City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. My name is Claire Wool. I am chair of the Burlington School Board, and I am thrilled to be here today with Brian Lee, senior project manager from Freeman French Freeman. Brian and I, over the course of, I would say, three years, at least, We're fortunate enough to have this time dedicated to our campus development updates. Brian's incredible team at Freeman French Freeman, which I'll thank at the end with a photo of the firm, was invaluable in our partnership with you over the course of these three years with our district, our superintendent, our school board, and Whiting Turner, our construction project manager. So today really is our final meeting together, unless we do another project in the future. But as a Burlington-based firm that has a deep history here in the city of Burlington, I've really enjoyed my professional relationship with you as well as everyone in the district. and the goal tonight is to capture this the finality of our campus with a photo essay of this past spring to where we are today and have you talk along and share your input as well but i wanted to give you the introduction as well thank you and and i want to say thanks for the whole team um in addition to freeman french freeman collin berg architects who has a long history with the school district was essential to the project as well as dra

and we're just so thankful for the opportunity. It's so exciting. I've been able to be at the school now taking care of little things as the students are using this space, having lunch in a cafeteria that is not too loud, you know, all the things that we tried to plan for. It's exciting to see it.

in operation I can't imagine your line of work because a lot of the times it is in empty buildings and for you to be able to come back and see an active campus must be thrilling well let's take a little photo essay for our viewers where we start at Macy's so this past June at the end of school year After six years, we survived Macy's, our public school families, and we have some photos here to show you. Actually, that's an incredible teacher, Colby Skolkin. At the end, before graduation, every single teacher in Burlington High School writes a personalized note to all of our students and puts it under their seats at graduation. and she was showing us that box and we made goodbye Macy signs and we actually had a parade that went down Church Street and ended at City Hall Park where we performed so our freshmen sophomores juniors and seniors and our music as you can see the banners they all congregated and sang and celebrated this transition our superintendent our principal Vestek was there and spoke to the crowd as well. And it was, thank goodness for Mother Nature, an incredible day. Our new class officers, our senior class students took the stage to welcome everybody to the park and to talk about what the future looks like. So it was goodbye to downtown Macy's. Like I shared, six years went incredibly fast. And our goal was to receive certificate of occupancy at the new campus in order for us to host our 2026 graduation. So we had treats and students signed things that said goodbye, mementos from this incredible journey that we were on and our graduating senior classes I shared we hosted graduation at the new campus and the reason for that many students said what are you kidding we're going to the new campus we never went to school there but we're graduating there and the goal was for them to start their tradition we had the bell that students ring at the new campus and it afforded an opportunity for all of our students to be together and their family instead of hosting graduation at UVM. So the goal was for families to, I guess a slow introduction to the campus, and as I shared, it afforded family members to take a sneak peek At that time, we also decided to open up the campus for the entire summer with volunteers and school board members to showcase the campus on the weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, as well as during the weekday after work. And that afforded so many of our taxpayers, our public, our future students and families, our public school families to come. so we can go right into those photos of the new campus and graduation as well. So this was...

If I can say, I will first say I know I think thousands of people came through over the summer on tours, and I know many more would have had that would have delighted at the opportunity i still had people at the end of the summer reaching out and saying when can i get in and see the building i tried to and we'll talk about the ribbon cutting i invited them there but yeah you know i'm so pleased that so many people saw the building i'm also looking forward to the school district starting to find ways to allow the auditorium and the gym to be community spaces and find ways for the public to get to use the building as well in that way because i know we've had so many good conversations about that And I had the opportunity through a friend who had a graduating senior was so kind to invite me to the graduation. So looking forward to seeing these pictures. But I was very, I wondered how the students would feel, you know, having been in Macy's for those years, coming to this building for graduation. But the energy that day was just so wonderful and electric. And everybody was so delighted to be in the space. So it was very gratifying to see the way that even people who were not familiar with the building could just come in and make it their home. just for that day.

