i don't have that information but generally one foot candle is a very low parking lot illumination um the only place you're going to see parking lot illumination of this level is in a pretty um recent development and and so the one the one that comes to mind is because it's a process i've worked on it was just recently completed is the caledonian spirits the solarium and pillar i don't know if anyone is familiar with that at all um but it's got you know it's got a large parking lot um it's in an area of town that's not particularly well lit because it's out on the edge of town so when you drive by that site um you if you look at the ground you can see that the ground is illuminated but if you look at the site itself it really it's not like a huge source of light like it's the light is going onto the ground and the part where it means to me but you really don't it's it i was surprised to be honest with you um at how little of the light is is really visible from a roadway where you're even a little bit below and looking into the site so i mean if you think of something like um a car dealership in new jersey where you picture in your mind but what is light trespass you're looking at like a 10 foot candle average what's your back to McDonald's for for there sure um what would you just um if i were to to speculate because i don't have the information uh on what the foot canals are McDonald's i think that's a bit brighter than what you're going to see there well two or three or i i'm not going to give you a number we can go look at we can go look at the application light shining down i'd be interested let me let me speak to that a little bit i i think you may know the standard there's five this to be like last yeah i mean a at a desktop a typical desktop in an office environment could be 30 30 foot candles at desk level so that's you know i don't know what we're at here this may be 10 that and one of the one of the things that's about illumination is and this has been required and and it's evolved you know as the technology's evolved we used to be sodium vapor was all we wanted for act 250 then the idea of cutoff fixtures the standard is that you don't see the source of illumination from a travel way right so you're not looking up and under so you're cutting that off it doesn't do any good to um spend the money on a fixture that's lighting up the neighbors for instance so when you look at a parking here like this which could be like a supermarket parking area the design is to ensure safety it is to be seen you can't read a newspaper that's not the standard but rather from a security standpoint your safety standpoint are you able to be seen when you walk out to your car do you have the sense of security and confidence that you're not walking into a black hole and you could do that with one foot I mean it it doesn't sound like a lot but you are seen and it's not scary I think the other thing that we did on this and I'm sure Steve can add more to it is we're not doing any building flooding public we're not showcasing the building lighting it up there are no lights up in the eaves to come down or anything that's not the point I mean when you think about it this is a hotel that's hidden unlike most interstate hotels there is no expectation of this being a place that somebody pulls off because they see it now that we're ready to stop for the evening most people go online to book their hotels so you can hide them and the same goes for the illumination on the building it doesn't have to be showcased so we're trying to minimize that is there any timers on any of this at all you know or so it's likely that the area that around the hotel itself won't be able to be shut off on a timer I think the outer areas of illumination certainly you can consider something like a 50% illumination but you know one of the things we're working on this project is that there are certain standards that the the national hotel chain requires and some of the things are around safety so you know I'm not sure if they would be able to construct this project and then really not house lighting it especially in the right around hotel area let me ask you a different question as I recall freeing your application when it comes to choosing the amount of parking you're trying to put together the rooms and the right way from wrong the conference center and the restaurant and kind of utilize not add each one up but try to have that's right if you want to explain that a little further sure so the amount of parking is selected based on a shared use parking analysis and typically the way that works is you look at the typical generation of parking for each use but then you would you apply a time-based factor to see if there's overlap in the peak time that things are under use so the way we came up with the number was we we said you know here's the parking generation for the hotel and the hotel employees here's for restaurants here's the conference center you know and at certain times of day the hotel is likely to be using 30 percent of its parking but the conference center is using 90 percent of its parking so comparing various scenarios in different times of day weekdays weekends we looked at where was the peak parking demand among the uses considering the variation in parking demand over time which is typically how a shared use parking analysis is done so we certainly and this was one of the things we requested of the town this is about a 20 percent reduction what we're showing for parking relative to what would be required under the band also in regulations if we just took each use and calculated its parking demand so it's 236 I think is the number of parking spaces and under the rain officer in your regulations if you just took them at least value you'd be looking at something close to 290 parking spaces now we want you to be successful if we approve this and so you're hoping to keep it filled I would assume but it would be kind of interesting to see if you know there are going to be some quiet periods that's just kind of another blood bank and if the outer parts of some of those lights could be quieted down and reduced when it was I mean if you could if there was some sensitivity that was possible with that and if the national camped it in would be agreeable to that kind of thing I mean I think you know what I think the concern from the neighbors tends to be that they're up above this mostly and like when I come out of my farmhouse and look to the south I'm always trying to figure out what the below I do see is and what and I never can quite figure it out to be honest because there's just big restored bush mills and that's about it yeah so this project really shouldn't contribute to any sky glow because it's all you know that those those kind of things are from light leakage up into the air right and all of these fixtures are downcast and cut off and specifically designed to minimize light leakage so um you know like I said with that that calving spirits development like even though you're looking at it from down below you don't perceive it like light is up high you can perceive that the things on the ground are lit so if you can see the ground of this development at night you will see that it's lit but it's not going to be like glowing up into the sky none of the elements above the 20 feet mounting height of those fixtures will be illuminated other than light that comes out of the windows from inside of the building or something like that so um it's not it's not going to be like I said like the cardio shift where you see these bubbles glow from far away it's really it's really quite impressive what what modern light fixtures can do in terms of limiting where that light trust is so the neighbors light up so to speak really yeah but you mentioned the the the the the resident the guests at the end um you want to show us again but how much is exposed to that direction uphill or whatever so um the hotel the windows are all on the north side and the south side here so from up the hill and then the windows there's the windows on the conference center are all you know these three faces of the project so there are very few windows that face this direction at all from the project so you can kind of see here's the front of the hotel where all the windows are and there's the side of the hotel where there are either no windows are only the stairwell I'm not sure you know Steve there's a just this corridor corridor has a window on each floor yeah there's one window on each floor at the end of the hotel yeah and it is um the loading dock that's on the back of the building that faces this what what will that have for lining uh there's no formal loading dock on any of these buildings so um any of the deliveries there's just there's an area for trucks to park but the deliveries will then be unloaded off the truck and walked into one of the doors of the building so there's nothing that you would look at and say that's a loading dock there's a little bit of area of pavement for a truck to park but the deliveries won't be happening late into the evening but the I'm assuming there's still lighting on the door the deliveries on that side of the building only the parking lot lighting there's no additional lighting for the delivery areas okay and again I mean if you if you think about this perspective um you know the what's what's the roof what's the eave height here Steve do you know 16 feet yeah so I mean this is this is roughly the height of the lighting fixtures in the parking lot so certainly from up here you're looking down at the top of the of the lighting fixtures and as you can see the majority of the parking field isn't very visible from this direction anyway because it's blocked by the building which is taller than all of those lighting lights so you know if you're up a little higher if you're on the second and third floor of this building and you can see the actual parking lot you might see it and you might see the lights but from this particular vantage point at night you would see little if any of the lighting on this project so again because of the setting of the project and because of the you know the parking being focused on the side where it's towards the road and the majority of those very tall trees you know trying to be sensitive to the people who can see the laid out portions of the site at night any further questions about the lighting at this point oh I just one more thing I wanted to mention there was a comment about the height of the building being related to where you can see light from none of the exterior lighting is anywhere near as tall as the building and so you know again other than the windows which I don't think know or you know there's not really anything we can do about that and and you know the people that are in those rooms aren't going to have their lights on all night either you know there's there's really nothing up at the height of the building that's going to be extremely limited on this project nothing higher than 20 feet this is the mounting height of the parking lot I think you're going to probably be the most most effective well sir I can see if you go back to that ABC when you got the last picture where my house is behind it there on the above there and you can look over to the parking lot I believe that's to the barn and McDonald's there at night I see the evening glow on that from what I'm understanding it's going to be totally different type I guess but you're probably be looking into their windows yeah that's it'll be truly close that that'll be blocking my view now that I get to look at 66 I would mention that the Shabbat residence is really oriented yeah my views are are orientated