 No, because they do it all in way better quality than I could do on a little reporter. Since we're on a very tight time schedule this time, I'm going to call a meeting order and ask for a motion on the approval of the agenda. I make a motion to approve the agenda, Eric. Is that going to be cute? All in favor. That was unanimous. You really need to count. As far as the comments from the chair, I don't have much comments except I asked and we are under some time constraints tonight because the DRB is meeting at 7. So I really want to keep things moving along and get as much done. I'd like to get done with the garage at 7 so we have something for the DRB. I'm sure the city manager is going to want to have it if we resolve before November 6 when we all vote. If you can't, we can find a way to do something. We'll figure it out, but I just, from a personal point of view, I've looked at this enough. No, I don't want to spend another meeting on it. Okay, let's say I'm Eric Gilbertson and I'm the vice chair. I'm going to introduce yourselves. Meredith Crandall, staff. What's up, Mitchell? Benjamin Cheney. 126 Main Street. Hello. Hello. I'm Theresa Barrows and I'm with the Department of Liquor and Lottery Division of Liquor Control. All right. Okay. We are looking to replace part of the sign on 126 Main Street, Yankee Wine and Spirits, and basically updating the logo and the name of the store from outlet to store. The descriptive things you want to talk about. So the lettering will remain the same, same type of lettering, which is, looks like this. Yeah. We'll make it match what's already there. We will repair any issues with the building when we change the letters. And we've discussed that with the landowner. And then everything will look the same with the exception of the 802 spirits logo. Going to add any lighting or anything? No. We'll just have any questions? Okay. Got a series, I don't know. That's yours. This is mine. That form? Yep. Yep. We have a checklist we have to do. A designer use standards in A, the preservation or reconstruction of appropriate historic site. I'm going to say that's acceptable. Just simply a redesign of the sign. You are normal whatever it is. Harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district. Acceptable. If anybody objects to what I'm saying. Let me know before I write. Compatibility of prose exterior materials. It's acceptable. Compatibility of prose landscaping. There is no landscaping. No bushes in the sign. That's good. Prevention of the use of incompatible designs, buildings, color schemes. That's acceptable. Location appearance of all utilities. Recognition or respect of significant view corridors. That's not applicable. Conformance with city, state, placement and sign recommendations. That's acceptable. Shall not obscure significant architectural details. It's in the sign then. So that's acceptable. Consistency and uniformity of multiple signs. That's not applicable. Elimination. Not applicable. Pants and banners are prohibited. Not applicable. Individual letters are fixed. Painted or engraved directly on the building. That's acceptable. Question again. Project description. It says 802 spirits from a liquor store. And then the sign as it's shown here. So it's from a liquor store. 802 spirits. So the design for fill this out. It should be Vermont liquor store 802 spirits. So the 802 spirits logo is one that the DLC has had for a number of years. And we're trying to get people to understand that that's where there is a liquor store. So we're trying to use that on state signs and store signs. So it should say liquor store 802 spirits. So the picture is correct. Okay. Thanks. Then one other quick question. How old are those affixed? Are they just like double sticky tape? No. So they are actually bolted, bolt mounted onto the plywood facade that's on there now. And then if there's any holes from existing lettering that we filled with cocking. It says it in the description. Flush mounted to plywood wall with hidden bolts. Right. One of our most expensive signs. Anything else? All in favor? I hope the other 74 stores go this easily. Do you do the whole state? That's what we're working on. So we have about 40 stores in the works right now. You personally are going to do them all? I'm working with the great big graphic set of more stuff. So we will visit every store and decide what we do. Do the permits for all towns that require them. And get them all, get them all out there. You need to sign this. Write it both my name. Oh, sorry. Oh, nope. It usually goes back to the chair and then to me. Works perfect. We've got a system. You do not need to go to the DRV. Correct. So you'll get a permit issued out of the department of planning and economic development from us. And will that need to be displayed for two weeks prior to? There'll be a notice along with the permit to be displayed. It's not too, it's not, it's not 15 minutes. Oh no, it is two weeks. 15 days right? 15 days not 30. So yes. So we'll be notified when it's ready. We pick it up and we can. We'll mail it to you. I think there was some email correspondence. Yes. So one will go to one of you and one will go to the other. I can't remember who gets what. Okay. Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Feel free to email tomorrow morning if you want to. Okay. Great. Thank you. River Street between Langdon and State. You want to make that permanent. Correct. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. Taren Grubberg, Executive Director of Montpelier Live. Yeah. Nate Hausman, board member of Montpelier Live. And I sit on the design committee of Montpelier Live. And vice president. Oh, vice president. Yes. So we have an existing permit for the river art installation that is located on the State Street side of the Langdon Street bridge across the river. And our hope is to have a, yes, our hope is to try having it over the winter to see if there are any issues with it being up over the winter and assuming that there are no issues to plan to have it up year round moving forward. And so, and we've been in front of this committee a couple of times for the seasonal approval and have gotten approval. And I've also, it's been received very, very well by the community. And so our purpose, I guess in, and I should also say as part of that we did an engineering review per, per this committee's request. And we also have talked to the property owners, of course. And so all, we've gotten all the green lights in speaking with Audra downstairs. She indicated that she didn't think that there would be any problem with snow. So one of the reasons why we were initially thinking seasonal is we wanted to pilot it for public opinion. But she indicated that she didn't think that there would be any challenges with the river flowing even in winter. So the idea, our request is to approve that. If the ice gets high enough to take that, that'll be the least of their worries. Yes. And that, that's our, you know, if it, obviously if it gets carried away by ice, it gets carried away. Just this winter or? I mean ideally, I think if the committee could approve it to be permanent so much the better, but if you feel more comfortable approving it as a, as a pilot, that would be fine. And it's clearly going to weather more over the winter. Sure. It does during the, during the summer. And I always worry about maintenance on these things, you know, as those flags get beat up as they do, you know, it was responsible. I feel alive as possible for the thing. Yes. That's what I would probably seek to put a, you know, the responsible and maintain it, you know, flags, deteriorate and new ones. That's how it makes sense. Yeah, we'd have no issue. Similar to landscaping maintenance. Yeah. I guess my other comment is it is art that it being permanent seems like maybe there could be some other ideas that happen there so that it didn't necessarily need to be blue flags all the time. Sure. And I mean when we say permanently just mean so that we don't have to come back to you next year for another season overview. But no plans to take it down, but also no plans to say that it's going to be here for the next 30 years either. So we'd certainly be, and certainly part of the original conversations and ongoing discussions have been changing the color of the little flags that flap in the wind and things like that too. So we'd, yeah, we'd be welcome to invite that. Questions? I guess we all know what it looks like. Yes, there's a photo attached as well. They're very popular. It certainly would make our lives easier. It is a significant amount of work to take it down and put it back up seasonally. Yeah. I just want to put in adjustments to the scope. I just want to add that you'll maintain it. Sure. Okay. There's nothing that looks worse than one of these things in the system. Let's go. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We have a series of criteria, present preservation or reconstruction of an historic style. That's not applicable in my feeling. Harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district. Compatibility of proposed materials with other properties in the district. This is so different. Not applicable landscaping. Not applicable. Revention of incompatible design, buildings, color scheme. That's acceptable. Location and appearance of all utilities. Not applicable. Recognition and respect for view quarters. Significant vistas. That's acceptable. For my own clarification, I have a question as to like what the scope of landscaping is. Does that just mean plants? Because this feels like landscaping for me. It qualifies under public art. It's not. We technically, you don't even have, you know, you do have those on your report because of the design review. I believe that we typically would be exempted, but because it's in the river specifically, and it needs a approval from the flood manager that also had to go through DRC. So it's, I mean, the landscaping doesn't really, I don't think it qualifies as landscaping. And I don't think we, I don't think we, if somebody puts a, you know, like a gnome in their front yard, we don't, I'll do a zoning permit for that. It's plants, you know, it's plant shrubs. It's not really our, necessarily all the time. That's different. Do I hear a motion? I make a motion to accept the... All in favor. I'll say you get a second. All in favor. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for your time. Under State Street. If we can, if it'll work. But what I think we're going to do, unless somebody has an objection, listen to the presentation, ask for public comments, and then have our discussion. I think during the presentation, we'll do what we did last time, and turn off the lights so that we can actually see the screen. And I figure you'll do that stuff. Yeah. This should be pretty straightforward as long as there's an open USB port. Oh, is there, there's a password, isn't there? Questions as they came up in your presentation are waiting for you to get done. Well, if I can sort out this password thing. I thought the exclamation point was extra. Yeah. All right. Oh. Do you need me to back on? Well, I'm just trying to, I don't know this computer very well. We're going to do our best to try to get through this tonight. All right. But I don't want to rush things and I have a question to answer because we're up against seven o'clock deadline. I understand that. I'm going to explain that the design has not changed significantly since I saw you last. But I will tell you what we have been up to. One of the things that came in too late to be sort of talked about at sketch plan review was the transition for these rooftops, these stair tower tops to be round, rounded roofs with glass enclosures. The other thing is, is there was some exploration of trying to provide a bike path via the Haney lot down through the Haney lot and up to the bike path. Right now, because of the grading difficulties we have in that area, we haven't found a graceful way to get people up there. Currently the path that was proposed is from State Street down through the project where you come on top of this walkway at the top, well, it's kind of hidden by the bridge, but a walkway along the top here and connect with the bike path here. You go between the parking lot and the building for that. Yeah, between the hotel and the parking garage out. There's about eight and a half feet of drop from the bike path down to the level of the Haney lot because of the way they did those bridge approaches and we haven't found a graceful way to do that without creating a huge dam here. And unfortunately, because of what we're working on in terms of storm water, that's the one place we cannot afford to dam water up because the whole watershed comes down through here. One thing we could consider and I'd love to hear from the board about this is we could put a pedestrian bridge from the second level of the garage over to the bike path level. That would be doable without having a negative impact on them. Another thing I wanted to talk to this board about is you'll have seen in the staff comments, Meredith is... They don't get those. Oh, they don't? Okay. Well, the question was raised whether or not a vine is a shrub for purposes of meeting your landscaping requirement. Our landscape architect says, yeah, I mean in terms of it being a herbaceous woody plant with a root and a thing that grows up, it just has a different growth habit. But we are asking that the city consider the plantations on the green screen system as being satisfying the requirement for shrubs on this project. We will ultimately have the right number of trees, but that is something that we... I guess we're going to need consideration on. Yeah, and that's a development review board decision. So they can talk about the design landscaping, but they won't necessarily talk about the numbers of trees and treads. Fair enough. We have also... We had previously submitted... Oh, jeez, I don't want that. We had previously submitted lighting plans for the garage floor plates. And I think the question was raised whether or not, you know, what was going on with the exterior lighting. The exterior lighting plan had been prepared during the original round of approvals. We do have a point-by-point analysis for the entire site, including the expanded garage. And those are within normal values. The one area of discussion we can have is whether or not, based on comments from the police, we want to allow some light trespass and overlight this back area a little bit. And normally we try to light things in a way that by the time you got to the property line, there was no foot candles spilling over. But it may be desirable in this case to consider doing that. And as far as those fixtures themselves go, our proposal for typical street lights is an LED fixture where the LED lamps are buried up in the top of that cone. Phillips Lumac makes a nice-looking fixture. These are somewhat traditional, I think. And it was our thought that between the hotel and general site pathways and everything in downtown that this would be an appropriate choice. If you want to push me off in another direction, that's fine, but these are a good-looking fixture. We've used them before. How similar is that to existing? Well, it's not exactly the same. You mean in terms of the shape of the housing itself. Well, it's not an exact match, but if that's a concern, we can keep looking for that. What we were after was the LED feature. So the existing LEDs that are in place now, why not just match what's there? I think those aren't correct. James has matched the same standard. I'm sorry, James isn't here, but I think it... I'm sorry, I should... It's going to be a warm-colored temperature involved. Well, that's a hot discussion in the lighting trades right now, I guess, whether or not you want blue-white light or yellowish kind of light. It doesn't matter to me, because we're after a certain light intensity. Does this board have an opinion on that? Actually, you want to match what you have. Yeah, that's right. I think the city standard called for, like, 3,000 couplings, which is, like, yeah. That's warmer. Yeah, that's the warmer light. So that's what we specified. There will be fixtures of this type over the entries to the garage and a couple of other corners for just general security lighting. It's nothing fancy, but it's a good fixture. That's how we do it as well? They're all LED. They're slightly bigger, slightly different for, you know, slightly... The lighting is... Well, this is well shielded, but when you get looking up in the garage and the ceiling lights... Yes. ...figured out people are going to be looking at directly whether it's going to be shielded enough. Well, I can show you. I'm just looking for the right fixture. Okay. I hope this is it. Some of these file names. Okay, that's a minor fixture that's just used in the stairwells. But this is it. So it's got this translucent white base on it. These are pretty big. I mean, it doesn't look like it, you know, but I think this fixture is a couple feet in diameter. And it's pendant mounted so that it hangs down. It's not hidden. Here's a, you know, 18 in one direction. What this does is it hangs down between the flutes of the concrete framing of the garage so that when the light comes out of the bottom of it, it's not getting cut off by the pieces of the beams. And then we did give a point-by-point analysis of the lighting on the floor plates of the individual floors here. So when you're outside, you'll be looking through a filter of things. But those larger openings where we have the sculptural thing going on, I mean, I expect you'll probably be able to look up and see some of these. But we should also take a look at some of the visual analysis stuff because, you know, when you look at how these things sit in the landscape, you know, it would really be people on the bike path more than anything who would run into that problem. At the very top of the garage, just on that open deck where we don't have a ceiling to mount, just wanted to show the same fixtures available with a pole mount. And it's simple and it's clean and it's neither modern nor historical looking, but a great quality of light and a good manufacturer. So we felt comfortable recommending this. So that's going to be on the roof? That would be on the top tier of the parking garage. Just running down the center, yes. She did say bring a mouse, but I... I want to go back to... We had done a couple of views that were requested specifically. I don't know that this board got to spend much time on it. This is the view... Actually, Public Works asked us to take this particular view, but this is the very end of Shaw's and next door, this fenced-in area. There was that building that was just torn down recently. And here's the railroad right away. You can just see the end of the trestle bridge here. And if you look down through here, that's about what you can see in the garage is that art panel. Just to put it into context. And then here's the hotel beyond and then there's the capital dome. We also looked at it from Memorial Drive, but actually my co-worker climbed around behind the gas station and took this view. And here it is right here in the foreground is what will become Confluence Park. Here's the trestle bridge here. And here's again how you'll perceive this garage from that distance. You can see here is the top deck. It's essentially lining up with the floor level of the fourth floor of the hotel. There's the fifth floor of the hotel. And in the distance beyond that is the existing six-story portion of the capital plaza. The state house dome is back over here behind these trees. But this is new stuff that we've done since we saw you because the discussion of context was so important. And I did bring physical samples of the proposed brick granite, and I also brought a piece of the green screen for anybody who hasn't seen it before. I think you all had, and that's an actual piece of it. What we buy will be more like a 4x8 sheet, and it goes with the solid part of, obviously. There was one thing on the garage elevations I did want to point out, and this isn't the one I wanted to do it with, it includes a sliding thing, that whole set, sorry. What I was looking for was the exterior elevations. Here we go. That arched component. The screen is making this squish a little, really. I know that a couple members of this board sort of question this element. And when I went back and kind of reported to the rest of the city government and talked to the other team members, they asked me to push back a little on that. I think there are some people in the group who like it. I'm going to ask if this is a deal breaker for the design advisory committee, because I got constituencies for both approaches. I will say that I liked it when I drew it. I think if it's detailed well, it'll come off well. I also think that with the introduction of the slightly curved roofs over the top of the garage, that having that curved element is a little less random than I think you were concerned before. But I did want to point it out, because I know specifically you asked me to look at that, and that's where I landed on it. But I don't want to be confrontational about it. There was a lot of opinion about that. Have you having that chance to render it as if it were built? It's still got all those horizontal lines coming through it? I've got a better color model image of these elevations, but I was having trouble finding them. They might be on a different side. You were going to render it as if the blocks actually were doing their job versus the way it's currently rendered? Right. To show the segments. That is being worked into the construction drawings, but we didn't want to present anything tonight that hadn't been in your packets, so those improvements will show up in the next application package, which has to be in this week for the next meeting. What you're talking about is making it look like it could be an arch. The way it's set up there now without modern construction, you couldn't possibly construct that stone hanging out in space. Right. So those segmented arch blocks with the appropriate trim relief to them will line that opening and make it make sense as a masonry opening. You know, and have a little bit of vertical size to it considering the scale of that arch. That's our proposal. But I didn't want to present anything you had seen prior to tonight. Can I just ask you, when you go back to the elevation drawings, if the landscaping and everything in the back with regard to the bike path connection ends up having that elevated platform boardwalk, how much of that arch will you actually see? Well, I've come back to something I said moments earlier, which is that we're proposing to eliminate all that. You are. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I couldn't make that connection. Okay. It was to eliminate the boardwalk too. Right. Because the, I think the concern was that big change of grade there and too much stuff plugging up that corner. Gotcha. Because that was the only place we could do it. No, I understand. But I am, like I said, we would be willing to consider something like a pedestrian bridge coming over from the garage at 528 so it could connect right into the bike path. That might be a little more practical. That would mean that people would have to walk through the garage to get. Yeah, they would. I expect bike riders are going to come into this garage. We're proposing bike storage in there. Hmm. You know. We've... Skateboarders too, probably. Oh, you won't be able to keep them out. Yeah. You won't be able to keep them out. I just worry about bicycles riding through the garage. That seems in a parent conflict. Taking your bike in there and parking it, you know, next to it. The entrance is one thing. But actually riding through there as part of the park doesn't seem... And I think a pedestrian bridge would probably just clutter things up. Okay. Okay. I won't argue with you about that. There's a whole lot of stuff going on. You probably don't want to hear about the floodplain planning and all that stuff. So I guess with those few points brought up that I wanted to bring up, I want you guys to maybe hit me with some questions. So the arch. Yeah. I'm still not a real big fan of it. And you said you did have something to show me or not. We're going to include that in our next application package, which is due this week, right? Yeah, depending on what Dan says at the DRB. But that doesn't necessarily come back to here unless there are design changes that need to come back. Okay. If they all vote on the design or you can not vote on it and wait to see what else comes out. You have an alternate. You're preparing an alternate. We are preparing an alternate for that, yeah. And I'd be happy to come back just on that one issue that made us, you know, limit the hearing to come back and show us the details of that. I just have to throw myself on the mercy of the court and point out, you know, how many other threads there are to this thing right now in terms of other permits activity going on. So it wasn't that we were given the idea short shrift. We just didn't get it done in time to make that submittal. I think for me it was like the one thing that I was looking to see. I know and that's why I'm bringing it up. The other thing too is the curved roofs. That wasn't on the renderings the last time. No, that is in response to comment we got at other board meetings. I think that might have been the city council started it. But the idea that the tops of those towers flat, they were lacking in some jazz. I personally like that curved shape. That's slightly curved roof shape. I've used it in other work of mine. So it's something I kind of dig. But it also allows us to sort of bring me a total mass of that thing down because we can allow that roof shape to sort of follow the runs of the stair down. We don't have to have that big empty volume over the intermediate landing. So the one closest to the hotel sheds onto the garage? Yes. The purpose of that being that we didn't want any snow or anything sliding off of that and dropping down to the entrance to the garage. Now another thing that many months ago we talked about was the steel work at the openings. Yes. How we wanted you to look at different approaches. I think this is fairly similar to the previous. It's exactly similar to the previous thing. I'm of two minds on that one. And I'll say why we left it there is we've incorporated other kinds of big art into this design now at the encouragement of the city council and members of the public. So one thing we could do is we could have us do this and make it part of the approved design or we could engage in a process where there's some competition for these pieces of public art and that gets integrated into the design. We create a place for it and then we go about because we're not specifically proposing that the paintings that we're showing here are what we want to do for art. Those are images that I just captured because I thought they were cool. But I think our belief is that those paintings and perhaps that sculpture as well ought to be something where we have a little bit of a public process to do that. And that was really well received at the city council level. So the openings where you have steel that you're calling that sculpture or those bars going every which way? I thought it was an architectural element. Well, I can get the same job done a lot of ways. I'm using that steel to brace up the lentils but it doesn't have to necessarily be that shape or those colors. So that's how that's left at the moment. If that's unsatisfactory, then we can talk about that and come back with some more options. I think we talked about kind of a different relief for some depth to it as well. Yeah, it does sort of fit within a space about 20 inches wide and those pieces are free to sort of occupy that whole plane. But no, I'm... What was the idea behind the random bars going every which way? My thought process, and again, I'm not a sculptor, but my thought process was that it sort of was meant to be a callback to the steel elements and various parts going their way on the trestle bridge. And at the same time, be kind of similar in a way to bikespokes. So not explicitly one thing or another, but when you look at that trestle bridge, obviously it's made up of triangles, but we don't perceive them that way. We perceive them... We look through them multi-dimensionally and there are pieces going different directions depending on which side of the bridge they're on and what part of the truss panel it is. So that was the genesis behind that idea. And we thought by having different angles that sort of broke up some of the boxiness of the... You know, there's a lot of square, linear things going on here. We're looking for opportunities to soften it up. Any other at this point? There are sculptures like that here. On this corner here, there's another one in the center of this wall here facing the street and then there's the one by the front entrance. We left the last 40-some odd feet of the wall here is essentially blanked out now to receive whatever happens in the future from the church does their project. And so there are... This opening is glazed in and that's where the stairs are and this one is solid because it's facing another building. So there are four of them. Solid, just the brick and granite. Oh, how many of these panels you mean? No, sorry. Yeah, just the brick and the granite. There's a solid panel here on this corner because it addresses both the church and this other what people call the garage building. And then there's another solid corner. Well, there's another big section of solid wall between the two buildings and then it turns to green wall once it comes out from behind that, from the hotel. So there's four steel sculpture panels? Yes, yeah. Are there any provisions for art panels on the state street side of the building? These I think are... People are going to see them driving by probably from the light path but you're going to have to have quite a look up and it seems like more people would see I don't know how hard it... I don't know whether you have the elevation of that or not that could... Is there a way you should do the same thing on that side? Yeah, so this is the side facing Christ Church or State Street but we could do that same treatment uniformly across here if you wanted and just mirror the image that's on the other side of the building or we could have these individually and then there are sort of relieved panels on the solid sections there are lots of relieved panels you can see them indicated here there's like a 2-inch reveal where these pop back and those are sprinkled sort of all over the place The question is how much of that do you really... how much of this do we really want to have happen? Do we want it to be to find the building or do we want it to have it sort of be focused as a sort of feature? I was thinking more that whatever spaces could work could be constructed so they could be that not really changing the whole design of it okay, yeah constructing the surface so it works so that would work here and here it could work here although I think it would compete with other things going on it could happen down here as well so yeah, there are other opportunities for our building we have talked sort of at the city council level maybe having the council for the arts and some of the local arts institutions get sort of involved a little bit in curating that art or helping choose it and so if that were the case this board or the development review board could say well, when that process is done we'd like to see it painted up or something and that would be perfectly appropriate and I'd be happy to do it so it sounds to me like I dropped the ball a little bit on the steel sculpture part of this, I apologize but I can add that to the list of things we should talk about next time I see it if it is your pleasure yeah, I mean I think it's an interesting if it's going to be something that is designed into it we would want to know that that's what it really is going to look like if it is a spot that is being left open for people to sort of create something that seems like a slightly different animal so can I get a sense of the committee as far as which of those two approaches you favor would you like to pin some of this down and leave only the painted portions as being sort of competitively arrived at or do you think it's appropriate that we make that a public process because I could go either way and I'm happy to come back and explore the fine-grained detailing of that with you but I do sense a real urge for public involvement in some of this art whatever sculpture you put in the windows of your last installation items so basically have some time I'm thinking about the public input having a design competition for that as you suggested I don't say some time behind all of this is a concrete structure that holds everything up I think we would have time if if there's a consensus that that's the right way to go about it because at a minimum we ought to pick some paintings for these big panels here which if you approve this you're just going to approve these white spaces as receiving future art and we can act on that permit and build the project and you know I mean it just probably just means labeling in that way on the drawing which we certainly can do in the final permit drawings but again if the portal sculptures or whatever you want to call them those I agree I think we talked about that I just slipped my mind if we want to explore a design that becomes part of the approval then I guess we'll have to do a little more work and come back while he's got the drawings how about the living wall what's how we have talked about maintenance of it who is responsible for it and who will get last yeah I'll dig into that a little bit well I brought a physical sample of it and you can see the other thing we've done in the elevations you can see where we've perforated with some kind of playful openings as well the plant materials specified on the landscaping plan include trumpet vines and Virginia creeper according to our landscape architect it's going to be like maintaining new trees and it's going to be about the same amount of commitment as if you did a new plantation of street trees someone's going to have to periodically go through and remove dead growth and the roots will have to be monitored and watered and cared for you know until these things really establish I think we can all think of examples of buildings that are really covered with ivy and there is ivy in the mix as well you know once it gets past a certain level of maturity that stuff is like kudzu it really hangs in there so the big commitment is in getting it to establish you know I think that may be a question for the management team in the end because all of this is going to have to be managed every surface is going to have to be cleaned every surface is going to have to be you know lit and all of that the landscaping whether it was on the ground or on the wall still has to be maintained in accordance with your ordinance it becomes part of the approval so what so you're going to be representing a living wall here what stage of growth is this representation of the ideal state at a certain day from the black and white elevations don't really show plantings growing on the wall system but the renderings renderings do show them fully grown out are you joking here a little bit I think the main strategy is James Felicia landscape architect so the strategy with the living wall here is to have several different species and the idea is that they'll be doing different things at different times and then we'll also have evergreen climbers in the background so part of the maintenance will be seeing which vines thrive and encouraging those and perhaps we've really over planted and so the idea is that right off the bat we'll have a lot going on on the ground year two we hope to see it sort of at the second floor year three and four is where that really will take off and we're hoping to have you know three or four floors of coverage at that point the other point of the maintenance that's great here is that because we have a garage on the inside the maintenance will be able to pull any dead stuff from the inside of the garage through and control any of the dead material that way that's it so what they'll do is they'll put the clippers through and pull any of the dead stuff that they can pull through that's the idea you're saying it's going to take like three or four years to fill in yes that's right you know generally with plants they you know the second year first year they go in they're pretty pretty static and then by year two they take off year three and four they really start to grow a lot that said we've got really aggressive species like wisteria and virginia creeper and things like that so I do feel we're going to get good coverage I think the key is as Greg said the trellis that we're putting on it is definitely not ugly and it's actually quite nice and so part of that the joy of these vines and these green walls is seeing the plants kind of make their way up over that fourth dimension of time and I think overall the experience as the years go it as the vines grow will be a beautiful thing and I think that the people enjoy kind of seeing it progress over time Bill Bill you want to go to the microphone please I am I didn't know you were going to say I was answering this lady but I know it means a design expert or a cordicultural expert I just wanted to share I was happy to be in Minneapolis last weekend and came across a parking garage with a green wall so people wanted to see one in place do you know how old it is? I don't have any idea I just booked Minneapolis yeah that's it we've been working with the guys that provide this also have done a whole foods in Chicago that's doing well and it's very brutal not looking for it came across and said oh good good I am certainly not a plant expert at all but it seemed to have this recollection of that plant line that Virginia Creeper is an invasive plant that spreads it does and that's we're going to harness that that's what we want it spreads I don't think it's technically an invasive I checked the plants it is very aggressive and that's why we selected it I've got a lot of bad examples to show you I'm sure you do against Vermont's invasive list and we'll check again but I don't think it was there it should be fairly easy to control this application that was the other reason we felt good about it do you have an image, an elevation of what this would look like year one? we could do a time study I know that when we first went through this process we had shown elevations of it at sort of year three and four where we anticipated the vines to be up around the third and fourth level the other thing that is a factor in this and it's not so well shown in that rendering is that we are also calling for river birch all along the two main frontages there the two elevations and we're expecting those to go in anywhere from 10 to 12 feet maybe even a little bit bigger and those birches will go in and grow quickly and I think they will also cover the first 25 30 feet of the building to create a scrim to look through especially in winter when we fill out that will be attractive with the green ivy behind like I said I don't have one showing it in interim stages this is what it looks like day one and we're talking about a process that will take two or three years to get up to the fourth floor oh yeah like I say it's okay to have that process happening to watch the plants growing work their way up climbing trellis I think that's there's something very attractive of that as well as having a green square the way they kind of be under their way up especially on the the heating building that GVA did you see those vines kind of going up the side and they're beautiful how they kind of pioneer their way up and around to cover the full elevation almost to me that's more beautiful than the wall of green you know that's thick and heavy I think it's not you know this was cheap or something I'd be concerned but this is a very beautiful product and then when it's on these four by eight sheets and as Greg has shown by cutting these little ellipse elliptical avatars and that's what I'm looking for I saw it in one of these pieces I think it's Bill your picture is really useful because it shows the kind of varied texture of the different plants is it possible for you to find out from Minneapolis where I will I'll ask their climate is very similar to ours exactly we showed a case study from Chicago I think when we did this first process and I can dig all of that back up and there's a lot more parking going to Minneapolis St. Paul in the years I don't think there's any more I'll uh get your information after the play out there yeah and we've obviously kind of uniformly with a hedge texture that we have but that's the limits of our soft words yeah no it's very difficult to show that but I guess this is what I was looking for yeah is this this is you order this from the manufacturer of this with these cut into it or you somebody will have to customize those I think they can do almost anything they have a really good ability to do stuff but I'm sure we can just cut that out I mean this looks like a powder coated thing well our thought process is periodically you should have the opportunity to just sort of come upon an opening and be able to look out at different levels on the building and so you know it was meant to be kind of playful and I think that maintenance will play a part there keeping it a little bit lighter we don't want this to be a super heavy feeling when you're inside either in the summertime you know one thing I thought about you know the square towers you had for the stair towers and I don't quite understand how you exactly what you're going to do now I understand the curve was but I think there might be some interesting views from that if people look at the downtown now I'm just thinking about the square towers that stand up there yeah somebody suggested I don't I can't remember who but it seems like a great idea to to go around the top floor of this thing and sort of mount on the parapets some pictures showing what you're looking at and I would really love to see that happen here you know so that people you know they could get out of their car and their parking but then they kind of walk over to the edge of the garage and kind of just check out downtown because yeah I think you'll have amazing views from the top floor of this thing you know the enclosed part of it I just think that ought to be thought about I don't have a strong opinion about it oh as far as the stair towers themselves there's a lot of glass on them yeah another layer to that could also be the lighting and how the lighting is handled inside of there perhaps it's the most you know you still could get the view out of them oh yeah they go right down to the floor right well they come down to you know they're going to come down to five feet off the deck or something like that but the stairs are going down underneath them you know so yeah but they had the top floor those are shown as all glass wasn't the intent to soften the towers to reduce the overall height yeah the squared off caps just relieving people a little cold we have the one the dark elevation though which is the one that's going to be facing state street that one has glass and people are going to see out and that's going to be the one with the elevator right that's where you're waiting for the elevators that big window right there and you'll have a little bit of solid wall where the elevator itself is and then the rest of that is all glass I'm not sure maybe some kind of parking symbol happens up here unless I'm mistaken I think the signs will come in as a separate application probably after permit and I assume something like that would be part of the sign package so you mentioned the second floor pedestrian connector so if that doesn't happen how is the connection made the way it had been per the original application which was trying to find a site here between the hotel right it comes down from state street along the buildings through here and along the top of this retaining wall down in the corner where it catches up with the bike path and then all of this is down at elevation 518 519 so this is a story or more or less a story below the bike path at that point which is trying to get up so I can get over the river why is the space between the buildings it's 10 feet right now which is the same way no it's you know I mean it's an urban thing it's kind of an alley it's close and yeah I mean you got a 5 story 12 building here and a 4 story tall building here but you know it only lasts for about 40 feet before it pops back out into the sunlight there's a green wall there's a solid masonry wall that comes down to here and then it's green wall to the corner so facing the facing the area here around the this bump out is the swimming pool yeah that route is compliant that's the problem I mean to put a ramp down on this corner it really occupied the whole corner and this heavy dotted line here is our river setback so we really don't want to put development in that zone although there's some uncertainty about that in the comments we didn't quite understand where you were going with that but I think that's a conversation for tonight yeah Greg anything else you want to say no I think we should give the public some time I don't want to move things along too fast but I want to keep them going good guys I'll see if I can more just understand the relationship of the what's happening like this is a concrete wall retaining wall it's a retaining wall and then what happens in this space here it's going to be water so basically all the way down the train tracks we have this river birch and red fescue grass planting sort of pallet and that would continue on down here and even wrap the building so the idea is to keep this continuous yeah so what goes through the arch unfortunately this is area that's left for flooding we have to leave it at that so water goes through the arch if there were a flooding everything would be underwater water would flow into that lowest level and then flow back out but so our pedestrians I saw a gate and some rendering there are people encouraged to walk through there we wanted to put a gate on the west on the east end of this heading over towards the the north branch of the river for access if this gets temporarily assigned as a farmers market space or something so the ground plane of this building is flat now essentially flat which makes it available for an expanded farmers market coming inside and under cover if that needed to happen or other types of activities as we explored that possibility we said we should put a gate in there just to give us the flexibility to have people come so the pedestrian can walk that sidewalk pokes you out here that would be up on the upper side so we'd be up here and then this elevation drop is 10 feet it's it's 10 feet floor to floor in a garage but the existing grade out here is 2 or 3 feet lower than that and then this area is level as drawn here and it's just sort of the river birch is in this fescue grass so it would be planted why did you choose river birch one because just going through down the railroads we've noticed a lot this wonderful kind of scrim of river birch along the edge of the railroad track as it goes sort of to the east and to the west and so we found the idea was to kind of keep that feeling and that look continuous down the side of the road there the other thought is that we've had the grass we've chosen is a very hardy grass because the railroad will spray we need to have whatever we have there very low maintenance and very resilient so that's the birth of these two things and the idea is to have birches of different heights and different maturity to kind of give it a more natural feel rather than just plunking them in a line to kind of make it birches are a short-lived high maintenance tree well part of it is also there's a power line running down there so we can't have ginormous trees kind of along that corridor that's one of the practical things we've been dealing with so the thought is that if we have sort of 25 foot birch trees that are regenerating and we're encouraging the younger we have sort of two or three different maturity levels being planted that we would have this succession so we would always have this we did lose a tree or two we wouldn't suddenly have a gaping hole to a parking lot or to whatever I understand the need to let the water out that makes sense to me the language of arch really means to me like something special and some sort of entrance and some sort of like hey this is a really cool moment to kind of go through this feels like it's on the back of the building and there's no reason to go through it and it's kind of just coming to this sort of grassy area that's my thoughts but I mean I like the concept but I feel like I think in the background too there is a model being run now of exactly what we can have there in terms of flooding and what levels we can I think that is a thing that's running now for the next couple of weeks so we've presented the most extreme version here of what we would need there but if we could bring that grade up and then bring the arch up I think that would be it I don't know it's a sort of architectural integrity question which seems to be antithetical to its form right I came away from our last get together sort of understanding that perspective and I mean from an architectural theory point of view it's right on and then I said well they want to get rid of the arch and everybody was disappointed so I will take another look at it but I mean I have to have an opening down there if it's not an arch it's going to end up being a square opening which maybe is in your mind is just drawing less attention to itself and therefore is but if we go to that elevation sheet again I mean you can kind of see the difference I'll just close this site plan this is the side facing memorial drive with the arch and the art panels and this is the side facing Christ church without the arch and it's just a little less it's a little more plain-spoke and in keeping with your thought process I mean I wouldn't want to align it with a colonnade or anything else similarly because again I'm making a promise that I'm not ending up keeping so maybe in this case this is more aesthetically okay I will do this though I expect that we're going to see you at least once more before this whole process is done I don't know I mean I mean it's it depends on if what you guys want to decide on if you don't decide on everything we definitely bring it back and if there's major design changes between now and I think there's a couple of areas and they're consistent with our last meeting I'm sorry to say but I mean that's kind of where we are that this arched opening and then the treatment of these portal braces needs more attention and if you could write a condition that said we'll move you on but we want to see this again before construction or something I don't know I mean to do a final thing I think there's too many things up in the air and that's partly just a fairness thing with other applicants we tend to table well I came in expecting this was going to be more than one meeting I didn't know I didn't know we were ready for a vote tonight or I might have worked this weekend let's hear from the public we had 20 minutes before the DRB starts people that need to turn the lights on or leave them off at this point I don't know how much people are going to be wanting reference to the okay we'll turn it on I don't know how much difficulty he had finding any some drawings that's me did you guys want to see the these at all? yeah the marble and this is for the trim bands we actually need to come back for retaining wall finish to have that and this is going to be this that's going to be the trim bands we'll get the rubber finish which tends to get dirty I'll just ask what? flames finish it's going to catch it catches dirt that's what happens to the great quick question that flame finish my experience with that is that it tends to catch a lot of dirt okay then you get moss growing on it and if you want to look at the state office building the marble building right across from the state house that has continual problems because it's a rough finish so you would prefer the opposite side as the own surface? it's not going