 Thank you everybody for coming out, my name is Ayman Hutton, I'm a landscape architect for the call Fuchsia, my colleague Jess Piggins, we're here tonight to give you a little presentation about the park, kick off public engagement process, do some activities together, but I wanted to start by reiterating Sophie's thank you to all of you for coming out, a special thank you to all the young folks I see here tonight, it's really great to have you here, it's super important to get your voices and your input, what we're doing tonight is going to be fun, we'll do some park design, so I can't wait to hear your ideas. We hosted another public meeting for a different park up in Maine two nights ago and the folks there were so happy about the attendance because they had six teenagers that turned out, and I just want to give a shout out to the tens of teenagers that came out tonight for making it, that's really great. So I'm going to just start off with a little introduction, this is Roosevelt Park, if you haven't seen it from the sky before, Oak Street is going along the top, we have the Boys and Girls Club here, this is the main park about three and a half acres, and then Lil Rosie as we call it across the street where the playground is, so you'll be seeing this drawing again and again, so just for reference, those are your bearings. We're having this meeting tonight because the city is conducting a comprehensive plan for the park, so you might be wondering what's a comprehensive plan, it's essentially a map of long range improvements and changes, it could be for a plaza, a streetscape, or in this case for a park, and the intent of a comprehensive plan is to include information both about what's going on in the park today and to set forth a vision for the future. It's also critical in a comprehensive planning process that we engage residents and community members to hear their voices and help shape the process. So from the outset the city had some real big ideas that were important to drive this project, the first was that we were going to do what we're doing tonight, which is include a lot of public participation and hear from residents. We acknowledge that it's a neighborhood park, it's a resource for the community around the park, first and foremost, that the budget for improvements has to be realistic and feasible, we're not here to propose water slides or ferris wheels that can't be built but real feasible improvements. Also that the process would be inclusive so we'll talk more about how we've offered surveys in lots of different languages and interpretation services. Another big idea for the park was that it needs to be accessible to all and safe and finally that there's a layer of storm water and ecology that needs to be considered here to make sure this is a healthy green place. So this is the process seen as a calendar, so this is September on the upper left, September of this year, all the way to August of next year, so each of these columns represents a month. Right now we're wrapping up the first step which is an inventory of the park, that's what you'll see tonight, we're having our first big meeting and then next we'll go into this orange bar which is the plan development, that's when we'll start drawing more ideas. So I'm going to pass it off to Jess to talk a little bit about the community engagement and outreach that we've done leading up to this meeting. Thank you so much. Oh yes, Max, thank you. All right, so as Aiman mentioned we are done with inventory, we are about to start plan development but during this entire process we are doing community engagement. Now there's three parts to this community engagement, that we are about a third of the way through. First there's been an online survey and that's been wrapped up, hopefully you have participated in that survey. We'll take a look at the results later and see what you said. Second part is the CAC meetings which we've already had one so far, we're going to have another one coming up soon. CAC is the community advisory committee and basically what that is, it's a group of people representative of the community and they can give us more immediate feedback on the planning process, we're barking up the wrong tree basically. Finally there's the public meetings. The first one is tonight, thank you for coming, we appreciate it. There's going to be two more after this, those dates are TBD but during this first one we want to hear about the park a little bit more, this is kind of an expansion of the online survey, we want to hear a little bit more feedback from you. All right, community inclusion, so the Old North Inn is one of the most diverse communities in Vermont and we want to make sure that we hear all of the voices in the Old North Inn. So in addition to all of these, the CAC, the public meetings as well as the online survey, we did intercept surveys in the park. We set up in late September from 9 a.m. to noon and from 3 to 5 p.m. And basically we grabbed anybody that walked by us in the park and asked them questions about how they use the park and what they want to see changed. Hopefully some of you are here tonight, thank you for coming. All right, let's dig into the online survey a little bit. So the online survey was, so city staff. I'm sorry to interrupt, Jess, I'm just curious by show of hands, who took the online survey, did anybody get a chance to do it in this room? So we can do some more outreach to the younger folks, I think is what I'm seeing. But that's great, thank you for your responses. Well, following up to that, did we intercept anybody in the park here? No, no interceptions? Okay, all right, I thought I'd ask that question. All right, so the online survey, so city staff posted up links to the website that brought you to the online survey. We had it offered in 11 languages, including English. And it was divided into four parts. The first part was tell us about yourself, what is your age? Do you have any children? Where do you live? The next is tell us about the park. How do you use the park today? What would you like to see changed with the park? Third part was voice your opinion. So this was an open-ended question of tell us whatever you want to about the park. We're listening, good bag, what do you want to see happen with the park? Let us know, don't hold anything back. And the fourth part was part of the community outreach, which is we were trying to get people to join the CAC. It's not too late to do that. We wanted people to come