 June 10th, 2021 planning commission meeting start time 632. Like the welcome everyone to the planning commission meeting before we get going on a read the abbreviated public meeting script. And before we do that, I would like to remind folks to go to mute if you're not actually speaking, please. I, Dustin Brusso as chair of the Essex planning commission find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott. I don't have the software. Okay, hang on folks. We got, we got folks who are talking in the background. I don't want to mess your machine up. I'm not going to mess my machine up. Let's have the administrator mute all except for Dustin. Yeah, please. I've done that. Okay. I, Dustin Brusso as chair of the Essex planning commission find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to addendum six to executive order 01-20 and act 92, this public body is authorized to meet electronically. The full script of this, the full text, this script is available through the town office or through the website. So let's move on to our agenda for this evening or let's look at this. I want to do a roll call vote of the commissioners present. Actually Sharon, you've already, no, we'll do that on the record. So I'll start with myself, Dustin Brusso present. Dave Raphael present. Tom Ferland, present. John Mangan, present. Well, I wonder what would happen if downstairs the way it's down low, isn't it? Ned, are you present? Ned. This machine is not connecting anything on the internet. Hey, Ned. I see Ned's on, I hear Ned talking. So I'm going to assume Ned's present. It's possible that he can't hear us. So that might be a problem. I can try, we can try and give him a call if, it seems like he's having some technical difficulties. I know his computer just had a meltdown the other day. And it looks like we might've just lost Dusty. So Dave, you are on. Oh, I hear Dusty's back, nevermind. Dusty's on and Dusty's muted. Okay, that was interesting. Thank you, Sharon. All of a sudden, team's completely dropped. So let's pick this back up again. For our agenda, we went through the roll call. I think we had everybody except Shu present. The agenda this evening, we only have one amendment and that is the addition of the minutes from May 13th, 2021. With that, I'm going to ask for the, for anyone who's participating this evening, I'm going to administer the oath. And if you can just respond by saying, I raise your hand, wave something like that, so we know that you've acknowledged it. And any participation in the meeting from this point forward will be deemed as, as accepting of the oath. Do you swear that any testimony you present this evening will be truthful to the best of your abilities? I do, I do. Okay, if that didn't care, let's start with participants. Now, when we get to the point of public input, please use the raise your hands option in teams, to raise your hands so we can recognize you and engage at that point. With that, first item on our agenda as normal is public comment. This is an opportunity for anyone in the public to offer comments to the planning commission for items that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone who likes to offer, who would like to request any discussion points with us? Staff is helping me keep track of the hands and so forth. All right, seeing none, let's go on to the next item on our agenda, which is the site plan amendment public hearing for Glavill Incorporated and Allenbrook Development. Darren, who are you presenting on this? Yes, I am Dusty. Real quick, I'm going to let Ned in because I think he's still having computer difficulties and there he is. Ned, can you hear us? You look good. Ned, can you hear us? Thank you. You're probably still operating upstairs. Ned, are you with us? Yes, I am. Right. Thank you. All right, so, Glavill application, one-to-one red pine circle. Let me just get the site plan pulled up here. So, this is a fairly minor amendment to a previously approved application at 131 Red Pine Circle in the RPDI, which is the Saxon Hill area, so off Thompson Drive and Alamarton Drive. The proposal includes a number of small changes, a couple of additions to this existing, a previously approved building that is, as you see here, a small addition to the front of the building for transformer pads and for, I believe, a mechanical room, and then also, there are two silos on the side that are being raised to a height of, let me just one second to get the right number, 58 feet and four roof vents for ventilation that are being raised to a height of 51 feet above ground level. Those two elements required a height waiver from the Planning Commission, which is why we're presenting this as a full application rather than a consent agenda. I do believe there's actually one more, a couple more changes, a concrete fuel containment dyke in the contractor's yard and a paved loading area. Other changes were previously approved by the Planning Commission in January. So staff has no issues with the proposal, meets all the provisions of the zoning regulations and the height waiver meets all the justifications as allowed under section 3.6 of the zoning regulations. That's all we've got. And Dusty, it looks like you are muted. I got there. Now you're back. Thanks, Darren. Commissioners, any questions for staff at this point? No. Do we know how it's gonna look from different points from the road and from the neighbors? Which neighbors, Tom? Think it across Saxon Hill Lane to the north. Darren, do we have any elevations to go along with this? Sorry, my internet cut out for a second, so I missed the question, but you're looking for elevations, you said? Something like that, yeah. Yes, can you just one second to pull those up? I saw the ones in the packet, but is there anything that would show what it might look like from different vantage points? Those were not submitted with the proposal. This is what we've got. There's also floor plans we can look at, but that's not helpful. So yeah, this is, let's see. The, if you're looking at it from Saxon Hill Road, you would be looking at the east elevation. So that would be, or the east and the north elevation, I believe, or maybe the south. Just one second to orient myself here. Sorry, that would be the south and the east elevations. So the top one here and the bottom left here. I guess you're saying two, four, six, eight. Yeah, so. Darren, would you like us to jump in real quick, explain the elevation? Sure. We'll shift over to you guys in a second. Okay. So Tom, we'll look to the applicants for that in a moment. Is there any additional questions beyond that? No, that's my only question. Okay. Commissioners, anybody else have any questions? Okay. So now we'll shift over to the applicant. You guys have the floor at this point and give us your interpretations with the staff and also you've got Tom's questions at this point. So how about it? Okay. How's everyone doing? This is Brian Birch from Omega and I'm here with Al Seneca, the building owner. And Darren, if you could actually just leave this elevation up for a second, I think this is kind of, we'll answer Tom's first question. But I don't really have anything to add to Darren's overview. It was a pretty thorough overview. So thanks Darren for that. But we did kind of want to look at this elevation because it shows the building, which is existing and it shows the two silos in the roof vent chimneys, which we're proposing to increase the height of. So they've been approved at 45 feet, both the silo and the chimney. But as we've been designing this facility with Glavil, we've learned that the height of the silo needs to increase 13 extra additional feet. So a total height of 58 feet and the chimney needs to increase six feet to a total height of 51 feet. And I have Ken Mincar from Glavil here and he can explain really why they need to increase the height of those if you're interested in hearing that explanation. No, I'm just gonna say it's a very rural area. There's only like one neighbor they know of. So my only concern is that the neighbors bought their houses under a certain set of rules and we're talking about changing the rules on them. And so it'd be nice to know what the impact would be to their view and their property before we go ahead and make the change. So one question I might have is, what color the silo is gonna be? So the silo, I guess looking at these elevations, the top elevation would be on the top of the page would be the view from the back of the building. And that's the view from the closest house. And so the buildings like a cream color and the silos can be painted any color, but we're proposing to have them match the building. And they're 58 feet tall, but the building's 30 foot tall. So it's kind of, we feel it's in scale with the building. There is a 200 foot tree buffer between the house that you're talking about and not the building's probably another 200 feet. Yeah, cool. Yeah, that's why I was kind of asking if anybody had some kind of view, you know. Yeah, we don't have a rendering or a picture of that, Tom, but yeah, because it could be, it could be completely invisible. I don't, I can't really mention it, so. Darren, can you put the cyclone for context? Let me jump in for a second, Darren, you hit your hand up. Did you have something to add to that component? Sure, I was going to ask the applicants if they know how tall the trees are in that area. I know it's at least in the 50 foot range, but the other thing I was going to offer is I have a Google Earth view pulled up. I can try to show a bit of a perspective on that as it exists today, which won't show the newest development, but you'll get a sense of sort of roughly what it looks like from those houses. And also, let me go, Tom, can I jump in for a minute? Going back to the original, this is an amendment, going back to the original proposal, what was the, please remind us what the original height was? The original height was a 45 feet. So there were two silos approved at 45 feet or proposing increase in additional 13 feet, so 50, 58 total. Okay, so we already had a waiver in place because you were exceeding the height, no, Darren? The height and the RPDI is 45 feet maximum. Okay, so we were already at high and the buildings you said was at 34? 32. 32. 32, so we've already had, we've already got a situation, we had stacks above the roofline, so, okay. Tom, where do you want to go with this sit down? I don't know, because I feel like it's probably not even an impact to the neighbors, I just feel bad that we're changing the rules on them, so I don't know what to do. What do you guys think? I think we should see if during public comment, if any of the neighbors have concerns before we create our own. Okay, that's fair. Darren, did you have, did you want to try the Google Earth? You? Yes, you try it. While you're doing it? While you're trying that, Sharon, did you have something you want to add? Just add that, we did send out a Butters notices, I don't know if it's as far as Tom was inquiring, but just wanted to make that point. Okay. So I'm hoping that, first of all, you can hear me over the jets, and second that you can see what I'm sharing here, so what the building you're seeing towards the top of the screen is Reinhardt's at I believe 19 Thompson Drive, so where the curve is here is where you start to see some of the construction for Red Pine Circle itself. You don't actually see any of the buildings that are currently there, but the site would be roughly between these two open fields here and extending, sort of a little contractor's yard would extend a bit along the meadow on the right side. So I'm going to come zoom into perspective here from one of the houses on Saxon Hill Road. And I'm not going to be able to get to ground level quite, but I can get as close as possible. And it's pretty clear that you can barely see Reinhardt. I believe that they're in the same range of the height of the proposed gravel building. So there's a slight chance you could see the top of the silo part poking over the trees, but unlikely, especially if there is significant tree cover within closer to the house sites. Thank you. Good job. Yeah, I think we should talk about the color, but that's good for now. Okay. Commissioners, any other questions? Just to Tom's point there, the colors says in the document that it's going to match the building. Brian and Ally, I don't know if you guys decided you were done. Do you have anything more you wanted to bring into this for the comments on the staff report or anything? No, I think the staff report was pretty straightforward. We didn't have anything that was an issue with the staff report. But we're here to answer any questions you guys have. Okay, back to the commission. Additional questions, let's roll down the road here. Josh, what are your thoughts? I am good right now. David. Ditto. Ned. Yeah, I'm good with it too, because I think you need to keep in mind that the highest, somebody's like six foot tall is not going to be able to see over the trees and see the towers anyway. You know, if you put it all in perspective, I don't have any problems with this at all. Okay. John. Mangan. I'm good. Shu. I'm good. All right, thank you. With no additional questions, I would take a motion to open the public hearing. All right, move. We open the public hearing. Exactly. Move by Josh, seconded by Ned. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Public hearing is open. So if anybody in the audience would like to ask a question about this application, please raise your hand, using the raise your hand tool and teams. I don't see anybody from the public, Dusty, but could I ask what time Shu got here? It's in the chat window, I believe. Thank you. So it's the time he checked in. Thanks. Frank. I'll move. We close the public hearing. I'll second that. Move by David, seconded by Josh. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Public hearing is open. Chairman, there hasn't been a lot of conversation on this. Does anyone have additional questions or do you, anybody want to offer a motion? I'm prepared to offer a motion. This is David. I move approval of the site plan amendment public hearing for Glavel, Inc., and Allenbrook Development for the proposed height waiver for storage units, sorry, storage silos and roof vents and other site improvements located at 131 Red Pine Circle in the RPDI district zone, tax map 72, parcel 12-5, staff report as written. I'll second. I'll second that. Move by David, seconded by Josh. Any additional discussion? Hearing none, all those signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 7-0. All set. All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Let's move on to the next item on our agenda, which is a site plan public hearing for Forestdale Heights, Inc. This is a proposal to conduct two warehouse buildings on a 2.21 acre parcel located at 19 Corporate Drive. Darren, are you presenting on this? Yes, I am. Thank you, Dusty. Let me get the site plan up for everyone. So this is 19 Corporate Drive. Oh, one moment. Okay. 19 Corporate Drive located at the far right end of Corporate Drive, also in the RPDI, Saxon Hill Industrial Park. So Allen Martin Drive is here. Take Corporate Drive all the way down and it's on your right. So to the site plan, the focused site plan. So we have two warehouse buildings, very similar to other Watson Corporate Drive. Entrance road off the cul-de-sac with parking along either side. And the only objection that staff had with this when it came in the door was the location of street trees, which was a little close to some of the utilities that were buried and we were concerned that would cause problems in the future. We asked the applicants to relocate the trees. So they're at least 10 feet away from underground utilities, including water and sewer, and to change the species out so they would still have the same number of trees, but they would be smaller growing. So they have witch hazel and dogwood as shrubs, which are native to the Saxon Hill Forest, in addition to the red oak on the corner here. No objections otherwise. We do wanna note that the site will use shared stormwater directed to lot 13, the pond for the phase two section of corporate drives, and that that will pretty much fill out the capacity of that stormwater pond. There's a small amount left. So the remaining lots on corporate drive that are not yet constructed would have to probably use their onsite stormwater. Darren, let me jump in for a minute. Can you put the plans up while you're talking? I thought I did. Sorry about that. It's only you. Well, that makes all my gesturing seem pretty silly. So let me run through this real quick again. Saxon Hill. One moment, it looks like my VPN is giving me trouble. So that might be part of the problem. And while we're waiting. Oh, sorry. I'm just gonna go to the shortage of issues tonight. While we're waiting, we had somebody come in with a telephone number of 802-999-9998, if I could just have a name with that telephone number. It's Rick. Rick, Rick. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, let me try this one more time. There we go. You're seeing now, great. Yep, yep. All right. So Alan Martin Drive, corporate drive, all the way at the end on the right, lot 19, two warehouse buildings. And I'm gonna point out the street trees real quick, showing the underground utilities. So Red Oak on the left here, Witch Hazel and Dogwood along the right side, well enough away from utilities. And then I just also wanna go back to the overall site plan to show lot 13 stormwater pond, which will be fairly maxed out in capacity by this plot. Otherwise, no issues and no changes needed. Commissioners, any questions for staff? So just one clarification, Darren. So the fact that the stormwater is being pretty much allocated for this, I mean, are we comfortable if the remainder of the development can happen with onsite and that we're not kind of boxing ourselves into a corner on stormwater? I would leave that to the applicant to discuss, but there is still a fair amount of space on the last two lots, so lot 21 and 23 that they could probably fit. It looks to me that they could fit most of the site and maybe we just have to have slightly smaller amounts of impervious or do a little more onsite treatment. But I would leave that to the applicant to really answer. Okay, so we'll park that for when we bring the applicants in. Any additional questions? I do have one myself. Okay, Darren. I think this is probably just terminology, but line 108, at least what I've got for 108. It says planting four street trees to replace the 50 foot buffer. I'm a little concerned about using the term replace. Did I lose audio? Did I'm not there? No. Okay, okay. I'm a little concerned about using the term replace because we talk about using, allowing street trees to come in and modify the buffer to bring consistency, but I don't think we've ever used the phrasing of replacing the buffer because it's still there. Yeah, so your PC findings for most of the applications on corporate drives says commission supports a waiver to clear the 50 foot buffer along corporate drive in order to replace the fragmented buffer with street trees similar to corporate drive phase two. So I pulled from that. Okay, I'm okay with that. Maybe Dustin, the word within would be more appropriate because we're really not replacing, we're planting new within the 50 foot. I'm yeah. Or replanting. But even if it was replanting, it would be replanting within the 50 foot buffer. We're not really replacing anything. It's a replacing suggest a removal of something and a replacing of something whereas this is a clearing and a replanting within. We're replacing the existing vegetation within the 50 foot buffer with fourth street trees. Exactly. So I think within is more appropriate. Okay. So maybe this is the opportunity Darren will use to tweak the language going forward. Okay. Anybody else have any comments or questions for staff? Then let's go to the applicant. Josh still has his hand up. Oh, sorry, Josh, go ahead. Because I was muted, that's why. I just noticed it's a minor thing that we're seven feet below the minimum lot frontage. Am I reading that right? Required 200 to pose 193. You're correct. And I may have neglected to mention in the staff report that because this is on the outside of cul-de-sac the typical section 3.1 of the zoning range allows the frontage to be reduced to 75% of the normal required frontage. Oh, that's right. Okay, yep. Thanks. Okay. Onward. Applicant, who's gonna be presenting on this? Paul O'Leary from O'Leary Burke. Hi, Paul. How about that? Good evening. So I'll start with the stormwater. Back when all these lots were vacant we designed a stormwater system and a conventional detention pond as Darin pointed out on a lot 13. So since then, most of the buildings have been built out and as we've built it, we've done what they call a disconnection of most of the buildings from the stormwater system. In other words, all the water that comes off the roof goes into an infiltration trench and infiltrates into the ground. So the fact is that the detention pond has never in its history had a discharge. It's never even filled up to the one year storm and gone out the back. So we actually have plenty of stormwater capacity with the next application that's coming in across the street we will be amending the stormwater permit with the state of Vermont to make allowances for the three remaining lots. Therefore, the detention pond will have adequate capacity for any future development on the phase two portion. The detention pond on a lot 13 only serves the back half of the development. The front half, the front lots, I think one through 11 all have onsite stormwater facilities. So other than that, the only comment I had was in the conditions. It appeared as though condition 17 is not needed as the key box is covered under condition 21. Other than that, we are good to go. Thanks, Paul. Commissioner's questions for the applicant. Hearing none. I'll make a motion. We open the public hearing. I'll second that. That was David. That was Josh. Yeah. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Public hearing is open. Does anyone have any questions on this application? I'll make a motion. We close the public hearing. I'll second that. By David seconded by Josh. They got a routine going tonight. All those in favor? Signify by sign. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 7-0. So commissioners thoughts, questions? I have a couple. We'll get to them. But let's go down the road. Tom, what are your thoughts on this one? I have no questions. Josh? I'm all set now. David? I'm good. Thank you. Ned? John Mankin? My only question is on the second building that's furthest away from the parking lot, is there any public access to that or is that strictly for the business? And I just asked because it doesn't have any accessible parking near that building. It's expected it's just for the business. Okay. That's it. All right, thanks John. Shoe? I'm a gun, I'm good. Okay. And I want to roll back and I'm trying to find all the lines. And then it would be the 282. So Darren, there's three spots where we reference the waiver language. I got it 108 and I got 187, 189. And then 282 through 285. And also the comment on 278 just the heading I'd like that to be as we discussed. But in there, we've said, as you mentioned that our language was replacing the buffer with the fragmented buffer with, I want to make sure we're not replacing the buffer. We're replacing the fragmented vegetation within the buffer with street trees. And if we can just make those three spots reflective of that, I would be happy on this one. Commissioner, is any concerns with making those tweaks? I think it's a good idea. So with that comment, Dustin, I would move approval of the site plan public hearing for Forest Hill Heights and Brad and Renee LaFountain for the proposal to construct two warehouse buildings totaling 12,600 square feet on a 2.21 eco parcel located at 19 corporate drive in the RPDI district. So text map, 72 parcel 3-19. Staff report as written with tweaks to the language to reflect that any changes to the buffer are not replaced but simply either redeveloped or some language to indicate that it's not a replacement. It's a help me out here. You're replacing the vegetation. Within. Yeah, that it's not a, yeah, it's within the buffer. It's new plantings within the buffer but it's not a replacing the buffer. I'll second it. And, Ed, did I'd like to, we want to strike condition 17. Okay. Was that your question, Darren? Yes. Okay. So just clarifying that, I think we can keep it simple but we're trying to be consistent with the application of that 50 foot buffer. So we can say we can say replacing the fragmented vegetation within the buffer I think is the piece that we're trying to capture in this. Yeah. Using street trees to replace the fragmented vegetation within the 50 foot buffer. Yeah, much more elegant. Exactly. Thank you. Darren, did that work for you? Sure. And David, I was assuming that's what you were saying. That's exactly it. Yeah, thank you. We have a motion that's been moved in and seconded. Josh, did you second that? It was Josh, shoot this time. Shoot, okay. All those in favor of the motion? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed. Motion carries seven, zero. Okay, onward back to the agenda. There we go. So the next item on the agenda is, why did I just lose that? Site plan public hearing. Rick Boeve doing business as HDI real estate. This is a proposal for two residential buildings totaling 30 apartment units and one mixed unit, one mixed use building including 22 apartment units and 6,000 square feet of commercial space located at Commonwealth and 10 car Michael. Darren. Just wanna jump in real quick and remind you when the time comes, you'll have to re-administer the oath to the late arrival. Hang on, I just, I got booted. Am I back on? Yes. Yeah, I can hear you. I can hear you. Thank you. I just wanted to remind you to re-administer the oath when the time comes for late arrivals for public. Well, this is our last app. So let's do it now. So I know we have, I think Rick wasn't here. I'm not sure who else. Anybody so, okay. So Rick, do you swear that any testimony you present this evening will be truthful to the best of your abilities? I do. Thank you. All right, now we're on to that application and I ran through it and I think I was offline. This is site plan public hearing for proposal for two residential buildings, totaling 30 apartment units and one mixed use building, including 22 apartment units and 6,000 square feet commercial space located at Commonwealth and Carmichael. Darren, are you presenting on this? Yes. And the site plan should be up. Let me know if you're not seeing it. It is there. Great, thank you. So there is a long history of applications for this site, as noted in the staff report has been under development proposals for at least a couple of decades. There have been many iterations of the building layout and design. This is Commonwealth Avenue here, Carmichael Street here. This application is three buildings, H, G1 and G. It was formerly two buildings, G and H with H wrapping the corner. At one point it was also one building, H wrapping the entire corner, including G here. But, and this is over the course of two different landowners. Staff believes this is perhaps the least aligned proposal with the community's vision and the regulations of all the proposals that we have seen. We don't support this proposal for many reasons, most of which were conveyed to the applicant during the conceptual review in April of 2020. And subsequently when this proposal was submitted in February of 2021, we repeatedly suggested some changes that would bring the project into conformance with the regulations and the vision. But most were frankly ignored by the applicant and we only allowed this to come before the planning commission due to repeated insistence by the applicant that we do so. So here we are. I'll run briefly through some of the major points of the site plan. So this is the master plan showing the entire HDI property as part of the half of the MXDC district. We've got the three buildings, on street parking along Carmichael and Commonwealth, parking in the rear, as well as underground parking within building H. Going into the main site plan, there is a sidewalk along both Commonwealth and Carmichael as well as around the buildings themselves and between them. But we do believe the sidewalks are too narrow. And there are some street trees along the frontage, but not quite enough. And I should say some of this for details later. But and access would be primarily for vehicles through the rear coming along this driveway between buildings I and H, as well as buildings G and X, which is jewels on the green and associated apartments. And then coming into the rear parking lot, either going down to the underground parking or into the parking on the surface. So the important issues that staff have with this proposal can be divided into quantitative and qualitative. Quantitatively, this whole proposal exceeds the maximum allowed density for this area. And the applicant has requested a density bonus of 31% over what is allowed, which is 123 units. But staff do not feel that this bonus is sufficiently justified because they are proposing a significant amount of ground floor residential, whereas we think this should be a primarily commercial corridor and that ground floor commercial should dominate. There is affordable housing proposed in the waiver. However, that affordable housing is already built in building K. So you'll see on the master plan they've calculated 157 total units for the entire development. 25% of that is 40 units and there are 44 units in building K. But this proposal will not include any additional affordable units, which is a deviation from the past proposal. And the applicant has a poor history of serving residents and tenants in the existing buildings in terms of maintaining them. So we question whether it's wise to allow so many additional units above what's allowed when that has been a problem in the past. And there are other reasons that this proposal doesn't meet our regulations and visions. So another bonus is not justified. More importantly, this exceeds the maximum allowable residential density per block. There's a provision within the mixed use planned unit development regulations that says any block cannot have a density more than 10 units per acre or 12 units per acre for buildings fronting on Main Street, which is now called Carmichael Street. So this block is defined by Commonwealth Avenue, Carmichael Street, Billy Butler Drive and Route 15. And the staff report does note that the calculated block density is, let me one second, I'll get to it. 16.6 units per acre, I neglected to include the Malloy Delaney House at, just got the address here, six Carmichael Street. So that should actually be corrected to 16.7 dwelling units per acre. In any case, that far exceeds even the 12 allowed for if all the buildings were fronting on Main Street, which they are not a rather Carmichael Street. So the effect of this is to concentrate all of the residential density within this Northwestern block of the development and basically leave all the rest to be commercial. Although the applicant has proposed additional units for the rest of the development, that would exceed what is allowed except without the density bonus. So staff doesn't feel that this is appropriate and that that provision was meant to ensure that the residential units were used throughout the development rather than concentrated in one area. I'm gonna move to some of the architectural features. So the building H exceeds the maximum height allowed in this district, which is 40 feet. They have requested a waiver to allow the corner pediment of building H to exceed that height by a few feet. But in order to do that, they have to justify that it meets the design criteria of the business design control overlay district. And staff does not feel that this building design really creates the sense of place and distinctive architectural features that would justify exceeding that height requirement. It looks pretty much the same as the rest of the building. We note that building G technically also exceeds the height by six inches, but it's fairly minimal. However, the applicants did not request a height waiver for that. Going back to building H, it exceeds the maximum footprint for building area per floor, which is 10,000 square feet within the MXDC. The mixed use planning and development regulations allow for a waiver to that if the proposal creates the sense of smaller buildings and is part of the town center and integral to carrying out the development goals there. But we do feel that this building is very large, looks very massive because all of the architecture and the colors and textures are the same across both building H and the building G and G1. So if we get down to the perspectives here along Carmichael and Commonwealth, we can see that you really can't tell that there's multiple buildings here unless you're able to see the gaps. So that really is not meeting the criteria of the look of small establishments. It does seem like there is some amount of breaking up the vertical face with some setback changes, but they're fairly minimal. And you can still tell that this is all one building. So we'd really prefer to see more variation between the buildings and more of a distinction between them and particularly along building H. We know that there's a large expanse of blank wall on the southwest corner right at the street level. So pedestrians can't even really access through there or see through the windows or anything, which is part of what makes this criterion work. So going back to some of the issues, actually I'll stick with this for a second. So within the Essex Town Center Master Plan that was approved in March of 2021, there are some qualities and some quotes that I wanna pull out that speak to this. So on page 17 and 18, we wanna focus on distinctive architecture that focuses on less boxy forms, varied massing, architectural elements like porches and arcades that encourage diverse roof forms and roof lines. This is a very flat roof line. There's not much change in it from the street level. We wanna have clearly defined entry points, which we do acknowledge the applicants have done with this proposal since it was last reviewed as a conceptual. They've added these porches to the building entrances along Commonwealth Avenue. So that does serve to distinguish the entrances. And we generally want to achieve the quality and architectural outcomes with traditional materials such as wood and brick, although we will allow for substitutes provided they achieve that look. And the horizontal siding here, although it's not wood or brick does achieve that look. However, the portions that are sort of a tan color here don't really look like brick, don't really look like wood and don't really seem to honor that traditional architectural design, not to say that it can't be part of the building and that we shouldn't strive for some level of variation, but it doesn't really seem to fit with the rest of the building. Gary, can I interrupt for a second? Yep. As much as I'd love to hear you go on, we've got a staff report that recommends denial. Okay. So all of the points you're making are in the staff report. As much as I'd love to go through this and this level of detail, I'm not about to, you know, yeah, I just feel like if staff is recommending denial, I want to hear from the applicant, but you know, I'm going to be hard pressed to go against staff recommendation for denial based on the fact that it goes against what we're looking for. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on this if we need to get this back to the drawing board. I don't like applications personally as a commissioner that come through without staff approval. This one's got way too many red flags for me. I don't want to spend an hour going through all the reasons it doesn't meet our regs. So that's my two cents. Sorry. I think, David, you jumped in before me. I think that's, I think that's a fair assessment. I mean, Darren, you said that the applicants were provided with all this, correct? Correct. Okay. So if you've got a couple of major points to throw in, that's, you know, let's go, but I think as David indicated, there's a preponderance of information that you've provided to us and it probably is a good time to swing to the applicant. Sure. I think I've covered the major points. Okay. Thanks for that. Paul, is this you again? Yes, it is. And this one? The floor is yours. Thank you. So I want to talk about commercial space to start with. The fact is, is that commercial space is more valuable to Mr. Bowen than residential space. In other words, the income he gets from commercial space is greater on a per square foot basis than residential space. So if we thought that we could easily rent first floor commercial throughout those buildings, we would certainly do that. But as David can lobby to you, if he pays any attention to the commercial real estate reports that have come out in the last couple of months, the commercial market, particularly the retail market and the office market has crashed. Very little money there, tremendous amount of commercial space available. We currently have about 50,000 square feet of commercial space within Bowes property. Peter next door has around 182,000 square feet of commercial space if you include Hanifords. Obviously, if you look at Peter's buildings, he's got large places that are empty, hasn't been able to fill them, essentially gives them a way to try to get somebody in there and doing something different. So obviously, commercial space is just not in demand. We just, it just doesn't work. I also want to talk about residential density versus commercial density. And I'm going to go off on a little tangent here, while familiar with Tafts Corners and Finney Crossing. And Maple Tree Place came in probably 15 or 20 years ago now and nobody really liked it. It was kind of out in the middle. And other than Christmas season, it was pretty much a dead zone. You go into that mall and there's no activity, no pedestrian things. Peter Judge had the Tafts Corner Shopping Center on the corner, again, kind of run down, always a lot of vacant space. But then Finney Crossing came along, Snyder's development. And between Finney Crossing and some of the other projects that have built, there's over 1,000 units of residential use right there. I think there's six buildings alone that are 60 plus units that are full. 100% full, if you tried to rent one of those spaces that you can't get it. And after all this density came in, what happened is there's been a big turnaround out there. Peter Judge's development Tafts Corner Center is full. Maple Tree Place, if you walk through there at night, there's actually some pedestrian activity and things going on. You've seen businesses like Healthy Living have opened. We've got hotels opening. My sister lives in Finney Crossing and says it's wonderful. I mean, it's a residential block, but it's close enough they can walk to all this different commercial. Now we're looking at the Town Center. And Darren is basically telling us in the staff report that we have way too much residential density. Heck, we don't have anywhere near enough residential density. The Town Center is gonna continue to be a ghost town at night until you get a lot of residential density out there. I'm sorry, you're a little misguided on your ETC plan and that we have way too much commercial space and nowhere near enough residential space to think that Peter is gonna take some of his buildings down in the near future is unrealistic. Five years ago when the outlet started going away, Peter hired a consultant to come in and give him some advice on what he should do with his commercial space. Consultant came back and his recommendation was was that he felt that the Town Center area would only support a total of 40,000 square feet of retail slash commercial. 