 All right. Well, it looks like at least a few more people have trickled in. So we'll get started. First of all, welcome everyone to the May meeting of the Ward 5 NPA. My name is Billy Clark and I'll be moderating for at least the first part of this and I'll try to follow the instructions that we give for all people who speak. My name is Billy Clark. I live on Locust Terrace in Burlington. So I'm in Ward 5 and very excited to talk with you all tonight. We've been interesting discussion going forward. Just to give a little introduction to what is the NPA, just in case this is your first meeting. Oh, no, not how to use the Zoom webinar. We all know how to do that. But these are the guiding principles for our NPA. We are a safe space. We provide a safe and welcoming forum for all views. We seek to be accessible. We cultivate involvement with a diverse spectrum of community members. And we seek to minimize barriers to participation as you can hear my children are already trying to find, breaking down the barriers to participate. We are respectful. We are inclusive and culturally and economically aware. I know you can join in a second. We are vital, clearly. We are a fun, creative, and vital organization. We value varied perspectives and we are nonpartisan. I think that's in some ways the most important thing that we are. We are a forum for discussions, but we are not here to endorse political candidates or endorse things. We are here to bring community members together. So this is a Zoom webinar. So just in case you're not familiar with the webinar format, if you want to participate, there's a little raise hand function that you can use. And I will try to make sure I keep an eye and we'll ask my fellow steering committee members to keep an eye as well if there's someone who wants to participate. And when you raise your hand and we acknowledge you as a speaker, you can unmute your mic and speak and turn on your video to contribute. And with that, I'm going to switch over to the agenda, which I have on our handy dandy Word 5 MPA website, which is not immediately showing up. Hold on. Can't find the agenda. Well, I know what the first item on the agenda is, and that's public forum, which is where members of the public can speak about any issue they want. So while I look for the agenda, I'll open up public forum and see if there's anybody who wants to contribute. All right. And I see Jovial King with your hand up. So let me see if you are allowed to talk. You should be allowed to talk now, Jovial, if you unmute. Okay, I should be unmuted. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay, great. I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Jovial King and I live in the North End on Lakeview Terrace. And I am part of the team that is planning to redevelop 453 Pine Street in your neighborhood. So I just wanted to introduce myself. It's where I'm planning to have a bathhouse and a bowling alley developed in that area with federal and state funding. So I just wanted to just introduce myself and say I'm happy to chat with anyone that has any questions or concerns or wants to give us more feedback. So I just wanted to put it out there. So my email is jovialkingatgmail.com. That's jovialkingatgmail.com. If you want to be in touch, you'd be more than happy to get together for coffee or answer any questions. Well, thank you so much, Jovial. I definitely have some follow-up when I would love to find the time to talk with you. And I think we as a ward may even want to talk with you about coming and giving a little fuller presentation at one of our future meetings. Yeah, I would love to, absolutely. Yeah, sounds good. Great. Well, yeah. So very much looking forward to future conversations there. Great. Thank you so much. Of course. And I see Andy Simon, fellow Steering Committee member, has his hand raised. So I'll recognize him for public forum. You are still muted. Oh, there you go. Okay. Hi. My name is Andy Simon. I am on the Ward 5 Steering Committee. And but I wanted just to do a report. I brought up last meeting. I brought up the Green Up the Event at the Pine Street Bards Canal, which directly relates to what Jovial was talking about, since that's where the Bath House and Bowling Alley are planned to be built. And I wanted to just give a report on that event on May 7th on Green Up Day. We had approximately 140 people who showed up for that event and worked from 9 a.m. until I had to pull some people away at four o'clock in the afternoon because they were so kind of like, you know how you get when you're cleaning something up and you really want to finish it? Well, it was time to stop. But there is more to do. We got about 325 bags, garbage bags of garbage out of the woods at the Bards Canal. We also got a lot of bulky items that were too big to bag and some big pile of scrap metal and many bags of recyclable cans. So it was a great success. And I just wanted to give a report to people in the ward on that since there'll be a lot of attention on that land. And we have a group of people and I have formerly incorporated with the state as the friends of the Bards Canal. And with our mission is to care for and speak up for the land, the water, and the current inhabitants which range from mycelia threads under the ground to Canada geese on the water in the Bards Canal. And that's our, essentially our mission is to be the boys for all of the living beings that are inhabiting that wild land. And I will definitely be reporting back on what we're doing. And I look forward to working with as many of you as possible down there to make that a better place for all of us. Thank you. Great, Andy. Thank you so much. Andy, can I ask what was the strangest or most fun thing that you found in your searching through? Well, it's interesting because we started out with that. We started out the idea that we were going to do a treasure hunt, you know, and quickly found out that became aware of the fact that while there were very many interesting things down there left behind mostly by homeless people that had lived there, including lots of stuffed animals, and a pair of purple high-heeled shoes and one of those magic eight balls that you, you know, tell your fortune with. The other side of it, the sort of darker side and more dangerous side was that there were many, many, many used hypodermic needles that so we did not do the treasure hunt because we instead decided to organize into teams with it, with a couple of team leaders who were pulling the stuff out of the old encampment sites and designated people who were coming in on a signal from team leaders to pick up dangerous things. So there were many interesting things out there, among them the memories of many people who had made that place their home for years and it really brought home to people who were cleaning up all that day on May 7, how urgent it is to really address the questions of homelessness and the desperation that lead people to live out in the woods in a wetland with their kids and also the desperation that leads them to take drugs and be addicted. So it was an absolutely joyous day and everyone was who was out there including Jovial and her husband were, I think, aware of the darker side of it too. Thanks for the question. As is often the case, Andy, a flippant question for me leads to a very thought-provoking and interesting discussion from you, so I really appreciate that. It does, yeah, flag the houselessness issue and the safe disposal of these things and just and finding safe places for people's possessions who are in those situations. So really good things to flag. Terry, I see your hand is up, so I will stop lathering. Hey everybody, my name is Terry Rivers. I'm also a member of the Steering Committee for the NPA. Andy, I guess my question may be for Jovial also. Is this a planned bathhouse bowling alley going into the space that you cleaned up? The answer is mostly no. We mostly cleaned up on a parcel of land and I can let Jovial answer the question too, but a parcel of land is city-owned 11 acres that are to the west toward the lake of the land that Jovial is planning to buy and build on. There was cleaning up done for sure out in the front part, especially by families with kids. We didn't want kids in the woods and so kids were working with their family some out in the field where the private parcels are. So no, we were in almost entirely on public land, not on the private land. I would say though that there was some cleanup done on that on the private parcel, which was fantastic. So as you guys know and as Andy has been really bringing forward to folks that the whole barge canal area is 28 acres, which is privately held city land. And so what we're going to be developing is the four-acre parcel right along Pine Street, which is mostly that open field. And there's 5.0, which is all forested, which is part of a fun site. They're really dumped, but they're just absolutely endless. So that's going to, that land will be going into innovation and it still needs a lot more cleanup to be done and that help, you know, we can do that, Andy's help. But that open parcel is what Rick has owned and there was less man in there. It was really kind of more in towards canal. Joville, your audio is cutting in and out a little bit just to let you know. Thank you. Oh, and I stopped talking. I don't know if you want to do another question. I have another point to make on a different topic. It's all somewhat related, but a different topic. So again, I'm Billy Clark on the Student Committee, but I speak now just as a neighbor and a parent. As some of you may have heard and some of you on this call are intimately aware, Stepping Stones Daycare, which is a excellent preschool daycare facility right on the corner of Hayward and Howard that has been there for many, many years, was just listed for sale. The business and the building are currently listed for sale. And so we're in this transitional period where this excellent small daycare that's done a great job of creating many children in this neighborhood and fostering many children through faces a bit of an uncertain future. And so a group of parents has been in discussions about potential ways forward. Mostly what I just wanted to do today was just make people aware that this is happening. And, you know, if you're interested, if you have experiences with it, if you want to, you know, hear more, feel free to reach out to me. My email is on our website, but it's also just W.T. Clark, CLRK21 at Gmail. This is how you get kids like that to be coming all around. Hey, Winnie, do you want to say anything about Stepping Stones? Well, so I can't say it any better than that. So I love you. It's not like I love you. That's so good, Winnie. All right, well, I'm going to put us on mute now. I got my butt wet, and then we had to change ones. It was really funny. So that was the story about the awesome water slide they had at Stepping Stones. It is 717, so we are coming up to the end of public forum. If there's no one else, I will get up our agenda, which I now finally have up. And I believe it's the first thing we've