 Okay, I think we need to get one. I have only a couple things officially on our... Can you hear me okay? Oh, okay. We will try to make sure everyone... How's that? Can you hear? Oh, I can kind of hear it back there. That's good. All right, so we only have a couple of items officially on our agenda tonight. Start with the begging ordinance repeal and then move on to the parking garage. Speak a little bit more about that when we get there. But, so is there any other things that people want to add to the agenda? Move around? No? Okay, great. So without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So on to general business and appearances. So this is a time for anyone from the public to come speak to the council regarding some item that is not on our agenda. And if you have anything you'd like to say, if you would say your name, where you're from and try to keep your comments to about two minutes. One topic not on the agenda. In your name? Stephen Whitaker, my pillar. Since the new paving was done, the crosswalks were not set at the proper grade and the water and the ice is standing in the crosswalks at Staten Taylor, Staten Elm, et cetera. I've taken photos. I've mentioned these to Bill. But apparently they were supposed to get regraded so that the water would drain to the drains and I thought that was going to happen long since by now but we're heading into another winter and the water piling up in the crosswalk turns to ice right where people are trying to cross in traffic and that's just a dangerous... So I'm sorry, what is, you're saying that the grade of what now is the grade of the... Elevation of the drains. It's often an inch higher than the elevation where the crosswalk is. So we got standing water and ice and freezing in the walkways because the paving wasn't done properly and I tried to get it moving while it was still under warranty so to speak and it didn't get corrected and it's still not corrected. Thank you. We will look into that. Any other thoughts, comments? Okay, moving on. So last time we had the first public hearing for the repeal of a begging ordinance and so tonight is the second public hearing for that so I'm going to start by opening the public hearing. So if anyone from the public has any comments on the repeal of the begging ordinance now is a good time to do that. Okay, seeing none, any comments from the council? Super duper. So let me... So I'm going to officially close the public hearing and I think we probably... Do we need to vote? We need to vote on this. I move that we amend the city ordinances to repeal section 11-708. Second. Further discussion? Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Thank you, Rosie. Great and because it was unanimous we don't have to take a roll call vote so it's approved. Thank you everyone. I am very glad to have that off of our books. Okay, so moving on. So moving on to talking about the proposed parking garage structure. So there's a couple of things that are going to be the focus of the conversation tonight. One is about the structure and then the other I think is about the facade more or less. I want to just be clear that things that we're generally not debating tonight is where, like is this the right location? We're talking about this location and other things might include like whether or not we're going to include it on the ballot. That's not the conversation for tonight. This is about what would be in a permit application for an upcoming approval of the DRB DRC. So having said that, there's, well, so one possibility is that I can just turn it over to you all and then we can... So the order in which I'd like to talk about things is what? I mean, there's some discussion or there's been some comments from the public about some pretty hefty ideas, right? Like should we have a roof? What if there was a pool? What if there were tennis courts? That kind of thing. I'd like to discuss that kind of thing first. Anything that might require substantial extra funding and then secondly, we'll go on from there to talking about the structure and then after that the facade. Does that sound okay, team? You okay with that as an order? Okay, great. Did that jibe with what you had understood? Close enough. Close enough. Fantastic. Take it away. Okay, first of all, I could introduce Greg Rabadou. I think everyone who's met might want to introduce yourselves. I'll start. My name is Glenn Hutchison. I'm City Councilor from District 3. John Abate, District 1. Ashley Hill, District 3. And Watson, Mayor. Hey Greg. Jack McCullough from District 2. And on the phone. Rosie Krueger, District 1. And Connor Casey is not with us. For folks that are out there, we've set it up in this fashion tonight so that we can have a work session. I hope that you can hear, there are some copies of the plans out, but I think the idea is to have Greg do a brief presentation about the proposal and then have questions and answers and comments from people about the topics as the mayor outlined. We have one, this is a mic, Greg. So if you and I can share this, I think that will help people a little better. I'm going to interject one more time. Just again, I'm thinking about the process. If after you're done and we have our discussion, I want to, I think it makes sense to take this piece, one piece at a time. And so I guess I would ask the public to comment specifically on the section that we're talking about, if that makes sense. So we're talking about the structure and we're about to make some decisions about that. That would be the time for you all to comment about the structure. And then separately comment on the facade as we get to that part. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that was my intent. I still can't see the video feed. I'm not seeing it on the website where the agendas are posted and I'm not seeing it on the office website. So if there's any visuals, can you guys email them to me? If you go to the website and just go to agenda within the agenda. It's not there. I got it there. City website? Yeah. Yeah. I went to the agenda section, but I'm not finding the video feed. Okay. If you want to get all the printed stuff we're looking at. Although there is printed stuff we just got tonight that we don't have electronically to send out. We can maybe follow up with that. We can send it out as soon as we get it. Just so Rosie knows there's nothing being projected on the screen here. Right. So what you would see in the video feed is just us sitting here talking. Okay, I'll picture that. Lots of experience. Versus the drawings that are closest to what we have is part of the link of the agenda. The updates aren't here yet. No, these aren't. These are new. Rosie, I'm hearing that on Orca Media the YouTube feed, it should now be up. Can you try looking at that again? I'm getting September 12th. Okay. Electronics. Yeah, it's running here. Sorry. So I think Greg will just walk us through the basics of what we have in front of us so that everyone is acquainted with that and then we can go into the discussions. Thank you for your time. I'm pleased to be here tonight. I'm sorry to give you a bunch of paperwork just the beginning of the meeting but I want to show you the substantive part of our discussion regarding which form of the structure we want to work with. That was transmitted earlier today. Everything will be available this thing in the morning tomorrow for you as well online. What I've presented to you is a little list of discussion points about the garage, trying to sweep up all the various threads of conversation that I've heard between city staff, input from the public, adjacent property owners. So I've got some bullet points in this cover letter but the very front part of it is our primary charge tonight is we are going to evaluate a few different forms that the garage can take in terms of its internal functional relationships and selecting one of those to move forward for development into a full application to the Design Advisory Committee and the Development Review Board which our current schedule calls for us to do to have those hearings during the month of October. I also was brought along some additional supporting information to help people understand some specific aspects of the project, some photographs of other places where people have used green walls for instance and we took the time to colorize the elevations that were submitted earlier. So nothing sort of totally new here but at the same time a little graphically easier to understand and hopefully that will facilitate tonight's discussion. Now briefly all of you and everyone to the project those of you who are looking at a plan this is State Street, this is Taylor Street, this large gray blob here is the original Capital Plaza Hotel and Conference Center. There's a portion of Christ Church Episcopal shown here and there's a small garage building people call it is located here. Those are existing structures. This form right here is the previously approved 84 room Hampton Inn and Suites which was approved earlier this year and when it was a smaller version of this parking garage was also approved with it. Now comes the city who's interested in developing a parking garage with a broader purpose and so we're presenting to you tonight a larger garage footprint that occupies about a half acre of land shown subdivided here which would be, I understand gifted from the Hampton Inn to the city for purposes of providing space to build this parking garage. The parking garage overlaps onto the land of Mary Heaney which is subject to a long term lease belonging to the city. So the entire length of the parking garage is roughly 216 feet I believe. It is also about 115 feet wide. As we evaluate different ways of putting a garage on this site different internal circulation patterns we should take for granted that all the footprints would be the same. There's no real change in the site planning associated with the various options so you should feel free to decide without concern that one of them's wider or something like that even if our schematic drawings and stuff you know having all sort of caught up with each other but we've only been on a case for a couple of weeks here so we've produced a lot of information in the last few weeks. So other pertinent features that we want to keep track of moving forward of course the relationship of this project to the original Hampton Inn project but also its relationship to Christchurch Episcopal and its impact on the Haney lot and the farmers market that uses it. The city has already in process a plan to develop a bike path. There's a pedestrian bike path bridge. It's immediately adjacent to the bow string bridge that the Vermont Central Railroad uses. That bike path carves through a corner of the property crosses the tracks and ends up going off to Taylor Street. So one of the things that we have to deal with moving forward is integrating that feature into the plans for this project. So we've been working on that since the original approval process but it's still a part of this. Pedestrian access to this garage would be the same in all the schemes. The primary access to the parking garage is here via a dedicated right away or easement. We're still waiting for legal opinion which form that should take but that the easement would deliver cars to a point here where there's an elevator lobby and one of the two sets of emergency stairs. Then cars would drive around in here. In addition to that there are pedestrian accesses from the other emergency stair out to the bike path and there's a pedestrian and potentially secondary vehicle access accessing the remainder of the Haney lot on the north side of the building. What will happen is that depending on the form of the garage some of them will slope different ways. The various solutions may have different heights and we'll discuss that because those will be among some of the pros and cons. But the charge was to come up with at least 338 parking spaces. At least one of the schemes produced is a few more spaces than that. As many as 367. We're going to explore whether or not that's a good idea but that's the basic problem we're trying to solve and the sort of lay of the land and the context for it. I want to just go through quickly some of the bullet points on the last page of the transmitter letter. I don't think you need to read along but essentially just to explain the outside facade of the building we'll talk about later when it's appropriate but there are certain features that we know for sure will be incorporated into the design and I would like to just put those on the table so that people can focus on things that maybe haven't been committed to yet. Certainly number one is the garage will incorporate electrical vehicle charging stations. We don't know how many yet because we're waiting for our traffic consultants and our parking garage consultants to explain to us what what data sets are out there to measure how many are appropriate. So but I do believe that initially we'll have some and then we will provide in the design the capacity to add more as electric cars, chargeable cars become more and more prevalent. That will mean we'll probably provide for additional blank spaces in our circuits panels and additional conduit for various locations to accommodate addition you know plugging in additional elements as we go. We also will illustrate in the plans that are submitted for approval, storage for bicycles there are many places in the plans depending on which version is picked where it's a sort of dead space created by the intersection of two 90 degree spaces. So we assume that we'll provide some kind of lockable bike storage in the garage hopefully you know at various levels. I know that when we developed the hotel plans there was thought about providing some kind of free lease kind of bike situations analogous to New York City Bike Program that the at least the hotel is interested in having some bikes for hire in some form or another because the bike path is right there. So in the garage these are sort of just points but the garage will have a full sprinkler system in it. It will have a security system in it which will have cameras in the stairwells at the entrances and exits and at certain key points along the building perimeter most especially on the south side by the bike path and adjacent to those bridges which my understanding is that those cameras will be monitored by a sort of internet based camera link. The team is also evaluating the use of the district heat system to do some snow melting and you know I don't know if that's been committed but a commitment to explore and to sort of understand how it could be integrated into the project is underway. Can I ask you about some of these things? Yes. Assuming you're interruptible. Yeah. I just want to check in before we move on too quickly. I mean about the cameras I'm thinking about the storage of the data. Has that been incorporated into the cost of that? Or is it just because I seem to need some data storage. Well we just today met with a one of our team members who is going to be involved in the electronic aspects of this thing the gates and you know the ticket system and all of that. They tell us that the project will require some kind of server room for managing all of that. Oh okay. So I imagine it's just a question of putting another plate into the rack as far as being able to provide data storage but we're going to have a live internet connection to this location and an air conditioned room for all the equipment that runs the parking garage and I assume the security system can be integrated into that. Thank you. So just generally speaking the project is designed for drainage. We're going to have a couple of different kinds of things going on here in terms of storm water. I know you don't care about that but I think so let me just pause on that for a moment then that the water will be collected from each level. There is likely going to be a series of large diameter baffles underneath the slab for the sort of temporary retention of that water while settling the solids cooling anything that might need to happen to that water. It will also have to go through an oil and grit separator so that anything that drips off of cars or anything won't end up in the storm water and then ultimately after it goes through all those systems it will discharge via a conduit that's going to be built into the head wall of the bike path and discharge into the north branch of the Winooski River but that'll be sort of treated to a secondary level or whatever by the systems in the building. As far as flood goes the best way I can explain this is that we're going to try to design a garage in a way that's volume neutral so that even though there's a building here we're going to provide for volume that's not parking level volume it's just storage volume so that we essentially in putting this garage here we end up with sort of no net change in the sort of amount of capacity for this piece of land to deal with storm water so water would flow in on the east and portions of the north and south side there'll be openings where it can flow back out again uninterrupted so in the worst case scenario if there was a flood this building would be resilient to withstand that but it would also it wouldn't be contributing to any loss of volume. There'll be some additional pieces of that that we'll deal with when we come through so it's for approvals to modify the hotel plans to do similar things I just want to make sure I understand that so by loss of volume you mean the capacity of that area to take a volume of water. Correct. During an inundation there's space, non-parking space that is designs to sort of absorb that flow and then when it retreats it's allowed to retreat out naturally without any pumps or anything like that and it wouldn't impact parked cars it's just sort of we're using the footprint of the garage to make that happen so I know it's a concern of people and that's why I wanted to mention it so those are my brief bullet points and so I think with that said I'll let you move into your section about the sort of other articles I may have skipped over one of these because I did want to mention that we are exploring the use of the addition of solar panels to the top of the building what I can tell you with certainty is that the building structure will be designed to handle any extra load that that might entail beyond that I think that's a city decision as to whether or not to implement that as a part of this but the project will be designed