 for coming to this forum about preserving the State Street. I'm Ellen McAuliffe, and it will be my pleasure to moderate this presentation and the discussion afterwards. We're very glad to host this dynamic subject at Beautiful Christ Church, which is itself a 150-year-old landmark on State Street. We think of Christ Church as both a sacred space and a community resource. I want to recognize and also thank Paul Habersang, our Christian partnership. So everybody can see you. Thank you. I also want to thank all the speakers in advance and our co-organizer, Linda Prescott. It's wonderful to know that we have so much knowledge in this room. We have people from the city, the business sector, the Vermont Historical Society, the Division of Historic Preservation, the Montpelier Historic Preservation Commission, which is a city-appointed body, the Montpelier Heritage Group, Sustainable Montpelier, the Montpelier Development Corporation, and many active citizens and artists, and many of you represent many of those roles. And it's also very good to have Orca here to record our proceedings. Some more people will be able to listen and learn. I expect this time together will be both an education and also enlightening to many of us. We'll learn about our historic State Street, what it used to look like, what is its status now, how do we want to experience this key part of our city state? You will hear briefly about what's challenging this historic building, Christchurch. We'll learn about the revitalization of the Montpelier Heritage Group. And we'll discuss what we've learned. Hear your perspectives about what characterizes State Street. How do we envision its future? So to start us off, I'd like to first call on Jenny Duggan, who works for the Division for Historic Preservation, and tonight represents the Montpelier Historic Preservation Commission to give us a brief overview. Jamie? Thanks. Good evening. Thanks, Ellen. Thanks for coming out. I really appreciate the attendance here this evening. And I just wanted to give a brief overview and let you know a little bit about some of the work that our commission's been doing. As Ellen mentioned, we're appointed by the City Council, and the Historic Preservation Commission is a CLG program, which is a partnership between the National Parks Service and the Division for Historic Preservation. And it is a program that helps communities that take historic preservation into consideration of their local zoning ordinance and provides funding and other support to help with those endeavors. And so our district, when it was created, the historic district, when it was first surveyed and evaluated back in the 70s, ended up having about 85% of the structures within the boundaries contributing to the significance of the historic district. We had a really early local design review ordinance in effect. That was supported by a document called CityScape, which was written by architect Bob Burley over in Winkfield, and who did a lot of work here in Montpelier and in the capital complex. And because of the strength of these materials, over that time, we've been able to really preserve that same level of integrity to our historic district. Historic Preservation Commission started back in a project in 2010, some fits and bursts. We ended up completing it in 2016, which was an update of the historic district. Reserving all the properties. Some properties were taken out. They had either been already demolished or had lost their integrity. Other properties were added in, a few extra that had come of age now over 50 years that were not at that threshold back when it was originally done. So an analysis that was done at that time that told us that we retain 86% still of the buildings within the historic district are contributing to the integrity of the district. And that's a really important thing. We've heard lately with the zoning changes, some frustrations with design review in some capacities and so one of the next projects that we've done, and a lot of this really led by our Chair, Eric Robertson here, is looking at the design review regulations and we met just last night with the design review committee, the other, another city board that takes on and really executes that policy because some good feedback there. We're getting ready to go to the planning commission and have a discussion with them and hope to integrate these regulations into the new zoning organs. This is important now because we are on the cusp of some of the most concentrated development in the historic district that we've seen volumized and in intensity in a long time and there's a lot of positive things that can come out of that and our goal from historic preservation commission's perspective is to make sure that that's done in a way that is balanced and allows for growth but still preserves the character and integrity of the Montclair Historic District which is quite valuable and a significant part of our local culture here. So that's just sort of one of the updates of what we have. We do have some work to do after that. We're looking to provide some design guidelines to help folks get through the design of the process but what our goal with that has been is to make it a bit more predictable. Allow for some greater administrative approval so folks don't have to come to lots of different meetings as I grew up in the community development when we grew up and so I would point you to our website, our webpage. There's some information there. Keep checking back and we'll do it. And we'd love to get your feedback and comments. Please feel free to direct any of your thoughts related to that to our commission, to myself, Chair Gerberson. Bob McCullough is a recently joined as a member. Judith Berlich, Elizabeth Peebles and General Appachinsky. So those are folks that you can reach out to get some information about that. Thank you very much and appreciate your participation. Thank you, David. Thank you so much for explaining a little bit about how that all works and I know you're really sincere about asking for feedback too so I hope people will get back to you especially after we hear more today. Now I'd like to introduce David Sheetz, my former colleague at the Vermont Arts Council who has served as state house curator now for 33 years and has done so much to enrich our heritage. David, I think one of my most memorable images of the decade will be you watching the Statue of Theories take off to her home on top of the state house. Thank you for all you've done and for your great knowledge about this part of my career. Thank you, Ellen. It's great to have a lovely crowd like this on an inclement evening like that outside and we're gonna keep this as brief as possible. That's why Ellen mentioned the time limits for each of the speakers tonight and she was especially training her sights on me because she knows that I have all these fantastic images of Montpelier that you're gonna want to see but since there are 19 of them and I have been given 15 minutes, oh, I have 20. Oh, okay. So that's about a minute per minute. I told you, I'm sorry. Okay, good, good, good. This will make it a little easier to achieve. What I wanna do, frankly, is open it up to the crowd because we have resources in this group, not just onlookers. I see so many people here who know a lot about Montpelier's past and I hope you'll chime in as we look at these images together to get a sense of what historic State Street was like particularly back in the 19th century when it really took shape. The big event in the development of State Street, of course, started with the State House and the original State House, pardon me? Too loud. Too loud, okay. Sorry. The microphone will be all right. Okay, is it better now? Okay. That big event, the State House, and I'm not referring to the first State House which dates back to 1808, but rather the second State House completed in 1838 and that structure caused them to widen State Street and to begin to build structures that were commensurate with