 Stakeholder meeting for the housing development, which Habitat for Humanity is proposing on Northfield Street. I'm Zach Rai Watson. I'm the Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity for those who have not met and worked here at our last meeting. So just a little recap of what we did so far and then what the goal is of this meeting. So this is our second stakeholder meeting. Previous to that, we held a public meeting for community development block grant. And then we had two public meetings for rezoning and two city council meetings for that. I also walked the property with Prospect Street, I was pleasant street folks and we did a Zoom meeting with Prospect Street folks as well. And with all that input, we still waited until last week to put anything on paper. And that's because we really care about the input of our neighbors and our community members, our stakeholders. Make sure that your voices are being heard and that you're part of our process. So at our first stakeholder meeting, we basically have this and a counter amount. And kind of reviewed the constraints and opportunities for this parcel. And then we went around in different groups and we talked about the housing options, the conservation options, as well as the street and the assets on the property. And heard your feedback. After that meeting, we took everything that we heard from you all and Habitat for Humanity met up with the engineering ventures team. And we had a team charrette where we basically started from scratch and started drawing things on pieces of paper. And we came up with, I think it was seven and nine designs. And then we kind of went back and revisited the comments and refined that again based on what we heard from you all. And then we refined those to seven more design concepts. And finally, yesterday, I just landed on three that felt really like it was a good, that capture, that was three options that really captured the interests of our community. So that's what we're going to be presenting today. Kevin, it's going to, and Kevin and our engineering venture team is going to give us an overview of those concept designs. And then just like the last meeting, we'll break up into small groups. So everybody has a chance to look at each design and tell us what they like, what they don't like. I do want to emphasize that everything is a rough draft right now. Nothing that we are presenting today is a definitively going to happen. In fact, project may definitively not happen. So I just want you to keep in mind, don't get stuck, try not to get stuck on any one thing in particular. If you don't like it, let us know so we can make sure that we're incorporating that in our final design. So with that, I'm going to introduce again, Kevin Warden, who's with Engineering Ventures, and he's going to overview things for us. Great. Thanks, Zach. There's a sign-in sheet. If you haven't signed in, please do so. It's circulating. So with that introduction, I'm just going to rewind to where we were on June 2nd because I see some new faces and some faces that were here before. Thank you for all your input at that meeting. But this is the parcel. It's about 54 acres. You can see Northfield Street on the left, Pleasant Street, Crosbeck Street to the north, Colonial down below. The site is wooded. It's got slopes, which we'll show in a second. We walked the orange. I know there's more trails, but those are kind of the main trail network that we walked and not. This white area is this interesting hollow that runs through the middle of the property north to south and also collects water that drains to the north up to an area there where we understand at entries a combined stormwater sewer system. And as we described last time, the access to the site that we've determined is the best access and the legal access that's available is through this spot here. And there's just the slopes on the other sides are just insurmountable from a road point of view. If you can go to the next. Yeah, speaking of slopes, this is the parcel kind of color coded based on the slope of the land. The red is greater than 25%. So that's, you know, if you had a four foot level and you raised it one foot on one end, that's that's a 25% slope. And the green is less than 10 or 15, I can't think it's 15. So that's the flatter. And then there's some areas in here where there's no color. Those are less than 5%, so quite flat. So as you can see, the site's bounded on the perimeter with steep slopes and then kind of has two level areas, which are divided by that hollow I mentioned. So as we described on June 2nd, the way we've looked at this project and all that we work on is a conservation development design. So step one is to look at what areas, what, you know, natural features, buffers to adjoining properties should be conserved, should not be developed. Set that aside first, and then that leaves the remaining area, which we can consider as a development area. So if you go to the next slide, you know, our first bracket that was to identify that perimeter with the steep slopes, and that's shown here in red, as an area to conserve. And then you can see this green line here. It's an arbitrary number that we set from those adjoining properties to the east, north, and west, and a little to the south of 150 feet. So again, as Zach said, taking into account some of the comments we've heard at our last meeting on June 2nd, these are the areas we've identified as areas to conserve. Is our next slide the comments? So Julie was going to speak a little, really appreciate the comments everyone provided. This is not all of them, but these are some that kind of concentrate our... I think it's a summary that covers all of the themes that were brought up. A lot of things were repeated, so I'm sorry if your exact words aren't up here. A lot of people