 This is sort of our kickoff for revising the design review regs and criteria as part of the new city plan. The historic preservation commission has been asked to do that. We're working with the design review committee. I'm Eric Gilbertson. I've lived in Montpelier for 42 years, worked for the state for 30 years, and I chair the historic preservation commission and advice chair of the design review committee. Can anybody from design review stand up and so people know who you are? Great. What we're going to do this evening is Sarah's going to talk a little bit about the process we're in. She knows it better than anybody else and keeps us on target in a straight and narrow. And then we're going to have a presentation from David Rafael who's a consultant hired by the city to help us with that. Then we hope to have some input from the public and what we're going to ask people to do is make your presentations very short and direct. Two minutes so we can get as many people in as possible and not be here until all hours of the evening. I provide staff assistance to the design review committee historic preservation commission and then develop in review board and as part of this project many of you are probably aware that last year the planning commission what or over the last few years the planning commission was in the process of updating the city's zoning and subdivision regulations and following that the city obtained a certified local government grant to really look at the design review district and evaluate its boundaries standards for review and just take a closer look at it since this commission has that specialty. So we obtained a certified local government grant last year and then following the last year we spent a lot of time finishing up the nomination for the historic district for the National Register and started this project probably really started focusing on this project in December or January or so. We've looked at we're starting to look at the purpose statement and discuss the overall purpose of the design review district the goals of the district and we've hired land works out of Middlebury to kind of help guide us and facilitate the public input process and help us develop the standards for review. We kind of envision this as our kickoff meeting to get your feedback and we hope to continue to have like similar type of events from now until August. We hope to maybe attend the farmers market or have some walk-in talks through neighborhoods and really listen to what people value in their neighborhoods what things are worthy of protecting and where there could be some like leniency and some standards. So the project we our grant it our grant concludes in August so we hope to really focus on the standards in the next couple months and looking at the different potential district boundaries and all throughout that obtain as much feedback from you as possible. So other than that I think you know we really hope that this can be a community engagement and a lot of public input and really hear from everybody. We think there are a lot of people in this community value our historic buildings and the historic architecture. We also want to look at what standards for new construction and infill development so it's really all encompassing and a complete analysis of the district. So we're here to listen to you and give you a little bit of history about the what the design when the design review and how the design review district came to be and why it's important and then really focus on hearing from you about what you value in your community. So with that I think this is David Raphael and I think Eric do you want to introduce David? We'll introduce David I forgot to say two important things first. There are cookies and cider on the back table. Sarah got those for us and I think the members of Preservation Commission could introduce themselves that would be great. I'm Elizabeth Peaballs I've been on the Preservation Commission for about two years now. I'm an architectural historian that works for the state. I'm Greg Tischer I've been the historic Preservation Commission for a few months now. I currently work for Vermont Law School. Hi I'm Jamie Duggan I've been on the Commission for 10 years now and I also served on the design review committee for I think about five or six a while back and I'm also an architectural historian for the state. I'm Jenna Lapichinsky I've been on the Commission since last fall and I work for the Preservation Trust of Vermont. And David Karris is also a member of the Commission couldn't make it this evening. And he's been on for almost two years now as well. Yes. David Raphael from Land Works is somebody I've known for a bunch of years. He's done a lot of work around the state of Vermont and I'm going to just read this short biography so you know who he is. He's a licensed landscape architect and planner with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Tufts and Harvard University. He is a resident of the Lakeshore town of Pantton Vermont where he's been chair of the Town Planning Commission and Development Review Board for over 25 years and was a charter member of the Town of Middlebury's first design review committee. Mr. Raphael is principal of Land Works, a multidisciplinary consulting firm in Middlebury and design review standards and guidelines for community and developed award-winning town plans, owning ordinances and design review standards and guidelines for communities in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York. Mr. Raphael is on the faculty of the Rubenstein School of Environmental and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, where he's been teaching for over 30 years and is a member of the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Council and a trustee of the Lake Champaign Land Trust. So, thank you. Actually, when you start putting all those years in, I think it's time for me to retire. Thank you all for coming tonight. It's great to see you all here. I know several of you, so it's great to have you here. I'm just going to back up, I guess, one step here. When I started this project, I was really taken aback when I read this first entry that Montpelier is home to the largest National Register Historic District in Vermont, with 642 resources or properties. So, it's very impressive. And I think also, I will make mention while I have this opportunity how impressive it is that you have these people serving you in their capacity, because between them, they have such knowledge and tremendous talent that I think you are lucky to have these commissioners working on your behalf and in the interests of the community. So, as Sara mentioned, we're at a stage now in 2018 where the Design Review Overlay District is being renewed and provisions related to historic preservation are going to be a big part of what we're working on, as Sara has mentioned. I have over the years collected postcards. These are not mine, but I love the views that old postcards give us of our communities in Vermont. They really do tell a story and they really do help us identify what's here and what's gone, which I think is another real important consideration as we walk through this. What we're going to do tonight very quickly, we've had our introductions, you've had your project overview. I'm going to inch into the presentation right now, but then I'm going to switch because Jamie wants to show you some slides and ask you a question, just to kick off the whole process tonight. I'm going to leave this for one quick second. I'm going to open up Jamie's slide here. Give me a second here. Let's see. I'm going to turn it over to Jamie to lead this discussion here. Give me a second here. Here we go. Okay. I just pulled a couple of images from around town. Just a quick pull of