Okay, well, it's a bit of a whitching hour. Call us immediately to order. This is a regular scheduled meeting of the town of Berlin Development View Board. We have one item on our agenda tonight. I don't recognize that a few people here in the audience, so I'm gonna start out just reminding anybody that wants to be an interested party to this application. They need to so identify that they want to be an interested party. And then what grounds are they asking to be an interested party? I'm guessing everybody here is with the applicant. No, I am. Nope? What's that got to do with that? Okay. So if you want to be an interested party to this, there are five criteria to follow, but usually it's because you're a buddy property owner or a neighbor in property owner. So if somebody wants to request an interested party status, please identify yourselves. Bill and Michelle Snyder. Bill and Michelle Snyder, a budding property owners. Okay. And what I need to have you do is, the reason I'm saying this is you don't have any real standing in an appeal process if you don't identify yourself as an interested party. I don't know if we have a copy of the interested party rules back there, but I can make them available to you. But really, it really requires that you speak on any issues that are concerned to you with tonight. What we'll do is we'll hear from the applicant and then I'll ask for any comments or questions from the interested party members after I go through the board, so. To that end, Bob. I'll just make sure that emails are legible so we can get you as copies of stuff. Yeah, we need full emails, addresses, and names on the sign of the sheet. So with that, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask everybody who intends to give testimony before this board tonight on this application. We only have one application, so. Please raise your right hand. And do you swear to tell the truth? And nothing but the truth. No, I do. I don't depend on these a perjury. I do. I do. Thank you. So I'm gonna ask the applicants to identify themselves, who's gonna be speaking, and so forth. You're gonna start to solve for you? Yes, I'm Mike Rushman. Here on behalf of the ball loader, the landowner of Riverwood Mall, LLC. I'm Brad DeSovetian, the applicant. I'm Paul O'Leary with O'Leary Burke Civil Associates on the site, civil engineer. And I'm Greg Rabbit of the project, architect. I'm Sean Kenningham of O'Leary Burke Civil Associates as well. Roger Dickinson with Amaro and Dickinson of the Traffic Consultant for the project. Okay, anyone else want to identify themselves? Do we have any two parties? Very good then. I'll kick this off just to give you the background. So I've been working with the mall owners for about two and a half years now, along with town officials on a long-term effort to transform the mall, the 65-acre mall site, into a mixed-use, more pedestrian-oriented town center. And over that period of time, we've done a number of things, both in the mall itself, in terms of new tenants, Planet Fitness, Pesosic Bank, Aramed, Juice Box, et cetera. We've had a number of special events. The Big Art Little Art show that we had a couple of summers ago, and art classes for kids throughout the summer. And then in a couple of weeks, we'll be starting the third year of Walk the Long Trail at Berlin Mall, which has attracted over 1,000 walkers that last year covered over 20,000 miles and raised $10,000 for the Green Mountain Club. So that's been a big community success, I think, in a lot of ways. But a lot of what we were trying to do, and we showed a conceptual site plan to the select board and the planning board. Again, I think in early 2016, was to develop some of the undeveloped parcels that were created back in the early 80s and bring in some non-retail uses to the site. So we've been working with a number of parties for quite a period of time. And one of those is Ducevich Ying. They were attracted to us both because they're a residential developer, local Vermont-based developer, and also a developer that builds for their own portfolio. That is, they not only build the projects, but they manage them when the project is finished, the senior housing. And this seemed to be a site to us that made a lot of sense for senior housing. But I think Brad and his team will be able to get into that more detail. Yeah, and that's how we're... Just the structure here. We obviously have detailed review criteria and we'll go through those and you've addressed some of those already in your comments. What we're looking for at this point in time is an overview. So that we have a general understanding. I think most of us have looked at this, and I've read this, but we'd like to have an overview. Sure, let me use the board up there so everybody can see. I always like to put the landscape plan on the front because it's the previous one. I'll see what we have. We've got the ortho-photo-based plan that shows the mall. North is on the top of the sheet. We have Route 62 on the bottom of the sheet. The existing mall entrance, Berlin Mall Road, that comes in, and as you're all familiar, the anchor tenant on the south end is Walmart. So the Berlin Associates has identified a number of outlots on their plans and we're occupying what's referred to as Outlock B. This is just south of Walmart. It's about a 1.95 acre parcel. It's not really a separate parcel. It's just an identified building envelope. So we are proposing a new 99 unit senior housing building. So there's 48 units, regular units. There's 33 assisted living units and then there's 18 memory care units. So the memory care unit is in one specific wing and the assisted living unit, the other units are scattered throughout the building. Primary access is obviously from Route 62. As it comes in, the project will require a full boat of state permits, wastewater, water, stormwater permit, parcel. Currently has an active 50 permit. The active 50 permit will need to be amended. The current mall property has a two system, two separate water systems. It has a four inch domestic water system, which is herped to the town system just recently. It actually was herped and then it has a separate eight inch fire line that goes all the way around the building. We will be extending the domestic water and the fire system from just north of Walmart along the back to the new building and connecting it to both of those systems. Similarly, power is currently extended to just north of the Walmart building. We will be extending power along the back of the building to serve the new facility. We'll need a state stormwater permit. We have four separate small stormwater areas to find two underneath the front parking lot and one underneath the two patio areas in the back. Again, I've done the preliminary stuff with the state. We haven't applied for a state stormwater permit at this point in time. If we look at a little more detailed site plan, this is actually the utility plan. You can see the two stormwater systems in the front parking lot, stormwater system behind the patio area in the back. This patio area is specifically for the memory care unit. It's a fenced enclosed area, second patio area for the remaining occupants and another stormwater system underneath the patio system. The elevation of the building is at 980 feet. As you come in the existing Berlin Mall Road, you're at about 981 here, hit about 980 here as you continue on down. It drops down to about 975. So on this side of the building, the finished floor is about five feet higher than the existing lane that goes around the Walmart store. A couple feet lower than sections of Berlin Mall Road in the front. So part of the things we looked at in terms of some of the plans is, you know, there was talk about trying to make this look more like a streetscape when you came in. So we've added a curb along this side of the road. We've added a sidewalk, you know, for a bench or extension out to Route 62. There's a sidewalk on the Walmart side of the building and then there's internal sidewalks as you go back through. There's a drop off area in the front, in the front parking lot that comes up.  You can drop someone here and they enter into a control space. There's underground parking in the building. There's about 76 spaces underneath the building. The entry comes in on the Walmart side. As you wrap around, you continually drop down and elevation is down to about 973 as you get to this portion. And so it's not too bad of a drop to get down into underground parking, trying to come in from the front with a crate, put a few more additional problems. What else? Water and sewer, as we mentioned, come in the back. Now we have retaining walls on this side, which looks a little odd seeing how we have all the space here, but this is actually the limit of the outlaw. So we're trying to stay within that to find outlaw. Retaining wall on this side is just to make the transition from the slower grade up to the finished floor. Retaining wall is going to be somewhere between probably two and four feet, probably a landscape type block wall as you come up through there. We did provide a landscaping plan that shows the streetscape that we're proposing in more detail on the front. There's an existing gravity sewer line that's shown here. That's going to have to get relocated because obviously it interferes with the building. The line, currently the school property has a force main that comes down. And the force main actually goes inside of the gravity sewer line and discharges. It looked like initially that this sewer line when originally laid 20 or 25 years ago is basically that has no slope across it. Going down to the invert is basically all the same. So I think whoever did the work for the school district kind of realized that they couldn't just tie into the last main hole and let it go. So they actually snaked the force main down through the sewer main. So starting at the existing sewer main here, we're gonna relay this line and extend it up past the property and then we'll pick up that three inch sewer main from the school district at that point. Realizing that at some point in time, hopefully the sewer force main from the school will go away as your sewer project continues up a file. All right, I'll actually stop there and ask the members of the board if they have any questions. Nothing in the past. Was that an item I have? Yes, item I have. Tom, do you have any comments to make, preference to? No, the comment is, some comments leave. They did receive a water allocation. So they have an existing water allocation. They'll be applying to the public's work board for additional sewer allocation there. The sewer commission has adequate allocation to cover anything, the additional capacity that they'd be seeking here. So from those two fronts, I think the public work board will be commenting on water lines and hydrants and things like that as they go along those projects as well. Is there, is the Nixon party's having any questions? This time we've got to go through details as we go. Yeah, I just have one question. Can they identify the 90s permit, the actually 50 permit number? I do not know what the permit number is though. You don't know what permit you're operating under. Does anybody know? I'm going to have to assume then it's the original one from 1985. Well the original one would be in effect, but I'm sure that permit's been amended a number of times so that the number should be the same. And by the minute you get a dash one, dash two, dash three, so. Do you know what number we're up to? No, I don't know. Okay, I'd like to have that. There's an online site where you can see all those up. I have. You have, okay. The only one I've come up with was dash two, which was signed in 1985. This was older than that. Was the cold one of them? Yeah. Yeah. Cold should have been a dash. Cold weren't was as well, yeah. Yeah. A lot of them aren't online, depending on how old they are. Before a certain year you've actually got to go to the district five office and get a copy of the permit because I looked before and I found the cold's information online, but like the original permit I didn't find online or any of the drawings there. But the original permit isn't in fact, it may be amended, it's essentially in effect. Yes. Yes, the original permit's in effect with any subsequent amendment. So basically you look at the original permit, you