that stately building that was located unlike its predecessor, not right down on the street, but perched up on the hillside where they blasted away at the rock to create that building site that has served the State House so well, particularly during times of flood which occasionally Montpelier suffers from as we all know. So this is our image for the show. I'm just gonna advance the slides and we'll start to talk. There we go. Oops. Too fast. So we start with a fairly early image. This, and I wanna thank first of all Paul Parnahan who just came in. The longtime librarian of the Vermont Historical Society, Paul's, it all started when I wanted to put together a few slides with naturally his book and I hope you all earn your own copies of Paul's book available in bookstores around the town still to the State, I believe. At least you'll find a copy at the State House. So this is the early Pavilion Hotel which as many of you may know was developed at the very time that the State House was built in Montpelier. The enterprising son of Colonel Jacob Davis, Thomas Davis, built this hotel adjacent to the State House. He knew what he was doing when he donated the land for the State House right on the next door. And he knew that there was a ready market for a hotel such as this. And this is the original structure that stayed there until the 1870s when it was replaced with the Pavilion Hotel that some people in the community still remember. But I want to point out, it was on the exact same site. There was a courthouse in the rear. This is St. Augustine's Catholic Church, the first St. Augustine's. And right over here is what we can identify as maybe best known to the community still as the Thrush. So this is the Thrush on its original site lined up with the Pavilion Hotel and other structures in the rear where the parking areas are today adjacent to the State House. But when this photograph was taken, I'm pretty confident the 1859 State House had been built. Opposite that view, so this is the same green that we were just looking at that is adjacent to the Pavilion, which is in this direction. This is the first of an early structure that was directly opposite the Pavilion Hotel, the Greek Revival Temple Front building, adjacent to Montpelier's first train station, which stood where the Chippenden Bank building now stands. Although, a little further back, I'm in trouble looking at the, here we go. So there we go, okay, right. So this is the Montpelier House, which was the hotel that stood on the site of today's capital Plaza and its predecessor, the Tavern. So this is an early hotel called the Montpelier House and the Frick House over here, a federal-style Frick House, was the home of the Wood Art Gallery. So the Wood Art Gallery was housed in that, beginning in the late 1890s, so it was a residence, and it was this place prior to that, but it would be best known to all of you as the Wood Art Gallery. It was demolished sometime in the late 1940s. Okay, it's getting interesting here. Anybody know where on State Street we are at this point? Do you see any recognizable, yes, so exactly. The one big recognizable feature here is this big column, which is the Portico of Washington County Courthouse. So if you know that's the courthouse, then you know what State Street looks like going in this direction toward the pavilion. So the pavilion is somewhere lost in the trees here. These two structures would ultimately be demolished to build a late 19th century post office that some people in the community still remember. The big, rusticated granite. The post office would have been built where this Portico of Grecian building and the Federal-style house next to it. Oh, they were moved? So see, 28th Street? No Portico anymore. That building was moved up to State Street in 1834 or 1936, it's an apartment building. It still looks that way, right? So that's not East State Street, Fabulous, I did not know this. Okay. They put on logs and rolled them up the hill with horses. Yes, yeah. So this has to predate the 1890s post office that would have been built on this site. That's all we can say. So this was probably taken in the 1870s or 80s, Paul, would you say it? 70s or 80s, maybe? Before the post office was built on that site. Opposite that, we can't see a lot about what's going on here, but we're getting into the, obviously, the Christchurch neighborhood and the buildings that flanked it. Now we can see a little more of that side of State Street with this building, a hotel again. Another structure, is this Capitol Hall? Yes. So this is Capitol Hall and then down further is the Montpelier House, the hotel standing where the tower was. This is the Federal-style house that would become the Woodart County. You can see the buildings that still stand on State Street beyond the Capitol Plaza. 110 State Street, which was the original home of the Vermont Mutual Insurance Company and beyond it, National Life Insurance Company built in 1890 as their first home office in a standalone structure. Again, where you can see those houses, some of these houses, because the post office has still not been built, but this is the courthouse again. The Washington County courthouse, the very one that we have today, although its clock tower was replaced with one that is a little more elaborate around 1880 or so. This was the post office earlier and this structure I know was saved and stands directly behind sitting hall and the firehouse, most recently known as the Pure List. And anyway, a beautiful structure, the bank building that stood where almost street is gone. And there's that magnificent post office that was built circa 1890, right next to the same courthouse with that more splendid new cupola on it. An excellent question. Why did they replace the post office? And through the street, of course, the Pavilion Hotel now has been built on the site of the earlier Pavilion Hotel. This is what it looked like initially before they would add another floor on top as a mansard roof. So the mansard roof expanded the Pavilion in the 1880s by the 1876. This is what it looked like with its big garages and of course the state house beyond. The state house with its original finishes on the dome all made of wood as you may know and painted with sand paint in a gray color to give the drama of the dome a granite-like look. Came taking the copper red so that it would look like a Renaissance terracotta roof. And of course the original statue of Sirius, right? Or agriculture. When did it get gilded? It was gilded in 1906. So we know this is somewhere in the 1870s before a mansard roof was added to the Pavilion. And right here is Vermont Mutual's headquarters, now a state office building. This is on the site of the Chittendome Bank building the second train station for Montpelier with another impressive clock tower. There's a magnificent photograph that you guys I think have showing a wrecking ball, not so magnificent, but violent, showing a wrecking ball taking this clock tower off as they demolished the train station back in the 1960s. And this is the rear of that train station where you can see the platform, the locomotive. We still, this is all gone, of course, all this fanciful Victorian splendor beyond. You can just see the parapet of the old national life building which is currently the agency of agriculture. And you can also see the cupola on top of the baggage handling building which also still stands. So this is still there, that is still there, but this is long gone. And there's the post office again, all dressed up for Dewey Day or 1905, it could be the 1905 Centennial of Montpelier as the capital, it's a little hard to tell. I know what the bunting looked like on the state house. I'm a little less certain of the bunting of other public buildings. And this is a great view because here you can see the Vermont Federal Building is, for lack of a better term, this is the brick house that still stands on State Street. This is where the Pavilion Hotel was and right next to it, this is the