 Yeah, I'm going to have to be today I found myself far far behind the plan schedule for the day and would either be very late or do it remote and I don't want to I don't want to wait. I can get down there and sign that if you want to just leave that stuff for me to sign the minutes. Yeah, I'm happy to get going here. I just have to go back and get Civic Clerk up on my screen here. So this is all we have tonight. We're down by three, but we have heaven. So we have five. We have five. OK. So. Good evening. This is Angel LaRosa, the chair of the Burlington Development Review Board, and I'm calling to order the Tuesday, February 6, 2024 meeting of the Development Review Board. We have an agenda in front of us. We typically move down the items in the agenda in the order in which they're listed. Scott has usually posted and I believe he has all of the relevant communications before us today. From the items before us today online. So I don't see anything else there on the desk. I don't think we have anything else for the evening. Are you aware of anything? No, everything that I've received is online. That's fine. OK, so. The first item on our agenda tonight is ZP 23 552 332 Ethan Allen Parkway City School District School Department Administrative Offices Long Title proposed construction a multiuse path connecting Gross Court to James Avenue. Do we have the applicant here? Actually, yes, I am here. I had to be remote. My son has an illness today. I don't. I said, OK, I'll use that excuse. There we go. My son has an illness today, too. So. This is put on our consent agenda item are. Is there anybody in the audience here to speak on this item? They're on Zoom and a lot of speak to this for your name, please. So we don't have any Zoom hand that we don't have any in person. You can't say that. OK. Is there anybody on the board that would object to treating this as a consent agenda item? It seems relatively narrow, you know, more walkability and pedestrian connectivity seems like a good thing. So anybody on the board have any questions that need to make this a public hearing item? Nobody good. All right. For the applicant, have you seen the staff report on this project? Yes, I have. Do you have any concerns or questions about it that you'd like to discuss with us? No, I do not. All right. So since it's on our consent agenda item, I'd move that we approve ZP 23552 and adopt staff's findings and recommendations. Any second, second by couldn't hear. Scott, you want to repeat that? So second by Evan. OK. All those in favor. All right. That's five. Enjoy your multiuse path. Thank you. So the next item on our agenda. Is ZAP 24 dash one two thirty Main Street. Appeal of zoning violation notice regarding unpermitted parking lot use. I'm I know we have the city there. Scott, or they on Zoom. We have the appellants here. City staff is here, including code enforcement staff. As I noted to the board this afternoon, the appellant has requested deferral. The appellant has requested deferral. Yeah. OK. Specifically, their request was for 60 days. I mean, I did. Unfortunately, I actually just missed that. So I am fine with that. Does the city who's here for the city? Do they have any objection to that? Yes. I'm here. Ten miles are enforcement inspectors here. Build or directors here. And if you repeat the question. Do you do is the city object to extending to a 60 day continuance deferral? Well, there's three of us here. So. I don't think it's a great idea. It's the board's decision to make. If you look at their request for deferral and feel free to ask the appellant directly. It's really aimed at what the property could be. Particularly. As it relates to the mainstream project. But what's before you tonight is not an application. It's an appeal of a violation of this. So. The college of course. Okay. So is that the request for deferral is based on the new communication that was included. So. Correct. Right. We got the appellants. Well, the appellants. There's also the letter from the city. Correct. That also came in. What came in today was the request for deferral. And you're able to go to the property. And we got a letter from public work saying she was. It would be convenient to use the property for mainstream reconstruction. Okay. Hey. Is Kim on. Yes. Kim, are you, were you planning on speaking on this? I'm available to the agree that there's questions on it. Yes. Okay. I didn't know if you had a commentary on the deferral. So. Scott, your comment was it wouldn't be a good idea to deferral. Because this relates to a violation separate from what might be worked out by DPW right now. Is that right? I see is two different things. Okay. We have an appeal before the board tonight. Right. Was the violation that is issued correctly or not. But we have this other matter of public works has interests. The property owner has interest in what the property might be. Those are really two different things. But again, it's up to the board. It's conceivable. Something could be worked out within the deferral period. Or not. Hey, Jay. Yeah. I'm here for the appellate. Oh, okay. Hi, Matt. Good. Just run me through your deferral thoughts. Well, Jeff. Nick is here for the appellate. Obviously I'm his counsel. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. We were urged today. By several communications. To seek this deferral. To head off what. Could be just an unpleasant appeal and follow up to that. And with the kind of mutual understanding that. DPW could really use this property. possibly in the future for things that are going to be happening. And our client has entered into discussions with one of the contractors hired by DPW to do the work and things are kind of just hinging on that. I had discussions with Kim today about this. Kim urged me to assist my client to request the deferral. So we did. And we're fine. I mean it was it was at the urgent of the city and this is just an odd situation where one department very much wants to see this property used the way DPW wants to use it. And now we're hearing this reluctance to even consider a deferral and the suggestion that this is not the appropriate place to do it. So I'd just like to make that clear for the record. There are other city departments that are on board with this deferral, the manors office, fire chief, police chief. So it just I want you to be aware of that. This didn't pop up. It's not like a delay tactic by my client. It was brought about at the urgent of city. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you there. Yep. This is Jeff Necklin. I've been on the phone for the last few days as Matt indicated with police chief, fire chief, the mayor's office and everybody would like to see this used for the purposes of the Main Street project. It's a critical piece of property that sits right in the middle of the project. This is the multi-million dollar project that's going to benefit everybody. It's a critical piece of real estate that's right there very, very convenient. And I know that the city's indicated or somebody's indicated to the public works department to eat up my parking spaces in the library on when they could be using our property. So it seems like a very reduced real estate for the city to take advantage of. After that, the ultimate I guess the post action we would be taking to this particular hearing if there was deferral would be to file a joint application with DPW for a temporary use of property. Yeah, I hear you. I'm curious what other members of the board think. I mean I have a sense of what I'm just what I want to do, but I'm curious with the board. It seems we do grant these deferrals pretty often and this circumstance seems like there's no thoughts in the air on the property that it's immediate seems to make sense to do the deferral. Yeah, I tend to agree. I'm also a little I'm a little, I don't want to say worried, but I wouldn't love to have a decision saying it is or it isn't a violation right and then have somebody try to work out an agreement for parking in light of that. I'd much rather see what shakes out amongst DPW and Mr. Nick over the next sort of 60 days. You know, I don't feel a compelling need