to accommodate it either during first construction or at some point in the future and before we get into the specifics about the alternatives could you tell us how what the distance is between the garage and the hotel and the river and back okay our goal is to try to create a ten foot wide space between the garage and the hotel so it would be an imaginary property line sort of splitting right down the middle with five feet on either side of it that's a magic number for us in terms of fire issues and the ability to have openings and walls and things like that but it also feels like sort of the minimum amount of space that we can do because that's a major corridor from State Street down to the bike path just before our meeting I was talking to a constituent who said she really wants to have that design so it's attractive enough that people will want to ride their bikes or walk back through to get to the bike path because you're having it just a dark kind of forbidden tunnel it's not the best thing well it's going to feel like an alley in some ways you'll have buildings on either side the design of the hotel and the design of the garage are intended to be nice materials it's not like there's an ugly side to the building so that's that and appropriate paving and landscaping the other thing is that that overlap is the building hotel building necks in a lot so that the duration of that narrowness is fairly short about 50 feet it looks brown here but it's green space but the other question I was thinking of was the green space or open space between the hotel and the garage and the river what's behind the hotel and the garage so the buildings meet the southerly property boundary at a kind of acute angle so what you're going to get all the way along the project are sort of big triangles of space up here it's mostly vegetation immediately adjacent to the hotel there's some social spaces then there's another band of vegetation and right now our thinking has been that we would create some kind of park like setting here that would include things like randomly mounted bike tour racks Wagner Hodgson who are our landscape architects have proposed granite blocks emerging at different elevations from the topography so that people can sit on them and climb on them and add some visual interest and then again right before we cross the river this turns into additional landscaping down in here this is another landowner so far as I know and there our landscape architects thought that there might be some effort going on to maybe put parkland in here although I don't know about it I think that's what I thought it was on this side so you know I think you know this space in here is meant to not be the backside of the building but sort of the front facade faces Memorial Drive so we're using the same quality materials all of that is the same you know this will develop over time but that's our thought process so I want to observe that just a few meetings ago we created something called Confluence Park which is quite small but it's right here at the corner of the North Branch in the Winooski and so one hypothesis is that you just mentioned like putting in some cement blocks up here granite slabs granite slabs I've translated that to something else but I guess my thought is you know so we're going through a process with the rest of Confluence Park to think about what could or should be done with that space and you know it seems logical to me that we would want to include that portion of planning or design in with that the rest of that planning process so you know again part of me would I'm sure this is not necessarily something we need to spend a lot of time on but I mean I would be inclined to like just hold off on any granite any installations at that point to let that process unfold and include this part of the world be a part of that design thoughts I just don't know when the park is going to happen so it would be in limbo I'd rather have it be attractive and granite slabs or any kind of staggered seeding also climbable something that's inviting but not hard to change that would be my problem and just for reference for everybody the Confluence Park here is that you can sort of faintly see the outline of the bike path so it would really be all this area in here and we're reducing six parking spaces I don't know if you've got those yet or not so there will be some green on this side of the bike path as well I think to Jack's question about what these things back up to the hotel actually backs up to this is all the rail line so these park areas will be bisected by the rail line and the rail bridge so the hotel backs up to the rail line and then the one Taylor project which is here's the transit center and the one Taylor building this will also back up to the parking and the upspots so the closest to the river this would be would be right in this area here where our bike path and new bridge is crossing I want to check in on that corner because I heard you say that there is pedestrian exit there in the emergency stairwell or something like that well yeah we have fire stairs at each corner of the garage but there's a smile like vestibule lobby type thing and our intention is to have a door here or something yeah and being a person who has opened the alarm door in a parking garage before and had it go off unintentionally going to be an alarm door or is that door that people can just walk out straight to the park I don't think it needs to have an alarm on it it's not required by code it's really I think our first line of defense would be to have the monitoring going on now if operationally over time you find people are sleeping in those stairwells or something like that then you might have to come up with a solution but that's for you to decide in terms of how you operated there's no code reason to compel that before we move too far of any other thoughts on I mean my inclination is going to be to want to include this bit in Confluence Park once we get to that point any thoughts on that yeah yeah even if we have to move some stones I agree I think you're probably right that moving some granite stones there is probably not that difficult I'll throw up one thing that we will probably have to illustrate something in order to satisfy the submittal requirements for our planning and zoning permit but the city is the client here and you can elect to not construct that until the rest of the thing comes together or if at some point in the future there's a happy moment where it all comes together then we'll just come back and amend the permit I wanted to ask a question about the solar panels that was mentioned earlier and I just wanted to verify you're talking like some kind of carport awning type structure over the parking spaces that's our recommendation and we're going to have a talk about whether or not this thing should have a roof on it in a minute but our recommendation is that we use commercially available systems that are already sort of it's a carport and a solar panel at the same time we estimate about 12 kilowatt hour capacity would be enough to light the structure completely and that's achievable I think with a 5000 kilowatt system or a 5000 watt system we it's reasonable to think that we could operate the lighting for the garage using that I understand that the city is up against their max in terms of net metering so the other option might be to just create the electricity stored and use it on site and I don't believe we could get enough solar energy to run the elevator reliably but with contemporary LED lighting I think we could get that done and that might be the way to go one other suggestion we'd make from a visual analysis point of view is that we to the extent that we provide that that we bring it in from the edges of the building so it doesn't sort of create a de facto fifth floor but yeah we've put a good deal of thought into solar on this it's just a question of budgeting and we can talk about that when we talk about solar and the electrical vehicle stations if the city doesn't have the capital to put that into their capital budget then there might be vendors who would be willing to put that in and lease it back to the city or to in the case of the EV stations they put them in and then they get a small charge every time somebody charges the their car so there are arrangements for some of these pieces of equipment that don't end up necessarily turning into capital expenses but we want to make sure that the building is capable to to receive these things so to answer your question Rosie no that's great thank you okay any other things on stuff so far okay so to switch the conversation to talking about I think mostly the the top the roof I just want to frame this in the sense that what what we've been talking about so far is a ten ten and a half million dollar bond and anything that really takes us out of that I think should be separate so if we're going to consider anything that's you know outside of contingencies basically that that would need to be its own bond so we're going to put a row if you would separate that as a separate bond to put a row right yeah I'm just just saying that's what I think we would be talking about there and I and Glenn I know you had some thoughts on this do you want to do you want to kick us off there sure I wish I had more specific thoughts it's been kind of exciting for me to think about the possibilities of the city owning a garage and many of my friends and acquaintances have helped source ideas from elsewhere some of them are really amazing for example I saw this morning a design it hasn't been built but a design of a garage that is set into the ground and it has a reservoir below and as storm water flows in the garage floats up and gets higher which is amazing I don't know that we could do that but for instance just having a real space on the top that could be potentially a park with some kind of greenery and some further use than just parking cars as important as that use is I think would make this project more palatable to a certain group of people including me so I would say I'd love to hear about the possibilities of making the roof structurally sound enough that we could have park space or something there I'd love to hear more ideas about other things that we could put up there I don't have any really strong completely developed ideas myself and I wish I did but I do want to I also want to try to keep this discussion open as long as possible despite the permit requirements and schedule and so on because I do think that one of the sticking points for constituents that I've talked to that it would be nice to have enough time to come up with the perfect idea that could even pay for itself and also make this not only a useful parking garage but a draw for instance for people from all over the place go and see Monpelier's super excellent unique parking garage that has a dog park on top or something so anyway that we can kind of get that time to make that process happen I would love to try for it. If I sort of contemplated the scale of possibilities from sort of really probably easy and not hard to think about all the way to this is pretty substantial I would think that the deciding factor would be anything that increased the overall weight of the structure beyond what it's normally designed to take so all the way over on the right hand side here would be a swimming pool because if we put 50,000 gallons of water on a fourth story that has implications all the way down through the structure all the way at the other end on the easy side you know would be things that generally take advantage of a hard scape like a skate park or a basketball court or a tennis court those are things where really it would just be the sporting equipment that would be the extra cost and then somewhere in the middle would be the adaptation of a green roof to the structure when we talk about the various forms though I'll circle back and tell you which ones of these I think would lend us to that better than others right now all the surfaces we have are engaged in getting us to our magic number of parking but we do have some space between that 348 and that 367 to where we might be able to take a portion of it and achieve that we just have to decide if that's worthwhile so I would think the city's planning it should say some of these things we could continue to talk about some of these things we need to decide now like is a swimming pool so I'm going to interrupt you there I just want to express that I love the idea of it but I have significant concern about the added cost that that would bring and there's even with the possibility of a green space up there I mean that is something that it has you know a positive side right like it could be really fun I think it would also be really difficult to patrol from the police perspective I think that it would be I think it's important for the public actually to understand that when we say we're looking at spending ten and a half million dollars there's a plan in place for how we're going to pay how we're going to make that money back this is a business investment and that this is something that over time will pay for itself and you know if we were going to I mean something like this even I think as a medium let's say as a green roof that's not quite right that's still adding something I'm going to guess between like two and three million dollars is that a fair assessment it's going to add substantial money in terms of increased structural capacity because we have to carry the soil but then there's the plantings the matrix that supports them and all that other stuff as well and there's no real plan around how we would pay for that right and so if that is just to you know us saying like oh we would just you know spend an extra three million dollars on something and I can think of a lot of things if we were going to just spend three million dollars on something you know I'm not sure it would be that anyway so that's where I'm at with that other thoughts team I completely agree I would rather take more parking off the streets and have more green space down on the ground level and get things going there I mean I get to like how many homes could we weatherize for three million dollars that's my part I guess I would point out that the city also already has an outdoor pool at the rec fields if we're talking about adding an indoor pool then that's an amenity we already have but we already do have an outdoor pool so that particular one I don't really see a rationale for I'm interested to hear more sounding like you're saying that adding a hard space like tennis court or basketball court wouldn't add any more cost is that negative correctly? it wouldn't be nearly as extreme it wouldn't cost three million dollars to put a basketball court up there for instance but you'd have to put a fence around it you'd have to get the equipment and you'd have to deal with the fact that you'd probably end up losing that many parking spaces I think he's talking about using a top floor that we're already constructing and converting that use I think there's a difference between that because we were told that even just adding a roof for covering was going to be one to one and a half million and then because of the roof and the load then if you add additional amenities to it then that just goes up from there so this would just be converting some of the parking spaces to a basketball court on the very top level or nothing, not adding another level with a basketball court on it you know here we could stripe it and then if there's no carts, park them sorry, go ahead Ashley so I guess everybody knows where I stand on this project but I have resolved I'm probably going to go forward so I guess for me one, I mean for the reasons I stated last week I have reservations about this project anyway but if we are going to build this parking garage and obviously it depends on a bond vote I think that we need to focus on making this a net zero thing and so I am at least somewhat glad and that's maybe even an overstatement but that district heat was sort of built into this I don't think that we're using district heat to full capacity additionally the solar panels are attractive to me I know that we're at our metering max are almost there but if we can generate that energy and use it to keep the parking garage going I think that's sort of our obligation I don't think that we use a council or at least I can't as a council member say that I'm really working towards a net zero goal and then sort of talking about all these other things that are not working towards that I also want to raise the issue of winter parking during parking bands and a couple people have asked and I've wondered about it myself but I am incredibly fortunate now to live in a place where I have parking so is the parking garage or has there been any conversation about opening that up for residents because I know D.P.W. still has to plow everything and plowing that back lot when you've got cars parked overnight is incredibly challenging and my understanding was that it was going to be a 24-hour pay garage but if D.P.W. is having a hard time plowing streets and clearing the back parking lot overnight and we the taxpayers are ultimately going to be the ones paying for this garage I'll be a tiff I understand that it's structured differently but it just strikes me that since this is something that our community is considering building and would be on the hook for if the funds didn't come through it would seem that there should be some sort of greater community benefit and I think that would potentially help D.P.W. as well by putting everything in there it's a covered space it might mitigate some potential safety issues for motor vehicles but also give D.P.W. some space that they need to do in terms of snow removal which I know has been an ongoing concern for the city and for residents for quite some while so I'll just answer that question and say that we certainly have considered that this could be a place for people to park during winter parking ban it's ultimately the financial operation of the garage is a policy decision of the council and what we choose to accept for risk so we haven't got it and it's not something that necessarily has to be decided in terms of a permit application and those kinds of things but we'd have to take a look and see maybe on nights that there's a winter parking ban called how many nights does that happen I don't know and we have to look at equity issues about who's paying who's not paying