Thresh. So this is before they moved the Thresh back from its original location lined up with the Vermont Federal House, which still stands here. And happily, of course, the Thresh is still with us. And a wonderful photograph that Paul sent me of downtown Montpelier, right at the junction of state and main streets. Obviously, some rope are going on here in the middle of the action, but it just shows the incredible variety of architectural styles in the heart of the downtown of Montpelier. All of these Italian asides as well as other, earlier, this is a federal style building at the corner that was essentially a very similar building to what we still have on this side of State Street. How do we refer to that building? I never know what to call it, cool jewels, okay? So cool jewels is in the lower part of this brick building and that's among the oldest surviving buildings in the blocks of the downtown of Montpelier to this day. This building would eventually be demolished and the bank building that is on the corner at State and Main on that block would be built, but every single one of the facades that you see here until you get to the post office, all of that is still here. The porch on this building is no longer there, but the building itself is still there. So these, most of this and most of this is still part of downtown Montpelier, Apple. 18, I'm guessing from the guard of the women here that this could be as early as the 1870s. They don't look 1880s to me, the trolley tracks are. The trolley tracks, yeah, they look like they're putting it in. Is that what's going on here called? Yes, 1898. 1898, okay, so this is later than it looks. Okay, 1898, so this building would go very quickly because the building that stands for this was built right around that time. Yes, I can. So, Theodore Roosevelt came to Montpelier in 1902 and here he is in his carriage, docking in his op-hat. He had a speech at the State House with a massive crowd on the lawn and we're going right past the pavilion, hotel, and this is the thrush. So this is the thrush with a beautiful fan light above the Federal doorway. One of the more impressive Federal structures still in Montpelier, no question. And the chance to see it on one of the great days, 1902. There is the pavilion in its glory with its mansard roof, cars around the 1910s, the tavern that would take the place of the Montpelier House built in the early 1930s in a classical revival style. This aerial view that Paul sent me just today, which I thought was pretty amazing, gives us a chance to look at the capital complex circa 1945. And here you can see the filling station that was built and they moved the tavern, the thrush rather, to its current location. Notice there's very little space between the pavilion, hotel, and the filling station and the thrush because the pavilion, hotel was physically further over and there was no street between them, the way there is today. The street instead was on this side and they made the decision when they rebuilt the facade of the pavilion hotel in the late 1960s that they would move the building a little closer to the Supreme Court and put the street on the opposite side. That's today Governor, Dean Governor Davis Adams. And this is a great shot of the filling station as it looked way back in 1945 or 1942. I think it's World War II. That's the Vermont Federal Building that still stands although the paint was removed from the bricks. At a later time. Yeah. You mentioned that there's another sort of shed building there behind the pavilion. Yes, I saw it. So there's another structure behind it, behind the filling station and as I said, no street. So they're right up against the pavilion hotel. And I know people remember the photo that we were looking at at the very beginning but the photo of the gas station that was torn down as a shadow of its former self. This is in appearance quite a different building. Yeah. Well, there have been a loss of the filling station. Yeah. It's not a building that's behind it. Exactly. This is the bottom of the filling station. Right. So they're starting to colonialize the filling station. It's around the town. And of course that's essentially the same structure that was recently removed. Although it does look quite different. So I'm not sure whether another one was built in its place at a later time. That is it. That was probably the 25th movement. And they put a pitched roof on it to make it more contextual with the other buildings next to it. Right. And I think they did that in the early 60s. Something like that. I think somebody told me that fairly recently. So I wrap up by saying one thing. The Pavilion Hotel, that struggle to save that hotel beginning in the late 60s and ending with its demise in 1970-ish, was the pivotal battle that essentially turned Montpelier around from an historic preservation point of view. And I think most of us are keenly aware that while we never would have chosen to replicate the facade of that building when they rebuilt it as a 1971 office building. 1971 was its completion date. That is the date we look to to determine whether a building reaches that magic moment of 50 years when it suddenly can be considered an historic structure. And we're coming up on that birthday. It's soon to be regarded as an historic building itself and a monument, I might add, to the preservation movement in Vermont. It was the turning point, essentially. And a lot of good things began to happen in Montpelier when they lost the battle to save the hotel. But somehow they managed to create a hybrid state office building that was a unique opportunity. And financially, it was made to work by the Pizzagalli Construction Company. And we're gonna possibly have a program devoted exclusively to that soon. As we gather more and more information from people who are still alive, like Bob Burley, the architect, who was so involved in that. And I see in the rear here Muffy Conlon, who of course was married to Tom Conlon, who led the struggle to try to save the building. Anyway, those struggles are what inform our desire to preserve Montpelier's past going forward. And I would submit we're at another critical point where a lot is going on in this vibrant town. And happily, I think many of the people in this audience must agree that historic preservationists has played a leading role in making this community the community that it is today. And that's what we're celebrating tonight. And that's what I hope will inform us as we continue to meet the challenges of the next few years. As we have opportunities to enhance the character of this truly wonderful, smallest capital city in America. Thank you. Thank you very much. People who are working, saving the building are consistent on reconstructionists that they were really looking at the streetscape as we are tonight. Indeed. That's a good point. Indeed. I know you wanna ask David questions and another discussion and we're going to get to that soon, now to locate Christ Church and its challenges within this context that David Hangemi so beautifully laid out and Sean Bryan, the man of many talents and our project director here at Christ Church. All right, back in 2010, we started to begin to assess the needs of this building in a serious way. And we hired a local character, Jamie Dozen, to do some investigative work for us back before he became a state employee. He was in private practice and he did a lot of good work for us. And so what you're gonna see, most of what you're gonna see is actually photographs from some of the work, investigative work that Jamie did for us. This gives you a detail of the flash. I'm sort of gonna work from the top of the bell tower down. So here's your, here's your, the cremation is at the top of the bell tower. That's a built up roof. You can see the flashing is coming off the stonework there, water is infiltrating into the building through that, through those gaps in the flashing. That's a built up roof. The built up roof has got some problems as well. It's on a