 Welcome to the Monday August 19th meeting of the Montpelier Design Review Committee. I will let staff and members introduce themselves. Hannah Smith. Liz Bridget. Meredith Crandall. Staff. Stephen Everett. Eric Gilbertson. Sir. Benjamin Jean. We are an advisory committee to the Development Review Board. We will listen to the applications and move them forward. Does anybody have anything to offer ahead of time? Otherwise, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor of the agenda, raise your hand. We'll go forward to the first application for 535 Stonecutters Way. Reverse station properties. You want to come up and have a seat? Sure. And you represent Reverse Station or Sun Commons? Sun Commons. And give us your names. Make sure you talk into the microphone. It doesn't pick up very well otherwise. Sean Fitch. Montpelier resident and employee of Sun Commons. I'm a commercial project engineer for all the commercial work that they do. I'm designing commercial systems for them. Fitch. Yep. FITCH. Yep. I've been designing commercial solar arrays for them for about 5 years and designed residential systems for them previous to that. My name is Jesse Clink and I work at Sun Commons as well as the commercial project assistant. And spelled your last name. K-L-I-N-C-K. And describe your installation, reposed installation for the rooftop at Reverse Station. Sure. It's a 64 kilowatt DC, 43.2 kilowatt AC solar portable tech system. It'll be connected directly to the grid. That's about it. 162 modules on the roof. There's not much else to see beyond what you see in sort of our first cover image. It's just modules on the roof. And then all of the service equipment will be down in the service enclosure that's existing on the side of the building where there are other meters and entrance section are. Would you do this one? Yes. Yep. Sign that as well. For this one? Nope. The panels flat on the roof flush to the roof? Yeah. They're flush to the roof. They sit about 5 inches above the roof surface or something like that. So they look pretty well blended into the roof. They'll look about like the skylights do that are on that roof now. Those pop sit up a little bit above the roof surface. Are they different colors in the roof? Yeah. So the roof is a corrugated steel that's a gray in color and those modules will have the typical solar panel look which is a sort of deep blueish color. Yeah. Yep. So this is on rails? Or is it clipped together? Does it have a stainless steel roof? It's not. It's a sinusoidal wave corrugated steel roof. And so, yeah, there are some attachment points that will attach into that roofing. And then we put horizontal rails that sit on top of those attachments. And then the modules sit on top of the rail and are clamped onto the rail. And that's a permanent installation? Yeah, I guess you could say that. At any point in time if something needed to be serviced, you can pull the modules up. You know, bolt it in place so you can undo things. But yeah, we would consider that it would stay up there for the life expectancy of the panels. Quick question just for my own information. Where is the wiring? Where does that enter the building either on the outside or inside or through the roof or under the roof? In the case of this project, the wiring from the modules is routed and connected to one another underneath the modules. So within the array itself where there are panels on the roof, you don't see any wiring there. The modules are very close to one another, so you really, if you were sitting on top of a module, you could probably look in between and see a wire, but from any more than a few feet away you can't see. And then the wiring will exit the array through one conduit that drops over the roof edge and would be blended in and run down the side of the building down to where the service equipment is on what would be the north side of the building. So they have an existing service fence or area that's over here where their meters and main entrance section are and main disconnect. That's where we'd put our equipment as well, and so we would run our single conduit down into that area to connect to our equipment. The conduit will come over the gable and wrap around the patient and down the side. That's the plan as of right now, yep. Although, yeah, exactly, yeah, that's a representation of it. Though, you know, something I'm thinking of right now actually is that is a large overhang right there and we easily penetrate to so that we're not wrapping that. Yeah. Because that again, that's like a, you want to see the underside of the roofing. Oh, you can, yeah. Yeah, it's a good overhang there, yeah. And now that I think about it, it'd be pretty easy for us to come down through that. I imagine our electricians, when they see it, would probably prefer to do it that way, so. Yeah, just come straight down. Yeah, yeah. So, snow loads back up onto the skylight, those considerations. Yeah, we deal with that a lot. And so, as you can see, there are some cutouts below those skylights. We try to maintain some space around the skylights, and we have enough experience with roofs like this and, you know, the general snow loads that we get in the area. And that's usually enough that the snow will kind of, as you get it, it'll sit for a little while, and then it tends to kind of slough down into those cutouts that we left there. And, thus far, we haven't had any issues with the skylight leaves. What's the pitch on