 So, we have only a couple of things officially on our, can you move me okay? Oh, a little louder. Oh, okay. We will try to, to make sure everyone, how's that? Can you hear? Oh, okay. Oh, I can, I can kind of hear it back there. That's good. All right. So, we only have a couple of items officially on our agenda tonight. Start with the begging ordinance repeal and then move on to the parking garage and I'll speak a little bit more about that when we get there. But so, is there any other things that people want to add to the agenda? Move around. No? Okay, great. So, without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So, on to general business and appearances. So, this is a time for anyone from the public to come speak to the council regarding some item that is not on our agenda. If you have anything you'd like to say, if you would say your name, where you're from and try to keep your comments to about two minutes. One topic not on the agenda. In your name? Stephen Whitaker, my pillar. The last, since the new paving was done, the crosswalks have, were not set at the proper grade and the water and the ice is standing in the crosswalks at State Taylor, State Nal, et cetera. I've taken photos. I've mentioned these to Bill. But apparently they were supposed to get regraded so that the water would drain to the drains and I thought that was going to happen long since by now but we're heading into another winter and the water piling up in the crosswalk turns to ice right where people are trying to cross in traffic and that's just a dangerous. So I'm sorry. What is the, you're saying that the grade of what now is the grade of the cycle? Elevation of the drains. Elevation of the drains is not. It's often an inch higher than the elevation where the crosswalk is. So we got standing water and ice and freezing in the walkways because the paving wasn't done properly and I tried to get it moving while it was still under warranty, so to speak and it didn't get corrected and it's still not corrected. Good. So. Thank you. We will look into that. Any other thoughts, comments? Okay. Moving on. So last time we had the first public hearing for the repeal of a begging ordinance and so tonight is the second public hearing for that. So I'm going to start by opening the public hearing. So if anyone from the public has any comments on the repeal of the begging ordinance, now is a good time to do that. Okay. Seeing none, any comments from council? Super duper. So let me, so I'm going to officially close the public hearing and I think we probably, do we need to vote? Yes. We need to vote on this. I move that we amend the city ordinances to repeal section 11-708. Second. Further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Thank you Rosie. Great and because it was unanimous, we don't have to take a roll call vote. So it's approved. Thank you everyone. I am very, very glad to have that off of our books. So moving on. So moving on to talking about the proposed parking garage structure. So there's a couple of things that are going to be the focus of the conversation tonight. One is about the structure and then the other I think is about the facade more or less. I want to just be clear that things that we're generally not debating tonight is where, like is this the right location? We're talking about this location and other things might include like whether or not we're going to include it on the ballot. That's not the conversation for tonight. But what would be in a permit application for an upcoming approval of the DRB DRC. So having said that, there's, well, so one possibility is that I can just turn it over to you all. And then we can, so the order in which I'd like to talk about things is what, I mean, there's some discussion or there's been some comments from the public about some pretty hefty ideas, right? Like should we have a roof? What if there was a pool? What if there were tennis courts, you know, that kind of thing? I'd like to discuss that kind of thing first. Anything that might require substantial extra funding. And then secondly, we'll go on from there to talking about the structure and then after that the facade. Does that sound okay team? You okay with that as an order? Okay, great. Did that jibe with what you had understood? Close enough. Close enough. Fantastic. Take it away. Okay. First of all, I could introduce Greg Rabadou. I think everyone who's met, you might want to introduce yourselves. I'll start. My name is Glenn Hutchison. I'm City Councilor from District 3. John Abate, District 1. Ashley Hill, District 3. And Watson, Mayor. Hey, Greg. Jack McCullough from District 2. And on the phone. And Connor Casey is not with us. For folks that are out there, we set it up in this fashion tonight so that we could have a work session. We hope that you can hear there are some copies of the plans out. But I think the idea is to have Greg do a brief presentation about the proposal and then have questions and answers and comments from people in about the topics as the mayor outlined. One, this is a mic, Greg's a human icon. Okay. I think people are a little better. I'm going to interject one more time. Just again, in thinking about the process, if after you're done and we have our discussion, I think it makes sense to take this one piece at a time. And so I guess I would ask the public to comment specifically on the section that we're talking about, if that makes sense. So if we're talking about the structure and we're about to make some decisions about that, that would be the time for you all to comment about the structure. And then separately comment on the facade as we get to that part. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that was my intent. I still can't see the video feed. I'm not seeing it on the website where the agendas are posted and I'm not seeing it on the website. So if there's any visuals, can you guys email them to me? If you go to the website and just go to agenda, within the agenda. It's not there. I got it there. City website? Yeah. Yeah. I went to the agenda section, but I'm not finding the video feed. Okay, if you want to get all the printed stuff we're looking at. Although there is printed stuff we just got tonight that we don't have electronically to send out. We can maybe follow up with that. We can send it out as soon as we get it. It's just so Rosie knows there's nothing being projected on the screen here. Right. So what you would see in the video feed is just us sitting here talking. Okay, I'll picture that. I figure as much as I've experienced. Versus the drawings that are closest to what we have is part of the link of the agenda. But the updates aren't here yet. No, these aren't. These are new. Rosie, I'm hearing that on Orca Media that the YouTube feed, it should now be up. Can you try looking at that again? I'm getting September 12th. I have it up right here. Okay. Electronics. Yeah, it's running here. Sorry. Go. So I think Greg will just walk us through the basics of what we have in front of us so that everyone is acquainted with that. And then we can go into the discussions. Thank you for your time. I'm pleased to be here tonight. I'm sorry to give you a bunch of paperwork just the beginning of the meeting. But I want to show you the substantive part of our discussion regarding which form of the structure we want to work with. That was transmitted earlier today. Everything will be available first thing in the morning tomorrow for you as well online. What I've presented to you is a little list of discussion points about the garage. I'm trying to sweep up all the various threads of conversation that I've heard between city staff input from the public, adjacent property owners. So I've got some bullet points in this cover letter. But the very front part of it is our primary charge tonight, which is we are going to evaluate a few different forms that the garage can take in terms of its internal functional relationships. And selecting one of those to move forward for development into a full application to the Design Advisory Committee and the Development Review Board, which our current schedule calls for us to have those hearings during the month of October. I also was brought along some additional supporting information to help people understand some specific aspects of the project, some photographs of other places where people have used green walls, for instance. And we took the time to colorize the elevations that were submitted earlier. So nothing sort of totally new here, but at the same time a little graphically easier to understand. And hopefully that will facilitate tonight's discussion. Now briefly and everyone to the project, those of you who are looking at a plan. This is State Street. This is Taylor Street. This large gray blob here is the original capital Plaza Hotel and Conference Center. There's a portion of Christ's Church Episcopal shown here and there's a small garage building, people call it, is located here. Those are existing structures. This form right here is the previously approved 84 room Hampton Inn and Suites, which was approved earlier this year. And when it was a smaller version of this parking garage was also approved with it. Now comes the city who's interested in developing a parking garage for the broader purpose. And so we're presenting to you tonight a larger garage footprint that occupies about a half acre of land shown subdivided here, which would be, I understand, gifted from the Hampton Inn to the city for purposes of providing space to build this parking garage. The parking garage overlaps onto the land of Mary Heaney, which is subject to a long-term lease belonging to the city. So the entire length of the parking garage is roughly 216 feet, I believe. It is also about 115 feet wide. As we evaluate different ways of putting a garage on this site, different internal circulation patterns, we should take for granted that all the footprints would be the same. There's no real change in the site planning associated with the various options. So you should feel free to decide without concern that one of them's wider or something like that, even if our schematic drawings and stuff, you know, haven't all sort of caught up with each other. But we've only been on the case for a couple of weeks here, so we've produced a lot of information in the last few weeks. So other pertinent features that we want to keep track of moving forward, of course the relationship of this project to the original Hampton Inn project, but also its relationship to Christchurch Episcopal and its impact on the Heaney lot and the farmer's market that uses it. The city has already in process a plan to develop a bike path. There's a pedestrian bike path bridge that's immediately adjacent to the bowstring bridge that the Vermont Central Railroad uses. That bike path carves through a corner of the property, crosses the tracks and ends up going off to Taylor Street. So one of the things that we have to deal with moving forward is integrating that feature into the plans for this project. So we've been working on that since the original approval process, but it's still a part of this. Pedestrian access to this garage would be the same in all the schemes. The primary access to the parking garage is here via a dedicated right-of-way or easement. We're still waiting for legal opinion as to which form that should take, but that the easement would deliver cars to a point here where there's an elevator lobby and one of the two sets of emergency stairs. Then cars would drive around in here. In addition to that, there are pedestrian accesses from the other emergency stair up to the bike path, and there's a pedestrian and potentially secondary vehicle access, accessing the remainder of the Heaney lot on the north side of the building. What will happen is that depending on the form of the garage, some of them will slope different ways. The various solutions may have different heights, and we'll discuss that because those will be among some of the pros and cons. But the charge was to come up with at least 338 parking spaces. At least one of the schemes produced a few more spaces than that, as many as 367. We're going to explore whether or not that's a good idea, but that's the basic problem we're trying to solve in the sort of lay of the land and the context for it. I want to just go through quickly some of the bullet points on the last page of the transmitter letter. I don't think you need to read along, but essentially just to explain the outside facade of the building we'll talk about later when it's appropriate. But there are certain features that we know for sure will be incorporated into the design, and I would like to just put those on the table so that people can focus on things that maybe haven't been committed to yet. Certainly number one is the garage will incorporate electrical vehicle charging stations. We don't know how many yet because we're waiting for our traffic consultants and our parking garage consultants to explain to us what data sets are out there to measure how many are appropriate. But I do believe that initially we'll have some and then we will provide in the design the capacity to add more as electric cars, chargeable cars become more and more prevalent. That will mean we'll probably provide for additional blank spaces in our circuits panels and additional conduit to various locations to accommodate additional, you know, plugging in additional elements as we go. We also will illustrate in the plans that are submitted for approval storage for bicycles. There are many places in the plans depending on which version is picked where it's a sort of dead space created by the intersection of two 90 degree spaces. So we assume that we'll provide some kind of lockable bike storage in the garage, hopefully, you know, at various levels. I know that when we developed the hotel plans, there was thought about providing some kind of free lease kind of bike situations analogous to New York City Bike Program that the, at least the hotel is interested in having some bikes for hire in some form or another because the bike path is right there. So the garage, these are sort of just dead points, but the garage will have a full sprinkler system in it. It will have a security system in it, which will have cameras in the stairwells at the entrances and exits and at certain key points along the building perimeter, most especially on the south side by the bike path and adjacent to those bridges. Which, my understanding is that those cameras will be monitored at Montpelier PD via sort of internet-based camera link. The team is also evaluating the use of the district heat system to do some snow melting. And, you know, I don't know if that's been committed, but a commitment to explore it and to sort of understand how it could be integrated into the project is underway. Can I ask you about some of these things? Yes. I'm assuming you're interruptible. Jump in, jump in any time, yeah. I just want to check in before we move on too quickly. I mean, about the cameras, I'm thinking about the storage of the data. Has that been incorporated into the cost of that? Or is it just, because I seem to need some data storage. Well, we just today met with one of our team members who is going to be involved in the electronic aspects of this thing, the gates and the ticket system and all of that. They tell us that the project will require some kind of server room for managing all of that. Oh, okay. So I imagine it's just a question of putting another blade into the rack as far as being able to provide data storage. But we're going to have a live internet connection to this location and an air conditioned room for all the equipment that runs the parking garage. And I assume the security system can be integrated into that. Thank you. So just generally speaking, the project is designed for drainage. We're going to have a couple of different kinds of things going on here in terms of stormwater. I know you don't care about that. So let me just pause on that for a moment then that the water will be collected from each level. There's likely going to be a series of large diameter baffles underneath the slab for the sort of temporary retention of that water, while settling the solids, cooling, anything that might need to happen to that water. It'll also have to go through an oil and grit separator so that anything that drips off of cars or anything won't end up in the stormwater. And then ultimately, after it goes through all those systems, it will discharge via a conduit that's going to be built into the head wall of the bike path and discharge into the north branch of the Winooski River. But that'll be sort of treated to a secondary level or whatever by the systems in the building. As far as Fred goes, the best way I can explain this is that we're going to try to design a garage in a way that's volume neutral. So that even though there's a building here, we're going to provide for volume that's not parking level volume. It's just storage volume so that we essentially, in putting this garage here, we end up with sort of no net change in the amount of capacity of this piece of land to deal with stormwater. So water would flow in on the east and portions of the north and south side. There'll be openings where it can flow back out again uninterrupted. And in the worst case scenario, if there was a flood, this building would be resilient to withstand that, but it would also, it wouldn't be contributing to any loss of volume. There'll be some additional pieces of that that we'll deal with when we come through the public hearing process for approvals to modify the hotel plans to do similar things. I just want to make sure I understand that. So by loss of volume, you mean the capacity of that area to take volume of water? Yes. Correct. During an inundation, there's space, non-parking space that is designed to absorb that flow and then when it retreats, it's allowed to retreat out naturally without any pumps or anything like that. And it wouldn't impact parked cars, it's just sort of we're using the footprint of the garage to make that happen. So I know it's a concern of people and that's why I wanted to mention it. So those are my brief bullet points. And so I think with that said, I'll let you move into your section about the sort of other articles. I may have skipped over one of these because I did want to mention that we are exploring the use of, or the addition of solar panels to the top of the building. What I can tell you with certainty is that the building structure will be designed to handle any extra load that that might entail. Beyond that, I think that's a city decision as to whether or not to implement that as a part of this, but the project will be designed to accommodate it either during first construction or at some point in the future. And before we get into the specifics about the alternatives, could you tell us how, what the distance is between the garage and the hotel and the river and back? Okay. Our goal is