 Okay, welcome everybody to this February 22nd, 2022 meeting of Development Review Board. Just introduce the board members that are joining electronically. I am Rob Goodwin here in person, chair of this board. On the Zoom platform, we have Joe Kiernan. Can you introduce yourself? Can you speak up a little bit, Joe? Or get the microphone closer to your mouth? Joe Kiernan, DRB. Perfect, thank you. Yes. Then Abby. You're muted, Abby. There you go. Hi. And then Jean. Oh, we lost him. He's just signing back in. People seem to be having technical difficulties tonight. I hope everybody just has a little extra patience tonight. Jean, are you back? I am back. I have a technical issue. I'm here. Okay, we have four DRB members present. Three on the Zoom platform, one in person. I believe we can proceed. And I will turn this point over to Meredith for hopefully one of the last times who knows to review these remote meeting procedures and process. So go ahead, Meredith. Okay. All right, everybody. I'm a little slower than normal because previous meeting went right up until the end. So I've got to open up my little intro for anybody watching the work. All right. So share screen. All right. So for anybody who is watching this development review board meeting from home via Orca media, you can participate in tonight's meeting by this link into your web browser. And that would take you straight into the Zoom meeting where you can see everybody and speak and see everything that we share on our screens. Alternatively, you can call into this phone number and plug in this meeting ID. Oh, we lost you again. If you are, if somebody is trying to log in and they're having problems accessing the meeting, please email me. Here's my email address. I will be monitoring my email throughout the meeting. And so I will try and help you log in if you're having problems. For those attending via Zoom, turning your video on is optional. For everyone attending, please keep your microphone on mute when you're not speaking. This will reduce background noise. And a reminder that the Zoom chat function should only be used for troubleshooting or logistics questions for questions or comments about an item on the agenda. Please raise your hand. You can do that physically or by using the raise hand button on your toolbar. And then when you're called on by the chair, please make sure to state your name once you're unmuted. And then you can place your include your comments. In the event that members of the unable to access this meeting and I'll find that out via my email, the meeting will need to be continued to a time and place certain because we did give the online platform as a mode of accessing the meeting. I will now hand the meeting back over to the chair. Jean, if you get bumped off again, feel free to just call in on your phone. And I know you wouldn't be able to see the screen, but you'd be able to hear everything and talk and keep getting bumped off. So it's just an option. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Meredith. At this point, I'd accept a motion to approve the agenda for this night's meeting. Moved. Motion by Abby. Seconded. Seconded by Joe. How do board members vote on this, Joe? Yes. Abby? Yes. Jean? Yes. Rob votes. Yes. We have an agenda. Well, just only comments from the chair this evening. We do appear to have you having some various technical problems. Seems to be working smoothly now, but just bear with us. And we will do what we can here. We have four members present. I believe we are expecting another member that indicated that he was going to be late. But that does give us a quorum for this evening. And out further ado, we can proceed on to the next order of business, which is approval of the minutes from the February 7th, 2022 meeting. And we do have enough members here who are eligible to vote on this. Is there any changes proposed for the minutes or a motion to approve? Make the motion to approve the minutes. Motion from Abby. Second. Second from Jean. OK, Joe, how do you vote? Yes. Abby? Yes. Jean? Yes. Rob, myself votes. Yes, we have the approved minutes for February 7th. OK. So the next order of business will be a continuation of the application for 43 Granite Shed Lane. And so I believe that there was some additional information that was submitted. And so maybe Meredith can give a brief summary of that. And then we'll turn it over to the applicant for discussion. Before we do that, because Joe Castellano was not at the first part of the hearing, we need to swear Joe in if he's planning to make any comments. Because I think we have John, Fred, Jeff, they were all here. And I'm sorry. I don't know if it's Michael or Stephen that signed in as Janet. Stephen. Stephen. OK, thank you. I'm sorry. I don't recognize everybody. I haven't seen enough of you frequently. I usually just see Fred. Jody, you wish to speak tonight? Yes, just for a brief period. OK. So we'll need to swear you in as a witness. Otherwise, whatever you say doesn't get to go on the record. Oh, you want to be able to see him? Oh, hold on one second. Sorry. No, it's OK. I've got to find where it is. I don't quite have it memorized yet. And I forgot my cheat sheet. I must have it. I wouldn't want to miss a word, though. No, that would negate the whole benefit. All righty, Joe. Here, you can speak to my microphone. So can you raise your right hand and repeat after me? Oh, he doesn't have to repeat. Oh, yeah. That's right. Do you always swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury? I do. Thank you, sir. OK, so what has changed on 43 Trenchhead Lane, Meredith, since we last met? All right, so I'm going to keep this fairly brief and then hand it over to the applicants to go into more detail if they want. But we did get supplemental information from the applicant on the application. And this has all been sent around to everybody. And the new information confirms the location of the water setback on all the site plans. And sorry, I should somebody else sign in. It also verifies the proposed total impervious area that's within the water setback, including the existing non-conforming impervious cover that's within the riparian area. So that was that crane area that once we got the correct water setback, we realized that that was in the riparian buffer. And then the new riparian buffer impervious cover. This all still falls within the limits. I double check the numbers. They're still OK with what's in the water setback for total impervious cover. And then the board is just going to need to approve those stormwater outfall areas. They also added some trees and shrubs in response to the Montpelier conservation comments. They added some both at these stormwater outfall areas, as well as along the swale. They revised the lighting plan. And this brought the lumen total under the maximum allowed for the site. And they also eliminated those poles that were too close to the property boundary. So under my review, the lighting plan compliance, a minor detail. They fixed a site plan detail sheet so that everything is consistent. And they can see the vinyl fencing that's going to go around the refuge enclosure. And then another thing that they put in into the cover sheet for the supplemental package was some potential conditions that they would be a, oh, they had either we had talked about in the hearing or some ideas for conditions for approval. I'm not going to go into all those in detail now, but the board has those and is able to evaluate them. I did get today, and I'm going to add it to the record, but I want to just read it in, that the Montpelier Conservation Commission, in case they had any additional comments. And I think it's the chair of that forwarded on an email that was sent to the applicant that said that the Montpelier Conservation Commission would like to thank applicant for considering their comments and revising the plans of the proposed project located at 43 Granite Shed Lane. And then they offered some information about conservation, including potential opportunities for grants and potential funding for other stormwater changes and things like that. But I will put that email in the record, but they didn't have any more constructive changes requested or anything like that to what we got. So that's sort of an approval of what was there that were made. You know, there's still some sort of outstanding items that I'm not sure if the board is going to want to try and dig down deeper on, or if they're satisfied. And that's really with regard to the preferences. I just discussed that fairly in depth at the last meeting. But if the board has any other questions about that, they should feel free. Recording in progress. Sorry about that. The key determinations when I went through the prior staff report and what was already dealt with or resolved or where it felt like the board had enough facts is really what uses are the board going to approve? Are they going to grant exemption to the street tree requirement given the need for a place for the trucks to turn around when they go into the loading dock and why there was an explanation about why putting street trees on that side of the building really wasn't. And then whether or not the board is open with cash enclosure, not being at the technically the rear of the parcel. Most of the other things that were red flagged were resolved with all the additional information that's gotten, at least in my opinion. The big one, of course, is what uses are allowed and is that the board going to approve? That's what I've got. Sorry, that was a long spiel. Thank you, Meredith. I would turn it over to the Connor group for anything to add or expand upon the materials you submitted since our last meeting here. Fred Connor here. I'll just be brief. Just want to thank the board and staff for reviewing the date and we respectfully request approval as we've outlined in our most recent letter. Yeah, thank you for the detailed summary, too. I think it's very helpful to sort of figure out where we're at and where we're going here with this application. So, Jeff, did you have any summary you would like to do here on the site plans? Yeah, I mean, I think Meredith did a good job of summarizing plan, site, detail, and landscaping changes that have been made. We did our best to try to summarize that in the cover letter, supplemental cover letter. So if I know how everybody's read through that in some detail, what we attempted to do is initially outline the changes that were made and how they address the initial staff comments as well as the conservation committee comments. As Meredith outlined again, I feel like we've done a pretty good job of addressing all those to the best of our ability. The remaining portion of that relatively lengthy cover letter was an attempt to address the initial staff comments, more or less, in the order they were presented within the initial staff review, as well as, I think it just kind of goes in a more miracle outline of