west so I've got my my property of my property around there there yeah right here I have a front porch that right so they're the front porch of their house is here and it's oriented to taking the long views down this way over that's the back porch so you don't have to you see how you going to leave in from your house or no I got some clients and stuff that come in the way everything you can see from exit four that's what I've got to be that's what I originally designed also the bring up McDonald's again I think we'd find that I'm not an engineer so I can speak like I don't have to but because of the closeness of say the gas pumps to the barn and McDonald's being so close that those that lighting is more similar to what we're designing here for right up next to the building at the entry as you go out farther you don't have that situation at the other side of the development so you don't have the low candle power virtually all of those prop all of those uses have the high higher candle power because you need it for pumping gas and you know so forth so that's why I was trying to get them to get you to speculate a little bit on that you need to be able to read your credit card yeah that's a lot brighter and VTC is pretty bright up on top of the hill I've grown up here my whole life and VTC has always had a glow so the 28 spaces behind the restaurant the conference center there those tend to be empty at night right yeah those are intended for employee use you're talking about this parking area right here right there yeah and then you overflow although you'll have some pretty upset guests if they have to park we were there yeah the intention the intention is we've provided enough parking in these three parking areas around the hotel for hotel guests so this is where I mean I think reasonably everyone from the hotel is going to park here this is intended to be employee parking and then this is the general you know parking people who are accessing the restaurant in the conference center you know and certainly when there are larger events there's going to be staff on say you know we need to work to go park and stop not all the time but when we did yeah I'm just wondering if we can I don't think we're going to be able to do this without the lunch for what's everyone's feeling about this we've got we've got three to do we're still going to have nine to talk about we can build a little while longer we have traffic to talk about I don't think I don't know about you all but I found myself I'm going too long you all want to try to plow through or okay so we've done lighting a bit we can always get back to them if you have other thoughts later let's talk about the tent and the noise and the number of events you're proposing that kind of thing okay the from a gross standpoint and and Paul can help us with this because he has experience with it we tried to and we did locate it the best we could from a visual impact and so forth I pointed out on the site and to repeat when we stood out at the the site the event area we Brian indicated that we're going to be dropping that about 10 feet and what we're planning on is that that then becomes somewhat tucked into you know the hillside to the south and to the southwest so talk to first about sound the sound will the closest neighbor the closest building right now is Mr. Chiba and that's around 600 feet away pardon me 605 600 from the tent area it's 355 from the closest parking area I'm just talking about the tent is 600 yeah and through through the woods and then again the the tent area is so so from a sensitivity and design and trying to mitigate impact we felt that that was the place best best put it the you know with the time of the operation of it being typically in the temperate months the trees are leafed out there's more acoustic benefit as it's going up to the closest in fact we were talking this morning about his ability to hear the difference from the highway noise from the interstate noise whether the leaves are on the trees or not so that's that's hopefully helping to to mitigate things as well because most of the operation of that will be when there are leaves on the trees so beyond that the thinking for the use is is the obvious we can use but there may also be during the temperate months uses combined with the conference center so you could imagine that there may be an activity in the conference center where they choose to break for lunch out into to a tent area or open space whether there's a tent there or not so that's you know we see it as as those warmer months and that the current operation that uh that is imagined is that all activities would cease at 10 o'clock on any weekend night you can have you've got more experience yeah so i was a prior owner of able mountain campground and we were coming in front of the district um and added 30 lots and we had bands every Saturday night and we were done by 10 o'clock um that's that was the rules we manage it there's no you know might get the band one more song like that's it um where are we uh able mountain campground and break tree i was in front of you folks to add 30 lots there um i brought in 500 to 600 people every weekend then we had bands on Saturday night and i think you'll show you'll see that i had the track history of managing the people and not disrupting we were right next to a mobile home park mobile acres and that's my job is to manage it not let it go beyond i have a proven history of doing that so we're talking so you're talking about um how about amplified music so you're talking about at these yeah i had bands and stuff they would be done by you know but how about what are you proposing here i mean we need more detail what you're actually well is there a state standard of 65 decibels that you're not 56 dba at the door step at the doorstep i mean we're going to work within the state parameters of what decibels are we'll probably condition it with that but i mean we're trying to get a little better understanding i mean you know i i also want to add another thing we're in the business of a hotel where people are staying and we want to accommodate our customers people are not going to come through our hotel if it's a party and there's a lot of music all the time we are accommodating i understand that public this is why this is why you know when i first looked at this proposal the hotel is its own set of issues as soon as you start to put a tent up outdoors you open up a whole nother set of issues um and despite your experience and i understand that when it comes to trying to understand this if your proposal is to have this during the as you say temper every single weekend if you can and then in the middle of the week we need to understand and know that that's what you're in fact asking for it you want to go to 10 o'clock at night that you want amplified music um you know all that kind of thing and then what you're going to try to do to mitigate it i mean you want to have fireworks riverside wanted to do that we would have to come back in front of you if we were to well you don't have to be asking for that right now probably not no we so we need to i think we need to have a little better understanding of what it is you're actually asking for i mean is it essentially park wash whatever you want to do the one of the difficulties that we're having after we got after submission and linda asked me to try to better define it one of the problems is that it's it's not a um a single say a band or a single disc jockey there could be several or different different ones so it's hard to come up with saying well this is going to be the wattage or this is going to be the volume and so forth so going back to reasonable you know expectation i honestly don't know and having done a few of these how we do anything other than a standard um of of sound of the sound volume well i mean my suggestion would be with you drop withdraw that part of the application at this point until you get your hotel up and you get your venues going and then you come back and ask for that a later date and you understand better what it is you want to do or um you know you narrow yourself down a little bit more we have to have evidence to make positive findings criteria eight yes the burden falls on those opposing it but on the other hand we need to have something in front of us that we can make positive findings based on and simply saying that you're going to have a tent there and want to amplify the music and want to do it whenever you want to do it and just cut off at 10 o'clock at night isn't typically the the kind of thing that in my your experience doing this that we've you know just you know given approval towards without some sort of other mitigation and understanding I mean just to simply say well you're going to keep it within 50 60ba or you're going to be up at the neighbor's property with this you know with your sound monitor you know doing that kind of thing and you would require him to have the sound monitor up there i mean you don't offer any sound evidence here you haven't done a sound study or whatever you don't even really understand fully you would need some modeling to understand that you're you're dropping that down you know 10 feet what that really means for you hill sides tend to bounce sound all across the way and whatnot i do understand what you're saying about about having being a hotel and having those who stay there and i want to have to listen to that but on the other hand that could well be who's staying at the hotel those attending a originally large wedding and that kind of thing so i just i'm not sure right now what i'm hearing from you is you know very well fought out yet as compared to the rest of your project on the same token though in real life like at the campground i knew when the band was too loud and i had to ask him to turn it down i i think of myself as a neighbor and i've got three professions and we're going to be there on site and it's going to be managed we're not running a party but it's i understand it's part of the wedding business you know we're trying to create a wedding venue as far as the modeling you are trying to create a wedding event well there's somewhere yeah and someone can run to 10 if they can come the experience of my experience both interior next year and i talked to an acoustician and the problem is that you know they can look at it and they can do some modeling but they're never any guarantees you know and then you get into what irritates a neighbor the difference between sound and noise i mean we've had that argument before too where you know something is like a quarry you know it may not be as loud but it's an irritating noise well i'll tell you one thing not having any idea what the sound is going to be like and what they will be exposed to is is going to give them a lot more apprehension than having come to a hearing and having at least rsg or some expert try to assuage that to some degree yeah of what i mean we have no idea right now what it's going to be like either from any of the neighborhoods other than your assurance that you know you're going to know when it's too loud and that kind of thing i don't know maybe the rest of the mission can feel better about that than i do at the moment and i just feel bad to think that your whole permit is hanging in the wind over this tent for instance it's an amenity your tent event or the convention we're trying to accommodate our customers and what their needs are i mean that's what we're in business for i mean that's how we're going to be successful i know but okay you've done a what i would call a very excellent job of citing it relative except for one neighbor perhaps in this situation