the audience, see if any folks out there can identify some of these buildings from some of the architectural detailing. Here's an interesting stained glass window above a pent roof and from a particular era. Anyone have any comments about this? Maybe where this is or some of the things they see in the architecture? Are there prizes? Cookies. Free cookies. I believe it is. Yes. So, okay. Next. So here's another one, a pretty sturdy building. It's got some iron shutters and looks like a secure place. Yep. That's correct. Yes. That's one of the buildings from our Civil War era of built heritage here in Montpellier. You can pull out that. And this was a residence, correct? This is now a residence. It was originally an arsenal. It was originally for storing ammunition that was associated with the Civil War Hospital that was here where Vermont College of Fine Arts is now. Wow. And so, yeah, the metal shutters, of course, to help protect in case anything goes boom in the night. Here's a close-up detail of a lot of different materials and some ornamentation, vibrant colors. Anyone recognize where this might be? How about we pull out maybe one? You want me to go to the next one? Yeah. My camera was a little wonky, so I had to adjust it. Anyone? Yes. Yes, exactly. Can we go to the next one? Cool. Yep. There it is. In the arms glory. Alright. Next one. So this is a downtown. This is a detail of a molding, right on, well, I'm not getting it out of the way, but this is a federal era building from the early 1800s. And what I love about it, if you read the National Register nomination, it talks about this molding being a rope molding. And with some very simple tools, a carpenter back in the day, probably just with a hand drill and a blade created out of this piece of wood, if you look at sorts to sort of splay as it goes down. And if you look at the corners of the buildings, it's actually got quite an angle to it. And I just think that that's a really neat way to show how even with early on that the need to embellish these buildings and give them a little extra style and detail was part of part of what was going on in building construction. Anyone know where this one is? Sorry? That is correct. Yeah. So if you pull out there, it's a union mutual. And it's one of those things where you kind of walk by and you just sort of see that cornice and maybe the dental molding, the dental blocks pop out more so. But when you start to kind of look at a little finer level, you start to see some of these fantastic details. Okay. Okay, so now we're much more modern era. I could help I go to the next slide if you want to pull out a little bit more. I think it's actually mutual again, which so they are obviously connoisseurs of fine architecture here, but pull back one more time. That's one of the few modernist examples of architecture here in the city. And so that was it. Just okay. Thank you. That was fun. Okay, get back to where we were. Let's see. Alright, so I'm just going to try and run through some some very quick slides here to sort of set the stage, but hopefully get through so that we can, you know, solicit your input and discussion and maybe if we have time, maybe at the end, if anybody I'm going to tell a quick story as I go through this. But if anybody wants to offer some stories, we would love to hear them. But I'm going to launch right into the into the presentation. And we covered this. And so this is the draft purpose statement for the overlay district that's been is in place at this point. And I think it's a robust, you know, articulation of the value of design review and the historic character of the city. And why this is important, and why what we're doing is very important. You know, some of the things that that we think of with the value associated with design review is that really does help maintain the core resources and and the value of and vibrancy of its rich history. Obviously, civic pride and sense of place enter into it. You know, design review also provides for safe, functional and beautiful downtown. So it's not just about regulatory purview, it's about promoting, as we like to say in our business, joy and beauty. And and the I think the intrinsic nature of historic neighborhoods and architecture. As I'm sure many of you know, a lot of money is spent on cultural heritage tourism, and people travel to Vermont to study everything from our covered bridges to our, you know, downtown districts to our scenic byways, and maintaining sort of the value and again, integrity of those districts and those landscapes are what people come to appreciate in Vermont, what brings people here to live and to invest in community and and visit as well. Obviously, we can certainly point to and I will in a moment to studies would show that well designed and well preserved and properly designed buildings and improvements and renovations do enhance property and property values. And also, you know, bringing back the original core elements of buildings and maintaining them or landscapes and places really does connect with sustainability in a number of different ways. You know, we don't build things as much to last anymore. Just, you know, all you have to do is go down and look at the big boxes and know that they have a lifespan of 1520 years, maybe. So the notion of long term stability and integrity, I think is integral to the notion of sustainability. You know, here's a great example of, you know, what design review or changing and taking outsiding and restoring it to the original, you know, facade and what that does to, again, I use that word, maybe too many times already, the integrity of that historic block, which parts of which are visible in some of those postcards I showed previously. One thing, you know, I was asked to look at was what what communities don't have design review and what does that mean? And the interesting thing is that around the United States, and I've traveled all over, I've done research on, you know, design review standards from California to Colorado to Maine, and beyond. And most most communities and most towns and most downtowns that have a historic core have design review and have strong design review standards and guidelines again, to protect that which they hold dear, and that which matters to them. So this is not a unique phenomenon. And let's see that. Yeah. So here's an example of an interesting one far from the notion of historic resources that design review helps with. One day, folks in the Lake George region, I mean, the shotgun mountain regions, you know, woke up and saw I'm sorry, this is wrong. This is from Lake George, not the shotgun mountains, woke up and found that the hillsides were around Lake George were slowly being developed. You know, that notion of death by 1000 cuts comes to mind. And we did a visual simulation to include in the design guidelines to show what they didn't want, what was not going to happen around the towns and villages of Lake George. So the fund sponsored these guidelines and designs which are now in place and have been adopted by some of the villages around Lake George. But Montpelier in Vermont is not alone. Obviously, we have everything from the first ridgeline and hillside overlay district in Stowe, which my company helped develop with that community to obviously downtown districts and historic districts and places like Brattleboro, Bellos Falls, Middlebury St. Albans, Shelburne has a neighborhood design review district. And, you know, again, there's a reason why these communities have enacted these guidelines and standards. This is an example of some of the information and guidance that your community has provided. And I think these are very, very helpful tools for potential, you know, developers for property owners and, you know, folks who are poised to change