 and I just couldn't stomach it. So thank you to the Recreation and Waterfront Department. This is a collaborative. Because this is a park, Gloria will find out about it tonight. Site right now, some ideas that we have for what should happen in phase two and then mostly to hear your ideas, questions and thoughts so that we can make sure that all of your thinking is incorporated into how we're thinking about the second phase. In addition to the three project partners that you see up here on the screen, I just want to call out a few other partners that we've had at the framing and they'll have a chance at the end of this presentation to talk about what they're doing, but we've got Vermont Skate Society, Joy Riders, Skate Club and I always, you have three different organizations that are on board. So they're gonna have a chance to talk about how they've been using the frame this summer as well. I want to welcome. I'm just excited to be here and then we'll kick it off on the second day to say that you're at full stop. So our great team, people start to enjoy the frame this summer and you can see where we can go with the next. People are very familiar with the history of the project. Some people don't know anything about it so we'll do a quick overview kind of how we've gotten here, hear a little bit about the current events, what was happening at the frame over the summer since we cut the ribbon last November and then an overview of how we're thinking about phase two and kind of our design team will be doing a virtual site walk to again, talk about how we've been thinking about the site they've been thinking about the site and getting your input throughout. So there'll be a couple of opportunities during this presentation where there'll be questions like make sure we have a chance to hear from people about specific things being presented but then at the end a much more general opportunity to share ideas, questions and thoughts. Okay, so the history, a brief history of a long standing project, if you go to the next slide. The Moran plant arrived here in the 1950s as an electric coal powered generating plant to provide power to the city of Bryanton. In the 70s it was converted to woodchips and our early progress towards more sustainable power production and then in the 80s this plant was shut down when the McNeil generating plant came online where all of our power is now provided without fossil fuels. There was then a long period about three decades where the building that was the Moran plant just sat there and there were lots of ideas about what could and should happen on the waterfront. None of them came to fruition. I think this is often the case. Sometimes it's better when things can't happen right away and communities have time to like think about how a place could be preserved or evolved. And so the city of Bryanton has made a huge long-term investment in maintaining public access to the waterfront and us not moving forward with any of the early ideas at the bus to continue and have this very, very long stretch of publicly accessible waterfront, which is when you live in Bryanton you think like, of course, but it's actually quite unusual. So I like to think about this three decade period as something that really has served the city well to make sure that we've arrived at this place with public access to the waterfront. In about 2015, so almost 10 years ago, I'm gonna just get this right, it was the, I always know it as the P app. Maro, what's the P app? Public Investment Action Plan. Thank you, Public Investment Action Plan. This is the good, I actually thought right there. Public Investment Action Plan kind of reiterated that vision for public access on the waterfront and it was kind of like, city, we need to figure out what we're doing. This was a, the Moran plant was a derelict site, like you've got it, we got to figure it out so that we can open up the northern waterfront to the public. And following that, there was many people who remember the nonprofit New Moran had a lot of momentum for redeveloping for lots of different reasons. I think mostly financial, that fell apart and it was really in order to move forward with the other components of this Public Investment Action Plan. Something had to be done at Moran. And in a sort of last-ditch effort for folks who love this architecture, this idea of the frame came out instead of just demolishing the whole thing and having a blank slate. So that's how we arrived here. That was pretty universally accepted and demolition on the plant started in 2020 and wrapped up two years later when I was luckily enough to inherit this project. So again, we cut the ribbon. Last November, we've had activations this summer and are now looking forward to the second phase of design at the site. For people who wanna know way more about the history of this site, we have this amazing resource that was part of the frame project that's now available on the CETO website that is hundreds of pages documenting the history of what has happened on this site. As I said, we cut the ribbon on the project in last November. We were trying to get it open for last summer as everyone knows construction costs and things. It was November and so they gave us a little bit more time to plan and be ready to activate the site this summer. And as I was mentioning with the Piaf, the cutting of the ribbon on the Moran frame was really the last piece of this re-imagining of the Northern Waterfront that everyone knows out. It starts to the north here where we are with the sailing center, the skate park which is an amazing resource right outside the window, the Moran frame, Water Works Park just to the west, the fishing pier and Burlington Harbor Marina. So the first phase was really about stabilizing the site and preserving this structure and creating safe access. So it was environmental remediation that had to happen both around the building and around the site. So it was really about getting safe public access to this location and to lay the framework for what was gonna come next. So this phase that we're embarking on. And we're thinking about this phase as trying to take the frame from something safe to something spectacular. When I inherited the project, the first phase was phase one A. Like there had always been, we knew that we were just starting on this adventure. I've moved past one B to phase two. And the goals of this phase are really about improving accessibility, making this a place that is welcoming and comfortable for all of our public and our visitors to the city of Burlington, making sure it's connected with our entire waterfront and taking advantage of sort of the iconic opportunity that we have here that has already begun to like really inspire both people locally and from around the world. Okay, so with that I'm gonna pass it off to Zach Campbell. Oh, thanks. Zach Campbell, I'm the founder. I was a little bit involved in the kind of last-ditch effort that Samantha mentioned to preserve this structure and space as something that could really become one of the most vibrant and celebrated spaces in Burlington. And so what I've been working on a lot this summer is, this spot of the waterfront is open and accessible to the public, I guess legally for the first time ever. And so that's an amazing thing to unlock in terms of a resource for the people of Burlington, people that visit Burlington. And I think a strength of this space has always been its open-endedness and it's sort of lending