the South Burlington Development Review Board meeting of December 7th, 2021. My name is Dawn Filibert, and I'm the chair of the board, and I'd like to introduce the other board members who are with us tonight. Starting over here, Mark Baer, Quinn Mann, Jim Langen, Stephanie Wyman, Frank Cokman, and Dan Albrecht. Thank you all for attending, and I'd like to remind you that there are a variety of ways for people to participate in this hearing. People can attend in person, as you folks have done. People can attend via their phone, pardon me, and they can also livestream this, and it's also recorded, so people can watch it after the fact. But if you want to be considered a participant, we ask that if you're here, you sign in at the back table, and if you're not here, but want to be considered a participant, please send a notice to the person I forgot to introduce. After I introduced the board members, Marla Keane, our development review planner, and also Delilah Hall, our zoning administrator. So please send an email to- Unmuted. Marla Keane and M-K-E-E-N-E at South Burlington, S-S-Burl.com? Yep. S-Burl.com, thank you. We're in a transition with our email addresses right now, so S-Burl.com or S-B-V-T.gov, both work. Okay, thank you. A couple of reminders about participating. If you're viewing this, streaming this, please keep your microphones muted and camera off unless you are actively participating in the item before the board. If you wish to participate during the public comment period, turn on your camera and raise your hand. You may unmute when recognized by the chair. And the chat function online is for administrative matters only. Comments submitted in the chat will not be recognized as part of the meeting record. It's just for our use. Emergency evacuation procedures at the back of the room in each corner, there are exit doors, exit the door, and you can either go left or right. And there are doors to the parking lot in the front of the building. I don't have the notes that I usually have, so I hope I'm not skipping anything. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes to the order of agenda items? Board members. Okay, hearing none. Announcements. Do we have any announcements, Marla? I suppose I should announce that the city council now requires masking in all city-owned buildings. This resolution includes exceptions for people with a disability who cannot safely wear a face covering, any person eating and drinking, or a person for whom wearing a face covering would create a risk to workplace health safety or job duty. Additionally, you are not required, okay, that's about if you work here. Is that it? That's it. Okay, thank you. Can you all hear me? Yes. With a mask on? Okay, thank you. All right. Are there any comments and questions from the public that are not related to the items on the agenda that we'll be reviewing tonight? Hearing none, let us move ahead to our first project. And that is continued site plan application, SP 21039 of South Village Communities, LLC, to provide a replacement plan for trees and shrubs that were improperly removed. The plan consists of installing a heavily landscaped passive recreation era and walking path between Acon Street and Spear Street east of the existing paved recreation path at 1840 Spear Street. Are there any board members who need to recuse themselves or disclose a conflict of interest for this project? No. Okay, thank you. Who is here for the applicant? Thank you, Patrick. I'm gonna swear you in. Raise your right hand, please. Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under penalty of perjury? Thank you. Okay, Patrick, give us a very, we have a long agenda tonight, so give us, please, a very brief overview of what you're proposing. Okay, thank you very much for your time, everybody. What we are proposing, I have to ask, is what you're looking at, what I'm looking at? Yes. Okay, good. Okay, and who is running? Okay, thank you, Didalia. All right, so in front of you, what you have is two buildings known as Lodge 4A and 4B of South Village and now more formally known as Acon Street Flats because they are under construction. Those sit on two specific locks. The red dots are 4A and 4B. To my right, which is probably your left, I'm guessing, is the area of question. A little further towards the edge of the page is Speer Street, thank you. The other street in the picture on the other side of the two buildings is Acon Street, which is a public street, which is part of the South Village Street network. When we started South Village, when we started this project, we wanted to go into that small stand of trees and shrubs and remove invasive species and some of the dead and diseased and dying trees. And unfortunately, more were taken than intended and that's why we are here this evening.  The site plan basically consists of between 28 or 31 trees. Last time you saw this application for those of you that were on the board, there were also some shrubs that were in the landscape plan and there was also a meandering walking path that went through this area that started on the bike path and then ended on the bike path. And in there, there was some benches. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend that evening, but regardless, this board tasked me with going and talking to the South Village boards to see what their feedback was. I did meet with the boards, the Homeward Association Board and the Stewardship Board, which manages one of their tasks is to manage the invasive species in all of the open spaces at South Village. And the feedback from those meetings is a result of the plan in front of you. They felt that first, they did not want a walking path. There was already, for those of you who don't know, seven miles of trail sidewalks and walking and quiet paths at South Village. And it's somewhat of a burden on the HOA dues. And so they felt that they didn't want to add to that. Secondly, what they wanted to do, what they asked me to propose was to not have the shrubs and rather put more trees in. And so really, the only other change was we had also proposed a mix of wildflowers and clover to plant in and around the trees that you see. And they felt that they really didn't prefer to have that specific mix and it would really just rather be clover. And a lot of that boils down to maintenance costs. So the intent of this plan is you'll see an area up there that has a squiggly line around it. If you were to zoom in on that, there's a label that says that is the remaining, the remaining trees. If I were to paint a picture of those trees, there's maybe one or two or three that are greater than six inch diameter at chest high. I think they may be elm trees there. They're straggly, they're being choked by vines.  So the other thing that the board asked me to do was come up with a management plan. And so what I did is just that. And basically, what we think is the best scenario to do here is to, before we plant these, is to go in and remove those invasives, stump those invasives, take care of all the invasives, and then the next step would be come into plant. So that's the general area, the general thought. That's why we're here tonight. And if it's okay, what I'd like to do is just dive right into the staff notes, unless there's any more specific questions about the plan. I have a question. Sure, go ahead, Frank. I mean, just for clarification, because I don't think I was at the meeting. Wasn't the direction to go to restore from the board to restore the trees that were removed and to come up with a management plan for those trees? This looks more like an amendment to the project rather than a correction. It doesn't look like a correction. It looks like an amendment to the plan that would require a notice. Marla. I mean, unless the board feels this is within some broad reading of correcting their error in removing the trees that weren't supposed to be removed. For what it's worth, the way I read this is this is not as cool, interesting, fun as the original proposal, but had they come to us with this plan originally, we would have looked at this and said, they are proposing to plant trees to rectify the error in removing trees and would have proceeded. So that's why I didn't feel that it needed to be a new application because it still meets the purpose of rectifying improperly removed trees, but the board may feel differently. The board's direction was to talk to the HOA and come up with a management plan and that's what they, this is the result of those actions. Thank you, Marla. Other board members or Frank? And I would say if it was proposing plantings outside of, substantially outside of a preexisting area of plantings and that would be a material change, but... So you're not of the opinion that it's a material change? Correct. Other board members? No, I would say as long, they're staying within the same confines of the original wooded area. They're just proposing a different way of resolving it and we have to review whether we feel they've done that or not. We think if they're getting rid of it in its entirety or adding new area to it, then that would be a subset of change that would require a new warning. Well, let me be, I don't know, Devil's Advocate, but Devil's Advocate, contrary to that view, perhaps. I don't know what's on the other side of Aiken Drive. Are the people over there who would prefer to have screening rather than nothing? In the plant, so this is, Aiken is on the right, so on the far side of the buildings. Spear Street is on the left. Is that what you mean, Frank? The house is on the... On the left. Spear Street. Well, the plant consists of installing a heavily landscaped passive recreation area and walking path between Aiken Street and Spear Street, east of the existing paved recreation path. Is that what he's done here? Yeah. Well, except it doesn't include the walking path any longer. Where were the trees removed from? Do you see the green wavy line on the plan that Delilah has up? So there's the black wavy line, and then there's the green wavy line that she's highlighting now. That's the area where the trees were removed between that and that. Oh, okay. That eliminates my concern about neighbors. There are no neighbors to be concerned about, it looks like. Well, I would say the neighbors to be concerned about are the public on Spear Street, as well as the neighbors across the street from Spear Street, which this existing shrubs and clumps of trees and junk stuff was screening the two large multifamily buildings. So I'm not, I mean, I would say that that's also, the screening was for the, not for the residents at South Village, but for the public and the public right away. All right, so this issue, the issue then is whether what he's proposed really is an adequate replacement for that screening. Right, that's what I'm saying. So perhaps we'll hear from some members of the public tonight. We'll see, okay. And if not, it's up to us to decide. Okay, are you okay with that, Frank? Yeah. Okay, thanks. So the first staff comment, staff considers construction sequencing and planting notes are not part of a management plan and should instead be removed from the management plan and provide and provided on the landscaping drawing. Can you do that? Yeah, absolutely, that's fine. Okay. The next two comments refer to invasive species and the removal of the invasive species. I'm wondering, Patrick, what your thoughts are about these two comments, which are very related. Yes, they are. It's also a little bit related to, I think the last comment that we will get to under site plan review 14.066. But regardless, we can talk about that when we get there. But so here's my thought on the sequencing. It's just not my thought. I did talk to a fellow by the name of Bob Hyman's who manages for the South Village boards the removal of all the invasive species on the site. And if I understand right, the question really is should the board allow the applicant to remove the invasive species before the plantings are put there? Or should they put a condition in that we wait a number of years to let the ones we are planning to establish themselves because they don't want to take out additional screening. So what I would, my feeling and Mr. Hyman's feelings are that if we don't get rid of the invasions now, they're gonna recede it. They're gonna seed out every year. And so that'll just make the struggle even more difficult. That was the first point. The second point, and I'm not gonna get into the amount of work it takes to remove most of the invasions which are out on the Willy Wax and the Great Swamp and all over South Village. We have an opportunity here to do it at this time when we are in there and we are pulling the stumps of all of the trees that were cut to also pull the root systems of the invasions rather than having to treat them with an organic chemical. If there's even, I think that might be an oxymoron. But regardless, we could do it mechanically. I do understand that it creates this nuance. So I do recall reading here that there was also some thought that the board might require some additional screening. So my feeling would be, we are happy. I looked at the landscape budget which is in your package. And my feeling is, if, thank you, you'll see on here that we've got two species of evergreen, a balsam fir and a Canadian hemlock. And they're roughly $525 apiece to plant. And so my feeling is, if you could go back to the landscape plan, please, Delada, or the planting plan. My feeling is that there's two things is that if the board wanted to condition us to plant 10 or 12 additional evergreens in that area, we would be absolutely fine with that. And I think that basically takes care of both of the issues of being able to take out the invasives, their root systems, not having them seed out, and also enhance the screening. So you would take out the invasives, plant the evergreens, but also plant the trees. Yes, and there's an important note. I don't know if anybody has caught this, but up on the, I'm sorry, go up for that next one. Upper left-hand corner, it's highlighted in white, and it should say that it's the approximate locations of the plantings. So, and I'm just saying that because I know going through some of the board members' minds might be, well, how do we know where exactly they're gonna put these plants if we give them a condition that they've got to plant 10 more? And I think that I know we like to be as accurate as possible in our approvals, but if there's any way that it could be worded that there's additional plantings, evergreen plantings required in the location that of the remaining trees, you guys come up with a wording. But nonetheless, that's kind of my feeling on it. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Do any board members have any questions about Patrick's response to two and three? Yeah, so I mean, it sounds to me like if what you're proposing and what you've testified is that in that remaining existing vegetative area, there's about one to three trees that are above six inches in caliper and most likely the rest of it, it's probably junk or invasive, so. I would say it's not, there's quite a bit of it that is non-invasive, but the majority of it, you're absolutely right about it. So I mean, it sounds to me like what we're really looking at is we have that squiggly area of the existing to remain. There's not gonna be much remaining once you're all said and done. What is this then? Right, other than those couple few trees and then some non-invasive. So I mean, if we're planning or if we're discussing getting rid of everything all at once and pretty much establishing everything, I'm not sure if 10 balsam furs or evergreens in a essentially 300 foot length that's gonna be essentially removed will do much. I'm wondering if we need more than that. If the intention was to correct a wrong. So that's just sort of something I'm putting out there. I'm not sure if once we get rid of all of that, that's gonna really do much. Sure. You know, you're right, we did create a wrong and that's why we're here to fix it. Don't understand that. So certainly my eyesight is not as good as it used to be, but I'm trying to determine which ones are the maples in the furs. In your proposals? On the screen, yes. I just wanted to have everybody have a bull. So they're the A B's and the T C's. Well, but over a 300 foot length, I mean Mark's point is that it doesn't matter which one are the maples in the furs. No, I know. I was just kind of getting an idea of, so again, you know, if I also don't have my calculator on me, but the, well, maybe we could go back to the cost chart again because it didn't look like 500 a pop for the buffers. It looked like, unless I misread it, I guess I'd like to see it again if we could. Well, it's unit cost. Installed cost is different. Unit cost versus installed. Yeah, we look at installed cost. I see what you mean. The way they've done their tables, sorry. The way they've done their tables a little funny because they've given the unit price and then just multiplied it by the number, right? No, no, it's not, okay, sorry. They should have a labor or install price as well. There should be another column that says installed price, installed price extended, yeah. So the bottom line is the hemlocks, which there are three of. The unit price to purchase them is 210. Installed price is 1575, which would divide by three and come out with 525. We look at a unit price. Right. Well, let me ask Marla, is there a monetary, like when we discuss landscape budgets, we typically tie it to construction costs, you know? But when it comes to this type of thing, do we have a monetary value that we have to hit or is it just purely what it takes to rectify the issue? The regulations are, we've opened some interpretation. The board's interpretation in the past has been, well, first of all, the board has the authority to allow credit for existing trees to remain as part of required landscaping plans. So trees that remain become integrated into the required landscaping plan and have to be maintained, which is, you know, Patrick knows and that's how they got here in the first place. So then the board in the past has allowed applicants when they were coming in in advance to cut down a tree because they want to put it in the building to calculate the installed value of that tree based on this Purdue methodology, which takes into account all kinds of factors, the quality of the tree, the trees' appropriateness for the location, the size of the tree, the amount of canopy it provides, you know, all these different factors and comes up with a dollar value based on the market rate of like a two inch tree of the same species. So Alice, can you speak to, I guess, I don't quite remember, but I think you would determine that there was no way we were gonna be able to back into that number on this project? Yeah, yes. I think the, for all the points that Marla listed in that formula, that there would be no way to put, if you did all that math, to put that amount of trees back into the space. So... Well, and there was trouble like figuring out that number too. Yeah, and then because we didn't have the luxury of examining all the trees that were felled, we wouldn't really have a good basis for that formulation. Let me make a suggestion because it seems to me we don't need to analyze it in such a refined fashion if we can get agreement from the developer who would just do it. And asking Mark, he said 10 or 12, if we had 15 trees over 300 feet, there'd be 20 feet apart. Does that feel adequate to you? Well, I don't think that what we're looking to do is do like one tree every 30 feet or one tree every 15 feet into a row because we're not looking, that's not gonna look natural. We need to get, who's T.J. Boyle that did your plan? Get them to put together sort of a proposed plan that adds planting because you're definitely planning and proposing removing what's remaining essentially and that re-achieves the goal of creating this screened hedgerow. If they hadn't removed the trees, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. So we're looking to recreate it. Now we know it's not gonna happen on day one, but we have to have something that provides a pretty plausible realistic goal of in five years, seven years, whatever, it's going to provide adequate screening and redo what was removed. And it doesn't seem like we ought to be constrained by the original landscaping budget. There's not an original landscaping budget. That's what I was trying to get at is that we're not looking at a number that they have to hit. They have to correct this to the satisfaction of the board and then the cost is secondary, and not to you, I understand that, but it's secondary to our review. But it shouldn't be ridiculous and my point is we're not suggesting something ridiculous. I'm just saying I don't think 10 trees is gonna do it over 300 feet. So I'm saying is I think they need to come back to us with a revised plan. If we're gonna be agreement with them that getting rid of all the invasive species and clearing out the junk shrub trees and start from scratch on day one is the correct direction, which I agree with you. I don't think waiting five years because you're just gonna allow the invasive species to continue and could start affecting the new plantings. I think we need to get a proposed landscape plan that starts from day one with a new planting plan that within five years, seven years, I don't know what the number is, corrects this removal. I like that. Did someone state this? I was just looking, yeah, just not knowing enough about the trees. I'm in the mature width here is saying they're 25 feet. I don't know how long it takes to get there, but then we're talking maybe, I know we don't want a wall, but 12 trees at 25 foot width over would cover 300 feet, but if it's gonna take 40 years to get there. Right, and also you don't want a rhythmic pattern. You want it to be clumps of different trees species so that when it starts to fill in, it has more of a natural look to it. So, Patrick, what would you be willing to offer or suggest? My first offer of clarity is, I may be incorrect on this, but I do think I read that one of the requirements was that we replace the approximate amount we replace the approximate amount of trees that were removed. And I believe Craig Lambert went out and counted the stumps, and that's how we ended up with the amount that we're proposing, but regardless of that, I would say that the interest of this board's time, I would prefer a conditions of approval with the number of trees that Frank suggests to be interspersed along and throughout that area in that condition could be further refined to make sure that the intent is very clear that they're not in a line like Mark suggests. What did you suggest, Frank, 15 trees? Well, I was just doing simple arithmetic. I said 15 trees at 20 foot intervals, but that's how my mind works. I'm not comfortable doing a condition with a set number of trees at this point without seeing it because you're talking about a large area. It's not like some of the other things we talked about where we've got a 40 or 50 foot gap that we're filling in. We know we can do four feet on center, six foot Arborvite is going to create a bedroom. That's the purpose. This one, it's a totally different intention of what we're trying to achieve. So you're suggesting that we will go through the rest of the comments, but that we conclude this for tonight and have Patrick come back. I think we need to see this revised plan. Okay, Marla? I just thought of kind of a suggestion. I know it's not really my place, but what if as they lay out the additional trees, you kind of think about sight lines. So you want to make it so that there's no, as you're coming down Spear Street, there's a tree somewhere in this area at all points. So they don't need to be in a line, but they should be, you know. That's what I'm saying, we're looking at what we're seeing, what we're trying to block, what we're trying to screen. That's what I'm saying. You don't want it to be a line of trees. You want it to have clumps. You want it to, you know, there's certain areas where you could probably where you're driving down, either North or South down Spear Street or up Spear Street. You know, if you clump them in one area, you're going to block the predominance of the two buildings coming the other way. You know, so I think, but I think we need to see it. We can't just say. So we're trying to achieve function and also some aesthetic with this. Okay, all right. Madam chair. Yes. I wanted to address the larger issue that seems to be implicit in staff comment two and three. And I guess my first question is for staff. Does a property owner have the right to remove invasive species? If they're not part of an approved landscaping plan. So because this clump here has invasive species and it was part of an approved plan then every removal of invasive species has to be vetted by the board. I think that, you know, in the case of South Village, since they have an invasive species management plan, if they were removing invasive species in a limited way that didn't sort of disrupt the purpose of this treeed area, you know, we would consider it to be allowed. But since it went too far, or it sounds like from what Patrick's saying that if they were to continue removal of invasive species, there would be almost nothing left. You know, that would no longer meet the purpose of retaining these existing woods, which were specifically mentioned as screening one of the original decisions. Thanks. And then, I mean, I guess I'll just say, I find myself supportive of the idea of if we were to allow a faster invasive species removal than the initial staff comments than Patrick's offer of putting in some additional plantings, then I would look favorably on that there, but I won't belabor the point. Thanks. I think the real issue before us is whether we're gonna delay decision in deference to Mark's suggestion. Well, they're not gonna plant until spring anyway. Right, I'm sorry. There's no reason to plant until spring. You can't plant when the grounds are present. So there's nothing pressing about time here? No, plus I get to see all. Yeah. I miss you. Flattery will get you nowhere. Yes, a couple of suggestions really that says, in order, my brain is saying, let's do this right. So what I think you should ask me to do is Mr. Hyman has already been out to the site on more than one occasion. And the reason is because I feel it's important for a third party to be involved along with the city Arborist to make sure that the remaining invasives that are taken out, that's not my decision. So what I think we should do is table this meeting. I will contact Mr. Hyman's. I will have him flag the invasives. That way I will have a better idea where the holes are gonna be created and therefore come back with not an estimated number of trees that might be required, but also knowing where they could be. Let's let that dictate where these trees are gonna be. Yeah. That's what I was sort of saying. Let's not give them 15 trees in a line. Let's have them come back and propose based on real world conditions. Or you could come up with a condition and I will do that anyways. So are you suggesting that we not review the rest of the staff reports? Well, I think we should just because if there's other nuances you want me to come back with. Okay, good. So let's look at numbers four and five, which refer to the maintenance plan. Maybe we don't need to do that. You can come back to us and talk to us about the managed. I would like to talk about that just because when I come back, I don't want to have to table again. So the management plan does not assign responsibility for maintenance. Staff recommends that the board require responsibility for maintenance to be assigned in the plan. And I just seek a little clarity here. Like for example, any other landscaping tied to approval is also tied to a bonding requirement which we will have here. And if it's a street tree, we know the city takes care of it. If it's not a street tree, what happens is the eventual owner or the association will be responsible for the ultimate maintenance of it after the three years. And so that is the answer to that question. And I'm just, my question is that answer sufficient enough? Is that the type of answer you're looking for? Okay, great, fantastic. Okay, thank you. Okay, moving on, several pages later. Number six refers to insufficient screening. Seems like that's part of the earlier discussion. Yes, and again, really, and that was my big question on this one is really is the question intent that I need to meet the same in the previous discussion wherein let's mimic the, try to make it look like they were naturally grown, not planted in a line, and so they can just fill in over time. I don't necessarily understand that number six any other way. And I'm just seeking clarity on that. Marlon, unless you have something else in mind, I think this is rolled into what we've already said. Okay, good. You understood it correctly. Yep, okay. So to be more specific, it says, like, do you want lower shrubs? I guess that's the big question. Keep in mind, your evergreens are gonna be down low to the ground anyways. How low to the ground? Well, you know how in evergreen when we plant them, their branches are really low. Versus a deciduous with the branches. And what I was gonna say is I think the evergreens will satisfy, you know, if the intent of those shrubs was to make so the ground wouldn't be visual under the trees, that evergreen would take care of that. Okay. And as they grow taller, they're gonna go wider and create more of that. We're good with that for you. Okay. All right, moving on to number seven. This staff considers this criterion for their supports that a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees should be provided. I think we've covered that. Number eight. Staff recommends the board determine, given the provided plans and testimony as well as any additional testimony, the applicant wishes to provide whether the board finds the criteria of 13.06C and by extension, 1407F to be met. I was having a hard time figuring this out. Sorry, this is like nested criteria. So 13.06C says, 14.07 says the requirements of 13.06 shall be met. 13.06 says landscaping shall provide screening between multifamily and lower density residential uses. And so, and then 3.06C one through five here talks about how that screening tell what it should be like. So I think that this comments really already been discussed. Mm-hmm. Okay. And providing a bond, are you willing to do that? Okay, good. Number 10. Staff recommends the board ask the applicant whether they still wish to request these modifications that are listed. And the answer to that question is yes. Okay. Thank you, Patrick. Wait, can we pause on that one? I just need to remind myself what those requests were because I was expecting the answer to be no. So they requested that they remove the invasives and then they are requesting a condition that they can replace trees on the landscaping plan as approved by the city harbor as based on supply chain. Okay, and we talked about that already and how it'd be, there'd be some limitations on that same size, safe and mature, okay. Good. Okay, well, I think that we know we're headed toward you coming back again, but I think what we'd like to do is take public comment now. Are there any members of the public? Yes. Please come forward, state your name and. Okay. My name is Bo Denim. I'm on the South Village HOA and I was one of the ones who worked with Patrick on working these designs. And I want to say that he was very cooperative throughout