 I'm Eric Gilbertson. I'm the chair of the historic preservation commission. And I want to call our meeting of Tuesday, June 14th. To order is the particular purpose of this meeting is to hear public comments on our draft guidelines to support the regulations that were adopted about a year ago. And first off Meredith is going to do some technical stuff. So because we do have people both hearing person and on zoom, I'm going to ask that for everybody on zoom to please keep your microphones on mute, unless you're actually speaking to the group here. It helps cut down on background noise and just difficulty with how everything works out. If you do have a comment, I'm going to ask that you raise your hand and you can do that physically because I'll be keeping track of the cameras or using the little raise hand button on your at the bottom of your bar on zoom. And I'll be keeping an eye on that throughout the meeting. This isn't a formal hearing, but it would really be helpful if you kept the chat function to any technical difficulties it just makes it easier for me to keep track of where to go. I try and pull together everybody's comments. Because the historic preservation commission will be considering all the comments we get tonight and anything else we get separately in making final revisions to these guidelines. Hold on one second, I'm just going to take one more look make sure you miss anything on that. No, we'll probably try and take questions from people here in person first and then do zoom unless somebody lets us know that they have a really strict time constraint. So welcome to email me with any comments you have that you think of afterwards. Or if somebody gets disconnected, please feel free to email me at mcrandle at Montpelier dash vt.org and my email is available on the website. And then all the flyers you got. Did you have a. Did you want to give your. Yes, I'm going to give a few opening remarks. I was thinking today that this is the first real revision of our design review. Guidelines and regulations in almost 50 years. So Montpelier said design review in place for about 50 years. And it has made a lot of difference in how the town looks today. I think people really respect for months. His store Monteliers historic character. I want to thank Meredith who has been, it wouldn't happen without her. For sure, because she keeps me on the straight and narrow and knows the regulations inside and out. And our contractor brandy Saxton from a place making. Is that right brandy. Nice sense. Okay. Sorry about that. So that it's, it's been a real team effort and I see Steve is here from chair of the design review committee we've worked with them on this. That's good. And the other members of the historic preservation commission by McCullough, the on a wilder and Ward jandal. It was a real team effort and also Mike Miller, who's head of the planning department was very helpful in some very practical suggestions. And this is done through a grant from the Vermont division for historic preservation, where I worked for 30 years but had nothing to do with the grant that's awarded by the advisory council. And we got some good coaching from Devin Coleman who's the chief architectural historian for the state. Lots of people that have participated in this. And the reason we're doing it now this is not a completed draft we're doing it as a rough draft. So it's much easier to incorporate any public comment into our final draft. We'll make more work for Brandy and Meredith both but Brandy has been very patient. I've done most of the work through zoom. And she's been very innovative and thinking and doing the design for the and clever mechanically. So the other thing I really want to say and just about done is that this was this guidelines were designed to do more than just compliment or supplement the regulations and make it easier for people to understand why historic preservation is important. And it's also to give some help to them and understanding their historic building and not only the ones in the design review district but outside. There are many, many buildings in Montpelier that are historic that are not in the current design review district. So, so let's let's go. Let's jump in. All right, so I am going to share my screen. I know everybody is probably kind of sick of PowerPoint at this point but I'm going to do a little PowerPoint and give a little bit more detail on how we got here. I'll do a really brief demo of the online guidelines in case there's people who haven't actually played with those yet. So I will take your comments. I'm going to fly through this if somebody, you know, wants it later will make it available on the website. Because I want to make sure there's plenty of time for people to ask questions. So, and the presentations up there as well. Right. So, as Eric sort of previewed, you know what are the design guidelines. And it's really it's for everybody involved is for people who are applying for permits. This is for property and business owners. The design review committee is a resource for them and a resource for zoning administrators anybody who's issuing permits in the design review overlay district. We've got a bunch of different purposes, as Eric said, it's supposed to help with figuring out how to comply with the design regulations. But it's also got all sorts of best practices. Historic preservation and rehabilitation techniques are referenced in here. If you really dig in, you'll find all sorts of resources, including federal resources. And there's other best practices that really don't have anything to do with historic buildings that are just about maintenance, you know, building new buildings, how to deal with signs. There's, there's information in here on all of that. Eric referenced. We had design review regulations for a long time. They were first adopted in 1973. They were very, very basic. There were seven criteria. When they were first adopted, some other bits got added, but they stayed pretty much the same since 1973. After in 1976 were the first was the first cityscape workbook, which would be the first guidelines. But in 76. When that was put forward, it was a combination. It was what we're trying to propose today as well as a planning document. We no longer need that planning document to be in these guidelines. The city has other planning documents. And it really