guards myself i am going to be resigning the chairmanship of this evening as a function of work pressure and healthy that my mother's spirit thing she has breast cancer and so i'm going to pay some attention to her and help my father while she's in her chemo so to that end i will be resigning the chairmanship and would like to stay on as a member of the commission however to just see the things maybe going to at least see through the village downtown district and re evaluate after that so but yeah so i got another two years very well i think the best idea would be to just run this through and then at the next meeting let everybody know of this and they can come in and make the appointment then so i will see this one receptive to the letter that chris and virginia submitted and that was my general reader storminess to be seeing what they would do to get close to hearing however they didn't come to you decisions to pass it on two things one is i have a letter from josie to me that i will read to you in a minute the other one was conceptually they seem to be pretty much on the same page they're kind of come around to the fact that we can have some residences there and it's not just going to be commercial but that it's ok to have some residences there then you get the feeling that they were kind of ok with it and resigned to the fact that we couldn't make it be commercial just by wanting it to be commercial if there was no commerce to be had so they seem to be coming around to that point of view and you know from my point of view i wanted to get across also in that letter that to make it a readable document there were some wording and organisational things that i would like to see different about even from the document that we submitted because subsequent to that we looked at it again and said there are some things that could be could be better and could have slightly better words not conceptually different but so they said that it was ok if i worked with jess to have that they were confused about the number of inputs that they had at the meeting because they had our document that we gave we had the amendments to the richmond zoning regulations that i think some of them were struggling to make amendments to the document you know to think of as amendments to the document but they were there were other amendments that need to be made to the other part of the zoning regulations to make it all work together and then you know there was the letter that we had that suggested some wording changes to make it less archaic wording so they were agreeable with with us working together to maybe make the wording different you know and change things like not saying if the building is hooked up to town water and sewer or the other that well they all have to be hooked up to town water and sewer so you want to have a line item in there that says you tell it east all the buildings in this district have to be hooked up to town water and sewer and then you don't have to put in stuff about if it is or isn't so stuff like that that i think it will just be easier to use they seemed sort of ok with that that gives us another opportunity to go through what we've done thus far greater detail to make sure we've got it right they didn't approve the right away so we have an opportunity to take those things that were in the letter that we know their approval is but also review the language again to see if there's anything so i know that you know requiring them to have sidewalks yeah but i don't know who put the language and that there's a requirement to have their sidewalks connect to the village sidewalks right well that is in her letter yeah but if it's not whether it's not in the exact exactly and there were some other things that they need to think about as well like the fire department was there and you know question of eagerness windows you know it turns out there's something that's called the a grass window that is an actual thing it has a lot of requirements about it and so that language was going to have to be fixed up and then there was the basement walkout basement question and you know shortly before this document had to go out i had just asked the rest of the commission what about residential  basement floor and what about working on the basement floor because if you make both the ground floor and the st street level be commercial where really back to a five thousand and fifty split between residential  commercial so you all replied nicely and said it was ok that you know you could have if there were windows you could have residential on the ground level a majority of the commissioners so i put that in there  so anyway so we do have another opportunity and you know i think because this is the st zoning district that we've tackled we are just learning kind of how to do it you know and we didn't really have all this language in place before we sent it would have been better if we had all this language in place before we sent our document to the select four but we were kind of working a little bit under pressure you know taking from the existing zoning document but this is our chance to make the language in the existing document easier to use not computing to the d r b you know so everyone understands what it is so it's good to have these multiple opportunities i think to really look at this language and really thinking you know is this how we want to say this and because this is going to make it a lot easier to do the others on the district you know we will now understand what it is that we have to do and to put the time in st rather than putting it out there and then put the dime in afterwards so so i think it was good but i think at least even though the process that we're going through right now is a little clunky back and forth between the slick board they seem to be my perspective happy that we were having the discussion and that it was moving forward and that they may complain that they have two districts before them now but that's essentially what they asked us to do so and they were in a hurry to close on it like they didn't feel the need to vote on it they wanted to take their time conversation that maybe weren't there previously so it is starting that back and forth with and i think the i think the letter that we sent was effective because it was included in their package it was included for everybody  who was at the hearing to to read from it and see the position of the planning commission and what we were proposing and it became the vehicle on which we went through the planning commission's recommendations and we had the opportunity to  give them the walk why we were proposing this which they were receiving before i knew it made a difference i think in the arms of how they viewed the proposal and that we had actually thought about a lot of the stuff right and i think it was really good that we were there said i spoke to jess and heard that you were going to look at some of the edits to the proposal and so therefore i did want to provide input on one element discussed but not definitively agreed on for us the project with building two for us to progress with building two we absolutely will need the option of using the basement walkout for residential units which we had thought was ok if it is required for us to have the street level be commercial we would want