 Thank you for coming out this morning. This is a big day. For the first time in more than four years, this construction activity is moving forward again on this site and with it the hopes that the community has had for hundreds of new homes, for dozens of new jobs and new retail around this block and reconnecting streets that have been lost since urban renewal in the 1960s. And towards the creation of strengthening the city of financial in the school district with vast new tax revenues flowing to the city and the state. So this project stopped. I sometimes see people say that it stopped in 2017. From my perspective it was really 2018 when the demolition stopped and today because the hard work of these three guys and many others, you can see things are moving forward again. And given the level of interest in this project from the community, we thought you know we didn't want to wait for some choreographed groundbreaking. We thought we should come out and and just familiarize all you with with with how this is moving forward. And why don't you want to walk people through David on the on the map here and then after we do we'll talk a little bit and then what we can walk around the site a little bit and you can get other perspectives on it. So these little depictions together to give an overview of the project. Everybody's seen these throughout all the planning process and the permitting. And we've got basically there's two buildings on the site. There's going to be a U shaped building that runs all the way along Cherry. It comes down the two new streets. That's what we're calling the north building actually oriented a little backwards here. But the north building is going to have retail all the way around the street level. And then the podium is the next level above retail at which that point it'll turn over to residential housing over on this west side where you see the steel sheet piles right now. That's the wing that we've just worked the deal with Champlain Housing Trust. And that's where they're going to be building and managing the affordable inclusionary units. It's this northwest piece of the north building. Then the rest of the north building will be market rate units. And then there's a standalone building that's going in over here. There's a new road will be passing right through here right past that sheet piling. St. Paul Street and where that hole is right there. That'll be the lowest level. It's going down a little deeper lower level of the south building. They'll be parking underneath that building again retail at the street. Going to be one floor commercial space, which is going to be a combination of office, rental space, and then some community space that the development agreement talks about meeting rooms for various civic groups to get together. They can coordinate the use of that room through the CETO office and will be a small balcony at that level. And then at the top floor of the south building, there'll be a public observation area as well as a restaurant. And that's on the top of this, the south building, also the white building that kind of distincts the two. This is a masonry brick. And this is a limestone building. So nothing's changed much since it got permitted. We're still going with it. It's 427 or so units. We're working out the final floor plans right now, but the square footage and the size of the project has stayed the same. The affordable units will be 85 or 86 units over in the northwest building. And then there's going to be about 270 or so in the rest of the north building and 70 or 80 in the south building. It's going to be a 400 car parking garage in the core of this. It's like, there's a big donut of buildings. And then the donut hole in the middle is the parking area. And we're standing, we're probably standing halfway through. We're six feet above, I'd say the lowest level right here, right? Maybe eight feet. And then there'll be a level that you access driving off of St. Paul Street or off Pine Street at grade. You pull right into the parking level and then it'll be one above that. So three levels of parking, 200 or so spaces below grade, then 100 or so on each level. What makes this a public private partnership in many ways, of course, is just to orient people is on that side of the site, St. Paul Street will be reconnected. And on that side of the site, Pine Street will be reconnected partially underneath the 100 bank building. We know those streets will get built. What we hope and are working towards is the combination of this partnership and the TIF funds that are created by that plus additional federal funding that we're now pretty cautiously optimistic we will be able to receive as a result of the federal infrastructure investment that we will be able to rebuild for maybe even five blocks of Cherry Street and two full blocks of Bank Street behind us here. So for members of the media who, you know, what's happened in the last, I guess, a little over, it was, well, when was, when was the special meeting to approve the development agreement was two weeks ago yesterday, right? Yeah. Or today, actually, was it two, did we do it on Tuesday? All right, so in those two weeks, what's happened is that all the documents were executed. There were a number of steps that had to happen after the agreement was signed before the building permit could be released to the city. You know, significantly, these three men have all given personal guarantees that the podium, which they're starting construction on now, which is Dave just described that that will be completed. And with the completion of all of that work, the city issued last week the building permit. And that's why there's work work is moving forward now. And I guess I, you know, I just want to say again a point I made a couple weeks ago when we approved the development agreement. Development is inherently risky. And there's there's uncertainty to it. It depends that whenever a big complex