but it could happen it would have to be I think we'd have to give it real thought policy thought know what gains and losses it's not precluded in any way I think it would be an interesting discussion especially if DPW was having a hard time keeping up in a blizzard something like that certainly have that conversation okay so at this point I just want to turn it over to the public any thoughts, questions, comments you might have about anything we've talked about thus far about the roof, about tennis courts about etc go ahead Northfield Street something that was said before if you've not discussed the flat of we have not yet talked about that it's upcoming it's upcoming then I will save my question because I heard something you say about the cost of this being within some parameters that's all I was talking about oh and while he's coming up do you want to say anything the other thing that I would like the council to consider just in terms of the use of the garage I know that this is going to eat into some of the Heaney lot where the farmers market exists I'm wondering if there's any way if we could partner with the farmers market to sort of figure out a way such that maybe part of the space could be used to host the farmers market that might give us a little bit longer to also host the farmers market outside rather than moving it inside and again I think it's a community benefit the farmers market is always busy there's always people there people want to be there and it just seems like again another way for us to be able to meet community needs while also offering a thing that so again I'll say we've been actively talking with the farmers market about alternatives with space I think we've got some I don't want to speak for the farmers market they haven't cleared all that with their board so I don't want to say anything that they may or may not agree with but we have some thoughts about how it might work that I think are exciting we did not talk about using the inside of the building for anything I think it comes it's the same decision matrix that we just talked about again it's if we would be it's an operational question and what would we be losing and you know from parking when you during those times and is that you know is that a value that we're making and where we assuming that we are not paying for this with general fund which we're not we're you know do we have sufficient funds to pay for this or where would that come from if there were a strain on finances but I mean that could be a discussion go ahead if you would say your name I'm Steve Dale I live on Terra Street in Mapillier and I'm a part of Christ Church we've been involved in a lengthy conversation about this project starting I guess in December of the last year and I'm not here to talk about swimming pools or dog parks on top but I'm gathering now might be the time to talk about the location so we're not do you mean like on the site like the footprint of it yes so we had discussed that the footprint isn't necessarily going to that's not necessarily one of the things that we would be changing on the matrix of decisions that we have for tonight but you know you're here go ahead go ahead okay we are the we are the neighbor that would be directly impacted by this project we've been we've had particular concerns and issues at the beginning we were in a lengthy conversation with the Bichera family and with Greg over a extended period of time a lot of negotiations to make sure that our interests were taken care of as recently as two weeks ago we were talking with Fred Bichera about finalizing a memorandum of understanding about exactly how this is all going to work and then we learned of the city's role at this particular time which changed a lot of things and we had a meeting earlier today to look at the most recent plans there are a number of things on the plan that are different at least this afternoon when we looked at it we're different than we ended up in our previous negotiation there are not elevations on here so it's hard to tell what's happening with ramps going whether there's ramp going up to the front door or not which has a huge impact on our easement and our parking and all those things I'm sure can get answered we had a good meeting with the city but if we were to be asked publicly tomorrow in the city do we support this project we don't have enough information to know what the impact is going to be on Christchurch we have two interests in this project officially faith and community there's all kinds of opinions about anything but our official position is really based on two things number one we have been talking about an affordable housing project for the last almost three years now it got delayed because down streets resources and attention was diverted to the transit center following that delay the proposal came up with a hotel now we're switching the sort of arrangement in terms of who's building the garage so needless to say it's been a long and tortured journey but our interest is to make sure that whatever gets built doesn't preclude the construction of affordable housing and as recently as this afternoon in a very informal conversation and because this is all on such short notice there's not time to have fully vetted any of this there were concerns being expressed by our key partner about this garage is two or three feet closer to Christchurch than the previous it is not clear what's happening with the entrance to the parking there are a few other things and we need time to understand what's being proposed here before and we would hope the city would want the answers to those questions before deciding to forge ahead and put something on the ballot the second interest is obviously the concern about the current state of Christchurch we do have an easement which is the same easement that will run to the parking garage to access our parking behind the church we're concerned to make sure that that isn't disrupted we're concerned to make sure that we have an equal amount of parking that we own that's another whole conversation but currently we believe we have somewhere 10 or 12 spaces on our own property for sure it's been very generous in letting us spill over for the last ever many years but we want to make sure that the result of this project doesn't end up with fewer parking spaces we began a discussion with the city about what that would look like that was in the MOU that we didn't quite complete with the Bechara family but we need time to make sure that in fact this doesn't get built strand us with no parking and we get some kind of legal tangles about it which wouldn't be anybody's best interest the other thing is stormwater we had spent a lot of time with the Bechara and with Greg about making sure we're not going to end up with a lake if you look at that little spot there it's easy to talk about the garage but just look at that little white low spot there if it's not properly managed as you know we have a fairly fragile 150 year old historic structure that brings great enhancement to the city and we are very concerned that this project not compromise that building or its operation those things need to be resolved they probably can be resolved but this is really fast and we're starting a new discussion with a new party and we just wanted to put that on the table tonight and we will continue to work with folks over the next couple weeks but we want you to be aware of the fact that they're not resolved so I want to just start by thanking you for coming to express all of that my guess is that we can't actually answer all those questions tonight but I know housing is a priority of the council and I think I can say that we're committed to working with you and figuring out some of these pieces and that for the I'm correct if I'm speaking out of turn at all here but I think for the application some of the things that you're asking about maybe don't they're not necessarily for what we need for the application but I could be wrong I'll talk generally I'll let Greg specifically address the drainage and those kind of issues so we did have a meeting they did give us a copy of the draft MOU I think the commitment I made I don't think I was too far apart was that we would honor whatever terms that were in that that we could specifically I think it's fair that we would keep them whole that they don't lose their parking and it's certainly we don't want to drain out their project nor are we allowed to legally anyway that we would provide whatever plans and work with them and their designers as aggressively as necessary to make that happen and that it is our goal to make the housing and we did hear that the proximity of the structure was a problem and it may be that it would have been a problem anyway whether it was the city or not I don't know if we're going to actually get a anyone's going to get an answer that says you can or can't go ahead because of other not because of the church unless it's because of external funding and those kinds of things but it's certainly everyone's desire to make this we've talked about building a connection between the two and designing that in and those kinds of things so I think we are looking forward to making it work I just want to ask a couple of clarifying questions so we need to have those questions resolved by ten three because that's when we put the bond language forward well I probably can help you first of all Steve thanks for coming tonight you might be able to answer your question my question was just what exactly is the language that we need to have when we warn the election the language is going to be to approve a bond for X number of dollars we'll mention the funding sources and it will describe the project in general terms period it's an authorization to flow to bond in that amount of money from these revenue sources typically people are going to want to see what it looks like and get a general idea of these things but I it's not carved in stone and you don't have to actually authorize going head with it even if the bond passes the issues aren't resolved but those questions would need to be resolved before permits typically resolved as part of the permitting process so yeah but in theory the permits could be approved not addressing some of those concerns I doubt that I doubt that honestly let me just interject a little bit because I want to put everybody's at ease a little bit Steve I hope Bill and Sue will back me up on this that as we've gone through this process I have continued to advocate for the things that we discussed and agreed to the only changes in the sort of relationship of the building to the parking garage are a reflection of the fact that it's gotten bigger but it's also a reflection of the fact that the zoning ordinance has changed and now the dimensions that we need to observe have changed and so this parking garage has been designed to the 2018 regs and the net result of that given the spaces and the driveline widths is that we went from 10 feet to 7 feet 9 essentially we lost a couple feet in width of the building but it's still a substantial buffer on the south side of that common property line to address your concerns I will also say that even if it isn't illustrated on a plan now we went through a lengthy process where our engineers propose solutions their engineers did an independent review of it and we came to a kumbaya moment on the workability of those solutions we haven't abandoned those solutions we're just generating a new set of plans so they will be in the final solution which includes the ability to tie into the drainage system that's being created as part of this overall project and several other features I think that the only unique things that will fall away were the things where you were asking the hotel for things but as far as all of this and all of this we're still working in the same direction we have been so the other thing I'll say is that all of these issues really do need to be resolved before we come back and these permits because they were part of the prior permit the city may well be served by coming up with a legal agreement between themselves and Christchurch I know that Christchurch if this garage is built will benefit from the availability of parking that will in turn support the development of the affordable housing so it's not a net loss thing there's good things in this project for you but speaking on behalf of the design team I will say that we remain committed to those fundamental issues of not damaging your property and I hope that you trust us to get that in there but expect that you'll show up at all our planning meetings to make sure that we do and so you know I ideally we would have had a number of conversations and sort of sorted all this stuff out but I haven't abandoned any of those principles and so we will be planning the zoning for at least four hearings during the month of October and I think that's the forum where these kind of nuts and boltsy kinds of things get sorted out the drainage issues and so on so let me just say one other thing it is only 2 feet or 2.2 feet 3 inches or whatever less green space the issue is that seems negligible in the conversation but from a housing development perspective and from the funder perspective and from the historic preservation perspective all those it is a very tight piece of property to start with it was a huge challenge to start with and any further squeezing of the project was there were concerns expressed by our housing development partner so part of this conversation needs to include them so that we can get to a place where we're sure to continue it's a zero we're a setback district so the creation of that green space was an accommodation intended to ease your concerns back then it remains an accommodation now so the fact that the client has changed it's still you're getting something on your neighbor's property for the mutual benefit of all we understand that but obviously very quickly this becomes a political conversation more than a legal conversation and we just need to know given that there's only seven weeks until a vote if this project will preclude us from building housing that it's a political conversation not a legal conversation we don't have any questions about legal and we hope we can work out I think for me that's also of great concern is that it's seven weeks between now and a ten and a half million dollar bond vote and I know that we're making some decisions tonight but the fact that these questions still haven't been answered I mean my constituents are going to come to me and say what does this look like and what does this mean and if we don't have those answers I mean I think everybody knows where I stand but asking those sort of basic questions like does this mean that Christchurch can't do the project or is their project going to change I mean those are important questions that people have a right to know before they vote yea or nay on this project and I am disappointed that we don't have those answers right now and I understand for many reasons that we're working on that but this is the kind of project where that's a big ask of the public and to not have those kinds of questions answered is we had over a year of public hearings where essentially this project was discussed in public and during which time we did work out solutions to these problems but now we don't have solutions I really think maybe about hearing what we're saying is that from the beginning when we talked about these issues Greg informed us of what had been agreed upon and what was going to happen and we said yes we want to continue to do that so all the solutions that had been approved had been permitted there is a change in the going from a 10 foot so the capital plaza had agreed to set 10 foot back from their property line even though they're not required to do so in order to fit with everything and meet our zoning regulations we had to move that to 7 feet 9 inches from the property line so I understand all this I don't think it's a disconnective understanding well actually, please let me finish we will not know nor would the capital plaza have known nor will Christ church know whether this will or will not preclude the housing because it's the decisions that will be made by people like historic preservation and funding people at the time that they pursue that they're expressing concerns that it's a tight site with or without a parking garage and the concern was expressed that even 10 feet might be too close which is the approved garage so to expect a finality of decision on that one issue at any point until they actually seek funding it can't happen it's impossible for it to happen so to be disappointed that we don't have that answer and we all are but we won't and we can't so that's all I'm saying it just seems like there's a lot of undefined pieces as of right now and we're making some of those definitions tonight but there are still questions that are yet unanswered that seem as though they are important questions to have answered so that people can actually make an informed vote so we'll as you said we're going to get some further clarity on some of those questions tonight and I can I'm excited to say that we're going to continue to work with you to resolve these things I'm sure you can understand we were close to actually having a signed legal document and memorandum of understanding with all these things spelled out because once something's built as you all know even though it might have been good intentions and oh I thought that's what it was we wanted it in writing and then and we received a copy of that just today oh great so our first review was there wasn't much in there that we couldn't agree to so I think we were actually pretty close to an agreement that's great and so hopefully if the time line on that is relatively short I mean that may happen in time for the bond vote anyway okay so so I mean I would further comments on the the parts that we've been discussing yeah the first time that we've heard dimensions 115 by 215 or some comparison like that there was discussion at the prior City Council meeting about spiral tower loading rather than as a contrast to ramps the ramp discussion apparently eliminated and you haven't touched on that we have not yet gotten there but I'm saying that the spiral is a footprint issue which is precluded by this footprint boundary but you also spoke about do you want to answer that? parking garage, egress entrance through the Haney lot which was contradicts what the City Manager said a few meetings