their buildings. Some stories quite a few years ago, I was working for the city of Manchester in the Inescape Millyard, a mile of mills along the Merrimack River in Manchester. And I had a meeting with the planning director of the community. And on that day, he was really in a tizzy, because one of the mills was about to be demolished. And there was nothing the city could do except to try and cajole the owner, not to do it, because they did not have strong design review standards, or demolition, you know, guide to prevent that from happening. Another, my little story, which is kind of an interesting one, is in the town of Panton. Quite a few years ago, as we were looking at lakeshore issues and development along the lakeshore was sort of happening incrementally, marching from both directions towards our little town of 600 people on the lake, we drafted a design review district for the shorelands and identified where that would be. And it had provisions about scale, sighting, landscape, contacts, things of that nature. The shoreline proper owners came out in force against it. It was coupled with a complete and much needed rewrite of our zoning ordinance as a whole. And in the wisdom of the rest of the development review board, which was a zoning board at that time, they decided to drop the design review process from the zoning. Fast forward a couple years, gentlemen from New Jersey inherited a lot of money, was looking for a place to build, found 20 acres along the shoreline of Panton, and built probably the largest residence in town. His garage alone is about 16,000 square feet on two levels. He has 20 cars. And he lit it up at night, because I guess that's what they did where he came from with landscape lighting, washing the side of this building. When Bill McKibben walked by that building as part of the writing and the research he did for his book Wandering Home, I had no idea that he had written this I was reading the book, he devoted two pages to that home. And really, frankly, describing what a mistake. He didn't say travesty, but I think that's really what he was thinking, that that had been built where it had been built in the size and scale that it was built at. To this day, I still get people asking me, you know, how could that house have been built? And I said, we don't have any constraints or review process that would prevent something like that from happening. So that's my little story of what happens in a little town like Panton. This certainly predates a design review, but it's one of my favorite slides of Brattleboro. You know, you remember the famous Joni Mitchell song, you know, they paved over paradise and you know, put up a parking lot. Well, in Brattleboro, there was a beautiful little pocket park right on the main street for many, many years. It was a Duncan Donuts story has a good ending. The town got the property back and it's now a little park again. One study that I came across in my research on aesthetics and historic preservation was a very thick report done for the state of Virginia, the governor and the general assembly to assess what the value was of aesthetics, historic preservation, and community design to the state of Virginia. And these little details certainly helped support the notion of just how valuable and important aesthetics design review historic preservation is real state values were shown to have risen 1.5 to five times faster in historic districts. Design standards and guidelines. Certainly they found enhanced physical appearances and aesthetics and stimulated private sector investment to the point which 23 23 communities in Virginia recorded approximately $8 million in private investment in historic districts and downtowns over a 15 year period as a result of the the protection of those districts and their resources. And obviously they found that with tax credits and grants, this was another incentive to promote good design thinking and renovation as well as preservation. In Montpelier, the sort of design control district overlay is shown in this existing map. I think Sarah has a map if anyone's interested in proposing. We didn't have an updated map. This is from before the recent update to the zoning regulations. She does have an updated map. I guess I just didn't switch that out. That's my mistake. We're not proposing a map at this point in the process. We want to hear from people and go through further development and guidelines before we put a map. So again, through Vermont statutes, communities have the right to enact special districts for design control, for historic preservation, for scenic resources and other resources of cultural and visual significance. And so the design control district in Montpelier is based on this enacting legislation. But you can see over time how things change. This is the original post office in Montpelier. This is obviously the current post office. Now I sense that the current post office is probably a good example of international style or more recent architectural design, but it doesn't discount the fact that a real architectural treasure certainly was replaced by this current building. You know, there's a very simplified version of the design review process usually comes through to the zoning administrator first, whether it's minor or major, minor can be dealt with administratively or can engage the committee or the commission major by its very nature goes to design review. Obviously, as you heard at the beginning and you know, a local panel of community members advises and interacts with applicants in the DRB. You know, one thing in our community that we really stress and I'm sure is done here as well because we've talked about this is the importance of that informal initial contact is to sort of come in and talk with the commission or the committee or the zoning administrator before you spend a lot of money before you do a lot of work and really find out what what are the parameters? What are the and what kind of guidance and support or questions need to be considered? And so that's I think a very important step. And then obviously goes through the review process and approval process ultimately decided by the development review board. Some of the things that are considered in that review process are for historic structures are identifying the historical historical significance and relationship to the historic context. Relationship to adjacent buildings and how materials, textures, details work together or don't work together. The overall environmental setting and aesthetics of the area. So you know, if you have buildings of certain size and scale, you probably wouldn't recommend to somebody that they if they have a vacant lot or they're replacing a building, they build something of a totally different size or scale. There needs to be some, you know, continuity in historic preservation language. It's often assessed as whether building is a contributing factor to the district or not. Certainly economics come into it. And you know, in some instances, if demolition is something that does need to be considered, you know, hardship and cost certainly enter into that discussion. In reviewing standards, obviously for historic structures, the Secretary of Interior standards are sort of the national guidelines and point of departure. But folks like Liz and others know that better than I. These are typical elements of design review. And I'm kind of going to just run through this very quickly. You've heard the considerations that apply to historic preservation and structures. But in general in design review districts, these are the types of categories and considerations. Design, you know, form, fit, massing, connectivity, design, style, finish, color, materials, fenestration and building entries. In the current standards, there are there