 So good evening and welcome to our first community meeting as part of the town of Randolph's and two rivers out of Quichy Regional Planning Commissions area wide planning study for downtown Randolph. I'm Josh Jerome, Director of Economic Development and Zoning for the town of Randolph. And before we begin with tonight's program, I just wanna provide some context as to why we're here tonight. Over the past few years, Randolph has taken some positive steps in reimagining what the community wants to be. Although change is always difficult to effectuate, I believe most people would agree that the R3 process was a catalyst for this momentum and contributed a great deal to why we are here now. It brought the community together and provided a container for residents to develop priorities for focused assessment and action. As human capital in the community activated disparate projects such as the hotel and outdoor recreation hub, new bike shop and new food establishments have provided fuel to sustain momentum of positive change in Randolph's economic sector. Increased capacity on the municipal level has resulted in additional community programming, events and focus on larger projects with a regional significance. Randolph is the commercial core of the region and largest township by population in Orange County. In order for downtown Randolph to continue with this positive momentum and to accommodate future growth, municipal officials have been working to develop a reinvestment plan to replace the North reservoir and bring on new wells to eliminate the use of the Pearl Street well, which has been the source of high levels of manganese in our water system. We first applied for and were awarded in Northern Borders Regional Commission Grant in the fall of 2019, then applied and we're awarded Vermont Community Development Program Funds in the beginning of this year to help fund that project. As it stands now, we are about 90% done of the final design plans and are slated to begin the project next spring and complete it by fall. This project was originally intended for this year but COVID's impact has delayed it. As we have developed the reinvestment plan for the reservoir and wells, we have concurrently taken stock of our municipal assets and identified action steps necessary to utilize those assets. The Branchwood parcel on Pearl Street is the largest unused municipal asset in the downtown. Conversations last year between the town and two rivers over the Branchwood parcel resulted in a phase one environmental assessment by VHB to initially assess the site's contamination. Being a site where fire destroyed the commercial building in 1999 and not having inclusive results from the remediation, further inspection was warranted. We then applied for enrollment in the state's Brownfields Reuse and Environmental Liability Limitation Program, otherwise known as Brella and were accepted earlier this year. This provides liability coverage to the town and any future owner over any contamination. A phase two environmental assessment began this past summer. You might have noticed the area has been roped off to prevent vehicular traffic. Some of the findings of that phase two assessment will be discussed later by VHB. For clarity, the Branchwood parcel is not the source of elevated manganese from the Pearl Street well. Manganese is a naturally occurring mineral derived from the bedrock. As the town, two rivers and VHB have worked together to complete the environmental assessment. Two rivers suggested a more holistic approach with an area wide planning study. And municipal officials believe this initiative can strengthen our objective of investing in this underutilized asset and identify additional underutilized assets that have redevelopment potential in the downtown. Your participation here tonight is both for your identification and ours so that we may align our opportunities with needs. And I'll hand it over to you, Kevin, at Two Rivers. Okay, thank you, everybody. Sarah, next slide there, I think. And I'm Kevin Geiger, I'm the director of planning at Two Rivers out of Quichy Regional Commission. And we are the folks who have the money from EPA to hire folks like VHB to assess the site and to do this area wide planning study. And so I'm gonna talk about Branchwood for a second. You may all be familiar with Branchwood. Branchwood is kind of on the southeastern corner of the downtown. It has two parcels, actually. The parcel you may be more familiar with, the smokestack on the railroad side of Pearl Street. Anna does have another parcel on the south side of Pearl Street there. So we're gonna be talking about that and other properties tonight. I wanna talk about area wide planning in general. That term, we use that term to talk about two parts in area wide plan does. It looks at environmental constraints around sites and then it looks at reuse potential and reuse possibilities. And the idea is a lot of sites have issues of one kind or another, especially in any urban context or that had previous commercial use. That slows them down from redevelopment. But what we really need for redevelopment is we need a vision for a future, a picture of what do we want this thing to be besides just a vacant block, perhaps. And there's a lot of possibilities. And so tonight we're gonna talk with you about all those things. This is the agenda right now. So we're gonna do our introductions and some housekeeping stuff. We're gonna talk about redevelopment opportunities and constraints. And then we're gonna have some brief question and answer. That's gonna take us about 45 minutes in or so. But then we're gonna really get down to talking about the parcels in particular and getting some feedback from you on which parcels we should focus on, Branchwood and others, and potential reuses out there. And I think there's one more slide here for me. Yep. So just hold all the questions until the end. Again, about 40 minutes or so from now we're gonna have a good time for questions from all of the presentations that we're about to do. You can raise your hand if you wanna speak when we get to that question and answer thing, literally raise your hand and wave it at us or you can use down bottom, you can use the reactions and there's a raise hand thing down there. There is, there should be, sometimes you can use the wave hand, there's a wave hand down there too and that'll work equally well. Remain muted, you'll see a little red microphone with a little slash through that'll mean you're muted. If you're not speaking, that'll be good. That'll save everybody listening to stuff and obviously be respectful and courteous as we go along tonight. I wanna point out that when we're talking about parcels, those have been identified preliminarily as parcels with number one within the downtown area but also with good reuse potential out there. And we're gonna be talking about them tonight. That doesn't mean that the landowners have said, oh, pick me on these parcels. And it doesn't mean that what we come up with is necessarily going to happen on that site. This is an exploration of opportunities for folks. And then as we go forward, and it's not the end, it's the beginning of that process a little bit. Let's see, just about some other things. Again, as we get a little later, we're gonna be looking at potential priority uses for sites. And then we're gonna try to do a deep dive, picking the Branchwood site, which we're already working on in another site out there. And these are the focus areas. You can see the outline of red. The yellow is your central business district. So we have Branchwood on the edge there. But we've got one parcel on the north side, several parcels on the south side. I mean, you might think of about the Playhouse Theater and other stuff that's down there. And then way out near the railroad crossing, there's some previously industrial properties out there as well in the purple. Again, yep, so we're gonna be talking about potential reuses. So the use because the use drives the reuse. If there's a parcel, but nobody wants to do anything with it, nothing's gonna happen. But if they say, oh, and it can be all sorts of things. It doesn't need to be a commercial use. It could be a public use. It could be a green space. It could be housing. It could be all sorts of things. And it could be a combination of those. And again, the Catalyst site is that Branchwood site, both sides of the street. And what are those design priorities? What are the things that the community really wants to have happen on those sites? And so now I think we're going to go to Denise. All right, Denise, are you gonna lead off the next part? Yes, and Greg's going to share his screen with the slides. Good evening, my name's Denise Roy and I'm an environmental engineer with VHB. And I'm here with two of my colleagues, Greg McDonald, also another environmental engineer and Mark Hamlin, who's a senior planner with VHB. And we've performed work at the Branchwood site today and also are driving the area wide plan. One component of that is the environmental desktop review. So Greg and I are going to go through our findings from the environmental desktop review. And this is just one of the pieces of information that's going to feed into our discussion tonight for reuse and potential considerations. So an environmental desktop review is really a high level evaluation of an area for environmental concerns. And so the area is the focus area that Kevin showed before with several parcels all in downtown Randolph. And it includes that former Branchwood site. But the review is very high level in that there isn't a site visit, there are no interviews. It's looking at databases, federal and state databases, maps, and so that's why it's called a desktop review because we can essentially do it from our computers. And we're looking for indications of former uses that may indicate potential for release of any sort of hazardous materials and any sort of other potential contamination that could impact redevelopment. So that's really the objective is just to kind of lay the groundwork and say, okay, do we see any red flags here? And how could this impact redevelopment? So that includes looking at the physical setting, the ground water flow directions, surface water soils, those sorts of things, also historical uses. So a property that's been vacant for 200 years is much different than a property that was used for a dry cleaner or for another industrial type of purpose. And we also are looking at sites that are nearby or in the area that are regulated sites with the DEC. Those have known contaminant conditions and or suspected contaminant conditions and they're enrolled in their programs. So Greg is now gonna go through the details of that environmental desktop review. And then I will come back and kind of summarize things and talk about Branch a little bit. So like Denise said, my name is Greg McDowell. I'm with VHB and I've been working on the area wide plan as well. And whenever we started, we looked at the focus area on which Kevin already started to describe and we essentially divided it up into four different blocks. So we