to try to create a 10-foot wide space between the garage and the hotel. So it would be an imaginary property line sort of splitting right down the middle with five feet on either side of it. That's a magic number for us in terms of fire code issues and the ability to have openings in walls and things like that. But it also feels like sort of the minimum amount of space that we can do because that's a major corridor from State Street down to the bike path. Just before our meeting, I was talking to a constituent who said she really wants to have that design so it's attractive enough that people will want to ride their bikes or walk back through there to get to the bike path because having it just a dark kind of forbidden tunnel is not the best thing. It's going to feel like an alley in some ways. You'll have buildings on either side. The design of the hotel and the design of the garage are intended to be nice materials. It's not like there's an ugly side to the building. So that's that and appropriate paving and landscaping. The other thing is that that overlap is, you know, the building, the hotel building next in a lot so that the duration of that narrowness is fairly short, about 50 feet. It's the green space. It looks brown here but it's green space. But the other question I was thinking of was the green space or open space between the hotel and the garage and the river. What's behind the hotel and the garage? So the buildings, the buildings meet the center of the property boundary at a kind of acute angle. So, you know, what you're going to get all the way along the project are sort of big triangles of space. You know, up here it's mostly vegetation. Immediately adjacent to the hotel there's some social spaces. Then there's another band of vegetation. And right now our thinking has been that we would create some kind of like park-like setting here that would include things like permanently mounted bike tour racks, Wagner Hodgson, who are our landscape architects, have proposed granite blocks emerging at different elevations from the topography so that people could sit on them and climb on them and add some visual interest. And then again right before we cross the river this turns into additional landscaping. Down in here this is another landowner so far as I know. And there our landscape architects thought that there might be some effort going on to maybe put parkland in here although I don't know about that. I think that's what I thought it was on this side. So, you know, I think, you know, this space in here is meant to not be the backside of the building but sort of the front facade faces Memorial Drive. So we're using the same quality materials. All of that is the same. You know, this will develop over time but that's our thought process. So I want to observe that just a few meetings ago we created something called Confluence Park, which is quite small but it's right here at the corner of the North Branch in the Winooski. And so one hypothesis is that, I mean, you just mentioned like putting in some cement blocks up here. Oh, that's what it was. I've translated that to something else. But I guess my thought is, you know, so we're going through a process with the rest of Confluence Park to think about what could or should be done with that space. And, you know, it seems logical to me that we would want to include that portion of planning or design in with that, the rest of that planning process. So, you know, again, part of me would, I'm sure this is not necessarily something we need to spend a lot of time on but I mean, I would be inclined to like just hold off on any granite, any installations at that point to let that process unfold and include this part of the world be a part of that design. Thoughts? I just don't know when the park's going to happen. So it would be in limbo, I'd rather call it be attractive and granite slabs or any kind of staggered seating. It's also climbable, something that's inviting it but not hard to change. That would be my problem. And just for reference for everybody that the Confluence Park, here's the, you can sort of faintly see the outline of the bike path. So it would really be all this area in here and we're reducing six parking spaces. I don't know if you've got those yet or not. So there will be some green on this side of the bike path as well. And I think to Jack's question about what these things back up to, the hotel actually backs up to, this is all the rail line. So these park areas will be bisected by the rail line and the rail bridge. So the hotel backs up to the rail line and then the One Tailor Project, which is here's the transit center in the One Tailor building. This will also back up to the parking in the top spot. So the closest to the river this would be would be right in this area here where our bike path and new bridge is crossing. I want to check in on that corner because I heard you say that there is pedestrian exit there in the emergency stairwell or something like that? Well, yeah, we have fire stairs at each corner of the garage. But there's a smile like vestibule lobby type thing and our intention is to have a door here or something. Yeah, and being a person who has opened the alarm door in a parking garage before and had it go off unintentionally, is that going to be an alarm door or is that door that people can just walk out straight to the park? I don't think it needs to have an alarm on it. It's not required by code. I think our first line of defense would be to have the monitoring going on. Now, if operationally over time you find that people are sleeping in those stairwells or something like that, then you might have to come up with a solution. But that's for you to decide in terms of how you operate it. There's no code reason to compel that. Before we move too far of any other thoughts on... I mean, my inclination is going to be to want to include this bit in Confluence Park once we get to that point. Any thoughts on that? Yeah. Yeah. Even if we have to move some stones? Yeah. I agree. I think you're probably right that moving some granite stones there is probably not that difficult. I'll throw up one thing that we will probably have to illustrate something in order to satisfy the submittal requirements for our planning and zoning permit. Okay. But the city is the client here, and you can elect to not construct that until the rest of the thing comes together. Or if at some point in the future there's a happy moment where it all comes together, then we'll just come back and amend the permit. Okay, great. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question about the solar panels that were mentioned earlier. And I just wanted to verify you're talking like some kind of carport awning type structure over the parking spaces? That's our recommendation. We're going to have a talk about whether or not this thing should have a roof on it in a minute. But our recommendation is that we use commercially available systems that are already sort of, it's a carport and a solar panel at the same time. We estimate about 12 kilowatt hour capacity would be enough to light the structure completely. And that's achievable I think with a 5,000 kilowatt system or a 5,000 watt system. It's reasonable to think that we could operate the lighting for the garage using that. I understand that the city is up against their max in terms of net metering. So the other option might be to just create the electricity stored and use it on site. And I don't believe we could get enough solar energy to run the elevator reliably. But with contemporary LED lighting, I think we could get that done. And that might be the way to go. One other suggestion we'd make from a visual analysis point of view is that we, to the extent that we provide that, that we bring it in from the edges of the building so it doesn't sort of create a de facto fifth floor. But yeah, we've put a good deal of thought into solar on this. It's just a question of budgeting and we can talk about that when we talk about solar and the electrical vehicle stations. If the city doesn't have the capital to put that into their capital budget, then there might be vendors who would be willing to put that in and lease it back to the city. Or in the case of the EV stations, they put them in and then they get a small charge every time somebody charges their car. So there are arrangements for some of these pieces of equipment that don't end up necessarily turning into capital expenses. But we want to make sure that the building is capable to receive these things. Is that an answer your question, Rosie? No, that's fine. Okay. Any other things on stuff so far? Okay. So to switch the conversation to talking about, I think mostly the top, the roof, I just want to frame this in the sense that what we have been talking about so far is a ten, ten and a half million dollar bond. And anything that really takes us out of that, I think should be separate. So if we're going to consider anything that's outside of contingencies basically, that that would need to be its own bond. So if we're going to put a roof, you would separate that as a separate bond to put a roof on it. Right. Is it an idea? Yeah. I'm just saying that's what I think we would be talking about there. And Glenn, I know you had some thoughts on this. Do you want to kick us off there? Sure. I wish I had more specific thoughts. I've been kind of exciting for me to think about the possibilities of the city owning a garage. And many of my friends and acquaintances have helped source ideas from elsewhere. Some of them are really amazing. For example, I saw this morning a design, it hasn't been built, but a design of a garage that is set into the ground and it has a reservoir below. And as stormwater flows in, the garage floats up and gets higher. Which is amazing. I don't know that we can do that. But for instance, just having a real space on the top that could be potentially a park with some kind of greenery and some further use than just parking cars. As important as that use is, I think would make this project more palatable to a certain group of people, including me. So I would say I'd love to hear about the possibilities of making the roof structurally sound enough that we could have event space or park space or something there. I'd love to hear more ideas about other things that we could put up there. I don't have any really strong, completely developed ideas myself and I wish I did. I also want to try to keep this discussion open as long as possible, despite the permit requirements and schedule and so on, because I do think that that's one of the sticking points for constituents that I've talked to and that it would be nice to have enough time to come up with the perfect idea that could even pay for itself and also make this not only a useful parking garage, but a draw, for instance, for people from all over the place. UNC Montpelier is a super excellent, unique parking garage that has a dog park on top or something. So any way that we can kind of get that time to make that process happen, I would love to try for it. If I sort of contemplated the scale of possibilities from really probably easy and not hard to think about all the way to this is pretty substantial, I would think that the deciding factor would be anything that increased the overall weight of the structure beyond what it's normally designed to take. So all the way over on the right hand side here would be a swimming pool because if we put 50,000 gallons of water on a fourth story, that has implications all the way down through the structure. All the way at the other end on the easy side would be things that generally take advantage of a hardscape like a skate park or a basketball court or a tennis court. Those are things where it really would just be the sporting equipment that would be the extra cost. And then somewhere in the middle would be the adaptation of a green roof to the structure. When we talk about the various forms though, I'll circle back and tell you which ones of these I think would lend themselves to that better than others. Right now, all the surfaces we have are engaged in getting us to our magic number of parking. But if we do have some space between that 348 and that 367 to where we might be able to take a portion of it and achieve that, we just have to decide if that's worthwhile. So I would think the city's planning, it should say some of these things we could continue to talk about, some of these things we need to decide now like is a swimming pool. So I'm going to interrupt you there. I just want to express that I, I mean, I love the idea of it, but I have significant concern about the added cost that that would bring. And there's even with the possibility of a green space up there, I mean, that is something that like we, it has a positive side, right? Like it could be really fun. I think it would also be really difficult to patrol from the police perspective. I think that it would be, I think it's important for the public actually to understand that, you know, when we say we're looking at spending, you know, 10 and a half million dollars, that there's a plan in place for how we're going to pay, how we're going to make that money back, right? That this is an invest, this is a business investment, and that this is, you know, something that over time will pay for itself. And, you know, if we were going to, I mean, something like this, even I think as a medium, let's say as a green roof, not green roof, that's not great, right? That's fine. You know, that's still adding something. I'm going to guess between like two and three million dollars. Is that a fair assessment? It's going to add substantial money in terms of increased structural capacity because we had to carry the soil. But then there's the plantings and then the matrix that supports them and all that other stuff as well. And there's no real plan around how we would pay for that, right? And so if that is just to, you know, us saying like, oh, we would just, you know, spend an extra three million dollars on something. And I can think of a lot of things. If we were going to just spend three million dollars on something, you know, I'm not sure it would be that. Anyway, so that's where I'm at with that other thoughts, team. I completely agree. Okay. I would rather take more parking off the streets and have more green space down on the ground level and get things going there. I mean, I get to like, how many homes could we weatherize with three million dollars? That's one of my priorities. I guess I would point out that the city also already has an outdoor pool at the left field. If we're talking about adding an indoor pool, then that's an amenity we already have. We already do have an outdoor pool. So that particular one I don't really see a rationale for. I'm interested to hear more, sounding like you're saying that adding a hard space like tennis court or basketball court wouldn't add any more cost. Is that my point quickly? It wouldn't be nearly as extreme. It wouldn't cost three million dollars to put a basketball court up there, for instance. But you'd have to put a fence around it. You'd have to get the equipment. And you'd have to deal with the fact that you'd probably end up losing that many parking spaces. I think he's talking about using a top floor that we're already constructing and converting that use. I think there's a difference between that. And we were told that even just adding a roof for covering was going to be one to one and a half million. And because of the roof and the load, and then if you add additional amenities to it, then that just goes up from there. So this would just be converting some of the parking spaces to a basketball court on the very top level or something, not adding another level with a basketball court on it? You know, here we could stripe it, and then if there's no carts, park them. Sorry. Go ahead, Ashley. So I guess everybody knows where I stand on this project, but I have resolved that it is probably going to go forward. So I guess for me, one, I mean, for the reasons I stated last week, I have reservations about this project anyway. But if we are going to build this parking garage, and obviously it depends on a bond vote, I think that we need to focus on making this a net zero thing. And so I am at least somewhat glad, and that's maybe even an overstatement, but that district heat was sort of built into this. I don't think that we're using district heat to full capacity. Additionally, the solar panels are attractive to me. I know that we're at our net metering max are almost there. But if we can generate that energy and use it to keep the parking garage going, I think that that's sort of our obligation. I don't think that we use a council, or at least I can't as a council member say that I'm really working towards a net zero goal and then sort of talking about all these other things that are not working towards that. I also want to raise the issue of winter parking during parking bans. And a couple of people have asked and I've wondered about it myself, but I am incredibly fortunate now to live in a place where I have parking. So is the parking garage or has there been any conversation about opening that up for residents? Because I know DPW still has to plow everything. And plowing that back lot when you've got cars parked overnight is incredibly challenging. And my understanding was that it was going to be a 24 hour pay garage. But if DPW is having a hard time plowing streets and clearing the back parking lot overnight and we, the taxpayers are ultimately going to be the ones paying for this garage. I'll be a tiff. I understand that it is structured differently, but it just strikes me that since this is something that our community is considering building and would be on the hook for if the funds didn't come through, it would seem that there should be some sort of greater community benefit. And I think that would potentially help DPW as well by putting everything in there. It's a covered space. It might mitigate some potential safety issues for motor vehicles, but also give DPW some space to do what they need to do in terms of snow removal, which I know has been an ongoing concern for the city and for residents for quite some while. So I'll just answer that question and say that we certainly have considered that this could be a place for people to park during winter parking ban. Ultimately, the financial operation of the garage is a policy decision of the council and what we choose to accept for risk. So we haven't got it, and it's not something that necessarily has to be decided in terms of a permit application and those kinds of things, but we'd have to take a look and see maybe on nights that there's a winter parking ban called. How many nights does that happen? I don't know. And we have to look at equity issues about who's paying, who's not paying, but it could happen. I think we'd have to give it real thought and policy thought and know what gains and losses we were