itself to creative thinking and big ideas. And that was always something that worked super well here even when it was an abandoned building. People were dreaming about things to do here and wanting to do things here. And so I felt it was important to not lose that spirit of this space and certainly going forward not to lose that spirit but kind of the flip side is requiring someone or some entity to kind of take the lead with organizing and making things happen. And so that's what I've been trying to do a little bit, certainly not alone. There have been many amazing people that have played important roles in starting to activate this space this summer and you can see kind of a good breath of that here with the movie nights that we did. We had the Vermont's Gate Society and Joy Riders start doing completely on their own a weekly skate meet up here that kind of fed into that great energy around movie nights. Lauren from Heart Song with the hammocks that you see here was really just, sort of this little group that started to form of people that were excited about the space and wanted things to happen and it was validating in a way to see so much of this happen organically. And so that's what's been going on this year. There's a lot of ideas I've heard which is great, exciting and we'll talk about some of those common themes tonight. We'll of course hear from all of you as well. You can actually click to the next one. But one thing I do, we just wanna leave everyone with as we continue the conversation is that this is an open-ended space. A lot of people come here and they're like, this is cool, but I don't really know what it is or what to do here. And the one challenge and opportunity is that it's a flexible space, but in order for it to be a functional flexible space, we really have to design for that flexibility and so that this part can serve people in the now but also evolve and change over time as people wanna do different kinds of things here. So I'll pass it off to Hilary. Oh, do I have one more? Oh, okay, yeah. So some of those potential uses, year round is something I've heard a lot from people. There's so much great stuff to do in the summer and the warmer months here in Burlington but as we all know, the reality of our climate is that it's cold half the time so starting to move toward, how could this space be sort of a destination year round? What could that look like? So some of the things we've thrown out here, you can see them on the boards in the back. We have a dot sticker activity. People can put a sticker on what speaks to you or we've got sticky notes if you have another vision. Please share that. But here are some of the things that we've heard and we're thinking about that might be possible here. So now I'll turn it over to Hilary and Matt from MBVA. Thanks, everyone. He's had a troubled past. So my name's Hilary Archer. I am a landscape architect, a designer and project manager at MBVA which is Michael Van Welkerberg Associates. And I live in Brooklyn. We are our offices in Brooklyn. We do a lot of projects that are focused on public realm. We do a lot of projects that are focused on equitable public engagement. And we've been pouring our hearts and souls into this first meeting and we're absolutely thrilled to see this room filled. So thank you all for being here today. This is valuable time away from your families and dinners. So thank you. When I wasn't living in Brooklyn though, I lived here in Burlington for about six years. So I'm pinching myself not only to be back in like my favorite place in the whole world but to have this as a project. I mean, this is literally a landscape architect's dream. A lot of challenges, a lot of opportunities, a lot of collaboration. And on that note, we have been so fortunate to have this amazing client team with Samantha. They put forth an RFP that was very well rounded and one of the things that was emphasized was that even though we were a regional team, we're not necessarily local being from New York, that we work with local experts. So we have added to our team these amazing local architecture and landscape architecture and structural engineering and civil engineering teams. So from SE Group, we have people in the room actually today. Patrick, do you wanna say hi? Patrick has a long, as all of these teams locally based, has a long history of working in the area. So we're very lucky to have his input and thinking about this site. From Freeman, French Freeman, a local architecture firm, we have Alex, say hello. Same goes for him and lots of different projects in the area, even just on the bike path. And then engineering ventures for our site engineers that are structural engineers because we are working with a frame. We have Paul here and Russell, hey Russell. And then because we are at this juncture of taking all this amazing work that has happened, the history of the site, the history of the architecture, the specialness of the events and activation that are already happening on site, into a new phase, an actual park project and a space for Burlington that puts it on the map as a waterfront destination regionally, but a neighborhood park as well. And so to do that, we're working on a lot of different deliverables beyond just a park design. We're working on cost estimating to make sure that we're understanding what our fundraising and budget needs to work around and what's realistic, what's not. Phasing, project phasing, which is related to that. And master planning. So how are we going to think holistically about this site, but also as it integrates into the waterfront, but everything beyond that. So to do that, we also have some site electrical engineers, lighting designers, irrigation designers to make sure all of our plants are healthy, architects, urban planning, and then our cost estimators. So that's our team. Our schedule, quite simply, it's six months. It's a first design phase, a concept design phase, if you will, it's going to lead us into construction documentation. And the main thing I wanna make clear is that this is one of two main public meetings that we're gonna have to include you all and also show you how the feedback that we've been getting from you all is actually having a place in the design that we're working on. We've been doing a lot of public engagement before this meeting, and we're gonna share a few of the results that we've been getting from that. This is an example of an actual postcard that is all throughout the city in various places. Where are some of the locations? We've got the library and all of our community centers, DPW, at Sydney Hall, yep. And we're still working on places to put them so that we can hear all voices. But it's been great, it's been validating some of our initial thinking about what could be appropriate for this amazing site. And this is the best mail that I get at the office, so keep sending your postcards. That's great. Yeah, yeah, keep it coming. But we get really exciting ideas that encourage us to think big, like getting up into the frame, having these elevated views of the lake that you don't necessarily get along the waterfront. So it's been amazing. As the next slide shows, surprising, we've gotten over, as of today, over 400 responses to both our postcards and an online version on the websites. So the interesting thing that we've been learning are of all of the different possibilities that we could potentially weave into the site here, there are three heavy hitters up here. Views up