wasn't something that was easy to revise. It was a lot of text. In 2017, 2018, there was a push for some new design regulations. There was a lot of pushback from the city on those. Those got scrapped. And the historic preservation commission was asked to draft draft new design regulations. That process was completed in February of 2021. Once we had those it was time to get new guideline documents. We now have regulations that we know what they're going to be they're very detailed. And it's time to have some illustrations to help people understand how to use them. So, you know, Eric talked about this briefly. The goal here is a document that is really easy to use, and it's very visually oriented there's lots of photographs. It was funded in large part by a grant certified local government grant to the Vermont advisory council on historic preservation. And this process we hired on brandy and June of 2021, and have had multiple public meetings of the HPC throughout here. And so, here we are we have our first draft. In general, I'm going to, I think maybe just fly through this slide if anybody has questions on what to do when you actually have a project, let me know. The key thing is call the planning department and speak to our planning and zoning assistant. They will figure out whether you even need a permit. It's, it's the best thing to do call us find out sometimes you don't need a permit at all. Sometimes you just need an easy one in house, no, no meetings. Sometimes you need to go to the design review committee, but we'll help you with that step. The guidelines have a lot of information in them. The slide I've got up right now focuses in on the guidelines standards that are keyed into the design regulations. And so it really focuses in on the different types of permits you might need to get under the design regulation. So stuff to do with building maintenance or rehabilitation. If you're going to do an addition or demolition. Actual construction of new structures. Things to do with how your site is designed, including lighting. Where your mechanicals or utilities go. There's a section on signs and you haven't drafted it yet, but there's going to be section on code compliance. Thoughtful ways to be able to adjust, say your railings or do something else that's required by fire and safety code. And suggestions on how to do that in a way that is still retaining the character of the building, but still meeting code. I'm going to do a quick demo. Of the site. So people can see. Does everybody still see the design guidelines at this point? Nope. Hold on. I got to stop sharing. Where it is just doing that. One thing. I want to say is that I'm also vice chair of the design review committee. Steve ever. It's the chair. And. That the design review committee really likes people to come in. Wits. Likes to help people get their. Projects to be as good as they can. Not. Not only just with historic preservation issues, but other issues. People on the design review committee know a lot about construction. And have helped a lot of people made their projects more affordable. And better preservation and so that's. We're encouraging people to do that. And hopefully these guidelines will help give out some of that information before you even go to a committee meeting. So for anyone who hasn't navigated through this yet. There are arrows. In this area. When I move forward, there'll be one over here to be able to navigate through the pages. There's also some at the top of the page. And once you get in. A little further. So the table. Of contents is clickable so you can jump to different sections. And there's also tabs up here. Once you get into the introduction. There's tabs up at the top to go to different sections. I'm just going to go. To the third major section. Guidelines. Just so that people can see a little bit how this works. If they haven't been on the site yet. So this is the first page. And once you actually get in, and this is different than the printed version, which is nice. There's a column of the text of the guidelines over here on the right. And the first sentence really reflects what's in the design regulations. And then there's more text that helps explain that. And if you click on the number next to it. It changes the pictures down below. We have still some work to do on picking out some pictures for illustrating these different guidelines and. Working some on fine tuning some of the captions. But they're going to really, we hope. Illustrate. Examples of in some places, some ways how to meet the guidelines. And in some cases. Things that. Probably aren't going to be acceptable to the design regulations. So we're going to go ahead and go ahead and. And in some cases things that. Probably aren't going to be acceptable to the design review committee. So this section is all on. Maintenance and rehabilitation of windows and doors. And so. Here there's a section on how to deal with shutters. This is kind of a good example of. Showing. Options. So these shutters are. Completely operational. They're still attached up here on the frame so they can close. Or at least it looks like enclosed, even if it doesn't, but it looks like the standard ones. And then you have situations. You know, like this one where they're really just decorative shutters. They're not sized right for the windows. That's something that the design review committee really wouldn't. Wouldn't be approving as a change is something new. For a part of a project. So we have this type of type of illustration. Throughout. All of these design. Guideline standards that are keyed into specific regulations. So if you come to the planning department. Let us know that you have a project and it's going to involve. A portrait entry or something like that. And you have questions about what you should do. And then you have a question. If you need to be one, we can print off the section that relates to what you, what you're working on or point you to it. And help you design the project. If need be, or at least just give you some pointers on the types of things that the committee is probably going to be looking for. I'm going to stop here and. Ask for questions. Questions, comments, any and all. And for anybody here in person, if you want to make a comment, that way anybody. Remote can hear you. And we can get it recorded. For, for organ media. And while you're