the regulations with regards to the critical items or items that we're looking for the board to make a decision on whether it's relative to the site center view with conditional use review. So I'm happy to go through each of these individually in the order that they were presented in the cover letter or I can turn it back over the board and we can simply address the ones in more detail that they feel are more imperative. But I'm happy to do either whatever the board's pleasure is. I don't think we need to go through every single one. I think that there's sort of three issues here to maybe our, that we could go upon. I guess one is the easiest. If you could just talk a little bit about we gotta address this issue with the trash being at the front of the parcel and not at the rear of the parcel. It's like it's in the middle. And I guess I could see some benefits. I'm sure you got a good reason for why that is, but for the record, I think it would make sense for you to sort of talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so if I feel like trying to, right now it's located kind of at the central location of the Southern parking lot. Obviously we have a little bit of a unique layout of the property in general, given the scale of the existing building and how it kind of bisects the property. And I believe where it's located, it was really to do a couple of things. One is to provide somewhat of an easy access to the majority of the Southern entrance points of the building, as well as making it somewhat accessible for access for trash and recycling removal without a scenario where it's, you know, blatantly obvious in the front of the property. Understanding that more than likely, and again, we obviously don't know exactly where the tenant or use is gonna be, but I think in theory everybody's generally under the assumption that the majority, if this is facility is to be used as some type of retail or restaurant or brewery or something of that nature, that the majority of the customer access and entrance will be on the north side of the building. So really the south or back side of the building is kind of the purpose of the lot, really the rear portion of the frontage, so to speak, or the visible aesthetic of the property, even though we've got the right away on the east or right side there. But I think, you know, the fact that that back considerably, and I say considerably, I mean, we're talking 60, 70 feet off the frontage or the granite shed laying right away. And it's also, you know, a screen with a vinyl fencing all the way around the perimeter. You know, we feel it's located in the spot that is out of the way, not really visible to the public eye, but it still presents an opportunity for a relative easy access for both the users inside the building as well as access to a removal of the trash recycling on a regular basis. Understanding that southeast corner of the property in that parking area really is where a lot of loading, unloading, and maintenance operations will be taking place, so. Thank you. Also the rear of the parcel is the top of the riverbank, I think that that's not the best place for a trash receptacle, in my opinion. That's the best number. All right, so then the next issue is the street trees. And I believe you guys are requesting slight deviation from the regs on that. I don't know if you could just expand on that a little bit. Yeah, so, you know, a similar fashion, we're dealing with, you know, less than ideal existing site conditions and where we have the ability to address that, which we feel as the North entrance parking lot along Granite Shed Lane, you know, we've made an attempt to narrow that down, make kind of a standard traditional commercial curb cut and install four maple trees, I think the Freeman maple trees, two on either side of that to comply with that street tree condition in the best of our ability. The problem on the south side of the building is that parking area that's adjacent to Granite Shed Lane, right now, that's all existing gravel. Really, for the intent of what we're proposing for the loading area of the property, which is located on the southeast corner right at Granite Shed Lane, that's an area where trucks will be pulling in down Granite Shed Lane, backing into that loading space, and then then again pulling out and needing to do a three point turn kind of within that southern parking area. And so creating any additional kind of green space or median or belt there is really prohibitive to allowing that loading area and access in that southern parking lot to occur given the existing site constraints. So, you know, we've, in addition to the, doing the best we can on the north side, I think we've tended to go a little above and beyond on the overall site landscaping beyond what is maybe actually technically necessary to help offset that a little bit. And we felt providing some landscaping screening on both the north and south property lines as well as some of the riverbank re-vegetation efforts that we're now calling for, you know, more than offset for the lack of a few street trees given the existing circumstances. All righty. Board members have any other questions on the trash or street trees? No, no, okay. Okay. The last issue, I guess, is a discussion on the uses. And I think I would, through this, I would push move to page five of the staff reports. Meredith gave a recommendation there. I believe I'm making this correctly. Is that still relevant? Yeah, I mean, this