the whole process. We're really happy with the outcome. We like the fact that there's seasonal interest throughout the year with all the plantings. There's some flowering plants in those evergreens. There's birches. We're quite happy with that. We feel like it'll blend in well to the north and south, which is now currently a park like setting as you walk along the recreation path. So we think that'll fit in nicely with what's there. And I was responding primarily to your concerns about screening and walking by there and doing kind of an inventory of what's there. It's all deciduous. So from November until May, you have no screening whatsoever. This new plan will put in evergreens that will give you more screening later on. I mean, granted, it's gonna be a little bit different for a while, but I think the planning ultimately will be much better. It'll look a lot nicer. So basically just in support of that and hoping that we could do it all at once, as my thought was coming back three years later after you've gone on this planting, trying to remove the stumps and things would be very disruptive and you're basically starting all over again. So if it could all be done at once, that would be my point. And tell us again, do you live there? I do. Okay, good. Oh, and one other thing. If you look at the buckthorn, the height of the buckthorn is max height of 20 feet. If you look at the grade difference between the buildings on Aiken Street and where they are right now, it's about 20 feet. So you're not really getting much green as buckthorns. The maples have a pretty narrow canopy too. Right, sure. Thank you. Are there any other members of the audience tonight who would like to provide public comment? And do we have any indication online to Lila that there's anyone or on the phone? Okay, thank you. So do we vote on concluding this? No. No, we're going to make a motion to continue. How long do you think you need? With the holidays, I think we should shoot for early February if we're approved on the foot of the man. In all honesty, we would like to do is here in the government 20 grand closed construction. Yep. So if we could come in early February, get approval, 30 days out, and that will allow us to do it mentally and... Keep in mind the board won't issue their decision when you're heard they'll issue the decision at their next deliberation. And you're also assuming you're coming in with the right plan. Let's assume he's coming in with the right plan. Yeah. So we've had a motion. Do we have a second? We haven't made a motion for a specific date. Oh, I'm sorry. So given the 30 day appeal period and that there has been some neighbor participation, I wouldn't expect you to be able to waive the appeal. Can I recommend, do you think you can be ready for January 18th? Yes. Okay. And make a motion. We continue this application to January 18th. Second, thank you, Frank. Please go over. Any discussion? All in favor of continuing this to January, say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you. Have a good holidays. We'll see you after. Okay. The next project is continued use application CU 2104 of Mike McGinnis, pardon me, to reconstruct and expand an existing attached garage on a lot occupied by an existing single family home. The proposed expansion includes increasing the length and height of a portion of the structure that is located less than five feet from the adjacent side property line, 13 white place. Who is, pardon me, who is here for the applicant, please? Yep, my name is Mike McGinnis. I'm the homeowner. My wife, I believe is on the phone. She was wrangling our two year old to bed. And we also have Missa from Hinge, who is our architect. I'm gonna ask you to pull the microphone closer. It's hard to hear you, but thank you. You can pull the whole thing too. It's easier. Sorry, give me just a second. Would you please give us a- We need to swear everyone who's gonna be testifying in. Okay, I'm sorry, thank you. Would you and your wife raise your right hands please? And do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on your penalty of perjury? Yes. Thank you. Did I hear right? Yes, okay. I do. Thank you. Okay, and are there any members of the board who have a disclosure of conflict or need to recuse themselves? No, okay. Now, if you could please give us a brief overview of your project. Yeah, so what we have is a single family home. It's about 850 square feet, and we're looking for space, right? So we love our neighborhood. We love the R4 district. It's super neighborhood. We have a bunch of friends and family, well, not family, but friends on the street. It's a very family friendly street, so we really want to stay. So we started looking at different additions, sort of, you know, going out the back versus, you know, building off the garage, things of that nature. Do the layout and the configuration of the house. It's a little bit easier to go off the garage and basically take it down completely, build a crawl space underneath, and go up two floors. This would provide us with two bathrooms, a bedroom, laundry upstairs, mudroom. So, you know, it really enhance the house. So, unfortunately, because it is a small lot, this house is sort of right in the smack middle. It basically puts us into that encroachment of the east border with our neighbors. So, we're here to try to hopefully get a conditional use to allow us to move forward with building both, basically moving the garage to be flush with the house on the north side and then building the two-story addition in place. Okay, thank you. So, you have read the staff report, I'm sure. Yep. Okay. What we're gonna do now is go through the comments and have board members either ask you questions or comment. Yeah, perfect. So, the first comment is, let's see, let's see, lighted these facts, staff recommends the board discuss whether they find the proposed expanded encroachment has an undue adverse effect on the adequacy of on-site parking. Staff considers the board may wish to require the applicant to maintain the existing driveway length. Staff considers that the board may be able to work with the applicant to develop a specific enough solution to allow this to be addressed as a condition of approval. What are your thoughts? Can we work something out? Yeah, I mean, I think we're definitely open to working something out. I think that initially we had reached out to see if there was a requirement on number of parking spaces in our Ford district and we were told that there was not a specific requirement for a number of spaces. So, that led us to sort of create the design that we brought forward with Missa and Hinge to basically bring it flush with the house which then technically does reduce the number of parking I think from three to one, right? And without parking in the right of way. Because the lot is so short, if we were to fit two spaces in the right of way, you're basically, if you created like a parallel parking space, you would probably be inches from both the front porch and the front of the house. And that's without parking in the right of way if it was sort of nestled right up against the house. So, it is something that on like a snowy day and because we do have the seasonal parking bands, we can fit our cars in the garage, or sorry, not in the garage, in the driveway without going past the existing front of the house if that makes sense. Quick question, how many cars do you have? Two. Okay, so. We are able to park off street. No, I know that. So, Not after December first. Well, no, no, no, we're able to park both cars in the driveway. Well, now you are, obviously, but if this gets built, it doesn't look like there'd be room for two cars. So, can I, oops, sure. Can I sort of, I know there's no standard, but I'm just trying to like. Yeah, so on the drawing that Delilah has up, they've got two dimensions shown for the driveway. So this is the proposed, the darker gray is the proposed expansion, the lighter gray are the existing structures. The driveway is 22 feet, eight and a half inches from long as measured from the right of way, measured from the edge of the road, the driveway is 35 feet, seven and a quarter inches. So what Mike is talking about is, if you think about the part of the driveway that they technically own, then they only have room for one car. But they have 35 feet between the proposed expansion and the road, which, you know, in the staff report, we kind of gave some examples. It was really fun looking up links of cars. You can get a Honda Fit, which is like 15 feet long, or you can get an F-150, which is 22 feet long. So it kind of really depends on what kind of car you have, whether you want to. All right, that helps clarify it. My concerns are addressed as somebody who lives on Proctor. So I know all about, well, the right of way is out right in front of my door. So, I mean, the other option, obviously, is you can widen your existing driveway. I don't think you can widen the curb cut, but you can pull in and widen it so that you can fit two cars side by side. Yeah, I mean, if you guys are okay with of widening it within the right of way, then that's definitely an option. It's when you get into widening it within our property line outside of the right of way. That's where it gets really tight, so. But just to be clear, right now, at least in my neighborhood, people are technically parking on the right of way right now, all over that entire neighborhood. Right. And I don't know if it's allowed. Right, so if Mike and Samantha both drove. We're not interfering with the plow. We're not interfering with the plow. If Mike and Samantha both drove F-150s, there's no way they would fit. But if one of them drives a Honda Fit and one of them drives like a Corolla, that's not a problem. I mean, we're not approving Mike and Samantha's project. We're approving the project as a viable single-family home. Yeah, we're also, but without a parking standard for a number of parking spaces, we don't really have, we can't say you have to provide two spaces unless they're proposing an accessory dwelling unit. Well, the conditional use criteria is specific to say that, sorry, I have to scan back to it, but the conditional use criteria says that it shall not adversely affect the adequacy of parking. Got it, okay, yep. So, I feel like I'm sounding like I'm relaying anti. I just want to make sure it's not that I'm relaying anti. It's that I want to make sure everybody understands what the issue is clearly. Okay, should we move on to number two or do we have more questions? Okay. For my benefit, if I'm gonna be writing the draft decision, I'd like to know where board members are on that. Okay, I have no issue with, I feel like parking would be adequate on site with this plan. Other board members? I'm fine with it. No objection, okay. No objection. Does that help you? Okay. Number two, the board requires the applicant to include the proposed structure on the provided survey with a note indicating that the building placement was provided by the architect and not the surveyor. Yep, so we're totally fine with this and we actually submitted a revised survey to Marla prior to the meeting. Okay. We just had, so between Missa and I, we were talking about who's plait should it be on and we went Missas and the comment is basically it should have been the surveyors. So we just reached out to some of the engineering and had them basically do what you asked and we submitted it to Marla so you guys should have that already. Okay, all right. Now this is a conditional use application so we're gonna take public comment. Do you have anything else to add before we move to public comment? Frank, go ahead. I thought the real issue here was the invasion of the side setback, no? Yeah. All right. What standards apply for us to allow the invasion of the side setback? So there's two sets of criteria. There's the standard conditional use criteria, no adverse effect on traffic, community facilities, that sort of thing. And then there's this 13.06J, additional J3, which Delilah has up now, additional encroachment subject to DRB approval and there's these criteria A, B, C and D. So the criteria are it has no adverse impact, no undue adverse effect on views of adjoining and or nearby properties or principal buildings located there on, no undue adverse effect on access to sunlight of adjoining and or nearby properties, no undue adverse effect on adequacy of on-site parking and no undue adverse effect on safety of adjoining and or nearby properties. So the only one that staff highlighted was the adequacy of parking, but you're certainly welcome to talk about the other three. I would definitely like to comment on that issue. Go ahead. Because your proposed structure is the same distance off the side yard setback as your existing garage. And that sort of is a thing that we seem to be focused on that they're not making the situation any worse. But the problem is that the existing garage is set far back in your property where it looks like it's beyond the line of your neighboring house, the neighbor's house. It's behind that. So you're bringing that up to be directly in line with your neighbor who looks like it actually looks like they might come a little forward of that. Now you're putting your, it looks like it's approximately a two-story, if not one and a half, but definitely much taller than your garage, which also has a pitch roof away from the side yard.  And I do have concerns about the adequacy of the regulation in terms of blocking of sunlight to adjacent properties with that. I mean, it's not even that. It's Supreme Court has said that a vertical increase within the setback is a further incursion. And I think that's obviously also the case with extending the structure to the front. So I come back to my question. What are the standards for us, not for conditional use per se, but for us to allow any relaxation of the setback? So this is not a nonconformity. This, as it exists today and as it is proposed is allowed under the LDRs with these additional standards. It's not, they're not proposing to modify or increase an existing nonconforming structure. They're proposing to further invade the setback. As allowable under 3.06. One of the problems we're having here is I'm really having trouble hearing you through the mask. So Delilah, could you pull back up to the bottom of page three again? Maybe move this a little closer so Frank. The masks make it difficult to hear. So additional encroachment subject to DRB approval. If the board approves it as, because it has no additional impacts as I read out before A, B, C, and D, then it can be closer than five, but no less than three feet from the side property line. Okay, so it says so to the provision of article 14. So we're back to conditional uses, which is adverse effect on what? Views of adjoining and or nearby properties, access to sunlight of adjoining and or nearby properties, adequate onsite parking, and safety of adjoining and or nearby property. Okay, so the person with the likeliest ground of complaint, if there is a complaint, I'm not saying there is, are the people immediately adjoining you, which is, what's the address, 13 White Street, is that? I'm 13, so that would be 15. I can't hear you. 15 White Place would be the neighbors who would file the complaint if there were to be one. And they've written a letter of support. I have a question about that standard. Is it, does the standard say, if a neighbor doesn't object, then it does, by definition, does not have an end to adverse effect? Oh no, no, I'm not saying that. I just want to make that clear. But it's not irrelevant. Right. Right, yeah, no, it helps, obviously. It's a piece of information that we weigh, yeah. What's between you now? Is there any vegetation between you and the property next door now? No, not really. There's raspberry bushes. So I wouldn't really call that vegetation in the form of it's blocking the view or anything like that. In the rear of the house, we do have cedars. So in the rear of the garage now, we do have cedars that are probably 15 feet maybe. So they sort of, the owners before us had a hot tub. So they basically planted a row of cedars behind the house to block the view of their hot tub. So there is some vegetation at the back corner of the garage, but not parallel to the actual structure. Questions? Have we, as a prior board, dealt with this issue of a property on the five foot setback line that's going pretty vertical, as opposed to just. Yeah, in 20, during the time before First Frank and after First Frank and before Second Frank, we reviewed one on Proctor Ave that was doing a similar, a very similar thing. So 2020, 2019, is that right, Frank? The big yellow house at the corner with Orchard. It wasn't on the corner. It's actually adjacent to a, oh, Hadley. It's on Hadley, but it's sort of within a stone's throw of the intersection with Orchard, yeah. And we've also seen quite a few in Queen City Park. Yep. And what is the standard, undue adverse, what is the track record? There was actually one in Queen City Park that was appealed. That was the CATS project, K-A-T-Z. And there was a lot of review of access to sunlight and views of adjoining properties. And I think the board's decision was to allow it and it ultimately was appealed. I mean, here just being on the east side of the house, it just, I don't have, it doesn't create as much sort of shading issues or sunlight access issues that the existing house is already that tall. So it's not an additional barrier to sunlight. I don't know if it helps, but in the, basically along the south property line, we do have a lot of very tall trees, probably 40, 50 feet that, you know, they have leaves on them. So it is a very shady backyard to begin with. So it's not like you have a direct, you know, ray of sun coming through the south property. So I don't know if that helps or not. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Yeah, I just have one comment on the report provided by your architect in terms of your distance setbacks to property line and construction classifications. I would just point out that your distance separation to adjoining structure is not to your next door neighbor, but it's always to your property line. So you have to work with the zero to three, zero to five feet separation. And you are going to be needing a one hour rated construction for that entire wall because you're below five feet to the property line. I know that Vermont, I'm trying to remember Vermont, adopted a formal one or two family construction code, but under IRC, your architect references IBC, International Building Code, that's for multi-family and commercial, but for one or two families, the chart says if you're within zero and three feet, it's not permitted. Three to five is one hour rated, so you are going to have to be a rated wall construction. Missa, are you on it? Can you take that? Yeah, I'm interested to hear that. I've always proceeded with the setback. So say your 15 white place was to do in addition to the west, they would have to meet the setback requirement. So it's always been between the adjoining properties. I hear what you're saying regarding the property line. I just haven't had it interpreted quite like that. I've been around for 20 years and I haven't heard it quite like that. You just can't put an imposition on your neighboring property by using their distance separation from you as the basis for how you build your house. You have to use the invisible line of your property line. Right. So I think that's what we're doing. It's the three to five feet because we're at three foot, three and a half. So, you know, we are intending to do an hour rated wall. It's five or cement construction. And then if you look at the openings, I think it's 10% openings for the window opening. So that's, that's what we're intending to do. I will tell you that I think if you look at IRC, you can see that you're at the top of the table. Table R 302.1. Which talks about, it's the same equivalent of your table 602 that you've quoted. But just for single family residential, I think you're allowed up to 25%. Windows. Okay. One hour rated wall. Okay. Great. It gives you a little more. Yeah. And the, the one hour rating needs to be both interior and exterior, not just your exterior finishes. Okay. Okay. So that would be, it would meet the UL rated one hour construction. Mark, I'm sorry. Could you tell us what a one hour rated wall is please? Oh, it's just underwriters laboratory. UL does testing and tells you what each construction assembly for walls, windows, doors, materials will meet. So like in the building code, it talks about one hour rating to our rating for fire protection. Oh, fire. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. So let's, where does this leave us? Have we answered number two? Do folks feel like we have an adequate, adequate information about that? Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So let's, where does this leave us? Have we answered number two? Do folks feel like we have an adequate, adequate information about that? Thank you. And Dan. Okay. Mark. Is it possible to make a comment regarding the sunlight as well? Go ahead. Or no. And I know that the, that the cedars were originally, I don't know if Mike wants to mention this, but they, they were, they went all the way to the front of the neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, neighborhood and neighborhood area. You know, the, the, the, the building property home. Previously, and those theaters, you know, blocked more sunlight than this addition. Would. Now. So in previous years prior to this, the landscaping that existed previously, would have been more ahead. More adverse effects than the height of this edition. Thank you. So this is a conditional use application. Do we close this? Okay. So thank you for your testimony. We're gonna ask for public comment and thank you for answering our question. So is anyone here in the audience? Is there anyone who would like to provide public comment on this proposal? Do we have any indication of people online? Okay. All right. So I would entertain a motion to close this hearing. Should I make a motion that we close the hearing in front of this hearing? Second. Okay good. Any discussion? Further discussion? All in favor of closing this hearing, signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. So the motions carry. Thank you again. Perfect. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Good luck. Okay. Next. Item, agenda item number 7. Continued Preliminary Plot Application SD 2119. Pardon me, of 600 Spear Street, LLC for a plan unit development on an existing and 68.66 acre lot developed with 7,000 square feet storage building and single family home. The plan unit development consists of one 6.68 acre lot containing 32 dwelling units in four family buildings, a 1.24 acre lot containing the storage building and existing single family home proposed to be converted to a duplex and a third lot containing proposed city streets at 600 Spear Street. Good evening. Let me just ask if there are any board members who need to recuse themselves or if anyone has a disclosure to make. Hearing none. Would you please introduce yourself and then we will swear you in. I'm Lucy Thayer, a landscape architect with Trudill Consulting Engineers. Okay. I didn't hear your first name, Lucy. Lucy. And I'm going to ask you to pull the mic closer to you, please. It's very hard to hear with masks. How's that? Thank you. We'll see. Okay. And hi, I'm Abby Dairy with Trudill Consulting. Abby, I think your mic is off. If you press the button, it'll be more bright green. Okay. Good. Thank you. Raise your right. Also, Frank Von Turkovich is on the phone. Oh, okay. Hi, Frank. Hello. Frank and Lucy and Abby, would you raise your right hands, please? Do you solemnly swear of the testimony you're about to give us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under penalty of perjury? I do. Yes, I do. Thank you. Please. I know we've seen you here before, but this this project has changed significantly. So please give us a little overview of it and tell us what you're now proposing. All right. Frank is online. Frank, we can't see you. So if you want to interject, please just speak out because we can't. Oh, thank you, Delilah. Now we can see you. So okay, great. All right. So as you noted, the plan has changed. Excuse me for just a moment. Frank, what's your role in this? Frank, what's your role in this project? Frank, I am the I'm here tonight speaking as speaking for the developer. I am a principal and I got it. I have represented thank in the past. I'm not doing so currently. I feel as if I can impartially decide the matter. But if anybody objects, I'll recuse myself. Thank you, Frank. Yeah, I would sort of make that same statement. It's been years, but I did work for Frank many, many years ago, but I don't feel that there's any impartiality that I can't. Does anyone have any concerns about these disclosures? Okay, thank you. All right. Please give us a little overview of the changes you've proposed. Okay, Don, as you noted, the plan does look different, but we'd like to emphasize that really all of the components of our original plan are still included in this newly revised plan. All of those kind of main intense goals and, you know, critical components, those are all represented. They're just laid out slightly differently. So I think Marla, would it be okay or Delilah? Sorry, you're running it. If we looked at perhaps maybe the rendered plan that we sent separately. Yeah, it'll just be a second. I don't think that we were quite ready to pull up the supplemental yet. But it is there. That will be the easiest thing to look at as we talk about what this new plan looks like. It is a two dimensional plan view. Oh, it's page two of the one. So go to there we go. Thank you very much. So this represents our revised plan layout. It has so we still have the city street that starts at 600. It starts at Spear Street and it heads to the east and then turns north south. One difference between this plan and the last plan is that we have shifted the north south connection further to the east. So just to back up quickly, one reason that we are even kind of in this position is because we had our preliminary hearing. There were staff notes. There was condition. There's a regulation where only 19 units or fewer can be served by private roads. We had 20 units that were served by a private road. We looked at alternative configurations and didn't find anything that we felt was all the way there yet. So we wanted to stop, step back and look at how we could rearrange these components to get all of those units onto the site with the same design intents and elements and revise the layout slightly. So that's just stepping back. That's how we got to this revised plan that we're showing you today. That's a higher level. So we shift, like I said, we shifted the north south street connection farther to the east and by doing that we created a double loaded street, meaning that we have residences now on both sides of the street. We have shifted the parking to be on the north and south sides which really creates a central development block, that centralized development area, our core development that has the six residential units along, yep, along the kind of exterior of our green space and then we have our other two units to the west. A couple of, so with this we have created this internal green space. We had an internal green space on the last one but it was separated by our private road network. We removed the private road network and reduced the infrastructure on the site which we think is a net positive. With this interior green space we have kind of more of a courtyard feel. We have recognized that, we worked a lot with staff on this and we recognize the importance of creating a front door appearance on both of these sides that are entrances. So the way that the architecture, you know, you enter on the street side or the parking lot side typically, we just recognize that it's really important to treat all of these as equally important entrances on the interior side, on the road network and on the parking side. Access to that interior courtyard is through either individual units that can exit out and directly into the interior courtyard green space. It can be between the buildings or the primary entrance from the west road network leads you in to an area that's got a pergola planted area. It's our more formalized kind of gathering space. It's that visual connection from the street that brings you in and then we have a less organized informal green space that's open. We're trying to keep this open for folks to use and recreate in a multiple different ways whether it's kicking a ball or sitting out and reading or multiple different gatherings, but letting that be not programmed and have a lot of different ways it could be used. So one thing that we talked a lot about with staff is the differentiation between public space and private space. And this came up in our last hearing as well. One way that we're going to differentiate those spaces is through our hard scape and soft scape elements. So one obvious delineation is the path that loops along the X that around the interior green space. We're also going to utilize soft scape elements planting potentially other landscape materials like fences or boulders that are short and open. We think it's really important to keep that visual connection to the central green space for all of the residents and all of the units.  We don't want to have privacy fences. We want to create a strong visual connection, but maintain a clear separation of space so folks feel comfortable in their outdoor private space versus public space. One thing that's not shown on here is our stormwater treatment that we are planning to develop further. And I'll just note where those locations are on on here and Delilah can highlight them as I go. But to the northeast of building five, which is not noted on here Delilah, but you're very close head south right there. That green space is one of our stormwater one of the areas we've reserved for stormwater. And if you keep going south to the other right in this area, that's another location we've identified for stormwater treatment. And then all the way to the farthest southwest building right in that the proposed that one that we have proposed stormwater treatment before and we would propose that is a potential location again. And lastly, along our northern property boundary would be a location where we anticipate stormwater would go. One other change you're noting on this plan is that we're showing a solar development that we is proposed and being reviewed by the state. Our green space path, we have a trail as you may have noted in the staff report, there's a trail that will go around the exterior of that solar array and that we connect to on the east side of our external of our green space there. Um, let's see what else? Do you thank you for that question? Sure. Um, to the south of the solar array, the little plots are those is that like community garden? Yeah. Okay. Yes, that is where that what that would be. Other questions before we jump into the staff comments and questions. Do you know you're proposing it for stormwater treatment? What specifically we're proposing? I'll let the engineer answer that. What we're gonna we're gonna have to do a combination of surface bioretention areas and subsurface for water quantity. So in the areas that Lucy had shown on there, it would most likely be surface detention. Would it be wet or dry? Any other questions? Quick question about the gardening plots? Are those the raised boxes? Or is that just sort of a general location? Has that been determined yet? So you're right, they are raised boxes in this iteration. That is something we would develop a little bit further as we go forward. But I think raised boxes would be in this location. So this is more or less accurate and they would be raised. Okay.  