high, as I just mentioned. That seems to really be resonating. Concerts and performances, day and night, and then fun for all seasons. So we're gonna talk about today, what does that really look like, and hopefully hear from you all what that looks like to you. Other themes, if you will, these are direct quotes from some of the open-ended surveys that we did, a lot of emphasis on ecology, diversifying the plant pallet here. There are some large, existing trees around the site, but making more of a garden place here with the ecological richness. There's an emphasis on food, maybe cooking on the site, or just having access to concessions, temporary vendors, or even a small permanent type food facility. Climbing, climbing up into different levels, we heard some activity was happening July 4th that will not be mentioned on the record, but that's all interesting things that we listen to, we pay attention to, because what is this frame? What can it be to the people and have memories here? So, what are some other things? Yeah, okay, that's good. We'll touch on some more as we keep going, but something I really wanna make clear to everyone, this isn't just a one-off meeting, we listen to you all, although we may not be able to get everybody's ideas into a scheme, that's a little, that's impossible. We do try to come back and show you how some of your ideas have landed in the physical form of the project, and the way that we do that is, well, literally showing you through a presentation, but also we'll be having a physical model, like this one shown here, photorealistic experiential renderings to really kind of start to show what the experience will be like, and hopefully convey that we've been listening, but also show you why we've been hired to do this challenging project. And then, I think just this meeting will be happening in November, so we'll have it posted, but also if you sign in and put your email address, like you'll be on a mailing list to get alerted to any other activities and opportunities around the project. Yeah. So, I will now hand it over to Matthew Bansky, who's a partner at MBVA, and someone I've been so lucky to work with and that I think is gonna be the perfect fit for this project. If I can just embarrass him for one second, he is a genius at making world-class public parks, and I know that he was asleep over projects like this one, and I know that he's very determined to make this a real big success for everyone. So, Matt? Yeah. This is for a second in the office, but she's asleep. Okay, so here we are, and looking down on it from this, I'm just gonna reorient people, because looking at it from the air here, for instance, just, and maybe answering a couple of questions about what are some of these things. So here, I'm just gonna go around and just point out a couple of things to start out with. Here's the electric company over here. Here's a parking lot, here's our bike trail here as we're coming in. A lot of how you approach the site is from the south, as you as you all know, there's parking along here and then railroad tracks. You kind of coming in at this angle a lot. Up here is this great anchor at the skateboard park, which is just fantastic, and then we have the sailing center as well. We have a big opportunity and challenge of waterfront access here, because you know, it's this kind of post-industrial edge, it's kind of crumbling and sheet pile, and it's definitely not people friendly in terms of walking down into the water. There's this old sluice way here where the cooling water came out of the plant and would just kind of be brought in or took a wind outlet, cooling water out, so that's just sheet piles sitting there now. And we have this nice new park, the waterfront park that's been made here. But, and then the frame, which is there is this kind of wonderful sculpture. So just in terms of scale comparison, because this helps you kind of gauge, well, what can I do here? You know, can I have a football field here? No, you can't. But, you know, city hall park just under two acres, right? The frame itself is a little bit under five acres, and then Oakledge, which we just went out to visit yesterday, it's just over 40 acres. So that kind of gives you a sense of, you know, the kinds of things that you guys know about and you can do in those different spaces. Here we are right here. And it looks like, oh, I just go over there, right? And you guys know it's not true, really, right? There's actually a wonderful, but, and dramatic, escarpment, right? That holds the city up and gives it a great view. And certainly, you know, it's especially from the parks and things up here. But, you gotta go all the way around and down. And then mostly up here, you can come in down D-Post Street, walk down D-Post Street and then walk and not drive, but that's it, basically, you know? You can't just kind of get there quickly. So this kind of sense of how do you present? So the most important thing in designing almost any kind of space here. Think about how much work people put into the front foyer, right? Or the first thing you see in a park is very, very important and how it's presented. So this is sort of that angle that we're gonna be coming in on. So we wanna think about how do we get there? What do we see, how much do we see? You know, it's one thing, because one of the things you could use in landscape is a sense of anticipation, like you give a bit of a clue about something, but you don't give the whole thing away necessarily. So there might be something like that. This does that on a little bit of a small scale right now. It kind of creates a threshold. This is right off the bikeway, as you guys know. And of course, distance reminds us of the wonderful silhouetteing against the sunset that we get here as we face west. Just to your left as you're walking onto the site is the Divert Luton Electric here. And these are occasionally used turbines to supplement the tower. So we need to be good neighbors and allow them to get and do what they need to do. But then we could also make it compatible with whatever kind of public space we make as well. We've been starting to meet with them about that and also with the water company. And so it's gonna be totally compatible what we do here. Again, there's other infrastructural elements. There's a wetland that does actually filter rainwater from the site. There's underground utilities, of course. And then you go and you see this thing. And to kind of artistic minded people, maybe you're like, wow, that's so cool. This is wonderful sculpture. I don't need to do anything. I love it the way it is, right? But then there's another thing that might come up. Like one of the things that Hillary mentioned is I think it's a little frustrating. You look at this and you're like, oh gosh, I sure wish I could climb up there. I wish it was something I could just get up into, right? Some people have done that. I'm sure if I was in high school here, I would have been up in there already. But it's enticing. This thing just kind of draws you in as a space. But I'm not gonna go over that. I'm very honest in my presentation. But the other thing I have to say though about it because there's probably mostly enthusiasts here, right? And we have part of making a public space is you really have to try to think about it from everybody's perspective, right? And I was in a car with a local guy who was giving me a ride and we were talking to him about the frame and he was like, what's that? And