good day and welcome this is a very special edition of the vermont before the housing show we're going to feature today that came green rise development in burlington with me i have some very special guests to my immediate  right is a need to match wits who's the director of real estate development at the champlain housing trust eric feral president of feral real estate cindy reed who is the director of development for cathedral square corp i just want to make a couple quick announcement students this is our money for the housing show we have some very special celebrations that are coming up in the housing world the thirtieth anniversary of the vermont housing and conservation board is happening next tuesday september nineteenth that shelburne farms i'm sure i'm going to see some of you folks there and then also on the same day earlier in the day the housing trust of rutland county one of our premier members in rockland county is celebrating their twenty fifth anniversary  cindy and cathedral square is celebrating their fortieth on september twenty first at the sheraton in burlington will be at that as well and then finally the vermont community loan fund another member of our coalition is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary on october twel so just wanted to get that out there for folks in the housing world this is a couple of really important weeks of celebrations of major institutions that have promoted and funded affordable housing and built affordable housing in vermont over the last of rise on the former girl in college site is i believe the single largest development in burlington in many years if perhaps ever and has a major of both affordable housing component as well as it has a major land public land dedication component as well so eric if you could maybe give us an overview of what you have planned and then we'll go to our nonprofit friends to talk about their their partnership with you ok i'll start with a little bit of history i'll try and condense four years into a couple of minutes in technically the most of the land is owned by a partnership b c community housing which we formed four years ago so brought in college at the time reached six local developers and almost from the beginning their finances started to unravel and it became apparent that they were not going to be able to fulfill their half of the development deal and so culminated in us purchasing we purchased twenty seven of their thirty four acres twenty eight of the thirty four acres which allowed them to pay significantly down on their debt and then they were going to keep six acres and continue the college on a smaller parcel of land and we were going to develop the rest so we purchased that land in two thousand and fifteen almost immediately we go from from atlanta us reached out asked us to engage with them and the city and chip in housing trust in a conversation about what the appropriate level of development might be for that parcel before we the big pieces of that development agreement were that we would sell twelve acres of the land all of the border on the south in the west including texaco beach to the city which means we had to forgo the opportunity to build twenty four single family homes which was part of our original plan and the college was going to keep their six acres and then we would build multifamily on the remaining on the remaining land other couple of pieces of that development agreement were that we would sell at a pretty deep discount land to shipping housing trust for the development of both senior in family affordable housing  and that we and that the city would tweak the zoning to accommodate the development on the remaining land is owning didn't increase the amount of development that could happen it just consolidated it closer to north avenue so our final plan we ended up with seven hundred thirty nine units maybe if i could interrupt you for a second i think we've got some visuals that might help our viewers understand what your what you're about to describe maybe we have the  slide if that can be projected well while erik it's going through ok so that's the first the first slide the first slide shows the entire property and it shows proximity of the property to texaco beach its relationship to the skate park is like a half a mile down to the skate state park a skate part mile down to the boat house it's just south of north beach adjacent to lake view cemetery interestingly enough all the rant land around this property is owned by the sea of bryant and in this happened to be texaco beach happened to be the only stretch of beach that the city brunton didn't own from north beach all the way to the waterfront so this really completed a link for them another important piece i believe in gill can speak to it more about the city being able to purchase this twelve acres was it it kept a wildlife corridor open north and south and east and west so that was one of the benefits of selling away and to the city so our final development plan on the next slide the site plan depicts about fourteen buildings and that in compass is seven hundred thirty nine housing units no single family lots two hundred forty of those units are condominiums for sale seventy units of senior housing seventy six units of family housing and three hundred  fifty or three hundred fifty three units of multifamily rental housing the first phase the first building to open it can rise was the it was liberty house formally the orphanage which was renovated over the last year it opened on july one sixty five units occupancy going on that occupancy the building is about three quarters full outer sixty days so there's a lot of demand for this location and of course it's a spectacular the city and in the county really just as an example the champlain housing trust where one of the largest landlords serving in northwestern vermont we have two thousand apartments in our portfolio and we get about one hundred twenty one hundred forty applications for housing every month hundred twenty two hundred forty and we may have twenty or so apartments that become available for rent in any given month so there's just a really large unmet demand that we we we recently partnered with their feral down on the avenue those apartment buildings when they become ready for occupancy there in the media we don't have the same experience eric is having maybe even more intensely within a month they're all filled up so we just have and an extreme demand and so we're especially excited to be partnering with eric and computer square again on the projects and or to what we did down on the ave we are building a seventy six sound building l so building l on that site plan is seventy six apartments it's a mix of one two and even three bedroom apartments we do have a demand for larger units it will have a community room where people can gather with a small kitchen there are some common decks on the west side