concrete deck. There's some places where that roof is also in poor repair. The flashing obviously is in fairly poor repair. So part of our project to restore this building and to get it back into a reasonable condition is to replace the flashing and that roof deck on top of the bell tower. Most of what you're gonna see here tonight from me is probably something that unless you're into stone masonry and mortar and stuff like that, probably isn't gonna be a real interest to you, but it really is gonna highlight what the issues are for this building in terms of restoration. You'll notice here, and maybe a little doubt to see, but there's holes and cracks in the mortar all over the space of the building here. What happens is when it rains, wind blows the rain into those cracks in the mortar, and then in the winter, that moisture begins to freeze. And the next thing you know, we have what we call frost cacking, which moves not only the stones, but also pops the mortar out of those joints. So it's a self-perpetuating problem in that it just gets worse and worse. The more the joints open up, the more water gets in, the more the water begins to frost back as we go through the freeze and frost cycles here in Vermont. And we end up actually moving stones in the facade of the building. We also have a fair amount of deterioration in the woodwork up on the louvers of the bell tower. So you can see the rock and the woodwork there. And again, you'll notice the cracks of the mortar all around there. So the wood is not only rotting, but also water's getting in behind those louvers. You can see again, the effect of that, these are really deteriorating to the point where they've got to be completely replaced. That's an interior view, looking to the outside. Again, you can see that the louvers are just completely gone. So part of our restoration project, obviously, will be to completely replace all of the louvers and the screening behind there, which keeps the vectors, insects, pigeons, whatever, from getting into the bell tower. All of that needs to be replaced, because most of it is in pretty poor condition. Again, another picture, there are windows in the bell tower, fairly narrow windows. And I think you can see there pretty clearly there's an awful lot of wood rot around the window itself. And a pretty significant crack right here where the mortar is completely gone. Another crack here, another crack here where the water is getting into the stonework. Again, just the two windows that are side by side. Again, you look here, you see there's a mortar is completely gone here, the mortar is completely gone here. Mortar is gone here, mortar is gone here, here. A significant amount of repointing needs to be done. The solution to this is to have stone masons come in, router out the old mortar until you get to good substrate, good mortar, and then replace it with a mortar similar to what was used when the building was originally constructed. So it's a sand mortar. One of the other issues that we've had with this building is at some point in the past, folks tried to repair some of the joints with cement. Well, cement is not compatible with this type of repair. You need a softer mortar. Cement, you know, Portland cement basically is a very brittle, hard substance. Does not work well for repair in a stone situation like this. This is the flashing between the roof of this building, the sanctuary and the bell tower. You can see there's a lot of slate pieces that have come down through here. Major gaps in the flashing here, holes, pinholes in this flashing all the way along. So what you've got is water coming in through the flashing into the bell tower. And water is just not a good thing when it's inside your building, whether it's your house or your church. Again, just another shot of the flashing. You can see all of the broken pieces of slate. As you know, it's pieces of slate that come off the roof. They've slid down and literally punctured holes through the flashing. This is actually the path to the sanctuary roof up here, butting up against the bell tower. And you can see again that there's a huge hole right here, gaps where the water is just pouring into the bell tower. And if we go up back in the fat corner, you can look in this fat corner, the plaster's come off the wall and the ceiling. We've got mold issues in that area. So all of that is part of our restoration plan. Again, you can see that large chunk of mortar has just been popped out. And obviously the water continues to infiltrate through there. These are path stones. And where you get path stones on the top, you've got this entire section that's wide open where the mortar has, again, has been spalled out. And water pours in through those cracks. Again, the joints here, these joints, and this joint all the way through here as the mortar's completely gone. Again, same thing there. You can see these things that, as I said, this is probably not of a lot of interest to some of you, but if you're really into stone and mortar, you can see there's pretty significant gaps in that area. This is the top of the rose window. Up here, if you look up there, there's your rose window. This is the outside. You can see there's a big gap in the mortar at the top of the rose window. There are gaps all the way along here. There's not a gap here. Some gaps go all the way around. You can also see the woodwork around that window that pulls the window itself in place is rapidly deteriorating. Our goal will be to hopefully restore that wood. If it isn't so far gone, we have to pull that entire window up. Our goal is to be able to inject that with epoxy and then repaint it and restore it. We also hope to be able to pull this plexiglass that was put on at some point. There were never any wheat poles when they put the plexiglass over the window, and so it's trapped moisture in behind the plexiglass, and obviously moisture trapped against the wood and glass is a pretty significant recipe for a disaster in the future. When we replaced the plexiglass on what we call a Jesus window, which is a big window up behind our altar, several years ago, we discovered that literally that window was ready to fall into the church because the wood was so far gone. We were able to, again, we were able to restore that wood and save the window, but it would have been nipped and tucked over the years. And obviously that would have been a catastrophic failure for us. It's a beautiful window and irreplaceable. And again, you can see the cracks alongside the window there in the mortar. We've left them, again, letting the water in there. This is on the north side of the building, so this is the wall on this side of the rose window. This whole wall, you can see the cracks, the mortar has fallen out from all these locations, all the way down through. Again, we're fortunate the wind does attend to come from that direction, so we don't take quite as much water in that area, but it's still work that needs to be done to replace that. Here's a really good example of this, how bad this gets. This entire section of stone has been frost-jacked in this direction. You can see the gap is quite wide here and right here. So these stones, literally, are gonna have to be reset. So when the mason's come in to work on this, those stones will have to be pulled out and then reset. That's a great photograph. Just a very obvious example of what happens with what we call the frost-jacking. You can see the whole, the mortar's completely gone. That goes back in about four inches. So the mortar that used to be there is completely gone and they completely are over the way by the action of the frost and the freezing frost cycle. What happens when we get water into a building? Now we're in the foundation. This is one of the main beams that you're sitting on right now. That's a storm. Are we okay? Yes, we're okay. And you can see the beam is set into the foundation wall, construction, okay? So you see whether it's floor joist or whether it's beams are set into the wall and then