thinking. If the members of the. Start preservation commission would introduce themselves and. Make any comments they feel like. Yep. I'll start because I'm here. I'm a local architect. I've only been on the committee for a couple of months and I joined. I've been on the committee for a couple of months and I've been on the committee to help have enough people on the committee for a quorum and. We'll stick along, stick around as long as I'm needed. Thank you. Your input has been very helpful word. Yana, you want to introduce yourself. Yep. Yana Walder. I work for Lakeburn property management and they. Manage a lot of the older historic buildings in Montpelier. And it's been a pleasure to learn a lot from folks who have been doing it for a long time. Thank you. Thanks. Comments questions. We really want comments and questions. And please do introduce yourself that way we. It just helps. Yeah, I'm Andrew Jackson. I'm a little behind the curve on this a little bit, but. A while ago there was a. Thing on the website that indicated where the historic district boundaries were. And it was. A couple of questions. One is. Well, is this being recorded and can. Will that be available on the website? Yes. Okay. I'm a little behind the curve on this a little bit, but. A while ago, there was a. A couple of questions. And it was pretty low res and hard to tell. And I can't really tell whether my property is. In or out. At 19 Bailey avenue. I was wondering if anybody could tell me whether it is. I. Can, if you give me a minute. I would need to pull it up on my, on my mapping. I can look at that. We have actually just updated. The design review. The design review. Web page to have a better image of. The design review. Overlay boundaries. We just did that. Today or yesterday. So hopefully. It'll be easier for people to find that it does not have. Street names on it or parcel numbers. But yes, you are within the design review overlay. It's a big design review overlay boundary. And then inside of that. There's an area that we can't touch. The capital complex, which is all governed by the capital complex commission. But you're a few, a few parcels past that. So you are in the design review overlay. Okay. So I'm suggesting, and you're probably ahead of me on this as well. That. That information and links to it. Are posted on front porch forum or. As soon as possible. Cause that's, that seems to be have become a central form of communication in the community. I can definitely do that. I can do a follow up to tonight. So to front porch forum that probably has a link to this recording of tonight. they can go on our website to see a map of the design review overlay. That's a great idea. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. One of the nice things about the the 1976 book was printed. So it was set in stone, couldn't be changed. And we really plan on making this flexible. So if new information, more helpful information, we'll add it to the website. And city can also print you off a copy if you ask for that, or you can print it up off yourself. You lose some of the interactive parts of it because of what the way some of the references are to the Secretary of Interior's briefs, which are guidelines on historic preservation activity, and they have they have a lot of really good technical information. So we're really trying to get the public informed on what they can do with their historic building, what the advantages of it are, and to keep Montellier really looking historic. A few years ago, I hosted a meeting of state historic preservation officers from across the country. And they were simply blown away by Montellier. And these are the experts that look at the stuff all over the country. The downtown blew them away, the neighborhoods blew them away that they could walk around Montellier. I told them not to bring cars that we pick them up at the airport, they brought cars and parked them and all they did is drive back and forth from the airport. So Montellier is a really special place, a valuable place. Anybody else in person want to chat before I move to? Okay. Frank or Chap? Any comments, questions, please? We were looking for feedback. That's really great tech that you have. Like the interactive feature is really, really enviable. It's a it's a really great platform. Very. Yeah, it's very innovative and it's cool. Awesome. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That's great. Well, hopefully people will find it useful over time. Yeah. Thank you. Anybody else? Steve, would you like to say something as chair of the design review committee? Don't have to. I don't want to put you on the spot, but Steve Everett resident of Montellier and chair of the design review committee. And I just want to emphasize that we view the committee as a resource for everybody in Montellier, whether you're a residential property owner, tenant, or commercial property owner, tenant. And our goal is to try to put a lot of pieces together. Again, and act as a resource for energy conservation, preserving historic structures. And again, our committee has a number of architects and people with specialty experience. And again, we would like to be a resource for people who need to tackle or wish to tackle a project regarding their property. And I can't answer any questions anybody else might have. I'm not seeing questions online. I just want to as part of that resource aspect for the design review committee, just to let people know that if you have questions about your project, and you're not quite ready to file an application, and it's not something that the planning department staff can really advise you on, the design review committee does take sort of pre application discussion, where as long as there's room on the agenda, you can come in under other business and ask them questions about your project. And it really, it's a great resource. We've had people come for small projects and big projects for that, that type of discussion, so that they get the committee's input before they file a permit application or pay any fees. We just we need to, you know, the planning department needs to coordinate with you to make sure that there's an agenda that has room on it for you. And so we fit you in, but that's a possibility as well. And it's very helpful. Thank you, Steve. Okay, you're welcome. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Not seeing anybody else with everybody's hands right now. I do have a couple of other things prepared to just walk through a couple of other sections that are in the guidelines that are separate from those standards that I showed you that I thought were useful types of information that are in the guidelines. So let me do that and then see if maybe Brandi has anything she wants to add since she is the driver. Once we gave her all the information, she took everything we that the HPC wanted and our historic information and molded it all into this great format. And she brought together, she's done several towns, guides for several towns. So she brought a broader view and we did look at guidelines really from all over the country when we started this project. We kind of forgotten that actually, but we did, we looked at a lot of different. We did, we looked at guidelines both within Vermont and outside to try and find, find examples that were useful. So if people have questions, just I know this is kind of small. If people have, or I'm trying to figure out how the process actually works in the guidelines, there is this interactive flow chart where, and I can go back to the guidelines themselves to show you. But when you click on different parts of the process and how, how to go through the design review process, it'll pop up with some information including contacts and details. So as I said before earlier in the slideshow, first step is to contact the planning and zoning assistant. She'll guide you through whether you don't need a permit at all so you can go straight to doing your work or if you have to submit an application for a permit. In this, on the guidelines, if you hit submit application and tap that, it's going to pop up with some guidance on the types of things that need to be in your application. Once you submit an application, there's two different ways you might need to go for design review. That might be administrative review, which is basically me taking a look and making sure you meet the correct criteria or it might need to go to the design review committee. So this is just an interactive way to figure out what the permitting process is. So there's details of that and the guidelines. We also have this large context section including a page that's about preparing your application and some really key terms that are in the guidelines and they're in the guidelines because they're in the regulations. So how to understand what compatibility means. What is essential form and character mean? There's a lot of discussion in here including some links to other resources because compatibility doesn't mean it needs to look like the thing next to it. There's much more to it than that. So this is a really good resource page for digging into what some of those terms of art mean. There's also sections in the guidelines keyed into learning what the different parts of windows and doors and all these aspects of a building, how they're going to be talked about in the design review committee because you might get some guidance from somebody talking about you know that your window needs to be a six over six or a three over six. What does that mean? It's in here in the guidelines. Same with regard to you know what all the different parts of a window are. That's not here but this talks about all the different types and that's that's what I have already prepared if somebody has questions and wants to see something specific in the guidelines. I can go back to that. We can also go to Brandy if she has anything she wants to add. Does anybody have any questions right now? Comments thoughts? Nope getting head shakes online. I think the one thing I might add Meredith that you haven't mentioned is that the design guidelines are also about fitting new construction in so I think one of the things that's interesting is that design review and came about in Montpelier kind of in response to a downturn really that there wasn't growth that with the interstate growth was starting to outside the city and historic preservation was a response was the city's policy response to try to turn those conditions around to some extent and now this past decade was the first decade since the 1960s that Montpelier has added residents has grown and so it's kind of a fitting time to redo the regulations as there's sort of a change perhaps underway in the city and you are also looking at how to fit new projects in and address the energy components and things like that while maintaining that historic fabric so there's a whole section in the guidelines that deal with new construction and ways to do that in that respects the history around it but it's also very potentially contemporary and distinct from what was before thank you brandy i did miss out on that mentioned it briefly at the beginning and didn't zero in that yeah the the guidelines as eric said Montpelier is a special place but it needs to grow it needs to change and there haven't been a lot of new buildings in downtown in the last 20 years but there have been proposals for them and we have the transit center now there was a proposal for a new building down on state street hasn't been built my guess is there's going to be something there at some point in front of the thrush it's just we don't know what yet and so the design review regulations deal with that and how to build something that's new and modern but still fits in with the city and so the guidelines have tried to elaborate on that and have illustrations on demonstrating how that can be done and so there's a lot of photographs in here you know Montpelier doesn't have a lot of examples of the new new buildings but there's a lot of examples in these guidelines to show different ways that things can be done sometimes well sometimes not yeah if you could come up to the microphone that way people remotely can hear you too was there some discussion about compatibility with the transit center there so the transit center was one before I was here and I'm trying to remember if that was approved under the old design review regulations are the new ones I can't remember when the permit it was the old ones but it was still it still would have there still would have been that discussion because it would have had to go through design review it's outside the borders no and I don't think it's in the exclusion zone we've had some changes