No, I agree. I think when we talk about the capacity of the gymnasium, so we had our first ever air conditioning gymnasium. The capacity with all three gyms open, as you see there, was 1,750 people. And so we had the capacity The floor is covered, because that is our wood floor for basketball and volleyball games. And so we put down all the chairs, and we were able to create the stage at the latter part by the community gym. And all the students, to be able to have, I think each student got eight tickets to graduation, family members and friends come to the graduation and be able to be in that space. Everyone thought the same thing, like, wow, this was meant to be. The light, the available light, we can talk about that kawali system above the gymnasium.

Yeah, kawal, yes. Kawal, sorry. And it did create, and you can see in these pictures just that the light doesn't look just the harsh gym light. There's just that little bit of warmth that you get from natural light coming in. And as we've talked many times, getting natural light in throughout the building was such a priority, and it was wonderful to see it coming to fruition.

And that system, again, when people looked up the efficiencies, I know we're a geothermal building, so we have air conditioning from geothermal wells as well as heat. And you see in some of the lights within the school building, mostly the south-facing lights, they have like a window shade above the windows for efficiencies. Like a louver. A louver, that's the word. And it was interesting to see people ask those questions as well as the translucent panel above the lights in the south-facing classrooms that you had shared with me earlier on site that it draws the light into the classroom so that it fills the light, it casts the light deeper into the room. That was interesting.

And softens the light. You know, we wanted to bring lots of natural light in, but the danger there is that you get a huge amount of glare right by the window. Because the classrooms have to be a certain size, there is some depth from the windows. You know, some part of that classroom is going to be 30, 35 feet away. So we used that Solera panel, that translucent panel above the louver, diffuses the light back into the room, softens it. And it also means that even if the teacher closes the window shade, you still have like a low level of ambient light in the space. Oh, that's great. And we did provide for rooms that truly need blackout, like a science classroom, additional blackout shades. But for most classrooms, you want it dark enough for, you know, looking at the monitor, maybe bringing the energy level down, but you don't really need pitch black space. Right, right.

Interesting. Well, we have also, I see a student on a cell phone. As of July 1st, the state of Vermont passed the law. For the last two and a half years, we've had a bell-to-bell ban on all cell phones in our middle and high school campuses as well as BTC. And then this year, July 1st, was the state, all cell phones are banned from the state of Vermont public schools. So that was a benefit. I just wanted to show to the public and the viewer how each floor we can go through these quickly that each floor that's the lower level BTC is yellow and then on each floor we have a light blue a blue an orange and a purple our front entrance we put up the flags but it's so I love the backlit of the lighting of the the school name as well as Burlington Tech Center We speak 48 different languages at BHS and I love the welcome sign in all the different languages.

This was a huge initiative that came out of, you know, early in the design process we were creating images of the space and actually one of the renderers on our team, Ryan, was looking at these images and he said, well, we just need something to happen here. And he put a little welcome sign there with a handful of languages and that idea grew into this effort to identify as many of the languages that are spoken or could be spoken here. both living languages and also taught languages. So Salve, back to my Mrs. Greenwood, my Latin teacher back in high school, would have wanted me to make sure we had some Latin on there as well.

Aw, that's great. Yeah, and then throughout the rest of the, as we welcomed families in, people registered on Eventbrite. We put out flyers. We announced it to the community. And we were so impressed by how many people showed up. and how many people are on the campus. And it does take a getting used to. Can you share about the parking situation and where, if you're coming to an event, where you would be parking or where the directional sign says?

Yeah, so currently there are There are the same lots on the fields side, the athletic field side that have always been there so that lot is available for athletics events. I think anybody who's coming to the campus for use of that area would want to park down there. The parking that used to be in front of the building is now up around behind and there is signage that leads to that so in the future as the district has more sports events in the gym and auditorium it will be possible to come down now Seahorse Street, turn right up the hill, go kind of around to the rear of the building, and there's, I think, about 140 parking spaces. It's a significant number of parking spaces back around that area.

Yeah, and I think that comes as a surprise to people, because when they come down the campus, they can't believe that they have, you were calling them parking trays, that are on different levels. So it really is built into the land, and it's the... The fluidness of it and the campus, the flow of it is wonderful.