look at all the subsequent amendments because some of the amendments might have changed the conditions of the original permit. So you've got to kind of, got to kind of look at the whole ball of wax when you're looking at it. Right. But there hasn't been development on this side, this end of, on the side of the end of the mall. There's been changes on the northern end. I believe that's correct, yes. Well, the expansion of the Walmart was on the southern end of the mall, but it's part of the mall. Okay. Once you've done it, we'll go to this here. You're going to run back up here again. Well, it's good for steps, that's it. So criteria A, safety of vehicle and pedestrian circulation on site and the adverse impacts on the adjacent street network. So obviously we have three access drives. We have one for the underground parking and we have two off the Berlin Mall road as shown on the site plan. In terms of off-site impacts, I'll let Roger Dickinson, you know, address that. Roger's with Lamarone Dickinson and performed a traffic assessment for us. The Berlin Mall road, that's a private road. I knew this. That's correct. It's not accepted by the town. It's not a town road. That's correct. Yeah. Your application does say the access is from a town road. So what this really is, often the private road. That's correct. The town road only extends some 50 feet or so off of it. 62, is that correct? I don't know the distance, Bob. I know it's... 8 bar. There's some discussion. The select board has a recent discussion on that road. So what's your understanding of where the town road ends? Yes, I think that it does that. But there are discussions that date back to one of the earlier act of 50, well, actually the original act of 50 program, I think. Right. Well, some of the road becoming a town road that was revived again here within the last year or so. That's six months at the time. But I think then it ultimately got put back on the back burner by the state a number of months ago. So the access is a town road, but the access to the... The frontage. The frontage is a primary road. The frontage is a primary road. Roger? Yes.  I don't know how much you would like to hear, but I can give you a quick synopsis and we'll go from there. So as Paul described, the project, it's senior housing and approximately half of it is independent senior housing and the other half is assisted living or memory care unit. And trip generation of these types of projects, including memory care and assisted living, primarily employees, caregivers, staff of those particular parts of the facility. And then there's the seniors that are living in the independent living units, some of which have cars and some don't. So the trip generation is relatively low during the peak hours for that reason. And also because seniors in general don't like to drive during rush hour. They'll do their errands during the day. So we're looking at the trip generation of about 25 peak hour trips during the afternoon peak hour. And that's the critical time period of the day for traffic traveling by the site on Route 62, as well as traffic going in and out of the mall. So our study took a 2018 traffic count that was done by Petrans at the Route 62 Berlin Mall Road intersection. And we estimate that with this project being so close to that end of the Berlin Mall that most of the traffic generated by this traffic is going to go in and out of that entrance. In fact, we estimated 75% of the trips were, I'm sorry, all the trips for the purpose of this study, all the senior housing trips would go in and out of the Route 62 Berlin Mall Road access. In reality, that's probably not going to be the case. There will be some trips that will go across the front of the mall and access Fisher Road towards the hospital, the medical offices, destinations in Montpelier, perhaps. But for this study and our analyses that are contained in it, we just assumed all traffic was going in and out of the Berlin Mall Road Route 62 intersection. Do you want me to stop you there? On page two, you say 75%. That's, once you reach that intersection, 75% turn to the north towards Airport Road, and then 25% turn to the south or come from the south to I-89 or this area. I do saw 75 in here so far. So you assumed 100% of the traffic is using this one exit? That's the basis of our analysis. That's pretty good, sir. Kind of a worst case scenario, if you will. And so when we analyzed the Route 62 Berlin Mall Road intersection, we find overall it operates at level of service A during both the morning and the afternoon peak hours. The two movements that experienced the most delay are the left turn movements, whether you're turning into the mall for Route 62 or you're turning left out of the mall onto Route 62. Those experienced level of service C, which is actually an excellent level of service for those movements. So in terms of traffic congestion, I think this project will have minimal impact on existing and future traffic congestion conditions. Traffic safety. There are several high crash locations. Where do you go for that? Did you at all look at the timing? In other words, there's two turns that are level C. Turning in, let the left hand dedicate the hand, left hand turn in, there's a level C and you're coming out to the left turn coming out of the level C. That would stream to me that a slight change of timing would probably reduce that to a B and still keep the other an A. That's possible. I did not specifically examine that. Something that I would have to look and see if I could get the timings from the detrans and have a discussion with them about that. So with regards to traffic safety, there are several high crash locations. That have been long-standing high crash locations actually on Route 62, starting at the Paintern Pike intersection and including the Fisher Road, Airport Road intersection. Detrans over the years has implemented a number of interactive signal and traffic signal improvements, modifications. Most recent were completed in 2015 at the Fisher Road intersection and then in 2016, with the paving project, they have modified both the Paintern Pike intersection and the Burund Mall Road intersection to change the traffic detectors and other things. The most significant work was at Fisher Road and that's really been the most problematic location with respect to crashes. The crashes themselves are rear end crashes on Route 62. If you look on page 5 of my study, table 4, where we looked at specifically the Burund Mall Road intersection, you see four rear end crashes over a five-year period. Those are predominantly on Route 62. The angle broadside, those are the ones that concern me because those are the ones that tend to be most of the year, but they also indicate a pattern of perhaps red lake running or that sort of thing. And then there's several more. But again, among the improvements that Detrans has made at these signals has been to install dilemma zone protection. Dilemma zone protection, if you're approaching a signal on Route 62, it avoids changing the signal as long as a car and what they call the dilemma zone, which is kind of like a far enough way from the intersection, it's like, do I hit the gas or do I hit the brake? Sort of the decision making that you have to do. So I expect that with these improvements, hopefully the safety record improves and particularly the angle broadside crashes diminish coming here. Is there a dilemma zone protection on this intersection? The intersection of Burund Mall Road? I'm not sure it's at Burund Mall. I know it's a paint turnpike. And Fisher Road. And Fisher Road. But not here. I don't think so actually. Okay. Does the dilemma zone just extend to go? No, it extends to green. Thanks to signal from Perm and Yellow. Doesn't let it go yellow. As long as cameras are for people, it's not to catch people. It's for this type of technology. Oh yeah, of course. Of course you've got that video screen in your eye. Oh yeah, it does. Online. That's a state highway. So record your license plate number. Yeah. One last comment, as far as multimodal, facilities, the sidewalk connections, also the Burund Mall does have local transit service. There's a number of groups operated by the GMTA that will certainly seniors will utilize that service. Will the facility have like a service? Like Westview has a van that takes people around. It will. Okay. Is that also a woman ice? It does. That's my synopsis. You have to answer any questions. Now, you did not look at any traffic going out onto Fisher Road. And you say this is the worst case scenario. And I suspect you're probably right in terms of traffic generation, but you really have a situation down at Fisher Road. If a few of these cars would go the opposite direction, the question might be would it aggravated, but it's so few trips of generating during peak hour. I'm surprised how few trips of generating during peak hour. Is that reasonable estimate? The 25. Yes. Wow. Yes. That's, there's been a lot of trip generation studies done of senior senior housing and we've done some ourselves locally, locally being in Kirtland County. But it is much lower than we would expect. Those two calories. Out of curiosity, what's the ADP out of this establishment? You look back at all? I want to say around 15,000. 15,000 from the senior housing? No, no, no, no. No, no. Senior housing. Average weekly. Okay. 311. Thank you. Questions by members of the board? I had a couple of questions. The, what, Bob was just asking about the Fisher Road access. Do you know what the level of service is at that, at that interchange? No, I don't. That intersection was last analyzed by Coles and their study was actually based on the earlier Walmart expansion study, which goes back now over 10 years ago. Yeah. And there have not been any traffic counts done at Fisher Road, Rowan Mall intersection, which surprises me, but that's, so there's no data available for me to analyze without doing new counts. The reason I asked is because any additional traffic that goes through that, if the level of service is poor, it would make it, it wouldn't make it better, right? It would make it, it would make it a little worse, but maybe not very much worse. How many employees are going to work at the, at the senior citizen? The facility will employ roughly 20 to 30 employees, but they're not all full-time. They don't all work every day. A lot of those are part-time caregivers, part-time food service workers. There's really a handful of full-time employees that are on site. Okay. So there is food service in this facility, is that correct? There is. And with a facility like this, the residents won't have a reason to leave the building a whole lot because they have the assisted care folks will have three meals a day. The independent folks will have at least one meal a day with the ability to get more if they wanted to, and obviously the memory cares or have all their meals taken care of. And then with the van, we buy a very nice sprinter van that will take people to appointments, doctor's appointments if they need to go off-site. But also it's important to note, too, one of our, one of our main things that we always focus on with developments like this is anti-sprawl. So you put the facility close to services and personally from our viewpoint having it right next to the mall and Walmart, if people need something, they walk right there and get it. It's healthy for them. It's healthy for the community. It's less burden on the community, too. So that's, I think that speaks to some of the low-trip generation, too. Yeah, I think that, I mean, firstly, I think that the employees are going to be most of the people who are going to be driving in and out. But yeah, with 20 to 30 employees having only 25 total peak-hour travel seems low to me. Well, they're not all working at the same time. Right, right. We'll probably, like, the project will employ that many people, but you might have five or six there at a time. On the first page of your report, Roger, you talk about additional background traffic load factors, from 3% to 2019. And then you use 6% for 2024. And those larger numbers are the ones you use in calculating the peak-hour trips. Those are actual, there's two typos there. What happened is that the DHB adjustment factor of 3%, the typo is basically 3% for the background growth should be zero. And the 6% for 2024 should be 3%. So for 