And maybe that's all people want for a few tomatoes. But if there is an option to have, you know, potentially something a little larger than a raised box, you know, 10 by 20 or something like that. I mean, if there's room for it, I don't know how you would manage it amongst the units. But there's let me let me jump in with and say that I think there is room for a more robust garden area. We just wanted to identify the space. But the actual programming will will come later and we'd be happy to devote more land for that purpose. And yeah, not just to be clear, I don't want to micromanage it, but you got space and give people options and let the residents work it out. And we agree that's a good idea. Is this amenity free to the residents? Or would they have to pay extra for the gardening plots? No, the gardening plots would be free to the residents. Yes. Thank you. Would you review again what what you were saying about the solar array? Is that for the benefit of this project? Okay. Yeah, yes. Exclusively? Pretty much. Yes, it's a it's being proposed as a 500 kw fixed ground mounted solar project. So your typical ground mounted array that we're all used to seeing in the area. 500 kilowatts will produce enough to serve all of the dwelling units in the project. So there's a total of 34 units. And also the uses for the steel building and there will probably be on an average annual basis, a surplus that would be available to offer to an off taker. And this is in Green Mountain Powers grid. So there are other potentially other users that might benefit from this as well. But it should allow the project to be, we believe, completely self sustaining from an energy standpoint. You mean from an electricity standpoint, you know, you don't mean heat? Yes, we mean heat. So we're thinking of heat pumps for the units. So all electric, all self-slight generated. We also have EV charging stations and stations included on this plan in the parking. Nice. Do you have any battery storage plan or just feeding off the grid? We are we're looking at the possibility that battery would would be a good feature of the solar component. We have to talk to our our contractors. Peck Electric is has done work for us before they would be managing this project. What's interesting about the evolution of the solar itself is that these are bifacial solar panels. So they will actually pick up solar generation from the from the top, which is typical and also reflected off the ground. So in the winter time, on a day where the snow actually sheds off the solar panels, it'll actually be really productive because it'll get a lot of reflection from the from the snow from the ground. So are there any other questions, general questions before we dive into the staff comments? Okay. Can I can I ask if if you have time for this? If, Marla, if you're okay, that we might want to show some of the other illustrations that we have that the board a reminder of what the buildings look like and how some of these spaces that Lucy just described fit together. Do you want to do that now or later? I'm concerned about the time. How long do you think it'll take? I think if you just want to give us a minute to flip through the slides that we have that show the renderings, that might be and I'm not thinking the floor plans necessarily, but the other supplementals that we provided that you put up, but we're happy to look at the architecture as well, whatever you prefer that briefly, that would be helpful. Thank you. Okay. So in terms of the building architecture. Yeah, okay, I'll wait. These are all rental units, correct? Yes. So this shows the back of the buildings that slide that we just saw. And then this is looking east and west through the project from the other side of the public street. It has a lot of the same feeling that we were able to accomplish with the first design. We've kept that green space in the middle. This is actually a much bigger, bigger green space area and it isn't intruded into by the parking of the cars that we that we had in our last design. So as this idea evolved, we ended up really liking this feel. And I wanted the board to see this because all of the units, the building's backyards or decks and patios will all transition into the sidewalk and then into the green space. And we think it really has a the it has the right feeling it has the feeling that we were looking for, which was this type of community space. Thank you. Are there any other visuals you'd like to share with us? No. Okay, we're good. Okay. So let's thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Let's start looking at the staff comments. Number one, staff recommends the board discuss the overall patterns of development. I think I was parking. Staff recommends the board revisit the relationship between proposed parking areas and landscaping and adjoining properties to the north and south, particularly in light of development potential on those properties. So this comment on is a little awkwardly worded. But the idea here is, you know, they're presenting the sketch level analysis or they're presenting the sketch level plan. So staff is prepared to sketch level analysis. And this comment is to say, you know, the board at the last hearing talked a bit about how the property related to the properties to the north and south. And so, you know, if the board kind of blesses them to develop this to a preliminary plat level, then we're just going to go back to that conversation and, you know, work on the fine details of the relationship to the adjoining properties. So shall we just move on to the next comment? Unless there's anything the board has to say about the overall pattern or wants to comment on about the relationship now?  And I think this is a great improvement. I really like the way the buildings creates that are like a central court. You know, I'm not saying I'm concerned, but I guess I'm reading sort of staff's comments, how development to the north and south, if it ever does occur, how it might sort of tie in. I see to the north, you definitely have a curb cut or, you know, right away that goes to the property line, but to the south, I don't Oh, actually, I see it that started in. But you know, the actual project, I really like I like the idea that you have, you know, the solar array, the garden plots, the central green space. It's a really good improvement. So I think it's a good project. The only thing I haven't seen in this, and maybe it's just because we are at preliminary, but I know we have discussed it. And I still don't see it is the steel building, what your ultimate plans are for it, what you're going to do, whether you're going to, you know, skin it in a more residential feel, you know, what are the plans for it? So Mark, the steel building, probably the best thing to look at to describe what I'm going to tell you now is if you could go back to the rendering that has the color on the plan, might make it a little easier to see. I guess that that would probably work. If we can zoom in a little bit to the to the steel building, it would be helpful. So what you see now is the steel building is there. We can't get, we can't don't want to tear it down. We actually think it's a functional and helpful part of the project. But the way it's going to relate to the project now is that by moving the north, south city street further to the east, that's allowed us to put the two buildings on that side of the street. And that effectively screens the steel building from the rest of the project. The treatment behind the two buildings that are now on that city street is something that we have to consider. This rendering doesn't show it, but on one of the site plans we actually show a fence that would be between the steel building and the backyards of these buildings. And that would probably be the right idea. We need to talk more with staff about that. But the actual rest of the steel building with the landscaping and the parking areas broken into two separate areas in the front. And with some trees planted to the west of the steel building, we we know we can't hide it. So what we want to do is to make it look look good and look functional and serviceable and well maintained. And and that's what we're proposing to do. We we intend to reuse the the building for tenant uses and for our own internal use as owners. And at this point, there are not any plans to increase the development inside the steel building. But that's something that we might come back to someday to the city if we have ideas that would be acceptable. But this is basically the feeling that we're trying to get to with this landscape. Okay, thank you. Just a quick question about the parking spaces around that. Are those necessary parking spaces to the south of the steel building? Are those necessary to meet parking requirements for the development as a whole? Or is it just like we're allowed to have a parking lot there? So we're going to put it in there? Those those spaces are the ones that are on the western most side of that second parking lot. Those actually are intended to serve the white house that's adjoining the project to this to the west. There are two two units in there. One has four bedrooms. So there is a need for a substantial amount of parking. We'd like to try to get that parking off of Spear Street if possible. So that was the thought there. But we also want to give enough parking so that the users of the steel building can have some parking and then the ones on the eastern side of the parking lot are intended to serve the buildings that are directly in front of it. Okay, for off street. As to the parking, it looks like some of those residential buildings have quite a trek to get to the parking parking spot. Is that right? Well, there is not. I think maybe possibly a little more than was required under our old plan. But I'm really sensitive to that. I we own enough property now to realize how important it is to have parking that's reasonably close to where people's front doors and back doors are with these buildings having front entrances back entrances. They're all relatively short walks to where your car might be parked. So we looked at the proximity of parking as we developed this plan, Frank. And we really thought that that these are reasonably close. Well, I mean, I think it's a pretty attractive project. So maybe the trade officer worth it. But I think it's a bit of a trick. I don't know what I would do about it. Thank you. Okay. Number two, staff believes the applicant has largely achieved these in their plan, but invites the board to discuss these design elements as they're critical to the operation of the neighborhood. I think we've already addressed a lot of this, but I'm wondering if you feel like we have Marla and if people have anything else to add, I would say in some respects, they are setting the character of the neighborhood. All right, let's move on to number three. Staff recommends the board discuss the plan landscaping in that area and confirm the mature height of the vegetation will not impede the proposed view corridor. So we see that note and we will address that during our plan development and to ensure that that view corridor is not inhibited. Okay, we'll look forward to seeing that. Thank you. Number four, staff recommends the board direct the applicant to rework this parking area to meet the regulations and needs of the project. Yeah, so that's that parking lot that we were just discussing south of the metal building. We read the notes and we will recon, ideally, if the board doesn't have a problem, we'd like to retain most of it, but bring it into compliance. I think it was noted that some of those parking spots need to be removed, so we'll do that. But like Frank said, we have quite a few things that we're trying to address with those parking spaces as well as retain access to the overhead doors. Okay, thank you. So there's parking. To Frank's point, the parking that we saw previously, there's also parking on the north side. Yes. So the furthest anyone would have to walk is half of the property. Are there loading and unloading areas?  Are there unloading areas before people park their car? We don't currently have any loading areas, but I know that one of the recommendations here is to add on street parking on one side. So I think that we could accomplish some of that. Okay. Number five, applicant has proposed a development pattern which supports expansion to adjacent properties. Staff recommends the board require the applicant to construct the proposed north south roadway to the property line to facilitate future connection. That's doable. Okay. And number six, treatment of stormwater. We've already discussed that somewhat. Do you need any more information, Marla, about that? Or do board members have any more questions about that? We good? Okay. Thank you. Number seven, staff recommends the board require the applicant to modify the public roadway cross section to include one lane of on street parking with appropriate bump outs. You said you're planning to address that. So good. Right. Was there any other? I guess I was a little surprised not to see it. Did you were you just not thinking about it? Or is there any reason it wasn't included? I mean, I really think it was in the interest of limiting infrastructure. So we didn't need it. Therefore, we didn't propose it. But we can modify that the plan to show that and include it. Okay. That brings us to the end. And now we're going to ask for public comment. Thank you very much for your time. And we'll look forward to seeing you back here. So we do need to after public comment continue because they haven't really done a full preliminary plat. So this is more like a sketch within the program. All right, that's fine. Thank you. Are there any members of the public here who would like to make comments on this proposal? People on folks online? Are there any people? Okay, good. So we will be concluding the hearing tonight or continuing the hearing. And I would entertain a motion to do so. So when would you guys be ready? Because I have kind of placeholder you in for January 18th, which means I would need stuff the first week of January. Does that work for you? No, more time. Okay, when would you like to get stuff to us? I think that we would appreciate a little bit of time to be we hadn't we've been waiting to hear kind of what everybody's thoughts were before really diving into the design. So do you want to be in the second meeting in February? Either the second weekend, the second meeting in February or the first in March? I'm gonna have to remind myself of those days. Some of those are Wednesdays just because of holidays. That's not a problem for you guys. Nope. 2022 meeting schedule. So we have room for either of those dates. February 15th is a Tuesday. March 2nd is a Wednesday. March 2nd. So the motion would be to continue to March 2nd. Make a motion that we continue SD 21 19 to March 2nd. Second. Thank you, Dan. Any discussion? All in favor of continuing this hearing until March 2nd? Stay I pose. Thank you. We'll see you back here in March. Thank you very much for your time. Now I have a question about the next two projects that are very much related. I'm wondering if the let's see if the if it would make sense to do the subdivision first. So the reason I put them in that order is because the subdivision is much simpler than the site plan. And if we get through the site plan, most of the subdivision comments have already been dealt with. Okay. All right. Thank you for that rationale. Okay. Site plan application SP 21 046 of Greenfield Capital LLC to construct a two to three story 130 700 130 790 square foot light manufacturing warehouse and office project 48 418 parking spaces and associated site improvements on a proposed 19.81 acre lot at 40 443 community drive. Who who who are here for the applicants? I guess is the question. There's a number of us here. I'm John Ellick and I represent Technology Park and I'm also here on behalf of Roland and Lisa Grunfeld who will be the owners of this. They're the owners of on logic will be the owner of this project architecture and engineering team here as well. Is anyone online or is everyone here? David Roy, our principal architect is online and I see Roland and Jess from on logic as well. Okay. That's correct. Yep. So if you could all please raise your right hand. I'm going to swear you in. Gentlemen in back all the way back. Do you promise to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth under penalty of perjury? I do. Thank you. All right. John, go ahead and give us. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Stephanie is recused. Is there anyone else who needs to recuse himself or disclose a conflict of interest? Don, we can just let Stephanie go right? We have enough of a forum for minutes. Okay. We'll see you in two weeks.   So John, please give us an overview of your this particular project. So thank you very much. Most of you I'm sure are familiar with the geography of technology park, but it sits essentially just north of I 89 and south of Kimball Avenue. And for people that have a little history here, it's the site of the former digital equipment plant. We purchased it in 1995 and have repurposed it into a business park. And most of you probably have been either through it or whatnot. It's sort of number one landmark would be the whales tails by way of identity. Roland and Lisa are interested in buying what amounts to be the southwest corner of the park. It's currently three lots, which we're going to consolidate into a single lot to facilitate this construction. And it totals just under 20 acres 19 point the facility is necessary to handle the fairly aggressive growth of on logic. Most of you know they have a existing facility, not only here in South Burlington, but in North Carolina and also internationally. This facility is their headquarters will continue to be their headquarters. They will keep their existing facility in the short term anyway. But this will be their principal new headquarters in sort of in reader's digest version. The building will be composed of three primary functions corporate office space. Assembly they're a light assembly company. They basically assemble for sale. Heavy duty computers computers for difficult and challenging environments. And then of course warehouse which will handle their storage and distribution function. The architecture is such that the office will be a three story building as we described at our sketch plan review. The warehouse necessarily is a single story facility and the assembly function will be primarily one floor but it has a mezzanine. We're interested in having a little bit of customer interaction between the office space and watching the assembly occur sort of part of our sales effort. There'll be two curb cuts on the property would show on the site plan. Most of you have seen that the eastern most will handle the employee and visitor traffic car traffic and the western most will be accessed to the loading and unloading facility on the western side of the building. As you can see from this drawing the tan is the building the black obviously is the is the pavement and around the perimeter of the lot which also is around the perimeter of the larger property Technology Park is the current and slightly relocated pedestrian path. That's a recreational path that was essentially created by digital equipment for their own employees. Since we've purchased the property in 95 we've allowed the public to use it which we actually like people walk their dogs flight kites do whatever takes their lunch break and walk out there and we're going to continue that people also use it periodically to get access to the whale tails because it's the sort of safest route you can walk across the meadow but it's safer to be on the path immediately to our east is the recently completed federal express ground facility and we do have a drawing that shows the approximate location of that facility to this. That's the primary relative building. I say relative because they're similar in scope both in terms of pavement and size of building the white roof you can see in that drawing in the lower right hand corner is the FedEx facility. There's a couple of similarities between that site plan development and this which we'll describe as we go through most of it having to do with number parking spaces with the dryways and those sorts of things. That's it for the general description unless people have other questions we'll get in. I know there was a staff comment a little bit on architecture and we'll get at that the type of building materials that we'll be using on the exterior of the building as we get to that section in the staff comments. Dawn can I make a preliminary comment before the board gets into the review. So staff met with Roland and Jess before they submitted this application and they had every intention of submitting sort of a two-stage application because of the nature of this project results in one lot not two lots it's a site plan it's not a PUD. They weren't able to do it so what they've submitted is the application for the property and once this hearing is closed that's the only review this board will do. So it's not it's not for lack of trying they had intended to submit two separate things so that the board had sort of like a preliminary and a final review they weren't able to because of the nature of the project so I just wanted to remind the board that like this is the only review of this application so everything has to be perfectly buttoned up before we close. Okay so if the board feels at the end of the when we get through the staff comments that it's not buttoned up we can continue it. Right okay all right. Thank you. We hope we can answer all of your questions this evening that may or may not end up being the case but okay we believe we can. Okay Marla was kind enough to get us the staff comments in enough time that we could respond to that in writing. Those responses are in your hands or I believe they're in your hands they were to Marla I don't know by noon today and if there's any questions as we go through those by way of completeness of answer hopefully we'll be able to do that this evening. Okay and I know Marla did tell us that you had submitted quite a large packet but we haven't had a chance to review it so not to be not to belabor that and I apologize a little bit we essentially resubmitted everything even things that hadn't changed or been answers to Marla's questions so it might have been a little bit cumbersome to receive that amount of information but as you go through the staff notes on what we submitted at noon today we've addressed just the comments that Marla okay great so hopefully we can fly through this hopefully we can fly through it okay all right thanks the first question or the first comment relates to approval from the appropriate airport regulatory bodies yes yeah so you can see from our response here and I hope you have those in front of you um we don't violate any I don't think we got a written response we just got complaints I'm going to have no okay so I have them here please tell us your response yeah so uh we've made this application umpteen times before basically for every development we do at technology park and people in the surrounding area have to do it as well if you're in the airport yeah approach zone we don't violate anything so we're going through the protocol now uh our application has uh been submitted October 8th they have a minimum review period of 45 days ISIS uh we actually had contact with them uh a day or two ago we expect we'll probably have final approval within 30 days so you have no concerns no no okay good in fact we also have to get that same approval just to put a crane on the site just because of the heights of those things so that makes it it's not an issue uh and we're very comfortable okay thank you number two um involves the integration of architectural um elements and aesthetics what do you want to tell us about that yeah we're going to have one heck of a handsome building it's what I'm going to tell you there was some question about exterior building materials the exterior materials of this building are right here so the principal piece of architecture of course is the office piece and that will be predominantly unit masonry which other buildings in our area will be two principal colors you come with samples I like it it makes it a little easier be two principal colors a brick that's the dominant one it'll be floors two and three of the office the base pay no attention to the grout color please the base will be a lighter color so that'll establish a base of the building the upper will be this darker color a little bit of metal panel for those of you who are familiar with metal panel uh probably the most sophisticated is a product called a luke bond which for people in the design field would know well it's a very smooth and sophisticated panel there'll be a little bit of that and then the predominant panel be these colors here consistent with this the warehouse we also an insulated metal panel will not be a luke bond it'll be this panel here in that very color the last product of consequence is window and that'll be typical aluminum frame can um we Delilah show the big elevation it's sort of like a very long skinny plan um because it sort of illustrates the proportions of these different materials I think it's just the next sheet actually yeah we actually have a little spreadsheet that I don't know if we've submitted yet we have this gives you the percent of each of these products as a fraction of the perimeter of the building including the warehouse yes yep yep do you do you have a uh a rendering of the warehouse appearance should be yeah so yeah there is a rendering to yeah let me tell you what page it is Delilah because I can skim since I'm not presenting a little faster John where's the lighter colored brick uh the lighter colored brick will essentially be the base of the office okay so if we right now oh I see the first floor once I zoom in I see the difference yeah okay yeah the the lower level differentiates it a little bit I was zoomed too far out on the PDF okay and then the the sort of beige orangeish tone that's going to be the alookabon panel soon David that's correct and then the the um what about the light gray is that going to be like a light gray silver alookabon panel between the windows it's it's almost like an orange color right but what I'm looking at is I'm looking at the the front elevation and I see the the orangeish you know amber burnt whatever color and I see the dark brick I see the light brick but then I see like a a silvery tone similar to the alookabon tone is that this is that a different color aluminum panel it is there are two different colors of alookabon that we're planning to use yeah okay mark do you have any comments no I think that I'm in agreement I think it is going to be an attractive building it's going to be very nice somewhat more orange color of the definitely fits in with the rest of the tech park development pattern in there I mean it's the intent of the the park and I think it's there I mean obviously we have to go through the the details of it but I think it's going to be a nice campus development for this thank you this area I think it's important to know that the existing buildings in technology park except the FedEx building are developer owned and they're obviously its purpose is to rent to tenants or multiple tenants so you're not particularly as from an architectural standpoint trying to create a tenant specific identity this is a single tenant single occupant building owned and operated by a a business so the architecture needs to be specific to that tenant and represent their culture brand and image and that's what we've tried to do here and I think I think we've done it well I'm also glad to hear that they're not currently planning on vacating the existing facility in the outland yeah that's a great building and it's a great building the great news here is on logic has been not only a wonderful employer but a rapidly growing one and a great corporate citizen in south room they have a great function room that they're very generous with yeah glad to hear they're expanding and staying in south Burlington thank you okay so let's make a comment on this sure Dan um this issue of relationship or proposed structures to the site I think the project complies with it for of the reasons discussed um and and I don't know if this has been typical of staff comments and and Marla it appears many of your comments and two are really more related to the next page 5c where it gets a little bit more into these design elements and character of the neighborhood and all that so is that is do you agree with my comment that your comments under two are really more appropriate under four and they're good comments and I want and I want to be sure yeah it's always tough to do these because they're related um criteria but not contiguous criteria so I end up yeah no and I've dealt with these criteria before when I pitch it for the time for the city so um I just want to be sure we talk about it because I yeah so now would be an appropriate time to discuss comments four and five and then we'll just go back to three because four and five are really integrated into comment two they're just unfortunately not contiguous okay I'll happy to kick that off then um because this is this is always a tough one here about because there are other brick buildings and the vicinity are use of brick what what does that mean and what sets the character of a neighborhood once once you have is it the first building this one when I especially when I just was playing around in google maps and I look at this this neighborhood zoning district and to me this build there is no standard we're not talking about 15 beautiful row homes all built from 1880 to 1885 and somebody came in with a metal building on an empty lot so in many ways this this this neighborhood is under it's under construction it's under evolvement it's mostly empty land looking at it from the big picture so I just want to reemphasize that so it does we want something that looks looks nice that's somewhat of a subjective term but over time if there's any infill 20 years from now then those people are going to have to conform with this nice building so but when I look at the the visuals of it how it lays out some of the color elements they it may not be brick but it blends in because of the orange and the steel so it seems to fit and to some extent it's it's open the creative palette is wide open at this early stage of development of this whole quadrant so well that's my thoughts on it I mean this drips a little bit into the philosophical I suppose but these these are to some extent unique building serving specific purposes and their the buildings themselves are large-scale and almost self-contained environments and I think our concern about somehow getting you know visual compatibility between these large self-sufficient function-oriented buildings should be de-emphasized I mean it's should be minimal the both now and going forward I don't see why well going forward is a philosophical part but certainly now I don't see a problem with what they're doing on that scale I think it's important to know that compatibility which we certainly endorse does not mean sameness when we bought the property