have the west block, which is the area out along Western street by the railroad crossing, what we've defined as the north block, which is two smaller parcels to the north of sort of the central downtown area, central block, which contains more of that central business district and then the east block, which contain just those two different branch wood parcels. And we divide this up as a way to sort of organize our review and also be able to focus on the properties within the focus area blocks, as well as in the immediate vicinity like Denise said, where maybe there's identified conditions that could pose a potential redevelopment consideration on a parcel within the block. So to sort of dig into a high level summary of the findings of our environmental desktop review, like Denise said, we looked at a lot of historical uses at these properties, tried to identify places where there was documented storage or use of petroleum products or other hazardous materials. And typically we can look at these historical uses as a good understanding of potential for environmental impacts at a property. So for example, if we're looking at a gas station, we know most times that gas stations have some sort of underground tank system where they're storing petroleum products. Unfortunately, we've come to learn that these tanks have historically been known to cause releases to the subsurface. So that's sort of an example of how we're looking at these past uses. So generally speaking, uses within the area aren't, none are extremely surprising. The west block out on Westin Street, we have a lot of woodworking use, wood products and lumber processing out there as well as some commercial uses historically. As we look more into the central block, this is obviously where you have a more diverse range of uses. If we look back to the early turn of the century, you have a lot more use associated with fuel storage, blacksmithing, some older style uses, and then we get more into auto repair, maintenance garages, gasoline stations, and there's always been a general commercial presence in the downtown area. The north block, largely residential uses were recognized and then as was mentioned with the branch of property, that was a wood products manufacturing and has had some residential use on the other side of Pearl Street there on the south side. And when we're looking at these uses, these are, it's important to note that this is in some ways speculation, but it's, we're looking at these uses, the storage of materials, handling of those materials. And like Denise said, looking at those state and federal databases to try to develop a better understanding of what potential constraints for redevelopment may be present. So then sort of a bigger summary of how this all relates back to the area wide plan. So the big takeaway from the environmental desktop review is that there's no environmental conditions within the focus area that appear to preclude redevelopment. There's no property here that appears or is documented to be contaminated beyond a threshold that it would make sense to redevelop, which isn't surprising. There are multiple DEC regulated sites that have a combination of known and perceived impacts associated with them, some within the focus area, some outside of the focus area. There's many properties that have current and former underground storage tanks, that's USTs and above ground storage tanks, which are ASTs. These are common, especially in older and urbanized areas, even with residences, it's a risk that that's something that should be considered and looked into. With any urban area, there's the potential for what we would consider urban soils or potential fill. So that's typically seen anywhere where there's a historical industrial presence associated with the three DEC regulated sites. There are, like I said, documented releases. So there's documented releases of fuel to groundwater in the central, in that focus within portions of the focus area. And then the last piece that we pulled out is buildings that are constructed prior to the 1980s. There's a concern or there's a potential for, there's a potential for potentially hazardous building materials to be used, building materials that are asbestos containing lead-based paints, which people are probably familiar with, PCB containing paints or coatings or other building materials. So that's just another piece that we sort of pull in in this desktop review to add into an additional consideration as we look forward at sort of the next steps. And it's important, like I've said, that this is all preliminary, it's research. None of the impacts have been confirmed and we don't know anything about any of these properties with certainty until it's tested under current conditions. And with that said, I'll pass it back to Denise and she'll sort of discuss the process moving forward with the findings of the desktop review. Thanks, Greg. So moving forward with any of these sites that are in this focus area for our recommendations, we would recommend that a particular site, if it was, you're looking at it for redevelopment, that it would go through a formal ASTM phase one environmental site assessment. The work that we did is kind of a higher level than that. It doesn't get into actually looking, being present on the site. And a phase one would include interviews. It would include a more thorough document review with other records at the town. A site visit, taking pictures, so site reconnaissance. So it gets the result of an ASTM compliant phase one is that it'll evaluate for the presence of recognized environmental conditions and it will list out what are recognized environmental conditions for a particular site. And by starting the process this way, it offers potential liability protections, innocent homeowner protections for, prior to any development, which is part of what we're finding out or working through with Branchwood. After a phase one is performed, if there are recognized environmental conditions, often it's recommended to do a phase two environmental site assessment. And that's to get some samples to get on site to analyze the soil, maybe look at the groundwater, do a more detailed review and get some data because the phase one does not get into data for soil and groundwater. And after that, you can, if you have known environmental conditions, then you start looking at corrective actions of what you can do. And so I've got listed here remediation, mitigation and institutional controls. These aren't very complicated. Remediation could be very, simply digging up an area of soil and trucking it off site. Mitigation could be putting down some sort of engineered barrier, which could be pavement or a building footprint or foundation. Institutional controls is a land use restriction sometimes that somebody can't dig below this certain level without having an environmental professional do a review for that. So they don't need to be complicated. And then we went through this process for Branchwood through to Rivers and an EPA Brownfield assessment grant. We performed a phase one and a phase two. The phase two investigation is complete. It's documented and currently it's being reviewed by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. That's the DEC that Kevin posted in the chat there. And also the environmental protection agencies of the EPA. So they're reviewing that. And so it's not finalized yet. We have a figure here next that looks at the layout for Branchwood. And so this is that parcel. It's divided into two pieces North and South of Pearl Street. So the footprint for the former mill is the purple stripe area. And then there were also former lumber storage areas. And there was a railroad spur that came off of the line. And there they had coal storage and they presumably would, you know import and export materials and that sort of thing. There were also a couple of residential buildings on that South piece. So we, after looking, after performing the phase one we performed a phase two which included soil and groundwater sampling putting in a couple of wells for groundwater on the entire parcel both the North side and the South side. And results show that they're basically just shallow soil impacts that are associated with the former uses. So that former wood manufacturing building had an incinerator where they incinerated waste. So that's burning things, burning waste. And also the mill caught on fire and invert in 1999. And there was the railroad spur and the railroad nearby. And so those former uses as well as potentially using it as a snow dump and some other things have caused some soil impacts on surface soil and it's contaminants that are really common particularly in urban areas. So and they're not contaminants that migrate. So it's just in the surface soil at this point we have proposed to do additional sampling further down to see if it goes beyond the one and a half foot depth level. And so that is still in review with the DEC and the EPA. We also looked at groundwater and there's no evidence of impacts to groundwater. So that is still in process. And this site as well as any other sites that we might be looking at for catalyst sites there are funding sources available and that particularly to Rivers can talk about that and some of the other groups on this call for helping to assess and remediate sites that may have some sort of impacts. And so there are resources available to help move these forward because oftentimes it's a perceived barrier for development. And so that helps. Sarah. Thank you very much, Denise and Greg. I'm gonna go ahead if you could stop sharing Greg and I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here to come back to our slides. So hello everyone, my name is Sarah Rait and I work as a regional planner here at Two Rivers on Pitcher Regional Commission. I'm going to talk for just a few minutes about noise impacts which are good to consider for any development projects. So what's the level of background noise for the specific and in the specific area and is that appropriate for the future land use that we're considering those sort of questions. This evening I'm only gonna be talking about noise from the perspective of how to fund a project a redevelopment project. So the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD funds many housing projects across the country, particularly affordable housing and they can also fund development of some community facilities, buildings, spaces, that sort of thing. So many folks do look to HUD when they're thinking about how they're gonna build up their capital stacks for a redevelopment project but there are some limitations on what can be funded and noise is part of that eligibility analysis. So HUD money, excuse me, cannot be used to construct buildings in areas where the background noise level is above 75 decibels. And creating outdoor spaces in those high noise areas is also tricky. HUD probably would not fund a park in that kind of an area but a parking lot that's ancillary to a different project might be fundable because a parking lot is not considered a noise sensitive use. If the noise is between 65 