that roof? It's about 18 degrees, as soon as out of 412. Probably be visible from across the river. It will be. It will be. Yeah, absolutely. I imagine it's similar to what this is. I guess that probably is visible too. Yeah, though, that's a little bit of a steeper pitch roof. Yeah. So, it's, you know, when you're looking, I drove by today to take a look at it. And, of course, stone cutters, it's a little higher than Caledonia, is certainly in relation to where you are when you're driving by on River Street. And then, of course, the pitch of the roof is a little less too. So, the actual, you know, view of what you'd see from modules will sort of be flattened a bit more than it is at Caledonia. But you certainly can still see them. What was the pitch on Caledonia's? Again, just to... Ooh, that's a good question. I'm not sure I remember. That might have been, like, a 612. That's sort of... Yeah, as you can see. There. There. There. All the power that that building is made out of. That's a different angle. Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure how that was sold. I designed it. I don't know what their real usage there was. It'll tell you. So, it's covering the tenants, the stone environmental. So, stone is the main off-tape. Yeah. And it's at least covering their usage. I don't know if it's covering others. They're the main tenant. They're the ones who want to install it. So, if there were excess credits, I assume they'll, you know, allow those to be absorbed by another meter or another account someplace. If they have an O&M contract with us, then we would. I think we are monitoring, right? Will they be getting an O&M? Yeah. So, yeah, that would be us. Yeah. So, we monitor the system for performance. That's done just about daily by somebody who follows up on all of the systems that we put in. They check for performance. Both commercial and residential, you follow up on? Well, commercial, we certainly monitor the system's residential. We don't, because it's thousands of systems. And the homeowners are the ones who tend to. They keep track of that stuff a little more closely. They want to know what their production's doing. So, you know, there's an app that all of our customers get to use that's associated with the inverter manufacturer that was on their project. They all have great monitoring platforms. So, yeah, the residential customers are usually just checking their own monitoring. They let us know if anything's going wrong. Commercial customers are less vigilant, because they're usually business owners, and they got other things on their mind. So, most of the time, we see an issue if there is an issue before they do. But, yeah, it would be us. We do all that sort of maintenance. The panel needs to be replaced. That's rare. We don't see that a lot, but optimizers go out sometimes. There's not a whole lot else that goes wrong. Not a lot of moving parts. You don't really see many issues. Are you going to have to install any safety equipment to accommodate? The install? We won't have to. There happens to be D-rings already up on the ridge of that roof, so we didn't eval of the roof surface and sent a couple guys up there to get some measurements and check stuff out. And there's already some D-rings that are mounted up on that ridge line. So that's what we would... No, no. During installation, that's what we would do is just tie off here. So, ropes. So, safety ropes. Anybody have any other questions, as far as the design review aspects of the application? Industrial use of an industrial building. Yes. As far as I'm concerned. I'll read through there's a section of criteria because it is in the district. Evaluation criteria. Preservation of reconstruction of the appropriate historic style of the proposed projects in the historic district involves an historic structure. I wouldn't call it preservation. So I would just say not applicable here. Harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district. Acceptable. Compatibility of proposed exterior materials with other properties in the district. Acceptable. Compatibility of proposed landscaping. Non-proposed in this application. Prevention of the use of incompatible designs, buildings, color schemes, or exterior materials. Acceptable. Location and appearance of all utilities. Acceptable. Recognition of and respect for view quarters and significant vistas including gateway views of the city and state house. Acceptable. All in favor of the application as proposed. Raise your hand. And if you can sign that on the lower left right above my name. Can you just start working? What do we say? September 3rd. We're going to try to be about two weeks worth of construction. Keep things moving. Get those guys done before the roof starts to frost over. Yeah. It gets slick. I'm sure it'll come sooner than we want it to. And this will move forward to administrative. Administrative. Administrative approval. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And so what after that it goes to administrative approval? Yeah. So it'll go back down to the planning office and it's in Audra's queue to just issue the permit. Okay. But there's no, I don't think we had any other issues with this. This was just here because of design review. It's not a fixing state plan or anything like that. Great. All right. Thank you. So give it a couple of days. If you haven't heard anything in a couple of days, give us a call. Okay. We'll do. Yeah. If anybody thinks of any other questions, you can always call them and ask. We're happy to chat. You work out of the Waterbury location? