 Good day and welcome. This is a very special edition of the Vermont Affordable Housing Show and we're going to feature today the Cambrian Rise Development in Burlington. With me, I have some very special guests to my immediate right is Amy Demetrowitz, who is the Director of Real Estate Development at the Champlain Housing Trust. Eric Farrell, President of Farrell Real Estate. Cindy Reed, who is the Director of Development for Cathedral Square Corporation. And Gil Livingston, President of the Vermont Land Trust, all of whom are partners in the Cambrian Rise Development in Burlington at the former Burlington College site on North Avenue. Before we get to our interview and to talking about Cambrian Rise, I just wanted to make a couple of quick announcements, since this is our Vermont Affordable Housing Show, we have some very special celebrations that are coming up in the housing world. The 30th anniversary of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is happening next Tuesday, September 19th at Shelburne Farms. I'm sure I'm going to see some of you folks there. And then also on the same day, earlier in the day, the Housing Trust of Rutland County, one of our premier members in Rutland County, is celebrating their 25th anniversary. Cindy in Cathedral Square is celebrating their 40th on September 21st at the Sheraton in Burlington. We'll be at that as well. And then finally, the Vermont Community Loan Fund, another member of our coalition is celebrating its 30th anniversary on October 12th also at Shelburne Farms. So I just wanted to get that out there for folks in the housing world. This is a couple of really important weeks of celebrations of major institutions that have promoted and funded affordable housing and built affordable housing in Vermont over the last 30 years. So with that lead-in and introduction, I was going to first turn to Eric, who is the, again, the president of Farrell Real Estate, which is the primary developer and owner of Cambrian Rise. On the former Burlington College site is, I believe, the single largest development in Burlington in many years, if perhaps ever, and has a major of both affordable housing component as well as it has a major public land dedication component as well. So Eric, if you could maybe give us an overview of what you have planned and then we'll go to our nonprofit friends to talk about their partnership with you. Okay, I'll start with a little bit of history. I'll try and condense four years into a couple of minutes. And technically, most of the land is owned by a partnership, BC Community Housing, which we formed four years ago. So Burlington College at the time reached out to send an RFP out looking for a co-developer of their site. They wanted to sell half the site off and keep the other half and expand their campus. Pretty aggressive plan on their part. We were selected after they interviewed five or six local developers. And almost from the beginning, their finances started to unravel and it became apparent that they were not going to be able to fulfill their half of the development deal. And so it culminated in us purchasing, we purchased 27 of their 34 acres, 28 of their 34 acres, which allowed them to pay significantly down on their debt. And then they were going to keep six acres and continue the college on a smaller parcel of land and we were going to develop the rest. So we purchased that land in 2015. Almost immediately we, Gil from my land trust reached out, asked us to engage with them and the city and Champlain Housing Trust in a conversation about what the appropriate level of development might be for that parcel before we deep-dived into design and permitting process. So we did that for quite a few months and that culminated in a development agreement that we executed in January of 2016. And the big pieces of that development agreement were that we would sell 12 acres of the land, all of the border on the south and the west and including Texaco Beach to the city, which means we had to forego the opportunity to build 24 single-family homes, which was part of our original plan. And the college was going to keep their six acres and then we would build multifamily on the remaining land. Other couple of pieces of that development agreement were that we would sell at a pretty deep discount land to Champlain Housing Trust for the development of both senior and family affordable housing and that the city would tweak the zoning to accommodate the development on the remaining land, although the zoning didn't increase the amount of development that could happen, it just consolidated it closer to North Avenue. So our final plan, we ended up with 739 units. Maybe if I could interrupt you for a second. I think we've got some visuals that might help our viewers understand what you're about to describe. Maybe we have the first slide if that could be projected while Eric is going through. Okay, so the first slide, the first slide shows the entire property and it shows proximity of the property to Texaco Beach, its relationship to the skate park. It's like a half a mile down to the skate park. A mile down to the Boathouse, it's just south of North Beach, adjacent to Lakeview Cemetery. Interestingly enough all the land around this property is owned by the city of Burlington and this happened to be Texaco Beach, happened to be the only stretch of beach that the city of Burlington didn't own from North Beach all the way to the waterfront. So this really completed a link for them. Another important piece I believe and Gil can speak to it more about the city being able to purchase this 12 acres was that it kept a wildlife corridor open north and south and east and west. So that was one of the benefits of selling the