Village Board - Regular Meeting

We are at 6.01. And we will call to order today's village board meeting for Monday, August 31st. Erin, could you please call the roll, please?

Yes. Trustee Detman?

Here.

Trustee Haller?

Here.

Trustee Casper will be absent this evening. Trustee Saunders?

Here.

Trustee Sarabin? Here. Trustee Van Evenhoven.

Here.

And President Buckley.

Here. Thank you. Tonight, we have four items on our consent agenda. The minutes of the regular meeting held August 10th. The investment report for July 2026. The Sendix food market alcohol and cigarette tobacco license change of premise. And a citizen appointment of Benjamin McGillicuddy to the Public Works Committee replacing Piper Plummer, Megan, for following her resignation. Any comments or concerns? Thank you for submitting your suggestions and maybe twisting some arms to- All right, people do just say, Mr. McGillicuddy's in the- There we go.

In the audience today, so.

So we could say good things or bad things about- Yeah.

I was like, that's the guy I voted against? No, I'm kidding.

All right, any further concerns? Hearing none, I'd entertain a motion to approve.

I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Thank you. Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you, Jacob. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. You're in. That's all we need to do.

Thank you for being willing to do that.

Thank you for volunteering. It's an interesting committee, and it's one of the more fruitful committees in that we've You know, every public work item goes through that committee and it's, it's, it's, and you've got Matt to deal with on a daily, on a monthly basis. And he's, anyways. All right, moving on to the report of the village officers, Mr. Village Attorney. Nothing to report, Mr. President. Ms. Village Manager, fresh off her South Dakota tour.

So we have brats and cops next Wednesday, September 9th from 430 to 630 at the police station. So right next door in the parking lot. Encourage everyone to attend that.

I can't remember when our last meeting was, but maybe I'm repeating myself to thank the Civic Foundation for putting on Sounds of Summer two weeks ago, which was a big success. Any miscellaneous trustee reports?

I would just like to thank staff and residents and businesses in the area for their patience on the construction project in and around Sendix. I went and toured that area today. I thought it was fascinating, but then again, I'm a construction geek, so... But I know that there are a lot of noise, a lot of changes, a lot of things for people to get used to temporarily. And so I just want to thank everyone for their patience, because I think at the end of the day, what we're going to see is something that is fantastic for the village.

Agreed. Do you want to give any commentary about the road closures coming up in the next week or two?

Sure. So Lake is now two-way. We have kind of a temporary condition for the sidewalk for school starting tomorrow. So it'll be traversable, but not in its final state. For Lake. For Lake. Yep. So Matt did a lot of work on site today. I think he was on site almost all day today working on that. So thank you to him for that. And then Silver Spring is starting one way eastbound only. Eight days from today. And that would be for two weeks. They've made good progress so far, though. They just need the one way to get that north curb in, really.

And I assume we've been in contact with the businesses, particularly Silver Spring and Lake and the Percy and all that, because we've taken away their parking.

So we've been communicating consistently with Lexi. We signed all the businesses up using their bid email address at the beginning of the project to receive the weekly updates. And then Joey has also been individually talking to all the businesses within the construction area. And I've heard from some of the businesses that that communication with Joey, who is our onsite, and she has been going really well.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Uh, any other miscellaneous trustee reports? Yeah. I just wanted to, um, you know, school starts tomorrow for a lot of folks. And if you drive around the schools that we have here in Whitefish Bay, you've probably noticed a lot of yellow, uh, bollards sticking out of the ground. I want to thank the DPW for putting those in. That is one of the iterations towards a lot of the school safety projects that we've been developing, uh, kind of test the waters before they become full concrete. I can say, uh,

near where i live i've seen a big difference um almost immediately uh just installing those so a big shout out to dpw for getting those in yeah even the temporary orange cones when they went in before the the ballards it if you're walking up and down santa monica it was completely you know people were noticing them and you know as as pedestrian and properly stopping and slowing down so good luck to everyone first day tomorrow yeah

Well, I will amend your comment and add the concept that please, drivers, put down your phones. Watch for a massive increase in, we've probably all gotten used to not having kids at 8 in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon walking through our village. Please put down the phones. Be careful during those rush hour times. It's on the drivers to make sure that they're safe and that the kids make it to school safely. All right, any other miscellaneous trustee reports? Once, twice. All right, moving on. Next is petitions and communications. This is an opportunity for anyone in the audience to address the village board on any issue not on the current agenda. Is there anyone here? for an item that is not on the current agenda. Going once, twice. All right. We will close petition on communications and move on to general business. We have six items on the agenda tonight, and the first is really exciting because it is discussion action on Resolution 3204, recognizing the Whitefish Bay Little League. And I'm going to hand it right over to Jay Saunders.