we said, oh, it's that beautiful red sculpture that's down by the waterfront. He said, oh, they didn't finish tearing that down. So, okay, so the guy was, by the way, this is the end of the long conversation. He was a very smart guy. He was like, he wasn't just on dope or whatever. And the thing is to him, it has to have a usefulness, right? It's not just gorgeous silhouette against the skylight, right? Like it needs to have some kind of, I mean, it doesn't need to be made into an office building but it needs to have some kind of engagement, right? A usefulness. I think getting up into it, for instance, would start to answer that. But I thought that was a kind of a little bit of a sobering comment, you know, to get from man on the street. They didn't quite finish their job. Anyway, this is great. This thing is fantastic to have here. And, you know, it just rains. Oh, there's somebody already out there. You know, there's always somebody there and it's just the greatest thing for a park to always have people wanting to be in the space. That's what makes it feel safe. It makes it actually safe. And so that is great to have it there. It also sets a kind of tenor in terms of activity and energy and useful and all of that kind of thing. And, but at the same time, just go back one slide for a second as we're going around. You know, it's a little bit of a kind of stark edge in between that and whatever it's fine because the frame site hasn't really developed yet as anything, but you know, how can we start to bring the two together is what I start to think about as I look at that. These trees along the bikeway are beautiful. So of course we want to keep that. And then we're over here, we're actually like right above this picture was where Jack's at sitting. But what we're going to be wanting to think about is how do we really compatible and beautiful with this function of the sailing center and you know, just kind of seamlessly all works together. And even though there's different jurisdictions and invisible, you know, property lines, so to speak, you don't want that to be the experience of the site when you're on there, right? You want it to just kind of flow through and actually what you really want to think is like, you know, this was just natural, just happened this way when it gives me the world, wonderful. So that's sort of what we go for. You know, as you move along the waterfront here, you get to this, which is very kind of dramatic looking, like you can make a nice painting of it, I think, but it's not, you know, friendly in terms of climbing. You could really hurt yourself, you know, get, you know, cut yourself or something. And so how do we, how do we, you know, get down into the water there? Are you trying to tell me to move? Yes. Okay. And then I thought I was going to be too short. So here's another, so here's, here's as a space kind of goes north from the frame, you know, there's these great performances that we saw in the various pictures as the actual stuff happening here, but can we do something to this space that helps it kind of join in with the neighbors better, with the shoreline better, and also facilitate the uses, especially as they focus down south towards the frame, in terms like movie watching and other kinds of activities like that. So, you know, we walked around, we looked at everything, saw the opportunity, saw everything that's here, but then you say like, okay, how do we start, you know, coming up with what we should do here? And the great thing, you know, like Samantha alluded to, and this is very analogous to many of our best parts and spaces is it's already been kind of taken over, not kind of in a moment, but seriously, and people have invested their hearts and souls into this already. And so there's something we can learn from, they've kind of done some of the work for us already, right? It's not like we're just making stuff out of whole cloth. You've kind of like done a lot of the work. And then what we can do is say, how can design, physical design, then start to support and enhance and make that stuff that's happening better? And is there like some newer kind of, can we push that stuff to a new space that is even beyond our imagination immediately? So, you know, the frame uses the Eiffel Tower theory, right? It's basically leverages this kind of neat object to create a there, there, right? And then people, and then you have things happening there and you don't wonder where it is because it's right underneath that big red framed thing. So you get, and it's open and abstract and kind of looks like a sculpture, like a found object sculpture. So it kind of eludes itself. It alludes to this artistic, you know, open-framed experience that you can do all kinds of things in which it's been happening already. You know, and you can put a movie screen on it here. That last picture was an art show that was put into it and had projections within it. This one here is where the movie screen goes, I'm sure you'll know, but movie screen goes on the front and then you can sit on the lawn. And this is what I mean by, you know, the lawn's very flat, it gets a little soggy actually. Can we shape it in a way that drains better and also enhance some views and things like that? You know, but it does create the setting that, you know, if you're gonna choose some place to do this, why not do it down at the frame landscape? Like we saw some people just decided to picnic in front of it with a grill. Actually, I have a picture of them in here. So one of the things, you know, if you're thinking about artistic presentation and performance, can we, this is our project, so I'll illustrate some ideas with some of our projects and I'll try to remember, but this is something we did in Austin, recently opened in Austin, Texas, and you know, they love bands better. And could we do this thing where we somehow build a stage, this thing acts as a stage, but then it's not a stage when it's not a stage and it does, and it works that way, right? So could we build a stage into the frame in a way that, you know, it's there, and then when you, somebody's on and using it, it really works well and it kind of makes, maybe makes seeing the performance easier or enhances it in some way or another. And then, if you want to, if you want to get up into the frame, which I think is kind of a given to us in a way and certainly tell us, I think you can't just make it that only climbing libraries is the only way up there, right? You got to make it accessible to people in wheelchairs and other ways of getting up there to make it easy. You mean not all the way up necessarily, but certainly in an elevated position. So that's a very important thing to think about. And then could we bring some, use some elements to kind of raise people up, connect the ground plane up into the elevated planes and then start to think about how this could be like a viewing platform, stage and kind of space for performance of its own, right? And then how could these things kind of move through the landscape and facilitate that? And then if you make these elevated connections, this is our Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago, which is an elevated linear park, it's three miles long actually. And they just kind of do things on it. They make these, it's called this, they call it the 606 and there's a conservancy that does some of this kind of stuff where they're just having like a festival right on it because you use again, they're leveraging