land to the city. So our final development plan on the next slide, the site plan, depicts about 14 buildings that encompasses 739 housing units, no single family lots. 240 of those units are condominiums for sale, 70 units of senior housing, 76 units of family housing and 350 or 353 units of multifamily rental housing. The first phase, the first building to open at Cambrian Rise was Liberty House, formerly the Orphanage, which was renovated over the last year. It opened on July 1, 65 units. How's the occupancy going on that? The building is about three quarters full after 60 days, so there's a lot of demand for this location, and of course it's a spectacular building if I do say so myself. I've seen it from the outside. Landscaping is beautiful. Some of the views must be just spectacular. You can see almost to Kansas from the veranda. So that's my short version of what we're doing at Cambrian Rise. Happy to answer questions. Great, great. Well, maybe we'll leave some questions for the end. Let's move on to Amy Dometrowitz from Champlain Housing Trust. Amy, you've been working in affordable housing for many, many years, and I know we have very low vacancy rate, especially for rental housing in Burlington and in the immediate area. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about what you see as the need and how your partnership, CHT's partnership with Eric and Cambrian Rise is going to help with that. I understand you're doing both rental and homeownership. Yes, we, as your viewers and you know, we do have a serious affordable housing crisis in the city and in the county, really. Just as an example, the Champlain Housing Trust were one of the largest landlords serving northwestern Vermont. We have 2,000 apartments in our portfolio, and we get about 120, 140 applications for housing every month. 120 to 140, and we may have 20 or so apartments that become available for rent in any given month. So there's just a really large unmet demand that we bring on maybe 30 to 40 new apartments every year. We just finished Bright Street co-op on Bright Street in Burlington. We have some new apartments in Heinsberg and in Shelburne and in Essex. We recently partnered with Eric Ferrell down on the avenue. Those apartment buildings, when they become ready for occupancy, they're immediately filled up. It's the same experience Eric is having, maybe even more intensely. Within a month, they're all filled up. So we just have an extreme demand, and so we're especially excited to be partnering with Eric and Cathedral Square again on a project similar to what we did down on the avenue. We are building a 76 unit apartment building, and if we can put the site plan up, on the site plan, the site plan. Yeah, we got it. They're perfect. It's building L. So building L on that site plan is 76 apartments. It's a mix of one, two, and even three bedroom apartments. We do have a demand for larger units. It will have a community room where people can gather with a small kitchen. There's some common decks on the west side so that people can have that beautiful view. We have under the building parking. We'll have a playground in the center courtyard. We have lots of bike storage. What we found down on the avenue is we have way more bikes than we have cars, and I expect that at this location it will be very similar. We'll have lots of bikes and lots of bike storage. Now Eric has a responsibility through his permit. The inclusionary zoning requirement requires him to provide 25% affordable units. Normally it's 15 in Burlington. How come it's 25 for the site? Yeah, good question. Waterfront zoning requires a higher percentage of affordable units just to make sure that our waterfront is accessible to everybody. So it's wonderful, and we're going to be able to meet that inclusionary zoning by getting an excellent discounted price from Eric for the parcel. But we will actually be able to exceed the inclusionary zoning requirements. The inclusionary zoning requirement requires that the apartments are rented to families that are affordable to families below 65% of median income. It kind of gets wonky there. That's $37,500, $37,000 annual income for a household of one, $53,000 for a household of four. So that's what the target is for inclusionary zoning. Are these going to be affordable for a year or two? These will be perpetually affordable, and our units will be even more affordable. 18% of the apartments, that's 14 apartments, will be specifically set aside for homeless families. We're working with the Burlington Housing Authority to provide support services for those families so that they can maintain their housing once they get in. And a third of all of the apartments will actually be affordable to, will be set at rents that are affordable to families below 50% of median income. And then we do have some that are on the higher end range. We'll have a range of incomes within this building, which will help to make the whole neighborhood a much more diverse, economically diverse neighborhood. And inclusive. And inclusive. We're going to be providing housing with Eric and with Cathedral Square. We'll be providing housing to a whole range of different types and incomes of folks. We have all of the funding committed that we need to be able to begin construction this spring. This is our next big project. 