Thank you, President Buckley. I thought that With all the excitement of this past summer and really, you know, I think it started last summer as well, the excitement surrounding our Whitefish Bay Little League teams playing at a national level and really rallying the community around them. You know, if you if you didn't see the crowds that showed up at the Argo for a watch party in the middle of the day on a Wednesday or Thursday, it was, it was something else. And I thought that it would be, I thought that it would be nice and a good, good show to, to, invite some of the players and coaches and parents and Little League President Mike Schwartz is here and we have a resolution to read this evening. Resolution number 3204, a resolution of recognition, whereas the Whitefish Bay Little League has been a part of the community since 1967, helping boys and girls learn the sports of baseball and softball. And whereas the Whitefish Bay Little League is characterized a nonprofit organization that provides opportunities to play for children ages 6 through 14 who reside in and or attend school in Whitefish Bay. And whereas the Whitefish Bay Little League made history this year by winning the state tournament in all five age groups. And whereas the Whitefish Bay Little League U-12 team had games broadcast live nationwide as the team advanced to the finals of the 2026 Little League Baseball Midwest Region Tournament for the first time in program history, which is one game away from making the Little League World Series. and whereas the U-13 team also advanced to the regional final in its attempt to qualify for the Intermediate 50-70 World Series, and whereas the U-14 team advanced to the 2026 Junior World Series just one year after that team reached the Intermediate World Series. And whereas the Whitefish Bay Little League continues to be a great partner with the Village, playing games at Craig Council Park and Cahill Park, two focal points of the community, and now therefore be it resolved by the Village Board of the Village of Whitefish Bay, the Village Board offers forth on behalf of the Village residents a resounding thank you and congratulations to the Whitefish Bay Little League for the excitement of this year's run of the Little League World Series and helping hundreds of Whitefish Bay kids learn baseball and softball every year. This resolution is hereby adopted this 31st day of August, 2026.

Thank you, Jay. I echo his comments. I so enjoyed watching the games on ESPN, but particularly going to the Argo and participating with kids that were on different teams and from different cities watching our local kids up on a big screen. That was just a tremendous amount of fun. I assume that you're making a motion to pass this resolution.

Well, I do move the Village Board adopt resolution number 3204, recognizing the Whitefish Made a Little League.

All right. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Sam. Any further discussion or commentary? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, thank you. What we'd like to do is invite the team up to the front here and we're gonna give you a plaque and have you take a picture with us And if you want to stick around and talk about the Hampton and Santa Monica intersection, you're certainly willing to, ready to do that. But anyways, let me, congratulations. You did a great job. Really pleased to see you. Thank you. Congratulations. So why don't you, how do you want to align these kids?

Yeah, if you guys want to go. Thank you. You can hold that.

Thank you.

Jay, you want to get in there?

Yeah, you drafted this thing. It's okay. Whatever gets in there is what gets in there.

Congratulations.

Do any parents want to come up and take a better photo instead of being back there? That's fine too. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Ruth. Exciting stuff. You're a mess.

All right. We will now move on.

to discussion action on the Hampton and Santa Monica Intersection Improvement Project concept design. Matthew.

Okay. I will keep this short and sweet, but just to do a small recap. Several months ago, our village received funding for intersection improvements on Hampton, Santa Monica, where it's going to be 90% funded through federal grants, 10% approximately with village funds. So we've been going through that process, including public engagement, stakeholder engagement, and Last but not least, on July 13th of this last Public Works Committee, we had a very in-depth presentation by Adam Walter with Strand and Associates to review the three separate concepts that they came up with to try to narrow that down to one concept based on public input and Public Works Committee feedback. So based on that feedback we received since that time, Adam wants to be able to take these three concepts, narrow it down to one in order for us to do more final design going through design and construction progress. So with that, I don't want to steal Adam's thunder. He'll go through that slide deck fairly quick because it was an in-depth conversation at Public Works Committee. But again, what we're looking for this evening is to narrow that down to one concept based on the improvements to that intersection to give our consultant direction.