2024, the DHB of 3% and the background growth of 3%, total of 6%. And that was a typo I missed. But I'm not an expert in this, but is it saying that between now and 2024 there's only going to be a 6% increase in traffic? Those are the trans projections that we use and the accepted guidelines. They update them every year based on actual growth patterns. They analyze it, they forecast it, and that's what we're supposed to use. Yeah, okay. And the reality is, if I may say, they've overestimated the last 10 years and the growth rate really has been close to zero. It's been negative. But to be safe, they're using a positive number. Am I correct about that, Roger? Yes. And in terms of the parking spaces at the facility, you've got total of, we said 74 underground and then, I don't know how many you have above ground. We have 76 underground and we have 36 surface. We have 20 in the front parking lot and then we have 16 along Walmart side. And you calculated that by reference? Yes. Do I ask you to hear that, John? Sure. Because our next criteria is parking. Okay. All right. Let's see. And I have some of the same questions. Yeah. Okay. But you're already round, but I just wanted to get that criteria. Fine, that's fine. Yeah. This is about pedestrian circulation, though, this criteria. And in that regard, I guess, I really don't see any discussion on pedestrians. You just pointed out that it would be anticipated that pedestrians would, in fact, be traveling to the mall. And I'm looking at the site plan. And what's missing for me is pedestrian connection. I don't see a crosswalk. I don't see anything there. And I'm a little concerned about the landing point on the sidewalk in front of Walmart because I believe right now you have the garden center sitting there. And it's pretty darn narrow. So I didn't know if you could address that for me. Paul, have you looked at that? It's missing for this plan. If we look at it briefly, we would agree that we should, at a minimum, add a sidewalk, a crosswalk across there. So it's an area that's striped and directs pedestrians towards the sidewalk that's in front of the mall. Yeah, I would go a step further than that. And just say, I think you don't show us the landing real well. In other words, that whole, the building is just showing there is a building. In fact, you don't even show on the site plan that there is, in fact, an extension to the building which is, admittedly, it's not a building. It's fencing. But there's a fair amount of stuff going on at the mall between the building itself and this project that's not shown on this drawing. And what I'm concerned about mostly is how does it affect traffic, people getting in and out of the garage, and how do pedestrians get over there safely in the landing point on the other side? And can you address that for us? Yeah, we haven't looked at that very closely. I'll be honest about that. And in that same regard, signage. Any thoughts as to pedestrian warning signs, signs that say there's pedestrian crossing here? I don't believe there's stop signs on either side of the main entrance. That's correct. And I think that's a problem for me. So I wonder if you looked at that at all. We had not. Okay, I'm going to throw that out as something in my mind that's kind of missing. I really think that... I think it's great that we're looking at this pedestrian thing, but I think we have to accommodate it. It's a fairly large crossing there. It's uncontrolled. I think we need to see control. I think we need to see marking. I think we need signage there. I could just jump in on that because some of that is off their site. He can tell me to coordinate with us. Obviously, but longer term, Outlaw C is immediately across the street from Outlaw B. Our expectation is that at some point in the future there will be sidewalks on both sides of Mall Road, going all the way from the Walmart intersection all the way up to 62. And we envision this intersection becoming a much more pedestrian friendly intersection, potentially at some point stop signs at all four locations, crosswalks all the way around. Now, that probably all won't happen until Outlaw C gets developed. But I agree with your comments in terms of what needs to happen to strengthen the pedestrian connection on the senior housing side of things. So is that... You're saying, like, that's the Mall's nickel of that signage? Well, that's something that we discussed with them. It's not Outlaw B itself. Well, the avenue is, of course, the Mall. So as you're having this discussion, you see these crosswalks where they're a flashing beacon that you get there and then whatever, 30 seconds, that may be an easy cure for this. Any estimates on pedestrian traffic? Most of the traffic will likely be employees going from this facility across... Pedestrian. You don't think pedestrians go to the Mall? Yes, I'm just saying that most of the traffic, we think, would be people who work there going across more or so than the residents. So certainly the people in the independent living are going to have some trips back and forth to the Mall. Certainly the folks in the memory care and the assisted living are probably not so much. Well, the other category of people are the pedestrians who are going to be the passengers to the facility. And nobody's more interested in making it a safe pedestrian connection between this project and the Mall than the Mall owners. I mean, we're happy to have this locating next to the Mall. We know they think it's an asset. We think that's an asset for the Mall. And it's the biggest asset if we make it an easy, safe way to walk back and forth between the two. Some of the residents will want to come and buy us for your ride. Exactly. Another question, just carrying that forward, did you consider the possibility of either something covered or weather protected because it seems like the whole purpose of putting this here is precisely that there would be a lot of pedestrian traffic between them. We're saying the services are right there for these people. In terms of crossing the intersection itself, that intersection carries a fair amount of truck traffic coming in for deliveries to the back of the Mall. So that's going to preclude anything across the intersection itself. Whether something to be done once you get to the Mall side of things, that's something we may have a discussion with Walmart about. Obviously these things are more complicated to make decisions. That's actually my concern that you just brought up. At this end of the Mall, the Garden Center, and which is as you can see in this photo even, it's stacked to the brim with material that people get dropped off by truck, or consumers will come in the Berlin Mall or make this left-hand turn, come down here, turn around, fill up their vehicle, and then leave. I don't see the room to do any of those things with all of this parking here. Well, parking is an extension of the, pretty much an extension of the existing pavement. So we're actually adding pavement to accommodate those 16 spaces that are along the Walmart side. So the part in your plan that's, well, on the bigger planning, you see that it's shaded. Would it be possible for those spaces to be limited to employees? Well, we expect that it'll be, it'll likely be a mix of employees and Walmart shoppers. We don't have any way to police them. Well, that's kind of exactly that. This is a two-way road, but it's the width probably of a one-way. The way people are going to use it. Can you read, but can the mall restrict Walmart? I mean, do they need to use all that? In terms of their own lease? So they have the use of that through there? Yes. And the road itself is, I mean, you're thinking about Walmart, but it's used for other stores as well. I mean, that's the service road to the rear of the mall. I think you're raising a very valid point. I think what's going to happen is the nature of that intersection is going to change. I think it's going to be a long-term part of what you're trying to accomplish with the town center zoning and the town center designation in the faster plan is that this whole thing becomes more pedestrian-oriented, more of a main street. The long-term conceptual plan actually shows at some point in the future mall road being double-loaded with buildings. It's going to make somebody driving through there that the experience is going to be more like driving through downtown Montpure or downtown Barrie. It's not going to be how fast can I get from Fisher Road to Route 62. My concern is not future development at the time. My concern is that there be an adequate amount of space between backing in and because this is a pull-in-back-out scenario to come around for these people backing and going back out, etc. That's all of my concern is is there enough space. Frankly, we have that concern as well that we're going to talk to these folks about because there are multiple things going on along that service road that all have to be accommodated. Let me be blunt. Are we keeping the lawn and garden center there? Yes. If that's going to be there, I want that shown on this drawing. I want this drawing to reflect how much space I've got. Do I really have 25 feet here? What do I have? I think the site plan lacks some detail here. Not only the crosswalk and connection to the sidewalk and signage that may be appropriate, but I share Shane's concern. I really think right now people do do interesting things. We can't please what they do, but we want to know that there's enough room to do it. Well, there is going to be two-way traffic because that's the only way you get into this underground parking area. So you're going to have traffic going back and forth, not just truck pre-automated coming in, but cars going back and forth on that section. Yeah, we ought to know the width of that space. So needs a better definition of that. Yeah, well, how are you? And while I've thrown out suggestions, there's no speed limit signs on the model road, private road. And I'm now back to you. Yeah, I don't believe that there are. There aren't. And I believe, Rod, in your report, you've assumed this 30-mile-an-hour speed. Actually, you'd be doing very well to make that corner up here at 30 miles-an-hour. Which isn't probably the corner. Which is probably why it probably isn't even 30 miles-an-hour, but a speed limit would be appropriate, I think. Just, you know, throughout the mall, in my senses, it's probably in Roger that would know better than I would, but it's probably more like 25 to 15 or something like that. That changes anything, but at least you need to set the parameters, you know? So I think we're looking for a little more detail in a number of us. Obviously, I'm concerned here. It's between you guys, but it realizes it's off the parcel, but as you point out in the application, it really is no parcel. No, no, we agree. We're not.  