are sections that deal, for example, with the importance of a visible and identifiable and appropriate entry. Lighting types and location intensity are becoming increasingly important. As I was looking at the old Montpelier cityscape book, obviously quite, you know, old but still very relevant in many ways, you can see things like sketches for future city state streetscapes in Montpelier that include light fixtures that would never pass muster today because of our concerns for night sky, our concern, you know, for energy efficiency and the like. But the good news is that lighting and that's something we do get involved with has become much more technically sophisticated with many more options for effectively lighting signs or buildings or entries. So that's an important consideration. And you know, these are sort of excerpts from different design guidelines that we've been involved with over the last few years. This is from Manchester looking at sort of rhythm and scale. Other considerations include site layout and accessibility, landscape and site design. I know, for example, accessibility is always a challenge with historic structures in particular. How do you integrate a an accessibility ramp effectively into a historic structure without undermining the qualities of that structure? Certainly landscape and site design are also critical, you know, with historic structures. You might want to think about what are some of the historic landscape materials that might have gone with that original structure. And there was a wonderful study on landscapes and historic landscape elements done for the Massachusetts Historic Preservation Society that we cite signs and site design. I was really interested to see the signs on the brick building that are kind of sort of arched over the entry. You know, probably not the most legible signs, but certainly may be considered workable with, you know, the shape and the arch and all of that. And then obviously we've talked about context and character of the neighborhood or district. You know, context, as I always tell my students, and in my practices, absolutely one of my favorite words, context is from the Latin word, context seri, which means to weave together. And so when you look at the fit of something in a context, you have to ask, how well is that change or that new structure or that development woven into the fabric that you are trying to preserve or you know, protect. So that's a very important consideration. We look at things like roofing and design review and roof lines and how they work together. Things like setback, that has to do with context and site. In Rockingham, there was a real desire to maintain the historic setback of the, you know, main commercial district. And those of you who know Bellows Falls probably can recognize roughly where this is. But with, you know, some infill buildings, the thought was, you know, maintain that continuous setback. And the irony here is that as some of you may know, even in some historic districts or in communities that didn't really, if you will, you know, dial in that pattern, current setbacks in place, like in virgins, would not allow for the historic footprint of an old building to be restored because the setback even in the downtown required the kind of look that you see on the right hand side of that slide. You saw this slide. This is a wonderful example of how obviously a historic building can, you know, change over time for better or for worse. You know, the notion of human scale is also important when you look at a design review and the experience of a streetscape. These are two, now at the Shungum Mountains design review. These are the, some examples of guidance for villages and downtowns in the Shungum Mountain region, which is sort of anchored by the village or town of New Paltz, New York and outside the Hudson Valley, if any of you are familiar with that area. And they were seeing, you know, dramatic change around their region. And so 11 towns, you know, commissioned a design review manual to help protect scenic, cultural and historic resources. And so what we used in this case was sort of recommended practices and, you know, not recommended practices. And with each case, we tried to find and display an example of, you know, projects done right or projects that we think work better. One, we brought from Vermont. You probably can't recognize it in the back, but in Waitsfield in sort of the Mad River Green, you know, the buildings were not flat roof, you know, 20 year buildings. They were buildings that tried to reflect the Vermont vernacular. And I think for the most part, succeeded in doing that. And, you know, to this day, Waitsfield still has that charm and character of a, you know, Mountain Valley village. Everything like everything, including overhangs and rakeboards and eaves certainly can come under consideration. This is, I don't know, this was, you know where this is? This is in Bradford, I believe. I think so, yeah. And I don't know if you want to talk about that one, Jamie? This is a project that has an interesting history to it. But essentially, this was built right along, I think it's from five there. But over the years, there have been a couple of different changes. And I think the most startling one is if you go to the next slide. I don't think I had it. No, I don't have it. No, this is the only slide I have. Sorry. There was a paired photograph for that where the property owner took that beautiful front entry door out and put in a very simple six panel home depot, hollow core door. And so it's just a dramatic shift how the change of one feature on a building can dramatically impact the integrity and the character of the property. Yeah, thank you. And I mentioned lighting as one element. So here's another structure that, again, Jamie, I don't know if you want to tell me. This is down in south between Chester and South London Dairy. But if you can kind of see that center section over here, this actually used to be an old cape right here. And it ended up getting elevated. The front door was removed. And I believe that's now a kitchen, bay, window, something or other. And this is just sort of there are so many changes here that you can't you can't read or recognize that original historic building. It's lost in all of those changes. And it was actually quite handsome prior to this. But it strikes me that when owners buy or people buy buildings like this, they ought to get an owner's manual, you know, this sort of describes what the intrinsic values in the history of the building is so that maybe they're more knowledgeable of that. One of my former associates said, if you don't want an historic building, don't buy an historic building. Good point. So that's kind of as far as I think we wanted to take it tonight because we really do want to hear your thoughts and comments. As I said at the outset, we like to allow a little time for you to weigh in. You know, if you have any thoughts or reactions to the presentation, the project process, which I can sort of at the end of the night before you leave, I can sort of tell you what our next steps are. You know, your thoughts about what is working, what isn't, what is missing, maybe experiences. But as Eric said, you know, maybe if a lot of you want to participate, probably ought to try and give everybody a chance to talk. So maybe keep your comments brief. We can come back to them. What he's what I'd like to do is have people come up and tell stories in a couple of minutes way so we can get as many in as we can without staying for the evening. I think I'll start out saying that in 1993, the state of stark preservation officers from around the country came to Montpelier for a meeting. It was the first meeting that was hosted at the hotel after the Bechara's took over