and 75 decibels then you might be able to use HUD dollars for a building project but the building would need to include noise mitigation features like insulation, double pane windows, that sort of thing. And a couple important caveats, HUD does look at additional environmental concerns when it's deciding whether to fund a project. And so even if the noise levels are below 75 decibels in a specific site, HUD might still end up deciding not to fund a project there for other reasons. Also noise analysis and mitigation requirements are incredibly site specific. And so you don't know for certain whether redevelopment project is fundable through HUD until you really dig into the details of that unique site context. That said, all of that said, in Randolph we know that we have some significant noise impacts from the train horns that have to be sounded before the train reaches an accurate road crossing. And so the state estimates that the decibel levels are probably at 75 or above within a radius of 125 feet of the tracks. So using spatial data that was very generously shared by Todd Schaeffer of SRW Environmental Consulting and Julie Ifland from RACDC. We've used that 125 foot rough pool of thumb to map these high noise zones. And so the high noise zones are in red and the study focus area parcels are in yellow and where they overlap is orange. So you can see that quite a few study parcels could be impacted by high noise levels in those orange areas then most projects would not be fundable through HUD. Again, this is just a rough guess and an actual HUD project review would look in depth with the unique characteristics of an individual site and its surroundings but it is worth keeping this constraint in mind if the town's gonna be considering redevelopment projects that might depend on HUD dollars like a subsidized housing unit complex or community facility. So at this point, I am going to pass it over to Mr. Doug Kennedy of Doug Kennedy's advisors who's going to be presenting, pardon me, I'm just going to share his slides. He's gonna be presenting a housing and commercial market analysis for us. So Doug, are you online? I'm here. Wonderful, and can you see your slides? I can see them. Perfect, thank you. You wanna make them bigger, that'd be great. Absolutely. Okay, just very quickly, I'm Doug Kennedy. I'm an independent planner and economist from Norwich. What I do is to work with private developers and communities throughout the U.S. and with a focus in this part of the world on development issues, what makes sense on a particular site or a community and to look at some of the feasibility issues behind new development. In Randolph, I'm specifically looking at residential or housing potentials or commercial potentials for new development. My findings and my recommendations, which I'll finish up with here are not necessarily specific to a site in downtown Randolph, but are specific to the community. In other words, it's a potential that could, if it fits on one of the sites, that would be great. But these are things that work from an economic and market perspective. They might compete with existing built businesses or housing developments in Randolph, but they make sense in terms of the current economic situation. So Sarah, if you'll move to the next slide. So first of all, one of the things I do is to take a good background look at a community, what's going on from an economic perspective. Some of these graphics may mean a lot to you. Some may be way too much detail, but I'll just go through them quickly and give you a feeling of what I find as being important in any community. This particular graphic shows three different things over time. That is since 2000, the year 2000. The red line is the size of the labor force in the Randolph labor market area. It's Randolph and surrounding towns. The green line is actual employment in that area. And the purple or blue line, however that may show up for you is the unemployment rate. And obviously what most recently happened with unemployment was there was a huge big jump in 2020, very much a factor of COVID. But what's more significant here is that gradual downward trend in both the size of the labor force and total employment in the community. There obviously there was a real loss of jobs back around 2010, a couple of major employers moved out. What's happening in Randolph and what's happening in other communities throughout Vermont is that a lot of people are aging out of the labor force. So that's an age thing. That's a demographic thing. Not much we can do about that. What's happened more recently is it appears that a number of people are not returning to the labor force following unemployment during COVID. And that's an ongoing factor. These are two things that if you will, it's a shrinking sphere of economic influence in the town. Nevertheless, if you look at the bottom there, wages in the area have increased by 44% average wages. I had a higher level than Vermont as a whole. And what I know in particular about Randolph is that the major employers are institutions and employers that create high level positions and who have been fairly stable recently. Next slide, please Sarah. Another interesting thing I always look at is real estate activity. That is sales of houses, of typical single family homes, condominiums, those sorts of things. This graph shows from the year of 215 to 2020 trends for Randolph and Red Orange County as a whole and sort of the yellow or orange and Vermont and green. And what's really striking here, you look at the labor force and employment, it's down in the Randolph area and yet residential real estate activity is dramatically up 80% higher than it was in year 2015 and a really big bump in year 2020. So while there may be fewer jobs in the town, this tells me that there's interest in the community from a residential perspective. I just happened to look today at listings. There were only 12 residential listings in Randolph today. And none of them are between the prices of 260,000 and 520,000. So that whole middle range is missing in the market. You can't find it. Another indicator that much of what's been out there has been sold. And the other significant thing to keep in mind, of course, is that vacancy rates for rentals in Vermont are really low. I don't have specific data for Randolph, but just looking at listings, I can tell that it's very low in the community as well. Okay, Sarah. So here's what I think of as Randolph assets that will attract development, will attract people first and then development, childcare capacity. There's a forthcoming project that will really solidify childcare in the community. And that has proven to be really significant for attracting employers and attracting people. The presence of coworking space in the downtown, that's impressive for a small downtown to have coworking space. And it's something that sort of shows you that there's an uptick in activity in the community. The active arts community in Randolph is a real attractive item. Recreation both within community and within a short drive of the community. The small town feel, local education, your kids, if you move here to Randolph as a family, your kids are educated locally. And of course, fiber-based internet is really critical. I think two other things that are really happening now, COVID has been happening and climate change have been happening, but they're going to have effects in Vermont. COVID in the short run, very definitely has brought new households to the region. The data isn't available yet, but every community I go to talks about new households that have moved in because they've had it with living in urban areas and they've looked to small town Vermont. So that's there, and you could call that a short-term impact, but COVID keeps running, it keeps going, and it looks like it's going to be around for a while, it'll be part of our lives. The second one that really is maybe just beginning to register is climate change. People who want to get away from constant flooding, from heat, and things like that. We'll begin to bring people to Vermont, a place that is relatively free of some of those. We're not free of climate change, but we're at least relatively free of some of the, it's more extreme impacts. I think the COVID thing has brought more affluent people to Vermont, people who could move very quickly. I think climate change will bring a more diverse route to Vermont, people who are just looking to get out of wherever they are right now. Go ahead, Sarah. So let's look at the housing side of things. And this graphic shows a graphic and this would be very, very typical for most Vermont communities. The blue is the number, the blue bars are the numbers of households in certain age groups. In currently 2021, the red bars are comparing it to a five-year projection. And for various age groups that is 18 to 34, 35 to 54, 55 to 64 and 65 years plus. And what we see here is that the number of young households is expected to actually decrease by 14% in the next few years, next five years. Number of middle-aged, if you will, 35 to 54-year-old households will increase slightly. That's a positive 3%. The number of sub-senior, if you will, 55 to 64-year-old households will decrease. That's primarily because the baby boom is moving out of that age group, is aging out of that age group. And there'll be finally a dramatic increase in the number of households in 65 years or older in the market area around Randolph. And what's particularly, what's interesting here is about Randolph is if you look at population figures really isn't changed much in the past decade. It's pretty much the same as it was in 2010. But what I always note and say to anybody in any communities, look at new housing. And there has been minimal, if any new housing development in Randolph in that period. So it's kind of hard to move to or make a community bigger if housing opportunities aren't there. And right now they're very limited. Go ahead, Sarah. What's interesting, this is very interesting to me and I think it's really important to point out the imbalance of the housing stock versus the number of households that live in a town. On the left-hand side, that pie chart breaks down Randolph area households by size. 26% of all Randolph households are just one person, 36% are just two people. So right there, 62% of all the households in the area have only one or two people. But then we look at, and this is breaking down all of the housing units in Randolph by size. Only 3% are studios. 