to really rush into a decision on this given the conversations taking place and the potential need use of the property for somewhat related to for a purpose somewhat related to what we're asking is a violation, you know. So I'm inclined to grant the deferral and see what happens. I mean we do regularly grant these and to some degree if Mr. Nick just said I was in Florida or away, we'd probably grant it anyway. That there's not going communications or gives me that sort of gives me some degree of confidence that that this is not, you know, the completely most adversarial situation we've seen in front of us, you know. It's not pickleball. Yeah, I also for what I'm okay with granting the deferral I my my only annoyance is that it's been used as a service parking lot for quite some time that permits are, you know, expired like expiring. So, but yeah, I think considering the big projects and DPW's interest in the site, I'm okay with the deferral but it seems to happen to work in this favor. Hey, if I just may clarify is Jeff Nick again. Hi Jeff. The reason that a lot was used for parking in the last few years is we granted pots the right to use our land. Jeff, Jeff, I just want to go I don't want to go into that part of it because then we're sort of bleeding a deferral into an argument. I understand that argument was made and I don't want to take testimony on it. We haven't opened the record that's not me commenting one way or the other. I just don't want to get into the city and you back and forth on this particular topic before we open the hearing. So, having talked about this, I would move that we grant the deferral and extend and defer this for 60 days to our April, first meeting in April. Second left. Okay. All those in favor? One question or anything. Yeah. Ask if anybody in the public wants to speak on this. That will be opening the hearing. Okay. Okay. Anybody in the public would like to submit comments before the April meeting. They're of course welcome to do that. All right. No, no, no, so that so it is deferred. Good luck. Okay. So the next, the next item on our agenda is a certificate of appropriateness and Z 245 ZP 23 Apple. Did I have that right 23 ZP 235 45 Apple tree point road the mileage existing house rebuild new house on existing footprint. Do we have the applicant in front of us? Yeah, several applicants say that let's go through the less than zoom. Okay. Who is so I should do a I swear everybody in all those people who would like to testify on this project, please raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you're about to provide in the matter under consideration is true and correct under the pains and penalties of perjury. I do. Yes, I do. All right. So who wants to start with the project? I do want to take this and take it. Mary, is it is it typical that you kind of described the project like you did with the DAB or would you like us to do that? I think it would be a good idea for the project team to kick it off. Okay, sure. Yeah, I typically like to hear from the project team and you know, the board has to read the staff report we understand generally what the project is we've seen the plans. Okay, so you know, run us through it but by all means, we have materials we've looked at them. Okay. All right. My name is Patrick from Ramsey Gord architects here in Burlington. We began working with the owner of this property, the client, probably about a year ago. And it was their intent when they bought the prop the home to remodel it. You know, as a as a year round, as it is, you know, currently a year round house. We found through a lot of, you know, back and forth with builders and engineers. That the house would be better suited for a number of reasons that it be demolished and rebuilt in the current footprint. And in doing so, we would raise the finished floor of the house approximately 18 inches. That would help us with floodplain considerations. We'd be able to correct a lot of structural deficiencies with the house water management issues, you know, both with the building itself and the property. We would also be able to create a a, you know, a building envelope that is built to modern standards and meet the energy requirements and mechanical systems requirements of Burlington. So you can see from the drawings you guys have looked through the staff report in the drawings I assume the the owner. The owner really liked the way the original cottage looked. And in rebuilding that it's not our intent to really stray too far from from that intent of the original cottage. So you'll see we've maintained most of the massing. You know, the garage, you know, the lake facing dormers a lot of the window openings remain the same. There is a change of materials. Just kind of, you know, moving to a metal roof some vertical siding versus horizontal siding stuff like that. So that is the project in a nutshell. We also have Ram keelman on here from Wagner Hodgson who has been working with us on the site planning and a lot of a lot of that stuff so if he would like to kind of describe what what they've been doing. I'll let Rem do that. Yes. Can everybody hear me. Yep. All right. So my name is rem keelman and I work for Wagner Hodgson landscape architecture. Thank you Patrick, and thank you to the board for listening to our project so we, we have a fairly, a fairly simple landscape design here. You know what we have done with the entry drive is just re grade it so that we have a low point, which spills a lot of the storm water into that northeast meadow, which then runs into a rain in overflow rain garden. You know, during larger storm events. We have reduced the driveway and auto court area by about 1000 square feet and have moved, moved the garage to the end of the structure. As you can see, you know, from the north side of the house. And in its in the existing location of the auto court, we have put a small stone patio to provide a little bit of outdoor leisure space and some protection from the winds of the lake. The majority of the planting. The existing planting on site is being kept. For the exception of two cedar trees which are currently growing about a, you know, six inches from the northwest corner foundation. So we will be removing those. We are, we are due to the area of redevelopment shown here in this diagram in pink. We are balancing that out, you know, if you will, through the use of Lomo, which, which is represented here through green hatching. The majority of the time we, you know, we locate that Lomo right at the lake shore, but due to, you know, the raising up of the property. You know, we found that, you know, the drainage will often spill off still off to the east and west of the property. So we're paying that up and around. Okay. I think that's about it. One question. Just, what was the elevation in the original house and see you have a little bit more basins than this one. I'm just curious what how much higher this one is in the original. Yeah, sure. So the, so the existing residence was 104.1. And we are raising that up 18 inches to 105.6. And the garage was 103. And it's now 103.9. Thank you. Mm hmm. It's my understanding that there's some area areas of this site that were previously undeveloped and they are now developed. Is that true? In undeveloped. Meaning paving my understanding is that the footprint of the house has slightly changed. The footprint of the, of the structure, the house. I think that's what you're referring to not like the drive quote or anything. The footprint of the house remains the same. It's unchanged. Was, was, was it the driveway that, that's, yeah, I guess it was parking area. Okay. I have a question for the architect, I guess, doing the choice of citing material and its application change from before the design of ours report to now. Can you repeat the second half of the question is just a little jumpy. I'm asking if the. Signing application of materials have changed since it was reviewed by the design advisory board. It has not. What you, the, the primary change. Since we were in front of the design advisory board. Was our. Access steps to the house on the lake side. Were wider than existed. That exists