floor joists come off that to the side. Well, this is so haunted that you've actually had to install, and you can't see them here, but we put in some supplemental posts, quite a bit further back. That literally was dropping when weight was applied to it, when we had a full congregation in here. And again, you can see the effects of the water on the interior of the building there completely rotting away that main beam. And also the floor joist. So these are the floor joists that come off that main beam, and you can see along the wall that the ends of those floor joists are completely rotted away. And we've had to do some temporary shoreing up of those floor joists to keep the floor from dropping as it takes a very long. Back some time ago, when we were doing some work on the roof, we put a temporary membrane, so just a rubber membrane over a portion of the roof until the flashing could be repaired between the sanctuary and the bell tower. That was supposed to be a two, three, four year repair. It's been there for almost 10 years now. Well overdue for replacement. And some day when we were wandering around outside and the weather's a little nicer and it's a sunny day, if you look up at the rose window and you look at about this four o'clock location, and you stand close to the building and look up, you'll see that there's a significant bulge in this location where the stones have been frost stacked away from the interior rubber wall of the church. Those stones will all have to be pulled out and again reset, but you can see there's significant gaps. Here, here, here, here, so again the water's getting in behind and jacking those, or frost jacking those stones out. So part of our repair would be where we have those kinds of situations would be to actually have to pull those stones out and reset them. Now the challenge with that, and I'll just very briefly go over this, but the challenge with that is notice that these stones are all different sizes and shapes. They're not all four by fours, or six by sixes, or eight by eight, or whatever you would like to think. So every one of those stones that has to come out has to be catalogued in place and then replaced in exactly the same location where it's not gonna work, it's a puzzle. And one of the challenges is when you pull these out is you also have to make sure that your mortar joints are identical to the joints that were there before or otherwise the stones won't fit. So it's truly work for someone who is really skilled in this kind of restoration work. That is my story. Thank you. We have been running a capital campaign and we've invited the community through a number of channels to participate in that to the extent that folks would like to. We've estimated that the total cost of the rehabilitation that we need to do on the building between talking with our engineers and architects is probably a million and a half dollars. The capital campaign is raised in the vicinity from within our congregational loan about, I think, half a million. No, over 600. And with the participation of folks from outside about 600,000 dollars towards that total restoration goal. I think that the goal of the campaign was to raise 700 because we just felt that it wasn't gonna be possible for us to raise a million and a half all in one go. So, we've been thrilled, I think is the word to use, with the outpouring of support from within our congregation and also from within the community. We've had some very significant contributions from folks in the community for which we're very, very thankful. I don't know. Yes, sir. And is there a possibility you guys could apply for like a historic preservation grant? And have you explored that out? We've got a historic preservation grant. It's $20,000, so it helps, but it doesn't pay the bills. And Sharon is running the campaign. Why don't you join us up front in a little while? Is anybody has any specific questions about the campaign? Thank you, Sean. I think I stepped up here first to get to discussion. I do want to acknowledge Steve Everett, who's an area business person and property owner, and he's just going to do a brief update on the Montilier Heritage Group. The Montilier Heritage Group is an independent non-profit that was created over 40 years ago in the 70s. I can speak a little louder if that's better. Just put it pointed at your mouth. Okay. Is that better? Right on. Close. Okay. Is that better? Okay. Again, the Montilier Heritage Group is an independent non-profit organization that was formed over 40 years ago by a number of interested citizens in Montilier. And their goal was to generate interest in local history and concern for the preservation of Montilier as a unique place to live and work. Through a number of activities, they have lobbied the local government and have encouraged independent renovation by property owners. They've sponsored programs and brought in nationally recognized speakers. And they had the, as a lot of people know, they had the ice cream social on the State House lawn with a croquet tournament in the summer in conjunction with a band concert. And again, they put on a number of programs, slideshows, presentations to help people who were interested in renovating their own properties and again, lobbying on bank for local other local organizations to again encourage people to save the best part of Montilier. It's historical downtown and related neighborhoods. Does anybody have any questions? The original group, of course, one of the most active members was Margo George. Anthony Otis was a member. Since they are no longer, Margo passed away a few years ago and Anthony's no longer participating in the organization. So the organization has been dormant for a few years but there's a lot of interest in reactivating it. I know that Sandy Fitzdom, John Russell, Lester Bomberg and myself would be interested in trying to get it going again and being more active in the community and again with its focus on its original goals. Any questions you might have to the panelists and also let's hear any of your own perspectives and comments. I thought Jamie posed a really good question, which is, what are the characteristics of State Street that we value and what would we like to see in the future? Questions, comments, yes? Thank you for introducing yourself. I just had a question. The buildings were torn down over the years. How old were the buildings? Were they 100 years old? Were they 100 years old? Well, the post office was not even that. It would have been around 70 years old when it went down. The Pavilion Hotel was at the point of which it was taken down in the late 60s. Again, it was only 70, 80 years old at that point, so many times it isn't necessarily the age of the building that is contributing to its demise as just simply changes in use. Changes in use and changes in what people value. And I'm sorry to say that both of those buildings meant their demise simply because at that time the general population of Montpelier was not as aware of the need to save some of its more important structures. That started to change, as I said, with the Pavilion Hotel. And I think the 70s was a decade when increasing awareness about preservation began to gain steam. Thank you. How about from this side? Question? Kind of the same question. We blame the demise of the post office. Federal building. Sorry. It seems to me that the federal government and the federal government went into more efficient building at a more modern moment. When you go in every day and you walk by and you see the people who are coming in. So that is a federal government's project. How about from this side? We'll just alternate. Questions, comments? I wanted to say that while the federal government may have been responsible for the post office, the government, especially the state along with the business community, should be credited with building some of our most notable buildings. Eric? Make a comment. In 1976, the state got a grant, a federal grant from the Economic Development