So Adam, the floor is yours. Yeah, thanks, Matt. So as Matt mentioned, I'm Adam Walter with Strand Associates. We've been working with the Village, City of Milwaukee, and WisDOT on the Hampton Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard intersection improvement project. So the agenda for tonight, we're going to go over project background, project overview, hit on the existing conditions that drove the alternative evaluation and proposed improvements for the intersection, and then also talk about the schedule. So the project background, this is a highway safety improvement program project to address existing crash trends at the Hampton Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard intersection. As Matt mentioned, this being an HSIP project, it's 90% federally funded, 10% local funded. So along with that, we need to follow the WSDOT process as far as environmental documentation and reports go, which I'll hit on at the schedule at the end of the presentation. The main scope of work for this project is traffic signal replacement, milling and resurfacing the pavement, and curb ramp improvements. So as we zoom in on the intersection further in the image on the right here, you can see the northeast, northwest, and southeast quadrants of the intersection are located in the village of Whitefish Bay. The southwest quadrant is in the city of Milwaukee. It's also worth noting Milwaukee County Transit has a route that runs north-south on Santa Monica Boulevard Route 14 with stops in the southeast and northwest quadrants of the intersection. Also, Oak Leaf Trail and Essendon Park are very close to the intersection. So given the park, the trail, nearby businesses, bus route, this is a heavy pedestrian travel intersection. So the existing conditions, crash history. So when the HSIP application was submitted, there was 19 crashes over that five-year period. Some of the trends from that study were angle crashes. Four of the crashes were left turn angle crashes. One involved is a type A level severity, which is a high injury severity crash involving a pedestrian. That pedestrian came to our public involvement meeting and told the story about her multiple year recovery from that crash. There was two level B crashes, one property damage only crash. And then also there were five right angle crashes and four signal poles hit in that five year study period. So some of the potential deficiencies at the intersection that could have potentially led to some of those crashes. The first one is a negative offset for northbound left and southbound left turn movements. So this is when you're trying to make a left turn movement. And when there's a queue in your opposing left turn lane, it's hard to see whether that oncoming traffic is coming. Kind of got to stick your nose out to be able to see if that traffic is coming. So that's one deficiency. Also, poor traffic signal head visibility. So your northbound and southbound movements right now just have your post-mounted signals. There's no overhead signals there. Also, there's no far left indication. So when you're trying to make that challenging left turn movement, there's not a signal to kind of guide you through that left turn movement. There's also non-compliant pedestrian facilities at the intersection. So all your existing curb ramps are type ones that go kind of straight into the middle of the intersection. There's no detectable warning fields on those curb ramps and there's no pedestrian push buttons as well. There's inconsistent bike marking throughout the intersection. And then access control is something we also evaluated with driveways being very close to the functional area of the intersection. So to address these deficiencies and crash trends that we saw, we developed three alternatives. Two were traffic signals and one was a roundabout. So the difference between the two traffic signal alternatives mainly is the south leg. In alternative A, there is village on-street parking. And in alternative B, that parking is eliminated through the horizontal curve. The main issue with... Keeping the parking is, there's a high volume left turn movement. Your northbound left has over 300 vehicles make that movement in the peak hour, which is a high volume. So only providing for a few vehicles of storage really creates queuing back onto Santa Monica and Wilson. So that's a bit of an issue. So with traffic signal alternative B, there's more storage for that northbound left and northbound through movements. It also eliminates the parking along the horizontal curve, which if vehicles are parked there can create sightline issues to be able to see some of that queuing. And then with the roundabout alternative, the traffic operations actually worked pretty well with this alternative. However, there were a lot of concerns with the alternative. One of the main ones being right away impacts. There's right away impacts in all four intersection quadrants. That's kind of shown in red on the image on the far right here. And then also the construction impacts. So where you have to tie in because of the project is shown in yellow here. Those impacts are even a little bit further. And you can also see in the southeast quadrant, that's over kind of the awning of the gas station, which it would impact a couple of the pumps. So that would likely require a taking of or potentially require a taking of that property, which is outside the scope of the project and project funding. There were also concerns with pedestrian crossing with the roundabout. So yeah, because of the issues with the traffic signal alternative and the roundabout alternative, the traffic signal alternative B was moved forward with as the kind of preferred alternative. So all the improvements that are included with this alternative are pavement resurfacing, that's shown in the dark here in the image on the right. Multimodal enhancements include reconstructing the curb ramps, bike lanes, bus stops, and then high visibility pavement markings for the crosswalks. The traffic signal improvements include monotube signals with the overhead They're kind of the bigger ones with the overhead lane designated signal heads. Those will have better reflective back plates as well for better signal head visibility. There will be updated detection, emergency vehicle preemption, pedestrian push buttons and countdown timers. And then updated signal timings and phasing with protected only northbound left and southbound left turn movements. So to kind of address that negative offset issue with the northbound left and southbound left turn movements, it'll just be the green arrow to make those movements to eliminate that challenging movement. There will be leading pedestrian intervals and then intersection lighting upgrades as well. And then as far as right away goes with this alternative, there will be temporary limited easement during construction. And that'll mainly be to reconstruct the curb ramps to if we need to tie in a little bit behind them and then temporary signal poles as well.