to the public meeting. Again, you did, thank you. And just get general announcements about the park development. So emails about what's happening next and about changes with the park. So let's dig into the survey results. So an overwhelming amount, 85% of people live in Burlington full time. And of those people, 68% live in the Old North End. And then 15% live in the New North End intervail area as well. So we really got a great response from the local community around Roosevelt Park, which is fantastic. When asked what people go to the park for, most people actually go for non-sports. So a lot of people were walking, jogging, using the playground, using for social gatherings, which pairs well with the Boys and Girls Club right across the street. But then that was followed closely by over half of people use the park for sports as well. And of the other, the 10%, mostly people were using it to walk their dogs. Well, 10% of survey respondents, how's that? All right, when asked about organized sports, most people play soccer and little league, which makes sense. Those are the two largest facilities in this space. Followed closely by tennis and basketball. The other category had about 9%, and most of the people wrote in Ultimate Frisbee, Ultimate Frisbee in this one. For non-sports, what does your family want to do in the park? And that's mostly a continuation of walk, jog, watch people, and social time as well. Now, when asked what stops people from going to the park, most people say they don't have any barriers. They can go to the park whenever they want. But those who do feel like they have barriers don't feel safe. This is mostly due to night lighting. And this little other category, we had a wide variety of responses here. They varied from there's too much dog poop, and dogs are off leashes, to there's too much infrastructure there to actually use the space. So that mostly pertains to the fences and some of the buildings. The playground's not really great shape. There's too few benches. A lot of people said they have to bring their own chairs to actually sit down and rest. When asked what sports they would like to see added to the park, holy ice hockey. A lot of people wanted ice hockey. That was nearly half of respondents wanted that. Afterwards, 32% we had tied for skate park and volleyball. After that, people were interested in table tennis, badminton, and we had a small percentage of people interested in botchy ball as well. So when asked to prioritize what non-sport facilities they would like to see in the park, most people wanted the basics. People wanted more furniture, places to sit, benches, picnic tables, covered pavilion, a place to rest in the shade or have parties or events, more access to drinkable water. And after that, people were interested in game tables, splash pad or pool for the summertime, and a refrigerated ice rink, which ties back into the ice hockey from the last question. Now, this is a lovely word cloud that we created out of the open-ended responses. We asked people what they wanted to see in the park, and the larger the word means, the more times it was mentioned. So a lot of people love baseball, tennis, playing, basketball, kids. It's a great spot. All right, I'm going to pass it back over to Aimen to talk about side analysis. Thanks, Jess. So we're at the halfway point. Congratulations, everybody. You've made it. I'm going to now talk about more of what's going on on the ground in the park. So again, here we are, Roosevelt Park. All right, this diagram is starting to explain the park boundaries. So the first thing we need you to know is that the park is actually extending beyond the property line. So the perimeter of the park is the curb here shown in blue. That's how far the park extends in real life, but the property line is here in dashed red. So much of the park extends beyond its boundaries. There's also a right of way through the center of the park. That's more of a historical piece that's not relevant to the park development, except that there's an old sewer line through there. So if we start making changes in that part of the park, it would be a good moment to upgrade the sewer lines there, just a consideration. And then Little Rosie is across the street and it's about a third of an acre dedicated to the play. So if you're coming to the park on foot or on a bike, you'll notice that sidewalks will bring you right to the block, but not onto the park itself. There's only one sidewalk on the park in the northeast corner. The rest of the perimeter is lined by different fences, some associated with the baseball, some with tennis, some with basketball. There's also a few runs of old concrete bollards that may not need to stay any longer. And there's two accessible entries here in purple. They're at the mid block of the park. We'd like to see those at the corners as well, but they're in the mid block right now. And there's no accessible entrance to Little Rosie right now. If you come there in a vehicle, you're parking on street in parallel spaces. The spaces are not striped, so the capacity that we're showing here of about 50 spaces is rough. You're also sharing those parking spaces with the residents. So it's first come, first served whether or not you'll be able to find a spot there as a visitor. There are no accessible meaning ADA or handicap accessible parking spaces at the park today. Zooming out and thinking about transit, starting with buses. So you see Rosie there in green. The first dashed line in black going around it is a five minute walk from the park. The outer one is a 10 minute walk from the park. So you're getting a sense of what we call the walkshed of the park, how long it takes to get there. Within that five minute walk, you can get to the Winooski bus line pretty easily. It's just a block away. Within 10 minutes, you get to North Avenue and City Loop for public transportation. Here, it's a little faint for some maybe, but we're showing the sidewalks in light blue. And again, they are pretty extensive throughout the neighborhood, but don't get you all the way to the park. The same is true of bike circulation. So we have access here to the intervail on the north and some of the bike lanes in the city. But they don't penetrate all the way to the park. OK, this diagram is going to look in a series of drawings at the uses, the sports uses on site today. So first, one notable thing goes back to that property line issue. The baseball field is in the northwest corner