the clause that was then parentheses in the letter which read in addition consider the areas of walkout basement with windows large enough for eve grass to be used for residences the few points to consider brandon and the architect are convinced that they can make those basement walk out units appealing so we would argue that the zoning shouldn't restrict but that the market should drive that as long as they are safe e g with the grass windows etc allowing us to build that is residential should be allowed so and that was good that's we support that next point if we are not able to have residential units on the basement level we are back to where we were in september of two thousand and eighteen for building two we would have to find port  thousand square ph it must mean fourteen thousand dollars commercial tenants and obtain signed leases she must mean forty thousand square feet of commercial tenants as we still only have thirty five percent of building one under contract right now this is very unlikely to happen and all your future i understand you included the nonresidential units uses for nonresidential tenant facilities or parking to help provide flexibility yes we didn't do that for that reason jess explained that was meant for like a centralized lounge area gym storage etc i love the creative approach however i'm not sure that will  in income enough and would still leave a huge burden commercial for that building to proceed but with that issue she she doesn't think that you know she's not they're not going to make any money that the select board will consider allowing residential uses in the basement in the places where there are windows so that's ok because we hope that we're ok with that right would there be room for residential units in the basement and yeah because part of the basement doesn't have any windows right so the part of the basement that doesn't have any windows water about guy could be th commercial downstairs but they would all swamp it but we're not going to increase commercial yet which is a little different from what she said at the meeting which is that she said she had interest in both the ground level and the st street level but if they can put half of it into residential with the windows and the few cans of whatever it is that way and the other half in ten services even if they have to charge more that sort of another problem some of the other things that we just needed to work on in terms of language are like what is the definition of a walk out basement what is a basement you know make it cool pro and clear absolutely what these things mean you know what street level exactly needs so these words are going to matter because what's the definition of commercial nonresidential everything that has to do with residents like they are residences or they serve residences to me those are slightly different we might want to distinguish between them and so you could do it that way and everything else is not residential everything that is either commercial which we have defined right now in the zoning as for profit like retail for profit i mean it's pretty specific like it doesn't include government or non profits or so we have to figure out where those things are going to go because i think we agree that you can have love and government office in there right or a nonprofit like the land trust could that go in the st floor i don't know maybe we need to talk more about that something that i was talking to somebody about today was the idea that maybe some of that so many people are working from home people are not going to offices as much as they used to people are not shopping in stores hardly a day passes but what there's a package on my porch for the tenants that order things online if people are working from home when some of the people that live in their residences care to see that issues solved even though it's a technical issue because they can't really do anything with both properties because they both play into each other with the parking permits they everybody would have been would be more comfortable they did that in joe's he indicated that they would do that yeah so there are three parcels not two parters three parcels in the area but two of them are considered one from the densities of the three acres that developed the whole only has a point acres because the density would require that ever so i mean i think we can make that really clear in the zoning just to be sure that it's all really clear that the residential unit have to go with they have to be located on the lot for which we're counting the land for that for those units i didn't say that very well that's  finished the deliberating but it won't and if if we're recommending additional changes they're going to have to have an additional year if there's significant enough or they may want to anyway with a finalized document that would be probably standpoint i think he could be credibly argued that either the st pool or ground level or the basement level would be considered street mean we ought to be saying that this street level is the basement level that's to commercial level and the other three levels are residential then you have any cap there is i don't know how exactly if it's really only that one on the view that is looking at the window you can't get bowling alley or if they reach back into the building and there's no windows on the sides but are they going to be is there enough exposure to have the windows on one side gets you think not really  was against any you know residential space in the basement and so for me the compromise was a lot of residential spaces that how do you risk windows right coming coming out because just missed my day job rage we dealt with mold all the time and they're just not suitable places for people because in the summertime the humidity their cool it's the perfect place for people to grow  the running day here's a picture i agree with you chris the lower something years ago and created a sort of basement a little apartment for myself because i had been considering building a house that actually they have to have some sort of perimeter surface that allows the fresh truck to get here so it just surfaces and was there a question as to whether or not these th floor windows were higher than thirty think many other colleagues on this commission at trouble is we see a nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies downtown so hard w front of the windows on the ground level it's parking in front of the windows has been level that's correct so if you want that to be your business you've got up at the street there in front some of the commercial property is facing art if you look at it you know the the square root that faces name challenge to your ideologues is in order to put the commercial interests or they would they would have in order to put the commercial in the st floor you'd have to make it is easy as possible for the customer to find her and that would be challenging to come around this side to get into this parking lot right here for these commercial enterprises as opposed to just coming in and like oh there's there's  so then this is a green space arche an entrance here to residential and yes there are some commercial operations that would not want to be commercial basements but if they're generally i don't know