to make any difference but for a maintenance issue I think it is and if you look at the wall in front of the building that used to be a smooth finish and for some reason they sandblasted it so it's rough now it catches all the dirt moss and stuff grows in it it's just a practical thing rather than probably not within the purview of this committee let's hear from the public okay my name is Paul Kernighan I live on Savings Street a quick from the public perspective the first one regarding the much discussed arch I would agree with Seth and Ben it seems to be it's announcing an entrance that isn't there it seems like it's a strange thing to put there it's also if you're standing on Memorial Drive it's going to be bisected by the raised bike path so you're not really going to get that full arch you're going to just sort of get the suggestion of an arch and then from the drawings you're also going to get this diagonal going through it that's the parking level because the parking levels are diagonal so it seems to me it doesn't work at all I love the idea of the arc above it it seems to me that square openings would work just as well as the arch it doesn't seem to me to add anything to the building in fact sort of distracts from it the public art alone would be with just square openings that consist of the rest of the building it seems a logical way to go then I also want to comment about all the fences around the bottom keeping people from going in and out of it that seems to me a missed opportunity and sort of an unfriendly aspect of the plan as seen now particularly on the east end where the architect was suggesting a gate I would suggest just no fences at all I mean what are we trying to keep out I'm not sure if the problem is you think cars are going to roll through there you can put up granite ballards or those low bumpers for cars to rest against it seems to me I really don't like the way that there's fences all around the bottom of this particularly when there's the light path on the on the what is that southern side of it going along with that I'm curious about what's happening on the eastern side of the parking garage I think Ben was starting to ask about that it seems like there's sort of a no man's land that's been created behind the old garage we've got two garages going here so it's a little confusing but the historic garage and then the modern garage maybe there's parking going on back there and one of the plans it seems to show a driveway I'm not quite sure how traffic is going to be monitored going back and forth through that alley with cars it seems like that needs a real resolution it looks like the architect is totally ignored that area maybe because it's not part of the land that the city is renting from the keenies but maybe it should be I don't think we should be since this is a city project I think the city should be taking responsibility for how that space is going to work I also want to talk about the comment on the connection of the garage to the bike path it's already been discussed again I think Seth and Ben have been sort of asking questions about that it seems to me it's a really weak area an aspect of this plan right now I think there is still a door showing on the plans at that bottom right corner of the illustration that's on the screen right now which basically opens up into nothing it's going to open up into a bank so people are going to have to scale an eight foot bank to get up to the parking to the bike path or they're going to go toward the river through this area that I've just described as a no man's land maybe it's paved maybe it's not maybe it's grass it's unclear what that is so it seems to me you're promising the pedestrian something that you're not delivering on the architect suggested a bridge across Eric said they thought that might clutter it that might be true but it would give a better access to that bike path right now there's the alleyway to the west of the garage I would think that the local businesses none of whom are represented here today would be very disappointed with the connection to the downtown to Main Street we're building this beautiful bike path bridge connecting this back area to Main Street one of the things that's important with encouraging downtown success and vibrancy is having multiple paths to various places so I think people are going to be taking that bike path bridge into the center of town it's going to deliver them right next to the Savoy and right along Main Street I think it's a real shame not to provide a stronger way for them to get up onto that bike path or pedestrian path and get into the city second comment is also about pedestrians if you look at your plans the path for pedestrians from the garage over to State Street are perilous this hasn't been fought out at all you've got people walking straight across one of your either one of your two main entrances into the parking garage and you're basically walking them through a parking lot there appears to maybe be a sidewalk along North Northfield Savings Bank but to get to that you have to cross one of the main driveways into the garage and then walk across in front of the drive-thru for Northfield Savings Bank the other side there doesn't appear to be a sidewalk at all I suspect because you have a fairly narrow path or traffic path going in there so I would say please look at the pedestrian access to this just as a you've read the plans right I'm just saying that because the pedestrian access is something that's technically on the hotel site plan there's going to be further discussion of that tonight at the DRB because the design review doesn't do access issues development review board so just if you have other comments like that about that section because this is just design review so just to help make sure you know it's not that bad I think that we're pushing here in Montpelier and it looks like it's not that the architect I would think that the architect could have some ideas about so I guess the final comment is about the trimming of the green wall that can be trimmed on the inside as a volunteer several years ago not any longer but with what you speak of MBCA I spent many hours weeding the two front areas under the trees in front of City Hall and picking weeds from between the pavers our Department of Public Works has lots to do they're not known for weeding which is fine but I find it incredible to think that they're going to be pulling the dead branches out from inside of the green wall it's not going to happen they've got a lot of things to do thank you thanks Paul Steven Whitaker I'm going to point out a couple things time is short and I think you're going to need to take this up on another at a prior meeting it was asked and responded that the green wall needs to be based in earth it doesn't live in window boxes and we were told that this was going to start down here that contradicts what you're hearing about open gates planters doors you know curb stops etc that you're but if this indeed needs to live in something beyond a window box you've got a real misrepresentation of the potential of this green wall the this has been tried in areas where I've seen and have family in other areas with the garages the maintenance often falters the dust brake dust and tire rubber build up from the vehicle traffic in the garage kills the plants and unless you're going to set up a maintenance routine with bi-weekly power washing of the entire garage and wastewater treatment you're not going to have the success I'd also ask you to think about what are the consequences of failed landscape design it's not like you can go tear this thing down because there was a bunch of unfulfilled promises this this view specifically the renderings this is about a 25 foot bridge so it strains credulity that a 45 foot garage is appearing to be 6 or 8 feet below a 25 foot bridge so the development review for did suggest or heard a suggestion I don't know if they've acted on it to do the floated balloon test verified compliance witness measuring the cable up to the balloon to the height and possibly get corrected versions of these renderings because I have one that I did which is probably slightly exaggerated on the height but conservative on the width and I know that I went and looked at the charge of the design review committee and you're supposed to reserve pedestrian access and flow but the view sheds of the neighborhoods and to in effect be blocking this taking a city lot 50 year lease on the Haney lot and be blocking the view out to the hills and be blocking the view from the confluence park which is potentially a joke and a tenth of an acre you know of all the church steeples and the state house et cetera and the superior court those are run those run directly counter to the design charges of the design review committee I only had a chance to preliminary look at those tonight and I haven't printed them but getting accurate renderings objective verified renderings of heights impacts and view analysis is important preserving the walkways to to basically take a common city through way which is the farmers market lot where we would get to the park and totally obstructed by putting this garage 20 feet from the north branch is again directly contrary to the criteria that's supposed to guide your decisions so I'm asking you to not assume this is tinkering with a pre-approved plan from before this is a much bigger garage with a much bigger footprint encroaching right to the limit even an unverified riverbank I would encourage a site visit to that site and look at where the riverbank is and have the architect or the engineers mark the corner of where this garage is going to be and examine the challenge to get we do need to maintain access pedestrian and bike access up there that's a problem they can't solve then they don't get to build their garage you know it's really that fundamental light spillage from the openings you've seen these bright 18 inch or 24 foot fixtures those are going to be radiating out through the openings in this garage well beyond the exterior lighting you asked about blinding a pedestrian walking in the night happens to glance towards the garage and gets night blinded not acceptable not that I'm advocating for closing off all the openings in the garage I'm advocating for not building it in this location there's nothing this is an entirely different project than what was reviewed a couple years ago and approved as part of a hotel project the city by being the co-applicant has compromised its objectivity and its due diligence as far as with the exception of Meredith with what needs to be reviewed here and slow down do it right ask every question demand verification input penalties if it doesn't come through there's nothing wonderful or beautiful or playful about this this is putting lipstick on a pig and it's not going to work thank you Stephen anybody else comments I don't know what's your pleasure I think I can say what my view is I mean we've heard some public comments that I'd like to take into consideration and see what the architect does about it I don't think we're ready to we'll run it tonight I just have a procedural question are we going to be trying to find a special hearing time next week to do this or do we just bump it to the next one and the next one's pretty busy right the next one's pretty busy I would be in favor of a special meeting next week and all it depends on how that'd be fantastic now I really want to move this along these are substantive issues we didn't come in here tonight expecting to walk out with an approval I wanted to make progress towards that goal and I think there's a couple lingering issues that really need to be addressed I do think that this is the biggest project we've seen in Montelier for I've lived here 42 years certainly the biggest project we've seen here and I don't want to make any mistakes that we can avoid in terms of design we're completely on board with that it's one very brief comment I just want to give Greg a little cover here with regard to the arch I will say that it was discussed I'm speaking here as city manager the city council very strongly liked it, asked for it so he got his marching order from the council to put that in I'm sure we'll review that with him but lest you think that he was being recalcitrant he was being in options I mean marching orders from the other end so that's fine and we'll obviously follow the regulatory process but I just want to make sure that I understood that there were a couple comments made this evening that I'd like to pull the board on the grills at the ground floor the security fencing or whatever you want to call it it doesn't serve any code function I mean it's there are some people who are concerned that people are going to be back there hanging out we don't want people filtering into the garage from multiple points but I'm okay not having that fencing if, but I just want to know what the sense of the board is on that because that's an interesting possibility I mean finish grade is the same on both sides of that opening so is it something where landscaping wise it can be up elevated like that James can back me up on this if he wants to jump up here but we understood that we don't need a continuous strip of planting we just need some places for the leaders to go up to get started and the revised drawings that were included in your packages for tonight did show an extension of the green wall system down to the grade to pick that up that was a legitimate point unless the wrong drawing though I would also like to see at least an effort at the bridge I do take the comment of being able to park on the second floor and walk out and walk towards the Savoy as a really valid concern and I would like to see a rendering or at least an idea of how that would how that experience would happen so you can, it's a little dark to hear that there are panels here and here for the shown on the A201 that was submitted that's the pathway for those plants to go up there but that's true that has to come down pretty close to the ground for those vines to catch hold of it and take off but it doesn't have to be continuous I thought the fence was a cold issue I think nothing to do with the house but I think I don't know how the police would feel about it the police I think wanted it to be very limited ingress and ingress for security reasons well maybe we can find a fence it doesn't jump out at you so much or something but I I think that's sort of a policy issue how are we going to operate this what's our security situation look like so that was an interesting comment and one last thing I will say is I have to defend the folks on my team who put those visual analysis together we've done hundreds of them at this point and we find them to be reliably accurate the original Revit models for both the hotel and the garage were used they were put into photos where we knew exactly where we were standing how far from the object everything can fool you sometimes but I will bet you at cheeseburger that those are accurate because we've done so many of them this has come up and people rarely want to believe them so bye I'll ask that you note that a public records request has been made for those models so that an independent architect could model different perspectives and the city has refused to honor that not recognizing that's work made for hire paid for by the city but the architecture produced those reddit models we don't we don't do that for all kinds of reasons I mean we've been happy to share whatever documents are submitted but that's kind of like asking microsoft to give them their source code I think the results are the purview design review the process is something for the law office to deal with thank you I want to see something and obviously that you want to see these things are accurate that accurately represent whatever is going to happen so we don't look at it we approve that at the end this is really we want the reason to be whatever we approve to be what's really going to happen we don't cook these things to achieve a desired effect we put them into the model and they show us what we learn from them I think that this is an interesting perspective that it would be nice to sort of see a rendering we've actually submitted renderings it's several iterations back but we did we have that image I can bring it next week anything else anybody wants to say so the bridge the arch and the portal openings with the steel in it are the things that I need to focus on before coming back how soon can you deal with the things we've addressed it'll take us the rest of the week I think you know I mean if you know if we could have a couple of days whether the staff could have a couple of days whether we could appropriately be like so from tonight next week as the soonest we'll be able to have enough people okay I want to give you plenty of time I know there's a time constraint there's a vote on November 6th but I want you to not rush things and to have as complete a package as you can for us good I think we may have to pull some people to figure out what day it works unfortunately because I know Tuesday's out for you and me because of HBC I'll make it work whatever you need me okay we'll do a poll tomorrow and the fencing okay fencing okay that's the word I want to say thanks everybody we usually don't have this much interest in design review meetings I think we rarely have an audience other than the applicants so so so second all in favor thanks at like high level elevation oh yeah well we can do better than this that was a rush job okay I don't know where we should follow the agenda can you pass me that piece should I put it in your record thank you let's stop the design review should I I'll leave that up there's nobody running so we can just press bottom since it's 7.08 okay so adjourn motion to adjourn I second good evening everyone I'm going to call this meeting of the Vermont Development Review Board to order my name is Daniel Richardson I serve as the chair of this board the other members for my right are Rob Goodwin Mirren Crandall staff Ryan Cain Tom Kester Claire Rock okay the first item of business is approval of the agenda we have three items of business they're all the same applicant the same project but different phases does anyone have any additions to the agenda or any further comment otherwise I'll end the motion the agenda motion by Ryan I'll select that all those in favor of the agenda as printed please raise your right hand agenda there are no comments from the chair tonight although I do want to give a roadmap as we enter our first application in describing how we're going to proceed tonight and what looks to be likely another hearing might explain in part we're a little bit understaffed on the board tonight because of illnesses and such so I'll save my comments for chair at that point we have one approval one minutes that we can approve and that would be the October first minutes and the eligible members to approve those minutes are myself Tom, Ryan, Rob and Claire so all five of us can vote on October first minutes any additions or other corrections otherwise I'll end the motion to approve the minutes for October first motion by Tom second second by Ryan all those in favor of the minutes from October first as printed please raise your right hand those have been accepted and adopted so our first item of business is 100 State Street final plan review for the two-lot subdivision so I wanted to take this in two steps before the applicant approves I'm going to give sort of an overview of where the board process is likely to go tonight and the next meeting and then Meredith is going to give our understanding of sort of the legal process of each silo but we'll start off by saying the board understands that there are three applications that are interrelated it's going to be difficult to approve one part of this without the other parts so we have tonight five out of our normal seven board members here we've asked those who are not here because of illness or conflict I mean other appointment conflicting as opposed to those who accuse themselves to review the minutes and the video that's generated from tonight's meeting so they can participate in the next meeting which is allowed where we'll have consideration so the board does not anticipate voting on any of the projects for approval tonight or closing the evidence and I say that at the beginning now I want both the applicant and any parties that are here as interested parties either in support or opposition to understand that we're not shutting anything down tonight this is just the first at least two meetings that I think is going to be necessary to review all three silos of project now that said I think the best way to proceed and what Meredith is going to outline is to keep each project separate in our review so that we're not mixing the site plan with the subdivision and so we're going to try and keep those separate so sometimes I may act like a traffic cop trying to keep people on task and focused on the specific but I don't see us coming to either close of the evidence or to a final vote on any of these three applications given that they're all fairly interrelated so Meredith if you want to give sort of a legal over if you can pick up where I left off so tonight we have three different applications we have the subdivision application which is the city is the applicant and they're requesting to subdivide a piece of land that is currently owned by the capital closet corporation that subdivision is is going to first step in transferring that land to the city for the city to then build a garage with that subdivision if we were to approve that subdivision without then amending the hotel site plan then we'd be violating the hotel site plan the prior approval for the hotel so the second application is actually by capital closet corporation to amend their previous approval for the hotel and garage package to pull off the garage and put the parking needed for the hotel to offsite parking you can't have offsite parking unless you have to put the cars so we have the third application which is the city requesting major site plan approval for the garage really unless there's a condition of approval on one of these that the other permits also get approved none of them work so chances are we're going to try and approve them all at the same time but so that's the big picture overview so if we can keep as much as possible subdivision discussion to the things that are outlined in the subdivision staff report and move on from there similar with the other team that would be great for members of the audience who did not get staff reports which have been posted on the website along with the agenda for this meeting there are copies of the full package that the DRB members got up on the table and then next to that there are a couple of supplements that were provided after that package was sent out on Friday which includes the third staff report for the garage site plan and the department of public works memo analyzing the traffic impact study so those things are up there if people want copies so the first applicant is it's the 100th state street it's the final plan review of the two-lot subdivision Craig if you have to state your name for the record as well as whoever else is testifying on that and then we'll swear everyone in my name is Gregory Rabbidow from Rabbidow Architects and with me this evening is David Marshall from Civil Engineering Associates of South Burlington also Corey Mack of Resource Systems Group questions about traffic at some point this evening and James Finley-Sheris who's a part of our landscape architecture team so if the four of you will raise your right hand you solemnly swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give for the matter under consideration shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth under pains and penalties of perjury I do can I just ask that you hold the microphone out from the piece of paper about the time we get this approved I'll learn that so it's your show thank you the subdivision part of this is really it's really Dave's bailiwick so I'm going to hand it right over to him but the broad elements of the subdivision are to cab off about a half acre lot from the existing capital plaza corporation lands that will be the part of the city's land for the development of the parking garage and there is a series of access easements but I'm going to let Dave essentially explain the plat if I can very good again Dave Marshall from Civil Engineering Associates at this point in time our surveyors we have two licensed surveyors that have researched the lands and have put together this particular plat we will be updating the plans shortly to basically reflect the comments that staff has put together as well as other professional staff within the city to bring the level of detail up to what's necessary ultimately to comply with the regulations that being the background this plan that's behind you that the public is looking at right now and will use a pointer at the risk of hopefully not trying to make it larger but it's pouring any areas out things that we will be doing is currently the capital plaza property actually extends in the west of the direction north is straight up on this particular plan and to orient you you've got the north branch comes down to the confluence of the Linovsky river which flows out in the north west of the direction this is the Heaney lot parcel that's leased by the city and this is the church property here for again for orientation and the remaining capital plaza property that extends out in this particular shape here what the future plan will do is actually show the entire capital plaza parcel and all the dimensions associated with it and in this particular case as Greg indicated this application seeks to basically subdivide off approximately 1.5 acre in support of the future parking garage in this particular case staff has identified the need to provide adequate access to this particular parcel and this is being shown with a series of access easements that ultimately generally are 24 feet wide ultimately widening out to 36 feet at the proposed lot itself what is not shown on this particular plan are all the easements that are necessary to support the various interests that