getting, but it's not precluded in any way. I think it would be an interesting discussion, especially if DPW was having a hard time keeping up in a blizzard, something like that. Certainly have that conversation. Okay, so at this point, I just want to turn it over to the public. Any thoughts, questions, comments you might have about anything we've talked about thus far? About the roof, about tennis courts, about etc. Go ahead. Hi, Dan Jones from Northfield Street. Something that was said before, if you've not discussed the flap of... We have not yet talked about that. It's upcoming. It's upcoming, then I will save my question, because I heard something you say about the cost of this being within some parameters, so that's all I was talking about. Oh, and while he's coming up, do you want to say anything? So the other thing that I would like the council to consider, just in terms of the use of the garage, I know that this is going to eat into some of the Heaney lot where the farmers market exists. I'm wondering if there's any way if we could partner with the farmers market to sort of figure out a way such that maybe part of the space could be used to host the farmers market. That might give us a little bit longer to also host the farmers market outside rather than moving it inside. And again, I think it's a community benefit. The farmers market is always busy. There's always people there. People want to be there. And it just seems like, again, another way for us to be able to meet community needs while also offering a thing that... So again, I'll say we've been actively talking with the farmers market about alternatives with space. I think we've got some. I don't want to speak for the farmers market. They haven't cleared all that with their board, so I don't want to say anything that they may or may not agree with. But we have some thoughts about how it might work that I think are exciting. We did not talk about using the inside of the building for anything. I think it's the same decision matrix that we just talked about. Again, it's an operational question and what would we be losing from parking revenue during those times? And is that a value that we're making? Assuming that we are not paying for this with general fund, which we're not, do we have sufficient funds to pay for this? Where would that come from if there were a strain on finances? That could be a discussion. Go ahead. If you would say your name. I'm Steve Dale. I live on Terrace Street in Mapillier and I'm a part of Christchurch. Am I great? We've been involved in a lengthy conversation about this project starting, I guess, in December of last year. And I'm not here to talk about swimming pools or dog parks on top, but I'm gathering now might be the time to talk about the location. So we're not, do you mean like on the site, like the footprint of it? Yes. So we had discussed that the footprint isn't necessarily going to, that's not necessarily one of the things that we would be changing on the matrix of decisions that we have for tonight. But, you know, you're here. Go ahead. Okay. We are the neighbor that would be directly impacted by this project. We've had particular concerns and issues since the beginning. We were in a lengthy conversation with the Beshera family and with Greg over a extended period of time. A lot of negotiations to make sure that our interests were taken care of. As recently as two weeks ago, we were talking with Fred Beshera about finalizing a memorandum of understanding about exactly how this is all going to work. And then we learned of the city's particular role at this particular time, which changed a lot of things. And we had a meeting earlier today to look at the most recent plans. There are a number of things on the plan that are different, at least this afternoon when we looked at it, were different than we ended up in our previous negotiation. There are not elevations on here, so it's hard to tell what's happening with ramps going, whether there's ramp going up to the front door or not, which has a huge impact on our easement and our parking. And all those things, I'm sure, can get answered. We had a good meeting with the city. But if we were to be asked publicly tomorrow in the city, do we support this project? We don't have enough information to know what the impact is going to be on Christchurch. We have two interests in this project officially. There's obviously in any faith or community, there's all kinds of opinions about anything. But our official position is really based on two things. Number one, we have been talking about an affordable housing project for the last almost three years now. It got delayed because downstreet's resources and attention was diverted to the transit center. Following that delay, the proposal came up with a hotel. Now we're switching the sort of arrangement in terms of who's building the garage. So, needless to say, it's been a long and tortured journey. But our interest is to make sure that whatever gets built doesn't preclude the construction of affordable housing. And as recently as this afternoon, in a very informal conversation, and because this is all on such short notice, there's not time to have fully vetted any of this. There were concerns being expressed by our key partner about this garage is two or three feet closer to Christchurch than the previous. It is not clear what's happening with the entrance to the parking. There are a few other things, and we need time to understand what's being proposed here before and we would hope the city would want the answers to those questions before deciding to forge out and put something on the ballot. The second interest is obviously the concern about the current state of Christchurch. We do have an easement, which is the same easement that will run to the parking garage to access our parking behind the church. We're concerned to make sure that that isn't disrupted. We're concerned to make sure that we have an equal amount of parking that we own. That's another whole conversation. But currently, we believe we have somewhere 10 or 12 spaces on our own property. The Pasharis have been very generous in letting us spill over for the last ever many years. But we want to make sure that the result of this project doesn't end up with fewer parking spaces. We began a discussion with the city about what that would look like. That was in the MOU that we didn't quite complete with the Pashara family, but we need time to make sure that in fact this doesn't get built, strand us with no parking, and we get some kind of legal tangles about it, which wouldn't be at anybody's best interest. So the other thing is stormwater. We had spent a lot of time with the Pasharis and with Greg about making sure that we're not going to end up with a lake. If you look at that little spot there, it's easy to talk about the garage, but just look at that little white low spot there if it's not properly managed. As you know, we have a fairly fragile 150-year-old historic structure that brings great enhancement to the city. And we are very concerned that this project not compromise that building or its operation. So those things need to be resolved. They probably can be resolved, but this is really fast, and we're starting a new discussion with a new party. And we just wanted to put that on the table tonight, and we will continue to work with folks over the next couple of weeks, but we want you to be aware of the fact that they're not resolved. So I'm going to just start by thanking you for coming to express all of that. My guess is that we can't actually answer all those questions tonight, but I know housing is a priority of the council, and I think I can say that we're committed to working with you and figuring out some of these pieces, and that for the application, I'm not sure if I'm speaking out of turn at all here, but I think for the application, some of the things that you're asking about maybe don't, they're not necessarily for what we need for the application, but I could be wrong. So I'll talk generally. I'll let Greg specifically address the drainage and those kind of issues. So we did have a meeting. They did give us a copy of the draft MOU. I think the commitment I made, I don't think I was too far apart, was that we would honor whatever terms that were in that that we could. Specifically, I think it's fair that we would keep them whole, but they don't lose their parking, and it's certainly we don't want to drain out their project, nor are we allowed to legally anyway to do that, so that we would provide whatever plans and work with them and their designers as aggressively as necessary to make that happen, and that it is our goal to make the housing. And we did hear that the proximity of the structure was a problem, and it may be that it would have been a problem anyway, whether it was the city or not. So I don't know if we're going to actually get a, everyone's going to get an answer that says you can or can't go ahead because of other, not because of the church or us, it's because of external funding and those kinds of things, but it's certainly everyone's desire to make this. We talked about building a connection between the two and designing that in and those kinds of things. So I think we are looking forward to making it work. Great. I just want to ask a couple of clarifying questions. We need to have those questions resolved by 10-3, because that's when we put the bond language forward, is that? Not necessarily. Well, I probably can help you. First of all, Steve, thanks for coming tonight. Hold on. I guess I might be able to answer your question. My question was just what exactly is the language that we need to have when we warn the election? The language is going to be to approve a bond for X number of dollars. We'll mention the funding sources and it will describe the project in general terms, period. Okay. So it's just a general approval? It's an authorization to float a bond in that amount of money from these revenue sources. Okay. So... It won't be, I bet. Okay. Typically people are going to want to see what it looks like and get a general idea of these things, but I, you know... It's not carved in stone. You don't have to actually authorize going head with it, even if the bond passes issues aren't resolved. But those questions would need to be resolved before permits... They would be... Typically resolved as part of the permitting process. Right. We want to, you know, so, yeah. But in theory the permits could be approved, not addressing some of those concerns. I doubt that. I doubt that, honestly. But let me just interject a little bit, because I want to put everybody's at ease a little bit. Steve, I hope Bill and Sue will back me up on this, that as we've gone through this process, I have continued to advocate for the things that we discussed and agreed to. The only... The changes in the sort of relationship of the building to the parking garage are a reflection of the fact that it's gotten bigger, but it's also a reflection of the fact that the zoning ordinance has changed, and now the dimensions that we need to observe have changed. And so this parking garage has been designed to the 2018 regs, and the net result of that, given the spaces and the driveline widths, is that we went from 10 feet to 7 feet 9, or essentially we lost a couple feet in width of the building. But it's still a substantial green buffer on the south side of that common property line to address your concerns. I will also say that even if it isn't illustrated on a plan now, we went through a lengthy process where our engineers proposed solutions. Their engineers did an independent review of it, and we came to a kumbaya moment on the workability of those solutions. We haven't abandoned those solutions. We're just generating a new set of plans, so they will be in the final solution, which includes the ability to tie into the drainage system that's being created as part of this overall project, and several other features that... I think the only unique things that will fall away were the things where you were asking the hotel for things, but as far as all of this and all of this, we're still working in the same direction we have been. So the other thing I'll say is that all of these issues really do need to be resolved before we come back and amend these permits because they were part of the prior permit. The city may well be served by coming up with an illegal agreement between themselves and Christ Church. I know that Christ Church, if this garage is built, will benefit from the availability of parking that will in turn support the development of the affordable housing. So it's not a net loss thing. There's good things in this project for you. But speaking on behalf of the design team, I will say that we remain committed to those fundamental issues of not damaging your property, and I hope that you trust us to get that in there, but expect that you'll show up at all our planning meetings to make sure that we do. Ideally, we would have had a number of conversations and sort of sorted all this stuff out. But I haven't abandoned any of those principles. And so we will be going through planning and zoning. We'll be appearing for at least four hearings during the month of October. And I think that's the forum where these kind of nuts and bolts, these kinds of things get sorted out, the drainage issues and stuff. So let me just say one other thing. It is only two feet or 2.3 inches or whatever, less green space. The issue is that teams negligible in the conversation, but from a housing development perspective and from the funder perspective and from the historic preservation perspective, all those, it is a very tight piece of property to start with. It was a huge challenge to start with. And any further squeezing of the project is there were concerns expressed by our housing development partner. So part of this conversation needs to include them so that we can get to a place where we're sure to continue. It's a zero setback district. So the creation of that green space was an accommodation intended to ease your concerns back then. It remains an accommodation now. So the fact that the client has changed, it's still you're getting something on your neighbor's property for the mutual benefit of all. We understand that, but obviously very quickly this becomes a political conversation more than a legal conversation. And we just need to know, given that there's only seven weeks until a vote, if this project will preclude us from building housing, then it's a political conversation, not a legal one. We don't have any questions about legal and we hope we can work out. I think for me that's also of great concern is that it's seven weeks between now and a 10.5 million dollar bond vote and I know that we're making some decisions tonight, but the fact that these questions still haven't been answered, I mean my constituents are going to come to me and say what does this look like and what does this mean? And if we don't have those answers, I mean I think everybody knows where I stand, but asking those sort of basic questions, like does this mean that Christchurch can't do the project or is their project going to change? I mean those are important questions that people have a right to know before they vote yay or nay on this project and I am disappointed that we don't have those answers right now and I understand for many reasons that we're working on that, but this is the kind of project where that's a big ask of the public and to not have those kinds of questions answered is... We had over a year of public hearings where essentially this project was discussed in public and during which time we did work out solutions to these problems. But now we don't have solutions. I really think maybe you're not hearing what we're saying, is that from the beginning when we talked about these issues, Greg informed us of what had been agreed upon and what was going to happen and we said yes, we want to continue to do that. So all the solutions that had been approved, it permitted. There is a change in the, you know, going from a 10 foot, so the capital plaza had agreed to set 10 foot back from their property line, even though they're not required to do so. In order to fit with everything in and meet our zoning regulations, we had to move that to seven feet nine inches from the property line. So I understand all this. I don't think it's like a disconnective understanding. Please let me finish. We will not know, nor would the capital plaza have known, nor will Christ church know whether this will or will not preclude the housing because it's the decisions that will be made by people like historic preservation and funding people at the time that they pursue that. They're expressing concerns that it's a tight site with or without a parking garage. And the concern was expressed that even 10 feet might be too close, which is the approved garage. So to expect a finality of decision on that one issue at any point until they actually seek funding, it's can't happen. It's impossible for it to happen. So to be disappointed that we don't have that answer, I understand we all are, but we won't and we can't. So that's all I'm saying. It just seems like there's a lot of undefined pieces as of right now. And we're making some of those definitions tonight. But there are still questions that are yet unanswered that seem as though they are important questions to have answered so that people can actually make an informed vote. So we'll, as you said, you know, we're going to get some further clarity on some of those questions tonight. And I can, you know, I'm excited to say that, you know, we're going to continue to work with you to resolve these things. I'm sure you can understand. We were close to actually having a signed legal document and memorandum of understanding with all these things spelled out because once something's built, as you all know, even though it was made up in good intentions and oh, I thought that's what it was, we wanted it in writing. And then, no, so we'll, we'll hopefully we'll finish this. And we received a copy of that just today. Oh, great. Thank you. So our first review was there wasn't much in there that we couldn't agree to. So I think we would actually be pretty close to an agreement. That's great. And so hopefully, you know, if the timeline on that is relatively short, I mean, that may happen, you know, in time for the bond vote anyway. Okay. So I mean, I would further comments on the, the parts that we've been discussing. Yeah. Yeah. This is the first time that we've heard dimensions 115 by 215 or some, some comparison like that. There was discussion at the prior city council meeting about spiral tower loading rather than, as a contrast to ramps, the ramp discussion apparently eliminated. And you haven't touched on that. We have not yet gotten there. But I'm saying that the spiral is a footprint issue, which is precluded apparently by this footprint boundary. But you also spoke about parking