unfortunately um you've shown us how it's really not visible from the road with from the interstate from all these other spots which you know that wouldn't necessarily mean it couldn't be approved uh it's kind of a bonus from that point of view you've showed us how architecturally you've tried to diminish the height and and the mass of it improve the architectural design um you've showed us you know with the lighting how you've got it all downward lit i mean to me it's quite well thought that out from what you've presented so far um and then you plop this tent down there and there's just nothing else coming with that um it's going to be done by 10 o'clock well that's about all we know and in the summertime i mean that it gets dark at 9 9 30 well i'll give you a different example of one and we have customers that we're trying to accommodate no i don't understand but then the customers are not my concern here my concern or the but it's my it's my concern well it's your economic issue yes but that's not our concern here i'm concerned is what is under aesthetics what is the impact of the noise in the area and yes there's a lot of traffic noise on the interstate i i i've witnessed that from having sat there and listened to it but this is a whole nother whole nother can of worms that we have to you know i don't want people in our room hearing all the music from the time let me let me ask if um if we could take a minute to to discuss you mentioned taking a break anyway yeah i mean you don't have to do that now i'm just saying that um and we can ask for more we might require you to go do a sound study we're just not sure how sensitive how quickly you want to get necessarily i'm not trying to hang anything over your heads with this i'm just trying to present this is kind of you know i i personally see the you know this at the moment um neighbors have other concerns and whatnot for sure i think um if you we can we can uh contact rsg we could probably get it turned around from uh you know some modeling um this just just doesn't fit the level of of of well you know how well flood out your project is to me the rest of it i think i've tried to outline that so one of the owners is perry armstrong who owns rain or shine tent company he does do wedding venues around the state you know as far as woodstocks stove and stuff and you have the conference center we have said it holds 400 people mm-hmm yeah so the tent would be just a very occasional thing i think that's what that's what well we we're not being told that though we're you know right now they're not they're just basically asking us to approve it without any stipulations at all they haven't come and said well we'll only have five events here we'll have one a month we'll have you know you know if if getting if getting modeling gets us over that hump because in i won't say it doesn't make any difference but on on frequency but if if the modeling showed and maybe stemming from the modeling further mitigation then maybe that's the way to go well another example would be we're not going to have any amplification outside that tent we're going to you know when we have weddings it's going to all have to be you know just like that you know live you know without amplification just we're envisioning a kind of wedding that the cellar's playing or you know something like that you know that's the kind of thing i'm talking about where it sounds like you're and i'm not saying you can't have amplification i'm just saying i can't understand what the impact of the noise on the neighbors but on the same token if we're under the tent we have people and let's say the state send standard is 65 decibels why can't we have that and say no you got to turn the bands down you're above our threshold well it's 56 dba if that's what it is if that's what it is why can't we do that with the band that's there could ask us to impose that standard with i don't have a problem with doing that because i have that much but then you know we need to we're thinking not we're also thinking about the neighbors when we think about this and what potential burden that place is on them to try to figure out if that is in fact how loud it is and whatnot so anyhow i've said what i've said and you often think about it i think maybe we will take a little lunch break here um i'm going to you know recess for half an hour i don't think we need to go to town particularly or whatever we just take a little break to think about things well let's start it let's call it 45 minutes we'll start back up in one o'clock mr. chair i assume we're investing for 390 after lunch we absolutely are thank you yeah i thought you farmers didn't have to work so we're in recess till one o'clock the other one we needed more for the contrast let me do this okay we need it again i know where the switch is yeah okay we're gonna start to talk about uh 90 magnus cultural soils and mitigation on site and off site yep the um arie and i've been working since last spring uh on this and we identified the two areas of protected soils that we would be disturbing so what is shown up there in what colors uh the deserved green and red green and red green is the light one yes i'm outside so that is those are the two areas of um or those are the two that is the area of the two disturbed soils we um did the measurements and trying to find qualifying soils for onsite mitigation and we show that in the uh light blue light blue down in the bottom we were there are certainly other soils but it's uh we're not able to because of the either the configuration or or they're wooded uh the type b i think those b that's a lot to be wooded arie and so we have onsite mitigation so we are into the woods in here but the soil types this first of all this we own all this but it's not um excess well it's not the confirmation is not doesn't meet the standard and where some of these soils we could also use but the wooded and the and the sea soils are not allowed to be wooded non-cyclic mitigation so we came up with uh that area in blue that could be used for onsite mitigation which left us let's say 10.89 acres that we're requesting offsite mitigation that's that's fine with us i mean we did we crammed in what we could and and linda and i talked about some of the other in the offsite i mean it's uh the ball of pliers i mean this is you know the backs um and it's uh recent years the per acre cost has really gone up but it's um it's unfortunate but we did the best we could to try to shape things the way they are and the the parcel around the left side arie wasn't you couldn't use that because of uh slopes my understanding of that that was not proposed is onsite mitigation uh tom peter to remind me what the soils were on that on that side that was um the type that you couldn't have as a wooded oh right oh yeah yes the statewide so statewide b that's what it was it was a statewide soil uh but with a b footnote which means a potential wetness limitation and the nrcs which uh rates the soils um uh the agencies practice are pursuant to their classifications that statewide b soils if they're forested do not meet the definition of primary ag soils because they already have a wetness limitation and on top that they're forested usually uh whether or not the soils are forested would not change their status as being primary ag except for these soils with a wetness limitation so those had a wetness limitation so wouldn't have been suitable for onsite mitigation that was the reason why otherwise we'd have come close and similarly with this this area down here is the same soil type so that's why this sort of ends here at you know sort of a reasonable point where the the forests forested sort of wetness limitation sort of takes over in this area so that wasn't available for mitigation either even words that to say so when you're just curious this is more academic so you say it's a b i mean that's the slow statewide sorry not to be slow different different uses of the term b statewide in parentheses b soil meaning uh it's an nrcs classification meaning statewide importance however it has a wetness limitation um so unless that limitation's easily overcome it wouldn't be a primary ag soil so when it's forested as well yeah no i don't think so and if i could just you know it's a good job if i could just say sort of one more time that the key recommendations the agency had that are also in its review letter it was that the project would impact 7.24 acres of primary agricultural soils for which with the multipliers some of them were prime soils the buckman loam of a multiplier a higher multiplier so with the multipliers 16.76 acres of mitigation were warranted and as tom stated 5.87 proposed onsite and the agency accepted those 5.87 acres is being sufficient provided there was no concerns about wetlands which it sounds like there's there's not in that area but there's sort of a standard contingency about subject to confirmation from the wetlands program and then 10.89 acres for the remainder that were proposed off-site subject to the appropriate circumstances analysis of this commission um and and what's the fee that paid again for the off-site excuse me a little over five thousand it is five thousand one hundred thirty eight you had a good memory Linda five thousand one hundred thirty eight per acre and again 10.89 acres of proposed off-site so you could do the multiplication and yes that for the for those in the room who don't know that money goes to the provider the commission finds appropriate circumstances and issues of permit condition consistent with that those funds in a general sense go to the Vermont housing and conservation board they're used for the conservation of farmland in the region with emphasis on conserving prime soils through permanent conservation easements so so that's that's where those primarily where those funds go do you want to go back to anything the noise or do we feel like we covered that does the neighbors feel like they got to say what they wanted about noise we know right I think we stopped we've just you know not knowing what kind of events are going to be happening there I know my daughter got married a few years ago she didn't you know it's not popular to find places that stop at 10 o'clock at night for if you have a wedding and a bunch of out-of-town guests they want to keep going until midnight and if that's going to be both Friday night and Saturday night all summer long you know so to the point of asking what kind of events how often you know as a wedding venue stopping at 10 o'clock it might be night not be the best would 10 o'clock be acceptable to you um you know if they were a neighbor putting a tent up in a backyard for their daughter's wedding and it's one weekend in the summer you know have at it you know I'd be happy about that if it's Friday night and Saturday night from you know May till October no no that's that's a big intrusion on on the peace and quiet that is normally Randolph Center you just asked you one question about your situation up there because we didn't go up there so you're thinking of building out in that field that's what you testified to yeah I mean I've owned the property for 35 years paid taxes on it hoping to come back to there's no house on it now there's not a house on it now we as a family go up there and picnic we you know and you yourself if I saw the address correctly you're from outside Rochester yes her family used to own this piece of land yes I was a buyer's agent for somebody who bought it 14 years ago so and they kept that piece in the middle there that five acres I was my understanding for protection so if you go back to the um I actually own two pieces of land there one I've owned