Before we go too much further, and maybe this is less for you and more for our board. One of the things that's designed into this project are bike lanes, but they stop just right past the CVS. And so I guess as a board, if we're going to do this, I would like to see those bike lanes continue up and down Santa Monica. I don't think it makes sense to have 100 feet of bike lanes and then just nothing. So, and it's, I mean, someone could correct me if I'm wrong, but beyond that, it's mostly just paint. And so I think I would like, I just would like that to be on our radar, that if we do this, at least I think we should continue those bike lanes.

North, south, east, or west, or what's your...

Well, we can't do anything once it becomes Milwaukee, right? And so we already have bike lanes on Wilson. So I would just continue those and then just do north, south, up and down Santa Monica. As you can see, they're already drawn in there. They just would, as my understanding is, they would just stop once they got past the CVS parking lot.

One thing, and I see that Matt is coming up, but I don't disagree with you. I know that there is... Oh, yeah. Like this area in here, there's a lot of parking, which I'm not saying is good or bad. I'm saying it's there. And I don't know if that is our permit parking or if that's public parking.

So that would just be on street parking. It is permissible in some areas, most areas of Santa Monica. So that's what I just wanted to bring to the attention of the board that we could look into and maybe have that as a future public works committee agenda item to see how that would fit as far as bike lanes. So I'm not saying pro or con, but I think having more of a purview as far as how that could affect public parking on Santa Monica could be a discussion point where it's further recognizing. So before we make any type of decision about the corridor itself of Santa Monica, just seeing what kind of constraints may impact local residents, especially along Santa Monica could be considered.

Well, cause I'm sorry, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's parking is only allowed on the, on the CVS side of that intersection, correct? Parking's not allowed in front of the Hampton.

I think it is.

Yeah, it might be driveways are limited as far as where there's signage, but more holistically, I'd say most of Santa Monica allows public parking.

Okay. Sorry, for some reason, I didn't think there was parking allowed in front of the Hampton. Sorry.

You can continue.

Yeah, and I mean, if you have corridor continuity with your bike lanes, that's great. Another advantage, I mean, even if it is only a couple hundred feet, It does help you navigate through the intersection for bikers, which is where all your conflicts are. So there is some advantage to having it through the intersection as well.

I guess to go along with Trustee Howler's question slash point, where does the intersection end?

Well, that's that the functional area of the intersection depends on the operations of the intersection. So it's not a set point. So if you have queuing that backs up 500 feet because of your intersection, that's where technically the functional area of your intersection would end. So it's not a it's not a set point.

I say that because I don't. I'll get to it. Sorry, go ahead.

Okay. So yeah, alternative evaluation, incorporating stakeholder feedback into the design. So we had a local officials meeting in May, public involvement meeting in June. We had multiple property owner meetings in July. We had the public works meeting in works committee meeting in July as well. So we've gathered a lot of feedback from stakeholders and we're going to share a few of those things that we incorporated into the design and based on that feedback we received. So the first one here is from the gas station property owner. And one of the things we're looking to do here is potentially close a couple of the driveways because of the proximity to the intersection and to be able to build the curb ramps and traffic signal equipment. So unfortunately, this gas station just put in new equipment new storage for their tanks. And then also they reconfigured their pumps. So for their tankers to be able to get in and out of the intersection, they need those driveways open. So they were open to modifying the driveways, to shifting them a little bit further from the intersection so we could construct our curb ramps and signals, but not closing them altogether. So that's kind of one modification there.

And I'm sorry, is that the... That's the one on northbound Santa Monica?

Yeah, so it'd be this driveway here. Northbound Santa Monica is getting shifted a little bit further south. And then eastbound Santa Monica after the intersection is getting shifted a little bit further east.