complicated project like this moves forward, there's all sorts of challenges to it and things that change and create can create unexpected challenges. As our lawyer said the other night, we may well good chance that they're going to need to be further changes to the development agreement and to go back in and need to be talking to the council and the public again. What, well, but what I know where I was going with that is that the city now has the right partners to make it through whatever challenges lie ahead. These three individuals and the companies they represent are some of the best builders we have in Vermont. They've they have shown again again. They know how to get projects done. They've shown that here since they took control of the site just over seven months ago. And I am very grateful to be working with with the three of you as we as we head down this really critical direction for the city of Burlington. I still I've always believed in this project. This is what we need to make our downtown healthy and and vibrant decades into the future. I don't regret for a moment any of the decisions that that that took us in this direction. I'm grateful we now have the partners to to get to get us a podium and and more over the over the the months and years ahead. Thank you for your commitment to Burlington. Thank you for believing in this place, investing in this place and putting so much behind getting this done. Thanks. I can say he's talking partners. These two guys are the best best partners I've ever had. I've had a bunch of partners in real estate projects. We've become like brothers. We were not giving up. We get a little challenge. We all put our heads together. We overcome it. I mean, we had a lot of interface with the mayor's office, the CEDO office, the Department of Public Works working through all these details on streets and how things are going to run the storm water and and rights of way and encumbrances and it's been seven months of a lot of meetings and we get a to-do list and we break it up and we just pick it apart and get it done and that's the way this project going to keep moving on. So thank you guys. Thank you. I want to thank the mayor as well. Obviously he's played a big role in our success to get this bar and we look forward to getting concrete board to begin in December and keep things rolling. So thank you mayor and thank you for your help with your help. Thank you Scott. I also like to say that we've heard a lot of support from the the community and we want that support to be there to help us keep pushing us on because we're going to need that that help in the months to come. So thank you to the community as well. December's when you're thinking you're going to finish pouring the concrete. Start pouring. Start pouring the concrete. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, we'll be working here all winter long. Right. There's a good five months worth of site work just on the south building alone. You know, we're starting excavation today but we've got a solid couple of weeks before we can start concrete but we're hoping to get concrete start December 1st and we'll be working right through the winter in hopes to have the podium slab complete in May on the south piece and we'll work around the CHT building as we go as well. So like total the podium work into spring summer next year is that kind of what people can expect? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mid-May to mid-July. What's the timeline for the entire project then? We've got that worked out for a final completion date of November of 2025 and that's when you'll see like the roads finally getting finished. So again work depending on which way we work around it's site work then concrete work and then the steel goes up and then the building gets closed in the roof gets put on it. When that happens then we'll start focusing on we're going to use this area in the middle. All right. The exterior panels and setting windows and all that work when that's finally buttoned up we'll take the cranes away and not for long and then start on the garage piece which is the infill piece and once that's all done then it'll free up the roads. We're going to have a crane in the middle of St. Paul Street. We'll have a crane over in the future Pine Street to work the site. I mean the site's big it's almost 360 feet wide so it takes a lot of a lot of stick to get all the way around it. So it's going to be real busy and then spring I'm thinking spring of 2025 we'll be wrapping up the big equipment work and then starting in on the roads and they'll finish the roads up over that summer and we have a completion date of November. Now when they say that you've gotten the permits are they the permits for the entire project or is it just this beginning phase? The project is permitted the entire project and then we've gone in because we wanted to get a jump on the site work and foundation this year our engineer completed the foundation plans right now and then in middle of January the structural steel plans will be completed and we'll turn those over to the city for review and then we'll do shop drawings and and all the stuff that has to make it happen in some factory and then that'll show up we'll get a permit to put that up in the spring and then by then the architects will have caught up with all of the detailing and we'll have the final set of plans that'll be you know all the detail work the outside the masonry work the windows everything inside all the systems mechanical and electrical mechanical electrical systems yeah we can't forget I'll see the electrical country so so there's there's a lot of steps and we're catching up but the project was put on ice for about two years and as much as we were trying to advance it along when we were involved with our former partner things were just slow and the commitment wasn't made to getting those drawings done so now we're doing that we're catching up