currently. We have since worked with the homeowner and reduced what was a double door and therefore double wide steps to a single door that you can see on the south elevation. So that we can have smaller steps to maintain the. Sorry, I was mostly referring to the siding material. Didn't, didn't. Didn't I just hear that there was a materials change? The, the, the current, the current siding on the house. There's some photographs here and actually there's a side by side up on your screen right now. A lot of the house is standard clapboard right now. And the, the owner has asked us if we could do that in a vertical siding. So. That's right. So when we presented this to the design advisory board, it was a vertical siding, but it's currently exists as horizontal clapboards. Right. And that's the peak of that. It is, yep. On the rendering, it looks horizontal, but it'll be on a picture. It'll basically be the other. Yes, so what's on your screen right now, I believe is you have a side by side of the existing south elevation at, at eighth inch scale. The proposed south elevation at quarter inch scale. So that's the, that's the difference there. Just one more question about the, I guess it's the, the pica siding. Yes. And the interest of durability, durable materials. It looks like, you know, type of spruce type siding that would have not some imperfections in it. We felt like an all of those. You can see this to be a durable material. Looks like it has a lot of knots and imperfections in it. Ramsey, can you speak to that at all? Yeah, sorry. I know it's becoming a very, I know it's becoming a very common cladding system. It's actually something that's been used in Japan for centuries because of its longevity. It's a process of actually charring the wood that creates a resistance to weathering. This is part of the thought process behind the selection, given the, the abuse that it gets at the lake. Thank you. Yeah, I'm here. I'm just listening. Are there any, I'm just letting the board run through your question run through the questions. Are there any, is there anybody in the audience who wants to speak on this agenda item. I can't see the room very well in the smalls. No. Yeah, the way with the big thing up the little 645 pine is quite small. Is there anybody in the audience who wants to be heard on this? I see some people in attendance. I don't know if they're interested in speaking. If you do raise your hand. Okay. I would only add conservation board reviewed this last night and recommended approval as submitted. So that has been that review went successfully and as submitted, we see the same as what they saw. Yes, Mary. Yes, that's true. So the plans we have or what they saw and recommended approval on. No, yes, that's correct. Okay. Because I know that we're revised plans. I want to make sure we're approving the right thing. Or maybe approving the right thing. Anything else the board wants to inquire of the applicant. No, just making sure for clarity from, from my side. So one of the concerns I think in the steps findings initially was for maybe with the DB was that the turnaround spot service parking potentially included space from one car bringing the total amount of parking over the maximum. So in this updated that slightly narrowed area with the one car that was just made slightly smaller little spur. Is that correct? Is that question aimed towards, towards me. There were revisions to the plan which minimize the size of the out of court men minimize the amount of parking and took all of the increased encroachments within the waterfront set back out. So the revisions have addressed all the concerns that came up in the design advisory board meeting. What were there any conditions from the conservation board merit. No, it didn't seem that way in the right of no. There were none. Well, I suppose with that, anything else the applicant would like to add. No, nothing, nothing for me. I'm looking like you have something to look at. No. With that, I'd close the public hearing on this agenda item. I was wondering if the board would entertain a brief discussion about this project before we move on to the neighborhood code presentation so that we can. We don't have to deliberate later on the project. I think. It is. Of relatively well conceived project. And seemingly like it meets the standards. So I'm wondering if the board would have a problem. Approving it now without deliberation at the end of the meeting. Have any issue with that. So anything we need to add or discuss. I think, I think it sounds like we are all in agreement. I'll make a motion on it. Okay, Brad. I move that I don't have the number in front of you, but the. 23545. 23545 that we prove the application stops as findings and recommendations and to leave the one condition regarding the conservation boards, we already have that. Yep. I'll second that. All those in favor. There we go. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, everyone. So the final. Item on our agenda tonight under other business is a neighborhood code presentation. By the office of city planning. Okay. Thank you. I haven't been to the RV in a while. So I wasn't sure how you prefer to be referred. So thank you to the staff also for inviting us to come and share the pending neighborhood code recommendations with all of you. Sarah is pulling up a presentation we're going to run through. But I know many of you may have heard about the neighborhood who have been involved in discussions about the neighborhood code. Over the course of the last, you know, 12 to 18 months as we've been talking about the sort of foundational level, the housing policies that we're hoping to help. Foster through the neighborhood code. As well as a joint committee process more recently to actually develop the recommendations. We're coming to you tonight as the city council after meeting last Monday formally received the recommendation and schedule a public hearing for later this month. We'll have other opportunities over the next several weeks for folks to hear more about this and share feedback and the lead up to that. To that public hearing and ultimately this we anticipate that this will be on the council's radar for consideration over their next several. So, because you all have a deep level of understanding of the zoning ordinance and its application through the work that you're doing. The presentation that we're going to share with you tonight is a bit more technical than some of the presentations we've been sharing in other contexts. In order to help directly illuminate for you what the proposed changes would do in terms of the residential zoning districts of the city. We've pulled out some of the background about the wise and some of the assessment that we've done that brought us to these recommendations but happy to answer questions if you have them about how we see these recommendations. First question this are bad start with the DRB not the D were the other DRB but we're made. Sorry about that. Good start. The other D that developed. So we'll just give you a nice slide. Next slide. Thank you very much. Wow. So, we're on the road and design review board. We're off to the right. All right. So, the explicit purpose of the neighborhood code is to allow more housing types, citywide in our residential districts. The neighborhood code proposes to allow do you flex triflx and for unit buildings in all residential districts, as well as town homes and some small, small multi unit building types in other locations as well. We're bringing this forward. I said I'm not going to talk a lot about the wise, but I think it's important to just note that there are sort of three major things that are. Yeah, the box. Oh, we don't have to see anything. We are bringing for these recommendations to address kind of three big things that we are our office is working on. The first is to help us move forward recommendations of our comprehensive plan to be TV for the city. And specifically, some of the recommendations that action items that were in the 10 point housing plan from 2021. And compliment the work that we've been doing at the city wide level and another more intensive