for a very long time that I would plan on building the house on so right there that was right those two parcels are both mine they're both listed as separate parcels and the second one that's a little more downhill that really is what a bus more closely to the hotel property it was just to give me whatever I want to do with it you know if I want to throw cannabis on it or goats on it or whatever you know I don't know what the state allows but originally this piece was part of this piece of the Francis and they kept this piece to go with you right yes yeah and it was for protection of the anything that might happen right so it's right but it's treated as two separate two separate tax bills but it was her it was her family that's so big the project and that's who we bought it from and I have represented him as a buyer's agent I've been selling property for 22 years so quite obviously you have a direct potential direct line you know is there any spot up on that upper piece that you could build that you would still have a view and not really see them pretty much you know I mean the view that does it flatten out up there it it does flatten out a little bit up near the top um but there's a tree line a hedge line of can I go to the map and just yeah it's just easier than pointing it back there it does flatten out a little bit right in here but there's a the streets here so the best spot for building a home again no permits at this point but there has been a there was a house on a property a bunch of years ago it's it's right there and it has like like um for good morning orchards it has a nice view that goes out through to there but it does go right over the top of the top of it what do you see um I mean you have the whole village behind you so are you down slow from them so you don't so one of the pictures showed there's a tree line here so I don't I don't see too much and the trees have grown up in there a little bit so I don't there are places in there where a lot of the trees to grow up so I don't see too much of of group 66 more than orchards for or over in this direction so most of my entire view is out there to the mountains and this does these slopes down a bit doesn't have quite the view so I think when you stand down here you don't you don't get the views but it is yeah it is what it is thank you all right you got a question yeah so we're talking about eight now uh yes here again yeah I'm not sure what that uh details I know it has the noise yeah which when you all work clear in the field or people that walk in that field and they have a regular conversation I can hear so I I know I'm going to be here in corridors slam and everything and it's going to be underneath the decibels I know that's that's part of that as far as the the party going to 10 o'clock or whatever I don't have too much concerns on that long as it's 80s music I still have concerns about the noises I I understand about the noises uh lighting uh you know 80s country what's that maybe 80s country oh okay yeah wrong uh some country running the truck the other concern is I don't know that falls into it uh I I retired from the record 1999 I bought this property to build on as a retirement or an investment okay well that's going to make my decision they put a hotel on that's not my retirement property and I'm going to be selling it so then I'm looking at my property value with a hotel and anything going right beside it I don't see I don't have facts and I've done research but I'm worried about my property value dropping 30 40 000 initially and then after a full five years we'll go back up or something like that so now I'm in a problem because I'm retiring next summer so I'm going to try to sell my house in the middle of this building stuff so this is what I didn't know where to put that yeah there is no place to put it for us you're you're absolutely right not knowing where because we don't consider economic impacts on neighbors and that kind of thing okay it's not part of the criteria yeah and it might well have that I have no idea yeah it's very part of the reason I think they don't do it is it's extremely speculative but I mean it's pretty much what come would come out of every neighbor's you know yeah and that's why I couldn't find our research you know we need to frame it more in terms of the aesthetics and you know if you yeah we try to have something not happen then you have to follow the criteria so the noise would be you know noises is definitely a problem my views is likely stated to the west but I also have the views that you know I have a small set of woods if I'm getting lighting and noise and everything from there it's just taken away from me tucking my place the other thing too is there's a burden of proof kind of basically here being our judicial posi judicial thing and different criteria have different burdens approved and the criteria aid is actually on those opposing the project so it really becomes incumbent upon if they can produce enough evidence for us to make positive findings which I was questioning a little bit with what they're asking for in the noise and I think I made that clear to them this morning that I was skeptical at this point anyway then it really falls on your shoulders opposing the project if you truly are opposing it so to present us that the noise is going to be above and beyond the 56 dba you're bringing a noise expert and on and on it goes you should say they're expensive all I can get you'll lose that thirty or forty thousand heartbeat unfortunately so there's no clean solution to a lot of that well no no we appreciate that I mean no we we don't have to honestly go there to believe you yeah I understand but yeah you know we also can be aware of the fact that we could you know the interstate is pretty loud too you know so it's all those things that go when we're trying to depends on the days it depends on it whether the leaves are down or not my concern was all once the leaves are down and I can see the hotel and I can see you know people and stuff no no I think there's no doubt that we would probably all agree that you're going to be impacted and you're certainly going to be impacted with thinking about you know told me about that okay thank you well we're on that subjective noise yeah during the recess we were discussing the comments you've made regarding that looking for more information around the operation of the 10 event area and we'd like to propose that we prepare and present a noise monitoring and management plan to you so that will include the some details about the operation of the 10 event center but you know we really feel like trying to tell you what's going to happen there now is too difficult at this point because it's going to depend a little bit on the market and we can tell you something but we could very well have something really differently happen within years so after discussing it we feel that having a plan to manage the impacts is a better strategy for minimizing the impacts on the neighboring properties rather than trying to say what has exactly been happening there so what we propose is the sound management plan that includes monitoring program for sound so for instance when there's an outdoor event they'll be some we'll put this in the plan you don't have all the details yet but we'll put it in plan some facility that the owners have committed to to monitoring the sound levels at the property line and you know comparing them to the the typical active 50 sound thresholds you know we can identify some relevant points then we can look and see if they feel comfortable with those locations and then to go on with monitoring there'd be record keeping so that we could go back and say here is this date here's our monitoring here's the results of monitoring this is what the sound levels were so then if there's questions about that then we can have a record that people can go back and rely on so beyond monitoring and right and keeping the other portions that we would propose to put in the sound management plan would be some standards for communications with people who are actually running the events so everyone who comes in from the outside to do an event who's not part of the hotel staff there's going to be a contract you know so we can propose some contract provisions and some like example communications that we could give to them where we would say you know for example like you have to do a sound check where you see what your proposed levels are and make sure that they're adequate you know it's limited to this the hours only to that those kinds of things for communication with the people to make sure that's clear and that we have a way of monitoring and controlling what's happening within the events there and then also having a section for a protocol with communication with neighbors so there's a clear line of communication between the neighbors and the ownership that will allow for you know if something's happening it gives them a way to get in touch with somebody and say hey we think this is too loud and initiate a discussion and look at it here's what I'm monitoring and looking like here's what's happening we'll talk to them that kind of stuff so that doesn't you know get us going straight to the state police or something like that certainly but ownership would prefer to be able to communicate directly with the neighbors and make a neighbor the effort to you know address any concerns they may have in a lot of times it's happening um obviously we don't have this put together today but you know you might request that you um you know when you recess the hearing the issue of hearings that's now asking us to give you the name of the plan and then the commission can have a chance to review it can you post it publicly so the neighbors have a chance to review it before everything that's on the list That sounds like a good idea um we might in that recess remember I have some suggestions for um you know a very simple thing is you actually have that tent with all the sides up or do you keep the sides of the tent down on on the back side of the side on the other side over here that kind of thing yeah certainly that's protocol that's just that's just that's the kind of thing that we would present in the plan for those protocols and it's certainly something they've considered already with those tentative events and then you know again consider the number of events I know you can't some of this gets to be a critical condition issue with stove clubs Highland and we won't go into all that but but it is a little bit it is always nice for neighbors it's this thing blue to go forward to know that there's going to be you know a weekend or two where they aren't going to have to have anything exposed to that kind of thing so um anyhow I won't try to write it for you that's not our job we'll just want some time to put it together sure okay thank you we understand it's a sensitive thing we want to try to address at the crack for you great um well I think we've covered everything we need to cover in eight I go B um we can go back to someone who wants to correct me on that at some point let's talk a little bit about traffic so uh as part of the dj was into the project we did have a traffic impact study prepared by lay wrong the consent submitted as part of the active 50 record um and this uh traffic impact assessment actually was uh prepared the request of e-trans um when we were going through the process of getting the letter of intent from new driver into it 66 they had asked for it um so they did have a chance to review it and they had they didn't have any significant comments about the conclusion of the traffic impact studies and essentially the impact