got going on is a presentation about the Champlain Street Park. And I believe I saw Max here. Max, are you there? You are. Yes, I'm here. Hi, everybody. Excellent. Hi, Max. Hi. Glad to hear you like your school so much, too. Stepping Stones is pretty cool. All right, I'm going to pull up my presentation. All right. Can everybody see that? Yes. All right. So I'm Max Medelinsky. I am a project coordinator for Burlington Parks and Recreation. I happen to know a number of the folks on this NPA. You still live right on the corner there at Pine and Locust Street in the Jackson Terrace Apartments, but no longer moved up to the New North end, but still love seeing everybody whenever I can. So I'm here to talk to you a bit about Champlain Street Park. In case you're not familiar, don't know where this is. It's one of our smaller parks in Burlington, so I actually get this a lot when I tell people I've been working on design for this little pocket park at 187 South Champlain Street. So in the upper image here, you can see between King Street and Maple Street, and about mid block is this green dot here, this green park dot is Champlain Street Park, which is this long, skinny lot between a large brick building and what's currently a vacant lot, but is planned for like a three-story duplex at some point. So the park is in pretty, needs kind of an update. A lot of the fencing is in pretty poor shape, even by there. The sign is due for replacement. The garden beds are due for replacement, playgrounds due for replacement. So it's all stuff that's sort of come into a head. And so we got started on this before the pandemic, doing some outreach and got put on hold for a little bit there while budgets and stuff got sort of shuffled. And then starting up again last fall, we got back into doing our outreach, went around to all the NPAs, giving a presentation, just saying that we've got some fun set aside to work on the park, went and tabled in the park for about a week or so, had a lot of online surveys and worked with AALV to get those translated into a few different languages, sort of recognizing that there's a lot of people speaking a lot of different languages, particularly in this area of the city. And in total, we ended up with about 89 survey responses. We had about like 20 to 30 different people that we talked to at varying in-person events. And if you're one of the people who gave us a survey response or came and talked to us, just thank you so much for all your thoughts and feedback about what you'd like to see and do in the park. So here's a little summary of what we heard on the left side of the slide is some responses to informal questions we were asking, sort of open-ended things. And on the right side is just a count from both our in-person questions, as well as all of those survey responses of the different kinds of activities people would like to be doing in the park. And there's a pretty strong correlation between the two in terms of sort of the more open-ended questions, as well as what we kind of heard from people that they'd like to be doing activity-wise. So relaxing, swinging, gardening, things that are more passive and not very high energy were kind of things that were up at the top of people's lists and things like exercising, spinning, running kind of came in down at the bottom here. And similarly, we heard from a lot of people they really wanted to continue to do a lot of the same things they've already been able to do in the park, but really would like to see it just get some attention and a lot of concerns about safety and visibility, especially with the park being so deep and long and having lots of vines and things like that growing up on the fences around it that prevent you from being able to easily see in and out of the park. So we kind of took that and came up with just some basic design directions or where we could go with things. So to add some lighting to the back of the park to make it more visible, to replace and expand the playground, to replace the benches and generally just add more seating in the park, to open up a little bit of the view that's available to the west. You can actually see through to the lake when the timing is right and trees aren't quite in leaf out here, but there's so much brush that that kind of needs to get cleaned out. To open up the fence lines and increase the visibility into the park and to remove the broken garden beds that are in the park but not without adding additional gardens or additional plants and keeping it green. From there we kind of came up with a general designs team for how we could lay out some of those different amenities and activities that people are asking for. So starting sort of at the back of the park, we thought this made the most sense to locate the playground back here. That way you're putting the most active part of the park in the back where it's going to really draw people further in and it also will still be contained on three sides by fencing which will just make it way less likely for somebody who's there with a small kid that their kid's going to run out into the street that they're kind of a little more contained and it's just a little bit of a safer experience in that way. And then next we were figuring for seating areas, benches, gardens, things like that, putting a lot of that up at the front of the park where if somebody's going to be hanging out sort of sitting, stopping by quick and they're walking past the park it's kind of making a little more welcome showing you that that space is there proceeding. And then also just offers increased visibility for anybody hanging out in the park or outside the park to kind of just see what's going on who's there and sort of adding that eyes on the street kind of feel. And then lastly just leaving that sort of informal open lawn area kind of between the two that allows things to kind of overlap from either side and yeah. And then lastly we just have a light that we're looking at getting installed in the back corner of the park to add some evening visibility. So for the playground I'm going to show you two different concepts for the park that we came up with but we are using the same concept for the playground in each of these and just a quick note on this. This is sort of put in here as kind of a placeholder. This item is going to cost so much that it's going to have to be competitively bid in order to comply with city procurement policies. So we've kind of put this into these designs just to show you the kinds of things we're looking at and the relative scale of it. So we're picturing the playground. We'll have sort of rubberized surfacing, bright, colorful materials, lots of sort of arching supports and see-through net climber type things like that incorporated into it so that it really gives the park clear visibility straight from the street all the way through to the lake about her side. That's really one of the things we were thinking a lot about is how do we make this skinny narrow park that a lot of people are telling us feels unsafe or too dark or hard to see into, feel more open, feel more spacious than it is, and feel more visible. So with that said, some of the activities we're looking at trying to provide here is sort of a larger climbing structure that could be used by older children and some concepts of that are sort of shown up here at the top. A basket or group swing which is sort of an accessible amenity that somebody in the wheelchair could transfer in and out of and to site that kind of as close as we can to the southwest corner so that in theory somebody could be sitting on that swing and sort of also taking in the view to the west at the same time. Lastly here to have sort of a dedicated structure for the age two to five groups so toddlers things like that. We heard quite a bit in our outreach from school groups or not school groups sorry wrong term daycare groups that bring younger children here as well as mothers who live in the surrounding apartments that are coming here with their kids who really want to make sure there's something for that younger age group. And again we've got our basket swing in the middle here and sort of some concept images of the types of structures we're looking at on the bottom. And here we just did a little free model of this to sort of show what it could look like in a little bit more detail. Again it's very high bright colors to sort of draw your eye to the back of the park clearing out a lot of that brush and putting in a lower three foot tall fence there so that you can see cleanly through the park and make it feel a little bit more open and trying to sort of make sure we're providing those activities we heard from from the community. Max you have two very excited children here who think the playground looks great so I want to play there I'm going oh when he's going right now so well you it's not there yet Winnie but we'll keep you posted. All right so the first sort of design concept we came up with is what we call the gentle curve. This concept puts sort of a main walkway to that playground sort of your accessible path into sort of the shadier side of this park. We spent some time looking at this large building that's slated and has been permitted to be constructed on this outside and thinking about how the shade might affect things there so we thought we could have it sort of curve gently down here so that we're putting our hardscape into that shade where we're not going to have this wide range of plants that we can get to survive there and also by adding that little bit of a curve it just kind of makes the playing space the one space a little bit larger a little more open and then locating sort of some stone dust seeding up at the front again we're thinking doing something hardscaped here so that you've got better accessibility down the line and lastly putting a few boulders up the front just to offer a different type of seeding and also to create a little bit of an entrance make it feel like you're stepping into a park from the street and then looking at the landscaping taking advantage of what full sun will kind of be remaining we're thinking we would put a lot of gardens and possibly some understory trees under these existing trees to the north along the north side of the park trying to keep it green citing a couple swinging benches just sort of along that pathway one out here at the playground and one just kind of sighted along the way so that you know when this is sunnier in the summer this would still be sort of a shadier spot for people to go sit here and here and then adding just like this small little section of fence where we can mount our park sign that would also sort of act as like a screen for things like trash cans located here as well as bike cracks and stuff like that again we built sort of the 3d model of this to show what it could look like this is one style of seeding we're looking at for the park is sort of these bistro style tables with fixed seats and that kind of thing so that someplace you could sit eat your lunch and sort of enjoy the park a little bit this view is looking straight