ago that's one of our discussions tonight we haven't got to yet Steve okay so that's still but this is primarily the last commenter brought re-emphasized a point that I've been making is that the City due to prior votes despite shifting plans is in the role of developer instead in what is suffering is the role of regulator and protector and that we really do need to have independent public advocacy more skilled, legally skilled beyond my verbiage to protect the public interest here this thing is being pushed by a city that is supposed to be pushing back on every one of these things we're rushing to accommodate Bashar and Hilton's threat and we are potentially foreclosing better alternatives and opportunities for the church and others no one's going to want to walk through a five story by ten foot canyon to get to this park so those are the items that touch on what you've covered so far thank you Steve you can take it off Barbara I'm Barbara Connery I'm on Liberty Street I just had a few questions of clarification can't hear me it doesn't sound like this it is just pull it down just talk closer to it yes really alright you can hear me now on the packet that was available this is a site plan number C1 is that the site plan you're discussing here today for which I just want to clarify so this shows a link of the building that is not necessarily consistent with the different concepts that are showing further on Barbara Connery is this the maximum extent of the length of the building the footprints the footprints are intended to be all the same okay well the link that's shown on them is not the same so some of them are shorter is this the maximum length yes yes here on this okay and then I guess the other question that it raises for me is does this then take into account the zoning ordinance requirement for that from the bank some of the other people will help me better with this but with a setback to make sure that we don't have any further erosion of the bank and the setback from the river in general I'm just going to take that as a guide post to make sure that it does I don't I can answer that off the top of my head if you'd introduce yourself I'm Danny Sagan I'm about to first add it's alright it's good to have a memory of you being up here I'll just I want to speak to a moment to the idea of the top deck of the structure which I assume from the drawings that I reviewed the top deck is designed to hold cars is that correct yes alright so from my rudimentary understanding of the live loads necessary for concrete buildings to hold cars that if we remove the cars there's still a fair enough structural strength of the building left over to actually hold things like planters things that don't necessarily weigh 60 pounds a square foot so I want to speak to the possibility that you might build this thing and you might find post occupancy reviewed that you don't need all the parking spaces and that you'll have this roof deck floating above the town which actually if you go to the parking garage on East State Street and you go up to the roof it's actually one of the most interesting spaces in Montpelier and there are other municipalities in the state of Vermont that show movies on the top of parking garages I was in Kansas City and in Kansas City they actually have a performance based on the top of a precast parking garage that was paid for by the Kansas Council for the Arts no, the Missouri Council the Missouri side of the Kansas City anyway, you can do a lot of really interesting things with the top deck of the parking garage I don't think that and you can do it without restructuring the building necessarily so I don't think that should be sort of cast aside as possibilities and I also think in terms of funding mechanisms it doesn't necessarily have to be the town that pays for it the Arts Council can help pay for it funding vehicles that would work I do want to say given the context of what people talk about what we do have in this town we don't have anywhere in this town where children can ride their bikes when it's raining if you're going to put solar panels on top of the structure with enough room to drive cars underneath it wouldn't cost a lot of money to put some rain shedding so that the kids could ride their bikes on the top when it's raining thank you I'm sorry, I couldn't say that with the comment you're saying would it be a good place for kids to ride their bikes? Yeah, under during rain, yeah under the solar panels one more commenter? My name is Karen Wiseman I'm the president of the board of the Catholic City Garmers Market and so thank you thank you for thinking of us we have been working with Phil and coming up with some good ideas we discussed it formally as a board as a board we do not have a formal opinion most people are not actual residents of Montpelier our ultimate goal is to create a vibrant downtown on Saturday morning for us and all the businesses and all the residents we appreciate the fact that we need more visitors we appreciate the fact that we need more parking and we're really comfortable that we'll be able to work with the city to support and bring things back so that the community gets the full potential that they can get and that they should get out of an investment like this Super, thank you so much Okay, so at this point, does any council want to make a motion regarding a roof or anything to that effect? No? Okay Alright, so we're going to move on and I think this part is talking about the structure so again, I'm going to turn it over to you Thank you On the cover letter I basically lay out the ultimate things that we looked at I want the public present tonight to understand that some solutions are scale dependent given our very constrained footprint and you can tell we're already getting pushback for as much of the footprint as we've used the options that we looked at were options that could be built on this scale and that included a single helix structure which is also sometimes thought of as a switchback structure that was very similar to what was previously approved you come in and the parking bays themselves slope in this case they slope in five foot increments so you're going up a half a level, you're going around, then you're going up the other half of the level and that is that was the version that was previously approved and there's some frozen cons to that. The other thing we looked at is based on public input there was an expressed interest in whether or not we could flatten the structure so that there would be some future utility to this thing, some ability to reuse it if people stopped using cars. So the second version is a so-called split level structure where parking is flat but at each end of the flat parking decks there are short steep ramps that take you up to the next half level. Again parking would be going up in five foot increments but instead of the roughly 3% slope that the switchback version used the fours would be flat and then the speed ramps would be 13.8% steep which is perfectly drivable and fine although when I look at frozen cons I will say that some drivers are going to have concern about that steep ramp. It's just going to feel weird to be able to your car is perfectly capable of doing it but it's a little disquieting for some drivers. Northfield Street, is that like 12-13% grade? Is Tom here? Northfield Street, is that like a 12% grade? Northfield Street grade. Probably closer to 6 or 7. 6 or 7. Wow, so it's twice as steep as that. So is there an example you can give us of a street in Montpelier that's about 13.8% that we're talking about? Richardson. Crosshead. Will you log? Might be the entrance of Town Street? Yeah. In terms of parking garages you know I would say that correlates to say the parking garage at the Montreal airport if anybody's ever been there they have steep speed ramps between essentially level levels. And then there's a third sort of version that we did evaluate which is everything's flat and all on one level with one long steep ramp. We're recommending that's we're essentially concluding as a design team. Don't leave yet Tom. Our concern on that last version is that it just doesn't quite fit the site. So we evaluated the three possibilities that we thought could fit the geometry of this land. We've already kind of eliminated one so we're asking you to decide between the single helix structure and the split level structure. And those are illustrated in your packages. You should have gotten those earlier today. The switch back or single helix type is illustrated on the ones labeled A101 through A I think 203B. And that's the 13% rate. The first one is the lowest. That's like less than 5%. Right, the specific conditional parking garage. Yes. So there's the A series drawings which show that version. The B series shows the ones that are labeled I'm sorry. The A's show the split level. Right. The B's show the switch back and then the C's show the one that we don't think works along with the speed ramp. This assumed that there was land beyond the end of the garage which really doesn't exist. So that geometry takes up too much space to work. But if you go to A101 it should look like this to everybody. You'll see that these are essentially flatbacks and then on each end there are these short steers. I think Tom's up here just to answer the streets. Yeah, we do. Well, I wish I'd do one with grates out of my head. So I'll give you a perspective. Course Street is in the 16 to 17% grade per inch. I have to know about Berlin Street Hill is in the 6 to 7%. So you're somewhere in between those. Wheelock is probably your closest but I don't know that it's in that area. Winter Street would be another one. You're not too far off from the 12 to 13% grade. But there are driveways that are very common that are in that 13 to 15% grade. Very common people use every day. Thanks. Thank you. I'll try to use the winter, right? That 15% limit is actually a limit that's enshrined in the building code so we can't really go much steeper than that. These are shorter duration than a street. You're going up 36 feet. They're also generally under cover so they're a little less. But if you're in a parking garage and you come around that corner and you start to nose dive down it feels weird to some people. The interesting thing if you look in that same first series of drawings, you can see a cross section through the building at A203. It shows how the levels are shifted a little bit and it also gives you a sense of what those ramps look like. The first one's cut through the parking bay. The second one is cut through the one on the top. A203? Do you not have one? I have A202 and an A901. It should look like this. It's on a title block by Simon Design Engine. Oh, it's on the back. It looks like this. I don't have any on the backside. Further toward the back. Thank you. Yeah. That's alright. I got the idea. I saw that on the website though. Even though you are in here. I studied there. You should trade that. I'll make sure when I do it. I love you for it. I keep in my head the name of this one. This is the split level. This is the split level. It's deeper. It's the split level. The advantages of this is it would build quicker. It's probably a lighter structure. I kind of listed some pros and cons. But with the flat surfaces ostensibly the reason we would want to go this way at least is that there would be some surplus used to the building if you ever stopped parking in it. The concern that our engineers have is that parking garages, the loading for them is less than other commercial uses or even residential uses. The wheel load in the parking garage is only 25 pounds of square foot. Whereas a house housing would be 40 in the units and 80 in the corridors. And then most other commercial uses are 50 or 60 square pounds of square foot. The reason for that is if you're doing this because you think you may want to do something else with the building in the future you're going to have to increase the strength of the structure by probably about 30%. It would increase the cost of the structural frame by about 30% to carry those extra loads. So while you may pick this because you like the format of it or you like the way it lays out you should be aware that if your primary reason for doing that was something else later, that's going to increase the cost now or it's not really going to be feasible in the future. I just want that to be clear with everybody. And the 30% to 40% increase is not an increase in the total structure just that component of it, right? Yeah, I think it would be the structural frame itself, the connections and all of that because I think in the end our foundations are the port and place foundations would be pretty similar. The landscaping and the sewer, all that other stuff will stay the same. And I expect we'll have a similar amount of exterior skin to deal with. So what does that boil down to in terms of total cost? 30%, 40% more. If that portion of it is 40% or 50% of our budget in the year to year. It's going to be a couple million I think. If I took a calculator and came up with it's going to be measured in millions though. Thanks. So we could do this design without beefing up the structure if we just decide we want to have. If you just like the way this works better you may, many people may just like the looks of it better with the level decks, you know, aesthetically it opens up possibilities in the facade. I personally could live happily with either one of these. They are going to make a recommendation to you but you are free to do what you want. You're the boss. So this cross section I think best illustrates the concept. Now this was based on the sort of out of the manual designs for dimensions for parking spaces. We're actually going to go by the dimensions that are in your regulations which means ultimately if you picked this version it would be narrower than it's shown on the plans because they've got 24 foot drive lanes and you don't require that in your wreck. We would tighten it up to preserve space for Christchurch, you know, to preserve that buffer. The other version, the switchback version it's illustrated in the back but it's also fairly illustrated in the package in the front here as well and I would just go to the second page and package A101 on my title block and that shows it pretty well. If you come in off the street you'd go off a half a level and then it just stacks up like that going on up through and the advantages of this are that, you know, the whole thing can be done in precast concrete. We wouldn't have any steel components. It's a much more efficient footprint in terms of, you know, there's not a lot of wasted space. This is frankly our recommended version but again, I would happily live with the other one as well. And then I might sort of suggest that if we looked at page A105 for instance this is the very top one. I'm sorry, this one you're talking about now this is the switchback option? This is on the switchback option. You know, if you came up to this last level here you see where it says 11. There's 11 parking spaces at the top there. If I were going to do any kind of reuse other than parking I might look at that end as being a place where you might put some cones across here for a party or something but at any rate in the split level one you've got these layers doing this so you could do that anywhere. And I agree I've been to movies on top of the parking garage in Burlington and I don't think they do it anymore but those kinds of things don't have to be structured they're just opportunities. That's more of a good viewing. That's more of a use policy thing than a design thing. I agree that if you want to have a party there's plenty of strength it's when you start bringing in furniture and extra walls and all the appliances and stuff that the other way it starts to add up. So can we pause on that point and compare the roofs of the two designs switch back versus split level my understanding is that the switch back Virgin you pointed out that page A105 11 spaces that's the level portion more or less of that each end of that there's about a 40 foot long flat plane each end of this garage where you turn around that's where the elevators and the stairs are located is in the flat portion and then primarily the long ramps are your parking surface. Comparing that kind of strip of level flat space at the top in that option with the split level roof you get 50% of the footprint would be flat level at that top level. In some ways the split level option gives you more say movie space or party space at the top if that were desired. Yeah, okay. Can I say which one is tired? I think I understood that the other one was tired but well you know I'm looking I'm looking at A203 on Simon Design Engineering's drawings the transfer sections that's the best way to understand the split level. And it's on the high side which would be the State Street side it's 41 feet from the grade shown on there to the top of the parking deck there would be additional where the stair towers and the elevator are there would be little pieces that poked up beyond that but your highest parking deck in this one is at the 41-2 and then they've conveniently provided a cross section at A203B which also shows the stepping levels where they have this setup right now is it would be it'd be 30 feet 6 inches from ground level to the to the top deck but at the other end there's going to be another 5 feet taller than that so you're like 35 feet or whatever and then that result is that the switchback proposal is is a little less tall than the other one by about 5 feet I think I can see it's a bit different I think I'm using different names for like the versions and I'm can you say I have a name for one of my options or I have a name for another option because I thought in your memo you use option 2 the split level and it says 4.5 to 5 feet floors whereas option 1 which is the single the switchback so option 1 would be switchback option 2 would be the split level so we hadn't seen these when we were estimating 4.5 to 5 so what he's saying is about 5 feet as I just heard you say about 5 feet different between option 1 and option 2 are taller yes I'm sorry if I've confused you it's confused me believe me they're both shorter than the hotel they're both substantially shorter than the hotel which it was approved I don't know it has different roof levels but it's 5 stories plus some roof and it's I think it's maximum height is like 57 feet I think it's in a district that allows 6-story buildings but I think everybody shares