mixed use areas of the city to help us address more of the housing needs that we have citywide. We're trying to approach this in a way that helps us provide additional housing opportunities that complement ones that we already have. Particularly thinking about benefits of more neighborhood scale housing solutions to things like utilizing existing infrastructure in the city, providing more housing type choice and different neighborhoods around the city, to help us expand our tax base incrementally through homes in existing neighborhoods and provide more opportunity for the kind of evolving needs of households and the community at large in our housing type choice. And then finally, the work that we're doing is also apart being informed by new requirements from the state legislature. You may be familiar with the bill from 2023 that was called the home act. We used a new set of statewide zoning requirements for all municipalities to comply with. But this is in in part in Burlington informing some of the work that you'll see here in the neighborhood code and will inform other zoning changes that we'll be making to in the coming year. One of the questions that we are always asked when we talk about the neighborhood code is, you know, why the neighborhood code why not up so many other friends of the city and I think you as DRB members are are much more familiar with some of the significant changes that have been made in the city zoning code in the last decade, things like the form code for down pound changes that we've made to parking policy changes that we've made to enable more accessory dwelling units and balance our short term rental regulations or be more explicit about our short term rental regulations. Many of these bigger initiatives that you're more familiar with have really helped us to address areas of the city that our future land use plan talks about being places that we're planning to grow in a more significant way really accommodate the greatest intensity of future development. In the neighborhood code we're talking about the residential areas of the city, where our code or future land use plan comprehensive plan talks more about, you know, more incremental change over time. And the neighborhood code has been carefully thought out in terms of how to help us address some of the barriers that exist in our zoning ordinance today that allow for some of that incremental change and act again as a complement to some of those other zoning changes that have been implemented in recent years. I think it's important when we kind of layer all these future land uses together to just note that when we're talking about the neighborhood code we're only talking about the residential districts. But when you see if you see subsequent maps in our presentation there may not be as many here tonight as normal presentations, you'll see some holes in the map. And we wanted to just provide this as a very high level overview that the areas that you see in blue are going to be the areas that we're talking about for the rest of this presentation. And we do also have all of these areas that are involved that allow housing in many cases at much greater intensities than what we're talking about either existing in our residential districts are proposed under the neighborhood code. And it's really those areas in green, the areas that have been identified as our important natural resource areas, areas of conservation our parks, and just really some small areas remaining that are in red. The remaining portions of the south end enterprise districts and the VHS site that don't allow for any housing development call so we also provide this just as context to remind folks that the city does have a limited land area and only about 60% of the city's land area actually allows for any form of development including residential development. So, as we talk about solutions like the neighborhood code this helps us realize new housing opportunities in a landlocked city that can't grow outward like some of our neighboring communities. This is a quick overview to the four main requirements from the home act that the neighborhood code is addressing again, I mentioned that there are some other pieces of the home act that will inform other zoning amendments in the coming year but these are the four key ones that we're addressing here. The first is that the state said statewide in all areas served by water and sewer municipalities have to allow at least five dwelling units per acre as a minimum density. For those of you that kind of remember and know our residential districts off the top of your head. You might say, great, we already need that. We do with a caveat, which we'll talk about a little bit more, except for explicitly in the RL larger lab overlay zone, which limits density to only 4.4 units per acre. So, at minimum we have to address that point and we have to address some kind of related issues that are further down in this chart. But the neighborhood code proposes to do this by moving away from a dwelling unit per acre standard as the kind of four way that we regulate intensity and instead propose regulating building mass and scale in these residential areas. The next issue is again statewide all communities, then this includes places outside of water and sewer must treat duplex and single family homes with 80 us the same as a single family home without one. So you may remember in recent years we made some changes to make our rules more flexible. That was also something the state said you need to make your 80 you rules more flexible. They've now come back and said you also need to treat duplexes the same way you treat single family homes. So this is a major change for us in that in the RL districts, the RL districts are the only district in the city that requires a minimum of lot size, but we also require a larger lot size for a duplex in RL. That's a good question. And what we are proposing is that these be treated as permitted uses. But yes, that's been an area of kind of like question. Yeah. Yeah. So again, we're in the neighborhood code actually proposing that we and the joint committee that worked on this are proposing reducing the minimum lot size requirements in RL. Um, this thing has also said that three and four unit buildings must be a required or must be an allowed use by right. Anywhere where residential uses are allowed. So today, the, again, the main district that this impacts is RL. We do not currently allow three and four unit buildings in RL and less a property is larger than two acres and can utilize the plan unit development standards. So we are again, as we pivot to more explicitly regulating the mass and scale of buildings, we are also proposing to provide more flexibility for the number of units that can be in a building, but putting caps on those numbers at four units per building in RL and six units in RL. And then the final thing that I think is very important to your work is that the home access that DRB decisions cannot limit the density building footprint or height that's allowed in the zoning code or require larger lots or more parking than otherwise be required. So in our review, we don't think that the city standards currently are necessarily explicitly out of compliance with this, but we are recommending some guiding language in article six in particular to just make sure that this is really clear in terms of how you review projects in the future. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. So, I mean, I've read the home act. I tend to think that the way it's written is that I think these are to be permitted uses not conditional uses within that smaller scale, right, like for four units or less. That's how we read it, AJ as well. But I, the only reason I said what I said is because I know there has been a lot of question about whether letting something exist in a neighborhood but requiring it to go through conditional use still needs the spirit of the law. And I know that's a question that some other communities are working through in terms of how they approach this so we're taking the approach that these would be permitted. Mm hmm. Yeah, I understood. What's the response I mean, what's the response been in terms of the community's response or yeah, well, I'll say that over the course of the conversations that we've been having we've been hearing a lot of mixed responses. We've heard a lot of, especially in our engagement work over the summer. We heard a lot of openness and agreement about the need for more housing and more housing solutions. We've heard a lot of excitement about the opportunity for more of these, you know, 234 unit buildings in neighborhoods across the city. We, at the joint committee level, we had a lot of discussion about the kind of in the weeds mechanics of the specific proposals in the neighborhood code. I think some folks wanted certain provisions to go further in terms of being more permissive. Others, I think, recognize that the sort of requirements of the home act and the proposal that we have in the code does represent a lot of change for the city's residential zoning framework. And didn't want to go much further. And now that this has been introduced to the council I'd say we're hearing a mix of, you know, again folks that would like to see this go further in terms of enabling more housing creation in these areas. And also folks that have raised questions about the appropriateness of some of these changes so I'd say it's been quite right, white, white a wide ranging issue. Sure. So there's no criteria to maintain scale of the street. Right, so the particularly because the the new requirements under the state law are introducing new and different building types that have for many neighborhoods long, either long been illegal or maybe have never been legal. We do recognize that it means that some new buildings might look different in terms of their form and so getting into the new requirements a little bit more we can show you how the approach to that in terms of setting some like overall building types requirements that we think are going to be more compatible, allow for some change and allow for some new building types to be included in neighborhoods, but help keep things in a more compatible scale to building types. Good question. We've been asked a lot about whether we're defining building types the way that we do in the downtown form code for example. We are not proposing to do that with the neighborhood code but when I say building types actually Sarah could you skip ahead one slide. These are the kinds of buildings that we've been talking about enabling or aiming to enable in the neighborhood code. I'm referring to building types Sean I'm referring to these types of duplex through four unit buildings in some locations we've been talking a lot about the house type developments or even small building that could be about the same size as a small row of townhouses. Megan. Can I ask a question about that. So, the two freestanding buildings on the same lot what what would the logic be about not allowing those but allowing a duplex I mean, we've worked out in a few met cases and our own practice. You know, I've seen it here in some projects. Ridiculous connectors built between. Yeah, those things that creates this like. Stupid connection simply to make it a duplex when. You know, now. Hard when you could just convert the garage to another unit and a half and call it its own thing without it being an accessory dwelling you right. It's a great question and actually I really appreciate as I knew you guys are very in the weeds and you already have questions I think I might be able to answer some of them we've prepared a little bit more of a presentation so. So, if it would be okay, I'll try to kind of like quickly run through the rest of what we put together because some of this might be answered. Could you go. Thank you. So, AJ to kind of speak to your point what Sarah just had on the screen is more about our existing zoning. So, this is the sort of current, not all, but the major elements of our zoning code that regulate what can be built in residential areas today. And this has been really important we've we closely evaluated this in terms of enabling more of these middle scale housing types and figuring out which of them kind of. Extracting patterns from existing neighborhoods and figuring out which of them we might need to revisit in terms of how we get to a place where we enable more housing types. On the next slide was what the purpose of this is, is to show that using this existing framework means that many of these middle housing types that we've been talking about these building types are either not allowed at all today. Or in places where they are theoretically allowed the standards require either very large lot sizes or other conditions that make them very hard to actually implement. And then I was going to note here to that the small multi unit buildings that are over on the right was not originally part of the scope of the code that we were working on but with something that came up over the course of the committee's work, particularly as we think about a new district that we're going to introduce to you tonight. So again our aim is for somebody navigating the city's code to see more of this, which is more of these housing types being allowed. We know that some of these like cottage towards townhouses and small multi unit buildings will still be locationally sensitive in terms of the lot size or the lot dynamics that are needed to successfully implement them. So ultimately, particularly for the ones on the left side of this we want this to be more permissive. And so, bringing us back to what our standards are today. We are actually able to. Well, right. I think we're throwing a lot out and I think the purpose of this and we'll walk through what we're actually changing is that many of these standards we are proposing to keep, we're proposing to change them in order to make it more permissible. But the only two that we're proposing to throw out entirely one is the minimum lot size. And that applies only in our health today. And we're proposing to replace the density ratios with this new building footprint and unit standard. We're proposing to keep all of the other tools that we have and make changes to them to help us implement these goals. Can I Can I ask about the setback. Sure. One of the issues that we've seen and that I've seen in people developing sites is that setbacks are often measured by reference to neighboring setbacks or as percentages of width or depth or sit things like that. And, you know, there's a long history of where that came from in terms of, you know, creating neighborhood uniformity. But neighborhood uniformity is not what we're trying to perpetuate. Right. Because if that was the case, we'd have the same density we have today, etc, etc. When you say you're keeping the setbacks retained front and side as is. Is there any consideration given to normalizing that just to a number because it's a lot easier to just know it's 10 feet or 15 feet or 20 feet as opposed to, you know, measuring my neighbor's property or this property. Yeah, it's a great question. And we had a long discussion about this at the joint committee level. I would say that this was an issue that was, people were really mixed on this issue. We heard a lot of advocacy for particularly for the front setback, either being significantly standardized and significantly reduced or even getting rid of it. We did our staff did a lot of assessment in terms of the different setbacks that exist in different neighborhoods across the city, and the front setback ultimately is probably the most. I would say like immediately visible kind of characteristic that creates a pattern from the street level in the neighborhood. We felt that that was something really important for us to be mindful of as we think about these changes. Neighborhoods very widely so we thought that it would be difficult to set like an RL wide front setback that wouldn't, you know, create drastic changes neighborhood to neighborhood city wide. We also did a little bit of work to figure out where in the city, any sort of change would actually be meaningful in terms of allowing like habitable area to be created in the front yard of an existing property