12% are one bedroom, 21% are two bedroom. So that if you add that up, you'll see that about 35% of the housing units are two units or less. That compares to 62% of your households that are only one or two people. So there's a major imbalance between the size, the housing units in the community, and the actual households that live out there. A typical household in the US is no longer mommy, daddy, and two kids. That's just not, that's the minority these days. And yet our housing stock is mostly built for that kind of household. So there's a real shortage of smaller housing units in the area. Okay, go ahead, Sarah. This is even maybe a little more deep, but if you look at it very carefully, what I've done is shown households by age and income in this graphic. And if you know how old a household is and what their income is, you know a lot about what they're doing for housing. And what this specifically shows in various groupings is how those groups will change over the next five years. For instance, if you look at the upper left, you'll see that households that are aged from 30, 18 years to 35, 40 years, who are very low income, the category zero to 25,000 will decrease over the next five years. Whereas if you look at the other extreme, households that are 65 or more years and earn incomes in excess of 100,000, that group will increase by 106 in the next five years. What's also, and this is very basic data that I use to look at housing need, what's really important to understand about this is, well, some groups are decreasing, some are increasing. The housing market is most influenced by younger and lower income households because they move frequently. Whereas older and higher income households move very, very infrequently, relatively speaking. Okay, go ahead, Sarah. So then I wanted to look at the commercial side of things. What are some of the potentials in Randolph? The top part just highlights some particular sectors that have shown growth in the Randolph area in the last few years. That's construction, more activity there, financial activities, that's real estate, banking, those sorts of things. Professional and business services, that's professionals like engineers, people like me, people who legal architecture, those kinds of folks. And then of course, what we can certainly expect in any community is that there's going to be long-term growth in healthcare. That's always a growth sector. And given an aging population, it will certainly be a health sector. And Randolph has its foot strongly in the healthcare sector. So that's a positive. I also like to look at travel indicators. And there's not actually, because Randolph's travel indicators are so small, there's not data available, but for Orange County overall, there's been very little growth in the last decade. And yet there's been substantial growth in terms of short-term rentals, VRBO, those sorts of things that is growing. There is interest in travel, but the traditional forms of travel, hotels, bed and breakfast really haven't grown in the area. I also made another comparison, and this is again, a little bit of a number of focus, but I looked at meals sales. That is restaurant revenues in a number of areas. Vermont, Randolph, Bethel, Montpelier, Royalton, Waterbury and compared them in terms of sales per capita. How much does a community bring in per resident? Randolph at $1,600 per resident isn't even as high as the average for all of Vermont. What this in a nutshell tells me is Randolph's underperforming in this sector. There's need for more restaurant, more food service, more drinking places, more entertainment places. Randolph is definitely underserved in that area. Okay, Sarah, go ahead. And other retail opportunities. This is just a comparison of what sales actually occur in the area versus the demand that's generated by the people who live in the area. And several of the areas that show opportunities are lawn and garden equipment, clothing, general merchandise, that is general store, small department stores, specialty foods, and then as I mentioned a moment ago, restaurants and drinking places. Okay, Sarah. Other commercial opportunities that I think are there is, and I mentioned specifically bed and breakfast. I think a hotel would be great in Randolph, but I think at this point, the community doesn't quite have enough volume to support a full line hotel. So I think the better way to look at it is to build up with smaller entities like bed and breakfast. The next category may be something you've never thought of before structured handyman services. Right now in this part of the world, you call somebody you know who can fix things and maybe they can come and usually they can't, but in a lot of communities, people have sort of build up, come together and structured co-op sort of services where you can actually call, get somebody to help you with fixing your sink, putting some new cloud board on your housing, that sort of thing. And that's particularly important in a community where there's an aging population. Couple of other things that pop up for Randolph are pet supplies and services and food trucks. A really good way for restaurant owners and people in that sector to test out a market and find out if it's a good place. Okay, Sarah. So on the residential side, here's what my preliminary findings are and I'm very interested in what I hear tonight because I'm gonna go back and refine this afterward. But in terms on the rental side, there is very definitely demand for rentals in three categories. And one would be subsidized rentals. That is for lower income folks and that is a strong need throughout the state, certainly not unique to Randolph at all. There's a need for what I will call affordable or tax credit rentals. These are units and they're all over the state. There's some in Randolph already that have somewhat below market rate rents, but really are in a great need for lower income working folks. And there's also a need for market rate rentals, rentals that rent at the going market rate. And I think honestly, given the data I've got and what I can see is that there really is a demand for about 60 units over a two or three year period in Randolph. I also think, and I think this would be a second step, that there's potential for ownership housing in Randolph. That is how smaller housing units that are oriented toward first time buyers or senior buyers, folks 65 or older, these would be two bedroom units that might include workspace for people who do their own thing and want to work at home. I know this may be shocking, but starter housing now is in the 325 to 350 range. And I think this is a potential that has maybe, there's potential for 15 or to 20 units over a three year period. So those are very quick run at what I've come up with. And I think a lot of this are things that could fit on some of the sites we'll look at tonight. Thanks. Here we go. Sorry, thank you so much. I really appreciate your work on this presentation. I'm going to go ahead and move us into, I apologize, I'm struggling to close up to the right slide, but I'm gonna go ahead and share the screen. Okay. So again, this is Sarah right from the two rivers. The Randolph community has had many productive conversations around the future of the downtown before this evening. And we wanted just to take a moment to briefly recap some of the ideas that have come up repeatedly in the downtown meetings and in the Randolph region re-energized or R3 process. And we're not gonna try to summarize all of the conversation that's happened before this evening because that would be impossible in an hour, very short on time, but we thought that some bullet points might be helpful to jog everybody's memory. So I've put down a list here of some of the more commonly discussed potential uses that community identified as needs in downtown. And as we heard from Doug just now, a number of those community identified needs sort of overlap with his analysis of market opportunities. And I've highlighted those in red here. Also, because we're going to be discussing site design this evening, we've picked out some of the recurring comments about the downtown streetscape that go beyond uses. So community members have highlighted that they'd like to see the downtown be ADA accessible and more pedestrian friendly. That means with sidewalks and other amenities, but also sort of street facing businesses, more bike friendly, wayfinding signage, mixed use developments, public Wi-Fi, street beautification, more cohesiveness of the aesthetics of the streetscape and electric vehicle charging stations, also connectivity to trails. So from there, I'm going to pass it to Kevin who's gonna lose through a brief question and answers period. Okay, so we're running a few minutes, maybe five minutes or so behind, not too bad. If there are any burning questions and maybe we can get answers from just a couple of people on what you've seen so far, if it's a question about, oh, what about that site or all those things, that's the next part coming up. So if anything's about questions and really uses on sites or comments on that area, that's really the next part of the discussion. But if there's any questions right now, and if anybody wants to raise their hand, I see Gary's hand, so I'm gonna call on Gary. Gary, you wanna unmute yourself? There, Gary Durr. Gary, you gotta unmute yourself there. Gary, can you unmute yourself? There you go. I was very impressed with Doug Kennedy's analysis of the Randolph area. One of the things he said was that there was a need for more B and Bs and not so much hotel. Well, there was a study done during our three, three years ago that said that there was a hole along 89 for a hotel and it is planned to be built next year. So did your study include that hotel on 89, Doug? I'm definitely aware of that project. I guess as I went through my analysis, I was really more focused on thinking about the downtown. And yeah, that project may go forward and that's gonna, if it does occur, it's more oriented toward, it's a very big part of that will be travel along 89 as opposed to a hotel that's specifically focused in the community. I'm not certainly not saying there isn't a demand. I think in the short run, being realistic and having worked with a lot of lodging properties, it would be difficult to find financing for a hotel project in downtown Randolph. Yeah, well, the study that was done in our three basically says BNB downtowns and a hotel on 89. Okay, yeah, so I concur. There we go. That's the answer. Thank you, Doug. Any other questions or so, you can wave your hand or you can use the little hand symbol down under reactions. And if not, we will move on to the next part. We have a question from John Kappel. Hey, John. Yep. Yep, hi. And maybe this is what you're about to get into, but I was a little confused by all the parcels that were highlighted on that first map, like the four areas. Branchwood is pretty obvious as a site that is kind of there to be developed, but maybe are you gonna talk, I guess I'm a little unclear about the status of the other parcels and why they were included. Yeah, I think we're actually gonna talk about that some coming up, but if Sarah or maybe Josh wants to hit that. Sarah, do you wanna? Sure. So these parcels were selected in consultation with the town with input from RACDC as well. And they were identified as a subset of the parcels that have significant redevelopment potential are either vacant currently or have significant redevelopment potential and the town has been thinking about it collectively in those specific areas for a while. And so we recognize that these particular parcels are not all of the parcels that need attention in the downtown. They were simply highlighted because we have to start