And that parking is also where the electric vehicle chargers are. So just so people know, they could come attend an event and their level two chargers get at least a small charge for their car while they're there.

uh... it's all on the charge point system so that is available very cool uh... the new building uh... hosts an incredible atrium uh... as we move through these slides uh... quickly uh... just because we had taken so many pictures our goal uh... of showing the students early these were our senior class members in june that came and got a first look at the campus they were so excited uh... to be future juniors as well and seniors

uh... that were graduating uh... the use of the mobile do you want to share a little bit about that so this space which is that we call the commons functions as the gathering space it's where you arrive if you leave the gymnasium or the auditorium and it's also the cafeteria for lunch yes and as a large volume space that we knew would have hundreds of people in it every single day there was a lot of thought about uh... keeping the noise levels down so The mobile as well as the colored bands that go around the space are all felt or acoustic absorptive materials and they really keep the echo down in that space. You know, there's an energy but it's not overwhelming to be in there when there's 300 or 400 students.

It is amazing. And I know we brought furniture down for the students to try out at Macy's. And I know we were, again, your designer, Jane. What an incredible job picking out the color tones and the palettes and the durability, most importantly, and comfortableness that the students have shared about its welcoming feeling. uh... you know i often get from students it feels like a university and i really feel more mature uh... being in a space like this and taking care of it as our home our new campus uh... coming from something that was so temporary for six years and we had that discussion early in design that it's easy i think because of the challenges of maintenance over time for school districts for the

position to become very defensive relative to the students and you know everything we do has to be protected from the students and we made the decision early in design to take that same investment and try to give a little bit of opportunity for joy and beauty and And it does go along with a little bit of responsibility for the students. But I can say all that furniture that was selected is highly durable. You know, you'd see it a similar quality in a place like an airport where it is in public use every day with lots of people on and off of it and spilling their coffees and all the things that do happen, you know, the reality of life. So it is prepared for that.

great yet and i know we went back to this is again the graduation set up we can go through these uh... and we can move towards uh... again some more of the uh... designer those that those families that came through we had a ribbon cutting we invited students from our elementary schools and our middle schools to cut the ribbon our future bhs students uh... instead of having people like you or myself uh... cut the ribbon we made a uh... really uh... uh... dedicated decision to include the students to be a part of that ribbon-cutting we were so appreciative that this many people came out for our grand opening uh... as we looked out into the sea of people and saw those community members that were part of this uh... uh... uh... there were the the the The outpouring of support, we said, you know, at 9 o'clock, we weren't sure. There's with Alex Halperin, the president of Freeman, French Freeman, and Superintendent Flanagan. We weren't sure at 11 o'clock how many people would show up. In fact, I had scheduled a tour, two tours with 60 people, thinking if people sleep in on the last Saturday before summer's over, make sure we have some guests. And then for all of those families and the students to come was just... Very moving for me and for Superintendent Flanagan and the whole school board, as well as I know your team that was there.

I know there was quite a bit of the, I wouldn't say just the design and construction team, but families. I know some of my family was in town and we, that building was open for three hours. You know, it was the ribbon cutting, but then time to just kind of freely move through the space, meet some of the teachers. um talk with people and we were there for a majority of that time and what struck me was not only was there a huge crowd right for the ribbon cutting but people continued to arrive just to tour the building and to see uh what was going on and there was um i have no idea if anyone got a count but there were hundreds at least of people through the building just so many yes yes Again, it was wonderful to see the joy, and as an architect, I loved to be able to walk around and just listen to people's genuine commentary on what they saw, good, bad, and indifferent. You don't often get the real, direct, honest feedback, but when you're at an event like this, you can hear people talking about what they react to and what they like and what they don't like, and of course, there's some of both, and it's pretty special.