and found that they're probably in most cases and left a building and already set back 4050 feet or more the likelihood that a front admission would help particularly allow a new unit would be very limited. So the one thing that we did change as part of the committee's work is actually set a maximum front setback. I think it was 25 feet. So if the average results in somebody needing to set back 40 or more, they're only required to set back 25 feet. So that was one of the ways that we're trying to deal with really deep lock conditions. But I think to your point AJ, a big part of the reason why we're recommending recommending standardizing the rear setback again as a percentage of a lot step that can be really, it's not transparent in terms of what you actually need to provide as a rear setback. Do you think that standardizing a rear setback can still provide an ample amount of separation in terms of buildings on to kind of back to back lots and will also help us to recognize and realize the potential that the really deep lots that exist in the city could have to create new units in the rear of those. Right, right. So you just subdivided you change the context right. So either by allowing a second building to your point earlier or through a subdivision, which is right because you've changed a lot size you can subdivide it and create a new freestanding developable lot. Yeah. Right, which changes your, your setback because it's no longer your back property line. Got it. These are the things then kind of grouped into three buckets we're updating key dimensional standards regulating mass instead of density and then we're modifying some of the residential districts boundaries. The next few slides just show kind of where explicitly we're making recommended changes. We've already talked about kind of in the top left for RL. Removing that minimum lot size requirement. We are recommending an increase of the lot coverage limit from 35 to 45%. And you can see over on the right standardizing the depth instead of 20 feet 25% of the lot that at least 20 feet we're saying 20 feet. 10% bonus on the lot coverage and RL. Yes, yes. And then for RM, we're just proposing the change to the lot coverage go from 40 to 60. This is based on a lot of assessment of the existing lot coverage. I think you all probably know this that many of the lots because much of the RM areas of the city used to be RH and we're built before we zone them are many of them are already at or over the existing 40% lot coverage. And this neighborhood in particular the old north end was one of the neighborhoods that flagged for us when we were doing our ADU reform work as being problematic because of the lot coverage limits for people to add a new ADU. So we're actually recommending that we actually formally change the RM for 40 to 60 and standardize the rear setback at 15 feet. We're not making as many changes in our age the lots are very small and for the most part I think the standards are working in our age so the only thing from these standards that we're recommending the change to is again standardizing that rear setback. And then we're proposing a new residential corridor district, which would apply to properties that front that are in the residential districts that front on North Avenue, Holchester Avenue and Shelburne Road, St. Paul Street. And this would allow for similar kind of buildings to be built along those corridors as what you might see in RH. So these are smaller, we're still limiting the size of the buildings but allowing for more of like the small multi. So, could you repeat again the quarters zones are yes, there are residential properties but front on North Avenue, Holchester Avenue and Shelburne Road and up into St. Paul Street. As we kind of move over to the next set of issues regulating building size instead of density. Just going to show you a couple of images that we've been using in a lot of our discussions. Evan will be familiar with this. One of the things that we have kind of uncovered is that people have very different perceptions of what a numerical density means from what it might actually look like on the ground. And this is a really good example of what we mean by that these are four nearly identical buildings all in the old North end within a couple blocks of each other probably used to be single family homes converted to duplexes. They all have some amount of off street parking for all intents and purposes, these are the same buildings, except only the two on the left would be allowed over our current density limits in RM today, the two on the right would not be permitted. And this is, you know, just a really confusing kind of situation for a lot of people who might see there's a duplex in a building just like mine on the next street over why can't I do the same thing. And as I think you all know this is really this really comes down to a function of how big is the lot that that building is on and whether or not you could actually technically have a second unit. So if you've changed it to 60% and the 70% more of those. But it's not about lock coverage in this case it's about the dwelling unit per acre limit of density that would still prove those. If you skip ahead Sarah so one of the things that we've looked at is, you know, trying to understand what is the outcome of a density limit. The example that I just shared of limiting buildings like duplexes is sort of one end of the issue with the density standard. The other end of the density standard issue can be that if you have a really big lot. You can actually build a really big building. And that may not always be what folks are looking for in terms of the scale of buildings in a certain context. These are some examples of real building footprints in the city kind of moving from small to large, single family to multi family. We can see that we have a wide diversity of them. But when we look at the next slide some of those on the left can feel like outliers we call these in some cases like the sausage buildings that were created over time. Under these density rules you can imagine like backs of lots just getting filled in and filled in with continuous building. So we want to try to address the kind of concern about the scale of those buildings in these contexts. And again, by replacing with these new standards that regulate the massive buildings instead you can skip ahead and see that we're still creating flexibility for how those larger buildings might be able to be used primarily by allowing more than one building on a lot. But hopefully the buildings themselves can feel more contextual in their setting. We also know from the work that we've been doing specifically when we talk about this new corridor district that the presence of RL zoning directly on a street like North Ave or Shelburne Road can make it difficult for us to introduce new buildings that provide housing and locations that are served by transit that are walkable or you know are in areas of the city that could provide more access to housing of different types. So this is an example that we've been looking at about how new buildings could be introduced along the Avenue on an existing site for example. So this is what the next series of changes are targeted at. Again, replacing all the way on the left you can see an RL and RM replacing the dwelling unit per acre limit in terms of that density limit with these new limits on the overall size of a building's footprint. So that's if we were kind of looking down in plan view and measure the outside perimeter of the building 1800 square feet is the limit. We worked really closely with an architect that helped us actually sketch through what that means to make sure that livable size units can fit in an 1800 square foot footprint, particularly in a building that has more than one unit in it. And trying to ensure that you know multi bedroom units can be part of this. We want, we've heard a lot about housing options for people that are not just kind of like efficiency apartments, family units, opportunities for home ownership. So we've set these limits to help provide flexibility for what types of units could be within them. And then for the back building where again we're enabling up to a second building on these lots. We've set the limit for the max footprint for those buildings smaller. And for each of these districts set a limit on the number of units per. In our age. We are not proposing to be as specific. We have a 40 unit per acre density limit and our age today which is pretty high and again it's working for the size of the properties that we have down there. So as you pivot to this building footprint limit, our age really works for us to just kind of limit the overall development intensity by lot coverage and the setback and other requirements height limits. But then again in the new corridor district that we're introducing this allows for a slightly larger just one max building footprint. We set this at 3600 because we were working through a potential housing type of like a row of three to five townhouses. We've heard a lot of interest in that as a housing type to expand home ownership. 