study is is divided into two sections there's um congestion and safety um so let me bring this up here so everyone can see it um typically um the standard way of assessing traffic congestion congestion is with a level of service analysis um so this is just an example of what that means um the the traffic engineers calculated um the background traffic using both uh data sources that were published from counts of e-trans did and also they took data from the um traffic study that was prepared for the new ag lab building the state ag lab building up at vtc so they were including the projected trips from that on top of the background counts from e-trans as well um so they calculate the um the existing level of traffic um as it is without the project and then the existing level of traffic with the project and then they project out five years of traffic growth they do five years of protected five years without the project protected five years with the project and then they for this particular analysis they selected the project driveway the 89 interchange and then the intersection wherever 66 takes a left up by the trans i'm i'm sorry vtc so those were the intersections of interest once you get beyond those intersections it gets a lot harder to predict where people are going so but you know if you can show that there's no significant traffic impact of those closest intersections you can assume that there's even less impact as you go further away from the site so uh level of service is measured on the average um delay that person driving would experience um trying to make a movement of an intersection so typically the worst level of service is for a left turn because you have to wait for people for a hole in traffic um so these are the criteria for the various levels of service a through f um and then an average seconds of delay for each um level the v-trans standard for unsignalized intersections is level of service d or better which represents around a 30 second delay when you get to the intersection between when you stop and you get out of the traffic uh so is that changed i mean statutorily i didn't even think case law okay go ahead i'm just curious yeah i think i mean i think that's um almost as approaching the frustrating level of when people are going to go dashing out yeah and i think honestly that's probably how they develop it is what is the point when it comes to dangers i am not a traffic engineer so i can't tell you how v-trans came up with d but i will rely on the traffic engineer that we hired to know that d is the appropriate level of service it's it's a little bit neither here nor there for this discussion so see in a second yeah good so this is the results of the intersection capacity um so we have the interstate um on and off ramps we have the project access then we have the mount 66 up by v-trans so this is indicating levels of service so that no builders without the hotel builds with the hotel so assuming that it's builds in 2020 five years later it's 2025 um as you can see that the construction of the hotel has no effect on the level of service anywhere um any of it there's no change in any of the categories of level of service without the hotel um and even the projected impacts at worse are an increase of about one second down here at the interstate and hardly any impact at all by v-trans tenths of a second uh worth of impacts well you know relative to the project traffic so um given the given the level of traffic coming that we're expecting to come out of this uh and this is all i should mention this is all done at um the peak hour of traffic on jason streets at the um the design hour which is the 30th 30th percentile highest traffic um day of the entire year 30 30th highest day anyway it's a it's a high it's not the most high traffic but it is like statistically heavy traffic at which these are um calculated so that's you're not expecting to have any any real significant impact on the capacity in terms of traffic uh safety is usually typically um assessed with uh site distances so when you're sitting at the um project uh driveway how far can you see instruction how far from cars can you see you in each direction um that stuff is all uh based on f h w a um so the recommended so there's two kinds of site distance there's intersection site distance and stopping site distance intersection site distance is based on um getting a 7.5 second gap in traffic which is what the traffic gurus have figured is what you need to be able to get out in the traffic without significantly disrupting the flow of traffic um the stopping site distance is the amount of distance you need to safely stop if the car goes on in front of you without hitting them um so typically you use the intersection site distance when you're analyzing the safety of a new intersection um we have we well exceed so the for the 40 miles an hour is the speed limit of the vicinity 445 feet is the intersect the recommended intersection site distance so we have 600 feet to the west downhill currently and i should mention that these are also measured at a point that's 15 feet back from the edge of the right away so that is additionally a bit conservative because i think most people their eyes at 15 feet back from the edge right before they turn out into traffic um but there's right now there's 400 feet to the east uphill which is slightly less than the 445 we need but there is a group and that's mostly limited by the tree line along the wetland as and then that corner as it goes around sort of turns into the wetland um but so there's a group of trees that stick out further than the rest um they're the major they're the major impediment that's causing that 405 foot site distance it's like a group of two to three trees all together just on the other side of the ditch there so we are planning to remove those trees from there and then we can improve our site distance to 450 feet which exceeds the recommended 445 feet so though though it's downhill and there are a few curves there you know we picked to the point of the driveway in order to maximize the site distance and with that small but when one multi trunk tree that needs to come down we'll have a quick site distance in both directions do they um I know we had a hearing once where um despite the recommendations of the speed limit they actually um the attorney opposing the project was able to show that that in some ways that wasn't relevant that you should actually look at the actual speed limit which in many cases is considerably higher you mean the actual speed of traffic yeah the actual speed yeah I mean I have heard of that being done but it's not it's not the standard to which the projects are typically with you it's pretty effective though yeah but you know we didn't do a project specific account for this and v-trans didn't ask us to do a project specific account and that's where you collect the data on I think what you're referring to is the 85 percentile speed yeah um yeah I certainly have seen that happen at projects before but um there wasn't enough concern from v-trans after their review to ask us to do beyond this standard step of evaluating site distances based on the uh posted speed yeah I suppose they're not the only ones that are concerned but um you mentioned somewhere that it would be over a thousand cars just slightly over a thousand cars I think it was on your act 250 application under 1039 1039 wasn't it right yeah and that was with 59 at peak I guess I just I was a little dumbfounded by that if you're having a having a conference there the conference is going to start at nine o'clock in the morning 10 o'clock in the morning or whatever I would think you certainly being geographically in the center of the state would like to do that I mean we have a we're not small fruit and vegetable growers we go to the lake morgana every year gosh why shouldn't you do that when you're off at 89 you're in the center of the state right um like you're thinking but but and that gets that may even get more than 400 you may be limited you may become popular we hope so but yeah I mean you when you have to get everybody in then I mean that didn't really this study didn't seem to address that really from what I could tell so the the way that these these what we typically look at is not the daily number of trips it's the number of trips that are going to affect traffic congestion which is looking at that peak hour right this traffic congestion is only a problem the number of trips is only a problem if the capacity of the road can't accommodate the number of cars that are there so that's why we don't generally look at a day day long memory of the peak hour number so these these peak hour numbers are the way they determine them is the Institute of Traffic Engineers has since the 80s gone around and collected data from traffic counts from various sites all around the country and then they break them down into categories and they provide you the statistics on traffic generation for each category so the particular category here number three time the hotel category the hotels that they were performing counts traffic counts out or hotels that had restaurants and company facilities so they don't provide a separate traffic generation for the hotel from the conference center so when they've counted those and they've statistically come up with these peak peak hour trips those are at hotels that have conference so it includes both the hotel traffic and the conference center traffic and frankly when I first looked at it I threw the restaurant traffic in there too but the trains didn't agree with us on that one so we're having a restaurant counted as a separate generator and in fact they're conservatively conservatively using the peak traffic numbers from high-terrain restaurants which is like your McDonald's or your fast casuals probably things like that it's not necessarily the kind of restaurant we're going to have here but in order to conservatively estimate the peak traffic impacts they use the more the use that generates more traffic so you're saying there's nothing for like a conference where you have a large number of people coming in at one time and then a large number of people exiting well certainly that may certainly that may happen but that would be reflected in the data that we're using so when they do these counts they don't just like count for an hour they'll set up for a day or a week or something and and the count will reflect what is the um how many cars are going in and out and they give you two in various ways you can get the peak hour of the actual use you can get the peak hour of the adjacent streets typically we use the peak hour of the adjacent streets because that's the point that you have the most impact on clubs of service and stuff so while there's not a specific like breakout for like if you have a big event um you know this this is a typical sized conference facility for a hotel of this size uh when you look around the country and and those trips are they're built in to the number that they're using it doesn't show any conference here right because the way they did the statistics was based on the number of rooms in the hotel the hotel also had a conference center you see what I'm saying I see what your center is there but your conference center is not 79 rooms that say two people with the 100 you know 160 people or so it's 400 capacity it's a lot bigger well sure but most hotels have far more conference capacity than we have for capacity programs you're not expecting the other one who comes to a conference no I just wanted to see it reflected you're trying to convince me that this word hotel includes the conference I just don't get it