Can I ask about that one before you that particular driveway before we move on? And by the way, I need to apologize. I did watch the public works meeting. I could not find my notes. So I apologize in advance of some of these questions have been gone over a million times. But then again, that's why it comes in front of a full board. Were there any discussions about that driveway? if it's modified and not closed, about not allowing traffic to turn north out of that driveway because that's a dangerous area when people want to try to get into the left turn lane to turn west onto Hampton. People come out of that driveway, and it's one thing if they want to go north on Santa Monica, that easy peasy, but a lot of people want to try to get into that, swing into that left-hand turn lane, and I've seen... some backups, some near misses, some, it doesn't seem like the most intuitive as opposed to, and I'll say, and this is for Matt and the chief, the opposite of that is if you want to turn north out of the Aurora area, clinic on Santa Monica and Silver Spring you can't turn left you can't even really get into that left hand turn lane if I remember right and it just it's a dangerous like I said I've seen some near misses and I want to know if there's any discussion about if we modify it and don't shut it down is there a way for us to keep people from going into that left hand turn lane because it is like right there

Yeah. So that would be challenging. Um, I guess I'll, I'll explain a few things with this. And, uh, so one thing, a couple of things that are here right now, there's your median that is right here, um, on, on the South leg. Um, and then there's a median also on your West leg, and that's basically restricting any left turn movements in, um, into those driveways. So there is some access control already. Oh, sure. Thank you. So, yeah, there's this median here and this median here. So there is some access control from stopping vehicles from turning into these driveways. And then also from having them make left turns out of the driveways, which is a challenging movement to restrict them from being able to get into this lane. be more challenging i mean what you would have to do is you'd have to put uh some type of median here um which there's already limited space um so it's not something we looked into could you not could you not put those ballards like we have um up at the in the school safety areas well that If you put ballards kind of in the middle of this, kind of how this is developed here, you're introducing an object in the middle of the road, which could be problematic as far as crashes go. I mean, if you were going to really split this up, you would likely want to put some type of median here, and that's going to shift everything to the left, and then your alignment is going to get off, and then of the issues we brought up with the public works meeting is once you start shifting this median to the west then you have issues with truck turning as far as your right turns making this this truck movement and then your left turns making this truck movement so shifting this further to the west to put a median there to stop these left turners um Would be challenging and could cause additional issues.

This is a in and this is an out. And so he's saying, like, you can't do that. I want to take a lot.

Okay, I'll continue here. So, um, the next. Design modification or, um. From stakeholder feedback was meeting with the funeral home. So with eliminating some of the on-street parking next to the funeral home to provide that additional storage for the high-volume northbound lefts, northbound through movements, and also kind of eliminate the sight-distant issue with removing parking along this horizontal curve, we added parking pods here in front of the funeral home to provide some of that on-street parking. And then finally, from the Public Works Committee meeting, One of the discussion items there was traffic operations, and that was very important to the village to maintain acceptable traffic operations. So one of the items we refined was we modified the north median to support future signal phasing and operational needs. So right now, what we currently have proposed is protected only northbound and southbound lefts. However, there was some discussion on what if traffic increases, there's future development that, you know, where there's higher traffic demands. Providing this improved offset gives you some flexibility in the future to be able to change your phasing at a lower cost if you needed to. So what that would be would be adding like flashing yellow arrows instead of just having the protected left. only movements so if you were to do that it would improve your vehicular operations um because you wouldn't have to provide as much time for your northbound left um with your you have a lower volume southbound through movement um you know more of that time could be given to the other movements to improve operations So that's kind of something that could be done in the future if needed to improve traffic operations if, you know, demand increases.

So are you suggesting that for the current design or for a future?

For the current design. Yeah. So one of the things there's a currently there's a median kind of on the west leg, the south leg and north leg. And I kind of touched on why these medians are needed for the South Lake and the East Lake here. But there's no driveways here where this access is needed, where that median currently is. So that's why kind of modifying that median was a possibility to improve those offsets for the turn lane.

And so is that, is this, that used to be the median is what you're trying to say. And now it's paint.

Yeah. So the median would be probably somewhere would have been here, but it's, it's getting removed and then we're shifting this and this will just be like a little pavement marking splitter here.

Okay. So is that, is that your recommendation now? Yep.

Yeah.

And that didn't, correct me, so we were just talking about bike lanes and parking. Is there still parking here?

That's what I was just asking.

