 Ladies and gentlemen, would you please take your seats one more time? I know it's a talking crowd, I know you want to converse, I know that this is the most exciting thing that's happened in a while, but please take your seats. Okay, there's also a point around that one. Are we almost settled? Thank you folks, I like you, I'm very excited by what we're seeing, so thank you very much for your attention, your interest, your excitement. We now have our fourth presenter, we have Steven Roy, Vice President of Wyman-Lampere Architects at a Colchester, and I will, without further ado, turn it over to Steve to make the presentation. Thank you, Dan, and thank you everybody for coming, it's really nice to see interest and enthusiasm in a project like this, we're pleased to be involved in it, it's been a team effort from the group at Wyman-Lampere, I'll start out with this little vignette sketch which is conceptually just trying to show that we want to blend in with Montpelier, we want it to feel and become a part of Montpelier, not try to stand out in any special way. As we began this process we looked at what Montpelier is today, everything shown on the screen is an existing building, one of the main issues as has been mentioned previously today is the domination of parking and the vehicle, so our task is to look at how we can change that arrangement. We wanted to focus on the strengths of Montpelier, we see a lot of great things happening on State and Main Street, there's some vibrancy, there's great places to go and eat, lots of things that we want to expand upon and not try to take away from. There's also the great plant for district heating, that's a nice feature that's already being in use and is something that helps us towards a net zero goal in 2030, so we want to take advantage of that. And another element that it's now under construction we want to take advantage of is the multimodal center, making that a part of our project. Fasibility, it's been talked about already, a key component of what we can do in Montpelier, I think anything can be phased and taken in chunks as needed. We've looked at the program as a thousand units of housing, a conference center and several other mixed use spaces, a lot of square footage in the end, whether or not it all gets built by 2030 or not is a question of whether it's going to be part of the market as to what demand can handle. We've focused a lot on density, we see the area between State, Main Street, Memorial Drive and Bailey Avenue as the real downtown core that we want to try and make this density happen. We want it to be pedestrian centered. Our hope is to slowly wean ourselves from the car and most of all making a vibrant downtown community. You know, by being dense and having a lot of housing units, new residents, we're trying to bring additional life into the Montpelier district. Looking at transportation, we see a need for some facilities that could house visitor parking, a couple of these facilities and they could be phased over several years. The red dots indicate a car share location and there's several of them scattered about, these would be the larger locations. We see car sharing as a good opportunity for also the satellite neighborhoods around Montpelier. Not everybody needs to have their own personal car if they're using it a few times a week and it's not a major portion of their life, that's an excellent opportunity for a car share. The yellow dots indicate a bike share opportunity also we see or segues were mentioned earlier. You know, any kind of shared transportation that can happen is beneficial. We also see the opportunity for a public tram. We've created kind of a loop around the streets that I mentioned before and we also have an uphill tram that heads up to national life. We felt that connection would provide an opportunity for either employees at national life or the state to come down into the city in a convenient way that they can go and enjoy that during their lunch hour, go out to restaurants and not be quite so separated. Unlike the gondola, we were looking at a fairly low energy tram which can regenerate power on the way down much like an electric car does these days. A large portion of our program also includes sheltered or indoor and kind of a combination of indoor and sheltered areas so that people can, you know, walk on the coldest of days but still be sheltered and inside at time. All in an effort to encourage pedestrian use throughout the city. And if we overlay all of our pedestrian access, we've really tried to make it dense and connected city so that it's easily possible to get from one side to the other several different ways. Another aspect of our proposal is to create some one-way streets, preferably on State Street. And part of doing this is to also slowly, over time, reduce the amount of on-street parking. So that would allow businesses to have a wider sidewalk, adds a better pedestrian-friendly environment, changing the traffic circulation and trying to minimize the amount of cars that go on Main Street and State Street. As we start to take a three-dimensional look at our proposal, a big focus, obviously, is the river in Montpelier. Right now, you know, our thought is that the city is turned away from the river and kind of ignoring it and parking is pushed up against the river. Our hope is to reconnect the city with the river. The edges have been talked about quite a lot. You know, we're including this riparian buffer and several natural areas to occur within the river. We do also have a few areas that are a little bit more a step in an urban direction, where we have a canoe portage in this area. We have a step, a public space, basically, to bring people down into the river. So somewhat limited areas are developed, other than that, it's a fairly natural edge. When we take a step back from the river's edge, we