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's us. Thank you. Thank you. The next application is for Bailey Avenue, Vermont State Employees Credit Union. Come forward and tell us about your rain garden. And you are from the Conservation Commission? I'm not. My name is Sarah Hoffmeyer, local landscape designer. I am on the tree board. Spell your last name for the records. I took my husband's last name. That was a mistake. My name is Mitchell. I got to go into it. It's Hoffmeyer H-O-F-F-M-E-I-E-R. Chairman. I brought, I only brought one copy. I should have brought more. This was the final presentation that we gave to the Vermont Credit Union. So we have the small. We have the small one. Yeah. Everything came in. So we have the small version in the packet. So everybody has it. Okay. Lovely. We're referencing anything. This is a little larger so we can hold it up. Awesome. This is a little backwards. I apologize. The timing was, we partnered with VYCC on this project. And they had one window to help us. And it was August 12th to 16th. So we've already started construction. And here's a picture of the construction that I'd bring it along just to show. Hardworking group of kids. Crew members. Sorry. I'm not supposed to call them kids. But a great group. And the crew leaders, Justin Geibel and Adam was the on-site crew leader we're fabulous to work with. But we did have to take advantage of using them that week. So we did already start. But it's not finished just yet. The planting is done. But we're still constructing the forebay and the filter strip, which are really important components of the rain garden. So that'll happen this week. It's a big haul. Yeah. I think we did. One of the drawbacks. We'll just be very frank about it. I really love VYCC. But one of the drawbacks was they didn't quite finish in time. And so we didn't crush their morale. My husband would go in at night. He might have seen him. Yeah. And he came with his machine. And dug out a little more. Poor guy. Neither party was happy about that. But don't tell VYCC. I don't think they actually knew. But yeah, it was a huge haul. We removed 35 yards of material. Wow. And then brought in with Vermont Compost Company about 28 yards of the planting medium. Because the main purpose is to filter in slow water. And then the plants actually, and just nerd out for one second, just in case you haven't heard of this. The plants do something called phytoremediation. Some of the plants. And that's where the storm water is coming from the parking lot. And it can pick up oil and gasoline from the cars, the breakdown of asphalt tires. There are a few plants in this design that are able to suck up those hydrocarbons, pollutants, and break them down in the tissue of the plant. It's such a cool thing. Phytoremediation, psyched about it. And we'll go any further. If you want to know more, I will nerd out with you more. But anyway, the main purpose of the rain garden, so is to slow, filter, but also clean the water. And so far, it's so far so good. We haven't had anything that was a surprise. We didn't find any varied propane tanks or anything crazy when we dug our hole. No dinosaurs. It was. The top 18 inches were basic construction fill. Pretty gravelly. And then we hit our clay. And just so you know, you cannot construct a rain garden on clay alone. But we lucked out in having that 18 inches of construction fill because we have horizontal infiltration. So if it was all clay, it would have been a swimming pool. That's not a rain garden. But it's OK to have the bottom be impermeable, essentially. Yeah. What are your top three plants for breaking down? I'll tell you, yes. So the big one is Indian grass. Super hard to find. I had to go down to Massachusetts to get it. It looks like a weed, but it is a powerhouse of a plant. It's usually, you find them mainly in prairie areas. But it's actually native to Vermont, more southern Vermont, not really Montpelier. Let's see. Goldenrod, oddly enough, is a great plant. A lot of people look at it as a weed. Something to note, too, about weeds, you see them growing in places where other plants can't grow because they can deal with really tough situations and pollutants. So a lot of what we call weeds are really good plants that can break down. And if they're not breaking it down, they're at least trapping it. Something like sunflower. It's a bio accumulator where it traps the pollutants, so you have to harvest it at the end of the year. Or as it dies, it'll just put it right back into the soil again. There are a couple of cat tails. That's another example of that. But no matter what, it's slowing it and trapping it, so it's not going in the water. So it's still very useful. A little blue stem is in there. That's another one. I could go on. But then we have a lot of just great natives for pollinators. So we put in butterfly weed, which is an orange blooming, and that's the main host for monarch butterflies, the caterpillar. There's a bunch of others that we put in for wildlife. There was one non-native that I put in that's from Europe. It's one of my favorites, but it's a sage. But it re-blooms continuously throughout the year, so I had to put it. It's a beautiful, brilliant purple. And it's well-behaved. It does not move. It really isn't a spreader. So I had to put it in throughout the year. Or throughout