of the park. And the bleachers, dugouts, batting cage are all either on the property line, straddling the property line, or outside the property line. So that's of note there. The tennis courts here have recently been resurfaced. And speaking with the kids on the ball organization, there's interest in expanding more tennis spaces on site, if that's what's deemed best by the community. Skaters love this park, whether it's skate borders or inline skaters or people riding quads. They're sharing the space with basketball today, skating on the basketball court. And that's worked relatively well. I think they're good neighbors. But as we talk to skaters, there is a critical mass. There's a lot of them now. So it's probably time to start thinking about dedicated skating spaces here. And we'd also like to raise the question if Lil Rosie across the street, across Willow is the best place for play. Of course, there's a playground there today. It will need to be renovated in the next five or 10 years based on its condition. And we would like to ask if at that time it would make sense to move it into the main park. We see some issues having kids crossing Willow to get to Lil Rosie. Then looking at structures on site, some observations. First, we need water at the concession stand. The second has to do with the Boys and Girls Club building here in the center. The renovation of the interior is great. It's a great program and there's a lot of exciting things happening in that space. But walking by the building, you wouldn't really know because there's not a lot of windows or eyes in. They have spoken with them and of course there are security and access considerations that need to be made. But it would be great to be able to see in and out of that building a little more and have more eyes on the park. The storage shed is relatively new. But we see some opportunities to put some of the Burlington colors on that or maybe a public art opportunity. And one more note about the structures is that the bathrooms are not always accessible. You need to be let in or the Boys and Girls Club has to open it up for an event. And there may be a need for more regularly accessible restrooms. And finally, this third layer are the amenities that are sprinkled around the park. So trash cans, picnic tables, bike racks, a little bit of signage and lighting. All of those things are underserved right now. So we talked a bit about safety and how we could have more and better lighting. More trash cans would help bring down the amount of litter we see. Seating and picnic tables give us places to rest and also the picnic tables. We see them getting pulled around and put into different arrangements to have different events out there. But it's often we hear it's often not enough picnic table seating, so we may want more. All right, again, so this is the idea of a walk shed. So Rosie is here in the center and what you see in gray is about a 15 minute walk. So if you're in that gray area, which is almost the whole old North End, you can walk to the park in 15 minutes. And we started pondering, well, what if Roosevelt Park didn't exist? Where would you have to go to find some of the same amenities? Like if you wanted to go to a skate park, for example, or do some street style skating, you'd have to go down to the skate park on the waterfront. If you wanted to play baseball nearby, Smalley Park on the south side of the city is geographically the closest, but you might drive to Letty alternatively. And then Schmanzka is your next closest opportunity for tennis. You're all probably familiar with Hummerroy Park. That's sort of the sister brother park to Roosevelt, where you can also find basketball and playgrounds nearby. This is not in isolation. The park is not in isolation. There's a mosaic of community assets and anchors throughout the neighborhood. Some of note are the Boys and Girls Club. We've talked about that symbiotic relationship between the park and Boys and Girls Club. There's also the, sorry, blanking on the name Riverside Housing, which we know uses the park as a backyard, as a nearby play space and activation space. We think the same is probably true for the community health center, using it as a place to go outside and walk. And then, of course, when we talk about play and kids in the neighborhood, the Integrated Arts Academy is part of the play spaces that this neighborhood relies on, getting close to the end. So Jess touched on the diversity of this neighborhood. And as we dug into census information, just a couple of things we wanted to share, diversity is kind of a broad term that can take on a lot of different meanings for folks. We'd like to underscore the international nature of this community here, that 14% of folks in the census say that they were born outside of the US. And as we dig into that, which is very high for Vermont. So it is part of what makes this neighborhood so special. When we dig in, we see about a third are from Central, Middle Africa, a third from South Central Asia. And the final third is sort of mixed from different global communities. That quality of the North End being a place where cultures crossed and also where people come to the United States and find their first home. That's an enduring quality. That's not just a recent story. So as we dug into the history of the neighborhood, it's seen many waves of new Americans move to this community that all have come together to kind of create the mosaic of cultures that we see today. So it goes all the way back to Irish immigrants during the middle of the 1800s. Waves from Lithuania and Russia, Italy. And then in more recent history where we see Southeast Asia and Central Africa showing up more. Across the bottom, this is something we'll expand on in a future meeting. But we have maps of the neighborhood for the past 200 years. Starting with before the neighborhood had been platted out to the early breakdown of the blocks, the creation of the park and here, all the way up through the present. So more for another conversation. Also a reminder that when we talk about the community that we find today and the census information of the residents today, there's another cultural layer here that needs to be considered and acknowledged. Which is the Native American indigenous roots here. So dating back all the way to when the glaciers were treated from the Northeast. We found human settlement happening in the Northeast. So about 12,000 years ago with Paleo Indian tribes up through the