and recovered from the flood. They were blown away by Montpelier. And these are professionals from across the country who do what I used to do. They know their downtown, no historic preservation. They were just blown away by both the downtown and the neighborhoods just walking around Montpelier. And I think that's Montpelier is a very important community in both our local heritage, the state heritage, and the national heritage. And Eric, is that do you think because it is so intact as a historic district for the most part? Yeah, I think so. I mean, what is it the high percentage of contributing buildings in the National Registered District? What is it, 86%? Right around there, yeah. And the fact that it's a walkable city, the fact that the neighborhoods that are adjacent to the downtown maintain a lot of integrity. And that makes it a great place to live and a great place to visit. People that live here enjoy that. Please. So we have a microphone up front. And I'm just going to do a two minute timer just to be a reminder to allow time for everyone to share. Hi, Scott Muller, Montpelier resident. I would love to hear a conversation about changing the name of the committee to a historic conservation committee rather than preservation. And for me, working 100% in urbanization. The city's a living thing. And if you look at actually the mission statement you have, it's also about cultural significance. It's not just historical significance. And so as the professor was saying, you have to look between the buildings, landscapes, and that has really been decaying in Montpelier. And it's very clear that you have defined, or not you, but in general, we have defined the design district boundary from sort of a God view rather than what you can see. So the city has now built its back to the river. It's a horrible parking lot. Shaw's puts all its garbage out back. That's the first thing you see when you look at the design district. The relationship with the river changes, the relationship with energy changes. So as we have to modernize, you know, they turned that river into a reflection pool. That's a reflection of the golden dome. And we're losing that already. Now there's going to be a parking lot in that view, blocking the reflection of the dome in the water. So these are values that have sort of been lost. You mention the walkability of the community, the things between the line of sight. If you look at any line of sight in Montpelier, you're starting to see gas stations pop out. You stand in front of the capital building, you look down Main Street, State Street, sorry, you see a little golf gas station sign right in your line of view. Yeah, it doesn't exceed height, but it's line of sight that also has to be protected. The space between the sidewalks are turning into asphalt. We're losing all our cement and granite sidewalks. They're turning into asphalt, which is just plain dangerous. So I would like to hear that discussion about conservation over preservation, keeping things culturally relevant, and seeing that city as a whole. Thank you. I should have said that Orca is taping this. It's not being broadcast at the time, but it will be put up on the city's website. So those of you who are speaking should know that you're being recorded. I'm Bob McCullough, and I teach at the University of Vermont and the Stratification Program for the last year or so. Close to the mic. Okay. For the last year or so, seems like more now, I've been working on restoration of a carriage house here in my interior that had failed structurally and that was in danger of complete collapse and loss. But this is the main point. It's easy to look at old buildings that have deteriorated and see just deterioration and not see the important architectural details that may have survived. And that's the case with this building. So the goal has been to demonstrate that it's possible to take a building that has deteriorated severely and bring it back and demonstrate or really restore the craftsmanship that's an inherent part of that structure. And we're working with Elliot Lothrop and his group, Building Heritage, to do this project. And some of the biggest challenges have been trying to preserve some of those really fine architectural details. For example, the image that Jamie showed of the cornice detail, trying to preserve some of those features all the while incorporating accessibility and meeting fire and safety codes. I think we've succeeded. There have been some challenges, but we're getting to the point where we're just about finished. Interesting. Thank you. My name is Kirby Keenan. I live on Elm Street. I'm also on the planning commission here. And I have a question for the group. If you guys want to take a question right now. So one interest I have in my work in the planning commission is trying to increase trying to try to increase. So one issue I'm concerned with is increasing housing stock in the city, of course. I think a lot of us are concerned with that. Can we just pause really quickly? Is the microphone on? Okay. Can you hear? No. I can close to all you know. So again, a Montpelier resident, Kirby Keenan, also on the planning commission. I want to ask this group about with keeping housing and increasing housing stock in mind, how equity, social economic equity fits into historic preservation. And that's not having as much of a background nearly as much background in this as any of you. That's a puzzle for me, but it's a real concern. How can we keep the character we want, but also make our community inviting to all sorts of people? And not just unfortunately, a lot of the examples in the presentation I'll say, were examples of places I think of as pretty elite places. I'm very familiar with New Pulse, for instance, it's a pretty elite town. In my opinion. So how can we avoid? Do we have to accept that we have to have an elite town or can we, you know, can we accommodate both of those? Those issues? What I would take a look at Berry Street and the grants from the Housing and Conservation Board that create. I don't know how many projects that Down Street has done along Berry Street for affordable housing and historic buildings and done a great job because their tax credits that are available to reduce the cost. It's a 20% federal tax credit. And you can sell those credits to a bank because then they can take them. And there's grants through the Housing and Conservation Board for historic buildings and for affordable housing. Do you see a place in your in your committee in your committee to help people meet the goals of the committee and what we're trying to do with design review while also saving money or making it affordable for everyone? Is that is that part of the process that you envision? I actually go into it further, but historic preservation doesn't necessarily have to cost a lot of money. And you know, the we dealt with this issue before. Does it make housing more affordable if you let it get run down? You know, and get it to the point where it has to be torn down and then new buildings built. That's really expensive, both from an energy standpoint and from just a cash cost standpoint. I would just add, you know, there are other towns in Vermont like Bellows Falls and White River Junction that historically were not elite communities or very wealthy communities, but have been able to find ways to, you know, renovate and preserve historic structures and add housing to the upper floors. And you know, some of it's affordable. Some is probably not. But there are some good examples, but I think you raise a very compelling point here. All the shine buildings can have some affordable units in it. And Kirby, their city staff can also help historic property owners connect them with state Caitlin Corkins with the state who runs the tax credit