that, the kind of neatness of that structure. Another thing we heard a lot about, I think could really work well is kind of pads and spots for concessions that you could plug in and make it a little less, like what camping in the wild, right? Make it work a little more seamlessly and easily and maybe you don't even have to plug in so you don't have to see the generators and all the little kinds of things that we could think about. This is, I love this, this is so, this is like the ecology of park programming, human ecology, right? It's like, here they come, look, they just sprouted up on the side, it's fantastic. And they're out here, again, I think it's the theatricality of the space act might, I'm just, I don't know, you shouldn't help us, but it's sort of, I think it's the theater, you know, that there's movies going on already, the theatricality of it, makes you want to go, you know, do this kind of thing. Also, a paved space. Also, a paved space helps, yeah. That's how, smooth, smooth helps, yeah. This is a group that we just saw yesterday. They just chowed up, they're like, hey, I want to grill. They chose this, so this is what I mean exactly, like, they just chose this place. It's like, it was a natural place to go set up and grill. And that was kind of fun, right? Well, who doesn't want to grill on the waterfront? It's sort of like, kind of, you know, high style actually. So, you know, if we could find ways to do that, it's a small site, but we could, if we could work in ways to do that, or have food available, you know, that's a great thing. Then, you know, one of the things that we love to do is go beyond your normal expectations in terms of the time that you use the landscape, right? So first of all, nighttime use, like, what's more beautiful in the summer than nighttime use, right? It's cooler and you can really appreciate it. Or winter, you know, can we get, they often don't design landscapes for winter use, you know, they turn out to be sometimes used, but civic landscapes are not often. They focus on spring, summer and fall, right? And can we plan in some kind of winter recreational fun that picks up on this kind of skating energy at the skateboard park, what does it, it's for other people, like, you know, more dirty people like me, you know, for instance, we could just skate in a more civilized way without cracking my head, working open. And then could something like that work as way of skating in the summer to them, you know? So it's not just the winter thing, but it's the summer thing too. That's a question. This is in a, look, this is in a pier shed, like a big shed structure that we made in Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn. And I'll just very quickly tell my nerdy funny story about how I wanted to make this roller rink and I just thought it was gonna be so retro in 70s and like only I would get the joke. And it turned out that like they have like disco parties there and I am absolutely not, I mean, like I'm way too not cool to go, you know what I mean? And so I thought it was gonna be just like, just this kind of cute nostalgic thing, but it's not. It's just so much a hit and brings, you know, the young adults and people, you know, caring for little kids and everybody together. So it's very nice. This is our skateboard park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I just am showing this because this is a public path that's part of the park. So what we've done there is we've integrated planting and kind of visual access to the skating. So it's not like just an isolated element so much. We've kind of integrated it more into the landscape that's totally doable here, some version of that. And then an idea that somebody threw out there was, and then actually the water department had, she was like, hey, is there any water thing we can do on the side that, I was like, yeah, I might have an idea. It's hot also in summer here, you know, and could we do something that doesn't use a lot of water but is cooling? And this is actually called Fog. This is, there's actually waterfall happening here also, but this is our project in Oklahoma. And we're using this stuff, it's just water, but it's run through a kind of very super micro nozzle that turns it, it looks like smoke or fog. It's just very, very magical, or this kind of effect, you know, and it's very, I think it goes along also with the kind of artsy kind of environment as well. By bringing in some slopes and shaping the land a little bit, we can enhance drinking, this is in Brooklyn Bridge Park. We can enhance drainage and have it work functionally, but also we can create spaces for getting in the shade and also sitting and getting better views. If you needed that, out either to the water or to things that are going on in the frame. And the bathrooms were probably number four on the list, right, I don't know. They weren't number three, but they were probably number four. That's needed, you know, public restrooms and maybe some kind of kiosks to support that, any kind of utilities, and you know, I don't know if there would be seasonal food or permanent, you know, that's the kind of thing we could work out in detail, but a concession stand of some sort. Built-in seating is definitely a feedback that we've gotten, you know, it's really not, there's the picnic, that's picnic tables that move around the site, but there's not a lot of seating. Seating is a cheap way to make people happy, you know, in public landscape. So that built-in, this is built-in here, you know, imagine this is our project in Hoboken, New Jersey, looking out over the water there. And then finally, and it is expensive, but to get down to the water would be really great. This is built-in seating in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and then a kind of constructed engineered beach, not really for swimming, more for just the toe touching and touching, you know, getting to the edge in a safe way without, again, cracking your head on the rock or something like that. But, you know, this kind of setting would be really neat if we could do it. It's got a lot of challenges in terms of cost and permitting and things like that, but it'd be very not nice to try to work in something that incorporated those activities. So with that, I think we should, I was getting like verbal communication with people, like eye contact was good. So, but I think, I mean, visual, not verbal, but could we, I would love to. Yeah, I think we're definitely gonna open it up for discussion, thank you so much. Matthew. Yeah, State Society to just kind of kick off this discussion to talk about what has been happening on the site so far, and ideas for, like I think these folks that are using the site now are our best folks to tell us like, how can we enhance that, and what's not working? I can hop up and say, hey, Pam, Lauren Larkin, I'm the most passionate person about the frame that you've met in Burlington, potentially. I am so proud of the work that's already happened because Samantha and Zach and this amazing to me too, Michael, I'm majoring in, I'm just gonna tell you a funny anecdote. I have a friend who's from Burlington, she used to work at the skinny pancake, we wrote a song, she's the girl that quit the skinny pancake. She's in Cirque du Soleil now. She's a hair hanger, she's representing New York for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas, but last summer, I had her down here, and I had already been working out like the insurance and