I can revise that initially revised or corrected traffic study. And one thing, and just really off this top a little bit, you mentioned a traffic study down on Fisher Road here hasn't been done in 10 years. Do you know, can the town request that of V-trans? Is there cost to that? Is there cost to that? Absolutely, no, there's no cost. V-trans, I surprised myself that hasn't been counted down. He says he was in that for 10 years. It's less than 10 years. You didn't get the cold study? I did. He said there was no traffic. Yeah, I understand what he said, but the study is only four years old. It's been upgraded, but I think you're also maybe mistaken. I believe it's specifically requested from the 7-Wall Regional Planning Commission, traffic counts of that intersection much more recently than that. There's nothing wrong with the state's database, their online database. Did you check with the Regional Planning Commission or not? Not regional planning, no. Um, what did you have? Okay, so pedestrian crossing, speed limits, stop signs, pedestrian signs, and the only other thing I had is and if you look at our criteria, we really talked about the connectivity and while this is a long ways away from your project, if we were anticipating pedestrian traffic at all from here to the hospital, I have a real problem with not having a sidewalk, the remainder of the way, which is along the other end, the north end of the mall road. Um, and I didn't know if the mall has given any consideration to turning that pathway into a sidewalk. I, there actually are some, I'm going internal discussions about that and where we've reached out to the hospital as well. Because I think that needs to, we need to turn that into a sidewalk. That's my personal opinion. Any other questions? Yes. Have we got covered B? I still have, I used to save the site plan. I did want some detail. You mentioned curb. Yes. I didn't see curb on the site plan. Are you curbing the entrance road on the west of the side? Is that what you're doing? We have, we have curb that extends from the, from the intersection back along Berlin mall road to our first access. Just to the first access? Yes. From that point on, the furthest access. So we're going all the way across the front of our property. Closer to 62. So we have a curb on that one side and that helps protect that sidewalk and then it helps all the way up to here? Yes. And so we, we bump the curb out. That's how we protect the parking. You can see there's existing pavement line and we're taking a curb out to protect that first parking lot, first parking space from turning traffic. Then that curb runs all the way back down to the entrance that's closest to to route 62 so that we're we create a nicer streetscape there. And that's where I noticed, you know, we've got the extension of the drive center here without knowing where that is. I agree. Does that work, you know? Yeah. Then the sidewalk itself is curbed or do you want to have a grassed area between the sidewalk and the curb? There's going to be a small grass there about three feet between the sidewalk and the curb. So we try to, we like to keep it off the curb. It just makes people nervous when they walk that close to the curb. I agree. It's better to design not to have it on the curb. We could go, you know, we may end up shifting it to five feet just because our experience is sometimes hard to keep. Well, it's hard to keep a three foot grass strip too.  So a five foot strip in our experience is a little bit easier to maintain and it looks a little bit better. And we have, we have quite a bit of space there, you know, with the treescape that we have throughout the front. Any thought to the pavement on the Berlin Mall Road entrance up to this point being repaved? That falls back under an earlier topic. That was discussed. I mean, we'll be paving a narrow strip right where the new curb goes in, but we're not planning on repaving the mall road. Thought we had a question from the electricity parties. Yes. I think I can shed a lot of light on a lot of this. Number one, the original land use permit foresaw this. Okay. I don't know if any of you are aware of that. And the original application in the very beginning of the mall required an access to paint turnpike, a westerly exit from the mall. So that was referred to, so they approved it on phase one, but any outbuilding or any changes going forward was going to require a phase two. And according to the original land use, phase two was to be this, the land for phase two has been maintained and preserved and is still in existence. And it it was required, first of all to answer your first question, 500 feet of the mall road is supposed to currently belong to the city of the town of Berlin, according to again, could have been amended going forward, but in the original room shortly after construction it was to be conveyed to the town of Berlin out of 693 feet. So technically the town of Berlin is supposed to according to the original world and that now. But phase two was very well discussed in this whole thing. There was an original permit and I have the numbers here. But then they decided that they wanted to apply for access to route 62, which created a lot of controversy. There was wetlands, there's traffic studies done, but going forward this many years later this is what they predicted and that 62 would eventually start becoming way over tax for its original intent and Fisher Road would be way over tax. What we're forgetting about human nature, if you're coming out of that senior center and you're going to the hospital for doctors, appointments, whatever, you're immediately, human nature is going to take it right through the front of the mall. Nobody's going to go out two traffic lights back and around traffic light for the mall when they can go right through the mall. The only answer to that and I brought this up when Walmart expanded was the potential of eventually making that road in front of the mall one way and then the circumstance one way as well. It's very traffic of a circle. That's neither here nor there. The main thing is that the original wetlands, I'm sorry, the original land use permit dictated that going forward another road would be at it. Out to Ping Turnpike or Westerlia, Texas. And I don't know if anybody's looked at whether that's been amended out over the years. I don't think it was because I looked into it back when I looked into it back then. And the reason I said that is that Westerlia route literally is adjacent to my property and that's how it impacts me. But there is, there is a lot of discussion about it. But the Westerlia route's not a part of this application. Pardon? The Westerlia route is not a part of this application. No, but it's a requirement on the land. Yes. Which must have been amended because it's not here. It's not I don't think anybody's aware of that. There's a reason it's not here. Yeah. I've gone back and looked at all those. I'm pretty sure you're right. That is. That may have been amended. Right. So it's no longer a requirement. It's no longer a requirement. But we don't know for sure if it has that. No, we don't. Right. Which leaves me up there. Will I suddenly have a road going by my property or will I not? So. The big thing that's going to keep that from other happening is that there's significant state significant wetlands that sit to the rear of this project. Right. Where is he talking about? He's talking about. The 15 acres strip place out here to Payton Turnpike. Right. I can tell you if we have to build that road there's no way we're building this building. I can tell you that right now. There's also other people that have other issues and how much. I can tell you we won't be here. I know. Because I already, whether it's a requirement or whether you want to, that's my question. People have to be looked into. Well, what I'm telling you, if they came back through our I-250 and said you had to build this road I'd say we're not building this road. Right. I'm sorry. What? No. You don't have to worry about it. No. I'm saying that the I-250 said that we had to build that road there's no way we're building this building because we don't want to worry about it. Can I stop discussing this? From where I sit, it's really not relevant to what it's important, but I don't think it's relevant to this criteria. The bill is proposing that access at this point in time and what's uncertain is whether or not it's still a requirement. Right. That's the question. Yeah. And you don't believe it is and you heard the applicants say if it is, it won't be with this one. Well, and nobody's going to be more opposed to somebody coming in with an idea to do that road than the state. Right. Because of the wetlands delineations that have happened subsequent to the original permit back in the early 1980s. The whole weather rules have changed. Exactly. Exactly. So, I should point out that I'm Chair of the District 5 and assuming that this comes for active approval for a permit, I will accuse myself from that because I can't participate both in this and in that at the same time. So, I'll put that on the record. Thank you, George. It's good to keep well with you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, going on to where you're going before, which is the parking the next criteria is in fact criteria B which is advocacy of circulation parking and loading facilities. And there's a few that are not mentioned in a heading which you did not address which we'll go to in a minute here. But I think the first one here is parking. You've provided how many spaces of parking? We have 76 underground parking spaces. We have 20 spaces in the front parking lot. We have 16 spaces that's on the Walmart side. So, we are we are essentially way over park. We have the underground parking. It's convenient. We like it. We have all that space so we fit 76 spaces. However, you know, that might be employees. There'll certainly be some of the residents that have cars. We expect that most of the time there'll be plenty of parking spaces the 20 spaces in the front are primarily for guests, visitors. You know, you have a family that's in the facility you come with the drop off space certainly we expect the front will probably be used for small delivery trucks UPS trucks, you know, flower trucks something like that coming going we'll pull up underneath the canopy and load and unload because we just don't expect to see much traffic through the front. The 16 spaces on the side we added our thought was likely to be primarily employee parking in that side to be honest those 16 spaces if we have concerns about the relationship with the garden center those spaces could probably go away. I believe your regulations for this type of facility ask for one space for every two beds. So we have 99 beds so I think technically we could probably get away with roughly about 50 parking spaces and meet the requirements. We think 50 is probably a little short obviously Brad has a lot of experience operating similar facilities. That's where I was going to go I was going to ask what basis are you using for coming up with a parking in other words our bylaws do not address this kind of facility so even though the two beds really doesn't fall there there's been near experience we do have employees so you need to add the employee parking in and you do have a number of senior residents which are independent living and will probably have a vehicle we do my guess. In our history the independent living folks will most likely have one vehicle the assisted care folks typically will not have a vehicle that would rely on our service vehicle that we provide. It's less expensive and less hassle for them to provide that way and the obvious with the memory care they don't have a vehicle so I think as Paul states we're a little over parked here and I'm in agreement that if we were to lose some it would be those ones next to the Walmart garden center for the employees I mean we really like I said earlier we might have 20-25 on staff but they're not all there at the same time it's really going to be 5, 6, 7, 8 people at any one specific time so that's kind of the rationale of how we do the parking I mean you see a lot of these facilities with no underground parking we've been building these facilities for 20 years and we just know the dollars and cents make sense for us to just provide underground parking you're putting your foundation image deeper it's less impact on the site generally when you look at stormwater so it's for us it's an effective cost-effective way to provide parking but it gives us a ton of it Don't misunderstand what I'm saying is demanding more parking I just want to know what your basis was I'm trying to walk through that where we came from there's an outstanding discussion here in Berlin where we we've got much parking space but if this wasn't striped as parking is it being used as parking now? no it's not striped as parking go there any day and there'll be cars parked there people using the garden center will pull up and park there while they're very close but again you're concerned over the truck traffic it's there now well but they're parking along the side if you've driven here currently the way it sits for the amount of existing pavement there really isn't you have to drive through one way turn around here and go back they're parking half on the road half in the dip they're parking parallel they're parking this again what I'm saying if you don't stripe it for this the parallel parking may continue but you'll still have the functionality of the trucks getting in and out right? the trucks getting in and out are happening now yeah could also mark it as not parking yeah I mean there'd be a curb presumably there isn't now we've made a point here we need to see this clarified for us we're not happy with what we've got there now I think I heard you say that this is actually off of the existing pavement