mention signs of bear or deer, other wildlife, and that generally it's currently used as a habitat for others, not just humans. The existing drainage path which Kevin brought up, which starts in that hollow, goes down into sort of a perennial stream and then discharges into the combined sewer on Pleasant Street. A lot of people on Pleasant Street brought up that that causes problems of flooding during spring thaw and other big rain events. Maintaining the existing trail loop if feasible was brought up as important. Providing opportunities for active recreation on the site, including other parks or trails. Prioritizing the existing green space, formalizing that trail access, and connectivity to the existing neighborhoods on... to the existing streets and the neighborhoods that surround it, and potentially thinking of future connections to trail networks elsewhere in the region. Maintaining a buffer for the backyards on Pleasant Street and the other adjacent streets like we showed on that previous exhibit that we have at least 150 feet on all sides there. Accessibility was brought up as being really important, making sure that whatever the development proposed provides access to a bus stop or alternative transit, and that the housing takes into account universal design. Affordability was probably the second thing that was brought up as a factor, as well as filling in missing middle housing. And the housing in general, everybody agreed should be higher performance or passive house standards. Density was brought up more than once with the conservation development type of design, and people said that mostly that can be good. It can reduce the overall impact to the site, and especially good if it can promote that sense of community. Dr. Do you want to talk about the next slide or? Sure, yeah. All right, so this is really an important piece for setting the parameters for the actual development itself. So again, this entire parcel is 56.8 acres, and there's actually two separate parcels. Within this, there's 11 rental units here that spend a long time subdivision, and then there's the rural part here, which has a long history that goes back to the cool farm, old pasture land, sheep pasture land. So basically, a part of the purchase option agreement we have on the property owner asked to retain three acres for themselves so that they can build more units on their rental units here or whatever they would like. So this is the three acres that we had proposed for them to maintain, so we would subdivide that and they would keep this part. The green part here is everything that we're proposing to put into a conservation easement. So we're not really going to talk about what this is today, because ultimately, this depends on the ownership model. Ideally, this will be owned by the city of Montpelier, and we will work with them and the abutters to come up with a trail network, bike trails, whatever you all want that works with the city's desires and with the neighbors. So this is pretty much an entirely different public comment period and discussion. We're focused on the housing. So I really left about 25 acres here that we could develop. So at the charrette, we started putting boxes on paper for houses. What we discovered pretty early on was that we could build around 100 units on this, what we're calling the lower plateau, with minimal infrastructure. And that we could actually build up to 80 units on what's called the upper plateau with a lot more infrastructure. And considering the cost and the restrictions that would come along with that, it's not doable. But also the fact that we are hearing from you all that you want density, you want to conserve, or keep as much green space as possible. You will see from our designs that we are not going to be doing anything on the upper plateau. There are no plans for the upper plateau right now. The reason we are not putting into a conservation easement, however, is because there is a need for housing in Montpelier. And while we have no interest in getting into this, we are not speculators. We're not real estate developers. We do want to maintain this as an option for a future if there is a major need for it. And there's somebody that wants to come and do something. But without a mind, this will be all conserved still, regardless. So this is the portion that we are planning that all the proposals will be on. So it's half of that. And so it's about 10 acres is what we're proposing to build on of the total of 50 acres. So I hope folks hear what that we did listen to you. And it coincidentally did fit in with our own needs. So that's sort of the, that's a little background before Kevin kind of launches in. Or Greg is going to launch into the actual designs themselves. But hopefully that is clear for folks. So I'm going to drag you up next. But I'm just going to introduce that this is 100 scale, which is just a term of how we scale things. We're going to jump same orientation to a 60 scale plan. So I guess you could switch over to that. You'll just see the hollow there is now a little larger. You can still see Northfield in the back of the Pleasant streets. And you can see the access down here. But we've zoomed in. And as that introduced, we've got three different concepts. And Greg, if you'd like to talk about at least the first two, or for all of them, who else? I think I'm sorry, yeah. So when we had the charrette and after discussing everything with people, one of them used the land in, first of all, compacting efficient way for all sorts of reasons. But also do it in a way that basically is fitting with Montpelier. And also provide a number of different housing types from single family homes, duplexes, possibility of town home type setups, which we're going to show which could go either way. And also some larger developments on, you know, I