are going to be associated with this project we have various utility easements we have storm drainage rights that basically will extend from the capital plaza property through this particular property new lot I should say so again we have also water easements that are actually going to be needed for these new lot easements back from capital plaza benefitting the new property itself utilities green mountain power we have been working with in regards to dealing with the existing high voltage conveyance that runs along the railroad tracks currently there is a line that basically runs out into this particular new parcel that ultimately is going to need less or distribution relocated so we have come up with a plan with green mountain power to provide that particular rerouting not only of what is happening within this particular parcel but also as far as providing new services for the capital remaining capital plaza lot so there are going to be it has been very good as far as what has come together in the past week to basically supplementing this plan as a way of basically rounding out the submittal process to the board this particular plan that Greg has just put up represents the proposed parcel and where is the proposed parcel and what we had just barely seen was some of the components that went on that particular parcel this is actually primarily the footprint of the garage and this shows the great change between the upper plateau parking lot area and the lower elevation Heaney lot and again for orientation purposes this is the church building and that all being the background these are the access points and the reason they had specific shapes was primarily because the interest of the city was not to control and access easement and encumbered some of the parking but basically had free access back and forth from State Street as well as Taylor to basically provide not only a circulation management tool but also access to the proposed lot a few things out now Greg says Dave has got some things so he's going to throw them away I just want to draw attention for the benefit of the public because this came up earlier during the design advisory committee immediately adjacent to the Heaney lot is building generally known as the garage and I want to point out this property line right here because all of this the garage and the parking area behind it are not part of this application they are a budding property owner they've only identified the lot for purposes for that purpose and for coordinating utilities and stuff I think there was some discussion about how there isn't what is the purpose of this parking lot and is this fully designed and everything these are more site plan issues as long as we have the plat up here I wanted to again for the benefit of the public and the board just point out that the lack of development here is because that's off the project site and a couple of other things there is an easement from the capital plaza to the city for the bike path that cuts off a corner of this lot down here that will have to be incorporated into the design as well and also to take note of the property line here between Christ Church and the project site when we talk about site plan there's going to be a conversation about why I think there's some people would like to see a sidewalk right here but I just want to take note of the location of that property line I'm sorry you need to wake up but I think for now we're focused on the subdivision plat part of this and I don't have much to add if you don't I think now might be a good time for questions from the board and we can fill in the blanks but one relatively minor point Greg you pointed out that currently the city has an easement for the bike path on the back corner of what's known by the capital plaza yes but if the city takes ownership of the lot itself that easement will essentially be merged with the ownership fair enough I just want to make sure that's what the understanding is the bike path will still be there it's just it's no longer an easement it's a function of the ownership of the lot one question I had it's on this map but there's a jog in the right-of-way that comes from Taylor Street it just had on the pointer is there a reason for that that geometry accommodates the previously approved Hampton Inn so the curb cut at Taylor Street essentially comes into the site a few yards north of the southerly property boundary once we get into the site though in order to have enough space for a building we have to put that little shift in the road here is obviously when you create a right-of-way sometimes topography requires those kinds of jobs in a place like this may not wondering what's driving that and so it's essentially the curb out of the existing hotel plans yes likewise the flaring of the right-of-way adjacent to Christchurch's rear parking lot is both because we needed to have at least 30 feet where that intersected the building but also we're just jogging around the parking spaces which will remain capital-plaza project property these two right-of-ways are going to be the primary access to this lot we're essentially creating a private road coming from Taylor Street through the project site and it'll be that shaded surface will be developed at least in terms of cross-section of pavement to city street standards it wouldn't necessarily have sidewalks and curbs and it'll have curbs and sidewalks but it's going to meet city street standards in terms of the construction of the road means you're going to have line marks to delineate the lanes yes oh yeah of course but it'll also have the appropriate thickness of asphalt and the appropriate thickness of stone and any fabrics or anything that are required by your public work standards just so I understand both of these right-of-ways will be dual directional yes and so someone coming in can either come in off the state street into the garage or from Taylor Street into a garage but somebody coming out of the garage can either take that left onto Taylor or go straight and regardless of the incoming traffic I mean obviously right it's at least a 24-foot wide pavement in all cases so there's more than enough room for two-way traffic so I'm going to move a little bit off the traffic unless anyone else on the board has a clear yeah I was actually curious I was reading some different terms and clarification on I understand you're going to have a right-of-way access like a legal easement and then you refer to the actual construction of the bed would be up to the city standard but will it be a road, will it be a public road among clear on the status of the actual we've been asking the city that question I can't try and answer and then if I can't maybe Tom can adjust this if I do it incorrectly so my understanding Claire is that it's going to be there is an agreement that the Capital Plaza is going to grant permission for the public to use this access it will still be private property technically underneath there to own it but that in exchange for the city agreeing to do certain types of maintenance the Capital Plaza is agreeing to let the public use that area is that a very general description Tom? Tom McCartle of the Public Works Department Tom just we're going to have everyone it's only swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give for the matter under consideration shall be the truth the whole truth about the truth under a paints penalty surgery just to state your name for the record Tom McCartle Director of Public Works so what we had in mind is something similar to what we had in practice for quite some time on Stonecutter's Way the portion of Stonecutter's Way that passes by Sarduchies is a public thoroughfare agreement the city entered into with the Palma Lo family so that's what I envision the details of that but it is really for the public's use and serves as a right of way to connect this parcel that would otherwise not have street frontage so it's an alternative to that and then with the where it meets State Street would that have to be widened for turning like large vehicles to turn in and out so the intersection at the curb cuts I think it's better reflected if you look at the site plan it's a 24 foot roadway driveway through to the curb cut I don't know if that shows the flares that the tip downs are actually a little wider the actual curb cut is a little wider so the radius is built into that driveway so the fencing that's there now and that landscaping that currently provides that kind of gateway into that parking lot would that have to change fencing I'm not sure I don't believe there's a need to change much of what you see here today it functions as a parking lot access the alterations are primarily internal internal that curb cut has served as a parking lot access for a long time that has sufficient width that has the appropriate radii and there is a fence there I just don't recall a problem far back it's back here Tom there is a change in the curb cut design on the Taylor Street site and that's primarily acquired by by our plans to reconstruct Taylor Street so there's some alterations and how that looks compared to what it will be under this plan which is coordinated with the Taylor Street project and would there have to be any kind of crowning of that road or like how does all that work and interface with the existing service area for parking I think that's a better question for the site designer for the laws a lot but there's a change within the roadway so it's a reverse crown like all Texas drainage systems Claire just maybe as a point of order I think in general we should keep in mind that the capital plaza as a project was approved with a lot of these right of ways already and so some of the drainage that's existing in them has been reviewed by the DRB that's not to say I think your line of questioning is spot on for what we should be asking but just keep in mind that there was that prior review so that some of these proposals aren't necessarily brand new so the pedestrian circulation I know we've talked about but it looks like there's a sidewalk does that go all the way from State Street down to the parking garage it goes along the the capital plaza side of the parking lot goes down to that crosswalk there where it lands on a pedestrian plaza access to the garage is from that plaza and if you walk a little bit to the west access to the hotel that sidewalk extends from that plaza down between the hotel and the parking garage to a point where it turns and follows the train tracks to connect with the bike path so that entire route is ADA compliant this plan this is sort of there's so much stuff on this plan it's really hard to read but the pedestrian way would follow where Dave's cursor is and connect with the bike path here we were asked to evaluate and did evaluate providing pedestrian access via the Haney lot to the bike path we've run into some technical issues that make that somewhat difficult the biggest being that there's about an eight and a half foot exchange of grade between finished grade around the garage and the elevation of the bike path where it mounts the bridge to go across the Winnowsky we couldn't find a method to get up from ground level to that level without creating problems for other aspects of the engineering design related to floodway management but we did have a conversation with the design advisory committee to explore the possibility of a bridge going from the garage to the bike path from the second level of the garage and we agreed to explore that with the design advisory committee the other part of that is what I pointed out to you earlier which is the fact that we have to maintain that right away from the Haney lot to the adjacent garage parcel the overlook partnership or something like that I think it's called by the owners of that otherwise there are sidewalks connecting there's the sort of walkways that go along the northerly edge of our proposed new road to get back out to Taylor Street there's discussion that I believe the Christchurch is talking about a pedestrian access on their property sort of running parallel to the garage right along there I think that's all the circulation stuff I can think of I'm going to go back I've got one question about the right-of-way and it says right-of-way that's still you indicated in process well I think they've just explained how it was when we started this when we submitted we were still waiting for a read on that but it sounds like they've figured that out my understanding and from whatever you've gotten is that it's going to be an easement it's going to be a master agreement I'm not quite sure what your question is at this point just as opposed to a right-of-way I think that these have all been updated for consistency between drawings is my understanding I just pulled this drawing up from a previous hearing let's talk next about some of the stormwater drainage simply because we may have the map right now but how is the stormwater going to be handled not only on this slot but presumably it's going to be incorporated into the larger stormwater system that's been approved for the capital pause a lot as well who gives a shot so I'm speaking on behalf of Ron Lyon from Dubois King and they have developed a plan in which there will be a number of stormwater management facilities some of them very mechanical in nature that will basically collect and treat the stormwater leaving this particular development area and ultimately being conveyed in a common pipe that will ultimately tie into the currently approved and soon to be under construction stormwater management line that discharges to the north branch and in this particular case keep in mind that all of this existing parking lot and there's basically a low spot right particularly here all of it flows to those low spots and drains to the river without any treatment today so anything that we do is going to be better just basically taking off the current parking lot surface and substituting it with a building roof is going to be a significant improvement over what we have out there today but nonetheless as part of the program for the development of the hotel component there will be additional stormwater treatment and likewise for the proposed garage the top level basically becomes a replacement of the underlying existing parking lot below it and all of that stormwater will be collected and treated prior to discharge to the receiving waters so again we expect a big improvement in stormwater quality leaving this this is going to be subject to a state stormwater permit operational permit is what we call it and that will all be subject to the technical review of the state as part of the redevelopment of this particular area that's a very general answer to your question but nonetheless it wanted to get started with that aspect what particular type of treatment are you proposing for the parking garage? the parking garage itself we're looking at a swirl separator or a vortex unit and what it does is uses basically centrifugal force that takes the water and basically sends it around and round circle just like you are a dryer when you're trying to basically take those drops of water out of your clothes and rip them to the very outside or specifically even your washer when you're in the spin cycle it uses the same type of technology where you're taking centrifugal force and you're taking those particles of water and it forces them all to the outside of this particular unit they color us on the outside edge of the treatment unit and basically fall down into a collection area within it and these are required to be maintained the city has indicated through their vector troffes provided that we can site these in a manner that allows them access that this is something that they can regularly monitor and basically pump out on as necessary basis as part of their management of this particular property so we find that in these particular redevelopment projects where there isn't a lot of area available for what otherwise would be wonderful by retention areas of rain gardens or large open water ponds that these particular subsurface treatment mechanisms especially when infiltration is not an opportunity because of high groundwater table or poor soil characteristics that these particular swirl or more technic type of treatment units does a significant does a very good job providing treatment compliance with the state storm water rules Is this determined by gravity? Absolutely so it does require a certain amount of elevation change between your inlet and outlet and that amount of energy that is used to basically create the centrifugal movement of the water ultimately it leaves the unit at the lower elevation but in the meantime there's a sump below the normal location where the water is moving to basically collect the sediment that again is forced to the outside or inside and settling out Now are all levels of the garage going to have that same system that there's going to be a different one between the second and the first level? Excellent question Grace said way into ultimately how parking garages are managed as far as dropping the wire hitting each particular surface so we talked about the top and that's the one that basically is subject to the majority of the precipitation that falls out of the sky needs to be managed in a way consistent with federal regulations that basically say anything on top of dorm water anything that's inside the building is actually a sanitary waste so even though you've got some drop to water or snow that comes in the car melts off and hits the ground and they slowly trickles into the drain anything inside the building is considered to be a sanitary waste that has to be handled So in this particular case the mid levels of the garage the one below the top bottom I should say all have their own collection system that goes into an oil water grid separated before it basically gets introduced into the municipal sanitary collection system that then goes to the treatment plant The very bottom level is one in which we have found our clients have different approaches as far as management some basically acknowledge or basically state gee Dave you really don't really need much in the bottom primarily because we don't see a significant amount of water getting to the drains a lot of it evaporates before it actually gets to the drains it will sit on the surface you'll see a wet surface but actually what gets to the drain is a very small amount some people will say gee I'd like to have a pump station in there and we'll send it up to final treatment and then to the sanitary system and other people simply say I don't want to spend money on a pump station only because they work so infrequently the seals will dry up and that I would just ultimately just like to have a holding tank and I'll monitor its depth and pump it out when it's necessary so some people will throw in an extra factor of safety where there's a monitoring component as far as a float level inside that particular holding tank and that's the one the city has chosen to proceed with in this particular case because there's a secondary benefit and the fact that what we want to do is that we know that in this particular corner this is an area that probably annually does have some higher water levels sometimes associated with ice back up and the city doesn't want that backing up into the bottom of the garage in a layer that it's actually using the internal drains to only send it back to its wastewater treatment plant so in this particular case we separate the entire bottom level into a holding tank a water watertight, water protected holding tank and basically anything that gets in there stays there if there happens to be a flood tank keeping in mind that our entire that's not my downtown it's their downtown is all within the flood plain we need to plan for those particular contingencies so the city at this point in time has chosen to basically go with the holding tank option for the very bottom floor and basically provide monitoring or automatic monitoring so that when it does approach if it does approach a high point that they get the signal to send the back of the truck down there and to clean it out so we did dip a little bit into the site plans but which is fine but I think it is important to understand how these tubes relate because the storm water for the creation of this lot won't be accepting a great deal of water in other blocks by the time so I want to ask about so my understanding is that you've met with the fire chief and with the chief of police in a technical review of any capacity that is correct both during the previous approval period and I as a part of this effort so one thing and I'm going off of the notes the staff report is the idea of security cameras right and you could just explain what the function and purpose are the the hotel folks will have the normal security we would provide which is cameras on operable exits and entrances and then on significant features like this backyard patio here or for instance the front this whole drop off area for the city the most important area is this area back in here on the back side of this along the tracks and adjacent to the railroad bridge it's been a place where people have kind of congregated to party and stuff so from the police's point of view is they'd like to have eyes on this area back here there's a lot going on the bike path that's coming through and you've got the parking garage so we would have building mounted cameras on the major corners and at the major entrances and exits there's a pedestrian exit down here and then we'll likely have them on each level of the elevator lobby and we'll probably have a set on each set of stairs that can be monitored at the police dispatch the cameras would be remoted to there as well as there's going to be some communication between this facility and city hall as well both for the security management but also to manage the actual parking garage equipment so there'll be a link between the garage and city hall and the police department up back so this area here that's on the south side of this garage will someone be able you're saying there'll be an exit here from the parking garage is it going to go to the south or to the east? well it's currently showing on the drawings going to the south this cross hatching here indicates a setback from the river ok so the actual setback line is here the shading is just sort of to show restricted to development we've also been asked to provide some kind of pedestrian access out the side of the garage going this way so finish grade down here is all significantly lower than the bike path there's a retaining wall that kind of comes along here and separates the train tracks from that depressed area and that's an area we're going to want to keep an eye on from a security point of view the lighting plan reflects that as well I'm just trying to understand as well so someone can come out this back door into this area because this will largely be this southern part all one level right here so someone can come around here or come back from here access the bike path the bike path access is tricky because of that exchange of grade ok so it's actually going to be up above it's about eight and a half feet above this is it nominally at 518 this is like 525 26 27 right at the tracks so we've got that little bit of grade change there this will still be sort of like a bridge on the right we're thinking it's currently designed to have its own retaining wall to basically allow it to be up at the railroad track elevation and then the remaining area just to the north of the bike path would go back down to existing grade they did that primarily to minimize the amount of fill being placed within the floodplain but it does create this dynamic of significant elevation change between the new bicycle path so I mean what is the what is the city's plan to have these cameras set up and I believe I've read that the city would see these cameras more as after the fact evidence gathering device as opposed to an ongoing sort of monitoring yeah I I can't talk to it yeah I mean this is obviously information but nonetheless as part of the technical review committee the chief indicated that they don't have the staff to basically just sit there and monitor cameras all day but in this particular case it would allow for after the fact review of what is what occurred on the property whether it be to gather evidence or otherwise how active it is used to basically monitor I think is again just depending on who's available to sit down at the chair at that particular point in time but as far as a constant monitoring that was not the police department's intent from what I understand were there any concerns expressed by either the fire or police department about this area here or the design as far as either a fire safety or a public safety the fire chief had a list of conditions that he wanted to have included in the approval of the project if it gets to that stage including things that we had already planned on doing but making sure that there was a fire suppression system a sprinkler system basically in the building they wanted to stamp pipes in each of the two stairwells which is fine and I think it's in the staff report he had enumerated some bullet points but it's a type one or non combustible kind of building it's a low fire hazard type of structure they will have car fires they will happen but for the most part you don't have a lot of contents here compared to a cotton warehouse so the police didn't express concern about the location so much as just wanting to participate in whatever kind of security arrangements we had there to to have the ability to look at what's going on back there the hotel will monitor their camera system from the front desk and the city's staff or however they manage the parking equipment the line that comes to city hall it's all done over the internet now so anybody can bring up one of these cameras those are the discussions we've had to date if I can just add one thing as far as working with the fire chief we did ask him specifically whether he was comfortable with the parking garage and he says well it's no different than how we respond to other parking garages specifically up at One National Life in regards to what our capabilities are and how we approach these