those parking spaces but there's nothing on the drawing that shows me that actually yes the shaded part is the new pavement you can see where the stripe goes so the shaded part would be the new asphalt a portion of the parking spaces would extend on to the existing edge of pavement so it's shown pretty clearly there but we'll we'll look at it we're going to add the we'll add the garden use my inclination is by the time we add the garden use and we consider two-way truck traffic back there that we will likely come back and eliminate those 16 parking spaces we're comfortable that we don't need them for our facility obviously if you got into you know one day a year maybe it's Easter or something that's a big day to go visit we need to keep in mind that we have the entire mall parking lot available for folks if we needed a little parking you know which is it doesn't make any sense to build one the maximum yeah one day is worth the parking out there considering how much we have for spaces right next door I think this board will all agree to that and I think if we come back with an improved pedestrian access plan to the mall that will make it easier for folks who are parking in that mall parking lot to get access to the facility one other question in a different area the front drive through you know the area where you have some additional parking there are you planning to make that one way or two way that's why not the two way okay well I understand just why I was thinking of my mother when she was at one of these facilities and it was very common for people to you know you have a covered area to sort of stop under the covered area and the person with the walker so you know just my natural inclination is you know to encourage one way then because that's the complete connection between it's a narrow passage between all the parking we have a hundred bed facility in Essex that's two way it does not have a covered area but it works very well with a two way process I prefer to keep it two way just to have that it does a nice thing and give people the ability we also have a concierge person that's going to be located right here so if there's someone hanging out and Miss Jones can't get out with her walker that's for them to say alright it's no different in hotels too when you see the same thing it's a totally valid point I had the same question about one way or two way particularly with respect to this exit right here one the area that comes out closest to Luke 62 because it is on a corner there I was just trying to figure out whether it's easy whether it's you're going to create any problems going in and out of there we're on the corner in your narrative you say you have sight distance there what is the sight distance at that Roger looked at the sight distance look you assume you assume the 30 mile an hour speed limit correct the 135 is the actual standard 335 feet we look at that and we believe that there will be presently there are some grading issues there's a burn a lot of that's going away but if both accesses there will be 335 feet of sight distance how are you doing deliveries like garbage and other deliveries here if you need to get trucks in and out bring food in they're all coming through the front entrance you can't drive a truck into the underground can you? no we're going to expect that most deliveries will come up through the front and the kitchen area's facilities are in the back and right in the center I was trying to figure out is this little low that sticks out there's a one story portion and that's how the commercial kitchen is so they can vent straight up through the roof that's where the kitchen is and that one commercial kitchen will call the area three separate dining areas okay and then if you look at the underground parking garage you have here which I think is a great idea to put parking underneath the building I don't see any stairwell on the north end you got one on the west end you don't have one on the north end I don't know if that's... it looks like if you go to one story up there's some place there is a stairwell there needs to be a stair in that plan it's actually where you've circled right because otherwise it's pretty long distance to get to the stairwell and where are the mechanicals for the building? where's the heating system somewhere? no I think what we've been doing lately it mostly ends up on the roof but it's so early in the design we really have a final design but what we've been doing lately are wide broad temperature range heat pumps one for each unit it's a mixture of one bedroom and studio unit so every unit has its own heat pump conditioning head and because it's the most efficient system we've found we do need to provide both air and heat with an elderly population so that's the most efficient way to get both of those done you have to control that heat pump it doesn't take much for a line so basically if you talk to the mechanical contractor they like the heat pump they don't have to run all the ducting through the building essentially you just need enough of a duct space and an electrical wire and those two small refrigerant lines back up to your heat pump on the top seems like all the larger buildings we're doing now is you get the mechanical guy in and they're all saying oh no we don't do those big common heat systems they're all individual heat pumps and so on if there's a majority unit the systems are expensive we're having trouble making projects that's allowed these days so lower cost up front but the big thing is the addition of air conditioning to have air conditioning as a regular built-in feature as opposed to lots of times we do a big hot water heat system and then put it through the wall air conditioner or something like that that's an inadequate solution in today's world there's better sear rainings on equipment that's available and open a hole through your building to put in air conditioning so we end up with condensers up on the roof they're about suitcase size I grabbed it on the project architect so that's my name on the architectural device and the heat pump will maintain heat even in some of our colder days the newest ones are good down to like if you get the right brand they're good down to like 20 well we typically will still do a backup baseboard hot water system somewhere or sometimes they're using actually a simple electric resistant heat for backup too that's fairly efficient but I just bought one of those heat pumps from my house and they said it was rated for 90% of the heat output at minus 13 degrees they get below minus 13 I'm not sure what happens but it's good for 90% to minus 13 I guess I put a couple extra posts on after that we did an Acura 50 compliant project in Waterbury on Blush Hill it's a kind of green look at apartments you see as you go through Waterbury Center and they have those in the Acura 50 slash Efficiency Vermont you know working with all the various constituencies they were okay with an electric resistance heat as a backup unit because we calculated my kick out maybe five or six days a year so I think generally we're heading towards a more electric based solutions because we have more options on the production end for green energy but yeah we will have some fairly big equipment to make hot water for baths and stuff like that and we'll probably have those kind of spread around the building rather than have a big distribution and somebody already started this conversation I don't think we've got an answer refuse storage we typically have done dumpsters in the basement area with a trash that seems to work well we can roll out or pick up so I don't need to be added to the garage plan unless we have another site area for trash that's where I always kind of envision it it's pretty tight you don't have a lot of extra room no, not in the site other questions on criteria being loading delivery before you move the trash that's sort of my experience a little like we're rolling out front load containers you're saying like one yard dumpsters and how often there's to be serviced and our existing facilities they come through twice a week yeah every bit of that yeah 99 yeah every bit of that that's what we're doing now so what you're saying is reference storage will in all probability be in the basement it will but Paul and I haven't talked too much about it about where to put it if the 16 parking spaces go away on the Walmart side we'll probably look to see if the space there to get a regular dumpster truck can come up front load we didn't close it the top thing too is you've got to get it it seems awkward to have to wheel it out but on the other hand when you first generate it you've got to wheel it out if you put the dumpster outside the building it all ends up going down the elevator or something to the basement and then someone's got to wheel it out so you've got to wheel it out at one time or another so the question is do you wheel it out on an incremental basis to fill the dumpster or do you just wheel out a whole series of containers but you're not pushing a 2, 3, 4 yard full of trash no you're pushing a small little trash can you might have 20 of them that's a lot better on our next criteria is criteria C which is bicycle pedestrian access I think we've already talked about the pedestrian access is part of criteria A a a sort of additional comments you need to make on pedestrian so bike rack we're going to get there in a second no we will add a bike rack to the plan I don't believe we'll show one I don't think Mike showed one on his landscape plan here so we should certainly have a bike rack in the front of the building yeah no question other questions on bicycle pedestrian access adequacy of landscaping you say you have a landscaping plan I think you showed that started by showing us that so Mike Lawrence who is a registered landscape architect prepared the plan for us actually Mike had a lot of input into the the courtyard layout too like a couple similar facilities in the original we just had you know people are patios here on both sides and Mike pointed out that particularly in the memory care you shouldn't have dead ends memory care folks go out and they go foot walk and when they hit a dead end it creates a little bit of confusion so Mike came back and reworked this I've been all the time so that sidewalk is a loop so it made some changes made the loop it made a few changes on this patio area too to allow some quieter parketed places that people could sit but landscape plan has a series of talks about the different foundations and different plans and then it tries to create a streetscape along this side of the Berlin mall road you have to plant shade tolerant trees on the north side of the building as long as we can be in the shade for a good deal of time on the north side north side where these patios are and Mike's given a wide variety of plants and our experience is usually when we would contract with a local firm to provide the plants and typically they provide some pretty good expertise as to which plants tend to survive best in the area it also helps that we usually make the supplier guarantee the plants for a period of three years so they tend to be a little bit more inclined to picking plants that tend to survive well in our climate so there's a lot of plants listed certainly we're not saying that we're going to provide all those species but it gives you a menu for someone looking after what to choose from so would you be amenable to a permit condition that there's a three year yes we would a three year guarantee on the plants of course the permit will require you to make any plant forever we have a lot of history in this town with things getting planted and then being dead about four or five years later never looking any different better than being cut down we had a project recently where we planted a dozen Austrian pines, beautiful pines all about six or eight feet and then one December they all disappeared that was an expense of less those fraternity boys I'd never be dead and then you need to add Todd's operation 24-7 yes I'm interested in your setbacks I understand this is not a lot but it is a lot you keep talking about lines but we don't talk about lines right you've indicated there's a front yard set back of 50 feet which I couldn't find yeah I'll say 50 feet this is in the in the application 36 feet oh 36 yeah I did find actually 52 feet it's