from the sidewalk kind of through the back of the park and again you can see how we try to leave it really open clean sight lines clear straight through the lake and then this view is just kind of looking back the other way toward the street from about the playground all right so the second concept i'm going to show you tonight is when we call the wandering walk you can see sort of the main difference here is just the way we chose to sort of make the walkway meander a little bit into the sunlight making that walkway itself just a little bit more interesting a little bit more of something you might be a little bit of an experience again looking at sighting benches sort of on either side and sun and shade instead of having the side this sort of pad kind of spill out into the sidewalk here using some site built planters at the front to again make that welcoming entrance but also create sort of a nestled in a little bit of a room up here at the front that feels a little bit more like a quiet pocket and looking at the landscaping again where we can we want to take advantage of that sort of northern uh full sun area here we expect this area in front of the building will act a little bit as kind of a sun trap so maybe a little microclimate that'll be a little bit warmer um mounting a sign onto the front of these site built planters instead of having our bike racks in the park actually pushing them up to the front here so that if you're arriving on bike it's just right there very visible we've included in this concept sort of putting some vines to offer some screening into and out of the neighbor's yards and parking areas and things like that but also just to add additional greenery to the space and to sort of put some shade tolerant shrubs on either side of that one just to make it a little bit more of a contained space so if you're kicking a ball or something like that there might be something there to catch it and keep it from just rolling out into the street and here's just what that could look like in a 3d model and looking back from the playground again out towards the street so in addition to hearing from you today just a little bit about what you think about each of these concepts which ones you like which ones things you don't like we'd really like to hear quite a bit about what you think we should prioritize for improvement first these are some of the different components we're looking at and are starting to make some steps forward on already but if there any of this stuff is really jumping to the front of your mind that you'd really like to see improved first and foremost we'd like to hear about that in terms of next steps we have gotten started on cleaning up some brush vines and landscaping and stuff like that actually it's a neat land terry who's on your npa and is one of our parks commissioners did a great job of organizing a bunch of people for green update to go and clean up a lot of the brush that's sort of been growing along the fence lines we are also going to be proactively removing a bunch of ash trees along the western edge of the park just recognizing that emerald ash borer is on its way up here we will continue to preserve there's a couple hackberries that are tucked in there that will save but we know those trees are going to be in decline in the next i mean it's kind of just a matter of time before it gets up here and they will become a hazard tree for the park so before we invest too much money we want to make sure we're taking those down i think this is actually our last npa that we'll be presenting at i've been to word six as well as wards two three sort of covering all the boards that but this park we have posted the concepts to our website and have a survey that's up and running which i shared the link with Nancy and it'll be on the next slide here so that'll be in your meeting minutes and then we'll sort of incorporate whatever we hear through that last bit of feedback into a final concept for the park as we continue to sort of can move along with implementing and getting some of this stuff down so thank you all so much questions ideas comments so i'm seeing something went wrong with my presentation slide here but i got my contact info down here as well as our survey link and the project website thank you so much max that is awesome i am going to step away for one quick second but i see nancy already has a comment so i'm going to send kick it over to nancy to give a comment and then to take over moderating duties just for a few minutes not the whole time just okay sounds good thanks billy um hey max uh i think you might be able to guess what i'm going to ask um but and i know you've told me but i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about callahan park too and the progress with the playground there yeah i'm totally happy to talk about that um oh do you want to i should i jump straight into talking about that because i have some other stuff i can show you but i'm gonna have to sort of switch up my screen a little bit um maybe we can we can pause and see if other people have questions about the Champlain Street Park actually i guess my question about it is you mentioned that nate did some cleaning of it will will parks do some more of that like it seems like that's like the first easiest step is like actually just like cleaning up the park yeah so some pieces i'm working on right now is getting in touch with some fencing contractors i'm basically pulling together floats for all of this stuff very actively as we're sort of going through uh last bit of outreach and seeing what people want to see or like which of these concepts they like better like things they do like things they don't what they want to prioritize but the reality is it's like we want to be able to move on this as soon as we have sort of finished hearing that and part of that is just getting estimates for all of this so that we know how much these things are actually going to cost versus sort of like your estimate based on you know comparable things that we've done recently and all the other ways that you know we design people price things out so you know it's one thing to sort of have a pretty good idea and have a sense of what it's going to cost based on all the other work we've done but it's another thing to actually get a formal quote from your contractors and get all that stuff lined up logistically and into their schedules because you know people fill up pretty quickly as you can imagine through the summer so and then other things that we're just constantly doing is you know we're constantly picking up trash and doing that kind of stuff it it definitely always helps to have community groups especially with a small park park like this who can step in and help with taking care of it and reporting things to our staff and that kind of thing cool um Andy you have a question um yeah I I'm curious to know max if you're done any work with the with the landowner to the south of you who's planning to build this building and has been for a while um about design of the building and how it impacts the park we have talked to her a little bit um and she's obviously aware her building is going to shade our little park um I know it's one of these things like we can talk to her and say what it's going to do and make our recommendations but we don't really have any direct jurisdiction over what she does on her property and so we're kind of in this area where it really isn't something we have a lot of control over particularly given that she's gone through the permitting process already and her plans have already been permitted so we continue to talk to her and sort of like work through uh like thinking about our shared fence line like what is something that we can do that you know works for everybody that she's been trying to press us to build like an eight foot tall fence along this and we're just said that is just too tall and doesn't really work with what we're hearing from people in terms of the park being not super visible and that kind of thing so um we're definitely in conversation with her but yeah we don't really have much control over the design of her building unfortunately and if no one else has another question Max I was also wondering I know with Callahan we did the whole planning but there wasn't actually like funding for a lot of the pieces is the funding like set for this yeah so we have seventy thousand dollars approximately that are dedicated to this park we have a little bit more funding that we can pull from another source for the rubberized surfacing that you're seeing under the playground which I would estimate that item is probably going to cost between twenty five to thirty thousand dollars somewhere like that so total that's like a hundred thousand dollar budget you know which sounds like quite a bit for a little park like but the playground itself is probably like a fifty thousand dollar cost for those pieces of equipment plus install and then fencing is probably another ten to fifteen thousand dollars so that budget gets eaten up pretty quickly when you start looking at those numbers um we have been sort of talking about funding stuff Nate Lanteri who's been organizing has been talking to his employer CDOEO about possibly contributing some funding towards this park and some of the amenities things like that in it and we're kind of still working through that sort of stuff but yeah we do have some funding that is ready to go like immediately right now this fiscal year and next fiscal year to start implementing this stuff great um does anyone else have a question on the Champlain Street Park before Max talks about Callahan does not look like it um yeah so Max if you could just give an update on Callahan that would be great yeah so I was ready for this Nancy as you had I've been flagging me on this one for a while I'm very invested yeah first is like a couple renderings of the structure that we're working on um so we're we put out an RFP back in December for the Callahan Park playground and got a number of bids and and decided to work with this particular contractor on sort of the design and construction of this it's a company called Compan which is based out of Denmark and after going through the master plan we heard quite a bit from people who wanted to see natural materials incorporated into the new new playground and thinking about nature-based play so I've got a couple renderings I can show you and I can give you a little update after that on schedule and walk you a little bit through what's included here so the thing in the foreground here is sort of parkour obstacle course which has a bunch of ropes and sort of these rabbinia timbers here that kind of go through and it's a lots of different like balancing and climbing activities and if you actually stop by I think it's center city park in south burlington this piece that's in front here actually comes it can be sold in sort of extendable versions this is kind of like the largest version of it and they have I think these first three components there it's a little bit always hard to tell in these renderings but