think of St. Paul Street here in Montpelier. Which I think is great, has a beautiful four story larger building and bigger than my neighborhood, you know, so that kind of scalable thing. So that handles a rental for sale. Could be condominiums, who knows. But it's all about trying to get that missing middle for housing types and affordability on different types of development. So on this particular one, the street runs that way. And the dead ends in a cottage cluster. Cottage clusters are sort of like this image right here. Single family homes, where you come in, there's like a shared parking area, and then a little mini green that goes around it. But on this one, basically the road runs the perimeter of the woods. So basically on this side, it's typical street with sidewalks, so like that. Sidewalks, we have front yards, porches, sidewalks, terraces, trees, street parking, just like a standard neighborhood, all the way around the perimeter. But on this side, woods only. And then that beautiful kind of ravine right there going around. In all of the schemes, we wanted to have what's often called a sense of there, there, a sense of place. I live up on Bridge Street, so we have the college green. The meadow neighborhood has that little park in the meadow. There's kind of a sense of place that the neighbors really gravitate towards. It's their place. So on this particular one, we put the sense of place here. Now this could be a place where we would turn with the idea of a e-bike to share a program, community gardens, play for the kids, hard surfaces, soft surfaces and the like, with a greenway, kind of illustrated like that, up there, that image, a greenway threading through to the trail network. And then sidewalks going all the way around the perimeter. So it has a really nice sense of place in the field. And then the larger buildings here kind of embracing that sense of place in the corner. So this one is a simpler loop going up around it. Here is more of a traditional street where we have development on both sides of the street, going all the way around. So again, traditional front yards, sidewalk terraces, porches, small front yards and the like, going all the way around. Single family homes and duplexes. Here we took the two larger buildings. What we wanted to do is we wanted to do a neighborhood that again had all these different housing types. So these would be more traditional rental buildings. These all could be either for sale or condominiums or rental habitat, single family homes. So we definitely have single family homes and all of them. So again, this one street, terrace, sidewalk, small front yards and porches going around. The sense of places here, we have a cottage cluster up on that corner. And then a smaller little place here with an overlook over the ravine, and I like. Again, up here, this would be where we could have a common bike share program. Community gardens, play structure, maybe even a community building of some sort. And I love this image here of gardens, community gardens with a little community shed there and people hanging out and like. The whole idea is that so when people live in this neighborhood, they feel like they're in a neighborhood. But this neighborhood is welcome to anybody else who wants to come up too. So that's where the connections of the trail networks are really, really important. The first one I think was like 117 homes, 114 homes. This next one is 121 homes. So it really shows that you can put a lot in a small area if you do kind of a level compact development. That also is a very sustainable way to look at development in the neighborhoods. I live in the Kent Ridge neighborhood. It was built in 1800 before cars were either invented or popular. So it's not car centric. I can stand on every one of my property lines and without stretching, reach my neighbor's homes. I'm back inside there. I love it, I love that aspect very well. So it's kind of funny, new neighborhood design is more responsible if you start looking at what old neighborhood design rather than the 1940s, 1950s, and 60s were car centric. So here the whole idea is not to be car centric. Also what I like about this neighborhood, and again I keep on bringing on my neighborhood, this is shorter than downtown than I live. The hill is about the same as the hill that I'm gonna be walking up after this meeting. So you think this is really remote but really is the crow flies. This is not a remote piece of property. I mean this is very walkable to downtown, very bikeable to downtown. I'm getting older, I'd love to have an e-bike. That's why I think an e-bike share program would be super, a moment in my own neighborhood. So that summarizes these two schemes. Now Paul Simon, I'll walk through the last one that came up. Thanks, Greg. So I'm Paul Simon also on a design team here and this is the third scheme. Similar in a unit count, we have 114 units on this design option. And variations on the same thing. We have a community building and we have central green. We have playgrounds and park area as well. So the entrance is coming from the same place, but then we pass by a larger 30 unit building here. And the entrance to that can be at this lower level because as you climb up and into the site, you get up to this upper level here. So that can be accessed there. And then additional parking can be under the building and then hidden away. And then as you come up and around, there's four unit buildings. And then these are two unit buildings here. So duplexes all the way up and through. And then a community building here on center with a central green. And then walkways through the green as well. And then that ties into community gardens, another 30 unit building here as well. And then this design includes more of singles along this part here. Duplexes in the middle here, so there's