but we're playing catch up right now so the architects and engineers are working like crazy we have weekly meetings with them and we get progress sets as we go but nothing completed yet to the point where I mean we changed us we're thinking we're changing the stairwell over in this building based on some some excavation and and shoring details so things will change a little bit and then once we stop making changes they'll finish them up and that's when the exterior will be all the same exterior is not changing but that's that's the easy part that's the windows and brick and stuff it's all all how the the columns and the chases and the ductwork and the piping and all that stuff that's inside that nobody sees that's where they spend a lot of time coordinating and that's that's taking a lot of time I mean there's imagine there's 420 houses here so everybody's got to figure out all the systems and we're working on it and we're making good progress it's just uh take some time Dave is uh all the financing in place um that's a good question um not for the entire project right now but we we do have commitments on getting going on the south building uh cht is working through their process right now on funding their piece of it and then we're in talks with some potential co co development partners on the rest of the north building uh we'll be making the decision over the next uh month and a half or so it's which way that's going to go and then uh we'll have some announcements then and Dan I want to be clear that you know that's not news like we in that we talked about this explicitly with the council and the public before taking a step moving forward but these guys have guaranteed is that the podium is going to get done they put personally they're putting themselves behind that and they have the resources to to get that first very substantial kind of essentially foundation to the whole project moving instead of continuing to wait for that to their committee they have guaranteed it's going to get built that the the the foundation the podium as we're calling it will be completed that's the foundation you want to describe again what's in the podium yeah the the foundation and podium gets everything up the street level um on the south building gets us around the corner here and gets the this basically the second level of the north building gets us air air rights to the to all of the the upper floors so that when we do pick that that developer uh or a partner to come in that's when the additional funding will come in place another thing that happens early on I don't think these got kind of highlighted yeah it's people when the public comes down and looks in on what's going down here you'll see a bunch of digging on on this side of the site and over by the building where some of the storm water infrastructures been being put in and a lot of work gets done underneath the streets that that are that will be public infrastructure infrastructure that both serves this project as well as infrastructure that is good for the broader city and so that also goes to why the council approved I supported the council approved this changed the development the agreement that allowed this work to go forward and start right now for for the podium knowing getting back to the point before that that these guys are still in a variety of ways working on the the financing that's going to be necessary to to go vertical cht is well into the process of applying for the the public funds that are going to be necessary to build one of the largest permanently affordable housing family projects that the city's had in decades and you know Dave just shared where they are on the on the two other buildings first piece of construction we actually have to do is a storm tank which will serve serve the local roads and bank street that's the first piece we really have to do over here before because it's lower than the building of the south building so we've got to incorporate a lot of that initial storm work for the infrastructure in the road at the same time but it'd be a lot happening on the ground you won't see yeah did you say storm tank yes storm water storm water water tanks retention tanks retention tanks it's designed to take the whole storm store it and then slowly release it into the city system rather than just flooding the system well yeah while this is actually an often misunderstood point so while we got the the entire kind of media corps assembled here just something that often people get confused about they say morrow how can you be building new homes when we have issues with with with our sewer capacity and we we have these events where there's you know overflows going into the lake we don't we have to fix that before we build anything new what a lot of people don't understand is it's actually every time we build in burlington a new building to modern standards we're almost always making the storm water and sewer system function better than they do previously because these these buildings meet such higher standards than the way anything that was built before so prior when the mall was sitting here and there was rain on this site immediately hundred percent of the rain immediately went right into the store the combined storm water sewer system contributed to this big surge of water going in the system all at once what will happen now is that water that falls during the storm will be retained on the site in these huge tanks and then slowly released over time and that dramatically reduces the storm surge in terms of what this site contributes to it so it it's this actually will make it less likely that these negative events that we see with these combined sewer overflows yeah we have i think over 10 000 square feet of what they call green roof which will capture a lot of the the water and it doesn't even get into the storm system it will retain it and then slowly evaporate there's a elaborate drainage system and so on the top