particular types of incidents so that gave us a level of comfort that we weren't creating a new expectation on emergency services with regard to this particular parking facility there was a concern expressed before at one of the meetings about the public safety ramifications but in part because we're transferring this project proposes to transfer ownership and oversight from the hotel that has a vested interest in its own security it's on site so it's centralized to the city that's going to have to manage it within their public safety existing public safety services or expand set of services so for subdivision it sounds as if the police are comfortable with the existing proposal is that accurate next Aaron here say this evidence does not have a place in the same way just a quick note my comments in the staff report that are based on the fire chief and police chief's comments they have reviewed a lot of questions I had are with is the expectation that this master and easement agreement will be executed prior to the next few weeks our review or is this something I think some of my concerns are just simply in defining what is the scope of control for the city taking this over I see well it took us to this point until last week really to sort of figure out all the plumbing issues now that we have those figured out I mean the primary issues are water, sewer and electric yeah now that we know where those lines go I think it's probably a relatively easy thing to sort of put a description of an easement over the top of them I should be clear I'm not looking to scrutinize the lawyer's work or you know look at the actual documents but just have an understanding in general how where the relationship between the parties being proposed through these documents so that we have an understanding as to responsibility rights you know I think statements made before by the city that you know ultimately they would like to see these as public streets well is this agreement such that that precludes that or allows for that just so we can understand really what we're approving and I think that that's just something that it may not be there but it may be something I'm just trying to get a sense of whether that's reasonable for us to expect more clarity about sewer bill so same same thing do you solemnly sort of affirm the testimony you're about to give for the matter under consideration shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do I do it brings some of the final lines I actually unless there is some surprise will have it signed next week by the time of the vote and is it bill just does that does that include things like maintenance used to maintain the roads snow removal we actually have three part agreement there's a master agreement that describes all the relationships permit agreement for their use of the garage and that sort of thing and then there's a lease agreement with us for the park surface parking that will be leasing and that actually in the master agreement describes the road and the relationship and our permanent public access and maintenance who's going to do what and none of that would preclude in the future as Greg mentioned it's all being constructed to city standards so in the future we're going to move in the direction under being the city road we could in the meantime it'll be a private road with a permanent public use in the future okay thanks thank you bill so let's talk about well let's talk about the traffic impacts at this point and this may be where the rsg so i mean essentially what we're doing is we're proposing to put a new lot here that's going to have uh can i make a suggestion that we yeah i mean so that i mean as far as the subdivision itself is concerned what we're really looking at under the subdivision subdivision regulation is the traffic impact of the creation of new lots right not the development on those lots the creation of one additional lot in this location i don't think like so usually if you had a 26-lot residential subdivision that subdivision is going to create traffic impacts and that's what you would consider under the subdivision regulations uh if it's a two-lot subdivision of an existing parking lot and an existing developed lot i don't see the subdivision as raising any traffic impacts um so i'd suggest that we right i mean and i don't i think it's just going to be easier to get into the traffic impacts of the proposed garage when we look at this site plan that's one board member's perspective just one um no that's a fair that's a fair point and i mean you know i don't think we're precluded from looking at traffic under subdivision but i think it's a well taken point that it may make sense to wait till the site plan um sorry to make you get up you can stay here we don't unless the unless there i'm wrong that there will be impacts of the creation of of one additional lot in this location absent uh looking at the development that may occur on that lot or that's proposed i think in this case i mean i i don't think we can look at this separate as you know they're just creating one lot maybe they'll put a one family bungalow there um i think you know the cat is out of the bag as to what's going there it's intertwined but i think i think that's that's a fair point to put that in in further and we can certainly hold off on that um but at least from traffic circulation earlier there had been a proposal to put some of the entrance ingress and ingress on the heenilot is that off the table or is that still part of the proposal we have provided for a secondary access point to the garage exiting out to the heenilot but our understanding operationally is that that is only there as a sort of failsafe in case something happened at the main entrance up above and i think that came out of consultation between the city manager's office and and st albin's who recently constructed a downtown parking garage and they thought that was an important feature to have we have not assumed that significant flows of traffic will go through the garage and out to the heenilot because elm street is is kind of dysfunctional at the moment so but but uh yeah there's an entrance there but it's not meant to be used on a regular basis it's there it's there as a failsafe so any other portion since we're over here is is this dedicated as access then along this eastern boundary i i believe there's an easement there's there's some kind of agreement but they have they have a right to the access that parking lot that we have to preserve and will that be preserved through the construction process as well the sequence of construction on an urban lot like this is pretty difficult i think the best we can do is we have a terrific construction management team in terms of de w is to make sure that they know the contact information for the people who own that building in that parking lot and that if there's any if there's going to be any activities that might preclude them getting in there like excavation for a water line or something that they get plenty of notice because it's hard to imagine building a structure where we wouldn't have to cross that line at some point or at least you know impact that easement to some degree so i think i think that'll be a construction management problem to solve but we've had this issue on every project we've done it so it's a communication matter for purposes of this we want to acknowledge that that exists and we're going to maintain that access uh the only thing that we haven't talked about is the fact that the distance between the garage's access to the easement is closer to the quote-unquote driveway for the christ church then technically it's supposed to be if you consider them both driveways um it's supposed to be a distance hold on one second yeah i think the minimum is 50 feet and it's less than that but it's one of those things that the board can approve is less right so just make sure that you guys have had a chance to just ask any questions you had about that well do you know what is the distance between the and so merit just for clarity we're talking about from this point to this point yep um and i estimated that based on the plan as just it looked like it was 30 plus feet but less than 50 exactly so it's just it was just calling it out as something that when a final decision is made on the subdivision you'll have to make it you know allow that to happen well do you know what that number is i'd want to measure it accurately to have something in the record but i think your sense of it is right it's it's probably somewhere around 36 38 feet no there'll just need to be something you approve which would i mean it's 12 or 14 short of that but we're connecting to existing features in both directions so exactly is there a plan for some sort of internal signage for traffic flow stop signs or oh yeah yeah i in the project site in general yeah i i'm a little i'm a little unsure on how that fits in with the sign ordinance because we're gonna have to have a kind of a master plan sign thing going on for for commercial signage um but traffic signs they're separate and apart right when they're in the public right of way and honestly i haven't seen if i'm assuming that kind of flows in the public access isn't it but i'm not 100 sure okay and i don't think we've had time to discuss how that all is dealt with yet but i know that there have been discussions about internal signage so there were just to fill in the blanks as far as what marriage this recollection is there were basically just two minor discussions in regards to the way fighting component we think it's an important component of the project but nonetheless at least on the traffic management end a stop sign at this particular intersection basically or both actually for that matter to basically keep people from rushing out into the the public rights of way and then the other thing as far as management of the hotel guests within the garage they wanted to make sure that uh when they were looking for interstate 89 that they didn't go right out to state street that actually they tried to find the path of least resistance getting out in that particular direction again just as a way of trying to minimize additional conflicts within um they're already challenged areas of the city so there has been some very preliminary discussions as far as that um i think ultimately the way finding sign package is going to be an important component of the project that we envision that as a separate application so that it can basically be a good standalone component um ultimately of the project prior to a occupation of any of the proposed improvements but it strikes me one of the reasonable conditions that might have to attach for such you know because of the shortness of that and because of the fact that you know you would have this would become this intersection here and i i actually wasn't thinking of this until we started talking about this but you know because it's essentially a four-way intersection there you know some sort of signage to create a four-way stop or a similar proposal and i i guess i'll put that out now since we're likely to be continuing this if that if something like a condition of a four-way stop sign would be counterproductive so i think we do need to discuss with public works what their goals are with regard to the flow of traffic and whether this truly becomes a four-way stop or a two-way stop as far as controlling access out into the main travel way so your points will taken in the fact that that will be a traffic management component that maybe aren't not on subdivision plan but on site plan site plan we need to basically make sure that we have those details included any other questions on subdivision is the creation of this lock creating any non-conformities on the adjoining lock no in terms of minimum lot size the the capital plaza parcel was large enough to have off a half acre without falling below any kind of minimum thresholds in terms of lot size i think the only non-conformity is the one we've already talked about which is the the frontage requirement and and we've talked about what the workaround is on that but otherwise the lots are big enough it's a no setback zone so creation of new lot lines isn't going to impose any new restriction on anybody else so no i wouldn't think so all right um why don't we wait till the end and then we can consider motions however the board feels i mean my feeling at this point is that there are still some open parts to this and it may make sense to continue it to our next regularly scheduled meeting but given that these are all interrelated we may have a different disposition after the next year yeah let's actually do that before we move on to the next one does anyone have public comment on the on the subdivision go back to the subdivision no that's okay and so let me just swear against you okay do you solid swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to get for the matter of consideration should be the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth under paints penniless surgery yes all right am i to understand that all the grounds that you discussed in this session are available for cross so to speak they even if they stayed into site plan they were subdivision yeah i mean i'm gonna obviously if it's if it's heavily into site plan i may pull you back that's fine we're gonna expect as much just to keep the meeting moving the site plan fundamentally impacts the setback requirement if in effect you're approving a site plan with the intent of building to the absolute limit of the setback you are in effect creating a congestion that runs directly counter to the goals of paths interconnecting and pedestrian transit etc similarly the site plan divide currently there's no vehicle access from the boshara lot into the haney lot for better or for worse but in effect this is in effect creating that and the implications of that are far reaching because in effect you're you're going to be narrowing the right away for the garage parcel to i'm told 10 or 20 feet through that little canyon uh as well as providing emergency if not full ingress ingress from the garage interconnected can i can i ask i just want to clarify when you say the the canyon you're talking about the pedestrian no i'm talking about the one between the canyon between the jacob's garage and the proposed garage oh okay so we're in problems down into the funnel correct um the site plan division is creating these new issues of the traffic coming into the garage from the boshara lot and exiting the garage through into the haney lot those those are um i'm not saying i have a solution for them but i'm saying that these are issues that but secondly what occurs to me is that you're you're creating a new intersection in the middle of a private lot that the city has a vague or soon to be defined easement to but that intersection that fundamental intersection is curb cut is supposed to be 30 feet but then it's you're throttling that down to 24 feet in order to go to taylor or to stay so you're defeating the very purpose of a 30 foot frontage by allowing it to be throttled down to 24 so moving this fast with this project under such pressure is creating more problems that it's solving and i'm just calling that to your attention i don't have a solution for it other than to slow down scale back and consider our other options um i'll try to rein into the there's not only green mountain power in there there's sovereign ed and and level three i believe there's two fiber carriers along that same high voltage line uh one of those is going to need to be accessible and accessed in the garage in order to provide the connectivity to get this video over to but that video won't work in a power outage in a result of a flood zone if we don't put backup power in into the design i had i did send an email i'm happy to forward it to meredith to chief fecos over the weekend after reviewing the staff memo calling his attention to the need for not only above flood plain utility vault access but possibly backup generator and transfer switch so the elevators could work in an emergency situation um that may be getting on into the third phase of your a private road to city standards is not going to allow perpendicular parking backing into it in effect this just perpendicular parking along this so-called private road fundamentally defeats the pretense that this is not going to create a huge traffic problem the i'll call your attention to the origin of the waiver back when you granted the hotel of the five or six spots that were required for loading and to not have to have given the hotel a waiver for loading zones and yet all this laundry from 80 something rooms is going to be wheeled across this private road with all the perpendicular parking and the traffic for the garage it your engineering a cluster uh floral arrangement christ church pedestrian access was mentioned uh design review i sat through earlier it was represented that there's a 40 foot stretch of the proposed garage which is going to be blank which is as i understand directly what christ church does not want to have affordable housing built staring at a blank wall 10 feet across the canyon so again these are these are problems that i don't have solutions for well you know my solution groundwater storm water what about wash water the green walls do not live or thrive in areas where that the break dust and rubber particles from a concrete garage are not power washed out every several weeks so you covered storm water from the top deck and then you covered uh sanitary waste from the lower decks neither of those systems are designed to accommodate power washing this garage and the cost of such and the water flow from such uh treatment uh and how are those pumps going to work in a power outage situation uh that's something that has to be considered which which pumps are you talking about the sump pump that they mentioned by sump pump and then the other is a vortex gravity gravity yeah that's the one that wouldn't require necessarily uh you know gravity still works in power outages oh it does hurt all right um um i i believe that whole dimension of this needs to be more thoroughly examined either in the technical review i'll be asking for the minutes of the technical review committee um that's enough for now thanks um the power washing question that does seem i mean is there is there a plan to have power washing james are you still here i uh can you go to the microphone absolutely a microphone any microphone sit right here you were as quiet as i was yeah james finley shares landscape architect Wagner Hodgson um i have not actually um thought about power washing the plants on a regular basis we've been working with a company called green screen that provides these armatures for training vines on buildings across the country um i can check in with them and see if they think that's uh something that's necessary in our discussions um that was never brought up by the rep or the technical people on their team uh they actually also gave us several case studies where we uh they had these screens on parking garages and the plants seemed to flourish so i'm happy to check in with them and i was going to also check in with some sort of uh to get their recommendations on general maintenance and so i think we could provide that absolutely and be sure i mean at least for the subdivision portion i understand that to be a question of are you increasing the storm water as opposed to rain events now regular right watering or power washing events where you know the system would be used yeah i'm not ready to concede that that power washing is an appropriate way to treat plant now you can begin with i wasn't talking about power washing the plants i was talking about power washing the garage to prevent to make sure that the plant survives um step in for just a second yeah so if we're power washing the garage my understanding from dave was that that would mostly except for the top floor that would be internal so that wouldn't go through the storm water system that would go into the large tank at the bottom that eventually gets sent to the water treatment plant correct it's all the stuff on the top it's only the stuff on the top top that would end up in the storm water system very close okay um middle levels would go to my gravity to an ore water separator that then would go to the sanitary system right bottom level is all enclosed with an holding tank and then the top is storm water mother nature's water basically all managed through that particular swirl technology so the power washing would not in any way increase storm water flows it would increase potentially sanitation flows that is correct but that that would be done on a choice by public works based on what times make the most sense for them both from a maintenance standpoint as well as whatever is happening at the treatment plant so let's move on to the site plan amendment for the capital clause of corporation better than maybe just give just a brief recap as to what we're looking at for this this particular portion of the application okay so this is the hotel site plan amendment so here we are dealing with an amendment to a previously approved permit that is still open it has not been constructed and so it was approved under the previous 2011 regulations so those are the regulations we have to deal with for all of the substantive issues and the board is limited at this point in what it can question about the hotel site plan amendment to the changes being proposed and in this case also impacts from the garage because the reason we're changing the hotel is because of building changing where the who owns the garage and how big the garage is so um you know in general the big picture for the hotel site plan is converting on-site parking to off-site parking that's the big reason that this was filed however in developing the garage site plan application and dealing with traffic flows and pedestrian access my understanding is that there have been additional amendments discussed that may impact things like how parking is dealt with on the access route to state street maybe discussed today that aren't actually in the application but they were discussed at technical review committee big picture though is conversion to off-site so great maybe it'll be helpful to go over what you understand the changes to the site plan no i i think for for just to explain how that previously approved site plan would be amended um obviously it's the the fact of the subdivision so the size and shape of the parcel is being amended it is the as you pointed out the fact that the parking now is off-site which according to your regulations needs to be within a thousand feet and i think we're we're substantially below that and then uh and the and the imposition of these easements uh that we talked about to create the access roads to the subdivided lot as as we move through the process there there may be some smaller detaily things that end up uh a part of this i can i can think of a couple ready examples there seems to be an ongoing discussion about a second sidewalk from state street back to the parking garage it's been brought up a few times by the time this whole process is done that may have worked its way into the process we've been resisting it on technical base on a technical reasons but uh you know it's still a live issue and the the only other thing i can anticipate might be uh some minor revisions to the well it could be minor they could be substantial revisions to the grading plan around the hotel to accommodate the change in the design here so um right now i think the only things we anticipate are the subdivision the off-street parking and the imposition of the easements unless you have uh just so just to clarify since technical review committee hearing a meeting where you're no longer considering a second a sidewalk on between the christ church and parking along that route there i know we had discussed that and maybe changing some of the that parking alignment on the access route to state street i'm sorry say that again please so we talked about potentially putting in a sidewalk there and adjustments yes parking spaces is that still part of the potential or that was that was one of the things i said could get folded into this as we move forward okay um just quickly i think that the problem is has always been that the the pavement goes right up to the property line putting that sidewalk in would uh would in its simplest form until you know putting it just outside the existing parking but that would have an impact on uh a pretty significant plantation of white cedars that form the enclosure for the church's memorial garden so the only way for that sidewalk to happen is for it to push over onto capital plaza land which is going to add adversely impact the parking okay i just didn't i know that we had had a discussion where dave was thinking about trying to find a way to make that work we can continue to look at it but i those are the issues and that's that's the source of resistance but other than that no i i think uh if grading plans uh if the grading plans do transition over time uh we'll you know we'll make that part of the application so maybe kick off with uh the something that mr wittaker raised which i remember uh from our original review of this which was the laundry yes that the proposal is that the laundry from the camped in would be carted across this parking area to the capital plaza right because they have the large industrial washing machines in their facility um is there anything about that that's going to shift because and in particular you know before what we were talking about was a large sort of central courtyard parking area whereas now they're going to have to cross this right um so well they have to do the same things they were going to do but as i understand as i understand it i i think they're going to get like a kushman card or some kind of golf cart type of thing to put this laundry in okay so we're not talking like people with like a giant four-wheel canvas thing with the wheels on it i don't believe so i i mean because uh the dirty sheets and towels from 84 guest rooms is going to be more than somebody's going to carry in their arms um the other thing is i think operationally is that the hotel is going to be looking for times of