the goal of trying to keep the profile of this low both to protect the view quarters from Memorial Drive and 14 Main Street but also to sort of limit the impacts on a future housing project to the north and to ask the question I asked again which I think I'm not sure if I got or understood the answer which was that with the option 2 the split level option if we did not want to plan for adaptive reuse in the future we would not have to build in the extra 30 to 40 percent to increase the construction cost is that correct? so in that case they would be essentially the same cost is the adaptive reuse that adds to the cost it's the increased loading of changing the use from parking to other types of human occupancies Rosie did you have a question? yes do you want to say what if I was now on the west side of the Catholic Church no, I guess what I'm saying is that the consultant drew it at 120 but we're going to reduce it down to like 115 by taking advantage of the dimensions that are in your regulations they did this kind of generically to illustrate the concept normally when we design we just say a parking stall is 60 feet wide but it doesn't have to be in this case we're recommending that it's not because we've got other values to balance out it doesn't mean option 1 option 2 the same way so sort of mentioned this that the switchback option option 1 thank you was mentioned in this packet here that this type of structure can be made entirely precast concrete which is more durable so what that translates to in my head is that that has a lower maintenance costs over time that's correct we are that's significant to me we're not strong advocates of using steel components and parking decks because they have a tendency over time to well anybody who's been to Burlington's airport recently has seen what can happen and that is required in the split level that's what the consultants are telling me okay even without the beefed up structure for the attic loads I don't really understand why this is and I'd be happy to go back and talk to them about it but I think it's some function on how they connect together and I also like the convenient I mean I feel more confident in a switchback when I'm driving in them you know and I think that we're not big users of parking garage so I think it's good to be convenient I think that's a big issue here is that it's a big difference between 3.8 percent which is handicapped accessible that's handicapped accessible is 5 percent versus you know 13.8 to 15 percent slopes that that's that's that some people are not going to connect with that well that's that may present an accessibility issue yeah people people who are disabled presumably could drive up the ramp but they would have to park on the section that's shared with the elevator on the stair so general comfort level is really different between the two driving did you have a comment or question yeah and I'm only standing here as a casual observer the required light loads for parking is depending on the code between 40 to 50 pounds per square feet five load which is the same requirements for residential so converting this to a residential building would not necessarily require structural upgrade and so I don't I just as a taxpayer the city of Montpelier I don't think the 30 to 40 percent price upcharge for making it more adaptable and deciding whether or not we do a majority of the building flat plates and the majority of the building sloped plates I still think it arduous for making the building as adaptable as possible and I think you can even do it with the building structure as it's designed given the fact that it's a concrete building a lot of the concrete is designed for deflection I just have to rely on Simon's engineering or the experts in this matter I don't have a dog in that haunt if it would be great if you were right I can't answer that I do just want to point out apparently that's a contradiction of information here that the designs that you're presenting assume lower load bearing needs something he was saying 40 to 50 and you're saying it's 25 to 30 remind me what that number was yeah I I'm depending on information provided to me by the structural engineer who said that cars weigh less than contents because the loads are uniform and predictable how that translates into extra structural strength that's an engineering issue but I'm reporting the expert testimony of our person who says this is how it is I still think you should make your choice based on which plan format you like the best and then you know if he's right and I'm wrong then you're getting an added benefit it really wasn't part of our initial program to try to solve for that problem and so in terms of comparing one to the other I think you should set aside that variable and sort of focus on do we like the way this works do we like the way it looks because they're generally going to produce the same amount of parking in the same kind of footprint it's really just sort of a different set of functional relationships and I think that's what we're here to resolve tonight I do know that as we go forward to the process there are going to be additional permits from the city that will address that issue I had thought there was some other factors involved in the reuse that we're also going to make it prohibitive in terms of the spacing or something the space to add I think that's what they were saying in order to run pipes and stuff around you're not going to drill through 60 foot long concrete tees they're not made for that they're pre-stressed concrete elements but they said in order for that to be successful you'd have to add additional height so that you can route things around and still get minimal they've said they've evaluated this proposition a number of times and nobody's ever pulled the trigger on it and I can say that we met with a different consultant earlier today to talk about the hardware and they said essentially the same thing they said we've looked at this a bunch of times for clients and in the end they never pulled the trigger so apparently there's consensus among the people who do this for a living that that adaptation has a cost to it that future utility has a cost to it any other further questions from the council on this I have a proposal so you're going to ask for it well I would love to hear from the public as well if we have more comments from the public yeah if there's comments from the public on which option of the structure now's the time hi here, Dan Jones from Northfield Street am I going to understand them because everything sort of gets mushed in together the baseline with your switchback model is the ten million dollar plan is that really what I would understand the estimating the data has been based on that design so that if you wanted to, what you're saying there's then a 30% additional cost added on if we wanted to have a more adaptable flat floor plan yes so what you're saying then is that anything over, because we have a 30 year business plan that says this is how much revenue we have we can only bond for ten and a half million dollars is that correct? it's my recommendation yeah so that anything beyond that then is not actually supportable by revenue and would have to come out of the general fund so you're saying to make the building more adaptable at least in terms of the way you're analyzing it would be 30% greater than the switchback model right you could still pick this option just because you like the way it functions or you like the way it looks it's still on the table but that future utility is the extra cost the future utility is the source of the extra cost the slightly taller floor-to-floor heights now if there are competing like I heard over here competing the issue was actually the same and is there a way of having a competing analysis which would tell us that because it seems to me that we're counting on one set of numbers that you're providing but I heard over here that it actually should be the same cost was that correct? no, hold up what I was mentioning is that the code requirement for parking is similar to the code requirement for residential parking his point was not about cost it's not about cost my point was that you may not need to upgrade if you build it as designed for parking you may not need to upgrade it to adapt to the top two levels for residential parking okay now clarify thank you I'm still not hearing about the spiral option for loading which would avoid the need for the I think you were out of the room when we talked about that and it was precluded it's not possible because we don't have the land to put the spiral tower to get the same number of spaces they looked at it it's in the package but here it is like cutting into that footprint to put a spiral you would give up two new spaces either that or we would end up going another level taller that was we can't we were not considering expanding further on no one else to expand we're trying to go smaller but the fundamental issue whether there is a 30% premium on the adaptive or use has to be answered before you can vote because if it doesn't cost 30% or if the parking load is the same as we're getting conflicting information you know your engineer is now saying he knows it conflicts with what it's in the building code so if anybody has a copy of the IBC we should be able to look it up it's also beyond the loads though the loads weren't the only issue it's the extra height so that you can move plumbing back and forth but you can put sleeves through a pre-stress concrete as you build them that would allow for retrofitting plumbing through later yeah and so a 10 bucks a sleeve or something that they add up right I think the estimated additional cost has come to me from more than one source so maybe the order of magnitude may be in dispute but there's definitely an extra cost the point that it's that I'm trying to call to your attention on this is that we are moving so fast that we don't have we have not done the planning for rail offsite parking telecommunication parking demand mitigation we have not done the necessary planning to know whether we are going to need this many spaces as Uber and autonomous vehicles and passenger rail come into play we're making a 40 year decision here and we're even making an economic decision to foreclose the adaptive reuse that is really irresponsible in the sense that we need to move slow enough to get the planning for help many legislators are willing to park at dog river or elsewhere and ride the train in because if we're over building parking because we haven't done our homework somewhere else and we're foreclosing the adaptive reuse option to turn it into housing we're really making a huge mistake so again this is the kind of point that I'm asking you to slow down enough to get those we need to vote down the bond and take another year to get full options for the pit well you know reduce load for parking analyze thank you Steve and just to comment we've done a lot of studies and pits not on the table so actually I just so I was I was on my phone because I was reading about how other cities are handling sort of what to do with parking garages that they're they're not filling and one the sort of most common theme is that they are turning them into housing or hotel type units so I just so if we were to go with the switchblade am I am I switch back same thing to me it feels the same so so is what I'm understanding that once the natural life so let's just assume it's 40 years some some studies have said 30 some have said 50 let's just go with 40 so is it that demolition would be the option once it's okay okay yeah I think the current thought in the architectural world is you address deconstructibility as part of the design so that would have an exit strategy for for taking the thing back apart when you're done with it so it would be so if we build this construction would be anticipated complete by 2021 2020 2021 it's going to take six to seven months to build this garage okay so then let's just go with the 3040 or sort of midpoint there so 2049 we'd be demolishing and our bonds would be paid off in 2030 years so we'd in essence have 10 years of extra surplus I mean that's obviously assuming the models that we some of that revenue could be then set aside for the next use or for the demolition to cost I guess my question is in what I've seen and admittedly that has not been much what is the other use for the switch back parking garage because everything else there they're the level ones so there is there is there no other use skateboard park seems like a very expensive skateboard park and the observation I make about this and I've heard people talking about adaptive reuse of what's going to have what we can use this garage for if at some point it turns out that people aren't driving cars anymore and we're therefore not using that garage for parking and I would think that the first thing we would do in that case is to remove parking spaces from the streets that I think that that's a better use than the the other things that we're talking about and it makes the downtown a much more attractive and walkable and livable environment which I think we would all like to see as soon as we can thank you Barbara yeah so Greg you asked for somebody to pull up the IBC I have the international building code here and it says that garages have a 50 pound live load residential multi-family homes is a 40 pound live load hotel rooms is a 40 pound live load so I'm not sure where that extra 30 percent is coming in and I think we would really need to see something in writing from your structural engineer in order to justify that because I just I'm not seeing it and the concern about the 10 foot floor to floor is yes it would be difficult to put residential units back into that but it's not impossible it could be done so any further comments from the public go ahead my name is Tino O'Brien I live on Clarendon Avenue and I'm not sure whether I have a statement or a question maybe a little bit of both I'll begin with a statement I think the parking garage is in the wrong place we clearly need more parking and better parking in this city and I'm afraid we foreclose the opportunity to put it any place else so I won't dwell on that point there are other potential places we could have put it but again that's not my primary concern my primary concern is to speak as the lurex which some of you may recall is the person who's concerned about the water quality and I'm real concerned about what happens to the wastewater from this facility and this comes to my first question I think you said no net change in the water quality entering the river is that correct? I was speaking about volume in terms of flood events that our goal is to make sure that we're not reducing the capacity of this parcel of land to deal with floodwaters that's different from the water quality issue which is going to be a matter of systems and controls can you explain the whatever the systems would be or not in detail but just what how much treatment will water coming off of this site get before it enters the river? well on each level there will be dropping little scuppers that collect water at the back of the parking stalls that will be collected down to the bottom of the building those flows will be directed through a series of concrete tanks that are intended to remove suspended solids grit, sand, the like and oil so petroleum based products which is in the main the types of things we would expect those would be the classes of pollutants we would expect on the parking surface whether it was a surface parking lot or otherwise and so there's that treatment and then there's an additional system which is more of a storage volume thing which would be large diameter EBS pipes underneath the slab which are just there to control the flow of the volume so that we can attenuate the rate at which it flows back out at which point we would charge to the north branch of the river now I'm not the civil engineer I can't speak to to sort of quantitatively about this but that's my understanding of the system and when the tanks that accumulate the salts, the oil etc. wouldn't they fill up what happens to those well there's this is regulated by state law but there's requirement for permatees to routinely inspect and clean these facilities out so with an oil grid separator once a year or something you'll have a specialty contractor who comes in and has to vacuum that piece of equipment out and so that's the sort of primary thought process right now I always speak for myself but I would think that rather than seek no net change of discharge into the river we should as a city be looking at improving the quality of the water in the river and I don't know whether that involves a better treatment system for this site but I hope as a resident that we're not continuing the level of treatment that we're dumping into the river right now this may be an opportunity I don't disagree with that statement I did mention in my written comments that I haven't spoken about tonight that there are opportunities to incorporate zeroescaping into the landscape planning around the building for both the hotel site and for the garage which would provide an additional sort of a natural based approach to treating the quality of the water because you know the various wetland plants are sort of efficient at taking those things up and taking them out of the water supply so there will be features like that but they'd be sort of ancillary to the primary approach which is to scrub that water as it comes off the surfaces and before it goes into the storage system there's a wonderful example of a parking garage in Florida where there is a hanging garden hung off the side of the building which actually bio filters and you probably know about that kind of approach and for that I just want to go back to something that Ann said earlier about the Confluence Park and the impact of this garage on that Confluence Park beginning with the visual impact you're down there to eat your sandwich and talk to your buddy and there's this massive structure behind you and I guess I just want to raise the question of the quality of that park and how this garage is going to impact it and whether there's a surface a face that could be architecturally designed for plants or for benches etc. I'm going to interrupt you because we're going to talk about the facade next what that can look like I think it would probably be most appropriate for you to come back actually is that okay? okay thank you I just had one comment