Abenaki tribes that still live here today. So a very important layer to the cultural mosaic. So we're getting close, we're almost done. So speaking of stormwater, when rain falls on this park or when it falls on the streets, let's start there. It goes into drains on the corners. On the Northeast corner and the Southwest corner, those drains go eventually to the intervail, they flow out to the intervail. And that stormwater goes via a dedicated storm line, which means it's not mixing with sewage. If you've heard of CSOs and those issues, this is a great setup where the water is staying clean until it gets out to the intervail. On the other two corners, on the Northwest and the Southeast, we have a different condition where the water flows in through the drain and then goes down into a large underground chamber that has an open bottom. So when that chamber fills with water, it'll slowly start percolating down through the soil, which is where we want the rainwater to go, not to go into a pipe. So that's the condition of drainage in the streets. And then for the site itself, one of the great things that you may not know about the site is that it sits on a prehistoric sand dune. So every drop of water that falls on the surface quickly drains down through the sand. So that's great when you're building ball fields, soccer fields, and you wanna make sure they dry out quickly. Having sandy soils is ideal. So most of the site, when the water falls on it, it drains right down through the sandy soils. The areas shown in dark gray are impervious, meaning they don't allow the water through. And those are the tennis courts, basketball courts, the pathways, and the roofs we have in the park. So if you're curious about percentage, about 27% of the site is impervious today. Per the city's ordinance, you're allowed to develop up to 30% impervious. So as we think about future designs, we can't add a lot of plazas or hardscapes that are impervious. We're already at that regulatory threshold. So we wanna be staying where we are or maybe moving the other direction and making it more pervious. A little drawing down here just to show you, there's a few layers of that sand before you get to the bedrock below. And a reminder, this is an urban park with a neighborhood context around it. But you can almost throw a stone and hit the Winooski River. So there's this funny adjacency between a highly urban site that has parking around it and curb ramps and city park benches and all that. But just to the north, you can tap into and access this massive ecological system on the Winooski River. Whoops, take my word for it. So yeah, just to the north we have the Winooski River, the flood plain, all the marshes down there, the salmon caves. Salmon caves, salmon falls, did I get that right? Yeah, I said enough on that. So, that's the end of the presentation. We're gonna see if you have any questions and we can talk through them. And then we'll get to the activities. Any general questions? There'll be lots of opportunities to grab us on the side and get down into the details in a bit if you want. General questions out there? I was just interested in how you were making a distinction between the property boundary and then just outside the property boundary. It's all city property, right? So what's the- Yeah, the city can speak to how those relationships work between the different departments, but yeah. But it's all city property. City right away, does the city own all of the right-of-ways around there? Yeah, we own all of it, so it's basically it's right away. The city built it the right-of-way. So if at some point the community wanted to have a sidewalk, for example. The park is where the sidewalks go, but it is all city property. It's all city property, but it's in the right-of-way that, theoretically, Jim and I can fight over, like, yes it could. Yeah. It's a- No, I was just- I just noticed there's a distinction, but it's not like- It means that what's outside the property line is vulnerable. It's not as promised as parkland as what's inside the property line. If the city can start to thrive in the future in 30 years, then that right-of-way is there for that reason, to provide a space for transportation and other infrastructure. So I would not perpetuate the building of park stuff outside the property line. But I'm also not advocating for peeling everything back right to the property line. That seems like drastic. Yeah, I'll go for it. What would happen to the, like, area in Yoho, if you were to incorporate it into the main area? Yeah, so the question was, what would happen to Lil Rosie if we took the play and moved it into the main park? Is that right? No. We don't know. It would open up that space for another park use. So it's an interesting design conversation. Do you have a thought? No. Something that can fit well in? No. Well, that's what we're going to do today. We're going to do some sketching on ideas for that. You know, things to think about is that that Lil Rosie parcel is lying in residences. You know, there's not a street between the park and the houses. So that means noisy things probably don't make a lot of sense there. But yeah, it could be a blood slate if we move into the move play and move to the park. I think you're next. Okay. This is just my own not understanding. Can you explain the building being the Boys and Girls Club on our plan? Can you help me understand what that relationship is? Yeah, I'll do my best to see if you can help me. But the best thing you can do is make it work. So within the park is the building. The building is the one. John, you know what here it was? I mean, it was like a maintenance shed for us. Yeah, I want to say 2013 or 2014 because it was right when I went on. It used to be a former shed that was like hardly used and then they created another shed. And then the city decided to allow the Boys and Girls Club to maintain that property so we could extend to our teen academic center. So that building turned into a teen academic center for us to use while we had all of our other teams go to the main site to have another site for teens that wanted that extra time to study and to get in to have that building for them. So it's a city building? No problem. I don't know if it's a lease, but... Low used. Long-standing agreement. I think the idea too is it put more eye to the work. That just popped another question in my head is do you guys use it most of the day or just after school? When I was there, it was used