40,000 square feet is all this guy said. Obviously Peter kind of dismissed them and said, well, that's not gonna work and go away. But the point is, is that we have way too much commercial out there today and nowhere near enough residential and you're just looking to make it worse and make it more of a dead zone out there. Now, obviously there's a lot of history. We've got all the master plans and master plan does two things. And particularly if you look at it from a court's perspective, the master plan allows the town to see what's gonna happen in the long term for a piece of property. But it also gives the developer or the landowner some sense that he can go forward. It gives him basically a foot in the ground. Now, I understand it's mostly a sketch plan application, but the master plan certainly does count for something. Now, we've had two previous approvals on this corner for these buildings. One in March of 2016 and the last one in February of 2017. Now, from what I can tell, there's been absolutely no changes to the zoning regulations since those approvals. It's the same rakes. If we read through the 2017 approval, that staff report said it complied with the town plan. It said it complied with the building setbacks. It said the building waiver was okay. It said the density was okay. It liked the building design. And it was okay with the sidewalks and it recommended approval. Now, the plan that is in front of you today, the architecture was done by Scott and partners. Obviously, we're all familiar with Scott and partners. John Alden is one of the principals. He participates with this board a lot. Joel Page did most of the work. They also did building O across the street. Rick had a design done for this corner. He threw it out, started from scratch with Scott and partners who've come up with a pretty good-looking building. Our discussions in the previous applications have mostly been because of the size of the building. As Darren commented, the approval in 2016 was one very big building. In 2017, we split into two buildings. And now the current application is three buildings. The building that was approved in 2017 was 49 and a half foot tall. And you approve that waiver in height. This building that we're proposing is 44 feet tall. And if need be, we can cut it down to 40. It just wouldn't be a feature on the corner. We think it won't look nearly as good, but we can live without having a building waiver. Yes, the maximum footprint is 10,690 square feet versus an allowable of 10,000 square feet. The building in 2017 was 15,650 square feet, and you approve that. The sidewalk in front that Darrell says isn't wide enough. In 2017, you approved it as seven feet wide. The plan today is eight feet wide. The buildings proposed today are three or four feet back further from the curb line than the building that you approved in 2017. So, it seems like that there's quite a staff prejudice going on here against Mr. Boeve. I mean, right off the bat with the staff note, you look at the title and it's titled denial. And big letters. The previous application, I didn't see that it said approval on the top. It just basically said staff notes. You read the staff notes now and the staff says it doesn't comply with the town plan and yet that town plan hasn't changed since 2017. It doesn't meet the setback requirement, but it's actually a little bit further away than the 2017 plan recommends we deny the height waiver. Well, it's not as tall as the waiver that you granted in 2017. You don't want any density bonuses, which is just so ridiculous that you would be talking about less density in the town center. And you're really trying to stretch it with this block by block view. I go back, Harry Smith was in charge of it when I first started. Then we had Herb Durfee. We, I don't know how many planners we've had that have reviewed this. I mean, we must have had six or seven different planners so far in the exact same set of regulations. And nobody's ever done this convoluted argument that it doesn't comply. It's just, there is no way to reconcile this staff report with the staff report from 2017 when the zoning regulations are the same. To talk about the ETC NEXT plan, it's a vision statement. The board has said so itself. Now, I was at a meeting a few weeks ago where Shu commented that he had been reviewing the jam decision in South Burlington. And the jam decision was something that went to environmental court and South Burlington had a regulation that wasn't specific. And the judge essentially said is that, hey, your regulations have to be specific if you expect a developer to comply with them. Now, in this case, you haven't started to change the zoning regulations to match your vision of the ETC NEXT plan. Therefore, it's our opinion and it's our council's opinion that in court, that plan will have little or no bearing on this application at this point in time. You know, everything in the report is prejudice against Mr. Boeve. I mean, the sections about the zoning violations, the thing about the 911 calls, I mean, give me a break. All the 991 calls are for building K which is the low income housing building. I didn't see any 911 calls about the 20 residential units that are in building O. So is it Mr. Boeve not being a good manager or is it the fact that that's a low income housing building? So you can draw your own conclusions from that. But everything about the staff report is negative, negative, negative, negative. And it's biased and that's not the staff's job in my view. They're supposed to come and bring an unbiased. Now, Darren mentioned that we had difficulty getting in front of the board. I mean, we've been almost a full year trying to get this application in front of you. And the last go around was relatively heated where, you know, Darren felt that we didn't qualify for the height waiver and we didn't qualify for the building size waiver and we didn't qualify for the density of ours. And the heated conversation was about the fact that it's not staff that gets to decide those waivers. It's the planning commission that decides the waivers. And that's what we wanna do is get in front of the board and see what you had to say, knowing that you're a very big on precedent and that you had approved this project twice. And it's our view that this project in front of you tonight is vastly superior to the 2017 approval and that it's three buildings instead of two. It requires less of a height waiver. It's a better architectural design from Scott and partners versus Rick's previous architect and got a wider sidewalk and all the other things that I mentioned going down through. And the thing that really kills me is there's no stipulations or no conditions. I mean, if the board was to disagree with the staff, how could you even approve it tonight with no conditions? You have a full set of conditions that was approved from the 2016 and the 2017 approvals. It would have seemed that at least you could have taken the 2017 conditions and modified them to suit for this project. So yeah, I'm wicked disappointed. And I'm curious to see what the planning commission says. I'm curious how the planning commission can reconcile the 2017 approval with this staff notes because I don't think you can lay it on the ETC next plan. I'm pretty sure that that will not stand in court. All right, Dustin, back to you. Okay, thanks Paul. Are you sure about this? No, I'm not trying to diminish any of this at all. Commissioners, let's bat this around. Ned, you've hit your hand up for a while. Ned, you're on mute. Ned, you're on mute. Okay, I was gonna say, I went through Darren's report and all and I have to admit that most of my reaction was exactly the same as Paul O'Leary's. I mean, this whole thing ought to be a case study about why things don't get built. It really is, it's just a case study of how for some reason people are bouncing around zoning codes, becoming architectural experts right down the board. They become involved in not understanding the reality of the commercial space market. I think it's a shame because we need housing, we need density and somehow our planners need to sit down with a developer and get something built. I think it's just not getting done and it's disappointing, I mean. So let me jump in and redirect for a second, Ned. Hang on a second, please. You're in support of something being built here. So I wanna bring back, and this is for everybody coming on after you. We have a recommendation for denial from the staff. So that's what we're looking at right now. And I do not want to have any more beating up on staff from anybody, for either applicant or commissioners. Staff is doing due diligence to bring us the staff report to the best that they can. We have the ability, we have the responsibility to look at this and if we don't agree with the staff's recommendation then we can redirect them. But I really do not wanna hear anybody else at this point cast aspersions on the process that we've followed so far. So I apologize for interrupting you, Ned, but I think we were going down the path that I don't wanna go down. We've done that in the past and I don't wanna go there again. So what I'd like from the commissioners at this point is if you feel there's substance to this that we should be pursuing this, let's hit the mark. Let's decide whether or not we are in agreement with the denial. If we're not in agreement with the denial, we wanna see something back. Dester, you're breaking up. Then we can go back houses. Still kind of funky. Okay, I'm gonna be with you for a second and come back. So Dustin, this is David. I would support whether it's a continuance or I agree with a lot of the points that Paul made. I also agree with a lot of the points in the staff report. I think there's some taking the ETC next out of the equation, but looking at some of the issues like commercial versus residential density, some of the requests for waivers or density bonuses. I think there's issues to be worked out here. Paul, you made a lot of great points. And I think there's a lot of questions to be answered between the last approval and where we are today. Not much is changed in the zoning regs. And Paul, that's a great point. I think we need staff and the applicant to get back together. I gotta be honest, I wanna see something happen here. I think we all do. And I think there's some room for making that happen. I just wanna see more alignment between staff and the applicant. I think staff can bend a little. I think the applicant's got a little bit of work to do in terms of commercial versus residential. Paul, I totally get where you're at. As a real estate broker, it's cyclical, but that doesn't mean that we don't need to do some work to build it and they will come because we don't wanna end up with all residential there and no room for commercials. So I'll stop blabbing, but I mean, I want at the end of the day, I love this area of town and I wanna see something successful be put there. David. Thanks, David. Josh. I would put ditto to what David said. So it basically, a ditto of what David said, the one sort of addendum is that the concerns about the active versus inactive streetscape do pre-date the passage of the ETC. Looks like we may have lost Dusty for a second. Hopefully I'll come right back. And in the meanwhile, I had somebody join with a telephone number of 318-1758. Can you identify yourself, please? Maybe that was Dusty. All right, we'll not, oh, Dusty. Sorry guys, I just, this has been really buggy tonight. I just completely lost all connections. Just coming back in now too. And I was looking for somebody who has a phone number of 318-1758, but no one's identifying and may came on just recently. Sharon, your hand, is that all you had? Okay. Yes, I'll take it down. So Dusty, can I just ask how much you heard of what I said? I didn't hear anything. I just, I'd lost all video. Okay, cause