day when guests won't notice this happening it could be very early in the morning or you know late at night um oftentimes in hotels the the night staff does laundry while they're keeping an eye on the front desk um but it didn't make sense to us to have two commercial laundry systems running on the same lot uh to consolidate that into one activity is is efficient for the hours is it uh there's a fairly substantial room in the building that's created to hold that laundry so it doesn't like it's not going to be like in bags in the hallway in understanding you know it i i my sense is that the big shift really is that we're talking about changing the nature of these driveways to we now share with the city with this additional traffic that's going to go to the larger partners yes um in just understanding from the capital pauses perspective are there any changes that are there they're rendering to their traffic flow or where they expect guests to arrive unload that is going to be affected by this change no we've as the design team has tried to take care to maintain a uh a decent sense of a back door here for the hotel which is right about there typically i think guests arrive at the hotel now are coming in the front door once they've checked in that there's a 208 space parking lot back here right it's it's all parking now 100% with the exception of this little red building here um and no i don't i don't see that changing i think it's just channeled more because right now when you go in there it's it's somewhat chaotic there's there's the one of the first things we did i think it was one of the things that got us hired was we said create a sense of the streetscape here so that people coming to this hotel feel like they're arriving someplace and not just landing in a parking lot and so that's always been the the operating theory of this design all we've done now is sort of said well this is no longer a private road you know fred's way or whatever we're going to call it but but now it's it's got a larger public component to it um but there was still going to be a 220 space parking garage here with all that traffic going to it is the real difference is you know we're going up to 348 spaces now or 349 so and just right here on the proposed hotel yeah there's a little bump in that it looks like and that's still going to be the loading and the loading for those for the new Hampton in that's where guests will pull out of the traffic line and that hatching pattern is intended to be a a stamped concrete pattern a kind of cobblestone thing uh or well it may it may it may be saw cuts or it's meant to be a special pavement uh number one because you know car stopping at the you know the tripping oil and stuff they don't want that in front of the the hotel they want something they can scrub it's going to hold up um but it also tells everybody to slow down right here and so even if like a large tour bus uh a full of leak vehicles stops and pulls in front of there there's still going to be enough room beyond that to get around the traffic to flow around yeah the canopy will be mounted at an elevation that's high enough it should that it shouldn't be a problem uh we did in the process of doing this site design have uh do truck overlays on the major turns which is really that big turn right in the center of the site um but we did we did verify because um the hotels don't use a lot of truck traffic but the restaurant in the capital plaza gets a lot of deliveries and they get you know they get deliveries from sisco and and the you know black river produce and generally those are high cube trucks you know 30 40 foot unarticulated trucks um but but they do they do get the occasional sisco truck as a full size semi rig and um we also had to show that we could get a fire truck even out of there that that is kind of where that curve came from and the large uh buses they aren't they aren't going to go into the parking deck or wouldn't even be possible no there's a fairly limited head height in the garage with 10 foot two floor to floor we're going to end up with between seven six and eight foot of clear headspace through most of the garage with the exception of the very lowest level so is there a plan for where those will park uh right now they disgorge and they leave the site completely okay they don't stay i would have to ask uh mr bashar but as i understand it there's uh there's a lot out underneath the bridge or something where they go i but they don't stay on site now okay so they don't park in the back of the existing parking is configured oh yeah you know somebody might have parked one back there at some point but but operationally my understanding is they go offsite is there any proposed anything like speed bumps or anything like that on the right of way just a special pavement i pointed out to you yeah i don't think we would want them honestly i i think traffic is going to anybody who's experienced that parking lot as it is today should concede that this arrangement is much better because we sort of channeled the flow of traffic definite set of lanes and the parking is definitely segregated from that um even even in the cases where we've got the perpendicular parking you know on either side of the main access road um there's a clear sense of a driveway there whereas the rest of it is it's very much a meander question is it touched on earlier that four-way intersection intersection right yeah right there yeah so that's there's no going to be any specific there as far as you know no right turn no left turn it's all going to be two-way you know no no restrictions you come out of the garage you can go you know straight or left come out of the church you go straight or um right sorry uh there's not going to be any restrictions in that four-way intersection no other than the possibility of like a four-way stop or something but maybe our traffic engineer can add something i i i think the the goal from public works was as people come out of here if they're heading north on eight if they're heading back to the interstate we'd really like to see them come out by a taylor street and get out to memorial drive as quickly as possible uh as opposed to coming out to state and then further straining either the intersections of taylor street or all the way down to the other end of uh state but yeah we're anticipating these to remain as two-way traffic here and here there's probably going to be some restriction on who can park in here uh because that's church property and as it stands now they have signs on all their spaces saying church parking only violators will be towed um so somebody could come out of the garage but if they pull in here they're going to have to turn around and get back out the width of the right way going out through um to the to the north through here and the width in front of the hotel here those the same 26 feet each year um i don't i don't know i think i'd have to verify i think this is 24 feet between the backs of the stalls yes this may be a couple feet wider i just i would have to measure it i just but uh right to provide clarification again Dave Marshall um what's depicted on the plat plan right now is part of the previous review was actually 24 feet in both direction in support of basically the city reserving the right for the travel ways without encumbering the adjacent areas for parallel parking or perpendicular parking um so that was the intent and that particular plan you were just looking at was an older idea in regards to what the width could be or might be so if this particular case our job is to make sure we're all the plans say the same thing now that it says geez i've been saying that for a while um but to basically bring them all together this week to basically get all the stories straight in regards to exactly uh what the latest agreements are as far as uh as far as the project is concerned so do we have a width that a continuous width going all the way through it is the 24 foot number right now 24 foot yes so no no narrower than 24 that is correct yeah one thing we want to make sure we touch upon so how many um parking spaces will the capital plaza have within the parking deck i'm going to ask sue or bill to to talk about that if they're still here um well phraser um the capital plaza know we will have reserved parking spaces but they will be purchasing 200 permits and so they will be allowed to use up to those on this median and long flexible system which i'd be happy to explain if you want to but that's the same 200 that i think they'd identify okay i we just need on the record that they're having the same number of office dedicated offsite spots as they had with their fire plan and i'm seeing the not a bill for sure yeah yeah i did that's the intention yeah okay i let's just simply put it on the record it's not okay no booby traps no it's just i just i know that originally that garage was approved as having 220 spaces in it so i can't answer that about the the original size i just want to be clear for the record that they will have permits one it's important distinction in terms of dedicated spaces they'll have access to them they will not have reserved spaces they reserve for capital plaza and on days that they don't need 200 spaces those spaces may be used by other people so make sure there's no confusion in the record but they will have access to up to 200 as they need based on their profits is an automated system so i'm not trying to confuse matters but i just want to make sure that there's no misunderstanding that there's 200 spots of nobody else for capital plaza can park in any product right well but that i maybe just helped me to clarify so i understand sort of from a gated mission point of view that they'll have 200 so if somebody has a capital pause and take it presumably they'll build deducted from that up to two and they'll have a credit of up to 200 we're getting to sort of parking management and i'm not sure that i'm happy to talk about it just not sure it's going to be productive for this use but they will help there's also ability to reserve and release so there's only half occupancy no conference that they might only mean 75 or 80 which means the remaining 120 will be released to the public and can be sold to the public for general use so i just want to be clear that since it's testimony that there's not yet reserve spaces for capital plaza i appreciate no i appreciate that distinction and it's just i just want to make sure so i understand you know we really are it and he gets relevant to this particular part of the application is and just they have a first dibs essentially at the 200 spaces i think it's probably the simplest way to put it there with me for a hypothetical which is you know say there's a legislative event on a thursday and capital plaza is between them in spaces because you get a bunch of people parking overnight for this legislative event how does that then clear out if the capital plaza needs their 200 spots the next day is that is they're not reserved is that something that would be worked out or yeah we have we there's a whole bunch of parking management strategies that work with this and it's all based on software and you know i suppose it depends where the legislative event is if it's at the capital plaza then well then i guess yeah it's elsewhere you know overnight parking means different demand than daytime parking hotel guests come at different times so there's a whole bunch of algorithms that parking garages use and their software manages and we've gone through all of those with the hotel and we're all pretty comfortable that it works but on a normal day what it would be is you know beginning of the day they would have first dibs on up to 200 spots unless they had released them yeah or conversely they would they have to reserve them one way or the other so they know you know for example someone books a wedding next April they could go in the system and say we need 200 spaces on April 14 because that's gonna be full day and they could just reserve them at that point whereas so okay i think i i think i understand that a little bit better i don't know if anyone else has any questions i just want to you know sure as opposed to a placard on spot on a spot saying there would definitely be double views right it'll be sort of a southwest seating first come first serve something like that and the boarding pass is the key but by the ordinance the demand for parking is 174 spaces or something like that it's in the previous approval and that sweeps up the capital plaza the hampton canoe the post and the various and sundry commercial uses that are on the ground floor the capital 165 165 so just to put that those numbers into a context relative to the ordinance right and that's simply what i wanted to confirm that's actually very helpful i appreciate the explanation anyone have any other questions on this modification to the site plan that was a question about timing and sequencing of how this goes through kind of a city committee approval because there was a committee that was sitting here earlier and and there's been reference to a technical review committee process and i was just curious on the timing and sequencing of them rendering their decisions and then when that information comes to us so the technical review committee it's a i it's a zoning administrator function to pull together comments from department of public works public safety you know by your chief um tree board whoever may have comments on an application and then i pull those comments into the staff report or as needed forward you larger reports like from the department of public works um and so that's the flow of the technical review committee um for design review committee which was the meeting before this that was actually their second review of the garage site plan because so far none of the changes to other things have triggered design review um so the design review committee typically tries to meet a hearing ahead of develop development review board and then their decision gets folded into the staff report however so far they have made no decisions um so if they had made the decision tonight i would have reported on that at this hearing so that you can have it um but at this point they're going to continue and we're going to be trying i haven't gotten to my report on that because that's for the next application um but i can tell you now that they haven't made a decision um and we're going to be scheduling a special meeting we just have not been able to look at our calendar just yet another question from from the particular um application that we're looking at right now is it a waiver that we will be granting for them to park off site um it's not a waiver it's just a change because they're allowed to have off site parking it's just that it has to meet some different criteria to be allowed to have off site parking versus on site under the old regulations it's an amendment so just an amendment you know they had come at the initial it wouldn't have been necessarily a waiver but it would have been we would need this information that they're giving us now um that's what we're seeing good okay uh so let's move on to the last of the applications of this evening same casting character oh sorry public comment i apologize thank you this is why staff isn't valuable mr. Whitaker um in discussing this right-of-way easement etc it occurs to me and this will come up again in the third application's public comment as to the adequacy of the traffic impacts that if you're going to consider this a street that every one of not only the four way intersection that you've just referred to which has not been analyzed the only thing that's been analyzed in pieces is the taylor street and the state street intersections but in effect you've got a four-way intersection then you've got 26 parking spaces which are each an intersection perpendicular parking spaces are east creating traffic impacts on this street so i can't over emphasize that point that the the volume of traffic and the interrelated complexity of traffic flows from northfield savings bank customers christ church overnight guests in their cars etc the number of complex interactions between the transit center the hotel the parking garage and the haney lot which still has some open issues unresolved issues is going to necessitate a more rigorous approach to analysis i'm glad to hear about the what no plan for speed bumps on our new street but the more than one guest or more than two guests often apply i've stayed at the hampton in in braddleboro and and white river junction those loading zones typically accommodate two and three guests unloading at once and keep in mind this is still only possibly 30 feet wide so these guests are opening car doors passengers driver side doors to get luggage or kids out while there's two ways of traffic passing by just a few feet away so the reassurance is about based on software that all this is going to work i think recent news of algorithms and software should pop that bubble without me having to emphasize it um that's enough for it okay thanks okay let's go on to the last uh application emeritus you want to just give us an overview and this is the big finale yeah um so yeah we have a new application for a city-owned parking garage um right so that's the um dated october 14th uh staff report for the major site plan review its application number z 2018-0117 and the development application should list city of failure as the applicant that's a staff report e-mailed yes um and it goes with the development application of the staff report cover in your packet do you have a copy of the staff report yep i'll take one also so let's frame up and so this is basically the site plan review for the yes it's the whole thing there you can discuss anything in here that anybody wants that includes traffic i was going to ask if we could go to traffic because yeah drag these poor guys out here for tonight he's pinching for for another co-worker so uh yeah maybe if we could uh i actually i think that would be that would be great because i think a lot of the stuff we've that's applicable here we've discussed we'll just be looking for sort of nuance on that but the one piece that we really have to actually do it can you just yeah all right and if you just ate your name for the record and i know you were sworn in at the beginning yes i was sworn in my name is cori mack with rsg traffic engineering consulting firm out of burlington uh so the way that we approached this project here was we uh basically took the difference of um uh well trip generation i should just start a little bit a parking garage in itself doesn't generate traffic it's really the adjacent land uses about how that's all all being being used so the traffic generation from this what we basically did was we uh determined the difference in traffic or parking spaces that are being provided in the the new garage here versus the existing lot and what's being replaced and then applied that to the land uses that are are being kind of backed our way into what the trip generation would be with that so as we were talking about before there's the 200 lease spaces for the the capital plaza there got my notes right over here if you'll give me a second so 200 200 lease spaces for the capital plaza there's some multifamily housing that's taking up 30 spaces there uh there's some monthly spaces for office buildings those are 80 spaces and the remainder is open to the public if that's 38 spaces that total there we have for 348 spaces that represents 163 new spaces so basically we're saying those 163 new spaces aren't so much generating traffic but they're going to represent you know a sort of a demand in this area here so coming and going that wasn't necessarily there to begin with so those 163 spaces the difference there we then applied trip generation rates based on the parking that that's providing there you know i can go into a lot of detail on this i can go into a little bit of detail on this uh and really what it comes down to is uh you know the the whole report there kind of outlines where trips were coming in and going out um there is a certain number of trips that we calculated as being uh you know what's you know generated not so much by the the parking garage or by the land uses surrounding it um and how that's distributed into the the transportation network uh and what kind of impacts it has on on the network so um i don't i don't know if i didn't cover anything or what you'd really like me to get into it i mean there's all kinds of nuance and i love talking excel formulas so sure um well i think it may make sense and i'll let the other numbers uh redirect they feel otherwise motivated but to start with the exterior of the site and by that i mean really the state street the taylor street you know and obviously the impacts that are going to be felt on the public streets as a result of this this development yes absolutely so there was a lot of uh thought given to how we were going to analyze these and what intersections we were going to analyze uh so really the the primary intersections that we analyzed were going to be the taylor street and state street intersection to the um to the to the west and uh elm street and state street to the east a little bit um we didn't analyze in specifically like to get delay all that at that the driveway entrances because those are um stop control that's really only going to impact the people that are driving in and out of there and as you know uh really only be going in and out of there if it was um as like a parking lot we don't typically look at parking lots unless it's a a large generator um but um though uh we uh we reviewed the volumes it gets complicated we use the 2013 volumes to analyze the traffic on uh on taylor street and there's a reason why we use um older volumes is because they were the highest volumes so we took this very conservative estimate of the traffic volumes that were there that was based on another study done by another consultant uh d and k was I think had been involved with the the um the project in a number of other ways um so we use those 2013 volumes we escalated that a number of years so that we raised the traffic volumes there three percent for like the background traffic and then we rooted all the enters and exits onto this site through those two different intersections and what we found was it's going to operate a little well I should back out off a little bit too um d and k's previous study that I was referencing is a some recommendations on state street and taylor street specifically some realignment of intersections so that there's going to be a different approaches to the uh um state state street so there'll be a separate right turn lane and a through left lane on the northbound taylor street approach uh the removing the eastbound right um on state street um so that's going to have some improvements and we modeled that as being an existing um characteristic for the intersection in 2022 uh so it'll be better than uh what we're seeing right now uh without those improvements but um you know when we add three percent of background you know traffic growth to it um plus some you know I would say relatively minor increase in traffic and um with the uh with this uh the the proposed garage here um that will have a negative impact on the taylor street approach um state street is a free flowing movement so and on both both of these intersections um actually I'm not sure about that on elm street um on taylor street it's a free flowing movement so um it doesn't impact state street but it does have a small impact on um taylor street um in both situations the taylor street approach with or without the parking garage um is not operating at um what uh you know the typical traffic engineering would give it a a fail and not fail an LOS F meaning that the delay is pretty high um generally considered unacceptably high but in a urban environment like downtown Montpelier there are often cases in which LOSF is either the best you can do or you know good enough for what you'd expect at peak hour conditions what is what is that level for this I mean what is the under unreasonable delay um yes so that um so I've mentioned LOSF that's level of service that is essentially a a measure of delay to an average motorist um for a stop sign uh that's going to be greater than uh 50 seconds of delay uh so that means that you're waiting in a queue you've like reached where you're trying to get out through that intersection and you've had to wait 50 seconds or more to get through that that's the greatest the highest level of impact that we we um really quantify um without uh the um that without the parking garage uh the proposed parking garage construction that delay is 62 seconds um we've modeled it a 62 seconds um and with uh the parking garage it increases to 73 seconds um so uh it's not too far above I've seen much higher above that threshold of 50 seconds but it is uh increasing there and that's entirely because we're adding some trips to that um and let me state also that that's in the p.m peak hour so that's going to be uh like the worst of you know your 30th highest day you know like um you know I'm not sure in this specific uh intersection what the p.m peak hour is uh it's typically you know 430 to 530 um you know you have a lot of office traffic here um it might be a little earlier people um leaving to go go home after a day of work um but you know there's also the whole um you know places that you go out to eat and stuff so and yeah typically it's around 430 to 530 that kind of thing um and these so the testify is the these numbers are actual numbers are not theoretical these are modeled numbers and there's a number of reasons why I would say that this is a very conservative model uh we're first of all we're projecting out to 2022 so um there's that whole unknown um but like I was saying um we were using um 2013 volume estimates which are a lot higher than what we've observed these days so we're using an old number um but to be consistent with old uh previous studies and to be kind of conservative and say that this high traffic volume is you know still out there um we'll use that as our baseline then we're going to grow that at 3% to 2022 to try to estimate what the future is going to be although you know traffic growth