garage, entrance through the Haney lot, which was contradicts what the city manager said a few meetings ago. It's one of our discussions tonight. Yeah. I haven't got to yet, Steve. Okay. So that's still, still yet, but this is primarily the last commenter brought, re-emphasized a point that I've been making is that the city due to prior votes and despite shifting plans is in the role of developer instead and in what is suffering is the role of regulator and protector and that we really do need to have independent public advocacy, more skilled, legally skilled beyond my verbiage to protect the public interest here because this thing is being pushed by a city that is supposed to be pushing back on every one of these things. We're rushing to accommodate Bashar and Hilton's threat and we are potentially foreclosing better alternatives and opportunities for the church and others. You know, no one's going to want to walk through a five-story by 10-foot canyon to get to this park. So those are the items that touch on what you've covered so far. Thank you, Steve. You can take it off, Barbara. I'm Barbara Connery. I live on Liberty Street. I just had a few questions of clarification. You can't hear me. It doesn't sound like this is on. It is. Just pull it down. Just talk closer to it. Yes. Really? Okay. All right. You can hear me now. On the packet that was available, this is a site plan number C1. Yes. Is that the site plan you're discussing here today? The rates. Yeah. Okay. Right. I just want to clarify. So this shows a link of the building that is not necessarily consistent with the different concepts that are showing further on. So I'm just wondering, is this the maximum extent of the length of the building? The footprints are intended to be all the same. Okay. Well, the link that's shown on them is not the same. So some of them are shorter. Is this the maximum length? Yes. Yes. Here on this. Okay. And then I guess the other question that it raises for me is, does this then take them to account the zoning ordinance requirement for setback from the bank? Even for a, some of the other people will help you better with this, but with a setback to make sure that we don't have any further erosion of the bank, and a setback from the river in general. Okay. I'm just going to take that as a guidepost to make sure that it does. You know, I don't, I can't answer that off the top of my head. Thank you. If you'd introduce yourself. Yep. I'm Damien Sagan. I'm about the first day. All right, Ian. It's all right. I'm just going to have a memory of you being up here. That's really loud. I'll just, I want to speak to a moment to the idea of the top deck of the structure, which I assume from the drawings that I reviewed, the top deck is designed to hold cars. Is that correct? Yes. All right. So from my rudimentary understanding of the live loads necessary for concrete buildings to hold cars, that if we remove the cars, there's still a fair enough structural strength for the building left over to actually hold things like planters and things that don't necessarily weigh 60 pounds of square foot. So I want to speak to the possibility that you might build this thing and you might find a post-occupancy review that you don't need all the parking spaces and that you'll have this roof deck floating above the town, which actually if you go to the parking garage on East 8th Street and you go up to the roof, it's actually one of the most interesting parking spaces in Montpelier. And there are other municipalities in the state of Vermont that show movies on the tops of parking garages. I was in Kansas City, and in Kansas City they actually have a performance base on the top of a precast parking garage that was paid for by the Kansas Council for the Arts. No, the Missouri Council for the Arts. The Missouri side of the Kansas City. Anyway, you can do a lot of really interesting things with the top deck of the parking garage. I don't think that, and you can do it without restructuring the building necessarily. So I don't think that should be sort of cast aside as possibilities. I also think in terms of funding mechanisms, it doesn't necessarily have to be the town that pays for it. The Arts Council could help pay for it. There are any number of funding vehicles that would work. I do want to say, given the context of what people talk about, what we do have in this town, what we don't have in this town, we don't have anywhere in this town where children can ride their bikes when it's raining. And if you're going to put solar panels on top of the structure with enough room to drive cars underneath, it wouldn't cost a lot of money to put some rain shedding so that the kids could ride their bikes on the top when it's raining on the floor. That was just a follow-up. Thank you. Would it be a good question to answer, Mike? Yeah, during rain. Yeah. Under the solar panels. Okay. I get that. Senator? My name is Karen Wiseman. I'm the President of the Board of the Capital City Government's Market. Thank you for thinking of us. We have been working with Bill and coming up with some good ideas. We discussed it formally as a board. As a board, we do not have a formal opinion. Most people are not actual residents of Montpelier. Our ultimate goal is to create a vibrant downtown on Saturday morning for us and all the businesses and all the residents. And we appreciate the fact that we need more visitors. We appreciate the fact that we need more parking. And we're really comfortable that we'll be able to work with the city to support and bring things back so that the community gets the full potential that they can get and that they should get out of an investment like this. Super. Thank you so much. Okay. So at this point, does any Council want to make an emotion regarding a roof or anything to that effect? No? Okay. All right. So we're going to move on. And I think this part is talking about structure. So again, I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay. Thank you. On the front page of the cover letter, I basically lay out the things that we looked at. I want the public present tonight to understand that some solutions are scale dependent. Given our very constrained footprint, and you can tell we're already kind of getting pushback for as much of the footprint as we've used. The options that we looked at were options that could be built on this scale. And that included a single helix structure, which is also sometimes thought of as a switchback structure. That was based, that was very similar to what was previously approved. You come in and the parking base themselves slope. In this case, they slope in five foot increments. You're going up a half a level you're going around. Then you're going up the other half of the level. And that is the version that was previously approved. And there's some pros and cons to that. The other thing we looked at is based on public input, there was an expressed interest in whether or not we could flatten the structure so that there would be some future utility to this thing, some ability to reuse it if people stopped using cars. And so the second version is a so-called split level structure where parking is flat. But at each end of the flat parking decks, there are short steep ramps that take you up to the next half level. Again, the parking would be going up in five foot increments. But instead of the roughly 3% slope that the switchback version used, the floors would be flat, and then the speed ramps would be 13.8% steep, which is perfectly drivable and fine. Although when I look at pros and cons, I will say that some drivers are going to have concern about that steep ramp. It's just going to feel weird to be able to. Your car is perfectly capable of doing it, but it's a little disquieting for some drivers. Northfield Street, is that like 12%, 13% grade? Is Tom here? Northfield Street, is that like a 12% grade? Northfield Street. Right. Probably closer to 6% or 7%. 6% or 7%. Spurlin Street is probably 6% to 7%. Wow, so it's twice as steep as that. So is there an example that you can give us of a street in Montpelier that's about 13.8% that we're talking about? Richardson. Go on. Cross out. Relog. Might be the entrance of Town Street? Yeah. In terms of parking garages, I would say that correlates to say the parking garage at the Montreal Airport, if anybody's ever been there, they have steep speed ramps between essentially level levels. And then there's a third sort of version that we did evaluate, which is everything's flat and all on one level with one long steep ramp. We're recommending that that's, we're essentially concluding as a design team. Don't leave yet, Tom. Our concern on that last version is that it just doesn't quite fit the site. So we evaluated the three possibilities that we thought could fit the geometry of this land. We've already kind of eliminated one. So we're asking you to decide between the single helix structure and the split level structure. And those are illustrated in your packages. We should have gotten those earlier today. The switchback or single, or the single helix type, is illustrated on the ones labeled A101 through a, I think, 203B. And that's the 13% rate. The first one is the lowest sale. That's like less than five percent. Right, this split level. Yes. So there's the A-series drawings which show that version. The B-series show the ones that are labeled... I'm sorry. The A's show the split level. Right. The B's show the switchback and then the C's show the one that we don't think works along with the steep ramp. This assumes that there is land beyond the end of the garage, which really doesn't exist. So that geometry takes up too much space to work. But if you go to A101, it should look like this to everybody. You'll see that these are essentially flat decks. And then on each end, there are these short steep ramps. I think Tom's up here just to answer. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, we did. I wish I do have a grade off my head. So I'll give you a perspective. Course Street is in the 16 to 17 percent grade. I hate to have to know about. Berlin Street Hill is in the 6 to 7 percent. So you're somewhere in between those. Wheelock is probably your closest, but I don't know that it's in that area. Winter Street would be another one. So you're not too far off. The 12 to 13 percent grade. But there are driveways that are very common, that are in that 13 to 15 percent grade. Very common people use every day. Thanks. Thank you. Or try to use in the winter, right? That 15 percent limit is actually a limit that's enshrined in the building code. So we can't really go much steeper than that. These are shorter duration than a street. You know, you're going up 36 feet. And they're also generally under cover, so they're a little less. But if you're in a parking garage and you come around that corner and you start to nose dive down, it feels weird to some people. The interesting thing, if you look in that same first series of drawings, the A series of drawings, you can see a cross section through the building at A203 that shows how the rubbles are shifted a little bit. And it also gives you a sense of what those ramps look like. The first one's cut through the parking bay. The second one is cut through. The one on the top. A203? Yep. Do you not have one? I have A202 and an A901. Oh, it should look like this. It's on a title block by Simon Design Engine. Oh, it's on the back. Tricky. It looks like this. I don't have any on the back side. Further toward the back. Monty. Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. That's all right. I got the idea. I saw that on the website, though, even though you are in here. So I'm fine with it. You should trade that. I'll make sure when I... I love you for that. I just want to make sure I keep in my head the name of this one. This is the split level. This is the split level. It's deeper. This is the split level. Okay. The advantages of this is it would build quicker. It's probably a lighter structure. You know, I kind of listed some pros and cons, but, you know, with the flat surfaces, ostensibly the reason we would want to go this way is at least is that there would be some surplus used to the building if you ever stopped parking in it. The concern that our engineers have is that parking garages, the loading for them is less than other commercial uses or even residential uses. The wheel load in the parking garage is only 25 pounds of square foot, whereas housing would be 40 in the units and 80 in the corridors, and then most other commercial uses are 50 or 60 pounds of square foot. That result is if you're doing this because you think you may want to do something else with the building in the future, you're going to have to increase the strength of the structure by probably about 30%. It would increase the cost of the structural frame by about 30% to carry those extra loads. So while you may pick this because you like the format of it or you like the way it lays out, you should be aware that if you were, if your primary reason for doing that was because you could convert it to something else later, that's going to increase the cost now or it's not really going to be feasible in the future. I just want that to be clear with everybody. And the 30 to 40% increase is not an increase in the total structure, just that component of it, right? Yeah, I think it would be the structural frame itself, the connections and all of that because I think in the end our foundations or the port and place foundations would be pretty similar. The landscaping and the sewer, all that other stuff will stay the same. And I expect we'll have a similar amount of exterior skin to deal with. So what does that boil down to in terms of total cost? 30 to 40% more. If that portion of it is 40 or 50% of our budget in your year to year, it's going to be a couple million, I think. If I took a calculator and came up with it, it's going to be measured in millions though. Thanks. So we could do this design without deepening up the structure if we just decided we'd want to have... If you just like the way this works better, many people may just like the looks of it better with the leveled decks. Aesthetically, it opens up possibilities in the facade. I personally could live happily with either one of these. We are going to make a recommendation to you, but you are free to do what you want. You're the boss. So this cross-section, I think, best illustrates the concept. Now, this was based on the... This was based on the sort of out of the manual designs for dimensions for parking spaces. We're actually going to go by the dimensions that are in your regulations, which means ultimately if you picked this version, it would be narrower than it's shown on the plans because they've got 24-foot drive lanes and you don't require that in your wreck. You don't need a stop to preserve space for Christ's church to preserve that buffer. The other version, the switchback version, it's illustrated in the back, but it's also thoroughly illustrated in the package in the front here as well. And I would just go to the second page in your package A101 on my title block, and that shows it pretty well. You'd come in off the street, you'd go up a half a level, and then it just stacks up like that going up through. And the advantages of this are that the whole thing can be done in precast concrete. We wouldn't have any steel components. It's a much more efficient footprint in terms of... There's not a lot of wasted space. This is frankly our recommended version, but again, I would happily live with the other one as well. And then I might sort of suggest that if we looked at page A105, for instance, this is the very top level. I'm sorry, this one you're talking about now, this is the switchback option? This is on the switchback option. If you came up to this last level here, you see where it says 11. There's 11 parking spaces at the top there. If I were going to do any kind of other use other than parking, I might look at that end as being a place where you might just put some cones across here for a party or something. But at any rate, in the split level one, you've got these layers doing this, so you could do that anywhere. And I agree, I've been to movies on top of the parking garage and garland towns. I don't think they do it anymore, but those kinds of things don't have to be structured. They're just opportunities. Places to watch fireworks. That's more of a use policy thing than a design thing. I agree that if you wanted to have a party up there, there's plenty of strikes. It's when you start bringing in furniture and extra walls and all the appliances and stuff that the other way it starts to add up. Can we pause on that point and compare the roots of the two designs? Switchback versus split level. My understanding is that the switchback version you pointed out, that page A105 with 11 spaces, that's the level portion more or less of that. At each end of that, there's about a 40-foot-long flat plate at each end of this garage where you turn around. That's where your anti-jet parking spaces will be. That's where the elevators and the stairs are located is in the flat portion. And then primarily the long ramps are your parking surface. Comparing that kind of strip of level flat space at the top in that option with the split-level roof... You get 50% of the footprint would be flat level at that top level. In some ways, the split-level option gives you more, say, movie space or party space at the top if that were desired. Which one is tired? I think I understood that that level was tired, but... Well, you know, I'm looking... I'm looking at A203 on Simon Design Engineering Drawings, the transfer sections. That's the best way to understand the split level. And it's... On the high side, which would be the State Street side, 31 feet from the grade shown on there to the top of the parking deck, there would be additional... Where the stair towers and the elevator are, there'd be little pieces that poked up beyond that. But your highest parking deck in this one is at the 41-2. And then they've conveniently provided a cross-section at A203B, which also shows the stepping levels. The way they have this set up right now is it would be 30 feet 6 inches from ground level to the... to the top deck. But at the other end, there's gonna be another 5 feet taller than that. So you're at 35 feet or whatever. And then the result is that the switchback proposal is... is a little less tall than the other one, by about 5 feet. I think I can change it to a different... I think I can change it to a different name to fight the fursions and... Okay. Can you set all the names for all the options and all the names for the fursions? Because I've seen your memo. You use option 2, which is split level. And it says 4.5 to 5 feet floors. Whereas option 1, which is the single... The switchback or the heliport. So option 1 would be switchback. Option 2 would be the split level. I was... So we haven't seen these when we were estimating 4.5 to 5. So what he's saying is about 5 feet... is I just heard you say about 5 feet different between option 1 and option 2. And option 2 is taller. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry if I've confused you. It's confused me, believe me. But they're both shorter than the hotel. They're both substantially shorter than the hotel. Which it was approved... I don't know. It has different roof levels. But it's five stories plus some roof. And it's... I think it's maximum of mine is like 57 feet. Okay. It's in a district that allows six-story buildings. But I think everybody shares the goal of trying to keep the profile of this low. Both to protect the view quarters from Memorial Drive and 14 Main Street. But also to, you know, sort of limit the impacts of the future housing project to the north. And to ask the question I asked again, which I think I'm not sure if I got or understood the answer, which was that with the option 2, the split level option, if we did not want to plan for adaptive reuse in the future, we would not have to build in the extra 30 to 40 percent to increase the construction cost. Is that correct? That's correct. So in that case they would be essentially the same cost. Right. It's the adaptive reuse that adds to the cost. It's the increased loading of changing the use from parking to other types of human occupancies. Okay. Yes. Rosie, did you have a question? Yes. Rosie, what if I was married and I missed this specific question? No, I guess what I'm saying is that there are going to be, the consultant drew it at 120, but we're going to reduce it down to like 115 by taking advantage of the dimensions that are in your regulations. They did this kind of generically to illustrate the concept. And normally when we design, we just say a parking stall is 60 feet wide, but it doesn't have to be it. In this case, we're recommending that it's not because we've got other values to balance out. The same with, yes. Okay. So sort of mentioned this, that the switchback option, option one, thank you, was, will you mention this packet here, that this type of structure can be made entirely of precast concrete, which is more durable. So what that translates to in my head is that, that has lower maintenance costs over time. Right. That's correct. We, we are... That's significant to me. I'm just going to put that out there. We're not strong advocates of using steel components in parking decks because they have a tendency over time to, well anybody who's been to Burlington's airport recently has seen what can happen. And that is required in the split level. That's what the consultants are telling me. Okay. Even without the beefed up structure for the attic loads. I don't really understand why this is. Yeah. And I'd be happy to go back and talk to them about it, but I think it's some function on how they connect together. Okay. And I also like the convenient. I mean, I feel more confident in a switchback when I'm driving in them. You know, and I think that we're not big users of parking garage. So I think it's good to be convenient. I think that's a big issue here is that... Comfortable driving in it. It's a big difference between 3.8%, which is handicapped accessible. That's, handicapped accessible is 5%. Versus, you know, 13.8 to 15% slopes. That's, that's, that some people are not going to connect with that well. That's, that might present an accessibility issue. Yeah. People, people who are disabled, presumably could drive up the ramp, but they would have to park on the section that's shared with the elevator and the stair. So... General comfort level is really different between the two. Mm-hmm. For driving. Did you have a comment or question? Yeah. And I'm only standing here as a casual observer. Uh, the required, uh, live loads for parking is, depending upon the code that you use, it's between 40 to 50 pounds per square feet live load, which is the same, uh, live load requirements for, uh, residential. So converting this to a residential building would not necessarily, uh, require a structural upgrade. Um, and... So I don't, I, I just, as a taxpayer in the city of Montpelier, I don't think the 30 to 40 percent price upcharge for making it more adaptable and deciding whether or not we do a majority of the building flat plates and the majority of the building sloped plates. Uh, I still think it argues for making the building as adaptable as possible. And I, and I think it can even do it with the buildings structured as it's designed, um, given the fact that it's a concrete building. A lot of it, concrete is designed for deflection anyways. So, thank you. I, I just have to rely on Simon's engineering who are the experts in this matter. I, I don't have a dog in that haunt, if I, if it would be great if you were right. I just, I can't answer that. I, I do just want to point out, uh, apparently that's a contradiction of information here, that, that the, the designs that you're presenting assume lower load bearing needs providing something, he was saying 40 to 50 and you're saying you can provide for 25 to 30. Remind me what that number was. Yeah, I, um, I'm, I'm depending on information provided to me by the structural engineer who said that cars weigh less than contents. Yeah. Because they're, they're, because the loads are uniform and predictable. How that translates into extra structural strength, that's an engineering issue. But I'm reporting the expert testimony of our person who says this is how it is. I still think you should make your choice based on which plan format you like the best. And, um, then, you know, if, if it's, if he's right and I'm wrong, then you're getting an added benefit. But it really wasn't part of our initial program to try to solve for that problem. Um, and so in terms of comparing one to the other, I think you should set aside that variable and sort of focus on, do we like the way this works? Do we like the way it looks? Um, because they're generally going to produce the same amount of parking in the same kind of footprint. It's really just sort of a different set of functional relationships. And I think that's what we're here to resolve tonight. I do know that as we, as we go forward to the process where there are going to be additional permits from the city that will address that issue. I thought there was some other factors involved in, you know, the reuse that would have, we're also going to make it prohibitive in terms of the, the spacing or something or, you know, the space to add. Yeah, I think that's what they were saying. You know, in order to run pipes and stuff around, you're not going to drill through 60 foot long concrete tees because, you know, they're not made for that. They're pre-stressed concrete elements. But, um, they said, you know, in order for that to be successful, you'd have to add additional height so that you can route things around and still get minimal and get good ceiling heights. Um, they've said, they've evaluated this proposition a number of times and nobody's ever pulled the trigger on it. And I can say that we met with a different consultant earlier today to talk about the hardware. And they said, essentially the same thing. And they said, they said, yeah, we've looked at this a bunch of times for clients and in the end they never pulled the trigger. Yeah. So apparently there's consensus among the people who do this for a living that that adaptation has a cost to it, that future utility has a cost to it. Okay. Any other further questions from the council on this? Yes, Chuck. I have a proposal. Is that what you were going to ask for? Well, I would love to hear from the public as well. But if we have more comments from the public. Yeah. And if there's comments from the public on which option of the structure. Switch back. Now's the time. Hi there. Dan Jones from Northfield Street. Am I going to understand then, because everything sort of gets mushed in together, that the baseline with your switchback model is the $10 million plan. Is that really what I would understand? Yes. The estimating today has been based on that design. The estimate is so that if you wanted to, what you're saying there's then a 30% additional cost added on if we wanted to have a more adaptable flat floor plan, right? Yes. Okay. So what you're saying then is that anything over, because we have this 30-year business plan that says this is how much revenue we have, only bond for $10.5 million is that correct? That's my recommendation, yeah. Right. So that anything beyond that then is not actually supportable by revenue and would have to come out of the general fund source. The other sources, yeah. So you're saying, so to make the building more adaptable, at least in terms of the way you're analyzing it then, it would be 30% greater in cost than having to switchback model. Right. Right. Okay. So if you still pick this option, just because you like the way it functioned or you like the way it looked, it's still on the table. But that future utility is the extra cost. The future utility is going to... The future utility is the source of the extra cost. With a slightly taller floor-to-floor height. Right. Well, now if there are competing, like I heard over here competing things saying that the load issue was actually the same. Is there a way of having a competing analysis which would tell us that? Because it seems to me that we're counting on one set of numbers that you're providing. But I heard over here that it actually should be the same cost. Was that correct? What? No. Well, that was... What I was making is that the code requirement for loading from parking lot is similar to the code requirement for loading from residential cost. His point was not about cost. My point was that you may not need to upgrade. If you build it as design for parking, you may not need to upgrade it to adapt the top two levels for residential. Okay. Now clarify. Thank you. So I'm still not hearing about the spiral option for loading, which would avoid the need for the... I think you were out of the room when we talked about that. And it was precluded? It's not possible because we don't have the land to put the spiral tower? Yeah. To get the same number of spaces, they looked at it. It's in the package, but it... Okay. It's in here. By cutting into that footprint to put a spiral, you would give up two new spaces. Yeah. Either that or we would end up going another level taller. And I was... We can't... We were not considering expanding further off the... No one else to expand. We're trying to go smaller now. But the fundamental issue of whether there is a 30% premium on the adaptive or use has to be answered before you can vote. Because if it doesn't cost 30% or if the parking load is the same as we're getting conflicting information. You're saying you don't know your engineers know. He's saying he knows. Well... It conflicts with what... It's in the building code. So if anybody has a copy of the IBC, we should be able to look it up. It's also beyond the loads though. Loads are the only issue. It's the extra... It's the extra height so that you can move plumbing back and forth. But you can put sleeves through a pre-stressed concrete as you build them that would allow for retrofitting plumbing through later. Yeah. And so you might pay 10 bucks a sleeve or something that they add up, right? I think the estimated additional cost has come to me from more than one source. So maybe the order of magnitude may be in dispute. But there's definitely an extra cost. Okay, but the point that I'm trying to call to your attention on this is that we are moving so fast that we don't have... We have not done the planning for rail, off-site parking, telecommunication. Parking demand mitigation. We have not done the necessary planning to know whether we are going to need this many spaces as Uber and autonomous vehicles and passenger rail come into play. We're making a 40-year decision here and we're even making an economic decision to foreclose the adaptive reuse that is really irresponsible in the sense that we need to move slow enough to get the planning for how many legislators are willing to park at Dog River or elsewhere and ride the train in. Because if we're overbuilding parking because we haven't done our homework somewhere else and we're foreclosing the adaptive reuse option to turn it into housing, we're really making a huge mistake. So, again, this is the kind of point that I'm asking you to slow down enough to get those... We need to vote down the bond and take another year to get full options for the pit, reduce load for parking, analyze. Thank you, Steve. And just to comment, we've done a lot of studies and the pit's not on the table. So, I was on my phone because I was reading about how other cities are handling sort of what to do with parking garages that they're not filling. And one, the sort of most common theme is that they are turning them into housing or hotel-type units. So if we were to go with the switchblade, am I right? Switchback switchblade is the same thing. To me, it feels the same. So is what I'm understanding that once the natural life of... So let's just assume it's 40 years. Some studies have said 30, some have said 50. Let's just go with 40. So is it that demolition would be the option once it's... Okay. Yeah, and I think the current thought in the architectural world is you address deconstructibility as part of the design. You sort of have an exit strategy for taking the thing back apart when you're done with it. So if we build this, construction would be anticipated complete by 2021? 2020? 2021? 19, I think. It's going to take 6 to 7 months to build this garage. Okay. So then let's just go with the 30, 40-year sort of midpoint there. So 20, 49, we'd be demolishing. And our bonds would be paid off in 20, 30 years. So we'd in essence have 10 years of extra. And that's, I mean, that's obviously assuming the models that we... Yeah, yeah. Some of that revenue could be set aside for the next use or for the demolition costs. I guess my question is, in what I've seen, and admittedly, that has not been much, what is the other use for the switch back? Parking garage. Because everything else, they're the... level ones. So there is there, is there no other use? Skateboard park. Seems like a very expensive skateboard park. Jack and then... How did that point? And the observation I make about this, and I've heard people talking about adaptive reuse of what's going to have what we can use this garage for. If at some point it turns out that people aren't driving cars anymore and we're therefore not using that garage for parking. And I would think that the first thing we would do, in that case, is to remove parking spaces from the streets. That I think that that's a better use than the the other things that we're talking about. And it makes the downtown a much more attractive and walkable and livable environment, which I think we would all like to see as soon as we can. Thank you. Barbara. I'm going to try this and see if it works. Yeah, so Greg, you would ask for somebody to pull up the IBC. I had the International Building Code here and it says that garages have a 50-pound live load. Residential multi-family homes is a 40-pound live load. Hotel rooms is a 40-pound live load. So I'm not sure where that extra 30% is coming in. And I think we would really need to see something in writing from your structural engineer in order to justify that because I'm not seeing it. And the concern about the 10-foot floor-to-floor is yes, it would be difficult to put residential units back into that, but it's not impossible. It could be done. So any further comments from the public? Go ahead. My name is Tino O'Brien. I live on Clarendon Avenue and I'm not sure whether I have a statement or a question. Maybe a little bit of both. I'll begin with a statement. I think the parking garage is in the wrong place. We really need more parking and better parking in this city. And I'm afraid we foreclose the opportunity to put it any place else. So I won't dwell on that point. There are other potential places we could have put it. But again, that's not my primary concern. My primary concern is to speak as the lurex. Which some of you may recall is the person who's concerned about the water quality. And I'm real concerned about what happens to the wastewater from this facility. And this comes to my first question. I think you said no net change in the water quality entering the river. Is that correct? I was speaking about volume in terms of flood events. That our goal is to make sure that we're not reducing the capacity of this parcel of land to deal with floodwaters. That's different from the water quality issue which is going to be a matter of systems and controls. Could you explain whatever the systems would be, or not in detail, but just how much treatment will the water coming off of this site get before it enters the river? Well on each level there will be dropping little scuppers that collect water at the back of the parking stalls. That will be collected down to the bottom of the building. Those flows will be directed through series of concrete tanks that are intended to remove suspended solids, grits, sand, the like and oil. So petroleum based products which is in the main types of things we would expect those would be the classes of pollutants we would expect on any parking surface whether it was a surface parking lot or otherwise. And so there's that treatment and then there's an additional system which is more of a storage volume thing which would be large diameter EBS pipes underneath the slab which are just there to control the flow of the volume so that we can attenuate the rate at which it flows back out at which point at which point it typically would discharge to the north branch of the river. Now I'm not the civil engineer I can't speak to to sort of quantitatively about this but that's my understanding of the system. And when the tanks that accumulate the salts, the oil etc., wouldn't they fill up what happens to those? Well there's, this is regulated by state law but there's requirement for permittees to routinely inspect and clean these facilities out. So you know with an oil grid separator you know once a year or something you'll have a specialty contractor who comes in and has to vacuum that piece of equipment out. And so that's the sort of primary thought process right now. I can only speak for myself but I would think that rather than seek no net change of discharge into the river we should as a city be looking at improving the quality of the water in the river. Now whether, and I don't know whether that involves to a better treatment system for this site but I hope as a resident that we're not continuing the level of treatment that we're dumping into the river right now. And this may be an opportunity to agree with that statement. I did mention in my written comments that I haven't spoken about tonight but I'm looking for opportunities to incorporate zeroescaping into the landscape planning