I mean, I know that's what you're asking. Like, I know currently there's parking there. With a bike lane, is this going to be parking?

Yes, that's currently what we have.

No, it's currently. I'm just, in this particular design, where we... Yep, yep. Okay. And removing a median... concrete is, you know, does that have any negative ramifications for crashes, safety, anything? I mean, I get why they're in the other legs. It's because we're preventing turning movements from driveways and how this is one case, but Does having a concrete median help you in any regard for any other things? I just I'm just trying to play devil's advocate in terms of getting rid of it.

Yeah, I mean, it puts it more separation between your three movements. So that's an advantage. But I guess a lot of the trends for what we saw at this intersection. So, you know, we're looking we did the HSIP application data. traffic study and a lot of the issues were from those turning movements, the angle crashes. So those are the things we're mainly trying to address here. But yeah, I mean, there is some benefit to having some separation between your through lanes. But I mean, it would kind of be the same, similar to what you have here on the Westlake. And, you know, based on the crash history, we didn't see any issues with like head-on collisions there. And also, you know, these through lanes, there's, it might be a bigger issue too if you had like a big skew through your intersection. Here, you know, it'll be pretty well aligned with your through lanes where, you know, the vehicle shouldn't be crossing into that opposing turn lane.

And remind me, perhaps I'm completely misremembering. I was under the concept that all four directions had protected lefts, but that's not what you've been saying. It's just north and south have protected lefts.

So all four directions will have protected arrows. These ones will also have flashing yellow arrows here, eastbound and westbound. Those ones, and that's just to improve operations slightly.

I am remembering it correctly, except for the flashing yellow arrows.

Yeah, so the eastbound and westbound left will have your flashing yellow as well, because those are lower volume movements. These higher volume northbound left, southbound left will be protected only.

I think one of the questions I thought of after the Public Works Committee meeting was, at what point in time does the number of turning movements decrease? reach a level where you do need a protected left or is it completely because of crash data and the reason i mention it is just i was thinking i was stopped at another intersection in whitefish bay and i'm like man there's a lot of left turns here there's probably double the left turns at this other intersection um and and yet we don't have one so is it is it a function of you know, traffic volume or is it a function of crashes where you're recommending for protected lefts?

Yeah, it's both. I mean, for your protected lefts, you know, for your like northbound and southbound, if it's protected only, they're not going to have the conflict of like with this crossing here when they're making that left turn movement. They don't have to see if a pedestrian is there to yield to them. So that's the benefit from, you know, a pedestrian safety standpoint. Um, from an operational standpoint, um, you know, it, it depends on what your volumes are at the intersection on whether you need a protected, uh, movement or not. Um, and typically, I mean, if you have protected and flashing yellows, you'll have better operations because vehicles are able to make those movements when it's, you know, a through movement or you're opposing through lane. Um, so there's not a, like a set number, um, It kind of depends on your overall intersection operations. But the protected lefts are... I mean, that was one of the things in the Highway Safety Improvement Program application was to add protected only left turn movements for... For all four. For all four. So... You know, we're following what, you know, got awarded funding to address, you know, the crash trends at this intersection.

And if I remember correctly for that meeting and just for the sake of the other board members, I believe that we came upon those protected lefts would not be triggered unless there's actually vehicle traffic to take that left. So we have camera systems that do not trigger if there's nobody taking a left.

Correct. Yep. There'll be detection there.

It would just go to flashing yellow.

If, well, it depends. If there's no, like for your northbound, southbound, it would not, that those movements just wouldn't occur. If it's for your eastbound, westbound, yes, it would just go to flashing yellow. So it would be phased with your opposing through lane.

Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Can I ask one more? Can you go back one? So you mentioned a couple of driveways for the gas station. Was one of those, because there are two. Where am I? There are two here at the Amstar. Wait a second. Where am I?

Yeah, that's right.

There's currently four. There's one here that's like right past the intersection and there's another one that both turn into it from the north to the south. Are we talking about closing this one?

No, both of those driveways were closed. we're remaining open based on our property meetings. They just reconfigured their gas station. So, I mean, to close those would be challenging and based on, you know, how their tankers get in and out of this gas station and then kind of how their traffic circulation pattern is for vehicles to get in and out. It would be hard to close.