that looks like you were, all I said was that I was basically dittoing what David said, but that the concerns we had back in April, 2020, about the active versus inactive streetscape and the commercial on the ground floor, like that whole issue does predate the passage of ETC. So any, anything we were going to hang our hat on did predate the change in vision. So this is, my point is it's been a consistent thing we've wanted for at least since April of last year. Shoe, what are your thoughts on this? You already asked that something, didn't you? Well, I just, I just said that, you know, ditto to what David said, I would like to see, I would see, like to see both the applicant and staff be, be, try to be more objective and have it create a discussion around this. I would like to see, maybe see this application with some conditions on it so that we can at least toss around some of those sort of things. Really one of the things I was really hoping for is to finish the paving on Carmichael, but that's another subject matter. That's all I got to add. John, any thoughts or what are your thoughts on this? I won't waste any time because everything I've, I agree with what's been said with Dave and what Shoe just said as well. Okay. Oiso, your hand is up. Yes, I just wanted to address the architectural issue. I worked with Darren on part of the review, especially the architectural review because I'm stronger in architecture than he is. And I do have a master of architecture and I have worked as an architect before. So I think we can agree to disagree that architecture is inherently subjective. And we tried to follow the regs as closely as possible and interpret your elevations in the context of the regulations. And there's nothing personal in these. It's an architectural assessment. Okay, thank you. What I'm hearing is that the commission wants something to go in. Rick, did you want to offer something? Sorry. Sorry. No, I was just echoing what Paul said. The one thing that hasn't been said tonight is my bank wants something happening here and they're fully behind me. But it's going to be a stretch with the commercial component. It's just the world that we live in. And if you watch CNBC, you're hearing the word hybrid quite often. And so there's going to be, we don't know what it's going to be like in the not so distant future as far as office space, commercial space, working at home, et cetera. And I would like to talk to Joel and to Paul, the commission with the residential on the first floor with the idea that if times change, we can build in such a way that we could turn, you know, when the leases are up, turn it into commercial because Paul is absolutely correct. Like a per square foot commercial, than I do residentially. And so there's a way that to me is a compromise. It wants a development, that people are driving by all day long and we have, well, not cardboard, but you know what I mean? That brown paper on the windows because there's no occupants. That doesn't scream vibrant. And so you've got to have the people to have the business to follow. And that's really my two cents. Thank you. Tom, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to give my two cents. So I'm really in favor of density. I think we should discuss commercial tonight and see what we're comfortable with. David's point is commercial is cyclical and we're at the trough right now. I think that's fair. But will it come back? Will there be more demand in the future? And Rick's idea of spaces that can be converted back and forth is interesting. I'd be in favor of the height waiver. I'd even be in favor of another floor and that thing just to get the density. Kind of to Paul's point, I think you need a lot of residents there to drive more commercial activity and make it more of a happening place. And in terms of the architecture, I guess I'm on Oisa's side that they could do, differentiate the buildings some more so that all the buildings don't look the same. But tonight we should have that discussion on commercial and then I'd be in favor of continuing. Okay. And I was actually leaning. I mean, I'm hearing from the commission pretty much across the board that we're looking to have something there. I think we've got, staff did do diligence to put a report before us. I think having a discussion on certain elements would be great. I guess I would lean more towards going to a continuance now and directing staff and the applicant to bring that back to us and giving us a summary of this any discussion points as far as the density options and so forth. And we did all that. I think there's points to be made on both sides. And as Mr. Bo brought up, that potential of having space that is convertible is interesting. It would be more interesting to see how that can become coded into the building. So that's not a question Mark, 10 years from now that you can't do that. So let's bat that around a little bit. We're not gonna be able to approve anything tonight because we don't have a report to approve. We have a report to deny. We gotta remember that our motion tonight, if we don't have one, we'll be to accept the denial. So even if we continue, we still have a denial on the table in front of us. Well, Mr. Chair, if we do a motion to continue, we don't have to take up the denial or approval. We're basically just kicking the can down. Right. And that's a completely new report with conditions to approve. And that's kind of where I'm leaning towards right now. So we don't, my feeling is that if we do try to have too much of a discussion tonight, we're not, staff is not prepared. I know Paul's got information they can prevent and Rick brought stuff and David's got peripheral information but I'm not feeling that there's an opportunity for a truly beneficial, meaningful discussion. Now I'll go back, Tommy, your hand's still up. So I'm assuming you wanna add to this. Yeah, it is now good. So I just wanna make the point that we, I think it's not productive to send the applicant and staff off to talk unless we give them some direction on the commercial space. I think we have to decide that tonight. So do we have, this is for staff and Darren, your hands up, do you wanna go ahead? You're muted. Thank you. I agree with Tom. It would be helpful to have some direction from the commission on the residential commercial. We can certainly do some research and talk with the applicant about some of their realities. And I don't mean this in an accusatory way, but we did try to have this discussion with the applicants back in February and through March about, we feel that this doesn't meet the vision and wanna have a discussion with you about why your proposal doesn't match up with what we're looking for. So we would really like to, again, offer an olive branch to the applicant that we're willing to sit down. We were willing to talk this out. The applicant insisted to come before you. So I just want that context to be out there. But I do hear Rick's statement that we wanna make sure that this is a vibrant area and that we're not just putting commercial in that's not going to be successful. And we're open to the idea of the convertible space as well, that's something that was talked about in the UTC next process and merits some exploration. There are some limitations, but we'll certainly discuss it. And again, we also wanna emphasize staff is not against density in this area. We fully support higher residential density. It's right there in the UTC next plan. But we are concerned about the fact that this proposal doesn't actually meet our regulations. And as Paul said, there's a very clear mandate from Jan that says there's gotta be clear community standards in order to recommend denial. And we've done that. The section 6.7E of the regulations, sorry, 6.7D4 says we cannot have a net residential density more than 12 units per acre and it has to fall within the overall density bonus bonus limit of 25%. That's pretty clear. So we would be open to exploring regulatory changes that would allow different development to happen, but we can't approve something that the regulations don't allow. So I just wanna ask the commission, if you're willing to consider density bonuses, you might have to amend the regulations to do that or willing to work with the applicant on a proposal. Okay, so just, there's a lot of hands up right now. So I'm gonna try to go down the road. Paul, you were years, I saw years up first. Yeah, so on a commercial, I just remind folks that you drive by the five corners all the time and the big building that would place Chittenden Bank is still about half empty on the first floor of the commercial. You know, it's been like that for what, six or seven years now, just to give you an idea of the difficulty of filling that kind of space. And I would argue that that's even more prime space than what we're talking about here. But for us to go forward, we need some clear direction from the commission. One, what's your opinion on the commercial space? Are you looking for one building to be all commercial? Are you looking for all three buildings to be first floor commercial? We need that from you, not a discussion with us and staff. Residential density. You know, Darren keeps quoting all these blocks and everything else. But the fact is, is the way I read it, you're allowed to give up to 400% residential bonus in that district. You should look at it not as the individual blocks, but one big project. You approve the density in 2017. I don't see how the regulations have changed since then. So we should have some clear direction from the board on whether you wanna see more or less residential density. The building architecture. I'd like to see a straw boat. Do people like the architecture or not like the architecture? Should we go back to Scott and partners and tell them that they screwed up, that they don't know what they're doing and we should change it? Or how do you wanna go on that? And then again, we need direction on all the waivers. Are you okay with the one building being 10,690 square feet? Or should it be less than 10,000 square feet? These are not issues that can be decided among between staff and ourselves. We need direction from the board on these items. Where are we headed? What are you comfortable with? Then we can sit down with staff and maybe work out some of the other issues. Okay. A reminder that we are working on tonight at this point, we're working on a denial. So as much as we wanna talk about everything I would disagree with that, Dustin. You have a recommendation of a denial. Only the board can make a motion to approve or deny. We have a staff report in front of us. That's what I'm referring to. So I understand that and we've got that. So let's not go off right now. We're trying to get to a good spot for everybody. Bear with us. I will be so. Hi, I would just like to bring up two points about the ground floor commercial that I hope that you consider during your consideration of ground floor commercial versus residential. And that is that one paper up in windows is one thing. So is having, it's a detraction from a vibrant commercial space or a vibrant public space. But so is having curtains drawn and absolutely no life on the street level when residents have to keep their windows closed because they're on a busy corridor. The other point about that is that, and the auxiliary point to that is that the quality of life on a busy street for residents is not desirable. The second point that I would like to make is that if you do consider allowing this application to build residential space that would be convertible to commercial space in the future, I would hope that you would ask them to build it to commercial standards, which would include taller ceilings and more generous windows than generally appear on residential space. And so that it is or somehow allowances made for that conversion to actually happen. Because once you get eight or nine foot ceilings that is not a commercial space at grade. I just wanted to point those things out as you're making your considerations. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't, I'm just saying that you need to take into consideration that it doesn't usually happen that ground floor residential becomes commercial. I understood. And I don't think we were looking to have the granular details from this discussion at this point because this commission is looking, looks for recommendations. David. So personally, I'm a fan of super high density because I think with residential density becomes the driver for the commercial. So I think it's a chicken and egg thing. So I think we need super high density in that area because it doesn't rely on car traffic. It doesn't rely on high parking. You put the people in there and then it drives part of the residential component. I think we got to look at the commercial across the whole area and we got to do some calculations. And we just have to do an analysis of how much commercial we need in that area. Right now, commercial's in the tank but when you start to develop high density in residential areas, then you start to drive the need for more commercial to support that area. Paul Finney Crossing is a perfect example. Build it and they will come. They densited the hell out of Finney Crossing and all of a sudden, a few years later, the commercial started popping. Healthy living would not be in Finney Crossing if it wasn't for the high, high density of residential they put in there to support that. And that's just a fact. So we need to do the same thing with that area. We need to pack it in like crazy and then that'll create the commercial that comes. But if you don't have the ability to develop the commercial after the fact, then we're sort of in a loss. So we got to find a balance. And I want to see that analysis for the whole town center. Lastly, I'm fine with the waivers and I'm fine with doing all this stuff. We got to develop that area but I want to see more collaboration and less arguments about the regs. There's got to be a balance here. This is one of the most important areas of town and this is why we did the whole ETC next was so that we could make this work. So I'll shut up now, but I think we're not that far off. And by the way, Paul, I like what Scott and partners did. I would like to see a little bit more articulation on the buildings. I think it's a little shallow, but for the most part, when I look at the elevations actually like the look of the buildings. I don't think it's bad. So that's my opinion. I'm done. Thanks, David. Josh. David said a lot of what I was going to say down to the chicken and egg thing. I actually had that phrase all teed up, but the one thing that I would add because I definitely understand the economic realities that Paul was saying that of course he'd like to do and Rick Bo would like to do more commercial, but it's not economically feasible. One of the things that I keep coming back to and John Alden was saying it when we were talking about ETC in the first place is it's sort of the idea if we're trading something in a regulatory way, what do we want back? And I think David hit upon it that we want sort of this sort of showpiece part of town. And so when I think of the commercial, I personally as a commissioner, I'm not thinking about the business so much as commercial. This is what a WeSouth point was. Commercial will pop more. It'll have a more active streetscape. And then if we densify it, and I think we're all in favor of high density. I think all those points are very well made. I like the idea of density, but density without an active streetscape, without a reason for people to walk around is sort of a, it feels like a planning failure on our part if we don't sort of get to that place. So I like the idea of this hybrid component, but I think that has to have a design behind it that yes, this will be an active looking streetscape. And I struggle how to reconcile that with, you will in the hybrid component, the time that it's residential, if you're residential on a ground floor, you're not gonna be active. You're gonna have your windows shut and your curtains shuttered and everything. But we want, that's what we want in that part. And more than whatever percentage is commercial. I mean, the reg say what the reg say. And I grant that, but more than a given percentage, we want an active street life. And yeah, it's chicken and egg. You need people there, but you need a reason for them to walk around at night. And I think that's the design aspect. That's where I am. Thanks, Josh. Ned, your hands up. Yeah, I think, you know, we need to work on the chicken and the egg obviously. Architecturally, we have worse buildings and this one isn't so bad. I think they've done a pretty good job with it. It seems to fit most of the other buildings that are being built in this area, both in five corners and Manuski. It's sort of the Vermont view, so to speak, whether you like it or not, somewhat subjective and it can mix it with colors and things. But that's the least of the concerns. I think the concern is to get something that furthers our plan and also doesn't roadblock the developer. You muted, Dusty. Thanks, David. Your hand's still up. More? You guys hear me? Okay. Yes. Yes. It's been a challenging night. David or FAL, your hand is still up. Do you have anything, Ed? Or is that a carryover? I mean, you are muted, so. Shu, anybody, any commissioners got anything else on this point? I just, if you will indulge me. I just, Paul, will you go back and go through those five bullet items? You had commercial architecture, the square footage requirements. There's two others. We had the three waivers, the building size, the building elevation and the density bonus. And then there was the discussion of whether or not, how much commercial space you want to see in those three buildings. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I'm, you know, it's weird that we have a, we're sort of at an impasse because we don't have conditions to work on if we were gonna try to approve it. So that's a little odd. But I think Tom is really hit on something where we do want to, instead of sort of talking about, we want convertible space. I was actually gonna suggest that, like have space that's convertible from commercial to residential and back, you know, depending on what the economic conditions are. And that just makes sense. That's not easy to do. That actually is an extra expense for the developer. But at any rate, I think we do need to have that active discussion. And I don't know if this is the right place for it or not, but I agree with Tom. We should talk about it. That's all I got. So my turn for a minute. We've directed staff before to be more definitive. You know, we've had reports that have been, reports in front of us that have been denial sort of or if you're gonna do this. I'm on, I wanna stand up for staff on this one because they took a stance and they defended it. So I'm not in any way trying to knock them down for this effort. So we have a staff report and it's, if they find it counterproductive to say, we don't have a report that doesn't have conditions to approve because staff in no way saw a way to approve this. And that's what they presented to us. And I think we're, you know, if we don't agree with that, that's fine. And we can work on a staff report. We can direct staff at this point to write it as an approval. Fair enough. I mean, I wasn't trying to say that it was a poor report. I was saying we don't have a list of conditions to work with, you know, specifically that. It wasn't just you, Shu. I mean, that's the tone of what I feel we've been doing right now. And I wanna get away from that. So we, what I've been, what I've heard is there's, do we want the commercial on the ground floor? And from that, or all the commercial, we've got potential limitations per regulatory requirements, but we've also got the strong aesthetics that we've tried to improve. And that's been noticed, noted by a number of folks that if we put apartments on the ground floor, it won't be, you know, it won't be attractive commercial space, pretty much ever. The density. Everybody's been in favor of increased density. I don't believe there's a question on that. The architecture, there's questions back and forth on that. But when we're talking buildings of that size, we've seen worse. You know, Shu, you laughingly mentioned the road. There's the road still in this thing. Waivers, people are arguing about the height waivers and so forth. In fact, if you can make it better with more height, add some height to it. I don't think that anybody at the table tonight has enough information based on the fact that Darren has introduced, or staff has introduced some questions about the maximum amount of concentrate. I don't even remember the term Darren, but there's that you were referring to. Density. That I haven't, well, I thought it was the space, commercial space versus whatever it was. I mean, we need to know that for sure. But we don't have that in front of us tonight. And I think if we want that, then the direction to staff is to rewrite this as an approval and put in those elements that you cannot resolve. And then we can look at that as a different report. I don't find any issue with having this report in front of us tonight as a denial for all of the reasons specified. And the commissioner, again, we haven't found issues with the architecture. I haven't heard any drastic issues with the architecture. I know O.E.S.O., you brought up that they could do more while put some of those more back to the staff, if need be. But I really don't, I don't want to keep eating this up tonight without having a different report in front of us. Commissioners, what are your thoughts? We haven't even opened the public hearing on this yet, but let's go down the line here. Because I want to get an idea of what you guys want to do with this tonight. Because let's think about being effective and not just throw stuff out if we don't have enough detail or enough information to get to a point of conclusion. So, Tom, I'm going to start with you. What are your thoughts on what you'd like to do with this application tonight? I want to decide what we're going to accept from terms of commercial. And convertible space, I think if we do that, we have to take O.E.S.O.'s comments into and on the ceiling heights and the windows. And any ceiling height that we want, you know, we'll just have to assume that the whole building is going to go up. And we're going to be okay with that. Okay. And to the point where residential is never converted to commercial, it's a good point, but I'm almost not too worried about that. I think that we need the residential density anyway. So, I would be very happy with sort of this application, higher ceilings, more windows on the first floor. Taller building. Some change, some more... Each building has the same color scheme. And I think it'd be easy enough to mix up the colors a little bit on each of the buildings and make it not look like one big monolith. We've always had issues with anything proposed there looking like one big monolith and we're just going to have to come up with and we're just going to have to get over that somehow. And I think the current proposal does that pretty well, but could use some changes to the colors. And the other issues I don't have strong opinions on. Okay. Josh. As for procedurally tonight, I would support a continuance just so we can, again, revisit this. Maybe as a rewritten report, the various things we've talked about, but in terms of the actual substance of it, if we can figure out how to get an active streetscape, I don't really care how we get it. That is to say residential versus commercial. I don't have a dog in that fight at all. I understand the economic realities everyone's facing in development. I just want an active streetscape. David. Ditto to both Josh and Tom's comments. I don't want to give up all of the commercial because I think it'll come. I'm totally supportive of super high density and giving the bonuses, especially with affordable housing. But as Josh said, and, you know, let's figure out the streetscape and how we get it more appealing. Who's after David Ned? I don't think we have enough to really weigh the pros and cons of some of some of the things. I think I think we did a pretty good job of putting it all out on the table with what people's concerns are. And I think we almost need to have a more of a shopping list on both sides and let the planning commissioners then make a decision. Okay. John Mangan. So just start out. I do want to say I like the look of the building. I kind of like the idea of the hybrid convertible space, but you guys have already mentioned and I was thinking the same thing as if it's really no chance of ever converting and it would just be overpriced rental units and nobody wants that for a ground level apartment. So I could see going either way on that. The thing I don't know, you know, I didn't come prepared to this meeting with any data on what's been suggested in terms of commercial properties in the area, you know, not doing well or not being able to find anybody to rent. But I do know, you know, right on Carmichael Street, I think where Cody's is and Mimo's and whatnot, there's only one space there that's not filled right now. So already there is room for additional commercial, it seems. I don't know, you know, I think the five corners area where Paul mentioned, you know, that hasn't been able to fill. I personally think that's a horrible area for business, but there's just no parking. And that's the comment I hear every time from everybody is there's no parking because it's hidden and they just feel that way one or another. But I don't know if that's the reason for that or not. Let's see, I have, you know, it would be nice if we could get some data on the commercial stuff in preparation for another meeting. You know, how has this, how has, you know, business been in Essex Town during COVID, you know, how many opened, how many closed? What