you know well I I didn't bring the book with me because I want to see that I mean I think um if there is uh some conference that is lighting out a peak traffic time the applicant wants to implement management procedures you know having somebody out there and a vast objective traffic and making sure that things aren't safe we presented this to the town and and again V-trans review both the traffic generation calculations and the impact calculations and their traffic engineers didn't have any so I understand that it's a little hard to disentangle but because the hotels I mean you need something to predict on basically and you never know exactly what's going to happen but the best you can do is have a wide net of a statistical analysis and because these traffic counts were performed at hotels they do have conference centers um and they should reflect the traffic from both uses we did get the letter of intent from the state of Vermont no no I just it doesn't make any sense I mean you got 400 people coming to a conference and you got say two in a car that's in 200 car trips and you only showing me at the peak hour coming to the conference 22 people coming in 22 cars coming in and then exiting 15 well presumably they wouldn't be exiting that'd be a few hotel guests so you need none of the categories and then you need category that would be just a conference the thing is there isn't one yeah I mean this is the standard this is the this is what everyone uses to estimate the traffic impacts across the country well okay let's just for a moment I'm just I don't mean to argue about this I'm just kind of he said we didn't have a hotel this is just going to be a big conference center okay and all they do is conferences right so what now what would you be using for a traffic study I think you'd have to ask the traffic engineer and I'm not a traffic engineer okay all I know is that a traffic engineer prepared this and this is the appropriate land use category to ask let me put a different river side when we've done dealt with them because they do acknowledge that there'll be lots of people coming all at once they actually hire someone to manage the traffic on those days right and they have someone out there in the road doing that kind of thing I certainly think that the applicant in this case would be willing to do that if that's needed my only question is coming down that hill it's quite steep it's quite fast now I think you're going to have most of these people getting off the interstate even coming south or north so once they do that then they're just going to be peeling into it so I think they're in pretty good shape there it'll be anybody coming down the hill yeah it'll be leaving more than anything else where you might get more critical so you've got an employee there because I know there's no more police that ran off there is a sheriff department right this you get the orange county sheriff or and what if you have a state police there yeah I mean regardless if there is a particular event that we know is going to be getting out at a time when there's a lot of traffic you know they can provide employees to manage the flow of traffic in and out of the driveway yeah I mean I don't I don't know how we present a traffic study to you that isn't done in the way that everyone is a traffic study you know what I mean like this this is the standard way to do it which prepared by a traffic professional it was reviewed by other traffic professionals at the state agency you know I just find it irrelevant but it's not but it's irrelevant because it doesn't deal with it on criteria five we're looking at it from from the standpoint of how is it safe you can be safe you can just an issue criteria five so it's not just because v-trans is looked at and said we're right but I mean there's a lot of rebuttable presumption because of v-trans as to how we deal with this I guess I'm just struggling to present you with a different a different evidence than the conclusions of a traffic engineer who's performing analysis on the safety and congestion that's relative to the project based on standard accepted engineering practices I don't know how else to present it to you well that's where that request that other that rsg which one is that that comes in and does that but I don't know what I'm saying though I do understand what you're saying if you've got 400 people in a facility and it's six o'clock and they're out of their conference it's peak hour kind of the issue of five o'clock you're headed home we're all going to hit that intersection at once and this is irrelevant to that for that particular moment in time at that particular conference yeah so so for that particular moment in time if they're going to try to convince the applicants willing to provide staff but I didn't see that in the application okay well well because this data didn't didn't show that required it if you're saying with the logic that it would then it then it would happen I think about a factory letting out 400 employees and what happens there well they back up on the property and then they leave you know as well they're gonna back up on this property too and they're going to be getting more anxious like I do I don't like to wait at all to get out of there and they're going to be turning left now coming out because they're all going to be getting back on the interstate and so and you're going to be having that track coming down that hill you know faster than 40 miles an hour I can guarantee you I don't think there's any of us in this room even though it's over 60 that probably wouldn't be at least trying to hit the brakes but generally going faster so I mean I think it's something to definitely consider do I I think that if it's that if it's needed like that that would be prudent for you know it's a combination of when the thing is booked and are people all going to be leaving and you know at same time could be an event as well right and and maybe there'll be an attenuation as as people leave or you're not going to you know maybe go have a drink in the bar before you go but I think that from the analysis standpoint it's as far as we take it if in practice you find that every year when when your group comes in you actually all get up and go out at the same time so we have a stack up then your meeting planner and your meeting people are going to say hey we're going to have some traffic control either on site or out at the out at the highway and I think it's I mean it's like you don't you don't build a church for Christmas and Easter right so you deal with you deal with those big big events especially and I want those people read them happy too I don't want them to have a bad experience by being lined up and not be never get out safely I want I think it can be dealt with on well no we don't deny under five as you probably know we just try to work things out so it's safer yeah I didn't question the studies of other hotels were they single lane because most hotels that I go to have two lanes on either side here we're talking about a single lane down and single lane so I mean so that's a bit separate from the the data that I'm talking about the studies of other hotels that I'm talking about are only relative to the number of cars going in and out and then the analysis of the single lane exit was done specifically for this project so the capacity analysis says we have a two lane stop control the exit and then they use that and some you know standard engineering principles to predict how long it's taking to turn out so the fact that the two lane entrance and exit is taken into account specifically for this project today is your question what I'd just like to say one way to help that turning of traffic problem is for people just to go up to DTC which is a conference center and so this is a competition for the an established conference center and I think that's not a good idea but we can just go straight up the road to where that one is thank you which conference center is that at DTC where which building the whole thing they do conferences yes sir I understand what he's getting at as far as you gotta use something as a basis to to do the study and everything I'm going off a 12-year study of me pulling to the end of my road and trying to pull out of there for the last 12 years and every year at least three times a year I almost get clipped going there because of the fact it's 40 everybody does 50 down below me is the blind corner coming up from the interstate up just above where they're entering is another corner above me that they're coming down so you got traffic going there by the time you hit your gas there's people on you coming down there I can the only feasible way that I don't know who could do that is the reduction of the speed limit because the volume of that traffic is going to go you cannot factor in when the conferences because they don't know when the conferences are and when their peak is or anything they haven't even built it yet but I can guarantee you that it's it's going to go up to where I'm not going to get out of my driveway unless I take a chance to get out of there I'm going to let it go to work so an actual speed reduction I don't know if I give it the town or anything to slow it down might be one of the the benefits so I at least have well it says I got you know I have to wait 10 seconds but not the state road no AOT has already looked at it yeah yeah so whatever needed to be done it's a state road it's a state road it's a state road so it'd have to be the state to reduce it because they've already looked over their application okay curiosity what kind of collisions have been in that area so they do as part of the safety they do review the high crash locations so there's no high crash location at the project the closest the closest high crash location is on the other side of the highway going to Donald's I have my mailbox taken out at least once a year that's a nice stretch there and I've shown the other driver in the bank and had him get my bank now they pay attention to you instead of the road so it gets very dangerous I might just add regarding Oak Ridge Lane is that right Oak Ridge Lane yes the reason why we part of the reason why we put the driveway where we did is because the site distance is significantly worse than Oak Ridge Lane and they are at the location where we located the driveway at the location along the site that maximized the safety and site distance along the choice of where we could put it and we actually own Oak Lane and they have a right-of-way across it and we're trying to be sensitive to the lake we own Oak Lane which shows it on the survey but there's a right-of-way there there's a right-of-way there okay for BTC is anybody do we own the land or do you have a right-of-way can most trees be owned? well with you owning the lane either way anybody that owns land there has right-of-way to it so you have a ownership well that's going to chop a few trees down yeah I was going to say I'm wondering if it could be opened down it's not the trees it's the corners there's a shot corner there I pulled the end of my driveway I can see down as far as the corner which is 70 70 yards people come around there 50 miles an hour not 40 50 at least sometimes 40 when they slow down and then up above it's great where they're putting their engine says is up above I can still see somebody pulling out there but right above them there's another corner that I can't see so either way I'm telling the traffic it's going to be a little bit faster a little bit more and my concern is with the extra traffic I'm going to get a corner of them out of time to get out did you say you were tired? yes we also wanted to be sensitive