duplexes on either side of the community green. And the design idea for these here is that they have front yards on both sides. Because they're facing the green as well as facing the street. So that's the idea is that this provides community space through a central green. So then you come around and then these are four units, four units, four units, and then you come through and then you come down to the back. And then there's some additional single units here as well in the back and a couple of duplexes as well. So the idea here too is to connect a greenway through the project. But you can see in all three schemes, we're also preserving the hollow as well. And if this other site ever gets developed in the future, that hollow is important to maintain. As we heard from you all, the habitat corridor is important. So we believe that that's an important aesthetic feature as well in the development. And what we're doing here is trying to connect our way through to existing trail networks without having to impact and grade and develop that. By connecting to those existing grade features. So we can even come down and park and then have ADA accessibility to remember those gray areas that Kevin was talking about that are pretty level. That's what this would be. So we can connect and we're really looking at the three dimensional aspects of this as well where we can connect to that. And then perhaps have a pedestrian bridge that connects over the hollow here, which can be a striking aesthetic feature in the development as well. Which is designed in that. So this has pedestrian connection through with playgrounds. This walkway, community gardens. And then that continues through and connects to the existing trail network as well as having a community building on center with the green here. So it's something that's visual through the green and can be used by the community and has its own overlooking to the wooded area as well. So and there are some design features here to the single family units and duplexes, the 30 unit building as well. And this is an idea of the lower grade entrance that can happen for the larger multifamily. And then as you get around you get to this side, you'll see that you create more of a pedestrian network. And again, the idea is to have a front facing porch kind of inviting building on both sides of this with the central green feature through the site. So. Yeah, as Paul mentioned, I forgot to mention that the first two streets of all of these larger buildings, they all have parking below. And we're using the photography to have the buildings kind of tuck in on hillside so you can drive in and park below. But the whole idea is not that parking lot. So the neighborhoods don't have parking lots. So the whole idea is to park below in these larger buildings. So it isn't like a big block building surrounded by a sea of pastel. Great. Thanks, Greg. Paul. Thanks, Julia. So our next step, we have those three concepts on boards. We're going to distribute those three boards around the room and distribute ourselves with those boards. So we'll break into three groups and then spend about 15 minutes at each location. As Zach said, these are far from final. We need to pick and move forward with a preferred alternative, but it may not be any one of these three because we're going to be listening for elements of these three that folks are drawn towards. And it may be a concept which takes a piece from one option to another piece from a different option. So we really look forward to any questions you have about these four comments. So I think what we'll do is there's about five or six folks over there. So, Julia, do you want to bring one there and follow up? Sure. You want to grab one? Greg, do you want to? Sure. Should I go to the back? Sure. Yeah. Why don't you give that one to Greg? And so, Greg, you, if you want to meet up here. Actually, folks in the back, you could go to the back, I guess. We'll join you back there. Folks over here, I'll come over. We'll leave the projector on so we can bring back some of the development options that folks want to look at. And Zach, you can keep time for us. I've had a baby since we last spoke. That's Peter. So just a final comment. First of all, thank you all very much. This was really great. I love hearing people's thoughts, their comments, their first reactions to things. We've worked really hard to create something that works well for our community. I hope that you all have seen that today. We are committed to our community. I live here too. Peter lives here. This will be his future city. And so, we really do care a lot about what you all have to say. And we encourage you to continue to stay in touch. What we will do next is we will take all your comments. Everybody's been taking notes, particularly as you've seen. We are going to probably create some sort of really pretty combination of these three designs for a final design that we will work with our consultants and our team with. And we will do a final presentation in August of that design. Regardless of whether we move forward with it or not, we have to do a final public meeting. Which is kind of funny. So we will also tell you at that time if we are moving forward with the project. But we'll be doing that in August. If you don't have my contact information, please talk to me afterwards. And I will give it to you so that you can stay in touch and you can email me more comments. Realize that sometimes you have thoughts after you leave or after you've seen all the different designs. You're like, oh, you know now that I think about it, I really like that piece. So I encourage you to stay in touch. Let me know what you think. And yeah, let's see how this happens. It works out. But again, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And I hope you all have a nice evening.