so that people can have that beautiful view we have under the building parking lot of a playground in the center court yard we have lots of bikes storage but we found down on the have way more bikes and we have cars and i expected this location will be very similar and have lots of bikes and lots of bikes storage now eric has a responsibility through his permit inclusionary zoning requirement requires him to provide twenty five percent of fordable units normally it's fifteen in burlington how come it's twenty five for the size yeah good question it's on the waterfront zoning requires a higher percentage of affordable units just to make sure that our waterfront is accessible to thousand anyone come for a household of one fifty three thousand dollars for a household of four so that's what the target is for inclusionary zoning and are these going to be affordable for a year or two the it will be perpetually affordable and arguments will be even more affordable eighteen percent of the apartments that some fourteen apartments will be specifically set aside for homeless families while we're working with the burlington housing authority to provide support services for those families and that they can maintain range of incomes within this building which will help to make the whole neighborhood a much more diverse economically diverse neighborhood inclusive and inclusive we're going to be providing housing with eric and with cathedral square we'll be providing housing to a range of different types and in terms of folks we have all of the funding committed that we need to be able to begin construction this spring this is our next big project seventy six apartments that we can bring on line all at once and we have our funding that we need committed at this point and you've got some home ownership units yes and so we've also come to an agreement with eric about condominiums he's building a large number of homes for sale as condominiums we have an agreement now for thirty of those homes to to be affordable and we're talking again those are one and two bedroom apartments for the i mean condos for the most part are our sales price will be one hundred sixty one hundred seventy thousand wow and again those will be perpetually affordable with our our shared equity program of the land trust we have five hundred fifty homes in our program that have that perpetual for nobility through shared equity and we will be doing that here as well as we have an agreement for thirty now and we expect there will be a new households were expected to be formed in tripoli county by twenty twenty so you know this is absolutely and some folks may doubt whether or not we need this many units but the experts in the studies that the state of vermont has done have so yeah first i want to say that senior housing was not a permit requirement that can be in rise and we're really thrilled that eric envisioned including senior housing and that it's a lot of hard powerful partnerships happening here with the city and from atlanta just transportation is really critical for our and for our community of seniors we have there square has about nine hundred partment in north that's for mine we have over eight hundred people on our wait list huge demand and as we know the senior population is growing rapidly it's the fastest growing demographic in fact in the next twenty years the number of adults aged sixty five and older will double and many people do not want institutional care they want to live in the community they want the support services they variety of income so their staggered rents similar to this building about half of our units will serve people below fifty percent of the median income which is about twenty eight thousand and you will in coming here and about fourteen units will prioritize for homeless and at risk of homeless seniors so we have a robust service program through sash which will help those folks work sasha's support and services at home it's a pilot piloted and is now statewide serving over five thousand people around the state to care coordination program to help people live at home independently with those care support some people refer to the growing senior demographic as the negative and aging we embrace as a positive thing our seniors are with wise people they have wealth of experience retirees that have a lot to give their communities so we try to channel that and nurture positive aging in our communities so at juniper house our design includes a large community room with a kitchen an exercise room for things like type she chair yoga those programs are part of support services at home and help promote bal strength to help reduce falls we do hospitalizations and save on health care costs and just increase people's sense of well being we also walking programs so juniper house will have a lot of those wellness in the design and we have a wellness nurse is office with a conference room for private consultations we have a garden space outside we're right next to the community gardens as well with the twelve acres of preserved land which is a huge benefit to this whole community and then there's a lot of connection built in between the cathedral square building and champlain housing trust and the rest of cambrian rise with the sitting area and other playground opportunities for for our seniors to to hang out with the younger people in the community it's very pedestrian friendly because as we know the parking is a lot of it is underground lots of safe sidewalks to wheel on or walk on so it's a fabulous community it's a sweat we call smart growth which is near transportation services goods to keep people connect to their community very mixed income mixed age we're very happy to be here we hope to start construction next october and we want to open the doors in february of two thousand and twenty we can't open soon enough for from the vermont land trust here and he gave us a little indication of that earlier this is the single i would say the what last large developable area in the city of burlington and certainly we have a you know we don't think in silos and vermont and i think this partnership is a reflection of that but i think we're observant generally of community needs and don't think about housing necessarily separate from open space separate from the economy separate from health  and picking up on cities that point i don't know that we talk enough about the importance of open space proximate where to where people live and proximate to schools in terms of the direct health benefits they're substantial and growing imperial evidence about reduced need to rely upon medical services for reduced prescription needs proved children's educational performance related to open space so i'm especially heartened right  name you have described the location of their two buildings there immediately adjacent to the new public park next to existing community gardens so i think that's a special