not share the same road that residents as we're on and we're trying to meet the neighbors concerns about yeah that's all and we were trying to be good neighbors by nothing you can do but AOT looked at the project and said it wasn't needed at the full of traffic and seeing things I don't mean to be a nuisance here but but does that sign really have to be quite as big as that? maybe not I do it's pretty big on the area it meets the local zoning requirements that sign or someone might be I know you might be a different shade that has about 10 different things on it right but let's see if I could bring that up I'm not sure that the the mothership no it's more of a it's 12 feet six inches tall from the average grade and then it's eight feet one and a half inches of the sign itself and then you've got eight square feet on your restaurant sign four by two um I just was as much asking as anything you just seem I can't quite visualize it in that spot I think that's one of the problems is that we got the the renderings what I what I submitted and everything without being able to put it into our slides and that might help to you know get it into scale as opposed to this I wanted to get this in because it did meet the local uh requirements whether we look at it aesthetically it's it's too much I mean that's something up for the owners to to determine so that one you submitted on um as an exhibit that's different than what shows up in the rendering no the location and everything is is there I don't know if the rendering was to scale and it's just pretty close but yeah this was an older yeah well that's sort of a well the fence is maybe four and a half that's a little tricky because I mean that road I mean I feel like I'm not on that road anymore I'm somewhere back yeah you're the architect you tell me where I am really I'm not on the road anymore from this perspective well the yeah I mean the it's hard really from a different angle or from a photo from the road I think would be a good perspective to look at to to get a sense of that I don't see the restaurant sign below but yeah it's just because this rendering was done back in April so we didn't have as many details about the sign then as we use it you know you want to keep it above the snow yeah my son's landscape architect in Massachusetts he's telling me about all the tricks they do to get around there people like us and whatnot I have a question about the placement of that isn't most of the people coming from from the right why isn't it on the other side so then you can see it well that's okay I mean that is you've got it skewed towards us over in the boonies over here well it's not the orientation of the sign if you look at the site plane it's actually opposite of the way it looks there it's actually closer to oriented down the thing if we look it's on the west side instead of on the east side but you want to be you want to get people to see it as soon as as soon as they can to alert them to it you know I mean to move it up another 40 feet could have another 40 that thing is 40 feet wide no no no no what if you were to have feet why it's 12 feet almost I'm saying if you put it on the other side of the driveway in other words instead of feet right there if I'm looking for it and I'm coming up from the west I'm going to see it better if it's on the right side of your driveway as we're looking at it now then on the left all right I mean aren't you aren't you isn't aren't most of your customers coming up from the left yes which is why we put the sign before the driveway so before the driving the sign and then see the driveway yeah it's too late by the time you if it's on the other side of the drive where you've gone by it buy it before you get the sign which if you ask me isn't this helpful but off the subject I have to get to work before I should hire you how do I find out any results or any information on this if I'm not here you got your name and contact information yes you're going to set this up now yep okay thank you for your time excuse me yep I have a question do we know what kind of restaurant it is as anyone ever said nope not yet I think that's not man is that out of requirement actually no all right then yeah no I don't know yet still working on still working on it's going to be a restaurant that is able to provide meals to the conference center so it's not going to be a pizza joint or a fast food restaurant or anything well the economy the way it is I wonder five years from now if you're going to have a company of customers to fill all these spaces that's I mean the food is right no no no no it's a lot restaurant and that name you pretty much got to be food the table don't you son yeah but from a kitchen design it's got to be able to accommodate both yeah okay um I just wanted to bring up that I'm sure you know how I totally feel about it but anyhow I was just curious about that if you thought about that now we're going to go to water and maybe the engineers you can explain the situation with that now the basic um I can't get a lot in that while you do this but the criteria says we'll not unreasonably burden any existing water supply so how do you prove that to these folks the other mile away so right now and in this process for quite a while we are working our way through the source permitting process with the state drinking water and groundwater protection um we're required to go through this permitting process because of the level of this proposed uh hotel and conference center will classify the on-site water system as a public water system even though it's privately owned it's regulated like it's a public water system um so for the source permitting process what we've done so far is we're working with a professional hydrogeologist who cited the wells at a favorable location based on um bedrock fracture analysis um and so that analysis and the proposed well location was sent to the state for a view the reviewed it through the location we drove the first well unfortunately the first well didn't have the kind of yield we needed for the project so we put in another application to drill another well same information sent to the state got it approved drilled the second well and so the second well has had a short-term drillers yield test performed uh that gives an estimate of its capacity at 150 gallons a minute um frankly 150 gallons a minute could probably supply most of the time brand of water it's a lot of water um but um based on uh calculations of the water use um using the um daily usage estimation uh estimates that are for published in the state water supply rules um we're looking at about 19,000 gallons a day of water use or 26-ish gallons a minute of pumping out of the well which roughly has the capacity of 450 gallons a minute so based on that the next step and we've just gotten approval from the state to do this uh is we do a long-term pumping test to determine the safe yield of the well um and what that means is that um based on the amount of water use that we have um the state in the water supply rules has designated um a certain radius around the well um which is the area um that the well may potentially be affecting uh other wells drawing water out of the same aquifer as the well that we proposed so based on our proposed use is that monitoring radius is 2,000 feet um so our hydrogeologists have identified all the wells within that 2,000 foot radius um and we've just sent out letters to all of the owners of the wells within that radius asking them permission to monitor their wells during the pump test so everyone who gives us permission um we will go to their property um open up their well put a water level monitoring device in the well um we'll monitor the background level of the groundwater both at the project well and then at all of the wells that we have permission to monitor within the 2,000 foot radius for a week or so to see what the um existing situation of the aquifer is like and then uh we'll perform uh a test where we pump out of the well uh at a constant rate for 72 hours so three days straight um and then during that we'll be logging both the water level in the well and the water level and any of the laws of permission to um to monitor within the monitoring radius um so that test the intention of the test is to both um assure us and the state and everyone else that if we are um so that that's pumping at the like the maximum amount we the amount we'd expect to pump from the well you the way you calculate that is taking your as if you use your whole day's water and you pumped it out in 12 hours so we're going to take that rate of one day over 12 hours and do it for three days straight and see how much where the water level ends up in the well um so we have to show that that isn't going to that the well can provide enough water um without dewater and to satisfy that demand just beyond what we expect to be doing normally in the well and then we also have to show that there is no um significant uh or detrimental interference with the water level and the wells in the water and any of this so the hydrogeologists will look at that data um you know and so because we're pumping at like one fifth of the well's estimated capacity we're not really anticipating that there's going to be any uh significant interference at all if if we do find that there's interference with those wells um then we're required by the state law um to mitigate that whether that's um you know drilling another well into a different aquifer so we have two sources whether that's um providing additional sources of water to the people that are affected or things like that there's we have to go changing the rate of withdrawing water some somehow we have to fix it but we're not again we're not expecting that there's going to be any significant interference so um at the conclusion of that test these hydrogeologists will write a report including any remedies um as well as a source protection plan and submit it to the state hydrogeologist for review um so all in all if we will see what the effect of the well is and how far that goes during this pump test um you know it's it's very unlikely that it will be anywhere outside of this 2000 foot influence radius and certainly not anyone up on the top of the hill or the or the Randolph Center fire district which has a well the well at VTC feeds into the Randolph Center fire district as well as they have a spring feeding the fire district up there so you know there's certainly quite a lot more water withdrawal at the top of the hill um much closer to anyone who's in the Randolph Center and not on the fire district water system than other projects it has um so we're certainly more than happy to submit the um the testing result report to the state um we're also going to have to be um submitting the approved source permit as well as the approved construction permits for the public water system to you guys before we'll be issuing the act 253 so with that much gpm you'd never clear the charge I mean that's that's the hope it's it's a little um the reason why you have to do the longer tests is sometimes sometimes there's things that might affect the well passing you don't see a short test in the way a well drill that usually do it the well drill will pump it for like an hour or two um you may see something different when you pump it for three days but that's why you have to do it for so long so you have a very robust um test of the well to make sure that we'll provide the capacity that's needed to serve the project over a long period of time what's the pump capacity that you're proposing putting down that would be needed uh well it's going to it's going to be around that what do you think about