to the question that was asked because I think somehow that got lost and you know I think Tina was appropriately talking about improving the storm system and what exists today are asphalt parking lots with no treatment so what happens is that all that grit and salt and everything are on those parking lots it rains on the river so if there's a system in a garage which is collecting and separating and sorting and discharging it's actually a significant improvement over the current status that's an excellent point like relative to what we have there now this would be an improvement and I just want to go back to one word that I saw in here and you used just now zero escaping because I would love the definition of it I could have gathered it a little dirty I'm sorry it's sort of constructed wetlands in this case I mean it's generally it's a whole suite of low water use approaches to landscaping but we are incorporating already in the design for the hotel Rain Gardens is a common name where instead of going directly into a catch base things go into a lawn area where there's plants that uptake some of that water and help provide some primary treatment so you know we're going to try to incorporate those kinds of features in the green spaces around the building but they're going to be supplements to what else is going on they might be useful for taking flows from sidewalk areas and stuff like that you're not necessarily going to plan to direct all of the flow from the parking garage itself into those areas those are yeah I think the state of Vermont is going to have some input on that as far as you know the engineers tend to think in terms of systems they know work so you know but we are going to incorporate it in there as a feature so Steve before you go I want to check with the public to make sure that there's anybody else who has not spoken yet who would like to make a comment about this portion the structure specifically okay one more regarding the structural treatment tanks filters, inspections, vacuuming and earlier we heard about an air conditioned equipment room, servers video storage, the cameras etc I have a informed sense, a hypothesis that we have severely underestimated the maintenance costs in our cost-benefit economic calculation I think they were I saw them at 100,000 or something they could be double that and totally bust the bank on the revenue models that are so I just want to call your attention to that because we have not seen many of these systems reflected in that maintenance budget okay thank you alright so we need a decision team on which option to go with you were going to make a motion earlier make a motion that I will now that we we proceed with option one with the switch back option as being the most practical, the most known quantity and the most this is a motion so I'll just stop my motion is option one switch back is there a second I'll second it do you want to elaborate further on okay for the discussion yes so I would just I guess what I'm struggling with is and again maybe this is just my own neuroses but I'm just I'm feeling a little conflicted because I don't feel like we have the full information given what the code seems to say about what the load looks like and so so what the representation was that there would be this increased cost to make this a structure that we could more easily repurpose at some point in the future for what if for example we aren't able to generate the revenues or or at the end of its sort of life cycle we can make the investment or someone can buy it and turn it into housing and again I just I feel like my obligation here as a council member is to sort of have the all of the information available and make the most informed vote and I just without having that piece of information because that's sort of one of the things like if I am going to be a part of planning this thing that I don't necessarily support but I don't want to be an impediment to that it just seems like having that information would be the only way that I could cast an informed vote and as it stands I would be leaning more towards supporting the development that would allow us to repurpose it but I don't have that kind of information and I just I think that's an important thing to point out that yes there are these reasons to do the switch back but other big major cities are repurposing garages that were sort of built in this split level fashion and they are experiencing success in doing that and given the conflicting statements that we've seen in the conflicting information right now I just don't know that we have symmetrical information about both proposals further comments Glen and Donna Rosie did you want to say something that's great we're filtering out the height and I am concerned the height that we add to this affecting the viewscape and going in addition to all the pieces that we've talked about that for me thank you Rosie go ahead I would say I'm leaning toward the split level option for the reasons that Ashley articulated and also because I hear the durability argument for the switch back I have a sense of the possible failings of using the steel in the structure for reinforcement and if the split level requires a steel that does seem like a downside at the same time it does feel like regardless of possible contingencies I kind of want as much flat surface as I can get and I can imagine many future and current situations where we might want that flat space for something something worthwhile I've also been thinking about this for the last few weeks and sending my thoughts out to people I know who are creative and almost to a person when I present curved or flat or like sloped or flat surfaces they say no brainer make it flat if possible so that it can be used for something other than parking at some point and that feels strong to me I do wish that I knew better exactly what the load numbers were that I'm unhappy that that is not perfectly clear Donna well I'm definitely supporting the switchback and part of this is my experience of garages they're just much more comfortable to drive in and I'm looking at this structure to be a garage for 40 years I want a garage that's going to work that people are going to be comfortable using and that it'll give us more spaces I also like Rosie, like the height and the other aspect is your engineer, your company has an engineer set you and Sue talk to another firm of engineers that's two engineer firms and I'll do respect it's like having legal advice no matter what lawyer we have here somebody disagrees with us so I think it's much more than just comparing assessment and I'm willing to go with these two opinions we can certainly explore it more but I feel comfortable with that and I do appreciate that you did talk to a second firm so that's where I'm at let me switch back great so just so you know what my values are I think I might have mentioned them the fact that the split level is less convenient for ADA accessibility not that it would be inaccessible exactly but it would be less convenient that matters to me especially considering that this might be parking for some senior housing and two I mean I share Jack's opinion that if anticipating that this is going to be a parking garage for a long time and that if it's not we could be eliminating parking on the street that we can be eliminating other surface parking spaces that to me seems very exciting and that this is a place where we can concentrate parking in the city even in the long run one vision of the future is that we have autonomous electric vehicles driving around they're going to need a place to plug in and this could be a place where they do that so I'm still hopeful for the future that we're still good so I think we probably can guess how this vote is going to go based on all of our statements but I think we should vote so any further discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed aye I missed that we have to do a roll call because it was not so Jack Rosie Glen Donna Ashley okay so we have four votes in favor so that motion passes thank you all moving forward we're doing okay could be worse okay so on to the facade if you would can you pass it over to you so the design process is a matter of wrestling with details I'm presenting conceptually our approach to the design of this exterior facade in full recognition that there's a lot of room for improvement that I expect will unfold as we perfect the application and go through the design advisory committee in the development review board the facade is presented on this color image or on the cover sheet of this and there are extra copies here anybody in the public can someone hand me a picture of that okay great thank you this is an outgrowth of our long discussions with the folks at Christchurch and our earlier approval process the facade is comprised of two primary elements there's solid masonry portions that occupy the corners and portion of the facade and then there's this fuzzy green business you see going on here which is something called living wall or green screen what that is is it's a metallic matrix that's designed to support plant growth our thought process is that we're not mechanically going to link this garage we want air movement through it we on the other hand we don't want a big concrete building in the middle of town this does a couple of things it provides sort of living material which cleans the air coming in going from the garage but also filters the light from the outside coming into the garage and as opposed to hard surfaces we've got a matrix of plants growing what kinds of plants Virginia creeper, Boston ivy English ivy, trumpet vines Listeria so you can imagine especially Listeria I don't know if you've ever seen it in bloom but you know at certain times of the year this thing is going to be covered with purpleish white flowers kind of cascading down at long terminals what does winter do to it well all of these are plants that have a success of planting here in Vermont you know several of those species are ever green is they green in the winter? the ivies will and so the thought process here is that it started when we thought there was going to be a housing project next door what are they going to see when they look out the window is it going to be a brick wall or is it going to be this birch and stuff occupying this material you know so at any rate the primary design concept is that we would break the facade up into smaller understandable pieces by having this shift between solid and the light so the typical brick tower would be detailed in a classical building I've shown some granite trim bands going through there and a few other features there are these kind of large openings in the brick walls and those were conceived of and have always been thought of as an opportunity for a more artistic statement that those kind of angled bars you see are a gesture towards something sculptural happening in that opening that would create kind of visual interest and we're very open to all kinds of input on what those could be you know I'm inspired somewhat by the classic bowstring truss bridges that you have coming in and out of town and so you know having these kinds of jumbles of steel parts is meant to be a kind of a reflection of that but it's also kind of like like spokes and things like that at the same time these things could be colorful so we very much we could give it to the art committee to see some art incorporated into this facade and those were sort of purposely created opportunities for that so you've got that you've got the masonry traditional these are the flat portions of the building so it kind of expresses what's going on inside there and then you've got the green wall system which is illustrated growing up the sides of the building I gave you some photographs in the cover letter of the green installations from around the country this was from the actual manufacturer and you can see they've got to make sure that they're hanging in place one of these is in Iowa I think and at the very last Iowa I think sorry Iowa the very last one shows you a new installation let's just get it started just to give you a sense it's going to look like this until that grows because that's a better question just to be clear on that these are open spaces behind that planting it's like a three dimensional chain that's a box about this thick and it's got slender wires going all through it like a space draw and Ivy's you know they want something to climb on and behind that there's not a concrete wall there are you're looking there's going to be a wheel stop that's sort of the foot off the floor and then there's going to be a bumper stop at like 18 inches off the floor and then beyond that if there's any large openings we'll have some kind of railing system to keep people from falling out of big holes on the top floor here you can see sort of the meshing so one question about how removable those panels are I mean they come in I assume some you know maybe for our purposes it would be like one entire you know length but is it sectionable I guess is my question and how easy is it to remove and the reason I ask is because I can imagine sometime in the future like let's say we have a public arts commission that wants to put in some might want to remove a panel of greenery and replace it with giant art or something well you know we're using this we're using this also as a as a means to sort of provide an edge to those floors so that people don't fall out of the building but it's there are horizontal stanchions or arms that come off of the primary structure and then this is this is sort of bolted to that and I would think so long as it was maintained the only difficult part of unbolting it would be you know you'd have to these plants once they grow in there are going to be tricky you know Burlington I'm sorry I keep referring to other places but Gallagher was on was on College Street and that building has just been kind of encapsulated by by vining IVs which ironically there's no green space or anything they're coming right out of the sidewalk and they've practically swallowed the building this is this is on purpose these plants are going to these plants are going to thrive in this kind of environment but yeah it's it's reversible it's demountable it's just I think and in sections or the whole thing it only comes it only comes in panels and we're going to make an overall well that last image in the cover letter sort of shows you it's you know a given section is going to be like four by eight or something and we're going to bolt them together to make this effective so it's modular it's not there here outside it's going to come out of a box it's going to get bolted together and then we're going to put Wagner Hodgson tells me we should see pretty respectable growth within about three years and yeah over time there's going to be some requirement to baby those plants just like any street tree program but anybody's got a wood lot like I do you know trumpet finds are they're tenacious they're not weak plants so this was our broad scheme and if if the public wants something else or there's a sense that there's something missing here we're open and receptive to to that input just the evolution of it was to to accommodate our neighbors but it they grew into a kind of a good idea for the whole project there are some large flat surfaces where murals or other kind of art could be accommodated and there's also sort of at the ground level where the building meets this parkland there's an opportunity for some public art in there as well one suggestion that came to me from one of the public was to go around the top of this thing and sort of have panoramic pictures of Montpelier and a description of what you can see from this vantage point which I've seen done very successfully and would love to see happen here but we're talking about a combination of traditional solid materials like you might expect to find in Montpelier and then something completely different which I think when we talk about the Confluence Park this is the backdrop to that so you know to have this living material here is an important sort of sort of sort of percenium against which that whole activity happens and I will say the good news as far as anybody concerned what the park is is that we're on the north side of the park so the southern light and everything it's still going to be a well-lit space this thing isn't going to cast long shadows on the park because the park is on the sunny side of the building sorry just on that point we've got two long walls and one of them is a north wall kind of facing toward the housing the potential housing is are we concerned about the green wall on that side surviving some plants are shade loving and some plants are some loving and the landscape architects have kind of come up with an approach for each side as I understand okay I guess so I'll be perfectly candid this kind of looks like a jail to me and I just Montpelier is Montpelier and it just kind of strikes me that this would be an opportunity for this thing to sort of embrace that a little bit and I just I'm not super fun it looks like a government building to me and I realize that there are reasons for that I lived in Boston for a number of years and Boston has been ready for years to sort of get rid of that government building look and it just seems like there's so much opportunity for us to like make this something that's not like kind of a brick structure that's just plopped in an area and I really don't like those bars across the windows it's see I picture those as like being multi-colored I don't know fair enough it just seems like there's something that we could do to make this a more unique structure if this is something that the city is going to invest in and everyone sort of jokes about us being Montpelier why are we kind of picking this very basic generic do you have any thoughts as to like what could be different I mean I just googled some things and I realize that that probably adds a significant sum of money to it but there are some that have art installations on the outside so like around the entire parking garage I think that's kind of unique I think we have some great local artists who would probably be willing to contribute to that I mean I'm just I'm looking now there are some where it's just a fixed art installation some of them seem to change some have different colored lights I'm not saying that we would do that given I know how much of a debate we had about lighted signs but it just seems like this could