for most of the day. For staff planning, meetings, board meetings, tours, and then it became like the academic center. During the time where teens didn't have to wait until six o'clock to get that help and support, where they weren't walking into Oak Street, where they had a facility that they could call their own. There's someone there all prep work and office work and then the students come home. But it really is lovely. I would encourage anybody who hasn't gone there to see it or to get to know the Boys and Girls Club to go check that space out. Because once you crack that door and go in there, it's a lot of art projects and studying and organizing exactly. So it's really inspiring. So many of you have already voted on the board in the back. If you haven't yet, place the sticker on the board. We'll get you some stickers. John, do you still have them? John's the guy you want to go to to get stickers to do that. That's activity one. We're essentially asking you to sort of recreate what we get on the online survey and rank these different activities. So we're going to take about four or five minutes to let you all do that. Maybe take care of your plate and then we're going to reconvene at the tables for a second activity. Yeah, go ahead. If we don't see an activity that we would like on this survey, can we add it somehow? Yeah, this second activity, you can definitely do this comment card from the back. You could write it on there if you want. And then when we do this next activity, that'll be a chance to incorporate some other ideas too. Yeah, sorry. So Sophie in the back is holding comment cards. If you have something you want to share that doesn't quite fit into one of the activities, absolutely use that as a way to share your thoughts. There's a box back there. My models are showing you. Or you could place your comments. So when we get back together, we're going to break up into different tables and work together to design our great renovation part. You want to hear all your ideas. So let's take five minutes in the back and then we'll reconvene at these tables. I think this is a really good process. I would have liked to, like we had more kids here. I would have liked to have seen them be a little bit more engaged. So we have some that are engaged and then we have some that are left. But I think it's important to have them involved because that space is really important to them. This park is really important to them in this neighborhood. Is there anything that stood out to you from the presentations? They stood out. I thought it was a really well-rounded presentation in terms of explaining the current uses and the state of the park and also incorporating thinking about Little Rosie because that park is important too. A lot of people don't even realize it's there, but it's a used park in this area. And so to have one of the children ask about, well, what about Little Rosie? What are we going to do there? It's a great thing. I was like, why do we have to change everything? Isn't it fine? Is it fine or is it not fine? Does Roosevelt need changes? I think Roosevelt needs some updating. So we have a tennis court. It's not in the best shape. If you go to tennis courts that are in other parts of the city, they're in much better shape in terms of having been resurfaced. There's a lot of TLC that's needed. And I think the idea of having a space that incorporates a variety of activities a little bit better because sometimes on busy days, things really overlap in a way that... I don't want to say people get hurt, but if you're trying to skate and a basketball goes flying by or baseball goes flying by, I think it is time to have thought about a redesign. And we've seen it done in other parts of the city. So it's nice to see it being done here. Thanks. Thank you. Hi Andrew, Todd. What do you think about all this? I'm so glad that there's a public process happening for this. I'm curious about... I heard hockey was the biggest ice hockey, but I wonder if people realize there's ice skaters that maybe don't want ice hockey, but we want to rank too. So I was going to go see if ice... Skating. Ice. Yeah, just ice. Ice baby. What did you... Is there anything that stood out for you on that? Presentation? Yeah. I think it's so important. There was an event that happened a couple years ago around this park, but it had sort of skipped this public process. And so I'm very pleased that this is happening now so that it is giving... I was loving the context, you know, the history, the kind of where we all sit as neighbors and residents and sort of players in the park. And that was not part of that first meeting. So I'm really happy that this meeting has had that context. It's so important. Yeah. That's new, right? Yeah. My name is Nuruddin. It's a good way to Scaldia and bring the community together. So the community wants to change the park for the community needs and stuff like that. Was there any human surprise to you about that? What did you learn from watching the presentation? There are some places that people... There are some needs that aren't met for Scaldia in the park with what people want. And when we bring the community together, what was it? When we ask the community what they want for the park, then it'll be way better for... I don't know how to explain it. What do you want to see in the park? Probably more space for the people to sit down and stuff like that. It looks like suicide scene, stuff like that. Do you use the park? Yeah, I play basketball there. Maybe... I think we started at the park in about 2000 or 2001. So we have a program on the tennis courts all summer long. And we're connected to the Boys and Girls Club with that program. Then in the winter, we just cross the street and do a program inside the Boys and Girls Club. But we're just doing a tennis program open to all the kids in the neighborhood. But it's gotten much bigger. We've gotten kids from all over the city to come because it's free. And... You have hundreds of kids out there. We have over 100 kids a day. We're just... I mean, we see the park all the time. So our input is we'd like to see someplace where people could sit and eat because we see a lot of food distributed at the park. We think there'd be a more civilized way of having tables for people that sit. The other thing is we just have so much overflow of kids. Yasmeena's here. We'd like to use that grassy area on the south part right next to the building. There's a grassy area. For some, if