reflection of our success here we've got the slide up also so folks can see exactly where the open open space great yeah thanks thanks for doing that so so you looking at that slide fully twelve percent of the land controlled by air it will be a public park it frankly is currently owned by the from atlanta trust in the city of burlington together pending the receipt of permits which were a condition of the agreement that we reached together that that twelve acres is the most valuable component of the property because it has breathtaking views it's eminently developable so we had the opportunity in our in our conversation with eric to really focus on what the public benefits were irrespective of land values and somewhat independent of the plant he done before he acquired the property as the overview  avenue and opens up in an opening that's now occupied by community gardens which will expand once we fully own the park and people may also be familiar with the stone house the stork stone house that fronts right on north avenue you know if you talk to folks for the new community there there was a high need for small meeting gathering space for some big auditorium split gathering space of a modest size especially in a nice intimate setting like that is that a premium  i think the city is going to work through uses but generally speaking it's a place that will be available to citizens so multiple resources there and frankly let me talk a little bit of a process i mean eric talked about this already  there was a high level of urgency and frankly a high level of community unrest when the college announced it was liquidating the property eric had no obligation to pause he could have proceeded like most developers to prepare a development plan submit an application engage in the public participation that sometimes occurs during those processes but instead he was willing to agree at the request of my organization but more importan weinberger decided it was an important opportunity to pause and really reflect on what the public schools were for the property and see if erik was willing to to engage in modifications to his expectations along those lines so we had extensive public hearings we had tours of the property we had a large public sort of design forum before we even talked about alternative plans we came back after we had alternatives and talked again to the public about what we had heard through public input and how we believe we've executed on those goals we reached out to all north and community broadly we met with the association of africans living in vermont we met with old north and arts and business association we met with the student council at the high school we were in small groups big groups just trying to hear what people wanted and most recently last night you were at the awards two with three there were plenty of them and i think that was for me the third time i met more for eric so people i think can fairly evaluate and have their own opinion about kind of the mix of open space and development and whether that's the right mix you know people who love burlington love this place and so logical to have an attachment and have views about it but i think we can say with great pied i'm not aware having been actually ran the active fifty program for a number of years have been in vermont for forty plus and i'm not aware of another situation in which this sort of collaboration prevailed upon a developer who had no obligation to do so to pause and give us six months to fully and openly engage with the community and so  i think we're still open for people's feedback about it but i hope people appreciate that they were heard and we did our best execute on what their goals are you know i'll just say as someone who's not just been fought in affordable housing for many years but you know year in burlington and i've been involved in public policy and public development for many years this is just extraordinary i think we all knew that someday this parcel was going to get developed and i just have to say from my perspective when you know i was on the planning commission many years ago in city council i can't imagine a better way to develop this this site given that some day it was going to be developed and you know what you all are putting together is just really remarkable and my hats off to you but that's just just my opinion but i'm sure a lot of other folks share that as well so i think we've got a couple minutes left here i know everybody's had their chance to sort of describe their component their part of this maybe just in the few minutes that remain to us eric maybe you could tell us kind of what are the next steps for came in rise where you know you headed next i know you've got your city permits it at this point correct or not or not maybe i'm not in as well informed tell us where you are in all of our local pharmacies we have all of our underlying state permit us dorm water and and what have november that will be a rental building and we hope to start our first new condominium building a which we made a deal with to buy thirty of ninety seven units in the fall springs use me spring of next year and we also will have some market units within our buildings so we'll have a real range of affordability within the senior building to serve all kinds of income so and we're hoping to open our building in fairway of twenty twenty but it be great if we can do it sooner because we know the ne emphasizing it's like the last piece so public land will stretch from perkins pier all the way up to iraq point basically this is the last remaining piece and i just think that's an incredible achievement right there y well two million dollars is the negotiated purchase price we've purchased and that that number it's a significant discount less than the appraised fair market value we've miraculously were a's to almost all of that money so frankly i think we're ready to transfer my organizations interest to the city and for there to be a part dedication what else is there cousins permits and i soon that while i know that a lot of housing is going to be funded by the white house and conservation board i kind of assume that thousand conservation board with a significant generous funder in two stages in addition the city for sidedly going back seventy years ago created an open space legacy fund which is for open space park purchases and so there was a city commitment of a half a million dollars and the rest of it has been private fundraising and a federal grant you were great i think i'm getting in the book we're close to the end of the show i just want to say thanks to each of you not just for being on the show but for the web resources for each of these organizations in for the cambridge rice development onscreen as we and our next show our next regularly scheduled show will be when's day october fourth that's going to be a live at five twenty five show hope you get a chance to t