their their business is that can only afford a basement rec yard and i don't know if that's really what we want to try you know i don't know that the guy w challenge for me as did how do you build in as much flexibility as possible because as we try the latest that we letter of the law we may be you know that we should write off because coles is questionable i mean the burlington mall is it cold looks like newport  beyond three or four of those things professional offices so you have laura you have law offices you'll have financial firms you have accounting offices you have those professional offices where people need to work together in teams right now that would be will face us to the core and that's where the public's going to come from correct but again if if they're coming from the professional services do it are to name the floors or floor or do with the select board was doing which is come up with a percentage as much commercial this much residential we argued against the percentage and argue that rd twenty five percent of the holding for one of the floor mandated it's commercial and the rest of it is up to you you put make it all residential that's fine you have a going to residential commercial are over two years and what i would worry about is that this building was build and we do he misled we demanded that this be commercial th the st floor all had to be commercial everything above that could be residential and the developers developed still the commercial space that a lawful orders and then filled up the residential because they sold out of the residential and there was no built in market for some of those businesses that they're within their to the scriptures spaces and they're mostly retail spaces and then waterworks got really developed after that project because there's people so that so if they build it the commercials going to lag behind the residential but if they're able to fill the residential to just this point if they're not smart developers and they're building it outside of the market and they can't get the people in then they have failed big they're not smart business people and we can't do anything about that but i think if they fill the building chose but we don't want to buy wood on the st floor windows if you can sell it commercial you could sell the residential and i think about the news the university as you probably well know is i'm not positive and i've got the answer so you wait we've waited twenty years for a developer to show up and tackle what is really a tough challenging project absolutely and i don't want to see him go back i don't either and so if you're telling us on a regular basis the banks will not fund you know two because of the restriction for so legislative process and all the sudden as the board the supposed to be the one who's doing the deed thinking different we responded to their call to get us something and we did and we can residential this is the only place on here that they could have four story building but they don't have to make a four story building if they don't want that extra floor or that they can't do anything with yeah building this one building is unique again as it says yeah as it goes down i kind of asked to see about what have you abandoned building two for now and you design a building three that's three stories and you have t floors of presidential money for commercial and then it's not as clear to people out it may be you know gives you time to figure out something different from billing to give time for doing a balding or whatever and she said really they've spent so much money and building so they don't want to go backwards and so our town she's not sure that we haven't done that town's challenge that is to do is to find something that's acceptable to the town that they approval by this life or are we going to take some or all of these districts to referendum vote because you know the words you were backing away because public who are speaking about going back to the interim selling and making this building seventy five percent commercial that i respond to just as i responded to you we don't want to risk not having this to be a developed site and if you look around ship coming there's hundreds of thousands of square feet of for mercial space available so to oppose that upon a developer means they're not going to develop it so that and then just work on the definition of the basement and make sure that there are windows that are egress a ball that's a word from any i mean really the officers should have a grasp of the windows in the basement had no time to talk about or they have not what we put that in there just in case that would be you know seems like a reasonable use for a basement to put a parking garage if why couldn't they have the st floor the residential big could but the so look forward it's not likely to pass anything that doesn't have some percentage of the building devoted to commercial but around the concept of whether it's in a different place or a different part of the building or whether it's very broadly expand into office or professional businesses i mean not that that's been ruled out but i think seems like a good you know what it just seems if you if you think about it in the traditional sense what we're really hurting back to is almost be rol old traditional new england there which were that the downstairs is the grocery store and the it's a mom and pop store and mom pop lived above that and so we have the you know th to get this financial person who wants the forty thousand square feet remain and the best you was on the th floor and so he she found that having the apartment over the commercial enterprise what made it a very unpleasant place for her to live and she was really happy to move out of there on one of not having restaurant over the place where she live it's i don't i don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying walk in terms of the flexibility of this building it doesn't need to be is like bridge street in terms of those commercial facing whoever's going to this building for a commercial enterprise knows the commercial enterprise is there that's why they're going they're not going to just walk by and find it i just don't think where we're at in the process that we can pull a left hand turn  understanding that they want the th floor the entire four thousand square feet to be financed so buys whatever whatever that is you know where are we insane yes we would like that we had commercial twenty five percent of the spaces commercial no it's not street fronts retail based kind of operation i mean you know if i were taking a stroll where we where would we come down because i'm going to stop you know the discussion or argument if if you cross your arms and you percent and we sort of gave them lest much less than forty percent of it right now according under something they're at seventy five percent commercial we gave them we said twenty five percent and they sort of moved towards us with the specter of the development not occur but i don't believe the development won't occur if you're just limiting it to just the st floor commercial because most banks that do the lending on this that is traditionally what they see and it if they're able to design such a way to solve the biggest issue for them right now is going to be the firetrucks