of the south building and then a good portion of the parking garage there's a section of green roof that just helps cut back on the amount of storm water that hits the the city system once it is is released and there's three of those tanks right scott how many gallons are there oh i don't know i know i think you're 25 000 gallons each there's one in the middle of uh state of the art the new st paul street there's one in the middle of the new pine street and there's one that serves just the the building itself that's um right where that excavator is right right adjacent to the 100 bank street building that's what he's digging right now in the first tank what is your best uh you've heard a lot of numbers over the years what's your best estimate for the total construction price uh i think our budget's right around 200 million dollars right now that's just for the podium that's no that's okay i just wanted to which does not include synexes part of it does not include phase two or phase three fair to say this is the largest construction project in our state is it it's in the it's in the top uh two or three probably huh what compares right don't know i don't know of anything on the housing pieces obviously like housing is a very acute need right now in the state and particularly in the county um do you have a sense on when some of the units might be coming online uh i think this we had a press conference here a few weeks ago the kind of this project is going to be a big deal for the the housing development here in the state and the county so when can we start to expect to see those the south building is about a two-year build so if we're starting now it'll be ready end the summer early fall of 2024 again depending on cht's timing and we'll know a lot better on that as they go through this they're doing a kind of a preview of the funding or a pre application and then the the actual uh request goes in sometime in january and they know soon after that um they may get their money and be able to have us start that as soon as we get the the podium in place which would probably be mid-summer and that that's about a two-year build that's about 80 units so they would be following up behind us maybe six months later on the south building and this building we anticipate would be finished up in the summer of 2025 the new road is part of the negotiations with the city after the lawsuit when brookfield went away we agreed to give the land to the city for the the two streets so there's a 60 foot right away it's right off the building the macy's building out 60 feet which brings us to about the middle of this last bay of 100 bank street building so this is probably the pretty close to the edge of the road right here then there'll be a sidewalk and then our building is to the east um so the city's 60 foot right away it it actually goes right underneath the building 100 bank street and then ties back into pine street um it's part of our development we've got an area over in this corner for indoor bike storage and lockers and showers as well as like a little repair shop if somebody has to change a tire or whatever and then our loading dock for the south building wraps right around the corner of the 100 bank street building right where the excavator is right now and goes back out to bank street and then retail picks up and goes to the corner of st paul and chugs right up st paul street and both both lanes of uh describe how st pine how paul pine street goes goes past here pine street is going to pass right underneath that archway yeah and then it's going to take a little kick and get closer to macy's and it's going to take the place of where the old driveway that used to take you underneath the park into the parking garage and the sidewalk that used to take you up to the mall we're flipping that orientation and the sidewalk is going to be on the east side and the road's going to be hugging the west side but we're coming right underneath this building avoiding the columns and then uh the road's going to be down about it's like going down about three feet there two and a half feet it's going to be 12 foot clear under that building scott have you ever built a road through a building before no not really i'm looking forward to it no it was the first will it definitely pine street yeah pine street is going to reconnect from from bank jerry as well as uh st paul is going to go up and then that right where the yellow bean porch is now and if uh that's that's the street level that's the street level and then you can really see at this level or here you can see the cht building why don't worry in people with the cht building this wing of the cht building is going to be coming right along this side of so right on this line at the end of that sheet filing basically it's coming this way about 130 feet there's going to be a gap in between the buildings of about 60 feet from the hundred bank street building to the edge of the argy building although the parking garage will fill in that one one or two levels above grade in between there so this will this will read like a four-story building coming off of that building sorry one thing i think people you don't really think about much unless you're kind of standing here working on the site is uh how much higher cherry street is than than bank street yeah there's got eight eight foot difference in grade so you get a whole another level right as you come down there's another level uh yeah um bank streets pretty much what 212 roughly 212 to 210 that runs from 218 to 216 so six or seven feet difference so this road's going to come in then it has to grade off um to to meet up with uh cherry street we'll plows people to go under the archway yep little ones i think maybe the only like the bucket trucks for uh like bd might have to go around as i remember like but they all all the different vehicles got evaluated yeah yes well you're fully humming here construction how many people