I don't need a traffic study to tell me that people coming through this intersection and then immediately making a right-hand turn into that Amstar is dangerous. Because people will slow down in the intersection so they can make that immediate right turn here instead of waiting three seconds to turn into the gas station here. And I couldn't tell you the number of times I've seen people backed up at the intersection because people were slowing down to make that first right-hand turn into the gas station. And I was hoping, and something I've brought up once upon a time. I was hoping that we could figure out a way to shut down that driveway because it serves no particular purpose for the village. To me, it's a safety hazard. As someone who drives up and down Hampton a million times, I don't understand why there are two driveways there that are probably 200 feet apart.

I'll echo that, Jay, as somebody who drives there. It's too many driveways in general. Way too many. Very confusing.

Feed the villagers' rights in that regard.

Yeah, so that's where it gets a little challenging is I agree. Having them closely spaced to the intersection is not ideal. So unfortunately, when they reconfigured this, they submitted permits for their reconfigured pumps and new storage tanks. So if those driveways are existing and that's how they show the traffic patterns are going to be in and out of their facilities with this newly configured, you know, pumps and storage tank, it might be hard to close it. I'm not exactly sure from a legal perspective how that works, but that's kind of the apprehension there, I guess, is, you know, they just reconfigured that. I mean, we could look more into closing those, but... This is an area that we'll need temporary limited easement for, and that could definitely impact the project moving forward if we were to look at going into trying to close that driveway.

I'd be curious to hear from the Amstar folks, because I'm also a frequent flyer there. Because I just, like I said, it seems...

And we met with them on site.

A crash waiting to happen every day.

Yeah. So they told us how their tanker is coming in and out, and they told us what their circulation plan is when they reconfigured this. So that's kind of how we came to modifying those versus closing them. I don't disagree having driveways closely spaced to an intersection. Ideally, you wouldn't have that. But given how the business functions,

recommended you know keeping well it's always been that way before they reconfigured it it's always been that way so i'll just chime in that to adam's point from the village's behalf all of our original concepts that we shared showed closure of two of those even our submission of that application went through the process of elimination of two of those entrances so we all had that intention of going through this process to get those two pinch points take care of with this but That's part of the public information meetings, that's part of the stakeholder engagement, is hearing back from local residents as well as businesses, because there's things that we don't know going through an application process that's more logistical to this gas station in this instance. So we even discussed about rolling curbs just for the tankers versus using for the public the main arteries of gaining access to and fro, and if that would work from a logistic standpoint. So we went through all those processes, but where it came... down to with Adam and I is very recently the village DPW before my time approved right away permits for brand new driveways. So that would have been our time to evaluate and recognize some of those issues. So they shared those comments with us at that time and that would really upend where they put their tanks back when they redid that. And that's a very costly exercise for a gas station. So fast forward, maybe Adam and I can have more logistics conversations with the gas station about enter only, exit only on their private property that it would show more or an improved traffic flow to eliminate cars making that quick turn after that intersection, Jay, as you were mentioning, that maybe, Adam, we could have more conversations about how their customers gain access. Just like CVS, that's exit only on Santa Monica. That's their choice to do so. But I think that helps out to have one entrance and one exit on those properties. So if in good faith we can continue to have these relationships, like we need these easements, maybe there's a way that we can have a better working relationship, express our concerns and find easier wins with maybe striping stencils for them and arrows and only signs and things like that, that we can help them out from a traffic and customer flow. Cause they don't want anyone getting injured on their premises. Right.

If we could, if we could make that first driveway and exit only that would be that would ease my concerns. Because like I said, people just, they slow down in the middle of the intersection in order to make that right-hand turn into the first driveway.

100% agree with you.

It's just a disaster.

I feel it. I see it a million times. That was our intention of resolving that, but we really hit a lot of challenges and we didn't want to be too aggressive in our approach because That could really put another year on to our project schedule when we have to do forced takes. And that's not a good situation. It's more costly to do so. So, Adam, I don't know if that's something that you agree with, that we can have those conversations with property owners. But maybe there is a mutual way for us to help them with their entrances and exits. Yeah, we can do that.

They're a good community member. I don't want to mess with them. It's just I...

They've been wonderful to work with.

It's just safety, safety, safety for everyone, drivers, bikers, pedestrians, everyone. It's an unsafe area.