3600 feet is about the right size you need to get a small row of townhouses. And over the course of the committee's work, the committee, many of the committee members said, let's just use that as an overall kind of building size limit and be flexible about whether that's three to five townhouses or maybe it's a small multi unit building. So, there's 80%. So this would be it, you know, more more intensity on this board. All right. So self interest on because I've done one of those. Okay, okay. How do you envision that transformation. Yeah, that's a great question. I think in, in the short term, it'll be, you know, some of these lots that are really deep, maybe being rebuilt as with a corridor building on them. But I think in general with all of these. It's very likely that this will be pretty incremental. We've heard from outside of those only changes that we're proposing. We've heard from a lot of folks just about the realities of, you know, actually purchasing and building meeting all the code requirements, etc. That it might be that there will still be some challenges there. So as we've been working through these recommendations, we've also been testing them back at multiple levels. So these are just some diagrams that show how what the different potential outcomes could be of these zoning changes in the different districts. So I think to your question, Brad, we certainly think and based on experience of other communities. We anticipate that we'll see more backyard infill or maybe expansions of existing buildings. Before like tear downs and replacements of existing buildings, particularly in the RL and RM, because of the financial realities of acquiring and demoing and rebuilding in those contexts. But this presents a whole range of what the options could look like if you apply the code and any of those scenarios in RL and RM. These are the building types that could be possible in RH and on the corridor. Again, these, these areas might have a little bit more capacity to evolve because the intensity is different than in RL and RM. We've also been looking at how these might be incorporated into sort of existing fabric of different areas of the city in these residential districts. We've actually working through kind of standard lot sizes and building placements in areas of the city's own RL and RM in particular, and what it could look like for either those additions or rear yards or replacements to actually fit within that context. And then we've even been looking at this through the help of a partnership with AARP providing some technical assistance to us. We've even been looking at this as like, what if we actually have a lot. So this is an example of a 10,000 almost 10,000 square foot lot in RL with an existing single family home on it and just trying to understand again the combination of these rules, the reality of what someone might build. Like what could an outcome actually look like. And this is actually a really interesting example of a funky shaped lot to just show a couple different examples on the lot of, you know, a detached carriage house with an ADU above it, or even a duplex in the rear yard that still fits within the lot coverage limits and everything that is here. So just be more likely. RL songs to the RL. This is, yeah, this is an example of RL. One of the, I'm going to read this, I would say it was, but it shows the percentage of home ownership in the city. It's considered quite low. It doesn't seem like this is going to actually help increase the amount of ownership in the city. And so if you can you skip ahead, Sarah. We'll get back to this. So one of the things that in, first of all, in terms of allowing the townhouse style units, I think that's one of the things that we've talked a lot about is like, feels like a very realistic housing type in the city for home ownership. And the other issue we're going to be following on this set of recommendations with two other details. One is about specific standards for a cottage port development, which is, I think you might know what this is like. Yeah. So more explicitly enabling those which could allow for some new home ownership opportunities like small free standing homes on the shared lot. And then the last thing, honestly, one of the biggest things, and this is kind of like a sneaky thing when we talked about it's not a loose that it's related but is that not a size requirement. The city is not growing out and the only way that we can create new developable lots, even for single family homes is that we have to enable smaller lots to be created through subdivision. And so that's actually one of the important changes here that I think this could open up. Because lots don't exist today, those buildings don't exist today, but we're opening up the potential that they could in the future. And then I feel like in the only way we can do this right is by shrinking lot size increasing lot coverage and creating two lots out of one. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And if you looked at the new act changes that are in the committee right now. That are in committee right now that we're introducing Friday. Yeah, not yet. They're, it's interesting. So two things. 50% they're making a lot, a lot coverage anywhere water and sewer. And then the other thing is bonus coverage if you allow access through your property onto a subdivision that's internal. I see. So trying to open up. If you build an alley and you use some of your coverage to do that to access somebody else's lot in the center of a block. It gives you a 20% bonus. So that's what this is. That's the interesting way they're framing it that would change some. That's odd. Yeah. It's just the way it is. And I just saw it come up so I looked at it. Right. An opportunity for me to comment to the committee why that's not really. Okay. No, because it's already in the district that is mixed use and allows for higher intensity residential development. And that's true for both avenue. There are, there are spots within a lot of north out like the. Yeah, yeah. Not possible thing. And actually, I think that's an important note. Same is true for Colchester Avenue parts of Colchester Avenue are already in institutional district so we're not changing anything about the areas there. This is just for the areas on the RL. All right. If I can, if you'll indulge me for five more minutes, the last part of this is, we are proposing to just the map of residential districts. So we've got a series of maps here to show you. You actually just tonight saw an example project that's in the waterfront low density district on apple tree. We have looked and talked with Scott and his team about the fact that we have a separate RL waterfront from an RL and a. RM waterfront from the RM district, we're actually proposing to just make all of that RL and make sure that the way that our design review standards are written. And encompass areas that would otherwise been included. So that's the first set of changes that you see here. The second set of changes is to propose some areas be rezoned from RL to RM. And then one small area that's proposed to be rezoned from RM to reach. This really has to do with helping