is one option. Yeah. Right, so just because you've introduced it, if you don't mind. Yeah. If the board is not comfortable approving a conditional use here, given that the exact conditional use isn't known, page five of the staff report does provide a potential avenue for the board to be able to approve a potential use, permitted use, which would then be able to be linked to the site plan changes so that the applicant can move forward with getting some paving done, getting some landscaping done, getting some striping in to make it easier to then be able to find a tenant for that ultimate use. You know, if the final tenant or tenants came back, if there was a permitted use, it would be an administrative permit. If the use was a conditional use, it would come back before the board. So it would be a fresh application once they got to whoever the ultimate tenant is, if it's not the restaurant use that was requested. So specifically on page five, my suggestion for an avenue here is for the board to approve up to 4,700 square feet of an overlapping restaurant, which is Eat-In, restaurant takeout, and service contractor use, because all three of those could theoretically overlap and use the same space at different times. And with a, it's tied in here in the staff, with a limited number of parking spaces approved. So that's all they would stripe up to until they came back with the uses for the rest of the building. It's a way to move forward. It's just an option. The board may have some other creative solution that I haven't thought of, or the applicant may, but that was an option. But the board could also theoretically approve a conditional use with a bunch of conditions on it. That's really how you want to go forward here. And Meredith, just to piggyback on that a little bit, on page two of our supplemental cover letter, we attempted to kind of agree to end or outline some additional language, and it really just marries what you had put in your staff notes. I think what we thought were the critical components of a conditional use approval being the use obviously, but then the traffic being a primary one, and us being comfortable with this concept of whatever being proposed, not exceeding the 49 PM peak hour trips based on IT generation study. And then similarly, with regards to the line striping, that kind of phase approach that you outline in your staff notes, in talking with the applicant, with how you had outlined that with any initial staff comments as potential options for the DRB to consider as conditions of approval. Joe and Abby, you got so many thoughts. Or Gene? You don't have the wording here, I don't see it. I mean, it's provided to Meredith. Gene, can you get closer to your microphone? You're a little fuzzy. What was that wording provided to Meredith? I don't see it in the... It's in a few different places in the staff report. So Jeff outlined some of it on page two of the supplemental cover letter. There's also at the end of my staff report, there is a very long list of potential conditions. And including that uses approved by the board's decision may not result in more than 49 new vehicle trips on Granite Street during the PM peak hours without additional board approval. So there's a whole long list of potential conditions that I threw into the staff report at the end. And I think that's what Jeff was referring to. I mean, I personally feel comfortable moving forward with having such wording and leaving it with all the options until determined on the specific use. Well, I'm hearing Gene, I think you're saying that you're sort of, you're comfortable with sort of the recommendations of the applicant, which seem to be actually congruent with the recommendations of the staff report, is that correct? Correct. Well, board members, I feel like I've got enough information to discuss this. I think that this has been... We do have Joe who wanted to say something. Joe Castellano, remember who signed in? Oh yeah. Let our public talk. Yeah. Thank you, Meredith. Alrighty, Jeff, I'd like to make a comment right now. The floor is yours. Yeah, thank you so much. First, I wanna thank the Connor brothers and Jeff for renovating the existing building. I'm very pleased. I'm actually a neighbor. I live up on College Hill and I actually can view the building as this construction has been progressing. So thank you again so much. I know it probably wasn't cheap or easy to renovate the existing building, but thank you so much. And I wanna express my support for what you guys are doing. You'd have a couple of quick questions. I know that right now you don't currently have a tenant, but what do you foresee in your ideal tenant situation is what the capacity might be there for the building? As far as seating. I'm trying to... We think it's a unique property, given that it's on the waterfront and also near Caledonia spirits. We've seen that facility be very well received. So we think because of the nature of the building and a lot of folks that have come through, including a couple of breweries, we think a brewery would be highest and best used if combined with a restaurant. And we think that the site can easily handle that. So we do think that's probably highest and best used but we are open to other things as well. Okay, I was just kind of curious on... I know you were talking about a 4,700 square foot. If I remember correctly, restaurant space. So I assume that would probably be 150 tables or 150... I don't know. I don't know how far they