program. So we're definitely open to help facilitate that conversation. We've also thought about having like Brown Bag lunch series of like just to give an overview of the tax credits that are available. I'm Ben Hoffman and I have a written statement which I'd like to read so that it can become part of your record. Unfortunately, it's five minutes. So if I'm able to do it, I'll read it. Go ahead. So the task of your commission is to rethink the city design control zoning. And I think I want to interject that we're talking about the design control district zoning proposition, not the historic designations of the National Registry, which is often confused and particularly as a course applies to historic buildings. There are many aspects of this which deserve public discussion. But I want to draw attention to just one of these because it has consistently overlooked. And that is the question of fairness or rather the lack of fairness in how historic design control zoning has been applied to individual homes. It must be obvious to all of us living in Montpelier that we are in a city of old buildings, especially old homes, nearly everywhere when once. And I believe it is also true that few residents are aware of which of those buildings are actually subjective to city design control zoning. So it has seemed to me that quantifying these matters could be of help as well as illustrating my concern about fairness. And we attempt to do this. I have relied on information from the U.S. Census Montpelier's official grand list and the city's listing of properties of the National Register of Historic Places. I know numbers are hard to communicate verbally, so I'm going to limit myself to only a few. Montpelier has a total of approximately 4,000 residential units, not buildings, units, over half of which are contained in single-family homes with the rest in multiple unit apartment units. Of the total of 4,000 units in the city, 2,500, that is, three-quarters, are contained in structures built in 1959 and earlier. This is the same time frame used in Montpelier's listing of historic buildings in the National Register. Of course, age is only one factor in designating and building this story, but it is apparent that a great share of all cities, the city's residential buildings might be regulated through the historic design control, but or not. However, the design control zoning district contains only some 20 percent of all residential units in the city and structures built in 1959 and earlier. Moreover, in direct contrast to the city as a whole, the district's multiple unit apartments contain 90 percent of all residential units in the district. The rest are single-family historic homes. And here is the main point I hope this commission will think about as you revamp current historic design control zoning policy. Today, single-family homes in the design control district number 38, just 38 out of conceivably well over 1,000 single-family historic homes in the cities alone. I believe this is unfair because, first of all, the owner-occupant of a single-family home is not eligible for tax credits available to owners of historic commercial buildings, including apartment buildings, for their compliance with historic building improvement standards. In addition, nearly all apartment buildings in the design control district are located in the designated downtown portion of the district. The state program, which affords owners of these commercial buildings with additional government-funded benefits unavailable to individual owners. Secondly, I believe Montbillier's design control zoning, from its inception in the 1970s, has served to benefit primarily the downtown business community. That's just fun. It's not mad by any means, but at the same time, never has there been an interest by city officials in considering the consequences of the non-commercial single-family home owner caught up by it. Caught up in an extensive and exacting review and approval process and its expense, which are none of the owners of single-family history homes. Historic homes elsewhere in the city have ever had to think about with maintaining or approving their homes. Their homes down in the Meadow, out Elm, over Terrace, Main Street, on Town Hill, on Liberty Street, and First Avenue, and all the streets in between or the prospect area, the prospect of where we're up on. And to my mind, this unequal treatment is unfair and simply wrong. If you have an opportunity to go and leave this with you. Sort of a, can you hear me? I have sort of a soft voice, so I used a bell to call my boys from upstairs downstairs. I wasn't a yeller. I don't know how many of you saw this. It was a slide. It's called Bonerable Vermont. It's right behind you there on the table. OK. My house looked like this when I bought it. I had absolutely no idea that I was buying a historic house. I was a single mother in my thirties. I bought my house in 1987. I just wanted to get a house with a roof on it. So a lovely person named Margo George had the foresight to stop by my house even though you can tell by the look of my. This is exactly the if you come by, you think you're all invited to come up to the top of the street. You can see still see the windows. All right. So my house is not eligible for historic preservation. I'm an ineligible house. But Margo George still had the human decency to come and talk to me about historic preservation. And so she started me thinking and what happened is that the previous owner took out the beautiful historic windows and put in the very best Anderson windows money could buy. I mean they they're still functioning just fine, but they're the wrong windows. And he did it maybe about seven years before I moved into the house around that time. I'm not sure about a few years before I moved into the house. So here I am. I'm going into design review had gotten enacted and Margo had the foresight to know that Cliff Street community, which is visible a good eight months of the year from the downtown was declining. It was declining in historic preservation or historic conservation, whichever I'm with either term, but because people were slapping up siding because it was cheap and we're doing things to their homes that was just reducing the gem of community. So I arrived in 1987 for the last 30 years I've experienced design review. OK, when I first went in didn't design review. Frankly, I was scared to death because, you know, someone telling me I had to take out those modern windows would it was not possible. OK, but what design review did for me was to give me some affordable ways to increase the height of those beautiful Anderson windows. By the way, the previous owner not only put these big horizontal windows, but he added horizontal shutters. So it really looked, you know, funky. And anyway, we took off the shutters. We added a decorative flower boxes underneath. We put triangles up above the store windows that did not cost a lot of money. And so you go by my house now and hopefully one day it might be eligible for historic preservation. And then they really helped me with how to really replace restore and replace a carriage a carriage facility that was leaning at a forty five degree angle. And so I am so I will be grateful no matter what happens to my community. I am so grateful to design review. I'll be the first one to tell you that it was a nerve wracking process. I'm all for making things more economical. I think that people should have the. I don't think the color of your house, you know, within reasons should have to be controlled. I think there's new energy efficient windows that come out now. But I am just so happy not to see that little community that looks over the city go down. And any further than it has. And even some people are thinking, well, how can we, you