the growing season. That's my year. Yeah, I'm asleep in the winter. How much of the water off the fracking line that you actually captured in my head looks like you're adding this curving? Yes. Yeah, Amy McCrellis from Stone Environmental did the major calculations for it. There are four or five actually storm drains on site that capture different areas throughout the property. This one, and I don't know the volume of water that it can take, but she calculated it so that it had to be 420 square feet. The reason why we called curbing in was a lot of water comes out of that last drive-through closest to the river, and it was going right into the storm drain. So we had to direct it into our forebay to get it so we can clean it up and slow it down before hopefully we never even have to use the storm drain. That's like the overflow, but the goal is everything is dealt with in the rain garden. Unfortunately, it's in the flood plain so that eventually in 100 years we'll have maybe not 100 people last month. Five. Yeah, five. Two. I just want the place to be established by the time we get our flood. But that's the only downside to the rain garden is that when it floods, we'll have to do some major reconstruction. Yeah, four. I think there's five. Five. It's only doing the work of about one-fifth. Right. So there's an opportunity for them to put in four more rain gardens, or it could be something else. It could be a bioswale or a retention pond. We would have to be site-specific. Yeah. I think that is the refludge. It's not really a refludge. No? It's just enough higher than it is. Yeah, I hope. I hope I want those plants to stay. The water got to the underside of the bridge in 93, or 92, when it was. Yeah, they closed that bridge. 3-1-1-92. They closed the bridge, and the water got to the bottom of the structure, but it didn't go over the bridge. And I'm not sure if it got up into the corner of that lot or not. I don't think it got into the corner of that lot. It was at Bayley and... Yeah. Paris. Bayley and State. Yeah, Bayley and State. They got it. This is quite a bit lower. Right. So that is lower. Right. Autocross in that area. I think that flooded. Yeah. I was living in the corner of Bayley and Baldwin, so... Oh, yeah. I don't know about the information that's signed, so it's... Is that here, or is that somebody else? Yeah, VSECU is leading the charge with the informational sign. They're hoping to put up something permanent, but it's still in the works. I haven't seen any... It'll need to come here before the sign goes up. Make sure they label the... Tell us a little bit about the plans. Yes. Yes, I will. Yeah. Yeah. This... And this, because this isn't... There isn't actually a structure really going on here. This probably wouldn't have come before Design Review, except that in Western Gateway, there's some sort of landscape-specific things that catch it. So, that's why the rain garden is a hole this year. Yeah. So, this is another fair question. Well, it is a fair question. Hit me with that. Due to our process, like... Yeah. What prevented you from being able to get this to us before? Was it a surprise that, when VYCC was available, or was it scheduled differently? No. I actually didn't know that it, for what you were saying, that it needed to come here, until a week and a half ago. Yeah, well, that's... Yeah. Audra... Neither Audra nor I caught it first, that... Because we were like, oh, it's not a structure. Right. It doesn't need anything. Yeah. And then it was like, oh, wait. Let's look a little more carefully at the Western Gateway District's specific guidelines. Yeah. And it's not actually, like, what you have in here for landscaping. In large part, it still seems to relate to when you're building a structure, but there's some language that's a little iffy. Mm-hmm. And so we figured better safe than sorry and bring it here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't seem like something we normally... Mm-hmm. And we did... I feel pretty confident about it because I did consult with so many experts in the field. So, Mark Companion from the Lake Champlain Basin Sea Grant. I worked with the UNH Stormwater Center to the Vermont specs for stormwater management are actually not quite right and they're being redone. And so I went with UNH. I went with the latest information. Amy has been fantastic. I've asked her a bunch of questions. So even if I didn't know them, I'm surrounded by people that do. So it was, yeah, a well thought-through process by a lot of other people that are good at what they do. Really just play a person. Any other comments, questions, suggestions? We'll run down through the criteria. Same criteria. Preservation or reconstruction of the appropriate historic style if the proposed projects in the historic district or involves an historic structure. I would say that the plantings are acceptable under that criteria. Harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district. Acceptable. Compatibility of proposed exterior materials with other properties in the district. Acceptable. Compatibility of proposed landscaping. Acceptable. Prevention of the use of incompatible designs. Billings, color schemes or exterior materials. Acceptable. Location and appearance of all utilities. No lighting or utilities involved, I assume. No. Okay, not applicable. Recognition of and respect for view quarters and significant vistas including gateway views of the city and state house. Acceptable. All in favor of the application as proposed. Raise your hand. Spirit of use is absolvable. But it would be easy to reverse. Yes. One dump truck flood. One flood. And again, if you would sign above my name and the lower left there. Do you have a pen? Good. We can add that, but I meant it's a separate sign application. I can just make a note. I can remind the SECO. I see. I just said that we'd make a notation that an information sign will be proposed and submitted for approval at a later date when final details are determined. Is that okay? Thank you. Sure. That way we can get written and verbal notice. Do you want to change the ratio of the sign? I would just do something that's a credit union. Okay. You know, signs are good. Yeah, it's out of my area of expertise. I didn't say everything. