 My name is Ricardo Erickson with the Vermont River Conservancy and we are going to give you a presentation tonight and also provide an opportunity to hear from you, your thoughts on the Confluence River Park. And just wanted to do a couple of thank you's and one is to Janna Clare, the director of the Senior Activity Center here who offered up this space for us and also to AARP, the Vermont Chapter, has donated the food for tonight and they've been an incredible partner in this project in identifying what people, how community members use parks and that's been a critical part as we design this Confluence River Park so those two thank you's and we are going to present tonight Ricardo Erickson and Steve Libby also from the Vermont River Conservancy and then we have Roy Schiff from our design team alone in McBrown which I'll talk about in just a moment but I wanted to give you an overview of what we'll be doing tonight, what we'll be talking about first we're going to give you a background of the Confluence Park, how it came to be where we're at a timeline looking ahead and where we're going with it and you'll hear from a little bit more about the Vermont River Conservancy and what we do and then we can open it up to feedback from you, we want to really hear from you what you would like to see at a Confluence Park and we have Roy here to answer some more technical questions and give us a sense of design, limitations and opportunities so that's a little overview and to start out with the history how we got here tonight with the Confluence River Park really is for the Vermont River Conservancy doesn't go back too far at the beginning of this year in January we started an initiative that we call Face the River and what we are seeing with the projects that we do throughout the state we do river conservation projects throughout the state so we protect public access to places along our river so people can access them for fishing, boating, swimming and we also do paddlers trails so long trails so that people can do overnight trips along our rivers and then we also protect land along rivers so that rivers have space to meander and to flood when they need to and so we were seeing throughout the state this real need for our town centers and urban areas to Face the River we were seeing that in a lot of our urban areas we have our backs to the river meaning our rivers run through our cities and town centers surrounded by often concrete buildings, parking lots but not a lot of space to access those rivers not a lot of space, not a lot of green space around those rivers in our town centers and we were especially seeing it in Montpelier, our capital where we should be a great example for the rest of the state and where we also have five beautiful rivers that are running through our city right in the downtown of our city so we really wanted to think about how do we shift that perspective, how do we turn and Face the River how do we give people opportunities to see the rivers running through our town centers and urban areas so through this Face the River project we did presentations, some of you were at those presentations that we did throughout this summer and into the fall and we also did some research looking back into the history of rivers in Montpelier and interestingly and we also started to have conversations with city officials and we went to city council meetings and just tried to really educate ourselves as to what were the conversations that were happening around rivers in Montpelier and in the spring Steve and I were having a conversation with Mayor Anne Watson and at that point we started talking about wouldn't it be amazing to have a park at the confluence of the north branch and the main stem of the Winooski rivers right in the heart of downtown and at that point we actually thought we came up with the idea ourselves and we were pretty excited about it but then in doing research and looking back into the history of these kinds of conversations in Montpelier we discovered that this conversation as many of you know has been happening for a long time so for a long time for about 25 years we've been talking about a confluence river park in Montpelier at this very spot and so with all that information and with the awareness that there is a lot happening in Montpelier right now a lot of projects along our river we have the parking garage we have the transit center, one Taylor street and the bike path what am I missing? hotel hotel, thank you so all these projects, all these conversations were coming up and we thought what a perfect time to start bringing that conversation back from two decades ago that conversation back about a confluence river park so that is the history and then in August, at the end of August we presented to the city council an opportunity that we had through funding from a grant to hire a design team to do a conceptual design and feasibility study for a confluence park to look at what could it be and really what could it be based on what does the parcel look like what are the considerations what are the obstacles and also feasibility study what would it cost to build a park there and what do people want out of a park so we presented this idea to the city council and said we would like to do this study we have funding for it and they said yes we would love for you to do that they declared at that meeting the confluence park, a city park and they said they would await this study that we're doing and so that was at the end of August we will present to the city council in January on January 9th at the city council meeting we will present this feasibility study and conceptual design and so right away we put out an RFP we knew we had a short time frame we got proposals from design teams across the country and through an advisory committee we hired, contracted with Malone and McBroom of which Roy Schiff is here tonight and so we've been working with them since the beginning of September on very quickly getting them the information they need and getting all the feedback that we've received so far and tonight we'll give them more feedback as well so that's the history of how we got here and before we get into any more detail I wanted to give you a little more context of where this river park is where this confluence park is so this is just do you want me to turn off another light? yeah, okay you got it, thank you so I'm going to give you many different angles here we're going to kind of look at this spot from a few different viewpoints and this is just a Google Earth image here and you can see the let's see if this pointer works the north branch coming in here and the main stem of the Winooski here so this part outlined in red is what is the confluence park and that is the parcel that the city council said this will be a city park so hang on though that's what we're going on now so like I said a couple different vantage points we're going to look at this is a drone shot from just a few weeks ago looking down the confluence park here so this right here is what we're talking about this parcel and to give you context the one Taylor Street project the transit center is right here and when we started this project when we started this research or this work with Milona McRoom that's what we knew for sure we knew that the transit center construction had started did you have a question? I don't interrupt I just moved to two weeks ago and as of the council meeting last week I thought you were going to talk with the city but they were talking about yes yes the new yes so the confluence park east is what we're calling that we'll discuss that in just a moment so I'm