know, fix our homes so that they're back to their historical nature? And that's all I want to say is that it's really worked very, very well for me. I'm very thankful for it. Thank you. Hello. Can you hear me? This thing? Yeah. OK. My name is Lily Fournier. I'm I go to Montpelier High School. I live in Montpelier. I'm not a homeowner. I live in a house. And but I love historic buildings. I've done an internship with the Department of Historic Preservation this fall and into the spring. And I just recently completed the 3D Vermont Challenge, which lets you research on historic building. I as part of my research knew immediately that I wanted to choose a house because houses are where we live. And as much importance that city buildings have and public buildings have and what they add to a downtown community or to the way the aesthetic of our place, you know, we don't we're not going to go and sleep or make our breakfast for the most part in public buildings. We live in our homes and that's what holds our stories. The building that I chose for my research project is on Main Street. It's 140 Main Street. It's in what is now no longer the residential section, but was the original residential section of Montpelier. It's a big red house. It's red painted brick. It's on the left side of the street or I guess the side of the river is easier to understand between Kellogg Hubbard Library and the Roundabout. Now it's owned by associates at 140 Main, which is a law firm. But through that building, I researched the story of three families and was able to connect with them in a way that you can't without that building. I think about a lot where my place is in my house and how I could be remembered through my house. With my research, I discovered a girl named Bridget. She is of no significance to anyone in this room or really even should be to me. But her name and her place felt really important to me because I knew that in my research of a house in the historic building, I was remembering her in a way that no one else before me could have because she didn't matter to anyone else. That was kind of all over the place and I don't have time to really wrap it up. But I love Montpelier and I love the way the historic buildings feel and I love the way they hold who we are all in this room right now. But also when we go home and eat dinner and go to bed. Yeah, I think that's it. Those are all my things. Great. Thank you. Hello. I'm going to also do this. My name is Ben Cheney. And I am also on the design review board for full disclosure. But Eric had asked me to come up and say one thing. But I also and I forgot your name where I didn't catch it. Susan. Susan have to. It was a real pleasure to hear you say that you came. You enjoyed your experience at design review because I do find what that you were nervous about it because we actually I think make a great effort to try and make it not be a nervous thing. Like it's we all sit around the same table and go over your designs and have like a conversation. It's really not about judgment. It's about trying to help people make decisions and see opportunities that they hadn't seen before and trying to make it a better project. And so having hearing you say that I really want to reiterate that we're here to try and make it a better project. On that front. I had the pleasure of designing and building the the deck space off of the Asian restaurant on the corner of main and Elm. And I had the pleasure of working with Eric. Eric came to the site and we custom built a door that actually like keeps all the glass lines sort of. We had to cut out historic granite and brick to be able to put that deck on that space. And it's important to me that our buildings may be historic but they're not dead. There's new things that are happening and we have to be able to live in the city and have it become a place that we can all sort of still continue to live in and designs change. But how do we make it so that it's still beautiful or attractive but not try and just remakes the same thing. And so that was really important to me to try and demonstrate on that project. And with working with Eric and sort of worth design review we were able to come to that and it was not onerous it was not difficult. And it is made what used to be a very kind of trashy corner. I think a really great place. I love seeing people sitting out there and having drinks and food and watching the parade or whatever it's made for a really exciting part of town. That's my experience. Thank you. I like what you said about building not being dead and it strikes me that Lily's comments articulated how buildings tell the stories and bring those back to life. Hello I'm Barbara Connery. I'm I live at 36 Liberty. I'm just outside the historic preservation district. And I'm also on the planning commission. And one of the things that was very important to me as we were rewriting the zoning had to do with older historic homes that some of our older people our families are living in actually older couples generally. And we wanted to make sure that people could continue to live in their homes. And so we were strong proponents of allowing people to take a historic home and without changing its appearance to make it into a duplex. And when I realized I was trying I was thinking about this today my husband and I moved here in 1986. And we took our Queen Anne house and made it to family. And it's always been a two families and around us they are not two families but it blends in perfectly well. So we just want to make sure that things are so that there is more equity in terms of providing more housing for people in the city but within our historic housing stock. There I'm Sarah Hoffmeyer. I'm a member of the Montpelier Tree Board and I think something that's really important is to get the different boards talking to one another. So and I'm a landscape designer in town. So landscapes are kind of my bias but a 200 year old tree that is something to preserve and conserve as well. The tree board I know I can speak on behalf of all of them would be more than happy to come out to anyone's property to take a look and to also protect it. A lot of times when construction is coming in the root systems heavy machinery can compact the soil and kill a tree very quickly. So I won't go into any more details but anyway I just wanted to make that connection of the boards should all talk and work together and keep the trees alive. OK thanks. Thank you for that trees are very important. When Middlebury College was building its new fine art center several very old oak trees were in the mix and I never forget the president of the college and Olin Robinson I ran into it at a sandwich shop and he told me that you better be able to save that tree because if it goes I'll be run out of town but you know we actually hired Bill LaVos out of I think Montpelier his company came and they did some treatment and it wasn't absurdly costly the tree was sort of fed but proper protection during construction is another sort of guideline and design to Sarah's point that really ought to be in a review process because you can build around trees but if you have to protect them appropriately in order to do so and obviously ideally stay out of the canopy diameter or beyond that but thank you for bringing that up because we can't forget the landscape and the heritage that our entries provide. It is part of the criteria the landscaping is part of the criteria I can't recall anybody ever wanting to take a tree down a design review. Hi I'm Erin Aguayo we moved to Montpelier and had no intention of buying an historic home we envisioned a sparkling modern gem in the woods and that was immediately dashed when we told our real turf four bedrooms and a walk to downtown and I got a crash course in restoring