Administration to spruce up and preserve buildings on a bicentennial railroad that was never built. But there are a number of buildings in Montpelier that benefited from that. Railroad station, across from Shaw's, the building used to have a cheese grater on the front, a road shop, all were PDA bicentennial grant projects. Thank you. Maybe they were trying to redeem themselves. Yes, introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jerry. I'm a citizen of Montpelier and I'm interested in the store preservation. Obviously we've had new work changes recently, there's a lot of renovations going on under the French block. Just a general question with panel, what do you see as some of the challenges facing us to preserve the historic downtown, and especially some parts of State Street as there's the pressure to develop? That's just my question. I think I'm going to toss this one to JV first. May I? Sure. And also, if you'd remind people how they can participate as citizens in some of these decisions that are coming up. Sure. Thank you. I would say two challenges in particular that I would see are accessibility and making historic buildings accessible to the extent possible. And also some of the issues around flooding and how that impacts new infill development within just floor levels and certain other aspects that can make integrating new construction into our historic built environment challenging because it was built at a different time with different standards and codes as that changes. But it is possible, it just requires some careful consideration. So there are a number of ways people can get involved in helping to direct that. One would be to get involved a little bit in the zoning revision and some of the components of that, looking at the design review process as we've been doing at the Historic Preservation Commission. I know Kevin's over there. He may want to mention about an upcoming grant that's going to look at some streetscape improvements and some other good things that are happening around here that are going to help with that. Kevin, you want to introduce yourself? Sure. Kevin Casey, Department of Planning and Community Development. We just received a grant, a municipal planning grant from the state. Oh, sure. We just received a municipal planning grant from the state to do a state streetscape master plan. So we just received that last month. We'll be putting out an RFQ for consultants. So we'll be looking for landscape architects and designers to help with that process. So we anticipate that's going to be kicked off in the next six months, I'd say. And we're looking to do things and to get some of the images that we saw. If you can look, we did an EPA grant a few years ago with the Greening America's capitals. So it'll be something along those lines where we'll start to see some images. We'll start to see some designs for what we wanted to look like, incorporating the recent wayfinding plan that was done by Montpelier Live. And so we're going to actually really need a lot of public input. That's going to be one of the critical pieces of this, is making sure that there's plenty of input. And there are enough people here to actually have a significant impact. So when we put it out, I'll make sure that it gets out to this group and make sure that there's a... I was just thinking we should start a sign-up sheet and let you... so that people can get support information. And I'm going to start back right now or ask somebody to draw the right squares and start. Thank you, Linda. Did somebody else want to address the question about challenges and solutions? Yeah. I think what we're in a period where it's tricky to know what the challenges are, because we're no longer in a period like the 1950s and 60s where progress meant you demolished buildings and moved on to the next great thing, like the federal building that they built back then. We're in a period where everybody kind of agrees that historic preservation is a good thing. But what I think has often happened in the projects that I've been involved in, and I imagine some of my colleagues as well, is that a real preservationist is somebody who cares even when there is something in tension with preservation that will change it and you just give in to that tension. Another good thing to prevail at the expense of the preservation of that resource. And what I mean by that is something, for example, like energy efficiency and how we're losing incremental energy, the elements that characterize our historic buildings because we think we're doing the right thing by replacing all the windows. Right then and there. Instead of doing the hard work of determining how to make your house energy efficient in a less aggressive manner. And that takes education, that takes enough caring to go to the great trouble of figuring out the problems. We have a lot of problems and they're not easy to solve and it's where they become a real problem that is going to require some major work that that's where a lot of our preservation battles are being lost. Me by the slow increment of change without thinking about the whole. And doing the easy thing or what you think is the easy thing. Paul. You should introduce yourself. I'm Paul Harding, I'm a resident of Montpelier at the Library of Montesport Society. Since we've got a lot of representatives from the church here, I was wondering if maybe you could update the community about your plans, not just for the renovation of this building but for the further development of this lot and also the potential demolition of the parish house and what sort of discussions you've been going through in your community about either reusing the parish house or a new building and what that new structure might look like. I think that's at least a two-part answer. A one? Maybe Sarah will speak. Sean. Sean. Sure. We've worked three years into a process of looking at the possibility of doing a portable housing project and that would include the replacement of the parish house with a housing project of some sort. We don't have any designs at this point obviously we're impacted by everything that's going on around us so until some of that has settled and we have the opportunity to assess what those impacts would mean and our ability to construct something I actually ask the architect if we have anything at this point that would be useful or helpful for this meeting tonight. We really don't. We would like to think that we can come up with a design working with architecture which would be different from what you see today obviously because what we have today frankly was built about 50 years ago and was built on the cheap and has some significant structural efficiencies that really make it uninhabitable for any kind of housing project or anything other than what we're using for today. And it's also frankly an energy hop. It is going to bankrupt us if we don't do something but it's to be perfectly candid. So you know our goal would be to create a housing project that would meet the needs of some of our relatives here in the city. Create an opportunity for people to have a space that they can come into that's safe and energy efficient and sound and anti-cap accessible is a challenge for us at this point. We're a long way from having a design we're a long way from having plans but our goal and part of our mission in outreach to our community is to hopefully create a housing project that would create spaces for folks that need housing here much clearer to certainly know that the housing needs of my failure are not getting much better at this point. That's the problem that I can do for you at this point. Fair to say that the church is very open to input into review by Well, we would have to go through Yeah, we have to go through the whole process just like everybody else. I'm sure folks will have the opportunity to participate through that process if they're inclined to do so. I'm not on the piano but may I just make a comment? Introduce yourself. My name is Linda Prescott. I'm