kind of trying to back up at that point in time all we all we knew for sure was this transit center was construction had started and as part of the transit center parcel there was already an area set to be a confluence park so whether or not the city moves ahead with what we propose and we hope they will but there will be green space here and what the Vermont river conservancy why we came into this project was we thought it could be so much more than just a green space and Steve do you want to talk a little bit about what what are the dimensions of it what it looks like can you just tell us what the size of the park would be sure so the dimensions I don't know the exact dimensions but one thing that changed during during this process is when the parking garage passed six parking spaces were then given to green space so this red boundary area was a change from you know the vote in November that increased the space a fair amount so it started out smaller it's gotten bigger with six parking spaces that were set to be part of the transit center lot or no there so dimension wise how about a quarter acre maybe there is a scale on that figure if you can make that out it's hard to see that I'd say about a quarter of an acre Steve do you want to talk about that I'll just say a couple things about how we got involved in this and I do want to say that it's not just the river conservancy by ourselves we're part of a much larger group of interests in Montpelier to look at what's Montpelier's future look like the sustainable Montpelier coalition there's a lot of other thinking going on about Montpelier we're sort of taking a part of that and focusing and trying to bring into reality one part of some of these larger visions so and we from our point of view at the beginning of this we kind of laid out four primary objectives for the Confluence Park that align with our mission and those are primarily the first is getting access to the river you know getting down to the river itself that's such an important part of our you know our connection to the landscape is being able to actually get down to the river second was water quality that we should be doing everything we can to enhance water quality and having a park on the river will be a really a good incentive for a lot of other kind of water quality efforts to follow on a third was is there anything that we can do in this effort to increase kind of flood resilience we know Montpelier is prone to flooding to ice jams that sort of thing so can we even in a small way through this park enhance some of the flood resilience of the community and the fourth one it should be beautiful it should be a place that people want to visit and go and having the bike path or the multi-use path go through here is really going to change we think the dynamic of pedestrian flowing downtown Montpelier you know high schools out here the transit center is going to add a lot of new people to downtown there's two new significant housing projects that are happening right in this area the hotels we think there's going to be a lot of activity here so we should really have this be a beautiful place so if we can keep those we'll be happy if we can emerge with those four kind of objectives so great and just to give a so we'll continue in this context giving you an idea so here is the this is from the city website this is the plan for the transit center and you can see so this is again the confluence park right here this is putting in the bike path through there and some more project concept context is so the transit center rendering and then as you know in November the city voted to allow a parking garage on that on the site right kind of behind the one Taylor street transit center area so to give it will impact the confluence park and you know something that's right nearby so this slide was put together by the landscape architect with Malone and McBroom who are working with and their considerations with these projects that have kind of really are starting to come to be during this process that we had hired them for so they're they're working with fairly constantly changing landscape so what they're thinking about is that integration and cohesiveness how does the confluence park fit into this bigger picture how does it fit into the transit center the bike path the parking garage the hotel and thinking about how it fits and how it connects with the rest of the city then to to your question about the council meeting was that just last week last week okay so also through this process this lot right here was the city calls it the moat lot and it was set to it had the M&M building and the center for the blind that were taken down right now you drive by it it's just an empty lot the buildings were demolished and and the city has as of last week has said we will hold off on continuing with our plans to build a building and a parking lot on this site so that we can consider other options one option that we've been thinking about in other organizations like sustainable Montpelier have been thinking about is what if there was a confluence park east here meaning the east side of the north grand river if you look at B this is the confluence park west side what if there was a park on the other side of the pedestrian bridge that connect to the west side so that was something that as of last week was sort of became a real tangible part of this project that we would like to consider so we have asked Malone and McBroom to consider that also in a conceptual design and feasibility study so that is a recent development our primary focus is to make sure we don't lose track of the original task of designing a park for the west side so that is going to that won't be the timeline won't be impacted we will still present this conceptual design in January and we hope that it will be able to include a conceptual design for the confluence park east though the confluence park east as we're calling it mo at lot from the city is still undefined the city is in this period in which they are putting together a task force to consider some other opportunities that will be presented to the public and for consideration over the next couple of months so that is something we will be asking for public input on as well alright so that was that brought you up to to speed I believe with the context and I appreciate the questions that were asked so if there are any other questions feel free to to jump in I think what we want to do now is focus on what the considerations are for the confluence park what are some of the limitations and what are some of the opportunities and so just to go over a few of those and Roy feel free to jump in on any thoughts here one consideration and I just love this picture from the historical society this is from 1929 and so the red circle is the confluence park and what you can see is this stone the stone wall which part of it still remains and is considered a historic landmark historic resource so it is something that should be considered in the current design so that's the main thing and you can see this part of that wall still remains here and that's um about what you're considering with that or we'll talk a little more once you're done okay so other considerations safety and access considerations as Steve mentioned it's very important to the Vermont River Conservancy and also to many people that we've talked to at the prior public meetings people want to get down to the river here and if you haven't yet going down there it's a pretty incredible spot under the railroad bridge there it was there just a few weeks ago and we saw a river otter we've seen a heron down there