for scale like this wooden bar here is at about six feet in the air so it's a pretty challenging little obstacle course and a quite a fun little thing and then this tower sort of back here consists of multiple platforms and sort of a seating area for kids here with some slides a shorter slide coming up to that side and then it goes up to this taller tower which is at about like 10 to 11 feet at the base here that comes down and you can't quite see it maybe we'll see it in one of the other renderings here but there's a climber net on the other side that actually comes up to sort of a window that you can climb through to get into that upper tower some other components here sort of nestled in among that parkour course is this sort of double somersault bar sort of a playground staple as well as one of the spinning cups here so you sort of sit in it and the thing rotates around like a carousel and it really like cups and holds children into it included in this is a small like tot lot type structure you know something designed for like really young kids toddlers and you know kids who are kind of taking their first steps really starting to get engaged with those motor gross motor skills you know and sort of keeping it separate from those larger structures so that they have their own sort of designated place to play and then tied with that are a couple spring toys again made out of that robinia lumber that'll be sort of facing each other like this and then the last piece you can see here is what's called a tippy carousel which is a larger carousel spinner that has this grab bar so that you can stand on it sort of as these rendered kids are here or somebody who's in a wheelchair can be transferred into this and the whole thing can be spun around while in this first phase of implementing the playground here we won't have any funds or and to like construct pathways in callahan and put in rubber eye surfacing we're thinking that down the line that could happen to make these spinners and this cup and potentially some of this structure here more accessible for people with mobility challenges and yeah there's one more closer up rendering of that so that gives you sort of a sense of what the new structure will look like and in terms of schedule we just got our ship date from the contractor last week that was set for august 4th which i'm waiting for a final response from them if that means it's going to be here on august 4th or it's being shipped on august 4th and then it's going to be here a little later but so loosely we're looking at the month of august is when the plan new playground will be going in and prior to that probably in like late july maybe a little sooner you'll see some stuff that's ancillary related to getting the site prepped for that new structure to get going so like the old structure will need to come out at some point there's some old concrete light poles that are in there some bushes and quite a bit of excavation that's going to need to get done in advance to sort of prep the site for this so that's stuff we expect to get going on july and that's kind of on our city and to take care of thanks yeah you're welcome we're really really looking forward to it in this house yeah sure sophie is ready to get out there and mess around on a new playground structure yeah yeah definitely um does anyone else have any questions on callahan and billy can i hand it back to you thoroughly can i have returned um i'm looking to see if there are any other hands raised as of yet well seeing none thank you so much max for coming and we will definitely eagerly look forward to this park and the the champlain park in our household and throughout the neighborhood so thank you so much for all your work on yeah great thank you all so much have a great evening all right and we are running a little ahead of schedule but let me just pull up my agenda here and i know the next thing we got up is the south end innovation district presentation and i see charles are you doing that yeah there you are yep hi everybody all right i will pass it over to you if you're ready to go all right let me uh try and share my screen can everybody hear me okay okay um so right um i am here to talk about the south end innovation district which i'm sure you've all heard a bit about uh megan tuttle uh planning director and samantha dunn were with you a couple months ago to very briefly introduce uh the the innovation district work and sort of you know where the city and the community uh were sort of looking uh at at the district and so we've spent a couple months now um thinking about the district and uh have worked with property owners um stakeholders artists makers representatives of different groups that's a sort of start to create a framework and so that's really what we're here to talk about at a very high level today is the sort of outline of a zoning overlay approach uh which is how we intend to implement implement the district and so this is going to be very high level keep in mind that we will be back in front of you in a month and actually less than a month uh to present what will be a much more detailed um draft zoning approach for the innovation district and so tonight we're really hoping to like i said present the outline get your thoughts give you all some time to to go back home think a little bit more about this and then you know get back to us with with more feedback and i'll talk more about next steps uh at the end we really just want to start with this slide and and make it very clear that the innovation district is certainly not starting from a blank slate i would say that in many many ways uh we are fortunate as the planners in having plan btv south end you know on our desks uh to refer to you you know the work that you did with my predecessors and current colleagues in creating plan btv south end is extremely strong and the concepts uh that are in the plan the themes the goals the principles are very much uh imbued and in a foundation for this innovation district so all of that work that that really meant to highlight maker space artists uh a burgeoning innovation district in the south end is very much part of the the zoning work we're working on now the with the added uh sort of uh element of housing you know planned as some of you probably know plan btv south end sort of explicitly said that housing should not be encouraged in the district i i don't think that was necessarily a unanimous opinion but nevertheless that's that's how the plan um put it forth and was adopted since the plan was adopted though i think everybody has sort of um seen how the housing shortage and affordability problem in particular has become so much more uh sort of acute in burlington and the south end and so very much we see the mayor's housing as a human rights action plan uh married with plan btv south end in creating the foundation for the innovation district so everything that you that you wanted to see in the south end from plan btv south end with housing added to it so just for everybody who's not familiar uh this is the map of what we envision the innovation district being this area in orange um so generally it is from howard street in the north uh to sears lane the properties on sears lane on the south and west of pine street uh and importantly it will include uh the champlain parkway which will run through the heart of the district uh and also importantly the barge canal is not part of the overlay district itself but we are very much taking into account that the needs of the barge canal and the community's sort of hopes and visions related to the canal in terms of ecology and open space uh into the into the zoning work uh and just again want to reiterate that this this whole notion of the innovation district to begin with did come out of plan btv south end so if you do have any questions it's been very helpful for me as i'm sure some of you know as a relatively new planner with the city to have plan btv south end to refer to so i recommend rereading that if you haven't lately so this is just the last thing i'll say about uh the plan is and this image really doesn't differ too much uh in terms of what we're thinking the district may look and feel like you know buildings may be a little bit taller uh ultimately out of the innovation innovation district but generally what you see here this very green walkable pedestrian bikeable environment uh is i think what the innovation district will ultimately hope to produce uh as the area evolves so there's just you know sort of a key a set of key points and concepts that i think we are working with now and very much would love to hear what you think about all of this so um the innovation district as you know includes some very large undeveloped properties some properties that have some um you know uh brownfield contamination issues and so this is going to be an evolving district if it's not as if this area is going to develop overnight um we very much see this as a mixed use area with uh with a range of building scales and types and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second um it is a place like i said for for new residents so likely could accommodate over the next you know five ten twenty years hundreds of new homes and neighbors um importantly again this is an area where in the south end there's already a very established character of arts lights manufacturing and a burgeoning sort of office district and we very much intend the innovation district to to continue to foster uh all of those characters uh and and you know finally the last thing i'll say is that the concept of innovation does run through every single sort of element of the work we're we're looking at here and so uh really looking at ways to encourage or incentivize you know very highly sustainable buildings landscapes a district that will clean the water and and foster a healthy ecosystem uh in the area there's just a little bit about land use here um the uses that we're considering permitting uh include residential uses and those would primarily be in the form of attached multifamily dwellings as they're called in the comprehensive development ordinance so that's generally uh apartment buildings anything from you know three stories probably essentially two stories up to six maybe eight um but generally buildings will be attached we'll talk a little bit more about uses we're not considering in the future in terms of housing but you know do want to do want to say that these are the uses co-housing assisted living group homes these are things that we certainly would like to consider how we can facilitate them in the neighborhood to create a really uh dynamic and affordable and diverse uh district so in terms of non-residential uses these first three bullets on the left so art gallery studios light manufacturing office so again those are the things that coming out of plan btp south and we know the community support in the innovation district and the the the remaining bullets are really those land uses that uh can and should support a residential district but sort of be ancillary to them you know certainly looking