it first time there's three courses yeah I mean I think I think we're going to be required but a pump that would be able to meet it in the 12 hour but we're going to put it more than that so we'll be at that 26 you know it'll be around the pump test rate that would be well-classified but it won't be designed to pump all the time you know what I mean so then this test we're pumping continuously for three days and we would expect that at most you would pump 12 hours at that rate each day so you have 12 hours half the day so they're well to recover and not for the recovery before you start in reality it'll be like in smaller chunks more often um but we are also providing a portable water storage tank here um so that'll both is for um coronation uh disinfection purposes but it also um makes it so you're not pumping out as well as often the circular units so you have store a bunch of water on this tank you use it up slowly as the day goes by and the well pump is only turned on when you need to re-shallow it well as you don't have very much static and not a lot of storage right there right you have capacity yeah right right so but we will have we'll have additional storage anyway did you get a permit from that you alluded to a couple of different things do we get a rebuttable presumption out of this yeah what's what's the permit again there'll be a two of them at least for the water system they'll be the source permit which permits which is what the process we're in right now which is the permit that says yes this well has the capacity to serve the demands that you want to place on it then there's the construction permit which will review the storage distribution and treatment of the water system to make sure that's compliant with public water system regulations and then there's the wastewater permit but because we're a public water system the wastewater permit won't uh they don't have any jurisdiction on the water system what part of that there was complies with our three that it would be the source permit and construction was permanent yeah okay we did get the allocation from the town on the sewer that sounds reasonable expensive it's very expensive yeah it is very expensive I mean it's a very robust task and it's the same level of testing that if Randolph if the town of Randolph wanted to build a new municipal water system they would do the same task that we're doing for this hotel it's it's it's robust for sure does that allay any of your fears uh well here's the thing uh supposing it doesn't work it there was a situation about 25 years ago where there was a development outside of Burlington I think it was in Williston and then there was a development next to them near them and the first development lost its water so it uh the aquifer of Randolph has not been mapped they have been mapping bit by bit town by town aquifers throughout the state Randolph never requested it even though we asked Randolph to do so so Randolph doesn't have its aquifers mapped we don't know but the 2000 feet we don't know what the size of the aquifer is in Randolph furthermore aquifers in Vermont are shallow and and and small they're a series of small ones it's not like in the Midwest or the West rather that they have this huge thing that runs for thousands of miles which they are by the way we're pumping but um we have a lot of smaller ones so if the if they start to pump this and it comes for more than three days it comes for a while what is the renewal of the aquifer because you've got a whole 25 acres of macadam and uh uh you know non-torus uh item non-torus surfaces so the water is going to come there drain off go down to the sewer system go down to the Randolph uh uh treatment center go out to the Connecticut Valley it is not going to replenish the water system here whereas people with wells and and uh so you're telling me you're criticizing the tests that are required I know if the I'm saying if the test is wrong and it can be wrong it has been falling in other situations they did that test in Williston and then they did that test in the next development they had to and the test proved fine until people moved in used the water and the other so what more would you like them to do I would like to have some kind of uh some sort of way of if my well goes dry that someone's going to drill me a new well and restore my water well the states requiring 2000 feet how far away I'm about 5000 feet how many feet did you say they drilled before they hit the rock here um I want to say like 30 it was 30 because we had to do 50 feet of casing right it was less than a better way to do it but you still had to do the 50 feet it's not on the atlas yet what this well yeah no I doubt it so I mean I just want to be protected if if I lose my water how many levels you said you're going to monitor wells within a radius there's I think there's about eight inside the radius we may not modern malls we may not have permissions modern at all but there's certainly a few that are very close to the project mobility monitors one of them is Perry Armstrong one of the partners of the project is one of the abiding lane owners so it's certainly modern as well we were just discussing with mr. Shiva at the break that he's received his letter and he verbally expressed to us that he signed it instead of back as soon as possible because it's interesting to show that his water supply so those water supplies are going to be significantly closer than 2000 feet to the project so if the task is going to show any effect on water supplies it will show it at these wells and the effect of these wells would be much greater than effect any effect that sort of go away well I mean I could go into the science if you want sure it's around it's not I mean there's not a ton of them in there it's around it it does take him at Donald's and the barn right no he takes in that old romont pure building and then actually even a couple of the houses that earn that road that comes down from the center like behind romont pure you know that oh yeah that is for there yep yep oh more they're on the they're on the they're on the Randolph fire district and again I would say you know if anyone loses their water up in the Randolph center it's far more likely it's because of the fire district because of our project because they're pumping out a well and there that's top of the hill and relative to the the comments about groundwater recharge this soils here are 60 percent or more salt soils so and we are have clear evidence that the aquifer that we're pumping out of isn't connected to the surface the surface aquifer at this location if it were we wouldn't have an artesian well the height of the water in the well would be at the height of the up of the ground water when you jump down from the ground so if you have water that's kind of up higher than the ground it's coming from a source that is separated from the water that's filtering through the rainwater so well I can't tell you exactly what's feeding the sock for it's not it's not water it's infiltrating from the rainwater on this site between the high the very low permeability salt soils and the confined aquifer that we're I've really studied hydrogeology I'm not a hydrogeologist I never studied light design or traffic yes so I'm just curious how the radius was determined the thousand or two thousand feet and then I would follow up with that environmental protection rules so given assuming that the aquifer has not been mapped would be an undue burden if for example Ms. Sacks and Ms. Rice were willing to sign off that their wells could be tested for quantity and quality purposes despite the fact that they're outside of that radius without being an onerous burden to ensure that their concerns are would be addressed if in fact there was an impairment to their flow or quality of their water I think I think the first question I'd have on that would be being able to show cause I mean what if if the project goes ahead and then something hopefully not ever happens to one of the wells how do you link them that's where the scientists determine I guess well if there is a level of confidence that they're too far outside the distance by which they would be impacted then there shouldn't I don't know what the injection would be but the objection would be because clearly there could be dozens of other reasons for a well to go dry that have nothing to do with the project beyond the fact that if we start opening up the radius to people who are outside of the the area that's required by zero regulations what's to stop someone else coming along and asking for their well to be tested too and they end up testing every single well in right now this is not here today that's what prevents you of protection no well I think we have to there's been act 250 rightly or wrongly under some of these more scientific criteria about a whole presumptions placed here what that means is if if they get a pass or you know do the testing that's required from the agency and natural resources or whatever agencies are involved then as to act 250 there's a rebuttable presumption that they comply with that criteria and I you know as a layperson with respect to this I don't feel that I you know I need to stay within what is presented to us and what is required of us relative to the existing law at this point I can appreciate that and I'm just kind of curious why you're asking whether that alias are required speakers um well that's okay you know I just I'm asking if you know you gave quite a lucky explanation which you miss most of which involves the rather expensive and time-consuming um recall what they're going to do where they pumped the well for what 72 hours I recall and at a maximum capacity of what you will be requiring the pumping out and what your needs are and that within 2,000 feet will be wells which presumably will be at greater risk than these wells will be monitored if they get permission to them and it sounds like a pretty good and a competent way to go about it and so I thought it might have made their fears that if those wells don't pump down and don't have a problem that there's two would not have a problem well the problem is the variables in terms of what the particular wells it will be tested what their historical flows have been versus someone who may not have such a robust number per gallon so it just doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal if they're going to do the contest anyway which is the protocol and well familiar with it seems like it would not be so onerous to monitor two other wells but we will take that into consideration okay I think we've covered everything um talking so um so what will you know before we recess just go over what happens next and tell the familiar will be issuing a recess memo some of what we discussed will definitely be in that recess memo and uh we may or may not reconvene again if we feel we need to but otherwise we'll be an opportunity for all the parties to respond and uh we're going to take back and forth by email on mail okay yes um I'm sorry since I did have to absent myself for the majority of hearing I was um just wanted to know what your uh decision at least a provisional decision on the F support and space standard. We've created an exit for preliminary party status on um criteria three, five, and eight. And have you deemed that the two members that are present have adequately participated during the hearing um in order to be able to maintain that or make participation steps oh from a participation standpoint certainly I would say I'm just speaking for the but they certainly participated okay well thank you for all coming we stage recess you make sure your time thank you