has not been at you know that level for um you know that's a statewide average that we're trying to use for um for traffic growth in this one particular case um so I think that we're kind of escalating these traffic volumes so um no those are not delays that are actual delays in fact uh I think D&K did a delay study where they actually like monitored individual visual vehicles and how they went through on you know one day you know that you can only really look at you know discrete periods um and they were seeing delays in the 42nd range so actually in um uh in a range that would be I think LOSD um I think I heard uh cited but it may have been a higher a higher LOS like an LOSD so that's going to be less seconds of delay um in an actual observed condition versus what we're showing here in our modeled condition which has so many of these conservative factors of safety or whatever you'd want to call it um into the traffic analysis analysis was the redevelopment of the multimodal transit center with the apartments above that included in the study of the Taylor street traffic no it was not and there's a specific reason for that this also adds to that conservative analysis so um I keep mentioning D&K uh they they were the ones who did that traffic study for the the multimodal transit center um and their ultimate conclusion came to uh that the amount of traffic following the implementation of this transit center would actually decrease on Taylor street so um by not including that we are being conservative by having this existing level of traffic that when the transmitter is complete that existing level of traffic should decline based on the the previous study um so by including the transit center we would have dropped the existing volumes so we kept it as in its current yeah so let's talk about any other questions for the external for any of these you know I guess uh I want to make sure I understand for traffic coming out of this area onto state street either turning left or right particularly the pm peak hours I want to understand what what impact is that's going to have on the level of service on your estimate on Taylor street no on state oh just on oh from Taylor street or from the driveway is that your question well specifically from the driveway onto state street so that was one of the intersections we did not actually study that intersection we studied Taylor street and we studied elm street for this level of service you know I can tell you that the existing the existing demand you know had a certain number of vehicles going through it were you know increasing there's 57 exiting trips in the existing demand we're adding 41 to that so it's going to it's going to be an increase on that driveway um our observations had had indicated that you know it doesn't operate you know when we put it in our model and it shows that you know there's just a street here where people can drive and do whatever they need to it doesn't show the downstream effects of queuing it doesn't show you know if a pedestrian crosses the street everybody stops on state street right and that actually opens up gaps for people to exit because you know people are generally pretty nice drivers around here so it gives the in the in the real world our models are usually kind of conservative because it doesn't really look at those external gaps that are provided in real world driving conditions well I guess I'm concerned particularly on state street you know there is as you say a lot of not only just pedestrian traffic across state street but along state street as well which I know interferes with both people turning out of that driveway onto state street as well as turning in from state street onto this driveway because of course the pedestrians we all yield to pedestrians um and I'm just trying to understand or wrap my mind around you know what impact that's going to have because that becomes one of the two major ingress and ingresses for this for this site and understand what one impact that's going to have you know we're particularly a p.m. hours I know there's a number of employers across the street that will discourage employees into that street traffic then at that time of day they obviously are able to meld into the flow of traffic but what does this add to that or those existing numbers so the majority of traffic exiting from the you know the project site onto state street they're all going to be most of them are going to be turning right I'd say you know 80 percent perhaps it's going to be a large number I have the exact number in here if you want it no I mean where does that estimate come from so if you're looking at our memo it would be on I think the 60 percent 60 percent of the site traffic is exiting to the right so it's going to be figure three there it has all the kind of the enters and exits as a percentage of the two driveways but we have an overall volume an overall volume of exiting traffic the majority of which is going to be turning right so it's going to have you know it's not trying to cross and turn left it should be a much more difficult maneuver for vehicles so it's going to be trying to enter the the state street traffic stream turning right there will be the pedestrians crossing so yes that that that is an issue and frankly a very difficult one to model it's a challenge yeah urban environments yeah urban environments create a lot of a lot of difficulties and and so really all we can do is you know do our best with the models and kind of ground truth it with what we see out there and that sort of goes to what we had mentioned with the D and K their observations of the actual delay being less than what what they have modeled in the existing conditions well I was going to say that we didn't specifically look at this intersection like the driveway entrance onto the state street as a like an intersection for analysis the volumes are lower than what they are on Taylor street so it should operate better than that but you know there there will be you know there will be delay there then probably in a similar number if there's signage internally directing people to go to Taylor street if they want to get on 89 if they want to you know other directions to get them to to go that way to avoid the state street intersection or two questions one is that signage going to be effective in your expert opinion and two is that going to create then are we overloading then Taylor street from people pulling to Taylor street and moving and turning left well a way find is a very important thing it gets its own section and you know federal guidance on how to design signs and I do think that if it's done well it can be very effective you have this one exit from the parking garage the bulk of the spaces where everybody's going to be driving through and you can have like 289 left you know to route to left you know that kind of thing so I think it could be a very effective tool to direct people to where you want to go when we did these traffic distributions to say that you know I was just saying 60 percent are turning right or something that's all based on existing conditions so that's all based on that when people are already leaving these driveways how they're how they're leaving so an effective way finding thing that has them going exactly where they're going that might change sort of that but again that's something that's like very difficult to to to model or to to assume it's going to be different you know all we can really do is say it's going to operate in the same way but on a different level or you know only so many variables we can to adjust on this again we didn't study the driveway of the southern driveway there onto Taylor Street so I can't say if that's going to be overloaded or not I know that the traffic volume on Taylor Street is pretty small so I would imagine that that can handle some volume turning left on it you know I I can't say we didn't study the route to interchange or intersection or you know there's only so far that it goes right well I'm just obviously building towards the idea of conditions that if there were conditions for signage to direct people oh you know especially those turning left that would otherwise be heading for 89 particularly because we're talking about hotels so we're almost well I think we have to expect a number of people who aren't oriented to the street map of Montpelier and how we want to get them to to even think about going out to to this traffic and whether it would make sense to make that a condition for some directional signage you know from a traffic point of view to put people and whether it would make sense to put them in on Taylor Street so for example you know people exiting the parking garage that are headed to St. Johnsbury do we want them to turn left onto Taylor Street and then another left onto Memorial Drive and head out that way you know is that worth doing not St. Johnsbury itself but but I mean that kind of directional signage is that going to have a real impact on the traffic as opposed to putting them into State Street putting them then into Main Street into these very these higher traffic areas when they're not really headed in that to that particular location so the typical threshold for when you would evaluate that kind of thing is if the number of trips going through these intersections reaches a certain threshold it's from the agency of transportation's perspective that's 70 trips and the two intersections that we did study didn't even meet that threshold but you know it's generally just something that you do to to review how your project will go into that so I mean you're talking at least it may and correct me if I'm wrong but you know taking the I think it was 51 onto State Street and adding another 40 one so whether or not that would cross that threshold um so the existing North Drive adds 66 trips so that's under that 70 threshold um it's kind of goes separate into these two intersections um so um I'm not I'm not exactly sure what what's the question I think I might have followed so I think that the trip generation the 75 trip number is the additional trips right not the not the you take those additional trips and add them to what are already there right so you have 60 some odd trips exiting onto State Street you said is new trips and then there's again less than 75 new trips at peak hours exiting onto Taylor Street at the current level right but not necessarily the 2025 level or is that the 2025 what I was what I was trying to say was that um the the amount of traffic that is kind of generated from this new proposed parking garage doesn't really follow or doesn't doesn't meet the threshold for a lot of AOT traffic studies for like further analysis into like larger upstream or downstream intersections and I guess you know and my question while I'm trying to dovetail it into that I think is really coming out of a sense of having walked in downtown mobiliar and on State Street where Elm Street dumps into State Street and then that next block into Main Street and East State Street where there is a lot of traffic and you're getting it from a lot of different sources so to the extent that we have something like this a large project that's that's funneling a lot of parking you know to the extent that we can avoid adding that to that downtown intersection it whether or not we meet the AOT threshold or not I'm trying to to just suss out whether that's a worthy goal to pursue through signage conditions whether it would make sense to direct that traffic and and also not shifting one problem which is what I'm envisioning onto Taylor Street that creates then a whole another set of problems but anticipated consequences and to what extent and maybe this is the the larger question which is what are your recommendations and we're sort of moving into the internal traffic flow a little bit but what are your recommendations for how traffic should be entering and exiting should we be exercising any control over where cars are going or trying to get cars to go in certain ways such as my hypothetical where somebody's headed out of town we we want them to go Taylor Street if possible as opposed to coming out onto State Street absolutely I'd say do you want to direct them the the clearest and most efficient route so I think that wayfinding would be an essential part of all that you know I think that there's a a lot of benefit to having the the you know having this garage in a place with some amount open to the public that provides a place for people to know to find parking that they know that you know they're going to have to pay for it but there's going to be parking there especially if it's a big bank that might be open to the public for whenever the hotel is not using it there so rather than having people like hunting for parking throughout the city streets they'll be coming to one centralized location so I think that there's going to be a big benefit for that then the other the other benefit would be just when you are directing people using this wayfinding you know they're not you know hopefully not getting lost on their way out of town or to their to their destination you know whether or not we send people down Taylor Street to get to you know St. John's very that direction route to yeah yeah part of it too is you know the fighting you know when I go east I always want to go east as opposed to maybe more efficient for me to go west and then back around but I think that's I don't want to necessarily be the dead horse I think that's been very helpful at least from my mind on the signage issue and the direction any other questions on some of the traffic I do want to ask a question unless not hearing anyone else jump in internally you know there's been some talk about how traffic is going to flow through in a stop either a stop signs or some type of traffic control at this four-way point as part of your traffic recommendations are you making any particular recommendation about the internal flow and circulation this study didn't really look at traffic circulation as mostly just traffic generation you know Dave does a great job with that kind of thing so I'm sure he's doing a lot of thought okay so any so yours is just largely surface street mine is mostly just like parking or trip generation based on the increase of parking and where those vehicles are kind of going and how that interacts with the existing intersections any other questions thanks right welcome you don't want to have to keep you running a bill either unless I don't have any other questions okay I don't know if there's gonna be public questions that we would want answered or I don't know mr. Whitaker do you have any questions about the okay then it it may make sense just I'm happy to stay a little longer or it's strictly up to you or more importantly it's strictly up to the people paying you yeah that's true and I know that you said that there's a follow-up meeting too so I mean we might be back and hopefully your your co-work won't be feeling better but yeah no I'd say just stay until this breaks up okay I'm happy to well and I'm just gonna make note of the time it's it's 9 30 I feel comfortable and rest rest of the board depending on how you feel I had coffee before I came of pushing through to 10 to try and get through this but I I guess I'm a little bit leery of pressing too much further on I think we lose focus and given that we do have another meeting but again I'm also I can go I can go to midnight I'm I'm happy to do that but I'm also conscious that other people can't how's the board feeling are we ready okay we're not another hearing anyway exactly so great we're going to let you rest your half hour filibuster away okay well I think I think they're that it may be useful to just turn our attention to some of the red letter comments in the staff report because as we looked at some of these I think I think we've I think we've addressed them and I just want to kind of go through those as kind of the pieces that need to be correct before we come back the first general red line comment is sort of a process one and we've sort of covered that it's this will all have to somehow come together in the end but starting on page five of the staff report at under district standards and sub paragraph B this was the conversation about frontage and and all of that and I think I think we've touched on that planning tonight the 30 foot frontage at the at the access to the lot on page six there's a pile of red line comments again talking about frontage also talked about the setback along the river I'll get with Meredith on this in the any interregnum but we read the regs to say in this district that there is a 20 foot setback and that's what we've observed that's what we've put on the site plan you seem to be indicating that that it could be less although I don't so do people want me to discuss this right now sure okay so the reason that this came up is because we have this issue and you see one where water setbacks are actually zero feet when you're dealing with channelized sections of river now the only reason I went further into this because there's no definition of what channelized means and the regulations and we didn't have any any testimony on this or evidence in the application but I have been informed by the planning director that last year the directly opposite side of the north branch was determined to be channelized by the board in a decision on the 10 12 and 16 main street parcel which is all being changed as part of this one Taylor Street project the Moat properties so in theory this directly opposite side may be channelized as well like I said there's no definition of channelized but in the prior decision the board decided it was channelized based on testimony from an engineer that the river was physically controlled at its banks that was what was quoted from the decision so it was just something that I figured we needed to be aware of that there was that possibility and whether or not the board even feels like it needs to dig deeper into this and ask for more evidence as to whether or not the current side of the river that we're dealing with is channelized or not or if because the site plan complies with the 20 foot setback just leave it but it was something I didn't feel like I could just leave out there in the ether since I was informed about it so I can that might be good since I'm on the board at the time so there is a term about you know setbacks from a river and there is a term channelized so normally it's 20 feet back from a river if it's a natural fleet free floating river but obviously if you have you know for example in the Necky classroom building sits on the north branch zero feet back on top of Granite and the river doesn't go anywhere but between the stones walls and so you know the question is we were faced with a year ago was what does channelized mean does it mean strictly the sort of you know that that sort of Amsterdam on the canal stone wall channel that's established or does it mean something where there's clear man-made boundaries that the river can't meander within that largely keep it within a channel and at the time that the city made it determined that this board made a determination that the evidence was that at least on that side of the river it was channelized because there was rock there was very little that the river could do to move against that now I think this is a fact-based determination and I think the applicant would have to put forward evidence that it was not channelized and they may not want to do that they may be happy enough with their 20 foot setback we have other constraints because of the geometry of the lots involved that would prevent us from meaningfully taking advantage of that the only exception I could think of would be if we were trying to get a ramp or something in that area but we've already talked about how we're trying to avoid that so from the applicant's point of view I would just say that we're not claiming a zero foot setback and so I think that renders the issue so I just ask one question on page six is up up top here talking about how how high is this building the highest point on it well it's labeled on the elevations and that would probably be the stair tower adjacent to the hotel so notionally it's it's 10 foot floor for four floors or 40 feet but then we've got parapets and stuff so I think you know I think you know for a small part of its footprint it would probably be like 48 feet or something but I just would have to I'd have to bring up the drawings again to look but it is labeled on the drawings in your package all right okay so the the next comment on page seven is a housekeeping one basically telling us to do our homework we've already on page eight there's a comment again about the frontage requirement I think we've covered that pretty handily the at the bottom of page eight there's some discussion about vegetation in the 20 foot setback um so I mean for other reasons we're we're still uh we're still treating this as if it's not channelized and we plan on vegetating that area like crazy so for the per the landscape architects earlier comments there's going to be you know river birches and wisteria and all the stuff that's on the planting schedule occupying that space the red line comments on on nine are a little bit arcane and I'm not going to drag you into it it relates to erosion control stuff on steep slopes as it works out that the drop between the back of the capital plaza and the Haney lot is a steep slope but we're already planning on doing the required erosion control planning stuff as part of our state permitting so for our from our perspective it's not a big ask to just provide that that and I think Dave's done the math and it's been explained to Meredith but yeah it just it needs to be on the record because it was explained to me after evidence so Dave could maybe just talk to us if you want to flesh that out so this uh the project will require authorization from the state of Vermont under the construction stormwater general permit um so we're fully have to do that um but we also offered to provide an erosion control plan as part of this application package uh to be delivered to staff this week to basically just cross the T's and dot the i's if there's any issue in regards to how to deal with the specific wording within the regulation so we have we have no issue either way but uh the one concern and this is just to flesh it out is that if I'm looking at the the the map it looks like the boundary and that would be that sort of uh grassy area between the Haney lot and the um the back of what's now the basher a lot yes a lot is is a steep slope greater than 30 percent is that actually based on the topographical mapping we provided staff what those particular numbers were okay very close to 30 percent absolutely and so we have an odd feature in mob pillar zoning which is steep slopes which has nothing to do with erosion but has everything to do with the limited restriction on development um and so if there is a steep slope of 30 percent of greater technically the rules talk about a strict interpretation of the rules talk about no disturbance whatsoever um and so just understanding if we're talking about that that restriction or not now I think there's another issue because this is arisen already in the context of the school application and there's a statute 4413 that talks about governmental uses not um under title 24 uh that this does not apply in such cases that would prevent uh public use um and it would be helpful to have that fleshed out only because this is a it isn't it sounds like an erosion provision but it's not it's just strictly a development uh prescription it was basically I mean other communities will adopt the same type of rules and the intent is 30 slope on the side of the hill we don't want you there because of obviously whether the site or erosion issues are just inability to develop in an appropriate manner here that we have basically a very narrow strip that happens to be man-made that often in other communities there's also been you know basically they said if it's natural greater than 30 percent the intent of the rule was not to develop in that particular area here in this particular case this was specifically man-made in order to basically maximize one particular parking lot adjacent to another so those are all things that other communities have used as outs if necessary I mean right now the numbers indicate that we're right at the 30 percent value or just slightly under um so taken at face value it's a non-issue but do appreciate your thoughts relative to statute 4413 as far as what municipalities have as far as um basically opportunities not to be reviewed under specific issues I think I think on 10 that's a continuation of this conversation that gets more at the heart of what you what you were suggesting right but if I'm not mistaken isn't that slope 29.7 percent right and we do not have more than 4 000 square feet of disturbed area we have about 1497 square feet so we're we can come back with this in in a in a memo or we can put it on the plans but it seems like we're below the threshold at the 25 percent slope and we've fallen just short of the 30 percent slope but you know unless unless you have anything different you want to say about it the item on number 10 is a continuation or sort of expansion and I'll say I I certainly understand and I think I agree you know that with other other communities have promulgated such rules they've clearly been clear in their intent for what those are you know unfortunately ours haven't developed that nuance yet I mean I think there's ways and you know we'll certainly look carefully at it the more help you can give us the better because it is you know a function of our of our bylaws as they're written right now and they do not make that nuance distinction between what I would agree the purpose of such provisions are as opposed to this small man-made right but what based on what I know now we walk up to but we don't cross the threshold I mean we can between now and the next time we see it we can obviously do some kind of demonstration to explain why we feel why why we reach that conclusion but the other thing that becomes a dilemma for the board is we a project may design a slope to be a three-on-one which is considered to be a stable slope but a