and it's um you don't really hear the noise from the street when you're down there it feels like a whole other world so that's one thing that's really important to us in considering that relationship we would like for people to have with our rivers to be able to experience that right at the river shore right down there rather than just looking over from up above universal access we would like for people of all physical abilities to be able to get down to the river that is a huge goal of ours the bike path is a consideration because as you saw in the previous slides it bisects the park, it goes right through the park and it's a limitation in that it cuts off the park but it's also an opportunity to incorporate the bike path within the park um the railroad is a consideration in that um access under a railroad and around a railroad bridge it has to be carefully thought out and considered Steve, do you want to go through some of the environmental considerations you mentioned a lot of them as our goals so yeah, I'll say a couple things one is, as you said before it's a very flood prone area so anything that's done here has to really recognize it's going to flood um, so how it's designed and how it's built has to take that into account it's also that historic slide that you showed all that industrial use down there the Taylor Street property and this is the Confluence Park area it's a contaminated site so any disturbance of the soils have to be handled carefully um the rivers themselves we talked about the water quality the potential to kind of restore the rivers as part of this um, as it regards to when you're down at the river edge it really is, it feels like a whole different place but you also see kind of the impact that years of industrialization have had on the river itself so how to sort of think about the river as a restoreable element of this is another kind of environmental consideration we know other places around the country have restored their rivers in really creative and very kind of impactful ways and actually bringing the river edge habitat back to these rivers as possible in urban areas, you can imagine as Riccardo said the day we were down there to see an otter swimming up the rivers you know, it's pretty encouraging that we can kind of bring these rivers back even in downtown Montpelier to kind of a restored state where they will be ecologically functional areas too so that's part of the thinking as well, how do we deal with these environmental considerations Can you explain that picture at the bottom right? Just when I hear? We think, we believe that was I think the 1992 Ice Dam flood You can see the ice here on the back and when you say it's a flood what does that actually mean? It means elevation is a problem Is there undercutting? Is the river curves there? What does that mean? So rivers are mapped to show their flooding characteristics I guess you might say It's different in every area but you can calculate through engineering studies during a flood event how high will the water come up what will it inundate areas that will be flooded under certain conditions A typical one you hear about is the 100 year flood so the flood that statistically happens once every 100 years You can calculate what area will be flooded during that type of a flood There's other kind of flood plain characteristics that can be described too There's an area called the floodway which is the part of the system that will be actively water flows during flood events as opposed to just inundations So there's a lot of thinking that's been done about flood plains and why they're important to protect Montpelier is built on flood that's the reality So we have to think about how to adapt to the fact that the river does flood maybe more frequently Is it dark? Is the dark area of the map the flood? I think that's all what's called the special flood hazard area which Roy is that right? That's the 100 year flood plain It's all the 100 year flood So you see down here all of that area here all of that patch area flooded in that 92 flood So it was 26 years ago It wasn't that long ago There's another riverside today There's a lot of water in the riverside this morning So pretty soon we're going to hand it over to all of you to hear your feedback and I just want to emphasize the importance that the Vermont River Conservancy sees in this recreation potential and the opportunity to increase the vibrancy of this area and this spot is really visible when you're coming in through town when you're coming off the highway as a lot of people do when they enter Montpelier on Memorial Drive you can look over and see what will be the confluence park from your car from the bridge by Shah's It's a pretty visible spot and imagine if people were coming into Montpelier and that's one of the first things that they were seeing of our city is people out in the river recreating people at a park at all times of the year enjoying the river eating lunch by the river looking out enjoying the view in the river recreating full of vibrancy we would love to see in this spot and we feel that if we could have that that river park there and that energy that it could really expand if we saw that and saw the benefits that people could have from that river park that it could really expand up the river down the river very river centric urban area like Steve said there's examples from all across the country of urban areas who have just turned and faced the river with a little shift that then just grows into so much more and so we see this as the first step in Montpelier really turning to face the river so we can hit one of the lights here I wanted to give Roy an opportunity to give a little intro of the work they've been doing and also give you the opportunity to answer some questions to think about what you want to see with a river park and appreciate and I appreciate that Roy's here also to as you think of what you'd like to Roy's here to give a little expertise and answer some questions that might come up so first Roy if you want to do a little intro thank you so it's great to be here for those of you who don't know me I've lived in Montpelier for about 13 years the first night I moved into town went to a conservation professional many others and on the topic was this parcel so it's really amazing to be talking about it we've thought about this parcel a lot in many ways over the past decade since I've been here and so when this project came up I was like I don't know it's a little too close to home but I dreamt about it for a week pretty much and joined my co-workers Regina and Carly who are landscape architects and we submitted a proposal to do the work so we're really excited to be working on the project there's really three steps of the project collecting some information which the river conservancy had given us a lot the city's given us a lot of information we've grabbed stuff from all the projects and then we actually did some field work a couple days then we're really analyzing the site and you've seen some text snippets that Regina's put together about the site information and then finally the main product is a couple of concept designs so we're doing alternatives that really capture access recreation flood resiliency environmental protection and other topics that we would like to have in this part places to sit, places to eat and really pulling people to the river and that's really a goal in my time I spent a lot of time in this spot launching a canoe to take my family on a canoe trip fishing bird watching, eating lunch after the farmers market so I think we have a pretty good feel of what the potential uses