the existing building digital was a pretty austere although unit brick unit masonry building pretty austere building the buildings we built subsequent to that were clearly a step above that and I think so you could even argue that that wasn't consistent with the existing neighborhood so you know we don't want to follow that pattern I'm as confident as I can possibly be that we will all feel this new building is not only compatible in the neighborhood but is a brilliant example of great architecture okay thank you um so number four modify some tourism provides the required parking lot screening as recommended above that the board finds this criterion met what am I missing here pose materials that complement or of the same caliber we've done that staff considers the overall massing and form of the building to be complementary however and recommends if the applicant modifies the materials and provides the required parking lot screening as recommended the board find this criterion met right so we skipped three just because we were trying to keep similar comments together um so we can go back to three which is about the parking lot okay um this is screening this is about screening and parking from hang on but on the on the architectural element though i mean when i'm reading the staff comment marlott it sounds like you're challenged by the materials because you're saying if they modify the materials right so in two we talked about the materials and the board said we're satisfied with the materials so okay no i just wanted but i wanted to be sure you had a chance to speak your mind about the materials we're good if board's good we're good i mean i think what john presented is a lot more information than was in the application um so what i would intend to do is kind of write his verbal testimony into the decision okay good okay thanks great so let's go back to three and talk about screening from the interstate can we put up the rendered site plan that shows the landscaping a little easier to see that uh no it'd be the two-dimensional plan view might just be the landscape plan so if you have a packet page number contact plan maybe page number 16 it's kind of large scale but i don't know if that one would don't no i mean there's going to be a landscaping plan in here eventually oh 29 sheet 29 yeah so this is why we asked you to come come with page number that can do i mean that that allows us to view this so what doesn't show on this particular drawing but shows on the larger context drawing is the parking lot on the east side of this which is the major parking lot is immediately adjacent to fedex's parking lot so you know you're screening parking from parking in a way that's no different than the aisle between the parking lots this so this comment isn't about the large eastern parking lot because that's screened from the interstate with the berm and screened from fedex like you said it's adjacent to a parking lot this comment is specifically to the long strip of parking along the southern property line and the required screening between parking lots and the interstate yeah coming around i'm coming around okay sorry john so starting on the east side working my way around okay southeast corner is a berm which if you we look at the line of site drawings from the interstate does a very nice job breaking up that line of site as you move west those next two umebic shaped critters are not berms they're actually depressions part of the stormwater management system so they alone don't provide screening and mike willard and his team have created a revised landscaping plan marlar from your comments that adds because we were also apparently short of trees so we added trees to the southern edge of that long east west parking lot both to get the tree count to the appropriate level and to create additional screening would that be helpful if i pulled it up i didn't download it for delilah but um sounds like we may be able to it might be it sounds like you sent me a new landscaping plan today on that one okay so let me yeah you have a new landscaping plan that reflects those changes we've made all right um if i look at just the overall landscaping landscaping plan rendering okay um let me present oh i guess i'm not organizing delilah um can you make me present no that's fine i didn't log in so it's my fault okay so this is just my web browser sorry it's a little not pretty but so this is the revised landscaping rendering that they sent over you can see the difference between this plan the last one we looked at the southern edge just north of the two detention basins have a line of trees now we also added a line of trees in fact this is a good one because it shows the fedex parking lot too we also added a line of trees on the eastern edge of our parking lot which is except for tree quantity is a little goofy because you're only shielding parking from parking but nonetheless it's there have we confirmed the landscape island requirement landscaping within the parking the 10 percent that's one of the staff comments okay so i'm sure they have a response to that yeah okay are we ready to move on i'm gonna stop sharing is that okay from three okay let's go to five the applicant is proposing four loading docks can you talk to us please john about clarifying the operation and screening of the proposed loading docks yeah our loading docks will be vastly less visible than the fedex ones which i think most people would feel are sort of pretty nondescript they're not by any means offensive you will see these loading docks but marginally so from community drive the visibility of them is incredibly modest from the interstate there might be about a 15 to 20 second window at you know 55 or 60 mile an hour that you would have any shot of seeing them you can only screen them just so far in other words the north and south edges are screened but the trucks have to come in the driveway so they can't be invisible i i'm very comfortable making the representation that they will be less visible than the fedex loading docks or even the 30 community drive loading docks thank you that's the digital the former digital equipment building which has six loading docks on east and west face um my question might be better answered by the engineer um so on page 18 of the packet koala it looks like there's some retaining walls maybe um and they're just not labeled and i don't know if you've revised the plans jeff to show like the height of those walls or if i should be looking at the grading plan maybe but what am i really looking at there um if you could zoom in on that hi i'm jeff's labor i'm an engineer with vhb so there's um the north part is four foot truck loading docks the middle part is two foot like smaller truck loading docks and the south end is at grade so there's um small walls that were needed because it's immediately adjacent to trans trans transition the grade from the four foot to the two foot to at grade um and then along the north edge there we're going to trans there won't be a a um retaining wall along the north edge there we'll just use eggs sloping vegetated surface to transition up to the to the area around it from four foot below to the building finish floor elevation okay i see that i see that on sheet 20 of the packet the grading plan that there's yep i can see the topography now thank you jeff so that's that's a tough plan to read wow that's amazing okay the west elevation makes it pretty clear of the building elevations it sort of shows the loading bays all the different at the same elevation and then yeah zoom into the bottom left yeah that's a good way to represent it just in passing i don't i don't know what aesthetic principle requires any level of concealment of loading docks in a commercial area i kind of like them myself that can go either way i appreciate that comment for sure this is a district uh by it's almost by its definition you have to ship and receive materials that's what manufacturers do and what you try to do is just make sure there is attractive and safe as possible okay let's move on to number six and this is about um an access easement and i'm wondering what your thoughts are about this yeah 100 fine it will not only mirror but be identical to the access easement we granted on the fedex property to this property and we'll do one in reverse okay thank you questions from the board okay number seven waste disposal locations um no detail has been provided about enclosing them if we could go back to that same rendered landscape site plan be useful the one that i had yeah the one that you had up a minute ago that showed the new landscaping plan so while we're looking for that um our trash disposal our is in self-contained units it's not your typical dumpster with a lid you flip up and throw your garbage in so if you look at that drawing there on the east face of the building excuse me on the west face of the building about in the middle if you could put a cursor on what looks like three rectilinear right there those are our trash containers and they're completely enclosed they can't be screened any more than they are i mean you can't put a fence around them because they're in our loading dock but they're they would look very similar to a box trailer that just sit there and they get they get loaded from inside and they're completely self-contained enclosed and they can be emptied obviously yeah a truck comes picks them unloads them and puts them back okay thank you are we good with that board what do you you mean there's no lid that flips up no how do they get loaded they get loaded from they essentially get loaded from an end i want to convey your belt or something a compactor so the trash is placed at yeah it just keeps pushing it with a compactor exactly building like the ones i'm familiar with are at the umal and they actually touch the building and so you load them from the building how does it look like they bring it out onto a loading dock that's elevated yeah there there's a yeah there's a raised platform as you come out the building it's at the same level as the finished floor of the existing building the dumpsters are just slightly lower than that by uh two feet uh so you can easily dump stuff into the compactor piece of the trash enclosure and that's compacted into this into this unit and these are 20 30 or 40 yard dumpsters we're talking about it's not a typical um lid that you flip once again it would look like a box trailer which has its opening on the end it would look very similar to that except just a little more rounded than that frankly box trailer is pretty square so i guess the my comment would be that the staff comment i i guess if the board feels like this is the right thing um okay let me see if i can do that new chair hang on i can do this um if the board feels that what they're describing seems to make sense i would just say that there should be a condition that says provide the detail and prove it okay that's the detail right there those that would be an elevation view of the end of the units looking east do you see the building beyond so it is accessible from the outside it has a door that could come open is that right on the end on the end towards facing the building yes so are we looking at it from the building you're looking at towards the building okay looking east let me see if i can describe it this way if you looked at a truck trailer backed up to a loading dock it would look just like that it's a big compact without the tractor it would look like the box landing gears down marlin backed up to a building can you see that so let me just let me let me jump in here go ahead yeah so when i read the standard it seems to say that the purpose of screening is to ensure the trash and debris did not escape to enclosure but right so there's two standards there's the one about trash not escaping and then there's also a separate standard in the landscaping section about screening for visual purposes right okay so i'll speak to the landscaping one because from the standpoint of escaping you know trash and debris getting out of the enclosure this that standard is met i mean this is an efficient way to move trash and high volumes of trash and without having to worry about things blowing away and i compacts it it makes it easy to pick it up and unload and take it away somewhere um no matter how you slice it it's still a trash enclosure and it's permanent like a big dumpster although it's more attractive than a green box now it's a green hexagonal thingy it needs it needs i mean i would say it needs some form of screening i understand and it's hard because you want people to be able to move the trucks in and take it away but at least from a landscaping standard it would need something at least that's what i'm seeing so yeah the overall the part their interior and part and parcel of our overall loading and unloading facility and that in the larger sense is screened from both the north and the south which is where the streets are by a row of landscaping we can't do anything different than that well here's a question though yep then if i mean typically when we say you have to screen the landscape areas we're normally we look at like you know your your your dumpsters with the you know the the chain link or the slats and then you throw a row of you know shrubs around it or you just say the slats are sufficient you know our you know this is obviously on a whole different scale than you know your little six by 10 or 10 by 20 enclosure you know can we look at screening that area that you know that whatever size that you know paved areas that includes the loading bays the trash compactors you know can we look at screening it from all three sides that are open yeah if we look it go back to the drawing you just had if you would please it's clear i'm agreeing but it's it's not feasible to screen that specific area because it's within an operable so if we look if we zoom in a little bit on that lower left hand corner yeah you'll see a row of evergreen and and michael helped me out here they are provided or some such right along the north edge which screens it is well as possible from community drive if we go to the opposite side the south edge we have the same thing okay but what about the the wrong way what about the the path side whatever side that is i'm oriented so that west side of the path we we wanted the landscape character to sort of feel continuous so what we did is we introduced a mix of evergreen trees and cedars okay so if you're on that path looking directly east to the building there's landscaping there yeah i i honestly don't know what else we couldn't do to make that disappear it can't disappear it's a fundamental function of our facility can i ask a question is that you know from an operations and security standpoints you know obviously you know the city and the public and the board and all the members who enjoy the park greatly enjoy the the path that has been continuous and is planned to be continuous but is it going to be separated are you going to have a fence to separate that loading bay trash compactor area from the publicly accessed path or is it just going to be that path wants to look as natural as possible okay it should be noted that that path is voluntarily provided i know that that's what there's no requirement we love having the public use it yeah it's a great path and right and they love using it i i don't want to put fences along it and what not uh i just don't want to do that i want it to look as natural as possible yeah i'm wondering if even just from a separation standpoint not a security standpoint but if we were to do more of a naturally split rail fence just to say as people are walking by that you know visually and to separate them from that loading area i can't say i would be opposed to a split rail fence for you know 80 feet or something but right i'm not talking about doing