No, I agree. And I saw the little student there eating pizza. We're so lucky with Filamino's and Leonardo's and Pizza 44 donating pizza for guests to have. Ben and Jerry's, as well as our Vermont BHS alumni who own the Vermont Maple Creamy truck to serve students. So the draw of also keeping people there to have social. I mean, I saw students that had graduated, you know, who came on the tour in the 1950s on the old Edmonds campus, which was the original BHS high school. Even though those people that had come on the tour still wanted to come to the grand opening to our littlest, you know, future BHSers, someone had said, like, this is class of 20, I don't even know what it was, 40-something, and you were like, oh, you know, just incredible. But, again... Looking at the photos really does bring you to that moment. I know you mentioned Seahorse Street. We're very excited that we were able to rename Institute Road to Seahorse Street. We created new sidewalks that enter from North Avenue, from the new north end and the old north end and the south end. We were able to move the bus stop. from the location of being on the south side of Seahorse Street Institute Road to the middle of the campus. So now when students leave our campus, they go straight out along the building side to enter the bus stop that's there.

That was a high priority from the beginning. And, you know, one of the things we did during in 2022 was meet with the students about our early design plans. And we were in one of those meetings and I overheard one student say to the other, oh, that's where you got hit by the car. And so from walking across the street for buses. So, you know, it was very clear from the beginning that that was a priority. a priority.

Yeah, no. And I also want to give a shout out to our landscaping vision and leadership. I can't stress enough the true, the meaningfulness of entering a campus uh... with mature uh... growing native plants uh... thanks to mother nature but also to the watering and the vision that you all had uh... with our team the vhb uh... landscaping team to not be entering a campus where dust is flying uh... the the forethought was so important and really sets this campus off magnificently. Like I just can't thank my lucky stars enough that those in charge and had that leadership vision to be able to have that, you know, matured and I know we have some more pictures of some landscaping throughout the campus. It's just, it was a gift. It really was. It shows great leadership.

That goes with the kind of commentary about the little bit of a collegiate feel. I think a lot of that does come from that entire experience of arriving at the building. It's not just what the building is, but it's also that sense that you're arriving at somewhere that's considered and set off with, I agree, beautiful landscaping.

Yeah. Yeah. This is, I think that was from another thing. Yep. So if we can, we can just do a rapid fire of the, of the photos and show that's the bell. Those are our first ever faculty meeting for the first time in six years. We were able to have over a thousand faculty members that make up the Burlington School District. They represent our six elementary schools as we see JJ Flynn teachers coming in and our two middle schools and our high school. so the first time in six years all of our district employees all of our teachers came for an in-service just a half-hour assembly where we were able to speak and shout out to each school the beauty of living in the city of Burlington and attending public schools is that all students begin their high school journey together at one high school and the unity felt in that building on that day was just so special and I know that faculty and staff we served them bagels from the bagel down the new north end and people will be able to you know recognize each of their union leaders that represent the teachers union they spoke as well as our teacher of the Vermont state teacher of the year from Aziza Malik from 2025. also spoke inspirational words. And then people began the move-in process. I know people had asked over the summer, how are they going to do this over the course of their in-service days and the school year? And we had members of the public that helped us shelve books in the library and support us in breaking down boxes. And they're just incredibly supportive in the move out and move in. And I'm trying to think of other things that I wanted to share just really going back to the campus photos the athletic fields we know that many citizens in the city of Burlington have asked about the baseball fields for the first time we were able to get our clean water grants and funding for the athletic the throwing fields area and the field hockey field in the baseball field so at no cost to the citizens of Burlington we have been able to redo the baseball field and those fields closest to North Avenue. And then over the course of long-term strategic planning we were able to complete the renovation and replacement of our turf and our track. And I shared on the tours with all of our school board members and community members that we host the State of Vermont Championship Meet. And our facilities are looked to by the state and by other schools to also host D2, D3 state championships. We have ample parking with the overflow at North Beach. So our campus really is a beacon for not just athletic events, but we look forward to, as you shared, those community opportunities to host state, citywide events with the investment that the citizens of Burlington shouldered to be able to create this new campus. And again, the appreciation and support for all of our citizens and taxpayers, as well as our public school families that stayed with us for those six years, at Macy's really culminated this summer with a generous spirit of appreciation and dedication to this next generation entering this campus at the Burlington Tech Center as well as Burlington High School. Well, thank you.