be an opportunity to sort of make this reflect some of our own community values and sort of embracing that eclectic kind of downtown vibe and I just that for me just doesn't come anywhere close well it sounds like some of the things you're suggesting are things that could be incorporated and for not that much cost right I just and a lot of them I think I kind of struggle so public safety is also a concern in parking garages and this is an awful lot of close space so there's like an entire closed off wall so there's no light coming in from there I realize it's lit from the inside but the ability to see into structures and making sure that they're well lit and I know there's going to be video cameras and things like that it just seems like maybe having a more open concept for the parking garage and I know that creates other issues in terms of like you know whether maintenance and things like that but it just the open the more open walls on parking garages seem to lend themselves to more sort of community art installation than a brick wall which typically tends to lead to like graffiti which is fun and cool I mean but it just seems like for ten and a half million dollars we could make this reflect a little bit more the talents that we have in our community and one thought I have which isn't reflected in the drawings but what's going to get there is we can edit this screen screen it doesn't have to be uniform we can put holes through it we can have a variety of openings and stuff to give it more of a look but I I would love to funk this up a little bit if if there's consensus that yeah we're ready for that you know I I think there was a sort of pallet of materials that we wanted to present because we thought they were appropriate but within that pallet you can do a lot of funky things with brick you know or maybe maybe you will say well the brick's not that important to us we want something else there are going to be portions where we want some solid wall where we where we come closest to the hotel we kind of need that short section of wall to be solid you know adjacent to where the church wants to put their housing project there's going to need to be some kind of solid wall for fire safety to let them optimize how many windows they have but yeah anybody else got ideas I'm trying to find when you're saying we could do some things with brick and I'm just wondering about what kind of cost does it add to do some interesting designs and the work how do historic buildings have in terms of just adding some more kind of detail more historic work that a lot of the downtown buildings have I would assume that it costs but I don't have an idea of in my opinion no I've done a lot of brick buildings and in my experience the mason's got to put the brick there if he sticks it out a little bit or pushes it in a little bit he's only too happy to do that they love to be creatively expressive and they get good production on large pieces of wall but we've always tried to incorporate stuff like that in our work and never found anybody who really made a big deal out of the cost of it how much do you think it would cost to add some like historically reminiscent molding do you know what I mean like something that's not just well you know we're doing that on the hotel building we've got sort of traditional moldings around the windows and stuff you know you could kind of like go around and find some architectural remnants and just sort of put them into the wall there's a great stone builder who does stone walls with wheelbarrows and stuff in them so if there's support for that kind of idea I think the way to do that would be probably to kind of charrette with the public you know have a thing on a Saturday morning or something and get that input of a question how does that fit in the process of the permit application and everything I think you know I mean it's your permit process but my guess is we would reserve portions on the places on the building where this was meant to happen and we would say you know based on public input or whatever because essentially what I think the design advisory committee is going to be most involved in that part of it you know I think if we go to them and say we're reserving this space for a significant piece of public art to be determined I think they would be supportive of that I like the brick as a base because then it goes with the rest of the neighborhood but it does need to be livened up with art and variety in the brick so if we can go up and have that reserve to work on that that's great to me there's nothing that says we have to use one color of brick or that brick has to be red or any you know I mean we're painting the building next door it's a brick building but we're putting paint on it because we're going for a certain very traditional look but no I what's that it's going to be the hotels color here white and gray it's granite limestone and white painted brick I just want to raise I just got an email from a constituent and I heard from one other person as well there's apparently they can't hear anything on the Orca broadcast sorry sorry I just I'm so glad that you brought that up I was just like to make sure I didn't I heard a couple other staffs as well if I can jump in yeah go ahead what is the currently large openings or square and I was thinking about what makes some of our building look unique and historic and I'm thinking about the people's background which is actually a modern building that has those normally big arches but I think I meant to come back to the train station that was there and I'm not doing an arched opening rather than the square openings oh my gosh I would love that what's that I would love that a big circular opening sorry if you have more to say, I want to cut you out the other thing I was thinking about was arched openings what does it look like to kind of grasp the way that a large factory window type thing I think historically what I would have done in this space what it would have been low buildings or that sort of thing those institutional buildings of the 1900s what kind of thinking about the design there a little bit I think what Ashley said about working at the prison, I think a lot of that because of this terror and I'm wondering if we can do something a little different to the roof of the tower is there a way to do some cool moving around the edge of that roof to make it look like a turret or something, you know how could that change because right now I think it does kind of look like a tower yeah arched too yeah you know what I can totally see it now that you say it it makes me feel bad to admit that you know I think there's a lot of things we can do to the top of those stair towers sort of reflecting the fact that the stair towers are going to pop up a little bit of relative to the rest of the building that's sort of a functional space requirement thing but I'd be happy to look at that element and try to take some of the low arched one final thought was about incorporating some granite just because that is such a local material and so some of these places that I think are kind of just maybe it's white cement making those granite as well I know that's probably more expensive but no we meant for those to be stone bands okay we use a little bit of real stone in most of our projects you know if you use it judiciously in the right place it doesn't bust the budget it's just you know no we'd like to see some real stone in there as well one last one I don't know about other private villages that I've seen that I've liked and I don't know how other folks feel about this but I have seen some that do sort of concrete cast lattice work that kind of feels maybe a little 1930s I don't know how I'm trying to think I feel it somewhere in Vermont and I don't know where and I don't know if anybody knows what I'm talking about but it's sort of like it's a lattice screen you know open air it's like concrete with some interesting designs in it yeah we're getting various reactions I think I know what you're talking about some people yes some people know I think they're called textile blocks oh okay they're laid up there's sort of air goes through them but there's different diamonds there's rounds unfortunately they don't make those anymore to get them you gotta find them reconstructed yeah interesting let me get the AC back on it's getting very warm I know I'm sorry just a little bit for a little while Rosie where were you thinking of for that please come forward all those ideas don't necessarily go together but that was just another idea for some of those openings or some of the more solid walls um yeah I do like the predominance of the greenness and having the other things supplemented oh Glenn you had a thing I just want to weigh in a little bit on broad questions of the design I really like the idea of the greenery I like the idea of the openings all of them through the greenery and elsewhere personally in some ways I have some hesitancy about adding decorative moldings or some kinds of decorative brick work because I don't want it to be a kind of gilded or just applied to the surface kind of look and for instance when you're talking about the steel structures that you can see in these drawings through the openings a lot of the beauty of those old bridges that you're talking about referring to there is you're seeing the actual structure like that's one of the things that makes that beautiful is that you can see that it's holding itself up um and I would be in favor of elements like that that are at least reflective of the structure rather than a kind of decoration applied to something that depends on something else for its structure if you see what I mean so in a way for instance I happen to often like the look of concrete facade if that's what the building is made of that feels like a kind of honesty to some degree I don't necessarily want it to be all concrete all the way across but I think that a kind of you know if it's a modern garage then make it a cool modern looking parking garage and don't necessarily try to make it look like it's a factory which it isn't you know an 1800s factory I'm not going to uh die on this hill but I just want to I just want to put that point of view into the conversation and I think that it is compatible potentially with what Ashley was talking about earlier a certain kind of downtown you know active urban contemporary feeling I don't know if that's really what you meant but that's what I heard so I get nervous when you say contemporary because city center got put in to be contemporary and nobody liked to live with it we've done everything to reduce it to make it be more compatible it doesn't have to be an invitation but some flavor of its neighbors please not another city center I agree not another city center that's the balancing act I mean it's clear we need to loosen our tile a little bit on this one and I'm happy to do that I really appreciate these insights because it'll be a lot more fun to do if loosen our ties that's a good way what if you don't wear a tie yeah there you go there you go I wouldn't like some direction to that one I swear so one more thing I wanted to add I'm looking at the images of the first floor that feels unfinished to me those first floor openings I think there could be some more done there um I understand what you're talking about I have a volume I'm obligated to provide there's a formula for it and as long as I hit that number I can manipulate these openings so um yeah is it I get it it's like 10 here I'm not understanding what she doesn't like these openings on the first floor down here ones just the north and south the ones with the sort of like railing they just have some like bars in front of them they're just kind of these square openings and you see the cars and there's no I don't know they seem unfinished and the rest of the building has something going on and then this is kind of good well that's for the jailbreakin so what I would like to do now I know the council has any further comments I want to turn to the public get some public comment and then I want to talk about the process for making a decision about this um so I think that I could use a little clarity so comments from the public I'm a big fan of biophilia so I'm with you there and it's great you pulled up all these fantastic images they're actually quite a few my job is a green building product expert and that's what I do so I love them but there are a lot of instances of them failing and typically they require a maintenance contract to keep them looking good insects like they require watering and fertilizer actually a lot of work throw that out there to make sure that you guys are aware that you go down that road you got an investment and if the look of that facade and building depends on that there can be significant issues with the aesthetics if things are not going well I hear committee being formed that does help can I interrupt you on that because I have a question related to that so we have a green wall there and what is our do we know what the maintenance is on that we don't control that but we can find out I also throw that in because if you do have to have a service contract that's another cost of things and if you are going to go down that road which I'm fine with as long as that's all just be really cautious about overstating the air quality there's actually really no data on them providing that benefit I know a lot of looking into the ones that are used on interiors because people try to upsell that unbelievably and I've looked at this in detail and the data just isn't there to support it common sense would tell you that it does provide some benefit but there's really no tangible evidence out there to do that so I would just say if you are going to do this don't try to sell it okay thank you that's helpful let it learn Barbara okay so the first thing I want to make clear is that I'm not necessarily opposed to this project I know it sounds like it it's okay it's just that I want to make sure we do it right and so you know as you can probably imagine I'm kind of stuck on zoning so zoning is my thing so one of the things that's come up for me about the facade and I don't you know it certainly has appeal but if we are following the new zoning ordinance in which it looks as if the Hampton Inn attempted to do in terms of articulation and varying the roof heights and all of that but it does not appear that the parking garage is following the architectural standards for this district I guess do we waive architectural standards for this city sorry how so because there are certain requirements in terms of articulation the building not just being a mass and being in certain openings in various I mean even in the old zoning there was for the downtown area there were requirements so you know it's fine if we want to just not say that we're going to waive that but you know I think we need to worry about it I'm not I'm still not clear on what the problem is well I certainly you know already from the but you know that but it has to do with mass and it has to do with the brick face the flat face of the building because what we're trying to do is to make buildings that are compatible with the downtown alright and we don't have too many buildings that have a 200 long wall or facade that has no articulation to it and so I think that is I mean yes the green space is an articulation to some extent but not a not a mass so what you're saying is that a long flat wall doesn't meet it that we're looking for some sections being bartered forward some sections being bartered back replicating replicating the streetscape where there's a whole you know it could have 5 big buildings in a row but it doesn't look like all one thing yep yeah okay thank you for that that's helpful so we were going to go through is there any further comment from the public on the facade very briefly it's great these are the first dimension elevation drawings and again it's on the point of how much time this is going to take because an analysis of public safety video angles emergency response in and out if certain one or more entrances are blocked by a car fire or vandalism I'm encouraging you to move slow enough to do this right or get well enough to do it somewhere else thank you okay so I could use some clarity on any further comment from the public so I would love to talk about where we go from here because you brought up this idea of a design charrette and on the one hand I really like that idea you know again getting more public input more creativity into it I think it's a great thing and but I also know that we have to submit something on Friday I think there could probably be placeholders in that application that's like something interesting goes here but I'm going to look to Bill or to you two both to think about how we can structure that it seems like we could parse this out if there is consensus about certain things like let's do something with the towers so it doesn't look quite like the prison guard structure so that we could yeah do you see what I'm saying I think perhaps it would be appropriate for the city council to put together some guiding principles for the design advisory committee and the development review board to consider when reviewing the form of proposal you know certainly at a minimum we need to make sure that we're in compliance with the new zoning regs as far as the articulation of the facade I'm definitely hearing a big vote for considering the massing and looking for ways to articulate in ways that make it not look like a prison I think we all have to share that goal so you know we can take the input I've got tonight and fold it into our drafting as we prepare these applications but I think from your perspective the thing to do would be to make sure that these concerns get folded into some kind of checklist for the review boards to to take off it seems to me like we maybe as you're suggesting like we should be making a list of at least the guidelines of how we'd want to see this be changed in general is that that would be useful to you we're totally open to change we're even to make the change we're not going to be able to make it for you tonight but as we go through this process which will last for most of the month of October we'll have at least two meetings with each of these boards maybe three and as we come before them they'll say well okay based on based on our instructions from the city council we think you have too much of this or not enough of that so let me hop in the boards would not take