76 apartments that we can bring online all at once. Wow. And we have our funding that we need committed at this point. And you've got some homeownership units. Yes. And so we've also come to an agreement with Eric about condominiums. He's building a large number of homes for sale as condominiums. We have an agreement now for 30 of those homes to be affordable. And we're talking again, those are one and two bedroom apartments for, I mean condos for the most part. Our, our sales price will be 160, 170,000. Wow. And again, those will be perpetually affordable with our, our shared equity program of the land trust. We have 550 homes in our program that have that perpetual affordability through shared equity. And we will be doing that here as well. So we have an agreement for 30 now. And we expect there will be a second phase with another 30. So we'll have 60 total affordable homes for sale. Yeah. That price point is pretty hard to beat. And it really is a stunning location. Well, thank you. Thank you, Amy. Just as a side note in terms of the need for affordable housing in Chittenden County, I went back to the most recent state study that looked at how many units are needed, how many households are expected in Chittenden County. And the state study said that 2,375 new households were expected to be formed in Chittenden County by 2020. So, you know, this is absolutely, and some folks may doubt whether or not we need this many units, but the experts in the studies that the state of Vermont has done have quite clearly shown us that Chittenden County still, in spite of the boom that we have of building really, we need a lot more housing in Chittenden County to accommodate all that. And we especially have a need for senior housing. Cindy, maybe you could talk a little bit about what Cathedral Square is seeing and, you know, kind of how many units you have available every month. I know it's not many, and how Cathedral Square is going to help make more senior housing available here. Thank you, Erich. So, yeah, first I want to say that senior housing was not a permit requirement at Cambrian Rise, and we're really thrilled that Erich envisioned including senior housing in Cambrian Rise and that it's a lot of powerful partnerships happening here with the city and Vermont Land Trust and Erich and Champlain Housing Trust. So, Cathedral Square's building is building K on the site plan showed earlier right next to Champlain Housing Trust, right on North Avenue, right next to the bus stop, which is great because access to transportation is really critical for our community of seniors. We have, Cathedral Square has about 900 apartments in Northwest Vermont. We have over 800 people on our wait list, huge demand, and as we know, the senior population is growing rapidly. It's the fastest growing demographic. In fact, in the next 20 years, the number of adults aged 65 and older will double, and many people do not want institutional care. They want to live in the community. They want the support services they need. So, at Cambrian Rise, our building is called Juniper House, which we named after Juniper Island in the lake to go with the motif, and it will have 70 apartments, both one and two-bedroom. The rents will serve a variety of income. So, there's staggered rents similar to the CHT building. About half of our units will serve people below 50% of median income, which is about 28,000 annual income a year. And about 14 units we will prioritize for homeless and at risk of homeless seniors. So, we have a robust service program through SASH, which will help those folks achieve stability. What does that stand for? SASH is support and services at home. There's group piloted and is now statewide serving over 5,000 people around the state. It's a care coordination program to help people live at home independently with the care support they need. So, some people refer to the growing senior demographic as the silver tsunami, but we really reject that term because it's a negative connotation. And we're really about positive aging and about wellness and activity. So, this building... Appreciate that, part of that tsunami. Yeah, that's a really negative... And aging we embrace as a positive thing. Our seniors are wise people. They have wealth of experience. Retirees have a lot to give their communities. So, we try to channel that and nurture positive aging in our community. So, at Juniper House, our design includes a large community room with a kitchen, an exercise room for things like Tai Chi, chair yoga. Those programs are part of support and services at home and help promote balance and strength to help reduce falls, reduce hospitalizations and save on healthcare costs and just increase people's sense of well-being. We also have walking programs. So, Juniper House will have a lot of those wellness in the design. And we have a wellness nurse on staff and a wellness nurse office with a conference room for private consultations. We have garden space outside. We're right next to the community gardens as well with the 12 acres of preserved land, which is a huge benefit to this whole community. And then there's a lot of connection built in between the Cathedral Square Building and Champlain Housing Trust and the rest of Cambrian Rise with a sitting area and another playground. Opportunities for our seniors to hang out with the younger people in the community. It's very pedestrian friendly because as we know the parking is, a lot of it is underground. Lots of safe sidewalks to wheel on or walk on. So, it's a fabulous community. It's what we call smart growth, which is near transportation, services, goods to keep people connected to their community. Very mixed income, mixed age. We're very happy to be here. We hope to start construction next October and we want to open the doors in February of 2020. We can't open soon enough for our growing population. When can I get my application in? I'll get it in right away because we have a long wait list. I'm sure that, yeah, I know that's true for Champlain Housing Trust as well. Thank you, Cindy. So, this is an affordable housing show. So, some folks might wonder