in the innovation district work at ways that we can permit things like cafes restaurants coffee shops child care while not necessarily allowing the district to be completely defined by commercial uses like that and so we'd love to have your thoughts on land uses the the types of uses that you would like to see we've heard a lot from some stakeholders about child care we've heard a lot about artist space um you know community uses that sort of thing and so you know please look like I said love to hear your questions and thoughts on that the last thing about land use here so uh uses we're currently considering not permitting include these on the left so single family homes you know generally just not consistent with the housing goals that the mayor has set forth in terms of density and the number of units people like to see hotels so this is one we're thinking about love to hear your thoughts you know in many innovation districts around the country I think we've seen hotels uh probably sprouting up in in higher numbers than most communities would like and certainly there is a risk that the innovation district could become a sort of tourist hub and I think we want to think about that and how how we may or may not permit hotels or limit them if we do permit them and then the sort of lastly bullets heavy manufacturing large format retail auto oriented uses these are just you know uses that aren't really consistent with the concept of an innovation district I think light manufacturing we can have we can talk more about the sort of difference between light manufacturing and heavy manufacturing but this this image here of the sort of waste management truck that sort of represents heavy manufacturing to us and so we think that these sorts of uses shouldn't be permitted but very much would like to make it clear that light manufacturing we do see that as part of the innovation district so just a few slides I'll go quickly through these about urban forms so we very much see the innovation district as being one where buildings are close to the streets close to paths close to open spaces I think church street we'd love to see pedestrian streets we'd love to see very bikeable districts where buildings are close to the street where appropriate I think we'll have to think a little bit more about Champlain Parkway in particular and how we would like buildings to be related to the parkway similarly just a bit more on that we definitely want the ground floor of buildings to be what we call active uses so that's shops community uses child care that sort of thing we want this to be a place where you can walk down the street and sort of see all types of activity going on all types of work people doing art making things office workers we want to we want you to be able to look in the in the windows on the ground floor and see that stuff going on in terms of building types generally would love to encourage a mix of attached detached buildings so these are just a couple images of eco districts both of them are actually from Europe but you can see how there is a mixture of sort of larger attached buildings that sort of define the street wall and then some sort of more detached apartment buildings that create some density but in a way that permits a lot of light and air into the neighborhood and creates a ton of green space for for kids and it may be some new parks to go just follow the park's presentation it was a building size and height definitely would love to encourage a mixture so you know the the Biju bistro on church street is a great example of how a one-story building can very peacefully coexist with a much taller building the image on the right is again is eco district from Malmo Sweden where they sort of very gracefully mixed in sort of an ecological design approach with buildings that are one two three up to five six stories in this district there's even a very tall sort of 30 story skyscraper which don't worry I think that's not being considered here in terms of transportation and open space again very much would like to see the district focus on accessibility for all users focus on pedestrians focus on cyclists to the extent that cars are traveling through the district we want to make it clear and clear to everybody that they should be sort of subordinate I think to that pedestrian character so we're looking at ways in the in the zoning to to make sure that new streets are developed but in a way that that makes moving through the district safe and comfortable for everybody and also looking at ways to incentivize or encourage open spaces plazas that sort of thing as part of development so the last piece about urban form here again and I mentioned this earlier about you know innovation being part of the sort of whole ethos of construction and development here and so we very much see you know things like green storm water infrastructure highly sustainable construction types like mass timber and passive towels and even things like bird friendly design being a part of the zoning framework here so it's a very important ecological part of the city we know that the barge canal is right next door the lake is right next door there's a brook just to the south up here and so we've been we know humans aren't the only creatures living and enjoying this area so we want to make sure that the innovation district continues to sort of foster that sort of diversity so we'll take questions after this we just want to say next steps here so we're here tonight in front of you we'll be back the next step we'll spend a month like I said continuing to take feedback and work with our partners in the city and without the city to sort of finish drafting out a framework that we'll bring back to you in June we're also targeting the last week in June for a public meeting we will confirm that date with you as soon as we can but that will be a second opportunity for you to provide feedback so you'll likely have between the June 16th meeting and the public meeting a week or two to sort of gather your thoughts and come to that public meeting prepared to provide more feedback and then yeah ultimately the plan here is to get the the zoning amendment to the planning commission to begin that public process in July with a target adoption date assuming you know you all are comfortable with it and city council and the mayor comfortable with it of the thing out having it be adopted by uh here so without talking talking now and really happy to hear what you think about this and any questions you have thank you very much charles really appreciate the presentation i will keep an eye out for raised hands um i will say i do you know sort of have this immediate reaction of i think all all these goals are laudable and set in a good way that as with so many of these things the proof ends up being in the pudding and you know the recently announced projects of a bowling alley and a Nordic bath house some of which we were hearing about earlier i i have to say my immediate reaction is that they don't necessarily jive with some of what was just articulated i mean i was just looking over the plan of the the bowling alley in particular and i see a pretty massive parking lot in the back i don't see any housing being added from either of those um they're very single use oriented buildings they're not multifunctional and and i also have to say that when the state is you know providing six million dollars as a part of that and i understand it's earmarked money for environmental cleanup and one of the reasons that that's being done for these projects is the statement that well it's not zoned for housing yet and yet we're about to have rezoning that's happening it it does get me a little concerned um and so you know i don't know if that's anything you can directly speak to but you know it's just i i want to make sure that you know and also with with the multifamily you know housing making sure that we're actually are the multi-unit housing making sure we are creating family housing as well you know it's not going to do us much good in our housing crunch if we're just creating a lot of very nice condos for out-of-state people um you know a bunch of people buy second homes with a beautiful lake view that's i guess good for the economy but not necessarily good for the housing problem so the two just sort of off the cuff points um but sure i'm happy to to answer respond to that and then or if others have questions and and i should say that uh samantha done i i think samantha's here from cito um she's worked much more closely with the issues related to the barb's canal uh more closely than i have uh and i think she's she could have an answer if she if she is here on uh the proposed development of 453 pie and the spa in the bowling alley so um right so just on the on the on the spa on the bowling alley yeah they're in they are in the innovation district boundary um you know obviously one way i could answer that is just to say in terms of timing you know that that uh property owner has been in negotiations to sell the the property and you know um there's nothing we can do about that i will say that given the contamination that is on the site uh it does make residential use is a bit more tricky right there's also the the soil types under the spa in the bowling alley you know i can't speak definitively on this but i do know that the amount of cleanup that it will take to to enable any use i think would probably be increased if residential uses were being contemplated particularly if if sort of heavier buildings the scale of which we're talking about here in the innovation district were developed uh you you know you might imagine it it may be necessarily to put buildings on piles that sort of thing so um that's what i can say about 453 uh pine i i do think that the uses that are being considered on those sites you know um not necessarily incompatible with with the neighborhood i mean i think they are uses that people would enjoy being around but yeah i mean um open ended question um if samantha is around and she has anything to add um be happy to talk more about that and this is something that yeah we can talk more about internally billy a few and others want to have a have a conversation about it uh or with your council member we'd be we'd be happy to do that i i will just jump in i think charles did a great job and would just say again that um that the redevelopment of that property is something obviously that that landowner has been trying to do for i think more than three decades and and is um it was engaged and is engaged as a stakeholder in this um process of the zoning amendment and fully supports the concepts and i think um you know as charles said it really was a matter of timing of something being able to move forward when it was available in addition to housing not currently being allowed under our zoning that site does have uh institutional controls on it that do not allow housing as well so there's kind of a double layer of no housing on that site which i think as charles was referring to was going to make it um you know harder i think we included it in in