not 36 but also left side and right side and rear are not applicable and I'm thinking to myself there's got to be some applicability here and don't it's not a subdivided lot right it's going to end up having to be a subdivided lot I mean this is subject to separate legal agreements separate financing etc by the time we go through 10 feet your process and the state's process it will be a separate legal parcel here so the district calls for 10 feet on those I don't think it's onerous I think looking at your drawing but you don't mention it and I just wonder if you actually looked at it would you have a setbacks on the lot lines and my sense is the lot lines can probably be moved to validate the project yeah I mean it really isn't a lot line you show out parcels but there's no there's no dimensions but essentially you're saying it will be subdivided so it will have to you will have to have you'll have to meet the setbacks so the question is can you meet the setbacks with what your layout is I think you can but I think we made a mistake yeah we'll have to take a look because there's some flexibility there's some flexibility although you're running into there's not flexibility in certain directions because you're running into other people who have other legal rights already the only place I see you having a problem with the lines as portrayed and the building as portrayed is that corner right here and that's where there's the most flexibility basically there's just an extra strip of land on that side of the entry road that's not part of anything effectively right now so that would be that would be one that could be adjusted easily I guess we need to have with certainty stated on what the setbacks are going to be from whatever lines you guys are going to do so that's not applicable it's not a good answer well they also have to come back for subdivision right their site plan review but not a subdivision so you really will be sub-dividing it and our new regulations would have it as 10 feet on the site as well so so point of clarification something we would want you to consider and part of this discussion would be the clearly the Berlin mall road is a road but the loading dock drive going back to the back of Walmart is that also a road requiring 50 feet or can we treat that as a side yard because I envision that as a side yard it's not a it's not a town road it's either face or top nose so you're saying it's a 10 foot setback on all sides but not the front I would look at it as the front being namely and the setback of the front is only 15 feet so I mean in our by-law am I correct currently what would we change it to 25 you want to change that in the town's out we can still but no they don't have a problem I think that was where you mentioned 36 right I don't know why we we're okay with it it just needs to be finalized in terms of thinking and needs to be correctly noted on the application whether it's going to be my opinion the same thing on here you also say the height of the building is 60 feet and current zoning limits you to 45 feet it doesn't it measures 43 feet 43 and a half feet from every side I looked at except for the entrance to the garage right at the entrance to the garage is 60 feet that's the best car down in the ground that's how I look at it we've been doing underground parking for a long time now and that's always kind of the rub is you want to talk about parking underneath there exposed and foundation we'll do a good job of making that disappear but there's again the application says 60 and that would be there would not satisfy our zoning ordinance is the zoning ordinance 45 or was it 60 what we're talking about 45 45 is going to be 40 and proposed is 43 change we're going to zoning changes which are already been worn by the planning commission and they're probably going to be worn by the site board when so here's why we were having conversation early about which which bylaws we're going to apply here 60 that's we have our plan on the height 60 feet we're operating right now to the current bylaw which is 45 which is okay you mean to require any when the application should say it's a 43 and a half foot high structure is the highest point without scanning the cooling units so that'll be revised then yes okay I'm reminded that the next criteria is exterior lighting yes was a lighting plan yeah so they you're in submitting this as part of the record yeah so we're proposing all LED fixtures sure we have 24 tall poles the fixtures are mounted on two of those in the front parking lot again the poles would face towards the building we have one at the entrance to the parking garage because as your nighttime you're looking for that parking garage entrance it's always nice to have a light there that kind of defines where you can find them another light closer to the Walmart entrance to that corner and there'd be a small light over the top of the parking garage entrance how can you tell where the poles are there's a little symbol on the poles I'm going to point it on here Paul and his map so we have a pole here a pole here there'll be a pole here and here and then on the parking garage it's just a wall mounted 12 foot tall just over the top of the door where it comes in we expect there'll be some some recess fixture there'll be under the drive up that aren't shown on our lighting plan so I'm seeing four lights yeah four pole lights four poles and then lighting on the building yeah you indicated there'll be also some other lighting obviously those patios are going to be lit yes there'll be some other lighting on the patios on the entryway this area over here you need lighting over here if people are walking back and forth on the sidewalk they have lighting here there's a couple of existing lights along the Berlin mall road that we'll add on there and show what light that they put on that might fill in that one gap that you're looking at there's street lighting out there now too that shows up on the author photo plan but we didn't include it on our oh they're definitely this there because there's a banner pole there so we'll add that to our lighting plan and show how that changes it any consideration for the renewable energy sources on this project we're moving on to my category it is yes you've done solar hot water a bunch of your other facilities right Brad? we've done we did solar hot water on one on hox meadow but we've just completed our fourth array on our existing buildings there's a roof top the building has a flat roof bottom and you are the building faces to the south so you have a good exposure what the trees are like on the other side of the road we've used sun common for all of our solar projects we haven't had them look at this yet but I can tell you the ones that we have now I was just at that facility today taking a photo they're really low profile yeah they're all ballast down I just created a new rocking system I mentioned I'm not sitting on the act 250 but this would be a subject that will come up at the act 250 yeah that's like what we've done I just sent this phone to you today on our projects but that's under consideration I'm not involved in that hearing I can say any one now I'm not involved in it any other questions on the lighting so you're going to revise that lighting plan and add that light that's the existing street light that we're going to demonstrate that you've got attic with lighting along the sidewalk there in both entrances are there only two I'm just going to ask about that are there only two doors and then the patio doors how many to the building how many entrances and Veronica there's everybody collects to the central lobby area there's an exit at the end of each way and then there's the main entrance here there's secondary entrances going from the dining areas out to the patios and there's I think there's a service door going from the kitchen out to the patio as well can you and he's got the appropriate sidewalks picked up what would you anticipate for lighting at those secondary entrances along the patio uh they would probably be probably like a one by one LED those thin panels you know up underneath the ceilings because we'll have cover of the doors we usually pocket the door into that exit so there's cover over the door itself there's going to be a a bigger array of LEDs in the canopy of the porch to share that's underneath yeah they'll be recessed or flush mounted how do those turn on and off uh you can you can do it by photo photo sensor or you can do it by a time clock because the building has 24 hour presence there's always somebody at the front that's right I think it'll probably just be on a photo cell all these all these minor entrances as well on a photo cell I don't see why not makes sense you don't normally like the patio space other than that the entry and exit doors no you want to put some like Christmas tree lights out there or something but not like an official door light if you're talking and then the exit doors we can show those I think that's what they're looking for exit doors, standard lights it's important to us that we identify what light you intend to have and obviously that it complies with the bylaws which in fact is imposing a downcast or a chill in that spirit of the key okay we're hoping you would suggest spotlights out there by the patios have you guys talked to the airport at all about lighting building heights you may want to find their flight path you want to talk to those folks over there and get their input I don't think we're high enough to trigger anything but we'll go back to that hopefully it's going to see on phone it's better to know now right indeed it just might be but I doubt it but you read across the other side that 62 you've got significant higher structures yes the we're done with lights maybe you explain how that all works you're following everything underground right and then it's going someplace yes so essentially where we collect all the the payment services we collect the roof runoff and that's all piped into one of four collection systems so we is there a plan that there's a storm water plan over there there's just a utility plan we didn't provide you with all the storm water details yes that's a storm water plan but they're not all the details I see so essentially what happens is we have two systems we have a sand filter system that provides the treatment portion of the plan we're required to treat up to essentially a one inch rainfall what they call a water quality storm so that system is kind of like a glorified septic system water is collected it's piped those areas it filters down through 24 inch thick sand bed and then it's collected by an underground pipe and it discharges out to the remainder of the storm water system and eventually discharges on the backside towards Walmart where there's an existing discharge the second part of the system built over the top of it is the storage portion of it so we need to in this case because of the the amount of impervious area with them all we need to treat we need to contain up to the 100 year storm so we need enough underground detention system so that during the 100 year storm we don't discharge at any higher rate than what the property does today so on top of the sand filter systems we have a number of underground storage chambers what they call storm tech ADS storage chambers so we have a combination of systems the sand filter we hope will meet the water quality requirement that the state has and then storm pick chambers for our storage so at the end of the day the discharge from the site shouldn't be any greater than what the discharge is today fairly heavy soils out there so not possible to put an infiltration system in and take care of our treatment that way we don't have the required three foot separation to seasonal high ground on a table that that requires so going with the sand filter system you have not submitted this to the state yet? no we have not we've had discussions with the state on the design to make sure that we were headed in the right direction is this a common way of handling this stormwater issues or is this the stormwater chambers we do on a regular basis is very common the sand filter system is not that common to be honest with you it's more expensive than trying to use a detention pond or a bioswale but essentially we don't have the elevation we need to make some of those systems work nor