and if they're able so that issue through design they'll get their four floors and then they'll have enough residential businesses will come south and you know i mean i think frankly they're going to need that basement for what about business building wind you know where's their stores there's no provision for stor into they're going to want businesses in that basement that provide services to the tenants whether it's a laundromat whether it's a small oh whether it's a workout space they're going to want like emergency situations or like really dire straits you could the only way you really would build something like that in there is what's ability which is what everybody else has it hoot about the giving the dear be flexibility to say are you put on the rd floor and i think a lot of people feel like that's scarier than just say street level be done with it and you know you don't need of variance anyway to put something on the rd floor because if you go and say i'd like to put this we like that this seems to be their threshold issue and if we stray too far afield from it they're going to get just kind of opens a door that they can change anything about yeah i mean they can change things but they seem to be receptive at the moment without windows you could  that they can make those basement work out he's it's appealing so they seem to be willing they seem to be willing to work  but i think that is the line we're trying to block is you know not doing it specifically for this like we're not doing it specifically for the developer trying to take all of those things into consideration do its best to richmond including the idea that it's better for richmond to have a development here the not now development here so you know i like the fact that we were working with this like board and i think that's a positive thing that we're working with and we're not doing things to try which could be looked at as not a good thing to try to please like we're which could be looked at is not a good thing we're sort of in the middle there you know we're just trying to make it work out and that's another challenge we have we have a developer the president did itself to the developer during due diligence can say we want to community planet you know whoever it is to reconsider do we have a process in place to do that there's not burlington planning commission we would have people who would come in and say i want to well up this property in your slope requirements are are the reason why this property has never been developed and let me show you why and they went through and said ok well we're not going to do it just for this property we're going to do what you're recommending for the entire district and we didn't know because it was reasonable they'd presented something that was something in our just zoning regulations that we weren't aware of that there were properties that you know something between forty percent and thirty five percent slope and it made a big difference for this property so he made his only change in development occurred and that's they just came and  never thought about what you think is best for richmond because i just wondered if you wanted to i guess if you wanted to say something you would but you know it you know you stuff so a lot of the mixed commercial buildings have different offices on different floors and you know they have directories and because this is is so hidden they're going to need a directory site probably  old buildings on there it's got the you know you can still like the dance studio and stuff is still around and they haven't even painted over them which and the new new business is not on there except the group shop where he says this is the corn know some point in this in in their process in their development process when they change that design it really needs to be run through the fire department for them to us yep could give them their permit because he doesn't really care whether the stones ladder truck reaches it or not it could meet code but then we need a new ladder truck and so that's the big concern that was raised at the big hearing real legitimate concern to the town can't really look at it and the other concern is that this which i didn't quite understand is the th building that is of a certain height you're allowed for so the actual language has a couple different variations of what triggers the ladder truck situation so it's either five hundred and thirty two feet or higher from high stakes in grade start talking about the number buildings in town that have so many stories are so tall the lake we were thinking today we're pretty sure there's already more than five that are three stories indoor thirty two feet tall but that's a pretty easy trigger  there's eight we've already gone over and above what they're saying they're worried about us triggering here and so we kind of put in some feelers out to people saying hey are we already low rated if not how are they not caught this worried about if we actually are already this is going to draw attention to it you know yes might be true but maybe we should be aware of that if there's a sprinkler failure or they have to get on the roof where the sprinkler can't going to access and they most of their the government's problem is sprinklers are only a temporary measure when there's a big fire like there are more of a get the people of the building measure than actually put the fire out later depending on how severe it is so they don't like to rely on the sprinkler idea and they would really like to be able to make sure that they can get into the building without the roof has to be accessible or oh so they have to make plans for that where in the process does the fire department the local fire department review come in is that part of the d r b's process or is that a separate required  and sometimes the police do too depending on the look what it is like to be sometimes police are consulted about cindy concerns do we have a concern about as law brought up the definition out walk out basis they're all relatively the same grade from the floor up so that rd factor that works but in this case they were saying oh it's an average of thirty five because it's thirty over here it's forty down here so the average is thirty five if was there a time when you said you were going to work just to try to get those definitions and what have you here think they're not expecting anything probably to the  hearing for the village downtown district so i would like to go see the do this same kind of real assessment of that because some of the same language that yet they didn't say they were opposed to it they just said we don't want to sign post here if we do it we do it if we don't we don't yet which is seems like they've given up on doing it for joe lieberman yes the bonus question i think it got then it got it hard for some just worded things in organizational things but i would like to put that into writing but i think based on the fusion that it sort of generated at the select board i would like to do it to tell them that i would like to  shouldn't be under the law kariya or whatever it is you know that doesn't make any sense you read through it and it says a lot here in that it talks about resident of that city so we could make that like a done section we just didn't really study the exact