engineering with engineering ventures, I got a little grant from Architecture Institute of America to buy some like mats and aerial supplies, and I was like, well, I'm gonna bring my Cirque du Soleil for former down here, we're gonna get some video, you know, but there was also cranes, and so then I like convinced the site operator, I was like, I already have a certificate of insurance, like la la la, but just for 30 seconds, can we let her do her thing? And we've gone from that, from me, like begging and pleading and being like, who can I ask, like how can we do this to like, okay, we have permission. This summer, we had movie nights. One of the largest health problems that our city faces is like isolation and loneliness, lack of connection. So these different things that have been going on, I just really quick wanna point out, Julie, Betty's Bikes, Betty's Bikes is a community bike shop and they're going to have a structure in the frame next summer that's different than the one that's there now, like a little trailer right now that's cute, but she has one that's been perfectly designed for the frame and it's almost gonna be like a little coffee shop, bike shop. And every single time I come down to rig my big aerial hammocks that are big pieces of fabric or camping hammocks when it's wet weather, there's always someone down there getting their bike fixed. Like they just found it, like just what you're saying. And that's already starting to happen. People from Canada and other places that have come from movie nights, even the very first movie night, which was Jaws. And I work for Children's Theatre in town too, so I have access to all these costumes. So I'm always like bringing down like sharp costumes or like lots of flowers for inconto. So anyway, long story short, what I'm saying is there's always people that just like find their way there and they can't believe that it didn't exist before. So that's already going really well. For me, I'm excited. I'm a singer and a songwriter and I also went to Brooklyn College for performance and interactive media arts. I'm working on a public art project in New York called Bike Broadway, which is like, we'll talk. But like we are interested in like having people on bike rides, you know, and then like hopping in a hammock and then like maybe having like a little something to eat and like listening, maybe throwing on our roller skates. So there's just like these really fun ways as communities that I've seen people really have these healing experiences in the hammocks and also the really cool swings that have gone up. We got a little bathroom, we got a little storage. It's really like starting to come to life. And so I just love that there's like a flexible vision and so far, so good. You know, we're like, we're learning as we go. So what I'm excited about is obviously going up. I'm like working to buy a pulley and we're gonna go up. We're gonna be like, you're gonna be like, ah, and then there's gonna be like someone singing, you know. And then also my personal aerial studio spaces around healing arts, it's currently at the Raleigh Art Apothecary, which is set to probably be demolished. So I'm thinking about where can these aerial arts things take place? I'm partnered with Marmarations, who's the other aerial studio in town. There's about at least 100 people of all ages and sizes who love, that know already that they love playing in aerial hammocks. There's all kinds of really cool theater and modern dance things that are happening in Vermont. So I'm just excited to see as the season progresses and into next year, like just continue to experiment and see what's there and lift each other up. Your gear. Yeah, I'm also a performer. I'm actually a professional violinist. Oh, yeah. Roller skates. I don't know. I'm Joanna Benazquez, I'm a BESA. I am a resident of the Old Garthen. This is my daughter, Sonia. And I am the founder of Vermont Skate Society. I'm here with our sister organization, Joy Riders. This is a BIPOC skate club. And I'm just so happy that I'm working with Alicia Taylor. Actually, I want to give her credit for finding this beautiful spot. We get to enjoy sunsets on the water while we're roller skating with our families. Roller skating? Oh, you're like, oh, I'm too old to roller skate. Or I just want to jump, or I just, I can't risk, I'm a violinist on skates. It's fine. Our youngest skater is three years old. Our eldest skater is 65. I love that it doesn't matter what walk of life that you're in, it doesn't matter where you came from, or it unites us. It really does. And we've been working really hard to bring the skaters of the state of Vermont together. So we've been doing weekly. I kid you not, I'm committed to this every week. Hosting a skate meetup, trying to find a safe space for us, which actually does not exist, except maybe with the pebbles that are over in that little pink area over there. We host monthly roller discos. You're cool enough to come. We have been working really hard to make it accessible to everybody. Because we know that Burlington, there are people from various backgrounds financially. So literally, Alicia and I have been collecting roller skates from our own funds to skates of various sizes, so that we can lend them to people for no cost, and also teach them how to skate. We've had donations from local motion for pads and helmets and things. This is something that we've been doing since April of 2022. And I'm not stopping anytime soon. I mean, I'm asking coworkers, like you wanna learn how to skate? What size are you? And then, okay, I'll come to you. I'll teach you how to skate. And now we have the following of almost 1,000 people. We have support from Pigeon Skate Shop in Long Beach, California, which is where I'm from. And Dirty Debra Herry, if you know her, she's one of the best actually international skating instructors, anyway. So we are really hoping to have a safe place to be the bike path, pedals, sticks, dogs, street crossings, not easy for this, you know, not easy for a beginner skater. She just now is after a year of skating is competent and feeling comfortable enough to cross those streets. Skate parks, that seems like it makes sense, right? Would you put this one into a skate park doing circles around people with skateboards? No, no. That's actually it. I mean, she also is a park skater. She's actually quite on board. But for a beginner skater, that is not a safe place to be, not for them and not for the skateboarders either. They're not, you know, a skateboarder, what if they ditch the board, but the board hits the beginner skater. Okay, so why don't we go to the streets? Again, would you put a beginner in the streets? This is not a safe place for them. Or even the changes in elevation, hills, not easy, right? So I don't know if you're actually aware, but we don't have a roller rink in the entire state of Rome. The closest one in the United States is three hours away in Massachusetts. The closest internationally is in Tibet. But again, does everybody have the means to travel and do a day trip or to take a weekend and go off to these various places just to go roller skating? No. So we're really hoping that since we've already made it a hub here, that we could just be here. Great, thank you so much. Design team or just ideas that you want to share? He said, tell me. That's great. Just a quick question. You didn't mention the lighting at all that's already in place on the plan. Which I happen to love, but I wonder if