do we have the space on the site so it's a relatively expensive system but it fits the space that we have part of that stormwater permit the state will include the maintenance of these structures as well can you talk about the maintenance is that a sense? well the maintenance essentially need to be inspected twice a year the catch basins will need to be cleaned on a regular basis to prevent sediment most of our surface area as you look at it is the roof two thirds of our area is the roof typically you get relatively clean water off of the roof that comes in there the business for maintenance wise is the sand filter at some point in time that sand filter is going to get clogged and it's going to have to be replaced and essentially the owner is aware that means that when it needs to be replaced he's going to have to excavate that portion of the pavement and then put it back but we're hoping that we're more like a 10 to 20 year life cycle on the sand filters before we need to replace them does something like that affect the residents from a water usage standpoint the replacement downtime well essentially if we had to go in and say the biggest system is in the front so you would lose access to that at front parking lot for a period of a couple weeks while oh that's sorry so we're all in storm water so it's really just mostly an inconvenience that people come in going same thing with the places over patio areas obviously if you've got to come in and replace it you're going to lose the use of that patio for probably a two to three week period by the time they replace it and put it back no flat back flushing system or anything like that no back flushing the roof runoff that will need to be built before it yeah we've got to collect it and it's just and it does need to be treated now it used to be that you could just collect it and store it but now they look for it to be treated that's a relatively new change in the current rules we used to be able to just collect it store it and pipe it off separately but now you've actually got to treat it the first flush you've only got to treat the first inch of rain you don't have to treat all of it but that goes for the parking surfaces and the sidewalk surfaces etc we have some control mechanism that after an inch of rain falls there's an outlet structure on each of the three systems and the outlet structure it's just an elevation thing so it fills up that first flush that first inch of rain when calculated fills up completely and it won't go out it fills up so that first rain goes up to the outlet pipe it doesn't go out now you've got this under drain underneath it so it doesn't stay there it slowly percolates down through the sand the pipe on the bottom picks it up once it works down through the sand and then that puts it back into your storm water system there is some runoff from this site now which enters the wetland area and that's soon going to continue in the future I see at least one catch basin that's just simply discharging down the bank yes but some of those catch basins that discharge are current catch basins that go down like the one at the intersection and actually our underground parking garage we don't collect much water on the ramp that comes down there but that actually has to be pumped because we don't have the grade to discharge it without going out into the wetland and needing a permit so it's a small area a storm water pump that collects that water at the bottom of the ramp and then pumps it back up into the system to be treated before it goes back out so we really like to avoid pumps but in this case we just don't have the elevation so we've limited the area that we have to pump if you don't pump that you can have a lot of cars in the water well surprising you know slabs a lot of times you think about do we need to drain the underground parking lot and some people do most people don't and even a car will drive in and maybe it's got a couple inches of snow on it it drives in the underground parking garage but essentially it melts pretty quick and that concrete slab just absorbs it all you would think that you'd have all these little puddles in there but you don't so next time you're in an underground garage look around you'd be surprised how many don't have floor drains or anything to collect it we will have a spot at the end to collect it but we don't expect to put drains in the remainder of the garage so our permit will be conditioned upon you're getting state approval and we'll obviously receive a copy of that permit but obviously our permit will be conditioned on you're receiving that approval which is tied into the whole mall system storm water approval process which is certainly a compliment utilization of renewable energy resources not proposing anything at this time but you said you might do the future that's the way that criteria is written it's to interfere with anybody else's ability to I don't believe we do or are you doing something that would impair your ability to do something and it's your testimony in fact that you'd like to do that and you have in other locations yes visible services impact evaluation do we have any comments from our visible service I received a chief wolf he wanted to see the traffic issue I gave him copy of that he seemed okay with it highway it's not town highway state highway gave us a letter I circulated to you guys earlier saying that no I needed on that I did not receive anything from the fire this sprinkler can be sprinkled so I didn't expect anything from that and you'll need to get your approval from labor and industry yes any other comments like application and so we do have a rendering of what the buildings kind of look like that we would like to show we saw flashes of but we have we do have one I was going to call it exactly so this is the front you can see the pork that people can pull up through and this would be the Berlin mall road in the foreground this is the entryway and this would be the north and the south wings on the building but you know balconies on some of the units a fair amount of elevation changes as you look at it in and out not just one big flat plane but a lot of different surfaces broken up by different color streams as you go through not saying that these are going to be the exact pallet of colors that's going to end up going to be expected to be somewhat similar the plans kept talking about the architect choosing the colors right you like some you can see the sidewalk in front and the curb you can kind of see the new street trees trying to start to create that you know streetscape element along the front you would see heat pumps on top though probably going to go down or they wouldn't be visible usually set back enough from the edge I don't think you'd see it the parapet would come up a little bit by the roof to the whole screen well I was just thinking about the stormwater and the roof like is there a way to do green roof there's a way to do it it's a it's expensive it's expensive and it's difficult to do you know you obviously have the water issue you're worried about the plants on top and then it's heavy so you have structural concerns on top of the roof so it's and I guess it competes with solar anyway does the peak with the solar yeah it just typically doesn't work out from a cost standpoint I just thought with the difficulty with the sand thing interesting it's trying to figure out how to replace the sand well also I was thinking about like gardening you know a rooftop kind of garden kind of activity is where I started and then I kind of wondered about the stormwater but because it's a somewhat idle question it's probably not that related but I'm curious I know that a lot of these kinds of facilities tend to have something like a walking trail or something like that are you maybe foreseeing that and the plants with them all there are two things there one there's some trails on the school's 10 acre site which we've had some preliminary discussions with the school about that 10 acre site we've had meetings over the last two years with the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps we've got a five, six acre we don't have a big enough piece here but piece of the mall property that fronts 62 yes so outlaw D is one another one of these outlaws A and C are here this can't be built on under the original act and a bunch of it is wetlands but some of it isn't and so we've been talking with the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps we've sort of delayed it until one of these projects that we were talking about we're talking to move forward but our wonder plan is to develop a walking trail there ultimately what we'd like to do is work with the hospital and other landowners in this vicinity the creek that's behind the mall and that set of wetlands is to develop a bigger recreation trail that the major employers and so on would be able to tie into and what we're talking about would be part of that so the only thing that obviously we control by ourselves is this and that and that is something we're looking to try to do I think we have some things we need to flesh out here so I think we need to retain any emotion to resist to a future date so that you can come back to us and flesh out lighting minor wrinkle there more importantly I think pedestrian access that area between Walmart and need to be ironed out reference to speed limit signs and the other signs are appropriate and show them on the drawings also so we have a better sense I think minutes will show what we discussed but I hope you've been taking notes also I have so my question for you before we hear a motion is how there's still some outstanding application fees that I hope part of your motion is that when they come back those application fees are paid that's usually the zoning administrator problem I know I'm not putting that on you so we talked about those points if there's any question about that so my question is how long would you need to make the revisions and address all the issues we thought of what's your reading schedule? first and third I would say in a month Josh is not here at the next scheduled meeting so I would say I think it's the first Tuesday and February would be adequate time for us to address your concerns and get it back to you Tom so you have a chance to look at it we need time to to review it I won't be back until February 4th I think it's the 5th one question I have shouldn't the subdivision application be getting processed with this I think it would be simplifying the matters that would need to be warned though because it wasn't warned initially so timing was once we get Tom back Tom if we were to warn subdivision at the same time would we have time to warn that for the meeting on the 5th so it's your subdivision a one step process or is it two? it's a brand new process so I don't know that answer would it be under the dew? remember it's been warned so we have to go by both sets right now well this building today was not being moved but the subdivision hasn't been there but the subdivision would have to be warned so we have to do some of the new bylaws and then the old bylaws I think there's a sketch plan review that I can do and it comes with these guys so I think they have one we need to do but I have to and very frankly if it's straightforward we have Tom has judicially rolled the sketch plan review preliminary plan review and final plan review just you're gambling a little bit that we don't have a question or somebody should give them up but nonetheless you can be warned that way and if you move that way try to not make it worse so the 5th we're for you Josh so I suppose the chair can make the motion I make the motion that we recess this until the 5th of February and we don't have to give them opportunity to make the necessary divisions which we discussed here tonight including application fees and applying for a subdivision in currently second can I speak here? yeah you can maybe they can't do the subdivision so I don't know I don't think that needs to be part of your motion the subdivision piece I mean it's a separate application I don't think you can make that part of your motion you're not dictating that they do there's something no you're actually right and I think that may require more time but to do this permit my guess is that it will not be conditioned upon getting the subdivision approval so it will be tied in one way or the other I was trying to eliminate one I get it I might like that so yeah I would draw that part of my motion okay well I'll second your amended motion discussion of the motion all those who pay for that motion please see if I have a saying aye aye opposed thank you very much