are we seeing exactly? Again, I'm hearing a lot of opinions in here, but no real data to back up anything that's being said. I'm a big fan of density. So everything that's been said regarding that. And nobody's mentioned this. And I don't know if it's just assumed, but I definitely would want to see the completion of Carmichael Street included with this as well. And, you know, I think that's about it. Thanks, John. Shiu. Yeah, I'm good for, I'm good for continuing as long as we have, we know what the direction is with the continuance and we've given direction to both staff and to the applicant. Commercial space. I guess where I land is kind of, kind of where, where we've talked about is maybe doesn't all the first floor doesn't need to be commercial space, maybe just, just the main, main thoroughfare facing areas or something like that. I mean, I'm not an expert on that. I'm fine with the architecture. I think the density is obviously something that's important to us, but let's do it within the regs, make sure that that's what we're doing. I mean, that's, that's obvious. Fine with the height. So yeah, let's, let's get to, to come back here with the, with this discussion about commercial versus residential on that, that first level and figure out how to make that work. Okay. So I'm, I'm, I know we've got Paul, Darren and we saw both of the, I'll have their hand, not both, I'll have their hands up, but, but hang on a second. Yeah, the volume of commercial or the amount of commercial, I think that can be a calculation. And that's folks have said there's, you know, what's the real numbers and drive the need for that. But I would, I'm on, I'm picking up on the thing that Josh said in the streets, streetscape. I think that's, that's an aesthetic and an architectural, you know, design point that I don't think along the major thoroughfares, I don't think that residential is what it's, we're looking for. And it doesn't mean necessarily that the entire floor of the building is, is commercial. And I don't, I mean, this is, I would challenge, you know, the staff and the applicant to find a way to maintain a streetscape that is commercial for the draw and still have, you know, an element of residential if that's what's, that's what's desired. But I, I don't see the street facing portions of the building, you know, converting back and forth. I just don't see it happening in an effective way. You know, it's, it's, it's a, I don't see that being feasible. So I feel like that's what I've had for the discussion. The primary, the primary item that we're trying to determine is whether or not the, not the density of residents residential, but the essentially the, the amount of commercial is the question point is the sticking point. Tom stated it clearly. David stated it. Paul's, Darren's brought it up. So I, if we're going to be opening this up for public in a moment and then potentially continuing it to me, I would, I would be looking for the staff report to be rewritten as if it was going to be an approval. And it might be that in order to approve, we need this in order to approve, we need that. I mean, but give us the elements to then work on, because that seems to be what the predominance of the opinions on the commission are at this point commissioners. Did I, did I misstate anything or misrepresent anything or flat out miss anything? Nope. Okay. Hearing none. I'm going to circle back. Paul, I'm going to go to you first. And then Darren and we saw all your hands. Yep. I just wanted to point out that, that we have about 22,000 square feet, floor area of buildings. And we are proposing 6,000 square feet of commercial space in the larger building. So it's not like we're not proposing any commercial space whatsoever. And I would also point out, you know, we talked about Finney crossing and how wirely successful it's been. And I'll know that Finney crossing does not mix residential and commercial. There are no mixed use buildings in Finney crossing. You have residential buildings. You have commercial buildings. And I disagree with the notion that first floor residential along Commonwealth wouldn't be a nice thing and wouldn't make that street still an active landscape. It's not so much about the storefront. It's about having the people there and then having commercial properties, whether they're walking to Cody's or, you know, they're going to grab a pizza. And I would certainly think we had high density residential. It would really help Peter element a lot. You'd see commercial come back in. You'd see restaurants. You'd see, you know, the bars be more successful. So it's really not, you know, you can go to Montreal. You can go to any big city and you have blocks and blocks and blocks of just purely residential buildings on first floor on the streetscape that makes for a lively present, makes for a very vital feeling. It doesn't have to be storefront in order to get that feeling. You can go any big city and see that. So I think that's a misnomer there. Oh, if it's not commercial, you know, commercial is dead. After five o'clock. All right. I mean, if it's an office building, you know, it's lively from eight to five, but then it's dead. I mean, the nice thing about having a lot of residential is, it's active. I mean, residential tends to be dead during the day, but active at night when people are home. So I, I disagree strongly that it has to be storefront in order to be active and work well and make the town center a walkable place where people want to go. Again, you put more businesses there. And for people to use it, they have to drive there and driving there is exactly what we don't want people to do. All right. You know, we're, we talk about connectivity. We talk about all these things. And then we put in commercial space that people have to drive to, to, to enjoy. So my two cents. Think about any crossing and how successful that has been and how nice it would be to be anywhere near as successful here as they've been. We saw Darren, I said you and then we sort to have to that. Darren, you're up. Thanks, Dusty. So I want to agree with Paul, you know, I think when we talk about commercial, we should actually talk about exactly what we mean. And in staff's mind, it could be storefront, but truly having, you know, nightlife entertainment, restaurants, that's what's been successful. That's what's still at the Whittier Building predominantly. So we definitely agree that having something like that would enhance this project. And that wasn't part of the proposal. They had an office building and nothing else. But we definitely want to explore that. I want to make a suggestion because I have heard a lot of general directives, but I haven't heard a lot of specific changes that might be needed to the site that would give staff and the applicants some direction on how to go about that. So one thing we didn't cover was civic space and green space. And I believe strongly that there needs to be more of civic space within this particular site. We understand that the town common is part of the next phase. The applicant doesn't want to necessarily put a lot of effort and construction into that if it might get wrecked by future construction. But not having any. Civic space for now for these residents would be a disappointment. So I would suggest that along the streetscape of Commonwealth, there may be be. A four court or something similar. That would allow for some contained, you know, civic space. The residential could use that or it could be used for commercial, whether temporary, like food trucks or more permanent establishments. And I think that would achieve a lot more of what it sounds like everybody is looking for and reduce some of the impervious as well. So that's a suggestion I'd like to make. If the planning commission is open to that, we can discuss with the applicant how that could be integrated. It wouldn't necessarily be a loss of building space, given that there's plenty of parking in the back that could be. So that's what I'd like to suggest. Okay. I had a question and dare or Paul on this. The 2017 approval, didn't we come down to that the majority of the commercial, so to speak, was on that section that was on Carmichael? And then we had more of the apartments because I can recall people talking about brownstone design. So you'd step down into apartments on that going forward. That's correct. The commercial was along Carmichael and most all the spaces along Commonwealth were residential that had front doors that came on the Commonwealth, which is the same as this project has. Thanks, Paul. One other thing, Dustin, talking about the town center and the green, we've moved that on the master plan. It's almost doubled in size from the previous master plan. So we've been at least constructing a portion of that as part of this plan. And I will, there's been some questions about the road. Our proposal does include as part of these three buildings, the completion of Carmichael and the completion of Commonwealth down to the intersection with Carmichael. So all that gets completely done. And we can talk about doing some of that green, at least maybe establishing some of the buildings. We have some building going on there, but at this point in time in that location, we can have that discussion. Excellent. Thank you, Paul. I apologize. That's right. So I actually realized I had a piece of information that would be useful to this conversation based on a comment that was made earlier. And that is that part of the reason why the commercial space isn't filled is because they had a non-compete clause, a no-compete clause, that didn't allow another restaurant, especially one that sold beer, to go into that space. And so I think it's now being filled by Leonardo's, but they're not going to be selling any alcohol. That said, I have another comment that was made about a non-compete clause. And that was about the whole not enough parking for people who drive there. So part of the reason for mixed-use spaces is so successful or successful town planning is a multi-layered process. And it's very much chicken and egg. And once there are more people, once there's a vibrant streetscape, we also need to fold in public transportation because once we have these things, then people will be less than, then we'll have another option as a way for people to get there, aside from any sort of biking or anything, which of course we know is seasonal. But another thing is, is that part of the reason for mixed-use is so that people don't have to get into their cars to get all of their needs met. If you want to have a drink or 10, go downstairs, but it's part of the neighborhood. It's part of the fabric of this dynamic streetscape and active neighborhood. And all of these things are just things to consider that again, right now we don't have very great lead times on buses, but once we get more density and more of a reason for people to go there, then we will. So it's all chicken and egg. Okay. Let me offer something. Yep. Go ahead. All right. If I could just two quick points. Number one, if the commissioners are aware or familiar with the building in downtown Burlington on the corner of battery street and college street, right? It's, well, it's called college and battery. And it's, it was built by Mr. Myla years ago. It's all residential. And battery street is way more traveled than any street in up there at the town center. And, and there and people have been living on the first floor for decades now. So that's number one. So it can work on successfully. The other point that I wanted to make is we need to remember there's still three more empty lots, three more developable lots at the town center so that right now with the atmosphere that we're living in an environment we're living in, if the bank and in our notions tell us that we should have more residential at this one building. It doesn't mean that as other commissioners have said, times can change. Commercial can become vibrant again. Well, we'll take that up at those other lots. I do want to develop the other lots. And if at that time commercial is, is great, we'll do it. So those are my two points. Thanks. Thank you. So I want to, I want to go ahead with one thing about them. Okay. So college and battery is an interesting building. It is all or it is mostly residential. There is a commercial office suite right on the corner. I worked as a planner for over five years in Burlington and most planners around the state will largely agree that not having ground floor commercial on college and battery was a missed opportunity. And that is literally just the discussion in the planning world. I don't expect that anybody outside of planning would know that, but that is generally the feeling about that grounds level space at college and battery along College Street. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Okay. Commissioners, I'm going to, I'm going to make a suggestion. This is a suggestion from the commissioners. I think it's strictly the commissioners. From what we've been hearing, you know, we, we, there's a question on how much commercial is good and so forth. I'd like to, to, to. Continue this with this sort of direction to staff. Which is look at as we did with 2017 commercial along Carmichael. The rest of it residential. Max the density. What do we get? What can we do? What can we do for bonuses? is if we need to do more than what they're asking for as the trade-off for one, let's see what we can do with that. Recognize that the road's going in, recognize that they're willing to talk about some sort of green space park, X, Y, Z, whatever we want to call it. But let's go back and redo this with that aspect in mind. Architecturally, notice I'm not hearing from the commissioners that there's any big hang up with the buildings designed as they are. But that would be enough to get us into a continuance phase. I know we haven't come back down and said what we need for a commercial, but I frankly don't believe we have enough information in front of us tonight to say we need this or we need that or we can have this or we can't have that. What I would say is that there's an acceptance from most of the commissioners that we may not need as much commercial as we had previously asked for or required. But let's get this at the level of what we can do for regulations and what we can do for waivers. We may not be able to waver everything that's being asked for. But that would get us to the point of giving staff some direction on redoing the staff report, engaging with the applicant as needed, and then giving us a chance to look at this from an approval perspective instead of a denial perspective. Commissioners, what are your thoughts on that approach? Tom? Yeah, I'm just, I'm thinking. I agree we don't need commercial and the whole thing. I had a question on the green space. Last I knew the park was to the east of these buildings, but it looks like it's kitty corner now. Is that what happened? Yes, we moved it on the last master plan to be kitty corner because we were able to, I had kind of an odd shape building there before that really didn't work. And by moving it across, we almost doubled the size of it. And in the past approvals, that's been one of the big knock against what we showed is that it was too small. Okay, I like the four court idea that Darren had, you know, just like three benches and a little alcove. Yeah, the question I had was on the affordable housing, low income housing, Darren, can they use the affordable apartments in another building as and count those towards a density bonus in these buildings settled out? We would leave that up to the commission. Our staff's feeling was that the affordable housing is already there and that certainly, you know, providing that should count for something, you know, and we don't mean to say that that doesn't, you know, allow the applicant to use density later because this is master plan development. We just didn't feel that it justified the extra units that they were proposing considering the perspective that we wanted to try and, you know, keep housing distributed throughout the site rather than concentrated in one portion. But we're hearing from the commission that maybe that's less of a concern. And again, we'd like to, you know, redress that on the regulations because that is what it says. But I think that's something we should bring up with the commission outside of the application. So those low income housing, is that owned by the applicant also? I would defer the applicant exactly how that's owned and managed. But yes, it's part of this project. The housing is owned by the applicant. And we didn't apply those low income units to density bonuses elsewhere. So the approval when those went in was a 25% density bonus for revision of the affordable housing and for the green space improvements within phase one, which is the tot lot and the green belt. So in staff's view, that means, you know, the deal was done at that point. So anything additional would sort of have to be a new discussion. And the density that would be allowed for that 25% is the 123 units. The applicant was proposing 128. So five additional units asking for 31% bonus instead of a 25, which was already established. Okay, well, I would go with that deal. I would, I think there's some good will from those affordable apartments, Bill. And just a point for clarification. It's not low income, it's affordable housing. Permanently affordable, 80% of the income. Yeah. Josh, are you all set, Tom? Yeah, sir. And Josh. Yeah, circle back what you said, Doug. Yeah, I'm in favor of what you said and to reiterate what I said earlier about commercial and Douglas degrees, I'm way more into active streetscape than a set number of commercial. I like the idea of the common being where it is and being in a more interesting space. I just need reasons for people to be on the street. That's, I'm willing to wave, I'm willing to wave a lot. Again, within the confines of regulations if we get an active street and reasons to be there. And Douglas agrees with that too. Okay. Thanks, Josh. David. I'm good. Thank you. Ned? Yeah, I think I'm okay. The key to having a lively street seems to have enough people, so. Okay. John Mangan. I just wanna, I think this has been certainly an interesting discussion and I think I'm in a different place now than I wasn't when we first started it and I appreciate a lot of what's been said by everybody. I think Paul made some great points about first floor space, not necessarily having to be commercial. And, you know, if you look around other areas, Bonuski and whatnot, some of the things they've done, you know, and as we've all mentioned, Wilson as good examples, I think there's definitely some strong evidence to support that. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think, you know, I think this has gone ahead in the right direction. It just needs a little bit more work as you indicated, Destin. What's that? Shoot. Yeah, to answer your original question, Destin, I think that is a good approach. Okay. So, Darren. May I ask a question? Yes. It's about working with the applicant. So, if, I don't even know if this is allowable because I don't recall what the heights are in that area or what you'd be interested in for a waiver, but if you're talking weavers anyway, if the applicant was amenable to ground floor commercial space, could we talk about an additional story maybe on the building, especially as the grade changes and it gets taller towards the corner? There are all sorts of ways to mitigate height, whether it's with a setback, whether it's with, you know, ornamental features, you know, actually make that level a more ornamental different sort of feature. And I'm just trying to understand what's on the table so that we can really work most effectively and potentially- So, let me jump in. I'm already on steam and really I'm, I feel we're circling the drain on this. So, to put it in perspective, we have for us tonight a motion to deny. Where we are as a commission, I believe it's safe to say they're not going to accept that motion, that report which would denote a motion to deny. We are requesting staff rewrite that report as an approval with emphasis, my notes just went blank, with emphasis on potentially a reduced commercial presence. And I think what I've heard is, you know, streetscape and based on the 2017 approval, we had the focus of that commercial was on Carmichael, not Commonwealth. So my point that I made to the commission was to take that, can we take that as a starting point? I didn't hear anybody say no to that. We're accepting and grateful that they were not grateful. We're acknowledging that the road is due to go through. Density is a big question. Tom brought up some good points. What can we do to maximize the density? And if, do we, so if your point is that to maximize the density, we, you know, there's another floor, put it in there. We can't give you detail tonight because we don't have the information, truly have the information to come back and say, do this, do that, or don't do this, don't do that. So. Yeah, I just wanted to know if you'd be open to that sort of approach as we're talking with them. I mean, this is like, this is the give and take that I thought that I was sort of hearing. We want architectural designs not to be compromised more than they may, you know, however they are in front of us right now, the commission as a whole has my opinion voiced approval for the architectural design, potentially with changing and adding some color schemes to accentuate separation of buildings. But I haven't heard anybody have any great heartache about the presentation of the buildings. So we still need to open the public hearing if we're going to continue this. But that's what I'm, that's what I'm hearing. And I want to go back to the commission or again, commissions. I know we're going to expect detail, but is this, do you feel this is enough direction for the staff to go and redo this report? Josh? Yes, and I make a motion. We open the public hearing. We have a second. Second. Seconded by, moved by Josh, seconded by Dave. They switched roles. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries seven, zero. Public hearing is over. I don't think we have anybody from the public here other than Rick and Paul, who are truly public. Close public hearing. No, no, we don't want to close it. We're going to keep it open. All right. My next recommendation is that we continue to allow staff to rework this report. So to the commissioners, do we have anything in addition or anything other than what I tried to summarize that we want staff to focus on? I don't want to resolve it or get granular tonight. I want them to be able to walk away and have areas to focus on. Did we miss anything? Did I miss anything in that summary? Nope. Okay, Paul, I'm going to pivot to you for a moment. I think we tried to touch on the points that you brought up. Are we, did we miss something and what we want staff to go back and work on? No. Oh, I'm good. I would just suggest we continue for a couple of months because likely as we get with staff, there's going to be some architectural changes and certainly some landscape changes and it's going to take a little bit of work, a little bit of back and forth so we can hopefully present you a staff report that we both are on board with the next time we come back. Okay. So my push out to now is to the commission. Sharon, I see your hand up, but hang on a second. Is generally when we do a continuance of late we've been doing it to a time determined by staff when working with the applicant. Is that sufficient language in your scheduling? Darren, Sharon and Oviso. Okay. Yeah, the next available meeting with staff support, correct. I'll put the usual language that you guys do for that. Depending submission of revised plans or whatever. I was phrasing is whatever you need to have that. So I'm actually going to put that motion forward. Second. Seconded by myself, seconded by David. Any additional discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, this application has continued. Staff, thank you for the detail and the work that you put into this. This is not wasted, it is not lost. Paul, thank you for the passion that you brought into this and helping everyone to look at this. This is not an easy one and it's not a clean one. So let's do dig more. Commissioners, thank you for the lively discussions because it was definitely one of the most engaging ones we've had in quite some time. Or is, it's not a was, it's an is. Thank you. Okay. Paul, if you can grab your beer now. At least one. Okay, with that, we have minutes from May 13th and May 27th. Move approval. We have a second. Does anyone want to offer any adjustments to the minutes from May 13th or May 27th? All those in favor of the minutes from May 13th and May 27th, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Minutes carry. Both of them. I've got 840, we have other business. I have something quick that I think made it into your packet, a sign application in the business design control district. This is one of Mike Teichro's buildings. If you remember right across from EDV, it was going to be a commercial garage and that didn't pan out. But these are the colors of the signed black, white with a little bit of red, maroon-y type color. Didn't know if you wanted to approve it this way or allow me to approve it. Any lights? I thought I'd just ask for some direction, no lights. I'd suggest that we allow Sharon to approve it. One question, does that exceed the size? Nope, no, it's all within the size limit. Okay. Okay. Do you need a motion, Sharon, or is a voice approval? No, no, I'll just proceed that way. Yep, thank you. Okay. With that, anything else from anyone? And I would take a motion to get out of here. I move we adjourn. We have a second. I'll second. Okay, moved by Josh, seconded by John. All those in favor? Aye. I'm not allowing anybody to oppose. We're done. Thank you guys. Everyone, this was a... Complicated. Complicated. Thank you.