somewhere. And so these were sort of picked out as ones where we could focus community dialogue and attention for the purposes of this study recognizing that obviously there will be conversations about many other portions of the downtown as well. So the sites are quite diverse and in their histories and in their current statuses as well. So I hope does that answer your question? Yeah, basically I guess if I, unless I misread the map, are you showing one of the parcels as the Playhouse Theater? That was the one that kind of caught my eye the most. Yes, that was selected in consultation with the town. I guess that one just is a little bit of a head scratcher for me, but that's okay. Would anybody from the town or Julie, would you like to speak to that particular parcel? And if not, we can, we're gonna go around and kind of work on these parcels. So maybe that can come up in that discussion too. I do see one more hand and then let's go to the next part. And that's from Mark Kelly. So Mark, can you unmute? Yeah, in Doug's presentation there was a, for the end there was a histogram that talked about the different opportunities for gray bars with some numbers at the top, which are dollar figures. And I would ask if you would explain that a little bit better. So Doug, can you bring a specter first? I think I'm, can you, Sarah, can you get us back to that? Yeah, I'm trying my apologies. Okay. And I missed the description of which figure it is. I'm sorry. Is it this one? No, keep going. I think one more. I think it's this one. Okay. Is this the one you're talking about? Yes, it is. It is, okay. This is a very, this is what I do is calculate total sales in each retail category. In other words, existing sales that existing businesses are generated. I don't know it to the dollar, but we can estimate it pretty closely. And then we compare it with the demand that is generated by people living in the region. How much do they spend on restaurants? How much do they spend on clothing? That sort of thing. And when you compare those two numbers, you certain things start to pop out such as, gosh, there's much more demand for in the sense, let's say clothing, much more demand generated by people in the region than there is actual sales in that category. And that's, boy, that's very typical for small downtowns because an awful lot of clothing shopping occurs in either, well, it used to be malls. Now it's a lot of it's on the internet, but a lot of it doesn't occur in a downtown area. But what this does show to me, and that's what this very simply shows, is where there are areas where there are, there's clearly more demand generated in the area than there is supply in Randolph itself. And this is just a way of identifying opportunities that entrepreneurs might jump into because maybe they can capture part of that demand that's now going somewhere else. Does that make sense? Well, almost. What are the numbers across the top? For lawn and garden equipment, it's 1.1 million surplus, clothing, $10.4 million surplus. These are the surplus, that's what you said. Yeah, surplus of demand over actual sales. So they could be thought of as the gap in available. This is called gap analysis. Yes, correct, yep. Great. So now Sarah's gonna have the ball for the next, the next hour or so, which is gonna be in two parts. So Sarah, while I'm talking, you can get ready to do whatever you're gonna do over there. And so we're gonna be looking, again, out of those blocks, the south, the central and the northern stuff. And she is also going to give you over in the chat, I believe she's gonna paste a link for a Google document where if you don't wanna comment right now, or if you're not the type of person who just jumps in on Zoom, you can be putting stuff over in this Google document and we can watch that. And we will leave that open for the rest of the evening and then we will shut it down just so it doesn't go on long. And so we can be looking at that. And so there's a link over there in the chat, I can see for folks. And this is about focusing. We've got a scatter shot of several places. How do you want us to focus down on a particular thing? And then what kind of uses do you want us to focus on those particular places? So Sarah, are you ready to take the ball? Okay. Thank you, okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Is that full screen now? Kevin, do you see a full screen? Okay, fantastic. So as Kevin mentioned, we're now transitioning into the portion of this evening's conversation where we're really looking for your input and all of the comments that you make this evening and that you post in the Google document, which is in the chat. And please, if you're having trouble asking Google document, raise your hand, let us know. You should be have editing permission there, so you can go ahead and type things in. We're gonna go through each block one by one and we're gonna talk through, first of all, the potential uses that you see as being and then we're going to think about which block might be good to pick one site out of to do a more deep dive into from a design point of view. And we're gonna ask for some design guides on that. And then we're gonna transition to talking about branch wood and we'll talk about uses and we'll also talk about site design for that. And so as we go through, I'm gonna give a little bit of introduction before we dive in, but I do wanna say just sort of thinking back to the comment about the Playhouse Theater. When we're talking about uses and potential redevelopment, it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that use might change on a parcel, but redevelopment might look like changing the look of the parcel or maybe the design of part of the parcel so that it matches the other buildings and sort of achieves that aesthetic consistency that folks have been talking about or something to that effect, right? So it doesn't necessarily follow that a use has to change during redevelopment but it's something that we wanna talk about this evening and get your input on. So let's dive in here to the West Block which again is a series of parcels over on the Western end of Western Street near the intersection with School Street sort of flanking the railroad corridor there. And I do wanna make a note that the zoning here is gateway commercial. So that according to the current land use regulations, the only prohibited use for this area is indoor retail and the zoning district does specify a maximum lock coverage of 70% and the minimum setbacks are fairly large. It's 20 feet for the side and the rear and 50 feet for the front. It's worth noting that the distance between the railroad easements and Western Street is only 40 feet. So redeveloping this thin strip of land between the railroad and Western Street is challenging from just a physical standpoint but also from a regulatory standpoint as well. So that said, this diagram does, we've tried to mark a couple of important landmarks surrounding the blocks. You can get a sense and really think about, how do these parcels relate to the surrounding development, the surrounding area and the natural resources as well because obviously there's more undeveloped land to the south of this block. So given the surrounding context of this block, what kinds of land uses do you think would be appropriate and successful in this block in this area? So if you have thoughts you'd like to share, please go ahead and raise your hand. And again, you can enter it into the Google Doc as well. Let's see. I see Jeffrey Groud. Yeah, can I just chime in or? Yes, let's do it. Yeah, I'm just, I don't know if this would meet the zoning requirements but I just looking at the picture, it's got close proximity to a lot of trails that are up on the hill behind it. And I know there's a lot of trail development. That's I think a big draw toward Randolph that's going to get larger is the mountain bike trails. Would that be possible? I don't know, for some type of park area or camping, recreational area, staging area for mountain bike or trail walks there. And again, I'm just thinking out loud so I don't know if that would make sense, but. This is a fine time to think out loud. Yeah, just brainstorming I guess, but that's the first thing that jumped out of me is it's a very close proximity to a lot of trails. I don't know what we can do with the buildings right beside the railroad tracks. They've been there a while and I guess I'd call those pretty heavy industrial buildings. Now, I love what they did to old mills in some towns where they make breweries out of buildings like that, but not close to the railroad tracks. I don't know what would happen, but I'll throw that in a mountain bike or trail recreation area and a brewery. Thank you. And I don't know if that fits zoning or not, but. It's okay. And I see Josie for others. Yeah. So Josie, you're on mute Josie. Okay. I'm not sure in what condition those buildings are in and if they are redevelopable, but it certainly seems like a light manufacturing use, but also interesting for artist studios, if those buildings are usable at all, I think they're tying in with the art scene. It's something that wouldn't possibly need subsidizing to redevelop those buildings into a use like that that's not profit driven. So I just don't know to what extent those buildings are an asset or not. This is in contrast to Jeff Grout's comments about the trails. It's a two very conflicting uses there, but it's a large area and could be really good for continued industrials use in a light way. So. Thank you. I see a hand from Kate Branstader. Hey, let me see if I can do a video here. I just want, can everybody see me? Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Hi, so I'm part of the library as well as I'm a business owner in town. And one of the things that we are really, really finding, we just did this huge question assessment with people in the community and parents. And one of the things that I just wanna point out is that there is a huge need, we're finding for space for people to have meetings outside with the pandemic and all that is happening. People are constantly looking for places like a table that's undercover all the time. And with the library closed, it's something that we offered over the summer, but now we're not because we took our tent down. The other thing is places for teens to hang out. We have no central place for sort of an older, not childcare, but an older sort of population of youth in town. There's no place. So just throwing that out there, I don't know about zoning with the railroads and everything, but just keep in mind that there is a huge need for both of those things. Thank you very much. I see a hand from John. Yep. So if I understand right, you're basically saying like our current zoning makes the parcels on the railroad track side almost, you couldn't meet zoning essentially and have the setbacks and whatnot is what I heard you say. So I'll just, this is maybe kind of a bold, I would say on the sort of track side, I know those buildings have some historic value, but honestly, they're kind of an eyesore that whole strip of old industrial kind of railroad oriented buildings. I'd say on the railroad side, take them all down, make it some kind of green space. We have very little green space in the downtown. And then I like Jeff's idea on the other side or we just heard in Doug's presentation a lot about sort of smaller housing needs. What about a whole row of, we could call it the railroad condos on the other side of the street? Dense development within a walking distance of the downtown, maybe that would drive sidewalk development along Western street, which is sorely needed. So that's my thought. I do want to keep us moving along so that we can get through everything we need to get to this evening. I don't see any of our hands raised at the moment. Of course you can continue entering comments into the Google document. Kevin. I see Nate. Yes, thank you everyone. I actually have to sign off to go do some bedtime here, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I really appreciate your time. This was an excellent and informative presentation. Doug, thank you very much. And I think I have personally witnessed a lot of what you said in your presentation. So thank you for bringing that to the attention of the larger audience here. And it's nice to see some familiar faces here. And I'm excited that we have a lot of passionate residents here in town. So thank you. I did leave a few comments in the Google doc and thank you. And unfortunately I have to sign off here. So take care. Thank you very much. We do have the other areas to cover too, Ann. Thank you. It's my entrance, so Sarah, you're gonna go to that. Okay. So the next area that we'd like to talk to you about and get your input on potential uses is the central block. We've outlined the Parsons of Interest in red. And I do want to just a quick note on zoning. This is the central business district, which supports sort of dense, multi-story, customer oriented businesses and services. As the land use regulations currently stand, the following uses would be prohibited. Contractor yards, single and two-family residential, heavy industry and rural industrial uses. And the sort of dimensional specifications for this district do allow quite dense development a maximum lock coverage of 100% to very small setbacks, zero to 10 feet. So you can pack quite a lot in here. I will also note that at the 2013 downtown meeting, the following comments were made about this particular area. There was a call for sort of landscaping and greening up of the streetscape. There was a suggestion of maybe an art corridor or gardens along L Street. There was a call for more aesthetically consistent streetscapes in this area and a call for sidewalks, of course, for professing connectivity along Western Street. And there was also talk about artist studios and living spaces on Western Street, which we talked a little bit about in the West Block discussion as well. So for that, I'd like to open up discussion again. What kinds of uses do you see as being possible and appropriate for this particular area? I see a hand from Josie. Very quickly, somebody who, former member of the select board, was upstairs in the space above the, I think it's the Napa Auto Parts Store, the one near the movie theater. And it's fantastic space up there and could be really good rentals. And I think a lot of the buildings in downtown could become rental residential. Gary, I see your hand, Gary. You're on mute, Gary. I've always been intrigued by the possibility of clothing slash shoe stores in downtown Randolph. Now, I know we're up against West Lebanon, but personally, I'd go downtown to get some shoes and clothes. Okay, thank you. Any more comments while folks are thinking? I will remind you that if you're entering comments into the Google document, the comments for Central Block will be on the second page, I believe. It's sort of organized by page. Okay, I see Jamaica. Hi, I just wanted to go off of what my mom, Josie, was saying, but so first I want to say that affordable rentals and nice quality rentals could be paramounts. But another thing to think about is the building with Napa is could be a boutique hotel and bring tourism to downtown. I've been studying small towns and how they have regenerated themselves or sort of come back from the brink of ghost towns for the last couple of years. And I have found some really amazing tiny little boutique hotels that have revitalized some really tiny towns, a lot smaller than Randolph. So not necessarily there, but in one of the older buildings downtown, it's, I've seen boutique hotels with just a couple of rooms that have really made a difference in some of the towns. So it's just something to keep on the back burner if any of these properties end up being potential for tourism, that would be a good way to bring more businesses downtown. Thank you. I see a hand from Kate, Brenda. This is the last thing I'm gonna say, I promise. So one of the things I just want to say two things, I definitely agree about housing. We really, really, really need housing. I have lots of friends that want to move to the area, especially out of like Brooklyn, but can't find housing. And the other thing is that when we asked all the teenagers and getting ready to graduate kids at Randolph, we asked them, what would you need in order to stay and live here? And many, many, many, the majority said an outdoors and fishing shop. So it was someplace that caters to outdoor recreation, but on like a level of stuff. So I was throwing that out there and now I'm going to be quiet. Great, thank you. Thank you. Gary. On the subject of a boutique hotel, as we all know, there's a railroad that goes right through downtown. And I would think there'd be some passengers who would enjoy being able to just spend the night there. And that would be an asset towards, you know, having more restaurants, which it was stated that we need. Thanks. If I can jump in, just going on what Gary said, don't forget about Amtrak in the train that comes right directly to Randolph. And I think that goes directly to New York City. And if we could promote that and, you know, spiffy up downtown area a little bit, it really could be a real attraction. And especially get right down into a small town with all the outdoor recreation that are available. Yeah, I think we should promote, that's something that could be promoted for sure. So yeah, that goes, but I think that's a great idea. I love that boutique hotel idea, even if it's a relatively small unit, you could probably keep it full most of the time. So that sounds like a real opportunity as well. And that's what we want to do is attract the business to downtown first, I think. So at this point, I think maybe I'd like to move on to the North Block unless you see additional hands coming. I do, but we do have, we do need to get the branch for it at the end. And so how are you feeling for time? Yeah, so let's move along. And again, please enter your comments into the Google document type, type directly in there. We definitely want to hear what you have to say. Thank you. So now we're gonna move on to the North Block, which is also zoned commercial business districts. So again, that sort of high density friendly zoning that we've already talked about for the Central Block. At the 2013 downtown meeting it was mentioned, there was some talk of activating pleasant streets along here as sort of a second main street. And the idea was to have perhaps back entrances to the stores that are fronting on main street. There was also talk of landscaping and murals, better pedestrian amenities, trail connectivity. And there was also discussion of potentially putting in a new food store in the pleasant street area. So with that said, and looking at the surrounding context for these two parcels that are highlighted in red here, what are some uses that you would like to see come into that area? Let's see Josie's hand. Josie. A few years back there in the red square between the gear house and Randolph house, there was extensive talk about a downtown park there and Vermont Tech students submitted models that I think were on display at the library. Anyway, a lot of really creative ideas. The thing about that is that it's a, you can almost fall into it. It's a wonderful downhill. And so it's very intriguing in that way. And as opposed to what could be a good idea having open space out Salisbury street, this is really in the visible downtown and would be a major asset in that way. It's the most viable spot for an interesting park currently potentially available. I think there's a old house or two that's been condemned on that property. Thank you, Josie. Other thoughts and comments? Zack. Hi, thank you. I too need to jump in just a second from bedtime here with a little guy, but I just wanted to add in a couple of things back when there was a lot of talk about recreation. I just wanted to let folks know that the SE Group did a community impact study on the tail end of the VOREC grant that the town won back in 2019. And we put a trail counter at the Ellis Town Forest Trailhead and we put it in for this past summer from June, July, August, and I think into the beginning of September and the trail use numbers there. And I don't have the report right in front of me, but it was over 12,000 trail users over the summer that use the Ellis Town Forest Trailhead. So that kind of gives you a snapshot of users. That's both hikers, that's everybody, trail runners, mountain bikers, hikers, and all of that. So I think you can get a good sense from that right there that there's a very strong growth rate even from just a few years ago when there was no trails at all in the Ellis Town Forest and that's just one teeny little section of the larger Randolph area trail network. The gear house there, that planned and property, we did have some larger plans for outback of that building pre-COVID. COVID kind of put the clamps on some of our other longer range plans with kind of entertainment ideas and food truck ideas in the back of the gear house. But I will let, I don't know if Josh Jerome, if Josh feels like the town just applied for another vorac grant and I won't let the cat out of the bag, I'll let him kind of speak to that if he sees fit. But the idea of what's in that vorac grant kind of falls a little bit in line with what's been discussed here tonight, some exciting ideas around housing and recreation and combining those. So I'll defer to Josh on that. I wanna say something, but I don't think I should. So, but yeah, all great ideas. The buildings next door, I think would be a great place to have a boutique hotel to tear down those buildings and rebuild those, it's a great visible spot on Main Street and I will probably support that. So thank you guys for- Thank you. John, you have your hand raised, John Coffey. Yep. I'm glad Josie brought up the park idea because I think there were some really creative designs that would definitely kind of enhance the downtown. Kind of alternatively, that seems like a spot where you could have some two to three-story buildings that were, or maybe a single building that had some kind of office, small business or a retail on the ground