Summary
Notes
Transcript
And so then we can go into the meat of what's the process? And that gets into this. The community to do this and do this project right, we've got to meet committee committee community goals. We've got to have the right plan that we're never gonna get 100% of the town to support any one project. But if we can get the masses to support what we're doing and understand this is for the next 100 plus years in Belmont's history.
then we will be headed down a good path. And what is the path forward and how should Belmont move forward? That's why you're hiring a consultant. But be clear, you're not hiring a consultant to draw pretty pictures for you that are undevelopable.
Several groups have already done that. That's why we're here.
Right. And this whole thing starts, in our process, it's pretty simple. You have to understand the objectives first. then understand where uses and demand are. I would, um... All this starts with, we've got a mountain of data to collect. on this property. Okay. We can't even begin to guess what's developable and what's not until we understand what are the boundaries of the property, what easements exist on the property, are there any deed restrictions on the property, what's the status of the pond, can it be eliminated or is it a wetland or is it contributing to the discharge of stormwater in the public sector or is it just for this? We don't know.
collect all the information and then your zoning code requires us, we've got to go out, we've got to get tree inventory, we've got to understand what all the trees are on the property. These are all steps that private sector developers have to go through in the in attempting to develop in the city of Belmont. You're going to be held to those same standards. So we're going into this collecting all this information.
Once we have that information and once we understand what the city's objectives are, and we can begin to define those objectives, then we can start to understand before the first pencil hits the paper, what what what do we what what can we put on the property and what is off limits For example, if you all say no apartments, From an urban planning perspective, that's probably not a good decision. However, it's your town or your property, you guys can vote on anything you want to vote on. But one of the biggest missing things in downtown Belmont is residential.
Not houses. Different types of forms of residential town homes, condos, flats, apartments. The more people we have living in downtown Belmont, that are in walkable streets is the more successful our downtown will be. I think... We shouldn't say it that way. We should leave that piece to the Q&A, because I'm sure it's going to come up. Right, about the apartments.
I'm not going to, I'm not, never are you going to hear me stop and dwell on apartments. I'm not having that discussion tomorrow, Monday.
First off, I don't lack confidence in any way whatsoever. But at the same time too, sometimes that confidence can be seen as being overpowering or overbearing. So I want to make sure, look, we're not here to cram anything down your throat. At the end of the day, if you tell us, if we get hired and you tell us you want us to focus on building a new park for Belmont, then we'll design you the best damn park we can design.
It's your prerogative. What we're going to do is bring you What we believe is a team of professional people who are studied in the area of urban planning, what we believe would be in the best interest of not only downtown Belmont, but any other small municipalities downtown. And there are things, I saw an article, and you're going to hear me, I'm not going to, every time we meet these, we're going to have three meetings, you're never going to hear me give the same spiel in every meeting, because I know, I've got, I've already studied who's going to be in each meeting.
They didn't put Mark Selinger... with maybe Rumpfeld or The other guy I don't know real well. The one that hates apartments. They didn't put all, they put somebody who's probably a little more liberal leaning with development with somebody that's more of a hardcore, no, we don't want that. It's good because it'll give some good opportunity, but Monday is not to decide what's going to be on the property.
It's to understand who we are, why we're best suited, and what the process is we would propose if hired for this assignment.
Personal Um... Close relationship working relationship, Well Most. Elected officials.
And staff. Man, I know all those people down there.
This is what we're in some regards going to be making some decisions. Because what's going to be asked of you guys if we conclude this and we're sent out to the market to bring in who we think are the best possible developers to come in here and to pull this off? You guys are going to have to be asked to rezone the property and we need to be in lockstep and sync. I can't go to the market and bring you the highest and best possible developer for this site and be put in a contentious situation where they feel like they just got bait and switched.
Yep. So those personal relationships, Personal is the most elect official staff and and adjoining property owners.
It speaks to it. But it's not only that, it's the collective firm. I mean, there are people, Bob Clay spearheaded Hawthorne and Adams Bluff development.