this area because we really were looking at where there was undevelopment underutilized parcels that would benefit from from being in an innovation district and i i hear that the uses might not you know they certainly don't address our housing crisis but as we have started these discussions about the district what we heard a lot from other stakeholders um really everyone was like how do we create a place where people can live work and play uh basically without using a car you know like all in this in this centralized area and so i think in that way it will be a compatible use and and again just to confirm what charles was saying about you know because of the nature of the land uh going up on it like in multiple stories as you would need to do with housing or more mixed use um is technically very do i i appreciate that both of you i someone at some point will have to explain to me how a nordic bath house is going to be able to go into a superfund site um i understand some of the barriers but i just keep thinking of ipsons enemy of the people but that's neither here nor there um i will pass it over to uh jane who i believe had her hand up first uh jane um yeah i wanted to know if you're gonna plan on on having any i mean bank bank source or um our our um grocery grocery stores in the in the in the in the innovation district the one thing that the south end lacks is is is a is a place is a place to replace to to have to bank and um and whether um for people that are that are that that that have trouble walking i mean will there be any kind of public transportation for them to go through if they can if they can't if they can't walk if they can't walk very far um without help i mean whether will there be i mean i can envision use having um car having i guess non motorized i mean non motorized vietn vehicles um even as i mean driven non motorized vehicles to shuttle people um yeah great question jane um so just the the first part um uses like banks uh grocery store so banks um as we're conceiving it now and remember this is all draft would be permitted and grocery stores i think would uh be permitted more on what we call conditional use so generally we're i think thinking smaller format grocery stores uh no large format grocery stores likely but definitely um also looking at ways to improve access to city market um which is very close by um so either via the path along shamblin parkway or potentially a new path to connect to that market looking at ways to increasing sort of food security um generally though the the answer is that any use that i think you might find in an urban neighborhood uh a sort of tighter knit urban neighborhood we would either consider to be permitted or at least conditionally permitted uh in terms of transit and accessibility yeah that's i think that's a very important issue for us i think that um we're going to hear a little bit later about a feasibility study for 68 sears lane where uh there is perhaps some potential to to develop a transit center um that would probably increase transit services but nevertheless i think transit services will be uh traveling up and down pine street up and down shamblin parkway uh so for folks who cannot or do not want to drive uh there will almost certainly be bus service in the area there's also some you know uh it's right next to a railway and as aim track service opens up uh soon we're looking at ways to sort of improve access to the train station from the innovation district as well um but just again in terms of you know the the types of districts uh we would love to see developed here is one that is very much focused on accessibility and pedestrians and cyclists so yeah um any way that we can make sure cars are either either not present or or driving very slowly um you know perhaps not parking too much on the street making sure cars are parked in structures or underground making sure that it's really safe and comfortable for folks who are on foot or on wheel uh themselves thanks could you stop the screen sharing so we can see each other sure i was going to pass it over to you andy anyways is the next person with their hand up and i actually andy if you don't mind i will pass moderating duty over to you um because i do need to go try to get some children down if that's okay that's great um so um before i take over moderating duties i do have some comments about um more than more than there's time for here but generally speaking i just want to encourage you uh Charles, Samantha, Megan, other people from from planning um to listen more and talk less uh i feel like there's um you know in your in your willingness to answer questions unfortunately you wind up talking a lot and um you know i i thought your presentation was really well done but you really um i think and i when i look at the schedule that you had up there um it doesn't look like there's a lot of opportunity for people to actually give input i mean the nta is one is one opportunity but um uh there needs to be a wider we have 20 participants and and half of them are you know city employees or or consultants right now and that's you know it's just not not enough people to count this as a input that you're getting um and and i only saw one public meeting on that schedule except for the other npa um in june i just i just that's that's my general reaction i do think that there's lots of reasons why um housing was uh discouraged by the last round of plan btv south end and um it was um one of the large concerns with gentrification and um the uh the artists in particular in the in the arts district were worried that you know uh new uh new housing would raise prices and uh and price them out of the market people who actually are sort of working and appreciating and creating in in the fairly funky districts that um are relatively low cost i want to note also that stepping stones that was brought up before the the child care center on on uh hayward street is uh at risk of disappearing as a child care center in in this district and um need support from the city you know uh there needs to be ways of keeping these these high quality child care businesses in business and um you know while we're talking about you know uh these wonderful images of malamo sweden i i just think that we really need to focus on what what we have here and not losing it um i also have a lot of thoughts about the barge canal but i don't want to take a lot of time with this right now um and i and finally i just want to say that um you know there there is a disconnect between the fact that we're building a new highway down into the uh to bring cars into the into the city uh through the south end and a desire to have cars being subordinate uh to uh to bicyclers and pedestrians i think there's a you know when we say that um this champlain parkway is going to be a 25 mile an hour um roadway i i would like to see uh whether you can make that stick tell you the truth i live one block from pine street and uh which is theoretically uh you know um uh a policed area but it's a drag strip you know and um and it's not safe for pedestrians it's not safe for bicyclists and and not safe for children who are crossing so um you know there's a there's a lot that i think needs to be said about this innovation district and um and a lot that's that's good about it but um the fact that you would even mention hotels and act like you couldn't stop those from happening seems crazy to me in a um you know in a housing crisis so um i look forward to other opportunities to um to talk about this and i hope many more opportunities so i am now the moderator and uh get off my high horse are there other um uh people who would like to comment about this and we also are on a time schedule for tonight so um we had a little more flexibility but i think we're um uh running out of that flexibility but are there any other um comments about the innovation district i i have one question if i could andy about the the spa the nordic spa i didn't realize that there was a large parking lot associated with that and has that been given permitted approval um it has not been completely permitted i think samantha probably has a better answer than i do yeah no they have not they have not come in for their permits definitely not and i think jovial was on the call earlier uh this evening just giving a heads up wanting to make sure to introduce herself um and we'll certainly be back in front of the npa with with the proposed project uh before submitting a permit application so she'll be here to to talk through those plans um before she gets a permit other comments questions well um charles and samantha i i really thank you for coming and um and look forward to having you back um and um i think that uh you know the the presentation that's coming up will certainly dovetail nicely into into what you've presented and um and i think there's uh a lot more discussion to be had and i'm glad you came to the npa to do it thanks a lot andy thanks everybody so now we have um david saladino we also have um other presenters from vhb as well right jeff duby and um uh anyone else david from vhb uh just the two of us from vhb and then uh samantha dunne uh is is uh sticking around for this as well and then charlie baker from the jidney county regional planning commission is on as well okay great we'll take it all right um smith i don't know if you wanted to say any any introductions or i can i can jump right in i think you can go ahead i think um you probably have the best handle just um we are this is a um this uh feasibility study that david's going to talk about is really a joint effort between the city of brunington and the regional planning commission and and even within the city it's uh well um coordinated between cito and planning and um the public works department so it's got a lot of people engaged uh and david and vhb are doing a great job of bringing us through it okay well i'm gonna um this is a perfect perfect segue or transition from the the previous presentation and um i'm gonna gonna follow the guidance uh and your previous guidance and um talk very little and um what we're really doing is is it want to get some uh get some initial input as we're as we're getting this project started so just a few kind of high level slides to kind of set the stage um and then just open up for any um any thoughts or questions um so at a at a very high level what we've been asked to do is look at uh the feasibility of a transit center at the 68 pine street uh 68 sears lane parcel in the south end you can see the map on the right um so we're looking at you know looking for really any any yellow or red flags any any fatal flaws on that parcel which is owned by the city of brunington um looking at an estimate of parking demand for the parking garage that would go with the transit center um we're going to be looking at two different uh conceptual layout options one with housing one without housing uh we'll be developing uh conceptual cost estimates for those two options uh looking at for funding streams and then um doing doing our best to get out to stakeholders and communicate the uh the