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck with your project. Thanks. And reviewing the minutes for the first meeting for July the 8th. Myself Eric Steff. We were here. Any questions, comments, suggestions on that one or do I hear a motion to approve? All in favor of approval of the July the 8th. That one is approved. And how about July the 22nd? Myself Seth Liz Ben. Any changes or notations on that one? Do I hear a motion to approve the July the 22nd? So moved. All in favor of the July 22nd. And the last one for August the 5th. Steve Hannah Benton. The 29th College Street on the second page just says an option would be to add a light at the door. It doesn't actually talk about the project. Yep, I didn't even, honestly, I didn't even look at these because I wasn't here. So I will fix. We gave them an option under the optional to add a, they hadn't proposed but we gave them the option. The application was for them. Yeah, there's nothing in here saying what the application was for. No, I see what you're, I see exactly what you're saying. Do you want me to bring it back or do you want me to just have a brief description in there? Just, your application was for the door. Yeah, oh I looked at what the, I know what this application is for because it's also having to go to DRB today. But I didn't prove these because I wasn't there. So while they were in, we just, if they had any intention of adding lighting for the door away in the back corner for the parking lot, we gave them the option. It said to add a light at the door, change the light at the other door, and then they also had an option on the back corner of the building near the parking area to put a motion to protect the light. I read the actual form that you filled out because it could be brass or black. Yes. And I had that in there so I, because I had to have a report on it for the DRB staff report. So I know what happened, I just didn't prove the minutes because. That's okay. I wasn't, I wasn't part of my routine because I wasn't there at the meeting. So with that notification. I'll fix that. Yep. Don't hear a motion to approve those minutes. Okay. All in favor. So that one is approved. Yes. With edits. Any other business or anything, anybody has to suggest or offer? With updates. With. Oh. No. I have, I have nothing on that. There's, we're supposed to be getting a decision from the court on all of the various motions, motions for summary judgment and to, to get rid of appellants. I think next month, I think it was supposed to be by the end of this August this month, but likely it wouldn't come out until at least September, just with the way the court has been a little slow on things. So hopefully we'll, hopefully by the second meeting of September we'll know something. What about the building that's going next to Shaw's? I don't think that they're going to decide on that until they know what's going on with the parking garage. Well, just because if, if the parking garage doesn't happen, then they might apply to do something else on that parcel. Yeah, they don't have to, they don't have to build the building that they got the permit for, if that's what you're talking about. Well, no, I just thought I didn't know anything about it. They're, they're trying to keep their options open, I think. That's my understanding. So. And technically who's doing that? I know that the trust backed out. Yeah, I don't even know, because I, I don't. What do I do? The, my. Last, last time that the trust backed out, I think it was Ribilini and I'm not sure who else had some options or a part of that, but I'm not sure who has the rights on the property at this point. Same design? Hi. I don't know. Last I heard was, was that, what was it Moat Family Trust or whatever it was called, it backed out. So, then you know more than I do. And unless it comes down to my office for a zoning permit or I hear rumors about that, I tend to stay out of that and leave that to Mike Miller, who lets me know if there's something that I need to know about. I don't even know who owns the property now. If they sold out their interest in the property or. It's too bad. This could have been. Yeah. You had to figure out how to get the trucks behind there for the designers, I guess, designed it to be. Attractive, but not necessarily they might have thought about involving a attractor-trailer driver in the design process. I'm so impressed with those guys who do over to the shots that pull in by. Oh, they swing around it. Back, get across. Quickly. Yes. Nobody has anything else to have a motion to adjourn. Why not? You're second. All in favor of adjournment, raise your hand. Meeting is adjourned.