why we have someone from the Vermont Land Trust here. I think Eric gave us a little indication of that earlier. This is the single, I would say, the last large developable area in the city of Burlington. And certainly, we have a huge need for recreational lands and for green and open space. And, Gil, maybe you could talk a little bit to us about what VLT's Vermont Land Trust component is here and how you're making sure that Burlington citizens and the folks who are going to live here are going to have some adequate open space. Yeah, thank you, Eric. I am the president of Vermont Land Trust but also a proud resident of the Old North Bend and have watched this property for years. You know, we don't think in silos in Vermont and I think this partnership is a reflection of that. But I think we're observant generally of community needs and don't think about how it's necessarily separate from open space, separate from the economy, separate from health. And picking up on Cindy's health point, I don't know that we talk enough about the importance of open space, proximate to where people live and proximate to schools in terms of the direct health benefits. There's substantial and growing empirical evidence about reduced need to rely upon medical services, reduced prescription needs, improved children's educational performance related to open space. So I'm especially heartened, right? Cindy and Amy have described the location of their two buildings. They are immediately adjacent to the new public park next to existing community gardens. So I think that's a special reflection of our success here. I think we've got the slide up also so folks can see exactly where the open space is. Great, thanks for doing that. So looking at that slide, fully 12% of the land control by Eric will be a public park. It frankly is currently owned by the Vermont Land Trust and the City of Burlington together, pending the receipt of permits which were a condition of the agreement that we reached together. That 12 acres is the most valuable component of the property because it has breathtaking views. It's eminently developable. So we had the opportunity in our conversation with Eric to really focus on what the public benefits were irrespective of land values and somewhat independent of the planning he'd done before he acquired the property. As the overview plan depicts, a long stretch of public beach, referred to locally as Texco Beach, actively used by citizens of all sorts. Beautiful open field and neatly adjacent to that. The path running from the bike path through the woodland gives you tremendous views of the lake and the Adirondacks left overlooking the Lake Champlain. That path that navigates towards North Avenue and opens up in an opening that's now occupied by community gardens, which will expand once we fully own the park. People may also be familiar with the Stone House, the historic Stone House that fronts right on North Avenue. As we talked to folks within the community, there was a high need for small meeting gathering space. There's some big auditoriums, but gathering space of a modest size, especially in a nice intimate setting like that, is that a premium. So I think the city is going to work through uses, but generally speaking, it's a place that will be available to citizens. So multiple resources there. And frankly, let me talk a little bit of the process. I mean, Eric talked about this already. There was a high level of urgency and frankly a high level of community unrest when the college announced it was liquidating the property. Eric had no obligation to pause. He could have proceeded like most developers to prepare development plans, submit an application, engage in the public participation that sometimes occurs during those processes. But instead, he was willing to agree at the request of my organization, but more importantly, Maro Weinberger decided it was an important opportunity to pause and really reflect on what the public's goals were for that property and see if Eric was willing to engage in modifications to his expectations along those lines. So we had extensive public hearings. We had tours of the property. We had a large public sort of design forum before we even talked about alternative plans. We came back after we had alternatives and talked again to the public about what we had heard through public input and how we believed we'd executed on those goals. We reached out to the Old North End community broadly. We met with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont. We met with the Old North End Arts and Business Association. We met with the Student Council at the high school. We were in small groups, big groups, just trying to hear what people wanted. And most recently, last night, you were at the Ward's 2 and 3 neighborhood planning assembly. Yeah, and I think that was for me the third time and more for Eric. So people, I think, can fairly evaluate and have their own opinion about kind of the mix of open space and development and whether that's the right mix. You know, people who love Burlington love this place and so logical to have an attachment and have views about it. But I think we can say with great pride, I'm not aware having been, actually ran the Act 250 program for a number of years, have been in Vermont for 40 plus. I'm not aware of another situation in which this sort of collaboration prevailed upon a developer who had no obligation to do so, to pause and give us six months to fully and openly engage with the community. And so I think we're still open for people's feedback about it. But I hope people appreciate that they were heard and we did our best to execute on what their goals are. You know, I'll just say as someone who's not just been