information to stakeholders in terms of project schedule we're really just getting started we had our kind of project team kickoff meeting uh about a month ago in april we have about a 10 person steering committee a number of city departments and local stakeholders involved there here we are at our first public meeting tonight um coming out of this in june we'll be developing some alternative sketches so those two different concept sketches uh the second round uh what's what's noted here is a second public meeting we really see as a more robust um outreach round so um uh we'll be we'll be doing things like going to the farmers market going to uh Feldman's going to some of the local businesses with the boards uh to try to solicit as much input as we can even um you know person on the street interviews to to gauge as much um get as much input as we can uh from there july and august we'll be looking at those two alternatives uh in comparison selecting one of those developing a preferred concept plan uh and then presenting a final um uh concept in august uh just uh an overview of the the project area so we're looking at the yellow outline the 68 sears lane parcel uh you can see the red hatch line is the uh the Champlain Parkway right of way so that that property will be utilized by the Champlain Parkway going forward uh 68 sears lane it's about three acres as I mentioned it's owned by the city of Burlington um you're all familiar with the area so you know all the adjacent uses lots of gray asphalt on this on this uh image here so lots of surface parking um part of the idea here is really to start to consolidate some of this parking and uh you know in in some density uh to then free up the the surface parking spaces for some uh you know higher and better uses uh you can just see here on the right this is just kind of without with and without the Champlain Parkway many of you are familiar with that orientation um some of you may have been been around or familiar with this study back in 2006 there was the study of this this exact parcel looking at a southern neighborhood transit center at the time you can see on the right the kind of the concept that was developed uh for uh the transit center at that time how it how it fit into the parcel and tied into the parkway uh in today's dollars that's about a 19 million dollar um transit center it was a three-story garage about 600 parking spaces you can see under underneath in the orange where the where the buses drop off and pick up um what's really driving this are a few things they obviously the Champlain Parkway is um is hopefully moving forward uh as as you just heard the residential zoning overlay is um is being discussed and plans for the 125 Lakeside Avenue are advancing so lots of things kind of coming coming together to um uh make this more uh more interesting looking at the future of this parcel so in terms of potential uses um uh mentioned the transit center so in an area for buses to you know pick up and discharge passengers uh then a parking garage right now we're looking at about 600 spaces we're talking with all of the institutions with the Burlington Business Association some of the other businesses in the area to see how much parking demand there is um uh 10 years ago in the previous study it was about 550 to 600 so that's we're feeling it's about that same range um and then as I mentioned there's some potential for housing whether it's affordable or market rate to fit into that parcel as well and then we'll be developing those those two concept alternatives uh just a couple of images just to kind of um kind of set the tone here the the top two are in Vermont one is the new one in in uh transit center Montpelier upper right you're familiar with in Burlington and then the two below are outside of Vermont uh just some some kind of precedent images here um also thinking about the garages you know we don't want to just um lay out a kind of a standard concrete block garage we really want to look at kind of state-of-the-art cutting edge um uh applications for garages and one thing that's um one trend that's just starting to emerge the idea that um we're hopefully not all gonna be driving cars forever and hopefully not for too much longer and so a lot of the parking garages are being designed now with these modular um uh components so that as parking demand goes down over time presumably as people are you know autonomous vehicles or using some other modes to get to their their destinations that these little uh slots that can fit in either apartment or retail slots that can plug into the garage and essentially you know use the same physical structure but not as a parking garage as either you know apartment building or retail uses so uh some of those concepts and you can see on the right some of other opportunities to kind of plug in some recreational facilities restaurants and so forth uh and then and then the idea is we talked about some potential to integrate some residential uses could do that as a wrapper around the garage so that you're not seeing a garage from the street front you can see here just some examples and images of those wrapped garages we have a great example here in in Manuski uh right right downtown just off the circulator we've got the the B-SAC building is a parking garage in the center that is wrapped by a similar brick building so um that was just a very quick high-level overview uh where we're going from here as I mentioned concept plans in June and then we're really going to be putting a full core press through the month of July to get as much input as we can on these two concepts and then wrapping up in uh in September with our final report so um I've got some questions here I you know we um I can I'll um hope if there's any questions but just some some prompting ones what one in particular question I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on is the idea of residential or not residential on this on this parcel um is there is there a desire to see some kind of mix of uses here or or utilize as much of this space to fit as much parking as we can and then put the residential on adjoining adjoining parcels that's that's one in particular I'm interested in but also open to any any comments thoughts or questions all right let's open questions one question I have David is um are the slides these slides and any other ones that you have available uh for people to view in a in a more leisurely fashion they were and I had sent them over I didn't see them on the website I will make sure um and I'm forgetting is it Joe um yeah Joe yes we did send those over on Wednesday um I will check back with him though to see if you can post them on the mpa website okay that's npa5.org for people that haven't been there so that's great so we'll post them on the website and is there any anywhere else that um uh they can be accessed for people yes there is a the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission so ccrpcvt.org uh has that's where the project um study website is great thank you questions comments I have a question um so we don't have enough um parking garage is downtown to accommodate the numbers of cars that are coming into Burlington is that why it's being built uh no not not for the downtown parking demand this is really more for the the south end parking demand it it's it's really in response well I guess um my sense and I'll let Samantha answer it on behalf of the city is is you know just looking at all of the surface parking that's down here with the Innovation Center with the 125 Lakes Lakeside um uh the the park we were just talking about up at the at the bath house if it's possible to consolidate these into one one structure then you can have green space or some other uses better uses on those on those lots but I'll let Samantha answer if there was another driver for the city I think the intention is uh as David was saying I mean someone to accommodate parking in the neighborhood because we're trying to uh make better use of the surface parking lots and just to act as an intercept for facility um to have more uh pedestrian scale um access and and use of of the city as a whole so that you would if you're coming from outside of the city you could park there to um be you know visit those businesses or housing or things like that and but also to potentially get on a bus or on the bike path and and visit other parts of the city not in your car I see Charlie is probably going to give a better answer than I just did not a better answer I just just additional answer I think and and the group already kind of touched on this is that uh Champlain Parkway is going to bring cars into the south end and I think um as 15 years ago this initial concept was that is not the ideal uh how do we get those cars not to go further into the city intercept them here have them park and have them as Samantha was just saying you get on other modes whether it's a bike path or walking to local businesses or or getting into a bus to get someplace else so it wasn't this idea is not to replace anything downtown it's really to try to uh mitigate the impact of the parkway on the south end so um what studies have you done that indicate that people actually park at that parking garage versus driving downtown this is that study so we don't have the answer yet you have data that shows that people would prefer to leave their cars at a transit center rather than to use unused parking garages in town so that is we're in the process of of uh quantifying the demand now and based on the previous study of the 600 spaces there was maybe 100 spaces maybe a little bit less reserved for general public or downtown businesses the majority of those 600 spaces were for the institutions so uvm uh Champlain and the medical center and so that's really taking those trips out of you know the institutions and the downtown bringing them in on the parkway and parking them in this garage and then shuttling them to the to those destinations so you've already arranged with these larger institutions that employees would park their cars there and that they would have shuttle buses coming to the transit center to bring them there nothing has been arranged yet that that's part of the discussions that are going on right now i see okay so i yeah i kind of feel like um there's a lot of assumptions that are being unspoken this is uh the we call this a feasibility study this is truly a first step in looking at the questions that you're asking there's nothing that's been decided determined nobody's decided to build a garage there are no decisions that have been made this is the beginning of a process to look at what's feasible what might make sense and have that conversation with the community so we're literally at the very beginning stages the consultant they've just got started a few weeks ago uh i having said that i will say 15 years ago there was some work done and the city acquired this parcel with this idea in mind but you know that hasn't gone anywhere in 15 years so we're kind of reopening the box if you will to re-examine the issues a feasibility to me seems