Where I've spent 13 years of my life trying to build something as a gift to Belmont. We're within months of breaking ground and moving forward. Were it not for me, and I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, and some of this you're not going to hear me say in front of them, but were it not for me, they wouldn't own the three and a half acres that Belmont Trolley's getting ready to damn build on. That was through the Belmont Trolley effort that the state decided to just gift the land to the city.
Were it not for me, they wouldn't own this 11 acres and they wouldn't be having this discussion.
So, you know, and I'm going to bring that, I'm going to bring up to the point where, man, were it not for some fast moving and kudos to Alex Zucks for spearheading Somebody else may have bought this property in auction and they may be damn beating their heads against the wall with these people now trying to cram something down their throat.
It's like, um... I'll just use South as a different example. Sometimes when people know we were involved in South End, but when you sit down and you say, and you start listing all the different things we touched.
You start to realize, holy shit, they weren't just involved, they were at the forefront of everything that occurred down there. I've been at the forefront of a whole lot that's occurred in Belmont over the last 15 years, and they've been the beneficiaries of it.
So I really don't have any real comments on this page. I think it's generally kind of what was consistent with what we put in our proposal. And then the next step is going to be, okay, let's get back down to, so this ain't the Rob show, it ain't the Sammy show. We got a whole host of people here. We chose not to bring a whole crowd of people in here. Instead, we brought the lead architect and the lead civil. to talk about their experience. And, uh, Taylor.
Talk to us a little bit about your place making and urban planning experience from Seaman Whiteside's perspective. True. Here's some examples. We can pull this up on the slide. But I want to print, I want to print, we're going to print these off. And there's... Two, based on the sheet I saw, there's two council members or two elected officials. The mayor's not a council member. There's five council members and one mayor, so that's six. And then there's three staff members, one in each meeting.
That's nine, right? Then there's Tripp and Taylor, that's 11. And then there's you and me, that's 12, 13. And we probably ought to have several extra packages. So I would say... 15 packages or something.
Because with us bouncing from room to room, I want to be able to have this on your computer so if we can plug in you can pull it up on a monitor.
It's already open. All you gotta do is plug in and it shows up.
You know what I mean? It'll look... The printouts, we're going to do it no matter what. If you guys have the opportunity to put it on the screen, I would. It just looks crisper. It's probably going to be easier for them to follow along.
But they all I also like to take notes.
From preferred strategy to execution, final conception plan, clear development concept. That's the slide I said. It's just redundant.
So we don't need this side. Is that good with you as well, Rob? Yeah. Just go and get rid of that one? Yeah. Cool. I think less is more, man.
I agree. Last time we didn't even touch four of our slides.
I know they were asking questions, but still. And then this last one is what was our last one in the previous Discussion it's just we You said that this is the thought you wanted to leave with them. when they leave the room. What does success look like?
Yeah, I think we keep it short and sweet. So I think we're missing one slide and that's it.
So we add that one slide, it'll be a nine.
I'm going to go back here right now and sit at my computer. So you don't have to read the scribble I'm going to type for you.
Just an email to me? Yeah. Perfect. I'll design a I'll slide for it. I'll send it to y'all as soon as I have it. You guys give me a thumbs up or whatever revisions and we'll get it done. What time is the interview on Monday?
2.30? Yeah. Okay. So it's in the afternoon. We'll print everything off Monday morning.
Okay. I was going to say, ideally, I'll have it done before the weekend just in case people have thoughts over the weekend that you want to change anything.
No, we'll reconvene Thursday and Monday morning. Make sure we got all of our shit together. That's perfect.
We'll get them printed out. That's perfect. I've got an appointment. I'll be leaving like 10, 1030 on Monday. So run out of the office, but we can meet before then like 9am Monday. Get everything ironed out. That works for you.
This is what we did last time. I'll make sure Sammy has the proper PDF version to put up on the screen, and we'll have 15 bound or stapled copies of the presentation that I'll resize them to make them fit the page like I did last time. It'll be fine. So I'll just have it all done before, by first thing Monday morning so that when I'm gone, y'all aren't scrambling for anything. Alrighty. I'll look out for that email. Anything else? Sammy? No.
I think that, Once he sends it over, I'm going to respond to it. I think he should focus on the prior deals. I wouldn't... Spend too much time on the current.