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