of this site are my vision is that you see the church in the background where everybody hangs out at lunch on a great day you know there's going to be a couple of buildings here but there will be pathways through those buildings and maybe this river park becomes a spot that people can sit and enjoy this is a spot where there could be arts concerts art shows in the spot so a lot of really neat opportunities the majority of my work is helping people live around rivers safely flood mitigation we do environmental restoration we do some development around rivers to do it properly but we also really have a history of bringing people to the river in Bristol New Haven River we worked on an ADA accessible fishing platform which we've thought about with some elements of maybe having people come off the bike path and be able to actually overhang the river and fish if they're unable to traverse down this bank so just to give you a little overview we're not going to go into all the details I'm happy to answer questions after the site right now is filled with a lot of stuff there's concrete, rock asphalt there was a lot of industrialization as Steve and Ricardo had said and so the site's going to be cleaned up and also the fill is earth so there's a very steep bank and actually when you back away from this bank you lose sight of the river very quickly so one of the main things is when you're coming across the bike path or approaching this site we're going to restore the visual entrance to the river we're also going to keep in mind the flood levels we have the mapped flood plains when the 10 year or 50 year 100 year flood spill out or where they come out on that bank so the bottom of the parcel will have to be resilient to the flooding both by just getting flooded but also getting eroded because the water comes out of the north branch with pretty high velocity in flood so a few things we're thinking about again I think about river processes and naturalizing rivers so we're going to think about naturalizing the bank as much as possible but we also want to have a place where someone a child can sit with their feet in the river or somebody can carry a canoe down there and literally walk into the river here there is bedrock around some of the pieces in my pillar in low flow you see them and you actually will see people sitting on those so maybe we would emulate that where someone can actually on a nice day sit out right at the edge here after either parking in the garage or going to a shop downtown taking a break with a slice of pizza and sitting down in the river it's a really neat spot and so we're also looking at the Confluence Park East and if you've been out to the site now there are two giant holes on the banks with some stone around them and those are the abutments for a new pedestrian bridge that's going to cross there and the plan right now is there will be a boardwalk behind the parking and we're thinking about ideas to integrate all of that into both of these parcels we envision that there will be green space there but there will also be active space possibly pavilion for a concert or to get out of the sun hopefully people will be swimming there in the future there will be a boat access in one side or the other this is actually a complicated task to get a boat down there safely we're thinking about how do you get 17 feet and shave that bank down and have some sort of path that people can walk down we believe there will be we're planning on different levels of accessibility so can a person in a wheelchair actually wheel down to the river or is there an overlooked viewing platform and are there stairs for able-bodied people to come right down quickly so we're thinking a lot they are smaller sites but that indicates there's a lot of these goals can be met there are opportunities and we have a lot of examples in Vermont and around the region where small parcels are really serving a lot of functions the other thing that really is tugging at me right now is I was walking around on the Capitol one thing about our main streets state main we don't have a lot of green corridor this is really the first chance I think for us to connect the bike path cross a pedestrian specific bridge and actually bring that out on to main street in a spot where we don't have park space we have a couple really beautiful wooden parklets they're fairly urban we can connect that out on to our business imagine going into the hardware store getting a bagel and then going through this green corridor and landing at the river there's a really good thing to do for a whole host of people and I'm thinking a lot about kids so like good mountain biking is emerging in the city and this is like another great spot to get maybe kids paddling more and they can launch right out of our state's capital so can you remind me where the dam is well there's two dams what's called the rap dam is just off the edge of this you go back to the back to neurophoto so one of the earlier ones this one here so here's the dam this is known as the rap dam here there's actually what's there the other dam the main dam across the main street I think right about here and where's the one on the north branch you see this white water here so you're thinking that the paddling opportunities are going west on the Winooski well the I guess right now the thought is that you could enter oh above the dam enter upstream, downstream of right spill portage around a lane shop stand and actually come through here you could do the same on the Winooski or you could start here and go down to other designated canoe portages in and out of the river or in and out of the river so you could start around here under certain conditions I think you actually could play around in boats on this stretch of white water folks jump into the river and jump out and going in and out so there are a couple spots along this stretch of river I've seen some folks doing that under higher water they are obviously trained to do that another feature while we're looking here is there's a combined sewer overflow that comes out right here there's a water quality issue that hopefully this will fall to the remediation of where you have under high flow there's a lot of water moving through the city and pipes combines with sewage and is discharged here and so that's really something that's kind of I think a next big step is eliminating that and that really should do a lot to clean up the water quality right in this area and that process is undergoing throughout the city right now that's right yeah and you can actually see in this picture here's the hole for one of the abutments and this is an older shop there's now a giant hole here and you see some rock in here and is the bridge there it's not there I think it's going to be installed in the spring but the contractors are working to get the foundation they're battling the weather right now so the dams are actually going to be part of this consideration I've looked at these dams in 92 I looked at a flood pattern where the ice jam hit on the dog river bend further downstream it backed up it shoved water up here into the city and water was coming out of the sewer system on the state street so I think from what I've seen that the dam behind Shaw's is actually an issue for the flooding in the city a liability you're saying a liability you're saying so we're going to think about that a little more and then this is a really small dam and there's actually a horseshoe bedrock outcrop that sits right under that rail bridge so we're not we've heard rumors about what this dam was used for it's called the rat dam and maybe it covered up pipes