you've gotten feedback about it one way or the other, positive, negative, whatever, because that's the one thing that is quite striking as a night scape added to the Waterfront Park. That's right. I think for people who have seen it, we hear positive feedback. I think not that many people have the opportunity to see it and we've been thinking, as we think about having a park that's accessible into the evening and making sure it's safely lit, how do you maintain sort of that sort of more theatrical lighting on the frame and keep safe? So I'm glad to hear that you like it and just do you have other ideas, just wanting to make sure it stays? Is that your... Yes, I really like it. And I have heard a little bit of negative stuff, but I happen to really love it and I love how it changes and I just love how it does add that vertical element to the water scape. Awesome. Great point. Yes. Yeah, I love everything about your presentation. Great stuff. One thing that Brons is lacking though is that we used to have a nice youth music venue underneath Memorial Art Gallery and the sailing center used to be in the building next to the electric building there. That would be a perfect place for a music center and then do the concerts here in this area. I think that getting, you can be loud there and there's no neighbors that are close and we're serving youth here, we're serving youth here and serving musical youth here, I think would be a really brilliant way of integrating and getting the social aspects back that we've lost through the pandemic. To have like a winter light show similar to what the children formed. Okay. And I would think it would be neat to turn that frame into like a digit bread house. All right. I'm on a train going around. I'm on a train going around. You don't have, you have no idea how much I like that. In addition to what Joanna was saying, I think having a space for roller skating but that also can convert to ice skating in the wintertime, so that dual purpose, I think would be a great addition to the waterfront in general. Yeah. And also, just mentioning that we've had over 265 people sign our petition to want to bring roller skating to the waterfront, so just if you haven't signed yet and you want to add your name, you can. Awesome. Thank you. Yes. I love all the ideas around the way the artists are being brought in. And I noticed last week or whatever there was some blue fabric up on there. Yes. I was imagining that earlier, just as it was finished having some moving fabric or even welders who put a little bit of curve up into the frame, somewhere welding, some stuff or having art down below and a little outpost there. So basically what we could do around bringing artists work. What was the story with the blue fabric? There was a very violent thunderstorm that came through the city of Burlington last Thursday that destroyed both our movie screen and the hanging of the art. This summer is really about learning. We're learning. When you put something up high in the frame and there's wind, you need to be thinking really seriously about how we're going to secure it. Zach, I don't know if you want to talk about it. It's coming back. It's coming back in a slightly altered orientation. But it was most of it was salvaged. It's coming back hopefully next week, you know what I mean? Well, OK. Yes. Well, building on that, I just looked at this past weekend for the first time. And I've been here for like 50-some years. OK. And what you were saying about art and fabric, I thought of having something that would be like banners hanging and banners of Burlington, but that it would change. I think the one of my aces is really important about that space. Don't have anything that's stagnant, especially for the people that live here. But I have something that's dynamic. That's a great idea. Yeah. So, I'll see you. I just want to reiterate first, I don't know. That would be OK. Reiterating just the mix, or sorry, the four-season use and just how important it will be to have an additional winter space. I think that most people that are here around would probably say that a lot of everything that we kind of do during summer with farmers markets shuts down. And I also just like thinking about it being an outdoor space, but not just an outdoor space that's used strictly just for market and capitalism, but also having an open winter space that is just for play and for fun and for embracing. So not feeling like you have to go to that winter space to buy something, which I think hinders a lot of people. That's a good point. So that's just something. What kinds of things would you come to do here in the winter to bring in? Ice skating, for sure. I definitely love incorporating ice skating. And I also think just having music and sound walks and the light installations and just, yeah, I think the musical element that doesn't necessarily mean that you're coming to a show. Maybe there's certain nights that there's music in front of you. You can come set up, and there's heaters, and you could have a picnic at the court. Yeah. I say I went to a winter light and music installation last winter. It was great. That's a great idea. So something that I think about a lot is this whole stretch of the waterfront bike path. There's not a great use of it being a pedestrian cycling space and a place to go to that's a coffee shop or something like that. I think about how to say we need to commercialize the bike path. But there's almost nothing to do other than ride and have outdoor access. So having this be potentially with the structures and kind of a more active space with people gathering to have it be like a place to go on the bike path that's not just like, oh, I'm going outside. It's something that I think about a lot. So how do we make it a destination to be this? You can go meet up with friends and grab a coffee or something in the afternoon or do something like that without being next to a road or being a part of the water, being downtown. Great point. I'm a student at UVM, and I'm going to look across him up there on the sophomore. And I think it would be a really cool place that people could use it, like UVM could use it for banquets along with like Berlin from high school. And then also the idea of the concerts and all that would get a lot of college students down here for sure, which I don't know if everybody lives in Berlin and wants that. Which way? But yeah, I think that'd be a really cool place that with food vendors and everything would definitely be a good Saturday spot for a bunch of kids to hang out and get food and get a break from academics and everything. So it's great. Yes. I know it's a beautiful place, but I think the top four would be being an observation deck in the elevator or other one in the center building. It's the top four with probably a class four. That's the best. Woo! Large. Back to the back. Kind of jump about that. My name's Saul. I own Farm Supporters' Backside, which is the outdoor restaurant with the food truck here at the Browntown Marina. It's on the other side of the frame. I think first and foremost, I made Mrs. Space that's open to the public year round, that's free to come to, has all the sorts of things. We spent, my partner and I spent a couple of years pre-COVID working on a new pop art project. And I look at a blank frame there. It's one of those I don't want to bring in there personally, but it seems like it could be an incredible space, and I've got two years' worth of architectural