possible, we had a proposal to put cement down there and make mini courts, but that was nixed by the city because of a permeable surface. So we had this idea that maybe turf there so that we could play tennis, soccer, some mini baseball, volleyball, anything on a turf in a rectangle right there. But that... I mean, it costs some money, but I think it'd be used for sure. Maybe you can give us just an overview of what's happening here today. Sure. So tonight we are hosting the community for a public community meeting concerning Roosevelt Park. All of our parks in the city at some point over time, we try to have a comprehensive plan done for them. So that way, as we do improvements over time, there are planned improvements. You don't end up putting your playground into a space that eventually is where your shelter needs to be. So it's something that we do at all of our parks. So basically, as we develop them over time, I mean, improvements, we're doing them in a way that the community wants us to do. This is the second sort of attempt around Roosevelt Park. So is that right, or what's been done at Roosevelt Park up until now? Well, I think in the 90s, in the 90s, there was work. I mean, that probably was some of the changes that were stopped and more recent in the park. I guess that's more recent. That was, what, 20-some years ago. And then in, I'll lose my track of my timing, but I think it was 2019, we were approached. We had some donors that were interested in making specific changes to Roosevelt Park. And that's when we listened and we were interested. I think we did one community meeting at that time. But then we realized that really, we needed to hear from the whole community, the whole neighborhood on what those improvements were and not just making specific improvements that a small group wanted to make to that park. So that's where we are today, is listening to the whole community and then we'll see if the donors are still interested. And the city has already committed $250,000 of ARPA funds towards the shelter, if that's what the community wants in that park. Does it have to be a shelter or has to be a building of some sort? Well, right now it's $250,000 towards the shelter. If the community said, the neighborhood said they did not want to shelter the park, we would just come back to Board of Finance City Council and say, here's what they wanted. Is it okay to use the $250,000 towards this purpose? It doesn't have to be a building. Yeah. So besides public input process like this, dots, chatting with folks, what other ways do you go about making decisions around a public infrastructure this big? Are there other data points that you're looking at? Well, we also do focus groups. So there's groups with user groups that are using, like Jake and his tennis program. We talked to the baseball program, the Boys and Girls Club. So we're also looking, talking to organizations that are using that. We also have a community group that's dedicated neighborhoods, really looking at the whole process to help sure that we're getting all the voices in. So those are, and we did a public survey. So those are some of the ways that we're getting information. But we also talked to public works. What are their plans? Is for sidewalks and streets through there. And stormwater. So we talked with our other city departments to make sure that what we're doing fits into what they're doing too. And I wonder about, is there anything around police data or neighborhood use data? Is there any, you know, like, when I think something was mentioned about kids having to cross to little Rosie, is there any data that says that there have been accidents? Yeah, we haven't noticed. I mean, it's an interesting question. So I don't know if we've done the police data on that. I know DPW collected some data as far as speed. And that's why they added in, there's now a flashing light. So the kids are crossing from, say, the Boys and Glow's Club or, you know, from the neighborhood into the park on that one side. They put that in based on data that they had gotten for that. But we, I don't, I'd have to check them with the dean to see if they got any specific police data on if there's any accidents related to kids crossing to say little Rosie. Do you remember the police? Thanks. You're welcome. Thanks for being here. What's the timeline on this? Well, we'll wrap up the public input. I'm not exactly sure when we're wrapping up the public input. That's another person that can answer that question better than me. We won't see changes in the park in the next year. I think it's one of those ones. I mean, the shelter, if it is something that the community wants, then probably next year we would start doing the design process for it. And so then what are we going into 24? So likely it would be built in 25, would be my guess. And we've put up over the past two summers, we've popped a tent, like a commercial type tent in the parks and put it up for the summer. And it was really well used. So I think it shows that there's a strong interest in it. It's a meal site for the summer for the program. The Boys and Girls Club has lunch there. We provide a dinner program in the evening. So there's a lot of uses of the park. We're having a covered space is really helpful. All right, thanks. So we had a great discussion. I'll start from St. Mary's and work my way over to Walnut, I guess. We started out talking about the tennis courts. They're recently resurfaced. This group has been made. Let's stick with the use there for tennis. So we've got our two tennis courts here. We started thinking about this space underneath the pine trees. Super shady. Wondering if it could be a place potentially for a flexible paved area that could be where the skaters can go and have their own space separate from the basketball court. As we were talking about the basketball court, we were also talking about creating foot sol or another court sport realizing that we're already at that impervious limit. We can't add a lot more impervious surface here. What if we extended a bit more paving? We're so close with the basketball courts. Maybe 10 feet more. Keep the basketball courts as is but add striping for foot sol going in the other direction to elevate the flexibility and multi-use of that paved area without adding a lot more paving. The need for shade here is real. So if we start to open this up and create a skatable flexible closet there, it would be great to think to have a shade structure here just off