a massive beautiful 1915 craftsman in fact I was almost late today because we were waiting for doors to be delivered from Ohio but I just want to stress the importance of thorough design review like you asked where Montpelier is falling short and you can work and work and work on this but then your neighbor can think oh like I know someone who ripped out every window because they were afraid design review was coming for them and I feel like there are a lot of exceptions to the design review there are a lot of ways around the design review and I don't know like my entire neighborhood doesn't have any like we're not in a historic district I don't think we're subject to any design review even though most of the houses are 100 or more years old and we were recently fighting someone trying to put in a 16 unit apartment building with no I wouldn't call it a design it's like a box and I would like to see stringent design review and if there's any way to help people who need financial assistance I would appreciate that but it would have helped a lot if someone hadn't been allowed to start dismantling our home before we bought it that would have been really nice and I feel like architecture is what gives Montpelier the special character it has and every time we lose a window or we let someone knock down a carriage house we did get ours propped up by the way but we really lose something that lends character and usually what replaces it is maybe not what I would think of as modern architecture but rather a very economical functional thing like where do you live because we're one of the things we're going to do in this process is look at the boundaries of design review is so I live on Kemp Avenue or Kemp Street right behind BCVA and the Saban Street area which is a lovely historic area and don't tell them I'm the one who told you it should be under design review. Probably should. You should be safe with us. And public television. Well maybe not. And I love the idea of a manual because we had no idea what we were getting into. So thank you. Let's blower from my failure heritage. I just wanted to express another concern which is that a lot of people see and a lot of people see something that's a value and that seems to be good stuff. I've seen recently a major problem that stuff that's being proposed doesn't seem to be a much reason to say yes. Make sure that everything is safe. Make sure that everything we are constructing is something that we want to be around in 50 or so. Lay in. Anybody else? Thank you very much and if you want to see yourself on TV again. You can do that. One thing I just would close with so you know what we're planning of in a little more details. Should I hit the light? Sure. I just want to be very clear. We're going to obviously we heard what she said and we're going to kind of digest that and take that to heart and we are going to start now to review the standards and guidelines in the application process and then begin to initiate drafting of new review criteria and revisions and as Eric said looking at the district boundaries and we do have a whole work plan as shown on the right in a matrix we've put together. In June the notion will be to review and revise as appropriate the second draft of the standards guidelines and the process and obviously to the point earlier we want everyone to be on board and so I think it's the intent of the commission to distribute to the city officials and boards as appropriate for their input and discussion and then I think we're going to with that new draft in place we will conduct another opportunity for this type of engagement and a public meeting and then over July and August we have to finalize revisions to that section and obviously ensure that the requirements set forth in the grant money to the city are all met and adjust the timing with which the new design review section draft is submitted to the planning commission so that's sort of the way forward the project will need to come to close by the end of August because that's the time frame for the grant. I don't know if Liz or anybody wants to add something to that. So they don't have to be passed in August. Thank you. They just need to be drafted so that we're meeting our CLG grant requirements. There is still the city's process for posting and mourning and all of that. Right. That it can continue on. Yeah. So any of you that are interested in receiving notices particular notices of the meeting, Sarah I think can put you on a list. Otherwise it shows up on the city website as well as video. One of the we haven't talked a lot about this but the idea is to make the design review process clear for the applicants about what they're doing and design control does not mean that everything has to stay the same. That's one reason I asked Ben to come up and talk about that. That's clearly a new thing. It's in a historic building and it went through design review. You came in for a preliminary right and then and then for a final. And so that things can change. It's not we're not we're not trying to pickle anything. And one of the I've been doing historic preservation for probably too long but one of the things that's kind of been lost is that when you come into a community you should instantly recognize that community if you've been there before. A sense of place. Here's where you are. You're in Montpelier. You're no place else. If buildings get too much change you lose that sense of place and people begin to wonder where they are. And so hopefully we can do that and make the design review process more constructive. One of the members of the Planning Commission really saw design review and Susan talked about a little bit. The idea of we have a lot of expertise on the design review committee and can offer help to people about construction and design. I think they thought this is a resource that people could come to and as a member of the design review committee we're always happy to talk people's project over before that or probably even help people that aren't in design review. There's a lot of buildings and this sort of talks to Ben Point there's a lot of very important buildings and districts that are outside the current design review. So but I think as a committee I think we want to help people take good care of their buildings and do it in a reasonable way. And if any of you wish to contact any of us we put Sarah, Eric and my contact information on the slide there feel free to reach out to any of us questions or comments by all means. And we'll be posting this PowerPoint up on the the city's website so you can reference it. Take a look at our first stab at the draft purpose statement which was early on in this PowerPoint and then use it for the contact info as well. And so and just lastly the Historic Preservation Commission they've been meeting the second Tuesday of every month at 6.30 there are public meetings and from this in the upcoming months there'll basically be work sessions of trying to review this come up with some draft standards review the boundaries and so those meetings are fully open to the public the agendas are posted on the city's website and you can certainly contact Eric or myself if you have any questions but we really welcome participation and having that just be an open dialogue and getting your suggestions on standards and boundaries things that should be exempt everything. So feel free to come to any of the meetings or send us an email call or whatever so this process and project will be happening from now until through July and kind of concluding in August. It looks to me like there's still a lot of cider and cookies left and as I think a conversation after the meeting with anybody yet I'll stick around till thank you all again. Thank you very much. Appreciate a lot of people that came.