involved in affordable housing for many years, but, you know, it's our 40th year in Burlington and have been involved in public policy and public development for many years. This is just extraordinary. I think we all knew that someday this parcel was going to get developed and I just have to say from my perspective, you know, I was on the Planning Commission many years ago and City Council, I can't imagine a better way to develop this site given that someday it was going to be developed and what you all are putting together is just really remarkable and my hat's off to you. But that's just my opinion. But I'm sure a lot of other folks share that as well. So I think we've got a couple of minutes left here. I know everybody's had their chance to sort of describe their component, their part of this. Maybe just in the few minutes that remain to us, Eric, maybe you could tell us kind of what are the next steps for Camry and Rise. Where, you know, where are you headed next? You know, you've got your city permits at this point, correct? Or not? Maybe I'm not as well informed. Tell us where you are. We have all of our local permits. We have all of our underlying state permits, stormwater and what have you. We have an Act 250 hearing next Wednesday, the 20th. And that's our last stop assuming that it gets completed in one hearing. Then we hope to be in the ground with our first new building in November. That would be a rental building. And we hope to start our first new condominium building, which we made a deal with CHT to buy 30 of 97 units in the fall. Spring, excuse me, spring of next year, around the same time that CHT breaks ground on their building. So the first building, like I said earlier, the orphanage is open, but we're anxious to get going on new construction in city streets and all the amenities that will be incorporated. We've got a lot of site work to do. We've got a lot of site work to do. How long is the development process going to take once you get going? You're going to do this over a number of years. Well, best guess. It'll take six to eight years to build out. That's a lot. But we've got some affordable units that are going to be coming on fairly soon. And Cindy, you mentioned when, maybe you could just say again when... Sure. We have some of our funding. We have a number of funding applications that are open and ready to be submitted. So we hope to start construction October next year. And we also will have some market units within our building. So we'll have a real range of affordability within the senior building to serve all kinds of income. And we're hoping to open our building in February of 2020, but it'd be great if we could do it sooner because we know the need is huge. And we'll likely be open spring of 2019 if we get in the ground this spring, about a year. The need is certainly great. The other things I looked up before I came was that we haven't shit in a county over half of our renters are cost burden, meaning they're paying too much for their rent. So certainly can't wait till we get more formal housing. And this is the land that you have negotiated. Gail is... I think it's been mentioned before, but I think it really bears emphasizing it's like the last piece. So public land will stretch from Perkins Pier all the way up to Rock Point, basically. This is the last remaining piece. And I just think that's an incredible achievement right there. Thank you. Well, $2 million is the negotiated purchase price. We've purchased it at that number. It's a significant discount, less than the appraised fair market value. We've miraculously raised almost all of that money. So frankly, I think we're ready to transfer my organization's interest to the city and for there to be a park dedication. As soon as Eric has his permits. Wow. And I assume that... Well, I know that a lot of the housing is going to be funded by the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. I kind of assume that VHCB celebrating its 30th anniversary next week has got money in the park as well. And not to make it all about anniversaries, but on October 1st, my organization celebrates its 40th anniversary. I totally missed that one. The Housing Conservation Board was a significant generous funder in two stages. In addition, the city foresightedly, going back seven, eight years, created an open space legacy fund, which is for open space park purchases. And so there was a city commitment of a half a million dollars. And the rest of it has been private fundraising and a federal grant. Yeah. Well, great. I think I'm getting the hook. We're close to the end of the show. I just want to say thanks to each of you, not just for being on the show, but for the incredible work that you're doing. Definitely my hats off to you, Eric, for the incredible, the responsible way that you're developing this, not every private sector developer would have done this. Well, it was born and raised here, so this is my community. I know. You used to live on Brooks Avenue. I remember it well. Yeah. You were my constituent, whether you liked it or not, right? I might have even voted for it. Well, we don't know that. I remember the sign you had up front. It wasn't mine. Sorry about that. That's okay. That's okay. I love you now. Things come in full circle here in Vermont. Anyway, thanks to all of you, and thanks to our viewers for tuning in. This has been the Vermont Affordable Housing Show. There will be some resources, some web resources for each of these organizations and for the Cambrian Rise Development on-screen as we end. And our next show, our next regularly scheduled show, will be Wednesday, October 4th. That's going to be a live at 5.25. So I hope you get a chance to tune in. Thank you very much.