the standards be more closely aligned with what's on the ground in those neighborhoods already today. We've done a lot of research about the history of zoning changes in the city. Some of you probably know that history pretty well in terms of particularly the evolution from having just one zoning district citywide that buildings were able to be built under until 1970s. In the 70s, we actually started to make a distinction between RL RM and RH. And then between the 70s and 90s we actually then further changed some areas that were higher the intensity to a lower zoning category. So what that's resulted in is a lot of non conformities that exist in particularly kind of in small and isolated areas of the city. So the committee looked at a couple of issues, including last size and lot coverage and brought forward some recommendations about areas, these five areas that are called out here in the bright gold as recommending to be changed from RL. Those are neighborhoods with smaller houses. Smaller houses, smaller. And you're going to turn that into RL. Imagine what you're going to gain with that. I don't want to give you how small the lots and houses are great. That's a great question. Yeah. And I would say that's actually part of the reason why we looked at this like one is about the patterns that are already there. And knowing that even under the proposed changes to RL in the neighborhood code, a lot of properties would still be non conforming. And changing to RM, for example, like we found some examples of properties that like wouldn't even be able to add like a rear addition onto their own house because of the lot coverage limits in RL. So some of this. But you didn't make changes to the old north end. The same way. Which is already RM. Yeah. And even some of it's our age actually. Because that is so much out of compliance with everything already. Yes. They have trouble doing any kind of additional types. And we have looked at that. And honestly, the question that's come up about whether, like, the older and then should be our age. We've actually found, we've looked at a lot of lots in that area and found that there are like outbuildings. This is something we're also going to. Just giving leading in terms of send backs. Do a lot for the old ones. Okay. Yep. The rear setback is one for sure. They have two feet right now. Yeah. And in addition, you know, just changes that, you know, I mean, they can't continue their way it is. And we talked to a lot of people who have like, they might have like a parking area that goes back to like an old garage or something that they'd like to be able to convert the garage into habitable space. But the combination of existing rules just precludes them from doing that for a certain reason. So that feels like an obvious way without needing to significantly expand law coverage. It feels like a way that we can try to be more creative too. So, um, I think we can skip ahead to the next one. We've talked about this creating these corridors. So this is a map of the properties that would be included within those corridors that we talked about. The other thing here that we included is a proposal to change the zoning for the Champlain elementary site from RL to RF. So folks may not know that that is in a residential zoning district like many of our schools. Um, as part of Plan B TV south end, one of the things that Plan B TV south end was looking at were lots that are in residentially zoned areas outside of the enterprise district and where housing opportunities could be enabled. And the backside of the Champlain elementary property over on the Shelburne roadside and like where they have the facilities buildings was an area that was identified as being potentially a future infill site. So we are recommending changing from RL to RM to help facilitate that if there were to ever to fruition. Sure. The current district, is it one lot deep? Great question. So it is one lot deep. And then kind of up to the same distance that the multimodal mixed use corridor. If you're familiar with that the parking district. I think is 250 feet from the street. So if a property is deeper than 250, it wouldn't fall within it. Which there's like five or a few. And then two small things, 60 Austin Drive folks. I don't know if folks know 60 Austin Drive. It is right before you kind of go around the curve on Austin Drive. It is currently a residential property next to I think it's like all worlds warehouse building. Yes. We are, it's as you're going back. But it is just like a standalone residential building. We've done a little bit of history on it. It is currently part of the enterprise life manufacturing district, even though our history suggests that it's long been a residential property. So we're actually proposing to rezone that property to be part of the RL. And through the PUD standards that property may have some flexibility in the future to add some more units. And then the other piece is just a portion of a residential lot on the far northern end of North Avenue that split zone. We're proposing that the boundary be more carefully drawn to incorporate an entire flat portion of the property at the top of the embankment that could provide smart flexibility even for like a meeting view on that lot. So those are the only changes to bring in properties that currently wouldn't allow residential into this. I think that's it that kind of shows the map on the left of our existing zoning districts and boundaries and the map on the right is what is under the neighborhood. Well, thank you for that. I'm assuming that's that is that you seem like you wrapped up. I did pause and then Sarah love to slide and it reminded me there's two other map related issues that I just want to briefly note. We have two overlay districts that are we're proposing to delete as part of the favorite code. The first is the RL larger lot overlay. When we talked about the things that are in the home act that are not compliant with those new rules the larger lot overlap overlays out of compliance for many reasons. The joint committee decided that it's not really in the spirit of the whole package of the neighborhood code so recommended that it be removed. We also have this RH high density bonus overlay that applies to just a portion of the sort of southeast corner of downtown that is functionally here though there are no properties that can be developed using the standards of that district anymore today. So we're proposing to just delete that. And the last piece here is about commercial uses we heard a lot of interest and advocacy for allowing more commercial uses and residential areas. So the only change that the neighborhood code proposes to make is that in this new residential district out under this like very neighborhood commercial use bucket be allowed as permitted uses. So those are things like you know bakeries restaurants small groceries etc. And off that there. All right. Well, and what's the timeline here what are we looking at. You think the city council is holding the city council is holding their public hearing on February 26. And we'll have a couple more opportunities between now and then for public comment and input. But from there, I'm not sure if the council may want to consider some changes but we're anticipating it seemed like from their discussion last Monday that they would like to be able to consider this under this council's term so sometime in the month or two. Okay. It probably won't show up until the agenda is posted. But the information is available on our website. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much for the thank you. There is no children program early. Children Street. That's my list of gaps. Yes. All right. Well. Thank you planning and zoning staff. You guys put a lot of work into this and. I know that the intent is to help us solve the city's housing crisis. Maybe everybody else can get a serious statewide as I think you guys have taken it. So thank you for that. Like people talking about active 50 reform maybe anyway. So with that, we have nothing else on our agenda. I will close the public hearing for the evening. And see you in two weeks. Okay.