And I think, you know, the thing I'm thinking about as we look at all this and those projects on the sports fields were done by the district but separately from our team. It's really fortuitous that they all came together at the same time, that that's just kind of how the timing worked. When we started this, obviously this project grew out of the attempt to renovate the prior buildings and one of the things we heard from the community really strong and clear was that it was so unfortunate that these buildings had to be taken down and just outright replaced and they were They were 50-year-old buildings at that time, and the sentiment was, that's too soon. And so there was no avoiding that, but what we really have tried to do is make a building that in 50 years definitely is clearly too soon, is just something that's loved, kept up, and good for another 50 years. You know, we talk about... hundred year buildings in in the world of architecture but the reality is we all see buildings that are even well over 100 years old in our communities and so you know our goal throughout and the decisions we made about materials and you know especially things like the wall and window systems are really um intended to be you know there for the long term and to last and so we're really proud of uh having the opportunity to to do a project with that mindset

Well, I know there's also a shout out to A.J. Murray, who is a BHS alumni and a photographer, and his pictures of campus pictures that he took at sunset with the lake in the background. And I know we have an image of that if we can find it. to share that just how stunning when you fly, if you're fortunate enough, as I said on the tour, to fly over our campus as some routes go over the lake and you look down and you see Lake Champlain, you see this incredible, which was once the Arms Family Farm, the last agricultural farm here in the state, in the city, excuse me, of Burlington. In 1954, we moved our campus from Edmonds to Institute Road to the new North Ave to connect the new North End development as well as to the old North End and the South End. It was within equal distance was thought. And then the Arms family dedicating all of the Arms Forest that abuts our campus. So to be at a campus where the entire backside and west side of the campus is protected by the arms forest with paths run by the parks and recs as well as Vermont wild ways and then the North Beach and we talked about one of the facts of you know we won't hear you in the auditorium because the auditorium's roof is made of concrete so you could hear a pin drop but just all of those little things that we shared with the public that your firm had such an impact on the layout of the building and the entrance to the building and then the materials chosen were just so impactful.

Thank you. Thank you. So I don't know if we... Oh, yeah. And as you said at the beginning, this is some of the team at Freeman French Freeman. I do want to kind of quickly shout out at the end of the process, we're coming on five years of having worked on this, but you mentioned Alex Halpern, our principal, Jane Piquel, our interior designer, was a huge influence, as well as Natalia Ellis and... Ryan Catozzi. They were really the core of our team throughout those years. Almost everyone at the firm contributed. And I also want to mention Randy Burnett over at Collin Lindbergh Associates and Brenda Barnum as well as Carl over at DRA, Carl Franceschi. Just a phenomenal team. And then we had a great consulting team with LN Consulting who are local. Hardy Structural Engineering, who are local. Don Hirsch Theater Consultant out of the Montpelier area. NV5 did acoustics and audio video systems and security systems. So we just were blessed. And VHB, who you mentioned, for landscape. CEA for civil engineering. It was a total of 12 companies, and I at one point counted 70 employees across those companies just on the design side contributing. And, you know, Whiting-Turner and PCI representing construction and owner interests, such a team effort.

Oh, I mean, unbelievably. I love that.

Really just proud to have been part of it.

Yeah, no, I, when I think of, you know, we've hit the ground running with the first week of school or two, first three weeks, we're entering our third week and can't thank our faculty and staff and our administration for a successful start of the school year. I wanted to shout out, we have our yearly calendar during the journey, our slogan, uh... with the school the campus uh... at burlington tech center as well as the high school uh... new layout uh... and these are at uh... every school as well as for fletcher free library for the public if they wanted one uh... and everyone has asked uh... you know where can i find out where events happen at the school and uh... i just am so appreciative that the citizens of burlington proudly support our 12 public schools and pre-k programming that really is the heartbeat of the city as the largest economic engine we really are we are what draws families to the city to work and live and we did show 78 realtors the campus because our neighbors have school choice so those that live in the islands or let's say Georgia Vermont can choose if you're live in a community in the state of Vermont that does not have a high school you have school choice so we look forward to introducing those residents in those locales to come to look at BHS and BTC to potentially choose us as well for school choice but on behalf of the district and the school board thank you so much i look forward to staying in touch uh and the future projects that you build but this was absolutely um such an incredible accomplishment i can't thank you for your part thank you enough for your partnership well thank you as well thanks