where rats were coming to the city I don't know the history I would have to do a little more research on that I know somebody who might know Manny Ramirez Manny Ramirez he would know he's kind of an expert on the industrial part of the river in Montpelier so who's your talk of taking out the rat dam or that talks, that's definitely part of the alternatives that's one of them so we'll look into that Garcia, sorry Manny Garcia okay thank you so those are a few things we're thinking about again trying one of the biggest constraints in all of this work development part is the rail line running through here there are pretty strict requirements the rail lines are notoriously difficult to work with so there's actually a right of way or space right here and there's a permitted crossing so we'll go through right here so that really separates for better or worse it separates the buildings from getting closer to the river other than one tower it also separates Shaw's, the rail corridor and the potential conflicts park east side so we'll think about screening out the rail corridor in spots and trying to create a response hey Roy thank you I just want to say there's a bit of clutter down there the center of the which is Shaw's backyard that property is owned by Ernie Palmerlow which I'm sure you know and I've had several conversations with him about his backyard and he's totally committed to cleaning it up and hiding whatever is unsightly and necessary for operations over there from hiding it from view of the the park park west yeah that's amazing I mean in walking around the site when you have a project you look at things a little differently and as looking at the site actually if you walk out to this spot and sit there it is actually an amazing spot if you put your blinders on with all the dumpsters and junk all around you I mean you're looking down here right down the Winooski and then you look and see the capitol back here I mean it would be an amazing spot to like eat or hang out back there so the opportunities are really amazing and if you're looking at how this is all sort of shaded and there's not much here but if you look on to this spot in the future you could see this beautiful park space and you could there's a lot of opportunity and it really would kind of tie this whole corner together yeah and he is really really amazing and he owns the land across the bridge to the Sardin cheese in a position of being a welcome wagon into town across the middle bridge that area behind Shaw's is significantly worse in the last couple years because I fish down there and it used to be easy to climb down it is a beautiful spot there but by design or not Shaw's has made it almost impossible to access that are those fences around the edge this is a guard rail so it's like that's what you see on a highway, a state highway it doesn't really belong there but they're using it to contain all the stuff I mean some of it's already on the bank it's kind of spilled over but they're kind of containing stuff if you want to spend an interesting half a day go back there with permission from Shaw's and just watch how crazy busy that whole area gets it's unbelievable and the guard rails are there to prevent things from going on the edge at some point don't all their trucks back up around into that area? they back I've seen trucks now parked here recently but I have also before but now you see this this is all it's crazy interview are those propane tanks? those three are one other thing Ricarda mentioned if you drive into the city you sort of get views of the capital kind of sitting up high in Hubbard Park and then you kind of come through the auto shop and the gas station you really don't see anything until you hit that light and make that turn a lot of this development and the backs of these buildings but I think if this were a green space your eye would go right to that and I think it would be a really inviting spot because in the future many of our visitors might be coming in and going to that parking garage which would take them around right to here and so it could be like a first stop we've talked a lot about interpretive signage of the history of these rivers and you know the flooding that's gone on here and the water quality issues and really having the chance to see our rivers but to learn about our history and our chairs Vermont Rivers one of the things that's missing are large trees there used to be a large cottonwood right behind the Christ Church and Annex that every year had a lot of people protesting with that came down and there really are no large trees there's plenty of opportunity to have that's a great point we're definitely balancing one thing we really want to do is get as much we can't naturalize this spot 100% because of what's around there but what we want to do is kind of hit the right mix of naturalizing the bank with native bank vegetation in a wild or river in Vermont and make sure people know like the cottonwood or some of the herbaceous species and kind of the plant pockets have been there and large trees are certainly kind of the anchor of all that planting we're sort of working through balancing having some rock into the river and some trees and riparian vegetation it's going to be an important part of that question in the back yet about five years ago we had a water fest here in Montgomery and we used that space as a ritual space in a dance performance space and so we those of us who were involved really would love to see some kind of circle of trees or standing stones that could be a ritual performance space and we climbed down to the river easy at that point to get water for the ritual so we love the idea of being able to do that is there what sort of culture is a native do you have any thoughts about because we're thinking about we heard a little bit from others about cultural identity of this spot out of confluence and I would like to suggest it's really important that we hear from you and whether or not you're comfortable saying your thoughts of what you'd like to see there or if you'd rather write it down we would love for you to do both write it down and share with us your thoughts like that some of you have shared but to imagine that this is a blank slate imagine that the confluence park is just cleared out there and put in what you would want how would you want to use a confluence park if you say it's all complete five years from now you're standing in the park what drew you to that spot so I would love to hand out some paper and have you write your thoughts down Tino before we do that it would be helpful to talk more about the possible east branch about what are the give-ins or what we should assume about that I have a question about that I mean it looks so nice now because villains are down and they're gone and you can see the cattle but I don't think that's going to be likely with a four-story garden plot so I can give you a quick thumbnail sketch of the conversations that we've been involved with over the last week or so so I'm one of the diagrams so the area on the east side which is the city-owned Saint-Ones the footprint of the old M&M beverage and the old so so this is an aerial photo that was taken when the Association for the Blind building was here and right under here is the M&M building so this is at least what we understand the city-owned property of this isn't much better than that it's a previous slide oh the this one even back we can use this one so this was the plan for new building so there was a plan for the use of that park which was to add a building and add a parking there and at the last city council meeting I wasn't there but