different than is there a demand so um you know is it feasible to build a transit center seems different than uh the city requires a transit center so it sounds like um you're going to be looking at whether or not i mean i i my thing is people drive from south burlington s6 they've brought their car in will they really park the car there walk into town take a bus into town well people who are using the nordic spa you know maybe five six hundred yards away actually park the car there and walk down there that that's really where i'm coming from yeah those are all very good questions and i that's exactly the type of thing that we're getting into right now and um when we come back in july i mean i would i would hope we'll be back here at the npa and we can show you some of those concepts and talk a bit more about the parking demand and and how we've quantified those numbers okay thanks when um david and others when you did a charrette was it last week or was this week it was last week yep last week um and that was for um stakeholders who are the stakeholders uh it's it's the project there's a project steering committee uh so there's a number of uh city staff members um local adjacent property owners um and then other you know so uh green mountain transit and kind of regional planning commission v trans kind of the typical um kind of public entity stakeholders you would imagine and what what came up as charrette were there different ideas that came out of that uh yeah i mean it was it was it was uh kind of a brainstorming event so you know lots of trace paper lots of sketching um just starting to articulate some ideas nothing really fully baked yet and so we're working on those concepts now and that's you know those will morph into what we're going to be presenting in july other questions from uh people i see carls hands up um yeah first of all just thank you for coming to talk to us here it's my first time at the second time at one of these nta's and it's really great to see this kind of engagement to the area so comment and question here first off comment side i just have to throw it out there given what we know about the state of the world at this point every new parking space we built was a mistake it might be a necessary mistake but it's really something that we need to be moving much more rapidly than we are to discourage um that said on the sort of local transit front everything i have seen about really successful bus systems relies on sort of removing them from the normal flow of transit the cars are taking and making them run regularly those are the things that you have to be able to do to get people to really think about them as an acceptable alternative mode of transportation so do we know anything about what green mountain transit would be ready to do in terms of service increases if this transit center were to be built uh no we don't know the answers you know gmt is part of the steering committee they were involved in the in this retina and are starting to think about the the existing services that run down pine street about you know detouring them down lakeside and then coming down through this property and then out sears lane um but in terms of service increases um uh it's a bit premature for them to kind of be committing to any increases at this point all right thank you other questions i think we have about 10 more minutes if uh there are other questions or comments so um david the um and samanta the the process and charlie the the process that you're engaging in right now is just to think about feasibility is this um at one point does it become um uh a more of a reality and actually enter into some kind of permitting situation a permitting process i'll i'll let you know our charge is really to develop a report a feasibility report that identifies you know um red flags potential red flags and costs for this um it'll really be up to the to samantha and charlie to kind of care if anyone wants to pick up the recommendations and carry them forward i would say we're you know it's this isn't just like a it's not like a box we're checking before we come in for permits it's a true feasibility to to understand if this is something that makes sense so i would say you know there's quite a bit of time between this and and something actually being permitted and could you talk a little bit more about um uh how the um the innovation district proposal relates to the feasibility question of the transit center yeah i think um i think that's a good question i think it the it relates in a number of ways one of them is obviously just geography um another one is um really thinking about as david mentioned the the there's a large service parking lot that's 125 lakeside um where there is the owner it you know desires to build a lot of um you know to to build out that site and and create a mixed use development with a lot of different housing types and the the reality of what happens on that parking lot right now while i think i always think of it as empty the reality is it has about i think 350 to 400 people who park there already from those institutions that david and charlie were talking about shamplain college and the medical center and so we know um that those are cars that would be displaced by something that we want which is is housing and and we don't necessarily want those cars to go you know and i think housing is the most likely thing that would cause that lot to be redeveloped in the near future and again as charlie was saying we don't want those cars you know continuing to come in and to go directly to those institutions and there's no place for them to park so that that's one um component of it i think there's also an opportunity to really think about um transit oriented development like if there's going to be you know dense um housing development on that site the idea is for people to really be able to live there and not have a car and so that's why this is not just it's you know it took me a while to be like the transit center is a parking garage like that doesn't work for me like it's supposed to be a transit center and it really it is more than a parking garage it's really about multimodal transportation and ensuring that if we bring housing additional and denser housing into this part of burlington that people have a way to move about the city without getting into a car and that 125 so that adjacency where where that's the most likely place for that to happen next makes a lot of sense in timing wise there's some opportunity to work together on the development at the at the charrette we were talking about could that you know how do we kind of use both of these sites not you know each person would still you know entity would still own its land but how do we uh design streets and pedestrian connections and things like that for a multimodal transportation center so just working together it's a very large undeveloped area in the city and being able to look at these things at the same time the potential for residential development and the potential for a transit center makes a lot of sense so we can you know if if the transit center makes sense and the in the zoning amendment passes that those things can be at least um planning why planned in tandem to work together jean you had a question i guess kind of um when you said about i've talked about talking to different groups um i said just going around going around to different complexes and and and apartment buildings and um and i guess i mean i guess you had to find out like who was in charge or um a little bit of fun having your house and co-op and and and um we and it would be nice to i mean and and you could contact us and i mean and that and that and we have we have we have well that we have a community room and we all i mean i mean and people i mean a lot of people do things by zoom but there's and but there's also and there's also other places but anyway so that's a comment about about trying to like like like like the school um sampling school apartments nearby um but and also about the about the about the schools have you have you um you know the the student you know students come into school every i mean to school everyone you know in buses with this as as a potential for having we're having the people the kids get off the the the buses would go would would go that would go to the transit center instead and that might take the pressure off the streets i mean people park along the street dropping off their kids with that yeah how was anyways that would be certainly nice for pine street but i i worry it's it's probably too far of a walk to have the kids walk over to the sampling school but it i like your thinking you know to get all of those drop boxes off of pine street but um i'll let Samantha address it but i i think probably not for school school kids well it's a really interesting idea and i think um i don't know that i like the buses i would send there i mean i think that makes sense for the buses to keep going to the school it's all those parents cars that are i think are the challenge and i think the real um hope and again and one another opportunity for overlap here is with the innovation district to really work hard on pedestrian connectivity throughout the south end again making it easier more convenient to bring your child to school on a bike or on foot that there's safe pedestrian connections or or and a pedestrian connection certainly from from this area but would allow if there's buses going to the school for those buses to continue i think to go and i think that's sort of the idea of helping people get away from using their individual autos is to make it more convenient uh to get there on a bus like the bus will drop you at the door but your car is not allowed to do that somehow or um or it's just trying to make it easier to use these other forms of transportation but that's a really helpful way of thing to think about thanks so um we have one more minute on our schedule and terry has something to say and i there's a lot more people that uh i hope that will be involved in this discussion um in the future as this goes forward terry yeah i just have one comment and that is that if i'd realize there was a companion project hopefully being developed this dense housing project on 125 uh lakeside um and that large parking lot that would help um you know from my point of view and given that i would look i would prefer the wrap around building of the parking garage similar to the manuski but that would be a good thing with with housing in the wrapper yep thank you yeah i just worry about the crime that's being committed in our downtown garage is currently and i might mitigate against that uh well um david and manta and charlie and jeff thank you for um for coming and charles um i think that will uh obviously have lots more to ask and to say um in the coming months and i look forward to it thank you very much and thanks for that uh it came tonight and asked questions and listened well and um we will have another meeting in the third uh thursday in june and um uh and continue on from there thank you very much thanks everybody