drawings, so it's year round. Are you offering free work? But something that I do think, and then to have a person paying taxes, paying rent, to help pay for the structure where we run into costs is our issue, and there's no roof up our in Browntown. We were going to do a sustainable raw bar, that apartment would not fish on an exciting, sustainable, see, we don't need to go down that route either, but if you have something that's indoor, that's year round, where you run into the difficulties is building an elevator, we really can't buy, I'm coming to buy a building, which I certainly can afford. So if there was a private, public partnership, I think it is good, and 100% in keeping I know when the marina was built, they contributed to the waterfront park that's nearby. And so as a private business owner, I would certainly want to contribute to the public space and finding that balance of, well, how do we get people up into it? How do we make it so it's not just a free observation deck of the cities, building a beautiful elevator for. Is there a way to, something that we, I hope the private business maybe can't afford up front, but long-term, it can help pay back and lock in a long-term, you know, towards the agreement. I think there are public uses and businesses, I don't think I'm the only one hearing artists and others who might want to get up into the space, not turning into an office building, but I think it would be pretty vibrant. So. Thank you. Yes, I love, I want to second that I love the lighting, but I would, I also love the ethereal aesthetic of the frame. There was a lot of discussion, should the building totally come down? Should we adapt and reuse it? And I think that this is an amazing compromise, but I love the fact that it's an ethereal frame. I would find, I would love it to be a place of sculpture parking so quiet as well, because we have concerts in Waterfront Park, we have ice skating up in Battery Park with a beautiful view. We do have other things that we could also make larger, but if we could also remember that some of us would like to walk in a quiet sculpture park so that not every day we're having a lot of things happening. So a balance of that, I suppose. Just, you know, there's a lot of energy, but quiet is nice too, sculpture parks are nice too. We do have very active other parks and music venues and things. So, you know, I'm just looking for balance in that, because I come down here in the morning and it's not like that's quiet. And, you know, I just wanna make sure that we don't go too far. That you don't go in exactly the same way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that's landscaping and sculpture parks that's, you know, right, calm spaces, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Very good point. Who else? Yeah, you back? I would like to second some of the, a couple of the ideas I would recommend translucent floor. I think the restaurant idea, restaurant observation deck using an entire floor, possibly not the highest top, but that it was conveyors that brought the coal into the hopper, that eight foot floor right below the top would make. But a translucent floor would give a little privacy to the skirt wearing people. And, but open air, open air top could create both the stargazing, and some maybe retractable rain coverage for the restaurant or the observation deck. The band could be on the level, the first level of bandstand using the lawn as a stage. The lawn could also be your winter ice spring. That's what we do in Montpelier. We freeze some of the temperates on the state house. A caution, some cautions. We are currently have real maintenance deficit. I do not want to move forward on this before we resolve the maintenance deficit. Our plaza, our fishing pier, our public restrooms, our marina is in violation of their contract to provide hours of those public restrooms and nobody's doing anything about it. So we've got a hundred people camping just a quarter mile from here. They need showers, they need toilets, they need dignity or then it's gonna get worse. So we need an immediate plan for facilities. We need to remedy the maintenance thing before we embark upon a new exclusive and expensive pursuit. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Who else? Yes. Is environmental sensibility being taken into account like with planting and water use and all those things? Can I talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean I think that MVBA, I think all of the work that you do is through that sustainability lens. We, and I think as you can see, there's some existing plantings on the site that have taken that into account. There's a very, especially this year, very lush stormwater rain garden that has been designed both to help accept our stormwater but with a lot of native plant diversity. And if you come here early in the morning or in the evening, that number of bird, the bird activity in that wetland already by itself is stacked, I mean you can just be here and listen and it's amazing. So I don't know, Matthew, if you want to speak at all to how you all take it. Sure, I mean we were out, like, this is a very particular ecology, you know, and it doesn't look like a lot of ecology right now because it isn't, it's just post-industrial. But when we were just walking up and down the edges of the lake and just seeing what wants to grow there, you know. For instance, the Arborvites are, the native Arborvite tree is just lusted to be right on the edge of the lake. I think it's just the moisture blowing in off of it. For instance, so that would be a good thing. There's a lot of other native trees that would look really great but also bring a lot more riches to the site than it has right now. And it could frame it out and make it comfortable. And then we also could have the other functions that you're talking about just to kind of, you know, managing of the water and erosion and all those kinds of things. And have that, yeah. We'll make a lot of habitat. You wouldn't have a tattoo, but it's working with, working by empirical observation of what's growing in this kind of similar ecology over the long years that we'll start out with. Yes, Sophie's telling me it's time. There's two more minutes I want to, someone has one last question or thing they want to say. And then I'm going to let you say that I'm just going to, the design team will be here if you want to come up and talk or please like put your dots, like let us know which of these activities would draw you, especially in the winter, what would make you come down here, please, or if you need to leave what we're sort of wrapping up, please do that on your way out and sign in with your email so we can keep in touch with you as we move forward. Big yes, come back. I just really happy to hear that there's things already happening down the frame and that it sounds like people are very amenable to continuing those activities, whether it be roller skating, bike shop, artistic endeavors with people hanging up in the frame, space, any of those things that are already there because like I'm a bit recorded, like use what you've got to get what you need. What you've got already is a community and a culture that's been building around the frame and I think that's going to be the heart of what pumps and drives energy into anything else that grows so don't late tear the heart that's already grown out of what's there. Use it to expand the market. That is a perfect final comment. Thank you so much.