do you think will be working on the site um i yeah yeah the the guest was always around two to three hundred maybe two two fifty it's all different different phases as you know there'll be a lot of site work concrete guys here than the steel guys yeah and when the steel guys are here the site and concrete guys are still going to keep going along and then concrete guys come back before the slabs and then it'll get probably maximum busyness when you're doing working on the exterior building the exterior walls putting in all the windows and then whole different crew comes in when you start doing your framing on the inside again depending on how how it flows with the different um funding sources for cht us and um it's going to be different levels of construction going on then then it'll start waning off when the south building gets done um and that same kind of crew will follow through so i think there's winners like concrete we should have between 25 and 35 guys and a lot depends on weather it's well we're hoping for a warm winter i heard it's going to be really warm so the warmer is the more guys we can fit in but you're prepared scott right to work if it if it gets cold you can keep moving yeah actually in burlington every major foundation the city of burlington has been done in the winter with the exception of the courthouse say that again that's a surprise in fact every major foundation the city of burlington in the last 20 years has been done the concrete's been which we've done the concrete most cases was done in the winter with the exception of the courthouse so it's what we do and we know what we gotta do and it's just all about protecting heat and protecting concrete but you don't have no effect on quality and keeps the team busy you know something we haven't talked about we want just to say a little bit about the outreach you've done to the local businesses and and the hotline you've set up if if there are things that people yeah there's any questions or complaints or comments i want to keep the complaints so minimum but there'll be signs posted on the new fence lines we've set up an email address that's info at buildingcityplace.com so you can email a comment in or questions and there's also going to be a 1-800 number and i don't know that number off hand look it up it'll be on the fence it'll be posted and right now those ring right to my phone so we appreciate that it's something that the city in talking with uh you know the the business community has been incredibly supportive this project always has um at the same time people are aware that there'd be a lot of you know project to this size there'd be the potential for disruption and and i want to make sure that there was good coordination and communication and another way we appreciate the partnership is that these guys agreed in the development agreement to to do what they've just described and are making good on it and we reach out to all the businesses on jane street including 150 bank and 100 bank and everybody on the opposite side we put in vibration monitoring systems to just check make sure things don't get out of control they've gone through and done like a seismic check to make sure if there's any cracks they're identified they're monitored for the state that they're in whether it's a quarter inch crack or eighth inch crack and then if they if they get worse you know we'll monitor it over the course of construction and then make any necessary repairs if we have to let's talk there will be a people who've been covering this for years may remember there was talk at one point that there was going to be months of pile driving at the beginning and there will be a little bit of sheet pile being driven is that right scott in the next few weeks here there will be a little bit for shoring and supportive excavation but initially when this was a 14-story building it required piles that were 75 feet deep around the whole site and the footings poured on top of them but with the new design there are nine to ten storage does not require that to spread footing so we minimized all that vibration problems that for potential buildings and residents and citizens so and noise it should be a pretty clean operation this is this is an example of sheet pile in the right yeah this is basically that's just vibrates down it's just to support earthwork and most of it we still use everything here we might need a little bit in the corner but very little be required and with minimal vibration so i think i think that that was a test pile there they drove that thing down about 70 feet right okay so we would we had had hundreds of those if uh on the old plan or yeah there was like 1600 of them so it was a lot of it's a big change that that doesn't need to to happen anymore it's definitely simplified it substantially i think it's last clear i just want to clarify the the phases of the project you've got cht handling the affordable piece in the north and south building you're looking for another another partner will help with the financing of the north building we're evaluating some proposals there's you know once once we got control of the site and decided we were we're going to be moving ahead a lot of interest came from other developers that maybe had looked at it when synex was contemplating selling it at one point and that's that's how we ended up he was saying all right guys i think we're going to sell the site and we said well we want to buy it so but he had a broker out there marketing the whole project as a you know first sale permit ready and then we just said you know we we've been involved we worked too hard to just sell it off to somebody else and so we worked out a deal with dawn and ended up buying this we're still partners in the two other buildings with with devinwood that's the macy's high school it's bhs high school right now and looks left to the old mall and the yellow beam building and you're in the south building is the one