when I understand I kind of put that plan on hold for several months and to kind of create a process for considering other options for the site so that's kind of my understanding now my question was that's going to be lower and I walked over there and I looked and it's really beautiful you can see the state capital dome but the parking is going to go right there and that's going to be four stories so my question was is there any visibility and I no but I'm asking you can you see will you be able to see the capital building from the confluence east part I don't think so I don't know for sure but we'll look into that because you're right I was there in the evening and it was just a beautiful view I'll put back there I think you can move those I think it's going to kind of come down to details of how the parking garage is going to be somewhere in here well they know where it's going to be so maybe even with balloons that's how people do it it's like balloons up to the elevation and then you can get an idea whether you can see and I think that would be really important that could be a great idea so I'm sorry I really don't want to ask you good questions there's no straight questions so the parking garage is going here it's going something like this and then you have all this parking still here and then there's a hotel hotel that's right there and then this parking is associated with the transit center so as a resident I live over here I see myself just walking over here I'm not going to walk to the parking garage I can see you walking the bike path just crosses the river right there I love the idea I think there should be more parking I agree I think that's been a good question is kind of how do you get to this place what are the corridors and pathways I love the programming there but that's a really good point in our advisory committee we were having a discussion about that and someone referred to the Confluence Park West the current Confluence Park as the back door park and if there was a park here that would be the entryway park and she was saying that that would be the park that you would see right off the road and you would then want to continue on across the way but yeah that's a really good point and also to the line of sight the view skate point I think is a really important one and with those two buildings gone I right away was like oh I love this view it's a different when buildings are gone you notice a different view right to the capitol when you're right by that that moat line and so I was very curious as well what will it look like when the parking garage is there what will be the view skate you have a plan that shows that the large space is supposed to be filled with buildings because it feels very massive any kind of scheme that I've seen that's been published I mean this looks like it's kind of it would be nice to see how the masses are being planned in terms of the big space the Taylor Street project space is laid out where the parking garage will go do you mean? yeah the proposed buildings whatever housing how is that going to be filled and also adding parking space more parking spaces I mean I think most people would rather see green spaces than parking spaces especially after having voted for another expensive parking garage because I haven't seen it giving an idea of how massive it is you're right there are some images on the city site of specific projects on their own but what is that what's the all together you're right I think the parking garage visual that you've had you've got that on the transit center I think that actually shows some of the other buildings behind it oh I think it was the other direction yeah okay up or right I mean it's hard to see but that's the parking garage and the railroad track and the highway and the hotel yeah and another that's the closest we got to some yeah that's right but I mean it just addresses one of the things you can have today at least to see the task of this group for us is to not change that but to how to make these parks inviting spaces that draw us in and give us a relationship to the river and the whole question is will people walk across the river and come to the the Confluence Park West well it depends on how we design this like will you be able to get down to the river will it be inviting will it be like great places to sit what how how will it break and it brings you down to the river as Carter says it and it's quiet you can't hear other things then then it's worth that walk across so you have funding from the design but what's a rough estimate of what the Confluence Park is going to cost and how will that be funded I mean come up with great ideas but we're starting off at 10 million or whatever and then going up to the what's the and that's exactly why we're doing this is because we wanted to be able to have that sense and that's what Malone and McBrim is working on and that's what we will present in January to the city council and because of now the city hasn't committed to any level of any of these ideas we're talking about but it's our hope that we present a conceptual design that has the research backing it up and the kind of the ground shooting to date to back it up and the feasibility study that includes some numbers and VRC is also working on coming up with funding sources to also present at that meeting so that's part of what we're doing and we just simply don't have those we're not ready to to even make a guess to put out any numbers One more question What's the elevation drop of the river from say Spring Street down to the mouth there I was just looking at this it's not a lot it's a couple feet maybe a foot at most well you have the rat dam there the rat dam water surface the rat dam is actually partially submerged so the water comes in and has like a six or eight inch drop there and it's about another foot from Spring it's not a lot you wouldn't get a real change in the river and the bedrock there will really hold the river in place because there's so many things sitting on the edge of the river you have to really be careful about that and one thing I just wanted to say you know, concept design we think of that as like being 30% design so this is really high level initial thinking about the site we'll put a cost estimate on that but there will still be a fair bit of work the idea is just to present this and now there's you're all asking great questions about the changing context in this area because it's in such flux right now so we're going to try our best to take all that in and put forward a couple concepts and see if the city council and the people in the city like it and we're going to go from there did you have questions? I was a retailer for like 32 years I'll call on the artist's hand so my genetics is as a retailer and most of my buddies are just for people that might have just moved here whatever are super into the hotel in the garden garage they want it to be pretty and everything but just to get that general feeling out there that this is a place of commerce this is a place of density this is a downtown and the thing that's exciting to me about this whole you know I'm sure things will get tweaked about the parking garage and the hotel and the transit center and everything and also the housing the new housing that will be behind the church all of those represent to me community members who are right at the back door of this park and there's already an established path and there's been something like a 30 year plan to finally connect the path and now it's happening so I feel like it's totally integrated into what's happening there now for that part a lot of people