floor and then some apartments above it. Because again, right in the downtown. But I probably, given those two things, I feel like some more green space in downtown would be good. Any other hands that you see? No, I'm not, I see Gary again and we're getting down to about the last half hour so we'll probably need to branch with soon. So Gary, do you have a short one? Gary, you're muted, sorry. This is relative to that comment on the need for green space. Whatever happened to that property on Pleasant Street, just on the corner behind it is Catamount Solar. What's the status of that? I don't know. Do we have an answer that we can give Gary very, very briefly on that or is it something we can follow up on, Josh, maybe? I guess I don't know what personally you're talking about, Gary. This is the pocket park on the corner. Julie may be able to help us, she's on the line. Right, I think that project has not gone forward or has not had any momentum for a few years now. So I think it's not really a thing. I think that was a project that back when it was being proposed had a lot of public support but the town didn't really follow up on it sufficiently. Yeah, this is, I don't know this for a fact but I had heard that there was kind of because the parcel is owned by, I believe it's owned by the Catamount Solar whoever owns that property and that they couldn't work out kind of an agreement about liability if it was publicly used or something like that. Right, the Catamount Solar was willing to get something worked out. Yeah, they were basically willing to give the property to the town with my understanding but there was some legal issue. All right, well, we're gonna take note of that. And again, as Sarah said, there's that Google link in the chat, so if you're a quiet person or something's just, you know, we move past you and you wanna keep stuff, put stuff in there and we'll grab it and we'll be looking at that later. So are we going now over to Branchwood? So before we do that, I did wanna get feedback on one piece. So as part of this area-wide study, we're going to be with VHB's very kind assistance. There's going to be conceptual designs developed for two specific sites, two specific parcels. And so we would like your feedback on which of the blocks that we've discussed so far, the Western and Northern, the Central would be good to pick a catalyst site out from. So what I'm gonna do here is I'm going to put up a poll and I'm gonna ask everybody to go ahead and please respond. It just tell me whether you think, you know, a catalyst site should get back from the West block, the Central block, the North block, based on your own personal interest, what you've heard this evening, what you think the most potential is for coming up with an interesting design. And let's see, we have 33 people here, so something like 30 seconds. 19 people so far. Okay, hurry up and vote. We're gonna leave it open for another 30 seconds and then we're gonna go ahead and close it. We are at 20 respondents so far. So the, or 21, thank you for the person who just jumped in. So I am gonna go ahead and close this poll right now and right now it's looking like the Central block came in with the most number of votes. Can everybody see the results from the poll there? Great, it's nodding heads, fantastic. So it looks like Central block is of greatest interest to folks, so that's where we'll go ahead and pick like how to say it from. If you have ideas for which parcel in particular would be good from the ones that we've highlighted. Here I'm gonna stop sharing this and I'm going to actually just jump back to Central block. If you have an idea of which of these particular parcels would be good for us to do some conceptual designs around that needs a rough site map and some renderings of streetscapes, that please do let us know, drop it into the Google document there under the Central block section. Let us know which site you'd like to see worked on. But from there, I'm gonna ask us to transition our thinking to the East block, which is the Branchwood site. And you can see it here. I've included, you can see the Central block sort of peeking in in your lower left-hand corner here of the map, but the property that we're focusing on right now is just the Branchwood site, which straddles both sides of Pearl Street and is currently vacant in its entirety with the exception of the one smokestack. So I wanted to start off by asking for input on what uses would be desirable, appropriate, successful for the Branchwood site. And I do see a hand from Heidi. Apologies if I said anything incorrectly. It's Heidi. It's on you. Thank you, Heidi. Thank you. My name is Heidi and I am the Recreation Director for the town. And so I'm gonna advocate for our youth and our seniors as well as for our community. You know, for through the Rec department, we have over 800 users that use our facilities for youth sports, camps, pool, ice rink as well as our special events that we have in town that we have created the last four years. And the biggest takeaway from our youth as Kate talked about a little bit is there is no place for our youth, our middle school youth and our older youth. Big advocate for biking and mountain biking, but that is also a high end sport. The youth that I work with over 200, 300 kids can have four bikes. And then when they wanna bike at camp, the number one thing they wanna bike is in a skate park. That is a huge need in our community central Vermont. It's a big thing for our youth. And we can't forget about them. And I feel like we're constantly forgetting about them and putting them to the side somewhere that we can't see. In my experience for 20 years in recreation, when you put something in the middle of town like a skate park or a park for older kids, senior activity that we have a walk space, it's get used because you got a large community watching over our youth as well as our seniors. We also don't have a town green either for our events. We have some of the largest Halloween events, winter events that we created for the July are very popular here in Randolph that bring lots of people to town. And we have to close down some streets and all that stuff that cause traffic jams and all that good stuff. If we have a community space that we could include food trucks, a green that we can have large events for our community, that's an ideal spot for that as well. And our seniors, we have our Randolph house, we have the red lions, we also have the Oslin house and they don't have a space to walk around our downtown. For their health and for their mental health, there also can be a nice walk path around the parcel. And when you engage your seniors as well with youth together, it brings the community together. It's, you have countless of data proving that, that's what a community needs. So I'm always, and then a dog park. So in the last four years that I've been director, these are some of the highest needs that have come to our committee meetings is a dog park, skate parks, another playground. The current playground that is located at the rec area is for zero to five year olds. So an older kid above five or six year olds, they get bored because it's very catered to zero to five. And a community space event for our community that together. So those are the top things that we've been constantly bombarded with, and that is the ideal spot that we have been talking about for four years that would really bring our community together. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments about the branch with site potential uses for the branch. Reuses for the branch. And I'm seeing comments in the chat too, and we're capturing that, of course. So especially anybody who hasn't spoken already or interested in getting your comments. Pat, I see Pat. I'd like to ask Doug Kennedy or maybe somebody else on Branchwood, what are the obstacles to housing with the railroad right nearby in terms of noise and so forth? I heard a little bit of earlier talk about that, but not really explained. So I can say a few words about that. The restriction really comes if there's a desired of HUD funding for the project. So it's certainly possible that a reuse could be accomplished without using HUD funding. And therefore the regulatory constraints around noise wouldn't be as big of an issue. I think that the community should evaluate whether the noise levels, even outside of the regulatory context, if you feel comfortable with the noise levels in proximity to the railroad, I know that some folks, Josh was telling you that some folks live next to the railroad now. And so maybe getting a sense from the communities to how intense those noise levels really are, if that would work for the reuses that are being contemplated in that particular area. Just to add to that, the limitations because of noise and Sarah's conversation was specifically oriented toward projects that receive federal funding. In other words, if a private developer came in and did this finance something privately, there would be no limitation because of noise other than that developer would wanna consider what impact the noise would have on what he or she was trying to do. Would the noise be so much that it would be an unpleasant place to live? That's a good question. But that the limitation because of the noise is only on things that are federally financed. It's not on privately financed projects. So it's different ways of looking at that. So just to follow up, if that was being used for recreation, like which has been talked about, would that be hard to find funding because of the probably use federal funds? So again, it would rely on whether or not we're talking about HUD funding. It's possible that other federal agencies might not have the same restrictions. Let me chime in again. I actually live on Pearl Street. I live right next to the train tracks. The highest trains are coming in the middle of the night. At 11 o'clock, two or three in the morning and your house shakes a lot. I'm not gonna lie. Luckily I'm a city girl, so it doesn't really bother me but it doesn't come in during the day. So the trains come at seven in the morning, 11 in the morning and then it comes at seven o'clock at night and several come throughout the middle of the night. No, a couple of times a week. So my neighbors can testify to that as well but most of the activity is because... No, Heidi, so sorry. I think you got muted. No. Can you hear me? The last thing I said was the highest activity is from about 11 to about seven o'clock in the morning. Okay, thank you. I do wanna call in Mark Gillies. I'll stand up for a little bit. Yeah, I'm just thinking that an overlapping use for this, if it is set up as a kind of a park is of course the farmer's market which really needs a place to settle and could be done with the addition of an outdoor shelter so that we'll have spaces for people to meet outdoors that have some shelter. And, you know, later on when COVID is over, if it is ever over, that space would be useful for people having pigments and that sort of stuff. Thank you, Mark. So because we are getting close to the end of our time here I do wanna remind