that you're beating up you're not looking for a partner on that one no we're just gonna get that going starting it um just we wanted to get going and that's it's you know smaller piece that's probably uh the big picture is probably 60 or 70 million dollars which is not small but small enough that we felt we could handle it and just get the ball on that's what this whole project seemed to need that and and so kind of lit the fuse so so when does the concrete actually get forward how much pre-work do you have to do uh quite a bit we've got it like I said that mentioned before we've got a couple weeks of excavation on the south building and working around that tank but we expect to be pouring concrete first of december and we'll be working all winter and hope to finish up the south building podium probably mid-may june and we'll keep working around the cht so we'll we'll have multiple crews working as we go home in the south and we'll be heading right around Scott, can I get your last name and title and also your name and title? Here's Scott Ireland, president of S.D. Ireland, Al Sannicoke, president of Omega Electrical Construction. Paths up from Albany she doesn't see all the Ireland trucks uh driving around it. What is the final number of parking spots created here? Make 422. 422? Yeah. 422 and 427 I think is the apartment, right? Right. Have you made a decision about owned versus rentals and housing? Right now we're going ahead as planned as as rental units of different sizes. Yeah it's it's the mix of efficiencies one bedroom two bedrooms three bedrooms. I guess something to point out like about the garage you know there will be a fair amount of monthly leases to the tenants for parking spaces for themselves but we're going to have a monitoring system that as cars leave we'll be able to take in public parking and we'll probably have a kiosk or there's some sort of scanning sign but you can park parked by your plate number and similar to a lot of the lots around town where you can do transient parking even though spaces are committed to people during the day and we'll have a management system that'll similarly the city has where it'll monitor cars in and out and then based on some evaluation of the timing of the day and stuff the public parking sign will go on and it'll allow people in to pay and monitor when they leave and then kind of wean away from that towards the end of the day when the residents are coming back so they have their parking spaces on the go here and residents paying for the cost if they want them it's not automatically it's it's separate um from the rent that's part of uh one of the um Burlington ordinances that you can't tie a rental two-way parking space so if you don't want one you don't need to buy one if you need one you buy one I guess it's too early to ask how much the rent's going to be or do you have a sense on uh with the horrific rental price on the housing units yeah um the the range all over I don't know if we've settled on it I mean they're not coming to market for two years so I think you know there are their market rate units and then there's the affordable rate units um and even those numbers change it's based on um mean monthly income or mean annual income I'm not I'm not sure the formula how they determine it then there's a range of like from 60 percent to 120 percent um on the affordables and then the market rates or the market rates uh which nobody's got a crystal ball yet but um I think those first departments will be two years from now 20 20 yeah fall of 2024 I just you know um I don't know if we'll be standing here quite like this again so oh yeah I just think uh standing here looking over there uh look gives you a sense of um just some of the challenges that we've had to work through together to to get to this point having moving forward you know when the when the city tore down these six blocks and urban renewal and combined all these streets gave up these streets they never thought it would be reversing that uh that the thinking at the time was that that was a good idea and um you know it's not very often that cities give up streets it's rare to get them back once they do that you sit sitting here you get a sense of the complexity of uh kind of what had to be sort of sorted out to make that possible the original that office building was built on top of the uh the mall that was already there you can see how some of the structure is still kind of sticking out and it's going to need to be shaved off and uh kind of tied in to the to the new structures you can see the macy's building never thought that that was going to the building was going to the garage that was there was going to come down um and uh it's uh i'm pretty excited standing here seeing that after a decade of talking about it putting in plan btv that we were going to try to get these streets back that uh we're now moving forward again on on uh i'm getting it done i've talked to a bunch of people they're pretty excited about it there's one local guy his name's bob blanchard he runs runs one of those uh facebook sites and i'm actually working with him we're gonna um he's got tons and tons of old photographs of the whole neighborhoods and we're trying to conceive some sort of uh public art project where as you walk down the street there'll be pictures of the old building that used to be right there so if you're standing here on on cherry street looking south you're gonna see the house that was there the school that was there so he's pretty excited about working on that with us too yeah so how much taller i just counted maybe wrong but this is seven stories how much taller will the building eventually be than this building be nine stories so it'll be two more four well i think that's eight isn't it well no problem it's a little hard to tell you really if you count that bottom one is one one two three four five six seven i think we should wrap it up thank you all for coming out