will be interested in they're right there and as a retailer I see people coming from that hotel and all of a sudden that part of the main the Shaw's End of Main Street becomes a more interesting place because they can just cross the river walking and there they are at the Savoy or at the Saruchis and you know can you know whatever get take out from fajitos and go to the park so it just seems very integrated in a good way it's not like plunking the park and it feels like it's all of this future planning is ready for that part so that's great I just wanted to I was talking about how the water was in the river in both parts of the river so I don't know if you can do anything about that but I mean it looked like a beach you know and you look at Saruchis which is the only place we really had to look at the river to try it was a very low flow at the end of the summer and fall last year we saw some record flows low flows in the area some of that sedimentation is from those dams and that's part of this is allowing the river to actually move water inside of the ice out of the system and down river so that's kind of what we're looking at the dams considering maybe taking those out because a lot of that sediment you see it when the water goes down you look upstream from all the bridges and you see these sediment bars and that's actually sand and grit coming off the roads and getting stuck in the rivers here that is an important consideration and we're going to look at high all the different flows and the range of flows because if you're designing an element where you go to the water there are some features not in the right spot as you approach the river so we'll think about that I think all of your ideas about what this could be are fabulous I'm just really sorry it's such a small amount of land because obviously you can't do all those things that you're suggesting and I wonder if well I was going to ask you two questions one is do you have in other communities where you work do you have any pictures and if not I just wonder if the best use of our thinking here is do you want us to just set some priorities out of all the wonderful things you mentioned this place to be what are the one or two things you wanted to be is that how you want us to do a lot of these parts I think it would be great if you listed maybe in the order of your preference there is going to be some give and take for a few different things you can put them in your top preference and you can list as many things as you want and then we can kind of weigh them in that order that would be really helpful there are examples of different sizes that have really become the assets probably the biggest most popular examples in the city of Denver there's this giant park there that has become like a hub of activity it's a little more concrete and urban because it's a metropolitan city look that up but there's a lot of small towns and there's communities around Vermont New Hampshire that have done in colleges that have created small river accesses to sort of accomplish a lot of the goals that we're talking about I mentioned the one in New Haven there's a couple spots on the connected river as well when you were doing research did you look at what was that called the knit zero project you know really good stuff great ideas and some of those have kind of gone into our thinking to be honest with you we probably looked at 20 to 50 various sketches including the knit zero that we probably gathered from folks over 10 or 20 years so there's tons of information the idea is sort of like calling it down and doing what's what's possible on this site I think and going back to maybe your comment in the back about integrating this and your comment about you never going here I think this spot is so critical because actually you'd have to work to avoid and I think if you hang out in Montpelier enough because if you're riding a bike if you're shopping if you're going to the grocery store if you're eating lunch on a nice day at the church if you're walking across our new bridge if you're everything a lot of things in town will actually take you right through these two sites if you're buying art supplies you can kind of get it all right here and I think you'll see more people coming to these spots I mean when we build that that it's the Eagle Scout Park in Bristol like we didn't see a lot of people out there and as we were finishing just a path to get people to the river like we had to close it because people wouldn't get finished building it I think you'll see something like that here especially with the huge density of people living here and housing and ice cream shops it's really a neat opportunity to connect I do agree economic development in the city is the driver but I think people come to a city like Montpelier because you're also looking at an amazing park back here people are building mountain bike trails off to the side and then they come in and get ice cream and then they come to the river and sit here like it's sort of a package and I think it all it all sort of works together like you were alluding to in your comments I think it's just a really really amazing opportunity I just get nervous about the empty storefront that I see now the empty storefront I think people have to realize that the retail culture is fragile and you need to kind of understand that retailers just don't take them for granted because if they need they need people to shop it's true and they need the periphery around Montpelier to come just because you're in Montpelier and you buy local that's not going to do it for bear price they need woodberry middle sex they need people that are driving in well a lot of people I've known them for the past decade we go to other towns for a safe place to buy for the kid and have a meal and then you end up shopping a little bit I think this could help bring people here you know like it's not so much the park I know that there's people that have been angry about the garage and cars so that's my thing the park has no conflict at all with that there's a real opportunity there to connect the two things the park and the economic vitality enhance the bike path and it's bringing people to the city when it's such a visible draw and as Steve and Roy both mentioned there are examples across the country and Missoula, Montana is where I went to grad school and that is the prime example of a river centric area where people the equivalent of Montpelier the businesses there got together and said how can we use this riverfront to best benefit us and they work together with some conservation organizations and now it's every single day there's something down by the river that is whether it's carts for the restaurants have food carts one day there's a market other days and so it's something it's a real draw for people to go to the local stores to really enhance to get that vibrancy back for the storefront are there other spots along the river that could be like when you say being to put in and go somewhere along the river are there other places like the wreck the wreck field are there places along the north french could get more little small places are down they tried down by the where the interstate crosses I guess it's the Wanoos yeah you can go in and out of the river there sure like you could go for a quick paddle or do some fishing between those two spots I've done that before and the river conservancy and other groups have designated access areas along the river so if you look you can find them and I'd say you know we did a project up in East Burke last year that sort of changed the nature of the river and you know for the first