a member of Quest Church and a member of the Capital Campaign effort. I just want to clarify something. The Capital Campaign and the Restoration Project which Bichon talked to us about earlier is addresses itself to the sanctuary the part of the church that you're sitting in right now. This is the historic part of Christ's church. This is the historic structure. When Sean was talking about the parish hall where we potentially might be having affordable housing that is not a part of the Restoration Project. Just to make that really clear I don't know if people understood that or not. I would be remiss in not reminding repeating that the goal was 700,000 we're at 600,000 so we're getting there and we'll address with lots of more help from the community we'll address those needs that Sean described. Other comments, questions? Yes, I'm Ginny Gattone I'm a resident of my affiliate. I've been for many many years in the state house and I'm also an active member of Christ's church. My question has nothing to do with Christ's church specifically though. I've been concerned and I'm not going to express any opinions about the possibility or likelihood of construction around us of some new edifices but one thing that's concerning since the very beginning of the talks about these is that I haven't heard anything about an initiative or the relationship of an initiative of two or three years ago the NetZero2030 initiative and I know it was not a state or I mean a city undertaking per se but a lot of us in the city went and looked at all the design submissions from actually all over the world. We had a long meeting at the pavilion that a lot of us attended. It was very well attended. We voted on one that happened to be the one I voted on and it was not high in the sky or unrealistic. It was a really wonderful submission about what Montpelier could look like by NetZero2030 in terms of energy sustainability. I haven't heard one word about that when I've heard the discussions going on about Montpelier. Thank you for bringing it up. Can somebody address the relationship between the proposed changes in Montpelier and that project, that envisioning project? Elizabeth, weren't you part of that? Yes. Excuse me. Would one of you like to address this? So, I'm Elizabeth Berger and I work with the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition which came out of NetZero2030 and Deb's here and Deb and Dan for this amazing design competition which I'm sure many of you have seen the drawings of and as Jenny said, the thing about that was it was an independent effort and was not it was not something that has yet to be well I guess I could say it's yet to be adopted by the city as a vision for what Montpelier might be and one of the things that we continue to be very aware of is the fact that 65% of Montpelier is now dedicated to parking and that there is a potential for a change in land use and we believe that parking problem is a transportation problem so we've been working towards that end and I think that is hard because we had all these wonderful visions and now our job as a community is how to realize those visions so I just want to let you know that at the Sustainable Montpelier is here on the ground working on those issues the other who is important who is sitting in the back Tino Ryan the chair of Sustainable Montpelier has done, we have mobilized a group of round table to talk about what we're calling the Lower North Branch neighborhood which is from State Street to the Manuski and from Main Street to Taylor Street because of the French clock and the development over the Genesis Center and potentially the development here on the Christchurch property there may be as many as 150 new residents in this neighborhood so how do we make how do we have adequate open space for all of those people so that they can really have a place to live and improve the quality of their life here in downtown Montpelier so I'm not wanting transportation, open space, housing there are many issues that come together and I think that we as a community need to continue the conversation of historic preservation and how historic preservation is brought forward into our living future and energy efficiency obviously all these different things together thank you Elizabeth Kevin I think you wanted to address this relationship too sure just to follow up on that Ginny's original question earlier this fall we applied for $250,000 FTA transit oriented design planning grant FTA it's Federal Transit Administration we anticipate we'll find out any time in the next few months I've been emailing them but apparently they're closed and one of the issues is not essential so I think that actually one of the issues that we're intrigued by about that was to say not necessarily let's do this but what's the feasibility again and again the issue comes up and people will say we'll throw around huge numbers 10 million, 20, 40 $150 million for to do something with the rail we don't know but the important thing is to find out and that's what the goal of this was it may come back and say it's just not feasible but at least we do the study at least we find out and that's the point behind this planning grant was to answer some of those questions what's it going to cost to do the rail sightings what's it going to cost to make some of these changes to do remote parking to do environmental cleanup all of these issues and so hopefully we get it if we don't we can apply for it again next year it's a great program but just to follow up it is an intriguing idea but like anything we want to do the planning first so we'll find out what the answers are and then decide if it's feasible and if it's feasible then we go to the next step but we're not going to go there until it's a lot of money too so we have to find out if we get the grant because we can't do that now thank you Kevin I think we all heard the invitation from Elizabeth that another opportunity for citizen input and participation is through Sustainable Montpellier and so that would be another good use of the list that's circulating people would like to know about public forum on how you're addressing some of these development and preservation issues Sandy and I am allowed to ask a question yes first I hold the mic right up to your short announcement which is that the heritage group is actively trying to gain new members there's no membership charge there are little pamphlets over there by the refreshments then if you take them you can take them and just call or email me I'm acting as secretary right now so here's the thing historic preservation was actually radical in the late 60s and early 70s and I think I'm in this group but I noticed that most of us are over the age of 75 in this room and probably most of us remember the early 70s that are in this room and my question to the audience and to the rest of the group is how do we make historic preservation fresh alive and I am concerned in the other issues that we have that are grave issues energy efficiency flooding that historic preservation gets counted in as some fossil like thin like oh yes we have to do this I'm rather than it be an energetic live for me I always work with old buildings and for me old buildings are a lot it would be so sad to lose that I don't know how though to engage people that are under the age of 40 right I don't mean to be just but if somebody is under the age of 40 who would like to address this how to keep it fresh do you want to say something I'm 43 but yeah I don't know cause we're getting to the I got interested in buildings and I'm clear when I was about 14 15 and I started looking at things I think in this day and age maybe one way though is maybe even more so now is through like visual interest since people are so interested in taking photographs I guess that's what I hear about what people do online and there are really things that are geometrically really stunning about buildings that might be one thing another thing for me was sort of like it's almost a