around the building for both the hotel site and for the garage which would then provide additional sort of natural based approach to treating the quality of the water because you know the various wetland plants are sort of efficient at taking those things up and taking them out of the water supply. So there will be others like that but they'd be sort of ancillary to the primary approach which is to scrub that water as it comes off the surfaces and before it goes into the storage system. There's a wonderful example of a parking garage in Florida where there's a hanging garden hung off the side of the building which actually bio filters and you probably know about that kind of approach but I'm just going to go for that. I just want to go back to something that Ann said earlier about the Confluence Park and the impact of this garage on that Confluence Park beginning with the visual impact. You're down there to eat your sandwich and talk to your buddy and there's this massive structure behind you and I guess I just want to raise the question of the quality of that park and how this garage is going to impact it and whether there's a surface, a face that could be architecturally designed for plants or for benches, etc. I'm going to interrupt you because we're going to talk about the facade. Next. I think it would probably be most appropriate for you to come back actually. Is that okay? Sure. I would just add one comment to the question that was asked because I think somehow that got lost and I think Tina was appropriately talking about improving the storm system and what exists today are asphalt parking lots with no treatment. So what happens is that all that grit and salt and everything are on those parking lots are washed off into the river. So if there's a system in a garage which is collecting and separating and sorting and discharging it's actually a significant improvement over the current status. That's an excellent point like relative to what we have there now this would be an improvement. Correct. And I just want to go back to one word that I saw in here and you used just now zero escaping because I would love the definition of it. Oh, I should have gathered it. It's a little dirty. I'm sorry. It's sort of constructed wetlands in this case. I mean it's generally it's a whole suite of low water use approaches to landscaping but we are incorporating already in the design for the hotel Rain Gardens is a common name where instead of going directly into a catch base and things go into a lawn area where there's plants that uptake some of that water and help provide some primary treatment. So, you know, we're going to try to incorporate those kinds of features in the green spaces around the building but they're going to be supplements to what else is going on. They might be useful for taking flows from sidewalk areas and stuff like that. You're not necessarily going to plant it direct all of the flow from the parking garage itself into those areas. Those are the state of Vermont is going to have some input on that as far as, you know, the engineers tend to think in terms of systems, they know work. So, you know, but we are going to incorporate it in there as a feature. So, Steve, before you go I want to check with the public to make sure is there anybody else who has not spoken yet who would like to make a comment about this portion the structure specifically. Oh, okay. One more. Go ahead. Regarding the structural treatment tanks, filters, inspections, vacuuming and earlier we heard about an air conditioned equipment room, servers, video storage, the cameras, etc. I have a informed sense a hypothesis that we have severely underestimated the maintenance costs in our cost benefit economic calculation. I think they were, I saw them at 100,000 or something, they could be double that and totally bust the bank on the revenue models that are so, I just want to call your attention to that. Okay. Because we have not seen many of these systems reflected in that maintenance budget. Okay. Thank you. All right. So, we need a decision team on which option to go with. You were going to make a motion earlier. Yes. I was going to make a motion that I will now that we we proceed with option one with the switch back option as being the most practical, the most known quantity and the most over this is a motion. So I'll keep it short. I'll just stop it. My motion is option one. Is there a second? I'll second it. Do you want to elaborate any further? I don't think I need to. Okay. Okay. For the discussion. Yes. So I would just I guess I what I'm struggling with is and again, maybe this is just my own neuroses, but I'm just I'm feeling a little conflicted because I don't feel like we have the full information given what the code seems to say about what the load looks like. And so, so what the representation was that there would be this increased cost to make this a structure that we could more easily repurpose at some point in the future for what if, for example, we aren't able to generate the revenues or or at the end of its sort of life cycle, we can make the investment or someone can buy it and turn it into housing. And and again, I just I feel like my obligation here as a council member is to sort of have the all of the information available and make the most informed vote and I just without having that piece of information because that's sort of one of the things like if I am going to be a part of planning this thing that I don't necessarily support, but you know, I don't want to be an impediment to that. It just seems like having that information would be the only way that I could cast an informed vote and as it stands, I would be leaning more towards supporting the development that would allow us to repurpose it, but I don't have that kind of information and and I just I think that's an important thing to point out that yes, there are these reasons to do the switch back, but other big major cities are repurposing garages that were sort of built in this split level fashion and they are experiencing success in doing that and given the conflicting statements that we've seen in the conflicting information right now, I just don't know that we have symmetrical information about both proposals. Further comments? Glen and Donna, Rosie, did you want to say something? Thank you, Rosie. Go ahead. I would say I'm leaning toward the split level option for the reasons that Ashley articulated and also because I hear the durability argument for the switch back I have a sense of the possible failings of using the steel in the structure for reinforcement and if the split level requires the steel that does seem like a downside at the same time it does feel like regardless of possible contingencies I kind of want as much flat surface as I can get and I can imagine many future and current situations where we might want that flat space for something worthwhile. I've also been thinking about this for the last few weeks and sending my thoughts out to people I know who are creative building types and almost to a person when I present curved or flat or like sloped or flat surfaces they say no brainer make it flat if possible so that it can be used for something other than parking at some point and that feels strong to me I do wish that I knew better exactly what the load numbers were that I'm unhappy that that is not perfectly clear Donna well I'm definitely supporting the switchback and part of this is my experience of garages they're just much more comfortable to drive in and I'm looking at this structure to be a garage for 40 years I want a garage that's going to work that people are going to be comfortable using and that it will give us more spaces I also like Rosie like the height and the other aspect is your engineer your company has an engineer set you and Sue talk to another firm of engineers that's two engineer firms and I'll do respect it's like having legal advice no matter what lawyer we have here somebody disagrees with us I think it's much more than just weight load in that engineering assessment and I'm willing to go with these two opinions we can certainly explore it more but I feel comfortable with that and I do appreciate that you did talk to a second firm so that's where I'm at let me switch back so just to you know what my values are I think I might have mentioned them the fact that the split level is less convenient for ADA accessibility not that it would be inaccessible exactly but it would be less convenient that matters to me especially as we're considering that this might be parking for some senior housing and two I mean I share Jack's opinion that if anticipating that this is going to be a parking garage for a long time and that if it's not full that we can be eliminating parking on the street that we can be eliminating other surface parking spaces that to me seems very exciting and that this is a place where we can concentrate parking in the city and that even in the long run one vision of the future is that we have autonomous electric vehicles driving around they're going to need a place to plug in and this could be a place where they do that so I'm still hopeful even in that 40 year future that we're still good so I think we probably can guess how this vote is going to go based on all of our statements but I think we should vote on any further discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed aye I was not I missed that we have to do a roll call because it was not unanimous so Jack Rosie Glenn Donna Ashley okay so we have four votes in favor so that motion passes thank you all moving forward we're doing okay could be worse okay so onto the facade if you would I'm going to pass it over to you so the design process is a matter of wrestling with nails I'm presenting conceptually our approach to the design of this exterior facade in full recognition that there's a lot of room for improvement that I expect will unfold as we perfect the application and go through the design advisory committee of the development review board but the facade is presented on this color image or on the cover sheet of this and there aren't there extra copies here anybody in the public have a picture of that sure I'll do it right now okay great thank you this is an outgrowth of our long discussions with the folks at Christchurch and our earlier approval process the facade is comprised of two primary elements there's solid masonry portions that occupy the corners and portion of the facade is the green business you see going on here which is something called a living wall or a green street what that is is it's a metallic matrix that's designed to support plant growth our thought process is that we don't want to have to mechanically ventilate this garage we want air movement through it on the other hand we don't want a big concrete building right in the middle of town this does a couple of things it provides sort of living material which cleans the air coming and going from the garage but also filters the light from the outside coming into the garage and as opposed to hard surfaces you've got a matrix of plants growing up what kinds of plants Virginia creeper, Boston Ivy English Ivy, trumpet vines wisteria so you can imagine especially wisteria I don't know if you've ever seen it in bloom but at certain times of the year this thing's going to be covered it's like purpleish white flowers kind of cascading down in Longtown what does winter do to it well all of these are plants that have a success of planting here in Vermont you know all those species are ever green is that green in the winter the ivies will and so the thought process here is that it started when we thought there's going to be a housing project next door what are they going to see when they look out the window is it going to be a brick wall or is it going to be this and you can imagine over time birds and stuff occupying this material you know so at any rate those were the sort of primary design concept is that we would break the facade up into smaller understandable pieces by kind of having this shift between solid and the light so the typical brick tower would be detailed more like a classical building I've shown some granite trim bands going through there and a few other features there are these kind of large openings in the brick walls and those were conceived of and have always been thought of as an opportunity for a more artistic statement that those kind of angled bars you see are a gesture towards something sculptural happening in that opening that would create kind of visual interest and we're very open to all kinds of input on what those could be you know I'm inspired somewhat by the classic posturing trust bridges that you have coming in and out of town and so you know having these kinds of jumbles of steel parts is meant to be a kind of reflection of that but it's also kind of like bike spokes and things like that at the same time these things could be colorful so we've got a contest we could we would very much like to see some art incorporated into this facade and those were sort of purposely created opportunities for that so you've got the masonry traditional these are the flat portions of the building so it kind of expresses what's going on inside there and then you've got the green wall system which is illustrated growing up the size of the building I gave you some photographs in the cover letter of green screen installations from around the country this was from the actual manufacturer and you can see they've got to make sure that these one of these is in Iowa I think and the very last one Iowa I think Iowa The very last one shows you a new installation just getting started just to give you a sense of it's going to look like this until that grows in because that's a better question that's been raised and just to be clear on that these are open spaces behind that planting it's like a three dimensional chain box about this thick and it's got slender wires going all through it like a space truss and Ivy's they want something to climb on and behind that there's not a concrete wall there's going to be a wheel stop at sort of the foot off the floor and there's going to be a bumper stop which is off the floor and then beyond that if there's any large openings we'll have some kind of railing system to keep people from falling out of big holes on the top floor here you can see sort of the meshing yeah so one question about how removable those panels are they come in I assume some width maybe for our purposes it would be like one entire length but is it sectionable I guess is my question and how easy is it to remove and the reason I ask is because I could imagine sometime in the future like let's say we have a public arts commission that wants to put in some might want to remove a panel of greenery and replace it with giant art or something well we're using this we're using this also as a as a means to provide an edge to those floors where people will fall out of the building but it's horizontal stanchions or arms that come off the primary structure and then this is sort of bolted to that and I would think so long as it was maintained the only difficult part of unbolting it would be you'd have to these plants once they grow in there would be tricky people who know Burlington I'm sorry I keep referring to other places but Gallagher was on College Street and that building has just been kind of encapsulated by vining ivies which ironically there's no green space or anything they're coming right out of the sidewalk and they've practically swallowed the building this is on purpose these plants are going to thrive in this kind of environment but yeah it's reversible it's demountable it's just I think and in sections or the whole thing it only comes in panels and we're going to make an overall that last image in the cover letter sort of shows you a given section is going to be four by eight or something and we're going to bolt them together to make this effective so it's modular it's not that here outside it's going to come out of a box it's going to get bolted together Wagner Hodgson tells me we should see pretty respectable growth in about three years in the meantime it's going to look like that and yeah over time there's going to be some requirement to baby those plants just like any street tree program but anybody who's got a wood lot like I do trumpet finds are they're tenacious they're not weak plants so this was our broad scheme and if the public wants something else or there's a sense that there's something missing here we're open and receptive to that input just the evolution of it was to accommodate our neighbors but they grew into a kind of a good idea for the whole project there are some large flat surfaces where murals or other kind of artwork could be accommodated and there's also sort of at the ground level where the building meets this parkland there's an opportunity for some public art in there as well one suggestion that came to me from one of the public was to go around the top of this thing and sort of have panoramic pictures of Montpelier and a description of what you can see from this vantage point which I've seen done very successful and would love to see happen here but you know we're talking about a combination of traditional solid materials like you might expect to find in Montpelier and then something completely different which I think when we talk about the Confluence Park this is the backdrop to that so you know to have this living material here is an important sort of sort of proscenium against which that whole activity happens and I will say the good news as far as anybody concerned about the park is is that we're on the north side of the park so you know the southern light and everything is it's still going to be a well in space this thing isn't going to cast long shadows on the park because it's the parks on the sun side of the building yeah sorry just on that point we've got two long walls and one of them is a north wall kind of facing toward the housing the potential housing are we concerned about the green wall on that side surviving some plants are shade loving some plants are some loving and the landscape architects have kind of come up with an approach for each side as I understand okay I guess so I'll be perfectly candid this kind of looks like a jail to me and Montpelier as everyone calls us Montpelier and it just kind of strikes me that this would be an opportunity for this thing to sort of embrace that a little bit and I just I'm not super fun it looks like a government building to me and I realize that there are reasons for that I lived in Boston for a number of years and Boston has been ready for years to sort of get rid of that government building look and it just seems like there's so much opportunity for us to like make this something that's not like kind of a brick structure that's just soft in an area and I really don't like those bars across the windows see I picture those as like being multi-colored yeah I don't know fair enough