time this year they had a paddler's event right through the center of East Burke village you know and it brought tons of people to that town in addition to mountain biking so again I think there are lots of opportunities that if this you know if and when this thing goes you know there'll be a lot of you can make a paddler's trail through here and you know I think people will kind of and then the water quality gets improved and swimming and you know I think it could really take off you might mention that there's a group of crazies who are having a whitewater contest just below the bridge by Shaw's if that could be opened up that they see having a whitewater paddling capacity right there with rolling and practice classes that would draw a lot of people who are already grieving about it no names will be mentioned that's a good one I just want to give the example of the earth clock in Burlington some of you might have been there it's the stone circle right on Lake Champlain on the big path huge attraction and part of the group of people put that on it's a non-profit called circles for peace they're all dedicated to world peace and part of their mission is getting these gathering places into local public parks and the governor of Burlington has been so happy about this there's just tons of events happening there all the time it's a huge draw it's a natural gathering space it's working with local grant from Barry lots of ceremonies lots of different spontaneous and planned events happen there all the time and it's actually had a really positive impact on the larger landscape and so circles circles for peace they're awesome good people I just want to say to the group that I don't think money should be a stopping point right now that imagining is what we're doing and once we see what's possible there's plenty of money out there to matter of finding it clearly we got to pay for things but it's not like it's going to come out of everybody's pocket and the returns are going to be immense the other thing is just we didn't talk about the fact that the bike path is about to be extended to the east all the way to Galveston Hill which when you put that on this map it's a mind wall that's why I was wondering are there more going to be more opportunities to add to it further there's certainly something that we're in other groups are looking at this larger context of Montpelier and Dion and how do you think about the river as being one of the natural connectors of all these places and we know that upstream the new Caledonia spirits they want to have a river access there there's other opportunities so I think this spot can really be kind of the focal point from which you go to be from I'm really kind of chill there is a question you were talking about water sports through Montpelier is the river really deep enough for it is because I walked there past the river countless times and it looks like I can see you to the bottom with the rocks somewhere you've already studied that and also just fished and paddled in the stretch of river there the water is going up and down depending on the flows in the time of year swimming also swimming will be a future item especially through the city there's some water quality issues that will hopefully come I was just thinking about the depth of the water if it's deep enough for swimming there aren't some holes that you could swim in to 10 more minutes or so I want to just ask folks not to end the conversation but are there any concerns about the use of this place night time use we want to address those in the design process and not have those kind of come at us after we've figured this out I'm not quite sure if there are any but we've heard for instance people asking what's the lighting going to be can you tonight can you go down there and feel okay so does anybody have any concerns or things that we should be thinking about one of my concerns is how you maintain the infrastructure especially down by the river with high water and flooding whether the long term maintenance costs I'm concerned about getting into the river in a boat in that area the water can come up pretty quick people do it now high schools do it but I'm just concerned people who don't understand you know how powerful the water is there I mean because there's you can get no trouble you know pretty quick there I would say lighting to me would solve I mean I think sometimes there are historic issues with people kind of hiding around back shores and around the railroad bridge and that probably lighting would solve some of that I'm guessing well under that bridge right now there's a fair amount of illegal substance use that presumably will be lessened by design by the way it's accessed but that certainly has been a reality in the past big challenge it's kind of changing use patterns all those homeless folks like where do they go they don't have a lot of options already it's a bigger question to move out of that place because it's cleaned up and where do they go are there people living down there sometimes yeah some of them really care about that really too great thanks yep so those are our main questions that we've touched on but if there's something that you want to share with us that's been shared if you could jot it down on a card and give it to us or email us the information is here sign up for an email list grab one of my cards get in touch with us and especially before January 9th so again January 9th we're on the city council agenda to present the conceptual design and we would love to have you all there as support as interested to share your ideas to share your support and again any questions in the meantime thoughts, ideas please let us know well Nancy don't wait until the city council don't wait until then exactly it's important to keep talking it up and to get a hold of your city council people and let them know we have some design I mean January 9th is not that far away so we actually have quite lots of thoughts already we've had some iteration and it's been as I mentioned it's a compressed timeline we're working Malone and McFirm have done an amazing job they're working really quickly to take it all in and spin it around and give us some options so yes we're in that process now so the design that came out with the AARP mailing is that what you're sort of working from now I mean there was a pretty detailed design I don't know what went out with the AARP mailing I mean it showed different access to the river in a couple places trees, dam shell oh you know what I wonder I actually I didn't see that email I think I saw that is that from net zero maybe I'm not sure I think it was related to the parking garage mailing this was last week inviting me to this meeting oh okay I don't I would love to see that I don't know but it wasn't yeah it wasn't what we've been working on this time as we mentioned you know these conversations have been happening for 25 years and I know that in 2014 Greg Gossens of the Gossens Bachman Architects had a whole had a whole public process with four public meetings where they came up with different iterations for not the transit center but also the confluence park so I wonder if they were renderings from that time around I remember the boardwalk there was a boardwalk idea that would take you down to the bridge at Leighton Street on the side that would seem kind of cool there's been lots of great ideas and it's our hope that we're building on those and presenting something that will move forward continue to move forward so many thanks everyone for coming tonight we really appreciate you being here and sharing your questions and ideas so thank you