three-on-one slope is 33 percent are you saying you can never come back and redevelop your lawn that was sloped off a three-on-one that's the way it's written and that's what we're doing and I guess we know the answer well you know and I the board's not insensitive to that fact is that that's doesn't make a certain amount of logical sense the extent that we have the rules we have it's it's a great rule for what I think it was meant for which is to preserve the sort of hills around the city and not turn this into Los Angeles but I think we're going to rely on on looking at the mapping and just seeing if we can't follow within the ranks we'll just have to see how it makes it that makes it easy I just want to flag that for you because that is an issue that we've been wrestling with as a board okay that that slope isn't one consistent thing over there it's got footpaths all over and stuff that's kind of what complicates it but dpw had comments on page 11 and we've been we've been talking about agree various agreements between parties and stuff and I think this all gets swept up into that as well as our ongoing dialogue with with dpw on a semi-daily basis I think there's been a lot of communication there but at the top page 11 it's talking about do we have to have permission from any of our neighbors or any of that stuff and we'll come back with that again I think 12 is a conversation we had earlier today which at the top of page 12 is a discussion about how far apart the driveways are supposed to be I think this is in the the staff comments because we're going to be asking you to grant us a waiver or that or use whatever discretionary power you have to to waive that away also on page 12 towards the middle is talking about the master agreement which I think Bill William Frazier laid out for you earlier this evening now we talked about the traffic study I think it's a red line comment here because stuff was going back and forth right up until the day of the hearing the number of accessible parking spaces in the parking garage that's a labeling issue I think that they're shown in the in the plans you can see where the offloading areas are they just need to have that handicap symbol on them or the accessible parking symbol put on them but no we we do have the right number they just need to be properly labeled snow storage is a conversation that we've had on a number of occasions there are there are two halves to this the conversation related to the garage part snow is going to be melted rather than stored we had recommended a mobile piece of equipment to do that but I think DPW wants us to explore the use of district heat to basically put snow melt on the exposed part of the garage and we're going to look at the technicalities of that but in any case I think snow from the parking garage is going to be melted and when we're talking about snow we're really just talking about the top floor yeah pretty much I in our experience the intermediate levels are not going to have a significant amount of snow on them and so this would be be you're not pursuing any thoughts about dumping the snow like they do in national light where they open up the gates and they just push it over the side to have it drop four stories well I mean the thing is is um yeah I mean apart from the the the hazard that might cause uh you know when it gets to the bottom it's got to be piled up somehow sure no I'm not I'm not proposing you do this I'm just clarifying what you're not going to do I am not doing and you know what happens today on that big lot is it gets shoveled into trucks and then it gets hauled to another part of town where it gets put in big piles you know under the bridge so we feel like this that's pretty inefficient it's putting additional trucks out onto the street at the worst time of year when you know traffic is competing with piles of snow yeah so our recommendation is for the garage is to melt it we did on the original approval for the hotel have a couple of designated places to pile up snow and that will stay unchanged from the original every correct those were mainly for the surface area not the garage they were they were for the surface areas but now that we've done this subdivision that's the whole of it for the hotel right um yeah and I I I expect that uh we'll have to do a little more work with the city to sort of figure out really how effective the heating system could be but we're going to explore that to to rule it in or out how about electronic or the electric charging stations for cars is that being included as well that is being included in fact if I didn't notice in the new ordinances isn't there a requirement for that but so I believe I calculated we would need 20 electrical vehicle charging stations I reached out to a vendor to get us cut sheets and and come up with a power plan for those uh and unfortunately it wasn't available for tonight but hopefully we can fold that into the application being made this week we are also making sure the garage is solar ready what about the idea mr. Whitaker brought up about the backup generator for some of these services or well um generation is one way to do it I think you know for the equipment that runs the garage the uh the computer systems and the like that that you know will have a small server closet um we would probably rather go with a ups type situation I have basically a battery backup for that equipment um but I don't see us putting a large-scale generator in this project we don't our power demands aren't that great whether or not it's a tesla power wall or some variation on that and power needs are going to be for the the the lighting system the the gate system yep um um but it sounds like this what the elevators as well I mean could that be run off of uh but there'll be a stairwell as there are stairwells um and the entirety of the garage is accessible I mean a person in a wheelchair is not going to encounter excessive slopes if they had to if they had to just wheel their way back down I'm thinking in flood surface conditions that the elevator might be shut off so that's the reality of that yeah so there's that what about just general power outage with somebody in the elevator during a general power outage I don't know I haven't I haven't I haven't sorted that out yet I'll go find information about that come back to you I mean that's probably they're probably issues for any building that has an elevator what kind of backup it's not a matter of building code or vermont state state law it comes up for us most typically as a requirement of the franchise organization like hilton will require the elevator in the hotel to have a backup but I'm even thinking from the elevator installation people I'm sure they face this issue and what it's just a big electric motor it's they're really big electric motors and providing backup for something like that is pretty substantial investment um as far as the lighting goes it's all led lighting we're trying to work with our solar vendor to made up the power demand of the the lighting circuits with the output capacity of the of the solar alright um so you know that that will have some kind of battery backup system on it as well at a minimum it'll be the battery ballasts and the individual light fixtures to come on if they think it's power firm it'll last for a short period of time but if we if the city does pull the trigger on installing solar on this then we didn't get a chance we ran out of time today to talk with the AC to talk about fences but there will be a fence along the railroad right away we wanted to and something the DRC is reviewing as well they they it's it's their purview super and retaining walls as well which we didn't get to today but we do have a retaining wall system that we need approval for um but just in terms of ticking off the red letter letter items um at the bottom of 15 there's discussion about landscaping that's uh came up earlier today it'll come up here your ordinance requires a certain number of trees and shrubs uh meredith had calculated 22 trees and 129 shrubs i think she's she's looking for guidance we're looking for the board to agree that the vines and stuff that we plan on a growing wall count as shrubs and i don't know if they do i mean shrubs have a particular definition but we've interpreted that provision within the context of that section and there's actually very good language along the lines what Dave was talking about with other steep slope regulations which i think allow us to modify that requirement within the context of the purpose that's stated fairly clearly which is screening and provide some break and and and to ensure that there's natural resources at the site but um not to obscure the site itself and certainly if you're planting a bunch of river birches i think those would count towards any uh total as well so i mean i think there's ways to to look at that um based on the needs and meredith can certainly give you guidance on that we're very close to having the right numbers if if we can find a way to look at it like that i mean my problem is is that you spend a lot of money on those i don't have a whole lot of real estate left to plant shrubs i mean we could do it but it starts to get silly sure i mean we just dealt with the clothespin factory that's completely paved so finding a place for 40 trees is even more difficult okay um at any rate that's uh that's an issue of substance we'll have to talk about as we look at the site plan review for the garage um and a similar comment on page 16 relating to some trees planted on the north side of the garage um so because because of this conundrum meredith wasn't sure that as proposed it met the minimum planting requirement and it really comes down to that issue and so sense of the board is yes we can probably figure our way through this is one thing if the answer is absolutely not come back with a landscape plane showing us 60 shrubs and you don't know i i mean i would commend you to the language surrounding that particular subsection g um that talks about the purpose of these plantings for screening effect um we've cited them in our prior decisions on this this particular you know a strict application of subsection g can lead to irrational results if it's not put into the context of the site and the purpose of these plantings so that's what we've and so the more you can point us to and especially since you have a landscape designer who can you know talk to those particular features that's that's important and that helps us especially explaining why you know it's either practical or possible or would actually go against the state of purpose of the statute to include an additional 140 shrubs or whatever well just we're not omitting plant material we're just we're looking for for flexibility in one shape as an example another applicant was able to show that they had a large specimen size tree in their front yard and to plant other trees around it would approach that and cause damage to both the existing large tree as well as you know the plant and trees and so it made no sense so those kind of you know senior landscape architect not it said so i anticipate that a permit if issued will include a condition that the landscape materials have to be maintained if they die they get replaced just anticipating a public comment on that but we expect they'll have to be made to these plants in place chief of police chimes in on on page 11 at number two and under d and he basically goes over where they want lighting and cameras it's in keeping with what we talked about earlier this evening and to clarify what outdoor lighting will be provided i i do have lighting plans for the whole site and lighting plans for the interior of the garage as well which were reviewed with the design advisory committee if anybody here wants information about any of that i'd be happy to show you but we'll just make sure it's included in your packages for the next you get some of the some of the cut sheets uh yeah i think there was some concern because you got the cut sheets for the guts of the garage you had gotten three of them but there were like five or six more for the site lighting yep so there's there's some additional stuff that he presented at design review as part of his presentation that will just make sure is incorporated before the next hearing into updated packages with updated staff reports and it's all a continuation of what was previously approved and what's currently being used i understand as a sort of design standard in downtown right sort of a gas light looking street lamps and uh i'm just you know wall mounted security lighting so i think with that that takes me to page 18 those are the red line comments we uh at design advisory we were challenged to look at a couple of areas of the design of the building but it hasn't changed substantially from what you saw previously which um i think the one change we made that that was a request perhaps from this board or the city council was that the tops of the stairwells have a new roof design so showing a curved roof we didn't talk much about the buildings tonight um but but the size shape of it you know the basic material patterns are there if you want to spend any time talking about that but it's after 10 and i think it would make more sense after you finalized it would develop a design review which hopefully you're not proposing and i see you brought well i would love to touch and feel the bricks um i think it may make more sense after those are finalized with the design review because they take obviously a more intensive cut at it than we're going to um i have one question that that i just want to forget um and it deals with the internal circulation and it's really a question of the threat of you know the right now that that parking lot is an infamous cut for for legal um my concern is that you know is there is there a risk of that continuing especially once you get rid of the speed bumps straighten out the roads um and are there counter measures to to to discourage people from using that as a cut through to the intersection are you talking about people in cars cars yes i'm out i don't think we'll care necessarily so people who want to get over to taylor street bridge but don't want to go through taylor street light and me or the stop sign i mean and then vice versa um um you know i don't have a solid answer for that i'm just reacting off the top of my head i guess i guess we could talk about what kind of internal directional signage and stuff we can use to try to discourage that i mean if it becomes a sort of quasi city street people people may use it yeah to me it feels a little bit like cutting through the corner station the gas station parking lot you know cutting the corner and skipping the light but without a light it doesn't i don't it's like do you think that it would be easier to turn left at that spot versus turning left a few hundred feet down the road at taylor street i no i don't think it would be uh much of a difference than in the behavior currently seeing now um if you formalize the whole roadway network system there and i'm not exactly sure what the internal um traffic control is if it's like a four-way stop or what but if there's like a stop sign in there and they know that there's like traffic coming out of the the garage that they might have to contend with it might discourage that kind of thing so until you until you see it um you know it's hard to to see how people are going to use it so that'll all go back to that internal circulation four-way stop component review to again try to address that concern as well as just what's practical at that particular intersection of all the different land vehicle uses of the area so i think that's the opportunity that we have as far as the traffic the signage plan um and i think that needs to be reviewed sooner than later so we're at this point in time putting together at least a traffic management signage plan uh that will help um at least provide a clearer picture as far as how we would be guiding people and managing people moving through this particular property and a well engineered site well will um not necessarily keep that from happening but at least control it so it'll be a slower environment a safer environment right and especially now it's probably a free-for-all out there so um especially if there's not a bunch of cars parked there but with curbs kind of directing people under a specific path um you know the the texture pavement or whatever treatments in front of the proposed hotel you know it'll be a different environment right yeah i've seen if somebody's three cars are taking a left on taylor street so i'm gonna jog back behind the hotel to get on the state street um but again i i appreciate it may not be something to control but you can stop like you can't control any other questions i was just wondering as far as timing goes and it looks like there's items still to collect to get the input of the design review so we're gonna yeah and i think and i feel it's only fair to give mr. woodaker five minutes to to make his comments that he wants to make and then what i would propose the board must be feeling differently is to continue this to the next our next very yearly scheduled meeting which is today's the 15th and November 5th where we would we would take all through continue all three until then they wouldn't have to be rewarned the evidence is still open that gives an opportunity for drc to complete their review and bring that material along as well as some of the other sort of holes that that you know we touched upon tonight that makes sense maybe just make a slight addition to that uh if we could if everybody here agrees to have a deadline for materials from the applicant of the end of day this Friday the 19th so that there is a two week window for the public to review those materials there might be some discussion from the design review committee continuation hearing which is probably going to be next week some of those things might have to get folded in but other than that to have that be the deadline for new items from the applicant uh merit has already uh made that shot across the barrel a while back so we've been all pointing in that direction okay and i think i think we'll handle the dac stuff by just having both any alternatives in the package okay so it sounds good from one of them yeah i mean ryan makes a point um which is i don't know if we can legally require that um which is that the applicant shows up he shows up with with the material but obviously if we can try it and suggest that you know this is something that if and certainly you know if the applicant shows up with a bunch of new stuff that they have the public hearing and the public that's this is the first opportunity there see it we're much less likely to close the evidence and say we've got a full picture so if you want us to be able to reach a decision sooner it leads you to have that out there to the public in advance so that everybody comes having reviewed it so can i make a clarification then this friday would be the drop dead deadline forgetting things and submitting them to the department of planning for my staff report and for public so that we're not so that the public isn't going oh wait but you added something two days later but that the applicant just like they did tonight has the ability to bring additional information to the hearing yeah that can then be added in so we don't have a running every two days something new comes in but we have a window and then that work sounds great okay which i would hope at this point you're starting to narrow yes yeah i the only sand in our gears is that we're reaching out to third parties to collect stuff you know and that's that's been what's sort of been the drag on this is is getting input from various state people all of that so this is an interesting this is a fairly complicated project that short amount of time so i mean the fact that we've done this far i think it's uh you know certainly the professionalism at fault has been high caliber so it's i think it's more just simply because we're dealing with the public notice and we're dealing with the public process to be as complete as early as possible and as you know the fewer sort of contradictory pieces of information easier it is for people to understand and unless you have you know counter counter narratives going as to confusion over what was and what is okay so mr. Whitaker you had some comments i do i will not speak to this but i'll enter it is what i gave the designer it's from the 2000 plant master plan on the preservation of the river greenway etc it should guide your deliberations um the i believe fundamentally that the traffic what you've heard tonight and seen is a kind of cumulative agglomeration of various trip generation estimates but some of the questioning has also revealed that you do not have a traffic impacts analysis of this project and especially you don't have a traffic impacts analysis of three projects of three under construction projects at once two of which are going to significantly displace existing surface parking haney lot parking is going to be displaced capital plasma lot parking is going to be displaced and the transit center lot has already been displaced but to have the construction the excavation of hundreds if not thousands of cubic yards of uh soil and asphalt to be removed from the capital plasma lot to bring it down to the haney lot those dump trucks those excavators those workers those are not factored in here you are actually wrestling with uh gridlocking Montpelier for the next year in this decision but more importantly that i guess i'll cut to the chase and say you need to hire this you've been in effect inherited mr bashar's traffic consultant who now has become the city's traffic consultant who admits that we've not done uh a circulation analysis so you really need to order your own traffic study traffic impacts analysis new guidance out from v-trans dated september 2018 and i had it copied and was many meant to enter it in with the board's permission i will email it to meredith and ask you to take administrative notice of it i've also spoken to a traffic analyst who does this kind of work on behalf of communities and he has seen and reviewed much of this and he uh has some thoughts i had printed that letter it meant to end it but the coffee shop failed to include it in my package i will send that uh michael oman is working for heinsberg has worked on several projects but taboim king did for the transit center do a more thorough transit traffic impact circulation analysis interestingly the two the bus circulation analysis is still in draft form dated 2017 and yet it's being relied on as a finished product in the recommendations you've just received so my point is that the dpw memo saying that it's all wonderful is who and that you really need to look at what you've heard tonight and order your own traffic analysis similarly at the last meeting there was discussion about doing a balloon validation with my independent observers of this because a 25 foot bridge does not these poles are 40 feet those these poles are lower than the garage so this garage rendering is dramatically under representing the garage and yet the architect is refusing to release the 3d model so that an independent analysis can be done those are in my opinion work made for hire paid for by the city and we've got a public records issue which might delay approval of this private that's a civil issue not for this board i'm going to take exception to that comment he thinks he owns the work that we've paid well i mean yeah public records are i mean my point is if i understand your your point about the information we need to do viewshed analysis from various perspectives and we can't rely on the work that they've produced he's he's alleging that we've somehow falsified our application this is my comment period i'm sorry go ahead uh so i noticed you used the word filibuster i'm gonna try to wrap it up um conditions are not remediation conditions you know what are the consequences to misrepresenting or poorly uh offering incomplete due diligence the garage gets built and we suffer the consequences for the next three or four decades you know signage saying no through traffic is not going to solve the problem that you're alluded to we've got multiple projects we've got existing traffic which hasn't been measured from the north's field savings banks salons capital plaza offices capital plaza rooms church the new hotel short-term city parking and we've got 38 new flexible parking spaces for the city this this project is uh being rushed through you're being encouraged to in fact potentially vote to approve it the day before a vote on their 10 and a half million our bond that's just totally untenable this this is not the way to spend the public's money or to make informed public decisions with such long lasting consequences i'll stop there okay thank you very much all right so i did retain a motion uh from the from the board to continue this if that was the consensus of the three applications to the next meeting yes so we'll continue until next meeting with the uh pending additional information from the applicants as discussed tonight we submitted to the narrative uh hopefully asked hope would be by the end of push by tom go up a second let's look at that second by rob any further discussion from the board all those in favor of the motion please raise your right hand all right so we'll continue on November 5th um and obviously the record is still open so applicants interested parties are free to submit additional information you heard the warning from staff which is the person you should always make happy in any of these processes um and we'll see you all in two weeks and that's actually the only thing we have on the agenda next week we knew this was likely to happen so we kept it open so hopefully we won't be here till quarter after 10 but i appreciate everyone's professionalism and civility uh in this process thank you thank you okay just before the well go ahead just the other business our next regularly scheduled meeting is monday november 5th 2018 7 p.m i'll take that motion from tom to adjourn second then by ryan all those in favor please raise your right hand we are adjourned thank you all very much for coming thank you