Is it just me, or is there a distinct lack of great staple Halloween holiday movies? I mean, okay, sure. We have stuff like Hocus Pocus or the creepy cacophony of horror movies like The Exorcist or The Conjuring to watch while hiding under our blankets and stuffing our faces with candy. I mean, grapes and other healthy snacks. But what's the spooktober equivalent of a Christmas carol or it's a wonderful life? Cue the Pumpkin King. But even then it's like, this is more of a November movie, isn't it? What with it being like a smash-up betwixt Halloween and Christmas? Anyways, I'm a sucker for Tim Burton and the music of Danny Elfman, and when you combine it with Christmas cheer and Halloween gothic macabre, you basically get one of the most ambitious crossovers since I mixed my orange juice and apple juice that one time. A nightmare before Christmas isn't just a holiday favorite. It's a stop-motion masterpiece filled with spiritual lore and depth that speaks to the Vedic concepts of Dharma, self-love, and coming to terms with your highest and most authentic self. So since COVID is coming in for another way while Biden miraculously came out with a vaccine the day he was elected, let's have a mash-up of our own by mixing last month and next month's holiday into the present moment. Jump into some hidden spirituality. So before we begin, I do gotta say, this movie is a legend and it also came out in 1993. So we're going to skip the summation and jump straight to the hidden meaning. And if you haven't seen it yet, well, you're nearly 30 years late to the party, but here's your obligatory spoiler warning. Now subtly etched into the overall narrative of this film is the Indo-Tibetan concept of Dharma, the wide-ranging belief that every organism has a role to play in a well-ordered cosmos and must play that role and no other, including our duties, rights, laws, conducts, virtues, and right way of living. Over the course of the film, Jack discovers that, as wonderful a thing as Christmas is, it's not his thing. He just isn't good at it. It's not something in accordance with his natural flow, but more importantly, there's an idea that he can't give up who he really is for who he wants to be. He's comforted with the fact that he has to discover the inherent value of who he is instead of trying to be something else just because it's apparently good or better. This may be one of the most powerful truths of this movie. The fact that something is a good thing, whether it's Christmas, a loving nature, or pretty much anything else, doesn't mean that it's the only good thing. Adding to this is the idea that other things, things that strike us as scary or deeply uncomfortable, can be good things too, and this idea is even mirrored in the sets as well. One could argue that Halloween Town and its inhabitants represent the darker or shadow aspects to us, the parts of our being that are seemingly negative and oftentimes scary to us. Conversely, Christmas Town is reminiscent of all of the beneficial parts, and much like Yin and Yang, these two towns act as reflections of each other, helping to balance the world that they're in. And when these holidays interact with our world, we embrace them in their appropriate set and setting. But it's when people expect Christmas and get Halloween that things go haywire. Perhaps if each town represents our own inner natures, there's an idea we can take from this about how when our light side and dark side cross into each other, they can cause us some confusion and chaos. Yet in the end, it's through that interaction that we grow and learn, and these aspects augment their original power and balance. They learn about each other, discover ways to coexist peacefully, with each part of ourselves respecting the other, and their part to play in the whole. The challenge arises when Jack feels he's mastered Halloween Town, his current domain. It's not just boredom he's feeling. If you listen to his lament at the beginning, his sentiment echoes one that I'm sure most of us on a spiritual path have felt at some point. His rendition of, oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones and emptiness begins to grow. There's something out there far from home, a longing that I've never known, is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis' mere Christianity. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another one. What's funny about this is that Jack is basically like a king in his domain. He's got it all. He's the boss of Halloween. But all the acclaim and vindication he gets feels hollow in comparison to his inner search for meaning. Ultimately, his inner knowing that something greater is out there isn't one that material pleasure can satisfy. It's spiritual in nature, something that is seemingly echoed in his little song when he reaches Christmas Town, his own hall of a mentee where he states, and in my bones I feel a warmth that's coming from inside. This empty place inside of me is filling up. When Jack finds Christmas Town, he is fascinated with the innocence and solace of this new world and recognizes that this is what he was called to experience, something that is interestingly reminiscent of many people's first astral travel experiences. But what's so funny about this is that his first approach is to study it scientifically and lock himself away in his tower to find the Christmas feeling inside objects. Much like trying to find a feeling or aspects of consciousness within the brain though, this approach fails. It points to how the mechanistic approach to the psyche has been pretty unsuccessful to explain the phenomena that arises from brain region correlations. Jack sings, but what does it all mean as he's trying to understand an experience, not a thing, and yet ironically he's studying things trying to find meaning. In the end, he ultimately concludes that just because I cannot see it doesn't mean I can't believe it. After Santa is kidnapped, that's when things really start to go downhill, and interestingly Sally, the ragdoll woman who is totally crushing on Jack, actually has a vision that it's all gonna go down horribly wrong. But Jack is so blinded by his lust of new experiences that he completely ignores her. Wait a minute, the dichotomy between action and vision, masculine and feminine, feeling versus action, this whole divine masculine feminine duality thing is really getting easier to spot. So Sally embodies the divine feminine quite well. She's wise, understanding, loving, intuitive, and even seemingly taps into the source field to see a future outcome of things. She loves Jack even before his failed Christmas fiasco, but is largely locked away, symbolically and physically later on by Okie Boogie, and also just often goes ignored, but is a figure who ultimately is a guiding force and can see things from a higher perspective. Yep, she definitely checks all the boxes on how the divine feminine has appeared in this world. Now Jack, her counterpart who embodies the sacred masculine, and maybe a bit of the king archetypes at times, is a leader, has direction, and takes action and initiative. Maybe a bit stubborn, but he takes care of his people and his people help him follow his dreams, no matter how misguided they may be sometimes. And of course, when these two can't work together or largely just ignore one another, the natural order is upset and things descend into chaos. And I mean good proper chaos too.  He's immortal though, so I guess it's no biggie, but very symbolically he lands in the arms of a graveyard angel. This probably signifies his own spiritual death pending rebirth, as his plans failed and he must evolve his consciousness to move forward, as soon after he finally sees his own blindness, coming to the understanding that he is meant to be the pumpkin king, and will carry out that role even better next year. After Jack's failed attempt to do Christmas himself, both towns come to appreciate their differences and the good things each holiday has to offer. Jack's attempt at Christmas were largely directed towards the symbols and visible events of the holiday, but when he got around to pursuing the real deeper meaning of it, his search was utterly clouded by his own selfishness and perspective of trying to incorporate that which he already knew. In a way, it's kind of like religious syncretism. Jack tries to practice Christmas and Halloween at the same time, and in doing so, stays true to neither, showing us the dangers of artificially trying to combine cultures and beliefs without fully understanding them both. Despite the colossal failure of his endeavors, though, Jack still sees the value in having experienced everything, and regrets nothing. He learns the lessons, instead of feeling sorry for himself and dwelling in self-hatred. He is happy he tried to put himself out there and just goes into making things right, even after his mistake, seemingly coming more into alignment with his true self in the process, and eventually finds a renewed love of his role. It's also interesting that our hero is not only flawed, but comes from the seemingly dark side of things. Even though we all love Jack, he is kind of an evil lord type, and yet this approach serves to humanize him and his town, and what they represent, allowing us to understand where the darker characters and attributes are coming from, and see the light and goodness in them as well. It teaches us that darkness also has value in this world, and those who are born playing those darker roles in life are actually fulfilling their role in this life on earth. The Halloween town people are all pretty supportive of each other, they're caring and collaborative, not traits you usually associate with monsters and demons. And then maybe there's a lesson here too that even the darker aspects of ourselves can still ultimately come from a place of love if we acknowledge their purpose and role in our experience. After Oogie is unraveled like a ball of yarn, Santa sets off to make things right, but leaves the residence of Halloween town with a parting gift, making it snow, allowing all of the residents of Halloween town to experience that same joy that Jack felt when experiencing Christmas for the first time, which in a way actually fulfills Jack's original dream of truly understanding Christmas. Now I'm sure there's a part of this that speaks to experiencing things to truly understand them, rather than just being told about them by someone else. As he flies away, Santa yells, Happy Halloween! And Jack replies by shouting, Merry Christmas! Which is pretty funny, but also serves to show that each side has become more balanced and acknowledges the role that each other plays in their world. All in all, A Nightmare Before Christmas doesn't really fit as a Christmas movie in the conventional sense, but it doesn't quite fit as a Halloween one either, which is really what makes it so great. It's a part of both seasons and is itself a very balanced movie, which is so meta I love it. Perhaps what is the most curious lesson in the whole thing is that Jack makes the mistake of thinking that his calling lies somewhere else, rather than where he already is. Yet the longing within him for something more compelled him into his search in the first place and into the discovery of something new. Even though it wasn't meant for him to give, it was meant for him to receive. Though his intentions are good, he misses this critical point and nearly ruins himself and the holiday he has come to love. Yet through his failure, he realizes who he is from a different perspective. Perhaps there's an idea here that sometimes we have to fail in order to discover who we really are, and chances are we often come back stronger and more in alignment with our goals every time we fail. After all, what is failure but an opportunity to begin again, only wiser? So until next time, it still kind of feels like October I guess, but then again, this year has really blended into one long continuous stream at this point, hasn't it? So happy holidays for whatever season you're in when you end up watching this video. Toodles!