folks, please drop your comments into the east block section of the Google document. I would like to get your thoughts and feedback on how the site might be laid out. I'm hearing a lot about sort of open air uses of the site. So, you know, as you're thinking about design of the site where do you anticipate that people are going, that like the most activity is going to be concentrated? Where are most people gonna be gathering? Is it gonna be closer to the main, the sort of the Pleasant Street side of the parcel would be elsewhere? Where are you envisioning sort of concentrations of people and then also structures if you're envisioning structures? How are people gonna be moving through the space? We'd love to get your thoughts on that. I see Jamaica. So I'm looking at this, I have two comments but one is that SAP is right there and I'm wondering if it would be possible to have like a walkway through the woods up to there because that's also where the fiber, yeah, the fiber arts, I can't remember. Yeah, that whole complex is up there. So having a walkway through the woods might be a really nice thing but also public bathrooms to facilitate, you know, all of the outdoor activities that we're talking about and especially, you know, just so that people can stay and enjoy themselves longer and not have to find a place in town to use their bathroom but just to be able to really settle in for a good day in the park. Patrick French, your hand is up. Are you still interested in making a comment or was that from earlier? I already made my question. Thank you. Thank you. I'll lower your hand. So Heidi, do you have another comment? Yes, I envisioned to keep that smoke shack alive. It's kind of a memorial to our town. So I do envision a nice, you know, a park space kind of around that area to, you know, to highlight the smoke shack and one side to have, you know, if there is housing that's good, but also a dog park and then the other side, the escape park towards Pleasant. You know, there's enough for parking as well that we do need in downtown, you know, as well as some space there near the park for, you know, food trucks, you know, a nice little gathering there. A lot of communities have those walking paths that go completely around. And you can also have some working workout stations and all that for, you know, keeping the seniors and other people, you know, healthy. And I like, again, a dog park, that street, I get, we get, I don't know, 50 people walking by with their dogs on a daily basis. So it's a very popular, you know, route around our downtown there. So I do see that that is a big need there. So, and, you know, parking. So thank you. That chimney could provide the best barbecue in the state. That is true. It's a great, great thing. A question for Josh maybe, this is Julie. What will happen to the property on which the Pearl Street well is located when that's closed down? I mean, I think the town will retain ownership of that in case that well needs to be used again. I see Larry has his hand up. He hasn't spoken yet either. Yeah, I just thought I'd respond to that question from Julia that the Pearl Street well, the plan for the Pearl Street well right now is that once the new wells are online, the Pearl Street well would be entirely or mostly taken offline. And if it is taken entirely offline, it'll be still serviceable that it'll be used if we need to do work on the other wells or if there's some sort of emergency where we need additional water, but we will retain access to that site for the foreseeable future. Okay, thanks. So it would still be kind of a restricted area around it as well. I would assume so, yeah. Yeah, great, thank you. For other comments on site layout for the future branch web redevelopment, whatever you envision that to be. Any comments about what you would like the streetscape to look like? So if, for example, there were pedestrian sidewalks sort of running along Pearl, what would you like that, what would you like a walker to be able to see as they're making their way west or east? Ramsey? I know there was lots of controversy about it. Well, maybe not a lot of controversy. I think a lot of people liked it too, but the redesign of Merchant's Row, I think made such a huge difference already in the downtown. And I think continuing on with that kind of idea with the rain, what are they called? When you do the flower things to mitigate the rain, wastewater, I can't think of what it's called, rain garden or something. You know, that kind of idea, it just made so much of a, I guess we're still yet to see how we deal with it with the snow, which was a lot of people's complaints with flowers going through there. But I really think it's made a huge difference on that little corner. And I'd love to see more of that around town and probably in the branchwood area of that were to become a park or whatever it was to become. I think more of that, I totally agree with everything John's saying about making the town more walkable. We have a lot of elderly people in Randolph and they need to have somewhere to go. They need to have something to do. You know, lots of places people go walk around malls or wherever when they want to walk. And there's nothing, there's no place to do that here safely for elderly people. So having nice sidewalks and all of that, I think would be a great thing to do. Transition, let's spend one more minute on this transition to closing up. There's lots of comments in the Google doc. Thank you everyone, keep adding them. This Google document will be available through the rest of the evening. So if something strikes you after the meeting, let's go ahead and add your thoughts. I'm not seeing any more hands. Kevin, are you? I'm not. So we could do the kind of what's going on next part of life. Sounds good. So Kevin, do you want to take it away? Yeah, so just to give you an idea of what we're gonna do with all this stuff, this is not the end of things. So VHB is gonna go off and they're gonna work on some conceptual plans for the branchwood site and for the site over there in that central area now. And we're gonna have a second public meeting where we're gonna show you all those things. We're not gonna have a third public meeting afterwards, but we are gonna have a second public meeting, get some feedback on that and we'll produce, we'll get the final report from Kennedy there and that'll come into this. And then we'll also get a final kind of report that's the synopsis of the overall environmental constraints as well that the folks from VHB talked about there. That's the immediate next part of what's gonna go on here. And I think Josh is gonna have a little bit of closing words to take us out. But thank you all for coming tonight. Yeah, thanks, Kevin. And I think, yeah, just to sort of close out, this has been really important for participants to give us feedback on these really critical sites around the downtown. And I think we really look forward to compiling this and seeing what the final product is going to be, which will help us inform actions that we can take moving forward over the next several years. So I just wanna say thank you for everybody who has participated I know a lot of you and you're all strong community supporters. So this has been great. Thank you. I think we have a few minutes before we reach, which was our stop time. Are there any final questions? I'd just like to say one more thing. This is Ramzi. I saw a comment on the Google doc about no more low income housing. And I just wanted to say, so my job and most of you probably who know me know that what my job is, but it's helping people find housing, usually people in crisis looking for low income housing. One of the things I just wanted to state was this year, I have a lot of people that don't technically usually qualify for my services, giving us a call coming through our door. And there is definitely a need for more of every kind of housing in Randolph. I've had so many people who have jobs at good jobs around town or in the area who are looking for housing and can't find housing. A number of people who work at GW have called me, they're working at GW and sleeping in their vehicle because there's no housing here for them. And they have really good jobs. If there's more low income housing, there's more, you know, one thing about people who live in low income housing, they spend every dime they make pretty much locally on all the things they need. They're not the people who are saving all of their money and spending it on giant things like fancy cars and things they are spending their money locally. There's a lot of need for housing of every kind. And when there's also more market rent housing, then that opens up something that, I think there's a misconception of what, who lives in low income housing. So I just have to make that statement. Thank you. Thank you. Just to say that I appreciate Ranzi's comments that all types of housing are needed. We've talked about it for several years, but I think the need is even more than it has been. Yeah, and just to follow up on that, I really enjoyed Doug Kennedy's presentation. That was a real eye-opener, but something that really stuck out is there's a severe housing shortage in town, but there's also a real surplus of bedrooms. And I think that graph he showed where there's many single or two people living in houses that have many extra rooms or designed much bigger. And I've been checking out co-housing, which is something that's really taking off. I mean, we're not the only community with this problem, of course. This is a problem in a lot of areas, but co-housing is an area where the housing is shared oftentimes with people that work in the same place. And I've heard what Ranzi just brought up about local companies that want to hire people, but there's just no place for them to live. And I think there's some real opportunity to fill up the bedrooms that we have. And a lot of those are right in the downtown area as well. So focus on the resources that are there and figure out the best ways to do that, whether that's converting to apartments or sharing in a co-housing, maybe intergenerational type environment. So there's some real opportunity for that, I think, as well. Well, thank you, Jeffrey. There is an entirely separate project, which hopefully we're finding out about soon that Randolph is involved with several other towns to look at their zoning for exactly those type of things for innovative ways to be doing housing that fits in the community spaces that are out there. And so look forward to notices on that properly. There'll be another public meeting on that side of life if we get the money in February or so. So are we all set here, Sarah? We are now at 8.30. Thank you all again for taking time out of your busy schedules and evenings to spend time with us and think collectively. Your input has been so important and valuable. And we're definitely looking forward to the products that come out of this area-wide plan and all the many community discussions and work that will come afterwards. So thank you. Hey, great. Have a good evening, everyone. Take care. Thank you. Thank you.