the existing building. That could be a place for those picnic tables to be. Get you out of the sun. The Boys and Girls Club camps would really use that a lot as well as kids on the ball and other programs. We talked about the building and a very interesting conversation. Is there an opportunity to rethink that? Do the Boys and Girls Club have another opportunity in another space nearby? That would allow us to eventually rethink this building, take it away and create more open sight minds. I think it was trying to do justice to the comment but trying to have more visibility through the site. So we talked about that. I think the group was a bit split and a lot of love also for what's going on there. So I think the consensus was it would need a real viable home before it would be relocated. Our group was a bit undecided. We didn't quite get to consensus on the second half of the field. Support for the little meek staying and the baseball field staying was real and powerful. A lot of reference to the cost that's been invested there already and out on the way from that since the meek we talked about kind of continuing the shared use where soccer takes the outfield for part of the year and then baseball puts up its outfield fence for the rest of the year during the baseball season. We also started talking about is anybody really hitting the home run? Do we need an outfield fence? Is there another way to think about that? So that's a conversation we'd like to keep having. And then the last one was thinking about Rosie. We could supplant the play. But we did think about could play happen over here instead. Originally we started sketching that as a turf area that could be used for spillover for kids on the ball and other tennis uses to play a little tennis on the turf. Turf tennis? And then we started playing with switching that with play. Our group I think did like the idea of being in the park. But we weren't convinced about any particular program here because of the neighbors. So more thought about what's the use that could be a good neighbor. Ah, I forgot a great idea. So thinking about the connections we were looking with Star Wars Boys and Girls Club and creating a raised crosswalk kind of elevating what's already happening there today making it like a really wide speed bump for the kids crossing and drivers are really encouraged to slow down and stop. Same idea here and also wondering if that would be an opportunity to go a step further and it's not a raised crossing that cars pass through but actually closing it off. We acknowledge that there's fire access and all sorts of things that would need to be figured out. It might not be possible. But some interest in it's possible closing the city street. Love the enthusiasm. We would look at doing it here. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so let's move to another table and hear from another group. Anything else? All right, who's in charge? I'm in charge. Oh, great. So this first group over here our group decided that little league with a multi-purpose field should probably stay in place. Infrastructure subject came up but also the idea that Oak Street is very, very busy and that fence there can help kids stay off of the street and provide a little bit of light over there. We liked basketball courts where they were. We didn't want to get rid of them. They're very well used and we like the tennis courts where they are as well. It's the fact that they've been finished recently, put a lot of money into that. We want to keep those where they are as well. Playground, we wanted to move it from Little Rosie into the main park over here. It's exact placement over on this side wasn't fully fleshed out but we have it here at the moment. Now over here on this side of the building that would be the south side of the building we're looking at putting in a splash pad in the summertime that converts to an ice rink in the winter time. And over here in Little Rosie we're looking at a smaller skate park over here because I know we have to worry about our impervious space as well. And the other half could be a volleyball court too. Since I know a lot of people have the volleyball court over here we're going to move it over here since we're replacing it with the ice rink. There were a lot of people who were wanting to drop in a lot of seating, lots of tables. We have a lot of trees in here as well that was very important to keep the trees. We wanted to keep what's there and we wanted to add more because we don't want a shade structure we actually want trees to provide that shade. And finally another big idea that's bubbled forth would be blocking off this section of the road as well making it to where emergency vehicles can go through but it's an extension of the park and kids can get across safely to the volleyball court and the skating rink. Did I miss anything, my group? Yeah, that the skate park would be more... more street style. Yes, less balls. Yeah. Alright, see you for the next one. Alright. So a wonderful kid from a dominating group I know is afraid that I'm going to ask him to talk. But we spent a lot of time talking about uses that could overlap and we had a couple of people in our group that were really tuned in to impervious coverage and trying not to go over. We definitely came to an agreement here I think before we got here there was another group that had had this similar layout but the little league field stayed and the multi-purpose field stayed. A lot of stuff just got moved here a little bit but we had this big rink space that we're a little afraid might put us over impervious wise but we did not want to refrigerate it we felt like it could be much more multi-purpose as an open slab of pavement and we're curious about overlapping or superimposing badminton on volleyball and little Rosie ended up being a playground. We did have a bunch of community gardens during a certain portion of the middle but I think those got pulled. Before the second iteration there was a group of ALB kids who were here and they had a design proposal as well but they had to leave early. I photographed it and what we have looks like soccer all the way across here to a certain extent of course it overlapped onto the street no harm in that neighborhood, skate park two basketball courts a playground and tennis and community gardens and a performance pavilion and four skate pavilions. Gardens were across from the boys and girls club. I thought they had them here. You put them over by