want to create riverfront parks. We see a variety of possibilities happening. This one we've kind of designated as an art park, a very public display of local artists. Throughout, there could be play parks. As we go throughout the city, there could be several different types of play parks. This could be a nature park in nature areas and even an event lawn for concerts, weekly concerts in the summer, weddings, who knows. This space here is what we've planned for, conference center and hotel as well, kind of the gateway entrance into the city. It allows for events to spill in and outside of that space. Looking at the energy performance of the city, we see all of the new buildings as being built as net zero, mostly focusing on super insulation, trying to orient the buildings in a way that is most efficient, using high efficiency systems and lighting continues to improve constantly, bringing energy use down. Existing buildings are a little bit more of a challenge and probably one of the major things that needs to be focused on over the years. Any opportunity to improve an existing building is going to help in the long term. Re-insulating them, retrofitting with solar PV where possible, upgrading and air sealing. There's quite a lot of square footage of buildings and a lot of energy use associated with these. That becomes a major step in getting monthly Bnet zero. Solar PV, a pretty easy set of things are possible with new construction. Obviously, solar PV on the roofs is very simple and affordable. Our thought is to keep the downtown area as dense as possible to take advantage of the district heat plant. By not spreading ourselves out too far on the outskirts, we're helping to reduce the need for a car because you're in a compact area. We're keeping it so energy use is not, you're not focusing on energy lost because it has to travel a long way. This is taking a sectional view of our proposal. Since the very beginning, we've kind of played on this idea of a plinth concept. This plinth is basically a podium or a platform that all the new buildings could be built up upon. The existing ground level, we have State Street here. Existing buildings, some public space between and then for the car, you could drive down into these parking areas. You could, on top of these public areas, focus on the green spaces that are possible. This allows us to engage the river's edge. It provides a podium for the green spaces. It provides an area for floodwaters to occur without any major damage. And it also offers some possible protection from floodwaters getting further into the city. Additional element that we've included is the possibility for thermal energy storage with solar hot water on roofs or possibly having the district heating line run through that area. We can more efficiently minimize peak loads by using thermal storage. As we take a look, we have several three-dimensional drawings and we've really spent a lot of time to model the buildings and give a flavor of how the city may feel. To orient yourselves here, the post office is kind of underneath us. This is State Street, a slightly narrower in its configuration here with wider sidewalk, making it more pedestrian-friendly. We have the church and Capitol Plaza in this area. The focus of this drawing is really to give character and the neighborhood feel of how this may fit in, similar in scale to some of these buildings that are already here. It gives a place, you know, beyond State Street to go back to. It's not a parking lot that you're getting lost in yet there is parking underneath these buildings. Here's an adapted version kind of the next step where we have, you can see that neighborhood starting to form. There's some public green spaces. Here's a look at our indoor-outdoor transitional farmers market. And we have some protected connections that cross the river and a cultural center that happens on the Memorial Drive side of the river. So we see this as almost a central neighborhood happening in a way that ties State Street all the way over to Memorial Drive in a very pedestrian-friendly way. It's not supposed to happen. This next slide is, there was a sketch of a similar view on the last slide. This is one that shows the more refined outdoor portion of the farmers market. And this shows the outdoor event lawn. We're trying to, you know, you see the rail pass through. We've added pedestrian links in this direction across the river and that direction across the river. Just really trying to highlight that there's vibrancy and community that can happen. And it's all convenient to Main Street and State Street. And the idea with our proposal is to get, you know, with a thousand new housing units within that area. That's a couple thousand new people. You know, maybe that happens over a few years, maybe it happens over several years. But there's a place for it. And, you know, for all the businesses that are there now, they benefit by those extra people in town. And that's not supposed to happen either. This one is, you know, a look at density. We feel that density is a big portion of our project and making a successful downtown by bringing people that don't have to take their car to get into downtown or don't have to bike. They're there already. They're going to go outside and take a walk. They're going to go visit the stores. This shows, you know, our most rigid connection to the river where people can come down. And as the water level goes down, there's a few more steps. And as the water level comes up, there's a few more steps. So there's always that opportunity. A little hand sketch of something that we felt was vibrant. It's crossing from the tourism center to the event park. And a little bit more refined view is supposed to show up. In the end, we have, you know, what we think is a vibrant community with a focus on public green space, you know, street