the whole thing or just chain link but i am saying is that you know having a public path that's open to the public walking right by a unoperable loading bay you know high volume area might not be there's the one back there as michael just described there's a line of landscaping there that i think accomplishes that purpose okay i'd like to put a pin in it to sort of possibly revisit it i don't think putting a split rail fence is a make or break on this one way or another but yeah i i would take a more i suppose radical view i think the the requirement for screening of trash areas doesn't as it exists in a regulation doesn't contemplate this this particular technology and that nothing about this requires any particular screening it's just another commercial piece of equipment that is self-contained not dangerous to any apparent degree and not you know not spectacularly ugly and no dogs are crawling under the fence and kicking garbage out you know underneath the so-called aesthetic screening you know it's an operational feature of any hour of the day 24 hours a day 365 our neighbor bed x has probably in the order of i don't know what it is probably 60 box trailers there that it will be way more visible than this and i don't think it offends anybody all right are we ready to move on beyond the dumpster screening issue or do we need to i think we can move on but i do want to say that i think that the area itself has been screened with the proposed landscaping and the natural separation of it from the rest of the site okay but i would disagree with frank that it doesn't need to be landscaped but i think that it has achieved that okay thank you all right okay let's just do a time check it is 9 30 now we typically close at 10 closer hearings at 10 so speak quickly and for what it's worth don because we anticipated that they'd be pretty close on most issues we did reserve time on the january fourth agenda for these books to wrap up and okay so i don't have to feel guilty please don't okay um so we just did seven okay number eight uh pavers and stone wall seating tell us about that yeah let's go back to that rendered site plan if we can rendered landscape plan so we don't want to keep holding back and forth highlight it helps to get these we actually love this comment because it's one of our favorite features of the whole site they sent me so much that i didn't know really which was the thing that i needed to focus on and the question i guess this is part of the landscaping budget and requirement yeah marla helped me out here i i think the intent here is some hardscapes should not be counted toward landscape like a sidewalk some hardscapes can if they're like patios or gathering spaces or whatnot so i just want to review on that rendered landscape plan the hardscape that we're contemplating sorry john i i recognize you just asked me a question and it was about whether what could be counted toward landscaping yeah so i didn't exert the full um the full ldr on this because the board seen it 900 times um but the board can allow elements other than trees and shrubs and the objectives of the landscaping section are met um so in the staff comment we kind of broke down they're providing um they have a minimum value of 407 thousand dollars in landscaping they're proposing some 165 or so 170 thousand in trees and shrubs and grasses and then they have some 230 thousand in hardscaping which includes pavers and stone walls so the question here was where are those pavers and stone walls right so if we can zoom in on the southeast corner of the building slash site on that plan you just had up southeast corner of the building um delilah if you could zoom in on that just a bit you'll see what looks like gray that is a patio uh actually it's going to be a beautiful patio it's quite heavily landscaped around it and it will also have seating stone wall seating around the east and south line of that that's the only hardscape we're referring to none of the sidewalks obviously i have a question this came up at a previous hearing is that a smoking area i don't know the answer to that i can see our clients uh i can see our client's face and it's that's an adamant no find out in a second i didn't hear what you said i'm sorry i can see our client's face and that was an adamant no it's not a smoking area okay good this is all in the belt you know it's it's an absolute no we don't allow smoking on our property perfect good thank you so just to clarify today patio floor cafe it's the all-space lunch area that's inferior building Roland just said is immediately interior to that patio space is our cafeteria that's you know employees obviously probably more likely in the good weather we'll be able to use that space nice any comments or questions yeah the only comment i have is that i'm just not sure the answer right now on that is that you know i know that we do we definitely do allow hardscapes to be included in the landscaping budget but it typically is as i think marlo alluded to if the rest of the landscaping is met and i'm not saying yes or no i'm not weighing in or offering my opinion on that yet but i i am a little concerned that over half of the landscape budget is consolidated to this one small little corner of the the building when you do have a 22-acre site and i know that when you have 40 million dollar construction costs your landscape budget gets pretty high but you also have a large site and i just want to make sure that we aren't reserving too much of it too much of your landscape budget for something that's going to be used eight months out of the year six to seven months out of the year since when it's servicing the cafeteria you know area during the winter months people aren't going to go ahead and enjoy that nice patio as we look at the landscape plan i'm not other than our future build out and we have reviewed that plan during sketching i don't know what else we could actually do so comments 10 10 i guess we're on eight so comments nine through 15 are about little tweaks to the landscaping plan and it sounds like you know from what you've been saying so far that you have made an effort to address all of those things yes we've addressed them all and they were all good comments most of them had to do with you know meeting requirement for a number of trees shade trees and so forth and all that's all been amended and met and so to to kind of conclude my point those are the other standards of landscaping and so if comments nine through 15 are met then they should be in the board in the board's previous behavior they should be free to apply the remainder as hardscape and that was my point as well i think you know that as long as they have adequately landscaped the parcel then fine you know then throw a nice you know chunk of money out of very nice elements my only concern was that it was all consolidated one little area that's not year-round use or i guess aesthetic for the whole site yeah that and that's that's totally fair there's a lot of landscaping yeah don't disagree with you on that thank you speak speak i don't know if you call landscaping it's all the green area actually green space in the final until we put on the addition it is yes until we uh harrowed the field to do our archaeology study that was essentially all lawn and it will be restored to essentially all lawn waiting for our next addition whenever that may occur if and when that may occur okay so you're reserving the development potential of that land oh sure yeah there's other plans in this back of it show that our current model for growth has us adding on to this facility in the not terribly distant future you know we're targeting somewhere in the seven to ten year time frame you know whether that happens uh i suppose the world has to keep rotating but okay that's what it's being reserved for you i understand interesting okay all right so number nine update i think you're going to do that number 10 um require the applicant to address the comments prior to closing the hearing sounds like you're going to do that too yeah we've done that michael willard has adjusted not only the quantity of landscaping but he also removed some of the maples that the arborist said you know maybe you want to think about removing right we did that okay 11 it's the screening um along the eastern side of the parking lot yes and we did that you did that okay uh number 12 um has not provided computations um staff recommends the board require the applicant to meet this criterion and to demonstrate it is met with an exhibit prior to closing the hearing that's our exhibit uh and by our calculation we believe we have met that okay typically don't they provide some sort of like diagram yeah i was going to say do you have a number for the south in the west that's a single lane so there does not need to be an interior island i'm sorry i'm having a hard time hearing you could you move the a little closer you get a little muffled with the so the requirement so jeff just said it's a single lane the requirement which is on page seven of the packet is in all parking areas containing 28 or more contiguous parking spaces and or in parking lots of more than a single circulation lane so i would say this is or it can certainly contains more than 28 parking spaces at least 10 of the interior of the parking lot shall be landscaped with islands planted with trees shrubs and other plants so um i don't know jelilah could you pull up page seven the black text just above comment number 12 i i think that this absolutely applies to the southern parking area that you were just showing i think it depends on how you define in the parking area if you look at the east parking lot there's more so i just wanted to give the board an opportunity to digest the text here yeah i mean if you yeah because i mean the east parking lot all of those strips and little bulbs count towards their 10 percent right we just need to see a calculation showing that right so that's the east i think the difference is marla i think is suggesting that on that southern strip which is a single drive aisle with double loaded parking yep the trees are outboard of the asphalt and she's not counting that as landscape area within that no what i'm suggesting is it's identical to the north south parking strips on the east which have islands those trees are outboard of a double loaded corridor and yet that does count toward 10 percent that's and it's the exact same thing the only other way you could do it is to remove some parking slots and have these little tongues that come in which of course are a snow pile nightmare you're much better off having that strip those tongues serve no useful purpose so i i fail to see the difference between our east west parking with trees on both sides of the outside and the north south strips in the east parking lot we just simply no difference the the point of the the 10 percent is to break up the asphalt it's not to have park in green space in proximity to the asphalt to break up the contiguous spaces so like the the north south or the the east the parking lot on the east the parking is broken up by those vertical strips the north's or the east west one on the south side of the park has no break it's it's a north south one just flipped on its side and there's only one of them as opposed to four we can agree to disagree there's there's a way that i know that marlon delilah routinely calculated this 10 percent and they look at it and there's a way to go through the formula and i think they're just saying show them the typical way that they do those calculations and i can safely save them by 15 years on the board i've never seen a single loaded including that outboard strip of green which is a natural occurrence well yeah natural if you plant trees which we're doing we could add like the thing along the south the single island along the south we could add fingers into it but it would prevent you know efficient plowing i i understand it's a pain in the ass but it wouldn't it wouldn't be an island like the regulations it says that you need to add an island so i guess that's that's how i was looking at it i i guess i understand the board looks at it different it looks like the solution that will solve this would be in that east west strip of parking probably in the middle will create enough of a finger on the north and south edge of that to hit that 10 percent and you know what that might be a nice way to provide some sort of connection to over to the path or something you could make it a landscape element that improves the overall site aesthetics you know if you have to make it a little wider you can consider it done yeah thank you are you good um i'm number 13 pardon 13 okay all right thank you um this is about curbing and snow storage so we created a drawing in the last probably 24 hours that shows our anticipated snow storage and curbing leave our curbing drawing will uh fully meet the requirement snow storage is always a little bit of a vague science so the blue there or the purple represents where we think snow will be shoved um and that is largely driven by the quantity of snow that's falling at any one time if you get two inches of snow you're probably going to just blade that off and it'll just go off the edge wherever you're pushing it if you get six inches in north you're probably using a front end loader at least to move snow that you've plowed to the end of strips and you'll have to load it and take it to wherever sometimes it's even off-site but certainly uh snow storage becomes an issue when you have a heavy snowfall lighter ones are easier to accommodate will you still be able to use those the long strip with the purple with the new landscape trees adjacent to the uh yeah so yeah right where it says la 1.30 um a front end loader could stack a substantial amount of snow there and I do not believe like that's tucked behind the vermin in between the parking so our arborist recommends um 10 feet between the edge of pavement and the tree if you're gonna put snow storage at the base of trees just as you think about that that's our that's the guideline we live by yeah I'm guessing the trunk of those is all of 10 feet off edge of asphalt just based on how they're drawn there you know parking slip is 18 feet that's probably 10 feet off so we'll make sure that that's the case okay all right number 14 numbers 14 and 15 um address shade trees and screening yeah so those uh quantities have been accommodated and the screening have been accommodated on this new plan okay good so we're good with that thank you 16th screening of utility cabinets transformers has not been provided um the staff recommends the board require the applicant to modify the plans to provide screening of utility cabinets and transformers prior to closing the hearing yeah fair enough and the new landscape plan does in fact show that good thank you um number 17 deals with the driveway width and the driveway entrance radius our driveway width which we're showing at 24 feet is important to us um for our sense of safety and convenience we could not find any prohibition against that 24 foot width so that's our proposal we feel it will be handsome it'll be safe and it'll be convenient staff's arguments against 24 feet with or in the staff comments i'm sorry i'm having a hard time hearing you staff's arguments um for 20 feet instead of 24 are represented in the staff report so if you wanted me to read that out loud i absolutely can or you're welcome to read it yourself um i think staff still feels you know john has just said we'd like it therefore we would like for you to prove it i haven't heard anything that contradicts what staff's recommendation is um figure 15-1c of the street details streets and concrete curbs it shows that a commercial drive has a width of 36 feet and tapering out to a 45 foot width at the street and so i think what we're trying to do