little Rosie. We were talking about that idea of the street somewhere in here I think they were working pretty quickly because they had to go. That's pretty close Anyway, we'll share this with the consultants two tennis courts I don't think there's volleyball there anymore there used to be volleyball in the early 2000s but one of the Vietnamese community was there but there hasn't been volleyball there. This was just their iteration. This is what they came up with. It turns out that group didn't have a skate park. They did have skate parks. Right in the middle. That's roughly what it was. I didn't get a chance to interact with any of them but we have it here. That's awesome. Next and final. We were thinking about stormwater management and also making an argument or a case to city council to up that if there was an amenity that we were adding that would benefit a lot of people that could be something we could consider. In the interim, there's rain gardens or cisterns or other ways to be creative about capturing the stormwater on the site to offset what we would add to it. Does the city consider for this making purviews? Yes. That's a weird question. You can make avian that is purviews but depending on where you are some cities count it as purviews. Interesting question. For this part, when I verified the purviews the little league infield is considered purviews. It's a playground where the structures are. Just think about that as impervious. Just FY. It's not huge like a building but it's still something. Anyhow, we played with things regardless of that thinking we could be creative about it. Adding a pavilion adjacent to the building thinking that splash pad is a great balance to warmer climate. Every time it's super hot we want to go to the beach. The beach is closed unfortunately and the Lake Champlain is not what it is these days. It would be a great alternative and a lot of people don't have air conditioning so we really should think about that. We moved the playground into the main portion of the park next to the splash pad having the play together. It was definitely an idea of layering a lot of uses in between the tennis and basketball area getting rid of one of the rows of pine trees and those are discussion about more trees as well. And then the same idea with Little Rosie is adding in a lot of uses starting with a skatepark that could be an ice rink with shade and then we have multiple uses like handball on a hard surface that potentially has a fence around it so we can use it for different things. We talked about the Little League just, you know, it takes up there's a lot of space taken up by it but is, you know, played with a reorientation and of course we have to remember that the sun affects where the pitcher's mound can be and the batter can be so there's that limitation but if we could reorient it I think to maximize the multi-use field that would be an approach. Anything that I missed from the group? We talked about a movable outfield. Yes, yes a better fence for Little League so that we could remove it more often than what is currently done so it's more movable. There's also a discussion about adding something on top of the building for capturing the lovely sunset and Sierra's eclipse maybe some tiki drinks were discussed but just, you know, is there a way to build up instead of building additional impervious in the park itself? Speaking of sports we're going to let you all go thank you so much for coming we want to make a pitch for the community advisory committee so our next CAC meeting will be on the 15th Do you want to make a request for people to keep trying to sign up? Yes, if there's interest it's going to be the next meeting will be virtual and it's going to be a application process for it to be as inclusive and diverse as we can be as is the neighborhood so that will be it So, next steps in the design process we'll take all of this back we'll we'll take all of this back we'll process it, we analyze it then when we come back in a few months for the next meeting we'll have conceptual designs that try to bring together the best of each of these so you'll see different options what if we really stick with a lot of what we have and just try to infill the gaps that's one strategy what if we take a big swing and rethink basketball that might be enough and so we'll work using your feedback using the stickers, using the survey to come up with some options that you think reflect your interests and scenarios and see what you like and so that'll be coming up So the kids from the neighborhood who were here tonight they have pretty severe time limitations and schedule limitations so I was wondering if you could go meeting with the youth programs is not hard if you have Sam and LaVar if you could go and give them the survey at their, when they get together because they all meet after school and they're pretty accessible so I think it would just be like you gotta go to them they're not gonna come it's really hard for them to come tonight with their schedules we've definitely been trying to get out there we've been to the boys and girls club well I think you have to make an appointment with Sam you have to make an appointment with LaVar ask them specifically when should we come what day, what time and then they'll let you know I think they'll feel more not just a passive try I think they did that boys and girls club but here ALB, the fact that you're the same the kids are upstairs and King Street, LaVar is there at certain times thanks I know that these guys have been working so hard to try to get out continue pushing that getting them here tonight was a lot of work the only thing I would share was the experiences that we get more input at this thing and then when it comes to that second meeting people are like in my opinions I almost say it's even more important that you come to the next meeting because that's where we've heard it all and we're putting it together and so if you see it for the second time think to yourself oh I'm really gonna make that next one because oftentimes the numbers like really blow it off because people are like oh I already gave my points but we're really really looking for you to give that second input because it's yeah yeah that's great is that meeting already scheduled? we don't have the date I think it's in a few months I think three months I think from now so February, late January thank you everybody thank you so much for coming out thank you thanks for coming out thank you