it just seems like there's something that we could do to make this a more unique structure if this is something that the city is going to invest in and everyone sort of jokes about us being Montpelier why are we kind of picking this very basic generic do you have any thoughts as to like what could be different I mean I just googled some things and I realize that that probably adds a significant sum of money to it but there are some that have art installations on the outside so like around the entire parking garage I think that's kind of unique I think we have some great local artists who would probably be willing to contribute to that I mean I'm just I'm looking now there are some where it's just a fixed art installation some of them seem to change some have different colored lights I'm not saying that we would do that given I know how much of a debate we had about lighted signs but it just seems like this could be an opportunity to sort of make this reflect some of our own community values and sort of embracing that eclectic kind of downtown vibe and I just that for me just doesn't come anywhere close well it sounds like some of the things you're suggesting are things that could be incorporated and for not that much cost I just and a lot of them I think I kind of struggle so public safety is also a concern in parking garages and this is an awful lot of closed space so there's like an entire closed off wall so there's no light coming in from there I realize it's lit from the inside but the ability to see into structures and making sure that they're well lit and I know there's going to be video cameras and things like that it just seems like maybe having a more open concept for the parking garage and I know that creates other issues in terms of like you know whether maintenance and things like that but it just the open the more open walls on parking garages seem to lend themselves to more sort of community art installation than a brick wall which typically tends to lead to like graffiti which is fun and cool I mean but just seems like for ten and a half million dollars we could make this a reflect a little bit more the talents that we have in our community and one thought I have which isn't reflected in the drawings but what's going to get there is we can edit this screen screen it doesn't have to be uniform we can put holes through it we can have a variety of openings and stuff to give it more of a look but I would love to funk this up a little bit if there's consensus that yeah we're ready for that I I think there was a sort of pallet of materials that we wanted to present because we thought they were appropriate but within that pallet you can do a lot of funky things with brick you know or maybe maybe you will say well the brick's not that important to us we want something else there are going to be portions where we want some solid wall where we come closest to the hotel we need that short section of wall to be solid you know adjacent to where the church wants to put their housing project there's going to need to be some kind of solid wall for fire safety to let them optimize how many windows they have but yeah anybody else got ideas about how we can get one it was not necessary to do some things with brick and I'm just wondering what kind of cost does it add to doing some interesting designs on the brick who might not really start buildings have in terms of just adding some more kind of detail more than the historic brick work that a lot of the downtown buildings have I would assume that I don't have an idea of all brick on that in my opinion no I've done a lot of brick buildings and in my experience the basement's got to put the brick there if he sticks it out a little bit or pushes it in a little bit he's only too happy to do that they love to be creatively expressive and they get good production on large pieces of wall but we've always tried to incorporate stuff like that in our work and never found anybody really made a big deal out of the cost of it how much do you think it would cost to add some historically reminiscent molding do you know what I mean like something that's not just well you know we're doing that on the hotel building we've got sort of traditional moldings around the windows and stuff you could kind of like go around and find some architectural remnants and just sort of put them into the wall there's a great stone builder who does stone walls with wheelbarrels and stuff in them and so if there's support for that kind of idea I think the way to do that would be probably to kind of charrette with the public you know have a thing on a Saturday morning or something and get that input I have a question how does that fit in the process of the permit application and everything I think you know I mean it's your permit process but my guess is we would reserve portions on the places on the building where this was meant to happen and we would say you know based on public input or whatever I because essentially what I think the design advisory committee is going to be most involved in that part of it you know I think if we go to them and say we're reserving this space for a significant piece of public art to be determined I think they would be supportive of that. Which is why I like the brick as a base because then it goes with the rest of the neighborhood but it does need to be livened up with art and variety in the brick so if we can go up and have that reserve to work on that that's great to me. There's nothing that says we have to use one color of brick or that we have the brick has to be red or any you know I mean we're painting the building next door it's a brick building but we're putting paint on it because we're going for a certain very traditional look but no I was that it's going to be the hotels with the white color here white and bright. It's a granite limestone and white painted brick. I just want to raise I just got an email from a constituent and I heard from one other person as well there's apparently they can't hear anything on the Orca broadcast right now. I'll look into it. Sorry. I'm so glad that you brought it up. I was just looking to make sure I didn't I'm going to cover another class as well and jump in. Yeah, go ahead. What is the currently large openings or square and I was thinking about what makes some of our prominent buildings in that period look unique and historic and I'm thinking about the people's background which is actually a modern building that has those lovely big arches but I think I'm not too kind of far from back to the train station that was there and I'm not the arched openings there rather than the square openings. Oh my gosh, I would love that. I would love that. We've got a big circular opening. Oh sure. I'm gone. If you have more to say, I want to cut you out there. The other thing that I'm thinking about is our arched openings what does it look like to kind of grasp the way that a large factory window type thing you know historically I've kind of been in this space what it has been and those are that sort of thing most institutional buildings of the 1900s what kind of openings that I've had to design there a little bit and I think what Ashley is saying about how I can do something a little different to the roof of the tower should make that kind of augment the skyline of my period is there a way to do some cool moving around the edge of that roof to make it look like a turret or something how could that change because right now I think it does kind of look like a curved tower Arch too. You know what I can totally see it now that you say it it makes me feel bad to admit that but you know I think there's a lot of things we can do to the top of those stair towers I'm just sort of reflecting the fact that the stair towers are going to pop up a little bit relative to the rest of the building that's sort of a functional space requirement thing but I'd be happy to look at that element and try to take some of the one final thought was about incorporating some granite just because that is such a local material and so some of these places that I think are kind of just maybe it's white cement making those granite as well I know that's probably more expensive but stone bands we use a little bit of real stone in most of our projects you know if you use it judiciously in the right place it doesn't bust the budget it's just you know no, we'd like to see some real stone in there as well and then sorry one last one there are some of the other person garages that I've seen that I liked and I don't know how other folks feel about this I have seen some that do a sort of concrete cast lattice work that kind of feels maybe a little 1930s I don't know how I'm trying to think, I feel it somewhere in Vermont and I don't know where and I don't know if anybody knows what I'm talking about but it's sort of like it's a lattice screen cast out of concrete with some interesting designs in it did you want to go? we're getting various reactions some people yes, some people no I think they're called textile blocks and they're laid up there's sort of air goes through them but there's different diamonds there's rounds unfortunately they don't make those anymore to get them you gotta find them reconstructed oh it's so interesting can we get the AC back on it's getting very warm I know, I'm sorry just a little bit for a little while Rosie what are you thinking of for that? please come forward I don't think the idea won't necessarily go together but that was just another idea for some of those openings or some of the more solid walls but I do like the predominance of the greenness and having the other things supplemented Glen you had a thing I just want to weigh in a little bit on broad questions of the design I really like the idea of the greenery I like the idea of the openings all of them through the greenery and elsewhere personally in some ways I have some hesitancy about adding decorative moldings or some kinds of decorative brick work because I don't want it to be a kind of gilded or just applied to the surface kind of look and for instance when you're talking about the steel structures that you can see in these drawings through the openings a lot of the beauty of those old bridges that you're talking about and referring to there is you're seeing the actual structure that's one of the things that makes that beautiful is that you can see that it's holding itself up and I would be in favor of elements like that that are at least reflective of the structure rather than a kind of decoration applied to something that depends on something else for its structure if you see what I mean so in a way for instance I often like the look of concrete facade if that's what the building is made of that feels like a kind of honesty to some degree I don't want to be all concrete all the way across but I think that a kind of if it's a modern parking garage which it is then make it a cool modern looking parking garage and don't necessarily try to make it look like it's a factory which it isn't an 1800s factory I'm not going to die on this hill but I just want to put that point of view into the conversation and I think that it is compatible potentially with what Ashley was talking about earlier a certain kind of active urban contemporary feeling I don't know if that's really what you meant but that's what I heard so I get nervous when you say contemporary because city center got put in to be contemporary and nobody liked to live with it we've done everything to reduce it to make it be more compatible it doesn't have to be and that's an invitation but some flavor of its neighbors please that's the balancing act I mean it's clear we need to loosen our tie a little bit on this one and I'm happy to do that I really appreciate these insights because it'll be a lot more fun to do if loosen our tie what if you don't wear a tie there you go there's some direction I would like some direction though I swear so funny so one more thing I wanted to add on this aside and I'm looking at the images of the first floor that feels unfinished to me those first floor openings like I think there could be some more done there I understand that there's a little flow into it I have a volume I'm obligated to provide a formula for it and as long as I hit that number I can manipulate these openings so yeah I'm understanding what she doesn't like like these openings in the first floor down here the ones with the sort of like railing they just have some wires in front of them they're just kind of these square openings and you see the cars and there's no I don't know they seem unfinished and the rest of the building has something going on in them this is kind of good well that's for the jail breakin so what I would like to do now I mean I know the council has any further comment I want to turn to the public at some public comment can you talk about the process for making a decision about this so I think that could use a little clarity so comments from the public I'm Brian Ehrlich I live on Winter Street and I just like to comment on the green walls I'm a big fan of Biophilia so I'm with you there and it's great you hold up all these fantastic images they're actually quite a few my job is building products expert and that's what I do so I love them but there are a lot of instances of them failing and typically they require a maintenance contract to keep them looking good insects, blight they require watering and fertilizer actually a lot of work so I just throw that out there to make sure that you guys are aware that you go down that road and if the look of that facade and building depends on that there can be significant issues with the aesthetics if things are not going well I hear committee being formed that does help can I interrupt you on that because I have a question related to that so we have a green wall on the district heat plant what is our do we know what the maintenance is on that we don't control that we can find out I also throw that in because if you do have to have a service contract that's another cost of things and if you are going to go down that road which I'm fine with as long as that's all just be really cautious about overstating the air quality thing there's actually really no data on them providing them I know a lot of looking into the ones that are used on interiors because people try to upsell that unbelievably and I've looked at this in detail and the data just isn't there to support it common sense would tell you that it does provide some benefit but there's really no tangible evidence out there to do that so I would just say if you are going to do this don't try to sell it as thank you living lawyer Barbara okay so the first thing I want to make clear is that I'm not necessarily opposed to this project I know it sounds like it it's just that I want to make sure we do it right and so you know and as you can probably imagine I'm kind of stuck on zoning so zoning is my thing so one of the things that's come up for me about the facade and I don't you know it certainly has appeal but if we are following the new zoning ordinance in which it looks as if the Hampton Inn attempted to do in terms of articulation and varying room heights and all of that but it does not appear that the parking garage is following the architectural standards for this district so I guess do we wait architectural standards for the city sorry how so because there are certain requirements in terms of articulation you know the building not just being a mass and being in certain openings in various I mean even in the old zoning there was for the downtown area there were requirements so you know it's fine if we want to just not say that we are going to waive that but you know I think we need to clarify I'm still not clear on what the problem is well I certainly put it already from the zoning but you know that but it has to do with mass it has to do with the brick face the flat face of the building because what we are trying to do is to make buildings that are compatible with the downtown alright we don't have too many buildings that have a 201 wall or facade that has no articulation to it and so I think that is I mean yes the green space is in articulation to some extent but not a mass so what you are saying is that a long flat wall doesn't meet it that we are looking for some sections being further forward some sections being further back we do that replicating the streetscape and my earlier looks where there is a whole you know it could have 5 big buildings in a row but it doesn't look like all one thing yep yep ok thank you for that that's helpful we are going to go through before there is any further comment from the public on the facade very briefly these are the first dimension elevation drawings and again it's on the point of how much time this is going to take because an analysis of public safety video angles emergency response in and out if certain one or more entrances are blocked by a car fire or vandalism I'm encouraging you to move slow enough to do this right or plan it well enough to do it somewhere else ok so I could use some clarity on the any further comment from the public so I could I would love to talk about where we go from here because I mean you brought up this idea of a design charrette and on the one hand I really like that idea again getting more public input more creativity into it I think is a great thing but I also know that we have to submit something on Friday and fair enough I think there could probably be placeholders in that application that's like something interesting goes here but I'm going to look to Bill or to you two both to think about how we can structure that what would be it seems like we could parse this out if there is consensus about certain things like let's do something with the towers so it doesn't look quite like you know the prison guard you know structure but so that we could you know do you see what I'm saying? I think perhaps it would be appropriate for the city council to sort of put together some guiding principles for the design advisory committee and the development review board to consider when reviewing the form of proposal you know certainly at a minimum we need to make sure that we're in compliance with the new zoning regs as far as the articulation of the side I'm definitely hearing a big vote for considering the massing and looking for ways to articulate it in ways that make it not look like a prison I think we all have to share that goal so you know we can take the input I've got tonight and fold it into our drafting as we prepare these applications but I think from your perspective the thing to do would be to make sure that these concerns get folded into some kind of checklist for the review board to to take off it seems to me like maybe as you're suggesting we should be making a list of at least the guidelines of how we'd want to see this be changed in general is that useful to you? we're totally open to change we're not going to be able to make it for you tonight but