scavenger hunt kind of like detective a-ha thing one thing in particular I got interested in Shakespeare cause we had books around and I was interested in poetry and the romance of it when I was like 13 and then we went to the high school and we had plays one of the plays that we listened to or read was a merchant of Venice and I paid attention to the dialogue I was walking around that town and I was like oh you're the river there's this building called the realto block there's a realto mentioned in that play wow oh people might have been inspired there were people from Italy that immigrated to this area oh my gosh so I got really interested later I was in a scenic design class and I copied a painting of the realto bridge in Italy so that's just like an example of like scavenger hunt type of mentality thank you so much anybody else want to address it? sounds like you're telling us to go on instagram I don't know I don't do instagram you don't qualify interesting things I think the goals I've been in the preservation movement for 45 years now in 1966 which is the day of the major preservation legislation a couple years before that there was a book that came out called The Presence of the Past and it really set forth that was in the middle of urban renewal when people were just demolishing everything nothing old was good but I think one of the goals for the preservation movement over the years it's been not to make it a radical movement but to integrate it with the programs that were around and the master park service has its preservation program with grants and all of that the state has a division for a start with which a lot of that has occurred and to answer the question a little bit I think that what you're talking about the heritage group was talking about we have to keep people aware of the treasure we have and you can do that with presentations you can do it with lectures you can do it with walking tours and how critical it is to the success of Montpelier to have the downtown we have and the buildings and neighborhoods I got to tell a real quick story I had a meeting here the first meeting that the hotel opened the state of start preservation office was small in the country and they were simply blown away by Montpelier these are experts in preservation experts in downtown familiar with them they could not believe how walkable and pleasant Montpelier is a giant neighborhood's work and I think we need to reflect on that you know keep educating people and telling people that hey this is really neat these are neat buildings and there's a lot of technology around today that solves some of the energy problems and solves some of the handicapped access problems before or mitigating against the use of the start filter thank you I think Sammy's put her finger on the biggest the logic we all face and it's what I referred to earlier we don't have people out there with wrecking balls anymore who are poise to demolish our treasures in the way the pavilion and the post office and the training station all were demolished during a time like that we have a much more challenging time which is that what Eric spoke of is the integration of the start preservation with all these other virtues that we're pursuing energy efficiency sustainability how do we keep multi generations living together in the community and being able to to support all of this we have got a treasure here nobody in this room would call Montpelier anything less it is a treasure itself and happily we have a huge number of historic buildings the hard part is always reminding ourselves that we don't stay historic or in good health without constant attention and detail and worrying about them all the time we can never forget to worry about them you can imagine what I put up with day in, day out in as vibrant and happy an environment as the state is everyone acknowledges it is a treasure it is a gem but then I sit down with a bunch of people who want to change it and they want to change it for good things they want to change it because it is a 21st century active state house and that makes it unique it has the oldest legislative chambers in the United States that are in their original condition and still actively used for the exact same purpose that they were created for that's what makes them truly unique not their age but the fact that we're still using them and there are so many buildings like that throughout Vermont particularly here in this littlest of state capitals and the small scale gives us the opportunity to grapple with the complex issues of our time with all of that integration that Eric was talking about and trying to figure out how we keep historic preservation first and foremost among the virtues that we're working for that's the struggle thank you Dave did I hear applause I think there were yes it was such a good final word but it stimulated a couple more comments if you have to leave please feel free to but I will take a couple more comments and questions out of here and then Diane back there my name is Tony Hartridge just hold it right up to you yeah I'm about Terra Street I moved here from Spanner but I'm an adult at the state house and what's most important that they've been saying one of the vitalities that I can tell you is everybody marvels at this town they marvel at that state house they walk through this they can't believe what they have and it has to help us somewhat because their tourism is very important to our shops, our restaurants everything else and downtown is really important and the state house is the economic vitality of historic preservation this is the exact time that I live and that's the great things that have been really filling this great community here I think I was one of those very excited by the Net Zero 2030 conference and it really brought a lot of energy to town I was in that pavilion and we made this and voted on it and it was really interesting and I don't think it's an either or I don't think it's either preservation or Net Zero I think the key to working on the future of Montpelier is to bring all of these ideas together to maintain the preservation and move forward with Net Zero and develop that remember the way we talked about the Net Zero which was so exciting for so many people and I just personal aside I have a house on my college street that has been 20 years so I actually was awarded the Montpelier Heritage Grand Prix Award back when Margot was still around I had to leave that house this year and sell it and I moved to the opposite side of the town I live in a 1,300 square foot ranch total change of face and I never used there with that size town I never used there with that community and I'm surrounded by young families with you kids for all too busy and I think because they've all got two or three young kids under the age of six but they're in the future of Montpelier they're not here tonight and I think what's really key is to energize people under that 35-day age range and I'm totally game for trying to figure out how we do that and not being on my neighbor's doors they don't have a kind of you know, we all live in a ranch and Colonial houses built in the 60s over there and it's such a different feel when I grew up on College Street but I just don't think it has to be an either or and I think the future this town is really going to be about bringing in young people to have these discussions and it's really exciting to see some of the new projects coming and I was just thinking today watching the transit center go up I worked for Jim Crawford's in 2003 when that federal grant was awarded so there are changes happening it's good that people aren't so happy about but it's great to see these conversations going so thank you and whatever I can do to help bring along the next generation who all live with my neighbor thank you guys and thank you everybody, I'm going to continue the conversation over some refreshments and let those who need to get back to their families go and thank all of our speakers and commentators