environments that are friendly to pedestrians. And that is my time. I think our biggest example of that case probably happens in this area here. We had precedent for it right behind there. So we were hoping that maybe we could do something similar. It's really just another way of engaging the river. Not to say that it's, you know, a make or break part of the proposal, obviously. But I think, you know, part of taking advantage of that resource and, you know, providing a public space that isn't a very large public space now, but if we can take advantage of some of those areas, it also provides a path connection between two sides of the river and really makes it more connected. Whether it takes the form of a building over the river or simply another pedestrian connection I think is up for debate. We have a question from the floor. And that's when you put cars and garages at or near the river level, what do we do at times of the year when flooding happens and also coincides with legislative parking crunch? I think the primary focus is to keep, you know, parking out of the immediate areas when it's possible. You know, if flooding is a known occurrence, then it would be best to stay out of the lowest areas. The advantage of having the parking and the location that we have shown is that at least there's nothing of any real cost. If everything were a concrete garage, it could be allowed to flood. If there are cars in it at the time, there would be some loss. But I think it's, if there's an event that's going to happen, I think we would try to move those cars to a higher location. We have the two developments along the river that you propose, the cultural center and the hotel and the event lawn. There's a question as to the available space. The space seems to be much smaller than shown. Can you fit these things in there? I think that's a matter of programming. You know, the cultural center is, I don't recall the square footage that we have planned, but it's really a matter of programming and what people think is needed. The hotel, this corridor here is the first slide that we had shown where we had existing buildings. We were taking a view from basically City Hall looking back, building right up to the street edge and allowing that space behind there to be more open. Could you please speak to the role of industry? Where would it be and how could it be a net zero enterprise? That second question might be the most. I think it depends on what kind of industry. I mean, it's a very site specific type of question. I think primarily we're focusing on live, work and play in a downtown district. If there's industry that's compatible with that, then I think it's appropriate. We have another question from Allegra. Who are the members of your team? With me here today I have Michael Minna-Dale. He's our design director. From the office, we are entirely within Weeman-Lampier. We have Allison Stoltz, James Barrett, Heidi Davis, David Roy, Steve Clark, Montpelier resident, and Matt Reed. And together, our diverse backgrounds and abilities help to create this proposal. A lot of work. And will the new river construction, putting it mildly, right, will the new river construction block the view of the capitol building? We've made an effort to, and I don't know if it shows up in any of the slides that we looked at, there are areas, and I think the next be over is the one I want to show. This is a lower area where we have the pedestrian connection and the connection that goes through. What we've done is tried to allow spaces between existing buildings that continue to maintain similar viewing points. Are we doing on time? Good. Other questions? Yes, ma'am? To be six stories to a big number of dwellings. We have planned for 1,000 dwellings, which is... The question. The number of dwellings that we've proposed within the project is what we used as a guide. The question relates to a six-storey building that was shown. Primarily, we are looking at four, and there's maybe one or two six-storey buildings. So we're trying to blend in with some of the scaling and massing that's already within the city, some of the larger buildings in the city. Other questions? In terms of the architecture, which is packed with buildings, it is totally ignored the stark architecture of my period of mind, then, plus the variation, some of it in the height of it, the variation in the roof, by the way. Anything? I think any design will take time to really flush out. With what we have, we looked at solar as a good opportunity for energy production. Although, pitch roofs work well for solar as well. Because of the urban atmosphere, we are looking at more of trying to prevent snow from falling off and things like that. Not to say there aren't opportunities for pitch roofs. Thank you. Thank you. More of a summertime question. I see you have steps down into the river. Are you contemplating people swimming there? Is that going to be at all possible, or is it going to be cleaned up enough to get cleaned up? Whether there's places for swimming, I don't entirely know. I think there's at least application for getting down and touching the water and allowing children to get their feet wet, and at least being at the river's edge. Could it be in any way so that people can go in the other direction in some other way? The one-way stage tree we were thinking would be from east to west. We've kept the other streets as being two-way to help with traffic. I think if you were, I guess it would need to be worked out a little bit, but the thought is to lower the amount of traffic and make it more consistent and bring pedestrian use there. I think we're about out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you. And a profound apology to Steve for the misslides computers. You know, as they say, the air is human, but to really screw up, you need a computer. Couple of other.