as we go through this process which will last for most of the month of October we'll have at least two meetings with each of these boards maybe three and as we come before them they'll say well okay based on our instructions from the city council we think you have too much of this or not enough of that so let me hop in there the boards would not take instruction from the city council they act independently in terms of their review they would take their instruction from the regulations whether or not the proposal complies the council can't interfere with the board process I think you and I can take instruction from their desires to create a product that meets those principles so they can't direct the board to say here's what we want that's an expression because there's been ways that we are promoting this but also the regulator and we're really trying to keep those roles separate they need to be separate and distinct I was going to suggest we have to file an application by Friday that the most important thing is the footprint and dimension those kinds of things to start the ball rolling it could be and I think Archer had said she'll give us a week if we're going to make a mind design amendments the first steps are the subdivision of the land which is going to be fairly straightforward but it has to be processed there's a whole lot of utility stuff that has to be sorted out that won't be impacted by design but I would think we could substantially improve this by the time we submit on Friday and then what we should do is sort of monitor our progress in terms of how that improvement is coming together moving forward and the council meets so it goes flow of revised design that's that meeting yeah and we're happy to put this thing up on any kind of public website or anything as it goes forward to kind of virtually sure-read it because I like the energy you brought to the beginning of this conversation it's probably the only positive thing that anyone can say you know I'm a big fan of Portlandia the TV show it's one of those great places that really has a personality it's not faceless nameless we get most in a lot of places we shouldn't screw that up I'm happy to go back and take a whack at that even though I live in Richmond I would love to see if there is I'm not sure that I'm feeling like we need a vote necessarily on this but just see if there is general consensus about a series of changes and if I'm missing anything let me know I should just say I got a communication from a constituent suggesting another way to break up the masses concrete facade with muralsaw obviously doing a mural is guaranteed to be controversial because everyone has their own idea of what they want to look like and they have to maintain them but at any rate that's just one suggestion from one person go by without mentioning it I need to go grab a pen do you mind oh thank you so much sorry I have a camera with an image I'm going to say close to mine put one man in the stairwell and that might make the plans look a little more um I don't know yes of course that's what actually St. Alvin's garage is actually all glassed the stairwells are glassed so you can see it the stairwells I think it's a safety thing to you I want to know if anybody is in the stairwells when I'm walking to my car in a parking garage um sorry so was the idea there that we could maybe use glass instead of glass as the solid surface there yeah that's another idea to make it make them glass towers presentably you don't need to do every tower the same too we could this should be some rose colored glass um at least some kind of windows or a glass in the stairways okay make a list here of things that we can maybe make some decisions about as we add these things we can end up with a really odd cookie cutter look so we can put out some ideas and maybe we can come back with more than one rendition uh yeah sure if you have glass we're talking about art if we have glass suddenly have we met on it? that would work well for me I think if we make a list and get it to you we can depend on you for relatively cohesive versions from our even if they're not at this level we'll apply the same kind of rigor we would to any design we're going to be looking for which ones are really compatible I just also want to restate that whatever it is that we do I'm sure this is going to increase or decrease costs marginally but I if any one of these things kicks us substantially over like that that's a big flag for me the only piece of that is that if you're thinking if you're going to have significant public art you should have some kind of budget for that I agree I might be separately considered oh yes and it should be part of the plan it shouldn't be the afterthought but I think that's how we keep it from taking over your budget as we set aside a line item for that kind of thing okay so I'm going to start with things that I feel like might have the most consensus and go towards the least consensus maybe and if I leave anything off the list or dear public if you think of other things that we should consider certainly welcome that so thinking about the roof line of the guard tower sorry can we not call it that the tower the roof line of the tower, thank you articulation should be number one articulation yes so that might be able to be achieved through the tower roof or something or a structure okay so we're all okay with doing something different with that okay okay what do we think about the possibility of adding windows and or glass to the stairways yes okay great how about at least the option for adding public art and I want to say that with the caveat of it might not be the first this might take a while yeah this isn't something of interest okay great having some portion of the walls be green yes yes okay great awesome so one thing the question about brick versus cement I think is a tricky one maybe yeah I mean I like brick I happen to like brick I like brick yeah I think that for instance there are parts of the bank that we were talking about earlier I don't remember that I do like and some of those art structures are cool there is one section that I think is weird looking it's two little arches a steel or something structure underneath those two arches it's not going to install one of the columns it looks like somebody stole a column and so I just want to be careful about things like that that if you make it look like the brick is structural in an arch then you should not break that illusion in some part of the building that's all I agree other thoughts about brick I mean it makes people talk so maybe it's filled yes I'm mostly pro brick I just want to I've just received another note from a constituent just making sure that there are like ample mirrors in the stairways as well so you can sort of see what's going on in there just as a safety that's a good call I got the same message we're planning on having emergency health problems stairways as well I think this was a non-issue because you said we were going to do it anyway but the inclusion of granite in some of that I think and we should feature that actually if we're going to put granite in there we should say what Corey came from and I just make it reflect our area it's going to be local granite just checking just checking now the we did sort of just talk about this but I had it on my list separately was the possibility of arches and I think if they had done well they would be amazing did the golden archers get run out of town here a few years ago if only they were golden they should have been brick yes yes other thoughts on arches sure the more like non non-linear elements it makes me really happy okay that was everything that I had on my list do you have to talk about patterns in the brick oh yeah patterns in the brick thoughts yeah how much of these do they all go I just think as long as we just make sure to be mindful of what the zoning requires I have a little bit of hesitation about patterns in the brick because I feel like it could go badly quickly I don't know what I think about when you mention patterns in the brick is one the steeple of the church downtown that has the patterns on the the slate and each section is different the building doesn't exist anymore but there used to be a restaurant down in Richmond called the checkerboard restaurant is it you can see it's called that because it's built with a checkerboard pattern on the brick it's a Flemish pond brick it's one of the oldest houses in Vermont it's a good restaurant is it still a restaurant yeah I can you know it's yeah I suppose that I could be I could get on board with patterns I might need some convincing but I oh my gosh there you go I'm going to put the periodic table in brick yeah there you go can we put the bubble to the bubble chamber tracks of subatomic particles okay okay anything else okay Steve break up the phone the I was at the development review board meeting a couple nights ago in these issue of advocacy developer versus regulator it became clear that the development review board that it's going to be the city's public works department that decides how much of a traffic study we need and that's a very untenable position to put Tom in who answers to Bill to answers to the council because the trip generation analyses that were done for the both phases of the Bouchard project do not come anywhere close to the definition of a traffic study traffic study done on number of turns left right time of day through which egress and out that needs to be done and you all need to take it make a firm commitment to do that but I believe where you're going to come out is that the 20 foot easements across Bouchard's property are going to be inadequate especially dumping on the state street without traffic control and I suspect where you're going to come out not where you want to come out but you're going to come out with any lot access potentially the need to use a domain and make the any lot a street connecting to L and a traffic one you know to accommodate the level of traffic and the ingress and egress and public safety and you really need to recognize that that's a possibility here and consider it in these discussions because that's a very political thing and you don't want to come back later with the bait and switch that we're going to do that right great thank you uh do you want to so we have been talking about the second egress and we haven't talked about it yet tonight and with Rick you know he's in appreciate Steve's input my direction to Tom was whatever's necessary you know we I'm not directed Tom in a way shape or form to do any more or less it's you know use your professional judgment whatever's needed the same as we would for any other development project of this size in this part of town and don't ask me to approve it just do it great um okay which has also been our instructions um I know Whitenberg did a lot of work for us in terms of thinking through uh what's normal for parking garages and they've been a good third party entity they're a very active yeah yeah okay okay uh was anything further um that we should be considering we are talking about the two exits yes yes I was going to say we didn't talk about make a decision about the roof that's true I thought we did nobody made a motion we made a motion but don't we have to and no no there was an opportunity to make a motion she asked and we asked for what is that translate to it means that there's no support nobody made a motion to to add a roof it's not in the base proposals nobody made it but I would like to talk about the two entrances yeah okay do you want to I'm going to turn it over to you so the instructions when I came in the door were that uh that the access to and from the garage would be solely from the to state um there has been some talk about what happens if there's a car stone or something like that okay um so so you can move that thing closer to you if you speak closer to it yeah so the best our best thinking on that right now is is that after the entrance to the garage itself we will incorporate three lanes one to come in one to go out and one to be flexible that would not rearrange the I just learned this today from the meeting we had at noon that takes some of the pressure off but there's still seems I think there's still a desire to have like a secondary or emergency only use access at the lower level which would be the Haney lot access everything the traffic people have told me is that introducing additional traffic at the intersection of Elm Street is going to be problematic and that that by having two egresses it's a problem I I think we would if we provided it it would be it wouldn't be for regular use but it would we're going to have an opening there for flood control purposes we've been thinking that that opening would be controlled somewhere and if for some reason the main entrance got blocked somebody at city all going to open a gate but that's I think that's as far as we've gone with that we don't really want to set up two separate pay stations or any of that stuff so that's the best thing my suggestion is that we just my suggestion is that we explore the second access to the extent possible understand the costs I I think there are safety and traffic reasons I think the counter balancing traffic concerns and this is what we would need someone else to tell us is in one hand you've got two places where people coming on the state street the other thing is with traffic management sometimes location is better but they still come out at the same place and none of us are expert enough to make that impression I know but to me just for any number of reasons that you mentioned there could be an accident there could be anything could happen need to get emergency vehicles in a separate way I think having a second vehicle access is preferable and if it's feasible and they're both functioning pay access is great if they're not that's okay too but I think we ought to run it up the flagpole and make sure that it's see if we can do it I was sold on that after visiting St. Albans they were pretty clear they have two separate exits and they're both fully automated functional pay and they just said look sometimes these gates break these things happen and people can just go around and go out the other way and still pay it's all fine but there's also additional costs and we'd have to understand what all that meant one time Elm Street was looked at a possible street to take traffic off of St. Lane Street remember when we talked about a vehicle bridge not just a pedestrian bridge I don't know that any serious study was done but it was a discussion right and we would have no issue using the property for that vehicle access because we have that property at least the same like the parking what do you need from us at this point? well if you don't want it no I mean I definitely like to explore it that's all we do especially if it's a safety keep it in the design for now whether it's thinking just could come down to a policy statement about how you use it Ashley did you look like you were going to say something? no? okay Donna it's related to this topic so you can cut me off but it has to do with using the Elm Street 60 St. Street lot that takes you out to Elm which this back access would for a bike lane Mary Hooper particularly brought this up she couldn't stay but I wanted to make sure it got stated and that here is St. Street and that we consider an actual clearly marked attractive bike lane back here to pass I wonder if that would require removing parking or would that be like outset from any parking again it doesn't have to be decided tonight but I just wanted to throw the idea she feels like this regress is not really bicycle friendly nothing out here whereas here you could look down and see straight through we could put additional flags extending from the outside of the building to help drive people to the river but that was her concern bicycles are here but what's going to draw them into path so she just I just wanted everybody to have that in their brain and then it got discussed no decision but something to think about thank you that was the point that I was trying to make true too when I talked about access to the back I don't have it in my head what address 60 St. Street is that's just that's that parking lot yep just to throw up there I need guidance from city council from the city's attorney or whatever I believe this garage building has some kind of right of access down through here it doesn't show up on the surveys but it's been described to me that access to that back parking lot so maybe it's in the indirect or something something so it would be good to get some clarity on that but I'm four square for improved bike access there's something like short term even that painted green kind of bike path that we're now using and then maybe we could go to some other kind of pavement later on something that's very distinguished okay gosh there was one other thing that is interesting to me but I don't know what the opportunity is here I really love permeable pavers instead of asphalt we could talk about that later that's maybe not this discussion someone's going to tell me that's going to cost too much later in any case I think for the purposes of what we needed to get done tonight we've gotten through it all we've done it okay so any further questions comments you're happy I'm excited I think there's a lot of room for improvement here and I'm glad to have some direction on that because you know I think whether or not you like the idea of a garage it ought to be the best garage we can make for the money we have they should say I'm glad we did that maybe functionally we can't make you happy but artistically we can I'm going to make that I really appreciate your time yeah for sure Glenn I just want to follow up because maybe I kind of missed it in the process and it doesn't totally feel necessary now but I feel like I understood that we were going to select a couple of specific council members to form a sort of ad hoc committee to continue talking about this design and being the point people is that no longer that's because that's what this is yeah it was going to be all of us that makes sense I just want to make sure I thank you you know that's great cool further questions okay I guess without objection did we have a point for council reports which we usually don't but I was just going to say one thing which is that last week we were scheduling our this week's meeting and you know we always have a meeting set up on Wednesdays as it happened after we left there were people who couldn't be here last week because of Rosh Hashanah Rosh to schedule this week's meeting for tonight Yom Kippur so again there were people who couldn't be there and so I just would like us to always try to be aware of those limitations when we schedule things and I apologize for the we're likely not having a good day to cover that thank you great so without objection we're going to consider this meeting adjourned thank you everybody