instruction from the city council they act independently in terms of their review they would take their instruction from the regulations whether or not the proposal complies a council can't interfere with the board process I think you and I can take instruction from their desires to create a product that meets those principles so they can't direct the board to say here's what we want I'm listening the issue has been raised we're promoting this but also the regulator we're really trying to keep those roles separate they need to be separate and distinct I was going to suggest we have to file an application by Friday that the most important thing is the footprint and dimension those kinds of things to start the ball rolling it could be and I think Audra had said she would give us a week if we were going to make a mind design amendments the first steps are the subdivision of the land which is going to be fairly straightforward but has to be processed there's a whole lot of utility stuff that has to be sorted out that won't be impacted by design but I would think we could substantially improve this by the time we submit on Friday and then what we should do is sort of monitor our progress in terms of how that improvement is coming together moving forward and the council meets next week and then it goes flu, revised design at least at that meeting we're happy to put this thing up on any kind of public website or anything as it goes forward to kind of virtually sure-read it because I like the energy you brought to the beginning of this conversation it's probably the only positive thing anyone else has to say about me I'm a big fan of Fortlandia and I was one of those great places that really has a personality it's not faceless nameless we get most in a lot of places we shouldn't screw that up I'm happy to go back and take a whack at that even though I live in Richmond I'm not so I would love to see if there is I'm not sure I'm feeling like we need a vote but just see if there is general consensus about a series of changes and if I'm missing anything let me know I should just say I got a communication from a constituent suggesting another way to break up the masses concrete facade with muralside obviously doing a mural is guaranteed to be controversial because everyone has their own idea of what they want to look like and they have to maintain them that's just one suggestion from one person I didn't want to go by without mentioning it need to go grab a pen do you mind? oh thank you so much sorry I have a camera with this image I'm going to say it close to me is it possible to put one more than this furrow and that might make those tears look a little more less foreboding? yes of course that's what actually the St. Albans garage is actually all glassed the stairwells are glassed so you can see in the stairwells I think it's a safety thing too I want to know if anybody is in the stairwells when I'm begrudgingly walking to my car in a parking garage sorry so was the idea there that we could maybe use glass instead of glass as the solid surface there for me it's just like one thousand it's got some other ideas from the glass towers and presumably you don't need to do every tower the same too let's show maybe some rose colored glass at least some kind of windows or glass in the stairways okay making a list here of things that we can maybe make some decisions about as we add these things we could end up with a really odd cookie cutter look so we can put out some ideas and maybe you can come back with more than one rendition yeah sure if you have glass we're talking about art we have plans right you've got my committee has done that would work well for me I think if we make a list and give it to you we can depend on you for relatively cohesive versions from our we'll apply the same kind of rigour we would any design we're going to be looking for things to tie it together and make it make sense I just also want to just restate that whatever it is that we do I'm sure this is going to increase or decrease costs marginally right if any one of these things kicks us substantially over that's a big flag for me top the only piece of that is I think you're thinking if you're going to have significant public art you should have some kind of budget for that line item I agree yes and it should be part of the plan it shouldn't be the afterthought but I think that's how we keep it from taking over your budget as we set aside a line item for that kind of thing okay so I'm going to start with things that I feel like might have the most consensus and go towards the least consensus maybe it's a guess and if I leave anything off the list or you know if you think of other things that we should consider certainly welcome that so thinking about the roof line of the guard tower sorry can we not call it that the tower the roof line of the tower thank you what now articulation yes so that might be able to be achieved through the tower roof or structure let's read what the regs say okay so we're okay with doing something different with that okay okay what do we think about the possibility of adding windows and or glass to the stairways yes okay great how about the option for adding public art and I want to say that with the caveat of it might not be the first this might take a while this isn't something of interest okay great having some portion of the walls be green yes yes yes yes yes okay great um awesome so one thing oh the question about brick versus cement I think is a tricky one maybe I I mean I like brick I happen to like brick I like brick I absolutely don't know if it's okay it's okay I I think that for instance there are parts of the bank that we were talking about earlier I don't bankers I don't remember people's united um that I do like and some of those those art structures are cool there is one section that I think is weird looking it's two little arches it's a steel or something the structure underneath those two arches like it's not going to stole one of the columns and so I just want to be careful about things like that that if you make it look like the brick is structural in an arch then you should not break that illusion in some part of the building I agree other thoughts about brick I mean it makes people talk so maybe it's I'm mostly pro brick I just want to I just received another note from a constituent just making sure that there are like ample mirrors in the stairways as well so you can sort of see what's going on in there just it's a safety thing that's a good call I got the same message so yeah we're planning on having like emergency health stairways as well I think this was a non issue because you said we were going to do it anyway but the inclusion of granite in some of that I think and we should feature that actually I mean if we're going to put granite in there we should say what Corey came from and I just reflect our area I love it it's going to be local granite right coming from China just checking we did sort of just talk about this but I had it on my list separately was the possibility of arches and I think if they were done well they would be amazing do you think golden arches get run out of town here a few years ago? no it's true if only they were golden maybe they should have been brick yes yes other thoughts on arches? sure yeah you all laugh that's part of that more like non non linear elements it makes me really happy okay that was everything that I had on my list do you have to talk about patterns in the brick? oh yeah patterns in the brick thoughts? yeah how much of these where they all go I just think as long as we just make sure to be mindful of what the zoning requires I have a little bit of hesitation about patterns in the brick just because I feel like it could go badly quickly I don't know what I think about when you mention patterns in the brick is one the steeple of the church downtown that has the patterns on the on the slate each section is different and there was the building doesn't exist anymore but there used to be a restaurant by 89 down in Richmond I think called the checkerboard restaurant it used to be okay it's called that because it's built with the checkerboard pattern on the brick it's a Flemish pond brick it's one of the oldest houses in Vermont it's a good restaurant is it still a restaurant? yeah I can't afford to eat there yeah I suppose that I could be I could get on board with patterns in the brick I might need some convincing oh my gosh there you go we're going to put the periodic table in brick yeah there you go the bubble to the bubble chamber tracks of subatomic particles oh that would be great okay anything else okay Steve I need to break up the phone I was at the development review board meeting a couple nights ago in these issue of advocacy developer versus regulator it became clear that the development review board that it's going to be is the city's public works department that decides how much of a traffic study we need and that's a very untenable position to put Tom in who answers to Bill to answers to the council because the trip generation analyses that were done for the both phases of the Bashar project do not come anywhere close to traffic study done on number of turns left right time of day through which egress and elk that needs to be done and you all need to take it make a firm commitment to do that but I believe where you're going to come out is that the 20 foot easements across Bashar's property are going to be inadequate especially dumping on the state street without traffic control and I suspect where you're going to come out is not where you want to come out but you're going to come out with any lot access and potentially the need to use on a domain and make the any lot a street connecting to L and a traffic one you know to accommodate the level of traffic in the ingress and ingress and public safety and you really need to recognize that that's a possibility here and consider it in in these discussions because that's a very political thing and you don't want to come back later with a bait and switch that we're going to do that right? Thank you Do you want to Aaron? So we have been talking about a second egress in access and with you know he's in appreciate Steve's input I my direction to Tom was whatever's necessary I've not directed Tom we should perform to do any more or less it's use your professional judgment whatever's needed the same as we would for any other development project of this size in this part of town and don't ask me to approve it just do it Great Which has also been our instructions to the planning design department I know Whitenberg did a lot of work for us in terms of thinking through what's normal for parking garages and they've been a good third party entity They're very active Yeah Okay Was there anything further that we should be considering? We are talking about the two exits Yes I was going to say we didn't talk about making a decision about the roof That's true Nobody made a motion Don't we have to? There was an opportunity to make a motion She asked What does that translate to? It means that there's no support to add a roof Not in the base proposal But I would like to talk about the two Egresses Okay I'm going to turn it over to you The instructions when I came in the door were that access to and from the garage would be solely from the Catholic Plaza property to Stacey There has been some talk about what happens if there's a car stall or something like that Okay You can sit right up here You can move that thing closer to you So the best Our best thinking on that right now is that after the entrance to the garage itself we will incorporate three lanes One to come in, one to go out and one to be flexible That would not rearrange the I just learned this today from the meeting we had at noon That takes some of the pressure off But there still seems I think there's still a desire to have like a secondary or emergency only use access at the lower level which would be the Haney lot access Everything the traffic people have told me is that introducing additional traffic at the intersection of Elm Street is going to be problematic And that by having two Egresses it's a problem I think if we provided it it wouldn't be for regular use But we're going to have an opening there for flood control purposes We've been thinking that that opening would be controlled somehow And if for some reason the main entrance got blocked, somebody at city all could open a gate But I think that's as far as we've gone with that. We don't really want to set up two separate pay stations or any of that stuff My suggestion is that we explore the second access to the extent possible understand the costs I think there are safety and traffic reasons I think the counter balancing traffic concerns and this is what we would need someone else to tell us is in one hand you've got two places where people are coming on the state street the other thing is with traffic management sometimes dispersal of location is better but they still come out at the same place in the Elm and none of us are impressed. I know but to me just for any number of reasons that you mentioned it could be an accident it could be anything could happen we need to get emergency vehicles in a separate way. I think having a second vehicle access is preferable and if it's feasible and they're both functioning pay access is great if they're not that's okay too but I think we ought to run it up the flagpole and make sure that it's safe we can do it. I was sold on that after visiting St. Albans they were pretty clear they have two separate exits and they're both fully automated functional pay and they just said look sometimes these gates break these things happen and people could just go around and go out the other way and still pay it's all fine but it is also additional cost so we'd have to understand what all that meant. One time Elm Street was looked at a possible street to take traffic off of St. Main Street remember when we talked about a vehicle bridge not just a pedestrian bridge I don't know that any serious study was done it was a discussion right and we would have no issue using the property for that vehicle access because we have that property at least for the same light as the parking lot what do you need from us at this point? Well if you don't want it no I mean I'd definitely like to explore it that's all we really need especially if it's a steeped in the design for now whether it's thinking or just could come down to a policy statement about how you use it Ashley did you look like you were going to say something? No? Okay Done It's related to this topic so you can cut me off but it has to do with using the Elm Street 60 State Street lot that takes you out to Elm which this back access would for a bike lane Mary Hooper particularly brought this up she couldn't stay but I wanted to make sure it got stated and that here is State Street and that we consider an actual clearly marked attractive bike lane back here to pass. I wonder if that would require removing parking or would that be outset from the parking It doesn't have to be decided tonight but I just wanted to throw the idea she feels like this regress is not really bicycle friendly nothing out here whereas here you could look down and see straight through we could put position flags extending from the outside of the building to help drive people to the river but that was her concern bicycles are here what's going to draw them into path I just wanted everybody to have that in their brain and that it got discussed no decision but something to think about Thank you That was the point that I was trying to make true when I talked about access to the back and I don't have it in my head what address 60 State Street is That's this parking lot That's that parking lot Just to throw up there I need guidance from city council from the city's attorney or whatever I believe this garage building has some kind of right of access down through here it doesn't show up on the surveys but it's been described to you that they have an access to that back parking lot so maybe it's in the undercarriage or something something so it would be good to get some clarity on that but I'm four square for improved bike access There's something like short term even that painted green kind of bike path that we're now using and then maybe we could go to some other kind of pavement later on something that's very distinguished Okay gosh this is one other thing that is interesting to me but I don't know what the opportunity is here I really love permeable pavers instead of asphalt we can talk about that later that's maybe not this discussion someone's going to tell me that's going to cost too much later in any case I think for the purposes of what we needed to get done tonight we've gotten through it all we've done it Okay so any further questions comments? No? You happy? Happy homework? No I'm excited I think there's a lot of room for improvement here and I'm glad to have some direction on that because I think whether or not you like the idea of a garage it ought to be the best garage we can make for the money we have when people drive by they should say I'm glad we did that so maybe functionally we can't make you happy so I'm going to make that up I really appreciate your time Glen? I just want to follow up because maybe I kind of missed it in the process and it doesn't totally feel necessary now but I feel like I understood that we were going to select a couple of specific council members to form a sort of ad hoc committee to continue talking about this design and being the point people is that no longer because that's what this is all of us are going to be all of us that makes sense I just want to make sure I thank you that's great further questions? okay I guess without objection oh wait did we have did we have a point for council reports which we usually don't I was just going to say one thing is that last week we were scheduling our this week's meeting and you know we always have a meeting set up on Wednesdays as it happened after we left there were people who couldn't be here last week because of Rosh Hashanah we rushed to schedule this week's meeting for tonight Yom Kippur so again there were people who couldn't be there I just would like us to always try to be aware of those limitations when we schedule things and I apologize for the role I played in not having good days covered that thank you great so without objection we're going to consider this meeting adjourned thank you everybody thank you the light is coming on