have to be spaced out. That was kind of the question I was asking. We haven't done it to those kind of details. We would not be the restaurant operator. Gotcha. We're not sure if someone wants to use it as a catering establishment or an establishment to take catered goods to other sites. So that might take up a lot of the space as well. Okay, and one other concern too is I haven't gotten into the weeds as far as like the lighting plan, but I know that Bar Hill... We're actually, luckily, luckily there are some trees that shield us from most of the lighting on Bar Hill's parking lot. And the granite shed lane's a little bit more visible because there aren't any trees around it. And I was just wondering if you were planning to kind of mitigate that or have the lighting more focused towards the building as opposed to out towards the street. Yeah, all of our lights are shielded lights. Both the pole lights and the building mounted lights. So they do shield it from going beyond the property and our photogrammetric plans also have to show that it's kind of zeros out of the property line. Okay, I just want to also express my support for the project, it sounds wonderful. I'm looking forward to, can I can walk down there to the brewery? Okay. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Joe, this is Meredith. Can you just tell me what your address is? This is one of the things we keep track of so that we can send you a copy of the decision. Yeah, I'm over at Three Savings Street. Okay. In Montpelier. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Joe. Thank you. Thank you for your support. You're welcome. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate what you guys are doing. Thank you. Thank you. I see a hand, Abby, or no? I'm good, thanks. Yeah, I think I'll note the record that Joe did bring up some, you know, talk about the lighting. I think there was a pretty extensive lighting plan that was, you know, submitted with the package. And I think the board previously has been quite comfortable with that stuff even being submitted, you know, afterwards as a condition of approval. But, you know, I feel like after reviewing that plan, I've got enough information to make a decision on that. I just did want to highlight that up to board members as, you know, it was something that was a core of the additional submittals. Do you have anything to add, Meredith? I don't really have anything to add. I think maybe just a quick note for Joe Castellano. The lighting plan for Gin Lane for that whole site, that was approved under old regulations. So our new regulations have very specific limits on how much light can actually be emitted from each particular location, each fixture as well as a site as a whole and what kind of shielding has to be included. So the hope is that this, even if they even put in the same number of lights that were at the Caledonia spirits, it would still have a lot less impact. The new zoning regulations have made a big difference on that. Yeah, my big concern was just the glare, because it does come straight up the hill. Yep, nope. And that's the, we have, because they are shielded in a way to try and keep them from coming back up for the light extending up, as well as the quality of the light, like it has to be almost a softer, warmer light and the total light that's actually emitted from every single bulb has to be less than what used to be allowed. So it should be a lot less impact for you. Thank you. You're welcome. At this point, I would accept a motion from the board. Good, deliberative session? Or which? I think that that's where we go next. This is a deliberative session. Motion to close the public portion of the meeting. Is that what you're looking for? Motion to close the public portion of the hearing. Yeah. And continue in deliberative session after the close of the public meeting. Okay, I make a motion to close the public portion of this hearing. Second. I will second that. All right, motion by Abby. Jean, Joe, how do you vote? Yes. Abby? Yes. Jean? Yes. Rob, myself votes yes. That's unanimous to close the public hearing. All right, so we need to do a second motion to adjourn into deliberative session. Correct? There's nothing else on the agenda. Sorry, I'm trying to set up that this went a little faster than I anticipated. So I've got to set up the deliberative meeting. We do not have anything else on the agenda. Our next meeting is Monday, March 7th, 2022. And that's it. Yep. So then we can close the public meeting. Did the applicant want to say anything? Do you want any closing comments for the Connor group? Again, just like to thank everybody for their time and for doing this thoughtfully. And I look forward to hopefully receiving your support. I believe we need all four votes to have a favorable decision. So we respectfully request that. And thank you for the additional information that you provided during this hearing. Absolutely. Okay. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion to close this meeting and continue in deliberative session. It works. Second. All right. Second by Abby, second by Dean. Joe, how do you vote? Yes. Abby? Yes. Dean? Yes. And Rob, myself was, yes. We will, you all on the Monday, the 7th, 2022 of March. And... Well, we'll see these guys in just a few minutes. And yes, we'll see some board members in a few minutes. Yes. Board members, we'll reconvene in five minutes. Get some time to set things up. That will be at, we'll call it, oh, call it 745.