to where lines are drawn we had actually the building got changed quite a bit as there is all the comments from design review I was there Steve and I have been there for 20 years or more so mostly in terms of materials and compatibility making sure the general massing of the building you know fit in with the downtown the hotel and all of that and it's uh yes it was it was it was reviewed uh and one of the interesting things to serve a philosophical thing on review committees is you know everybody has an opinion you can't do everything in regulations or I mean you can't and so it is it is a human judgment and the people on the design review committee are really pretty aware of all of that and and really look at things and try to figure out a way something can happen and still meet the standards Steve I've got a question for you actually would design review look at something that was actually outside the district just as an advice piece gotta come up to the microphone so people remote can hear you sorry get me your exercise I just kind of thought of that but you know this I think it's possible to look at something outside of the district probably on a informal review or recommendation process but there is no formal necessity to come before the for an approval if you're outside the district right it would just be it would just be I mean what you basically end up with is a panel of experts that can look at your project and try to help you make it a better project of course if you're not in the district it's just again it's not every environment but if somebody has a project that they're doing outside of the district or a remodel or an addition or something and they want some information about what might fit in better if it was in the district I mean some people might be just interested in and again we'd see ourselves that ever as a resource and we're able to provide some advice informally and we hope the guidelines are useful to anybody that owns an historic building in Montelier or any building or any kind of building or wants to build a new building anywhere as something that sort of looks at the way Montelier as a city views itself and views no construction or it does several things so you can look at making your building more efficient making the building look again maintain its historic importance and try to do all those things at the same time and again it just preserves the value of your building and the long-term usefulness thank you okay any other questions it looks like we lost chap well we got 20 minutes left so anybody who wants to say anything we don't have to go for a full hour but at least at least some people turned up so that's helpful and if anybody wants to call me or anybody and it was particular questions that's fine too yep we're available okay I didn't really come up with a big plan for how to close things out actually I do want to thank people those of you who came out on a beautiful summer evening we're not quite in summer yet are we that feels like it that way it is it's such a beautiful day well yep yep so we have got at this point our grant period ends in august so we are aiming to have a final version of these guidelines and wrap up our work with brandy by august and so we're we're going to be working on refining and filling in some polls in the guidelines between now and then so any comments during that time would be great if possible send them to me but if you happen to have contact information for our hpc members feel free to send it to them as well and again it's mcrandall at montpillier-vt.org and my contact information is on the planning department website and then the we don't know the exact timeline moving on from august the guidelines before we can really post them as official policy documents will need to be approved by city council it's not a change to the actual rules so it won't need the dual public hearing process but it will need official sort of blessing from planning commission and city council and then hopefully we'll be able to be making these live some point in the fall and then they'll be out there as a resource for everybody who needs them and i will keep keep things updated on the city website but also i think the using frontparch firm to announce things and some of our other avenues has been really helpful so we'll continue that process probably won't put anything in the bridge the next time around but you can also keep an eye on the planning commission and city council agendas because once this goes before them it'll be on their official agendas so hopefully hopefully sometime this fall that's my guess and i'll also depend on how busy the planning commission has been very helpful they're the ones that's decided that this needed to be done they've been helpful with comments and some criticism we timed the time but the jet that was very constructive yeah so we don't want people in my period they hate regulation you know we want them to see that it's helpful and that it really contributes to our sense of community and the place we live so hopefully the guidelines will help some of this conversations thank you everybody for being here both remotely and in person we really really appreciate it the historic preservation commission will be having a it's one of its regular meetings beginning at seven o'clock tonight across the hall it's going to be mostly a little bit of a debriefing on tonight there's not a whole lot of else going on right now other than this project and their standard meeting nights are the second Tuesday of every month so we welcome you attending in July the next that may don't be July 12th or August we would love to see people thank you very much thank you we usually meet in the in the city manager's office and on zoom so yeah but the city manager's office is our usual place we're not swamped with public attendees yeah we usually go in a small small room we welcome people to come to the meeting yeah and we have openings for additional commission members commissioners if anybody has an interest in joining the historic preservation commission reach out to me I can give you a link to the application it's a you know get on there by being appointed by city council but we do have open seats and welcome different viewpoints for sure so thank you Yana we'll see you on zoom in about 40 15 minutes awesome Juana just like the meeting is closed