All right. Thank you. So with schedule, where we're at, so we're through survey traffic analysis. We're narrowing in on getting close to finishing up preliminary design. That'll be done in October. Um, you know, we had our operation planning meeting, public involvement, public works committee meetings. We're here tonight at the village board meeting. Um, over the next month, we'll be working on, um, wrapping up the environmental document, our design study report and our TMP, um, also putting together, uh, together the right away exhibit for that temporary limited easement. Um, our final design, um, our plants specification estimate is in august of first 2027 with a let in december of 27 and then construction in 2028 so one of the purposes of of this meeting here is to have the village board approve the concept that we proposed so that we can finish up the preliminary design and right away exhibit so we can get to that temporary lease limited easement acquisition and move forward with final design because this this is a pretty aggressive schedule as far as temporary limited easement acquisition you know eight months so we'd like to get our preliminary design wrapped up and kind of get through some of the WSDOT environmental process. So yeah, that's one of the things we're looking for is to kind of get the proposed alternative approved by the board.

One last thing, and that came up with the Public Works Committee meeting, and that was a discussion about the traffic grade like the grade of the intersection as it exists now and as it will be when it is designed and i i couldn't find a slide on that in either one of the meetings but i think you just discussed yeah i think we had it in the public works meeting the intersection operations yeah um i didn't put it in this meeting um but yeah so the operations will get slightly so typically uh

Intersection operations are at a grade from A to F, with A and B being very good, C and D being acceptable, and then E and F being more like you're failing needs improvements. So the intersection currently operates at, I believe, a B or a C, and the intersection will get slightly worse with the protected left only movements, but it'll still operate at a level of service C. So it's just a little bit worse. And then some of the movements are, none of the movements are worse than level of service D. So that's what we would consider acceptable.

And I just, I wanted everybody to understand that, you know, we are moving from a

know an intersection that has higher throughput to one that has higher safety exactly yep it'll be the intersection vehicular operations will slightly decrease but you know you have the benefits of you know eliminating some of those pedestrian conflicts with your left turners sam did you know your answer i didn't know what goes into that metric i guess is it only traffic flow vehicle traffic flow when you grade an intersection Yeah, it's intersection operations. A lot goes into it as far as what your lane width is.

What are some of the metrics you'd use?

Yeah, so it's your lane width, it's your vehicle, how much your vehicle volumes, your truck percentages. Wait times? Yeah, yep.

Okay. Okay. I have a litany of questions. So whenever you're ready.

Well, let me ask maybe Matt, what is the purpose of tonight? And because I think we could go through each one of these little, you know, nitpicks of design language. Is that appropriate for now or is it more appropriate in that we're still four months away from having a preliminary design and nine months away from having a final design? So what are we doing tonight?

I would like approval of concept B with the additional feedback that we received from the public feedback, the resident engagement, stakeholder engagement, public works that's been presented today for Strand and Associates to be able to move forward with one design concept. So if that takes a little bit longer to hash that out, I'd rather have Adam have that information now so then we don't. have to come back to public works committee meeting our village board with a misunderstanding about how to proceed.

How does that fit with what you want to talk about? Okay. Go for it.

Okay. We've been talking about this now for 20, 25 minutes. And while I appreciate as someone who traverses that intersection all four ways by car, I appreciate these changes and I like option B. Throughout this 25-minute conversation, I have never once heard the word pedestrian. And I don't see, in my opinion, as someone who also walks pedestrians, in that intersection a lot. In fact, I think I've probably done it a half dozen times in the last two weeks. I don't see unless I'm mistaken by what some of these markings mean, I don't see improvements to pedestrian safety in that intersection. And so please tell me if I'm wrong, because right now what I see is no extension of, like, for example, no extension of the median in a pedestrian island. Those are all very long distances. And I mean, we have a short crosswalk at Silver Spring and Marlboro and Lake, and we have those pedestrian islands in three different places in that area. I find myself having to jog across that. And no one wants to see that jog across that intersection because the signal length is short and the crosswalk is long.

Yeah, sure. Yep. I wish you would have been at our public works committee meeting. We went into a lot of this stuff.

Well, like I said, I watched it and didn't bring my notes, but you know what? That's why it comes in front of the whole board for us to ask these questions.

Yeah. Yep. So one of the, so there are pedestrian improvements with this alternative and One being the curb ramps are being constructed to be ADA compliant. Currently they are not. There's going to be pedestrian push buttons with audible pedestrian signals on them. So currently there's no push buttons at the intersection. Those will be there as well. There's high visibility crosswalks. That provides better visibility for pedestrians in the crossings. There will be leading pedestrian intervals, which gets the pedestrians into the crosswalk before the vehicles have an opportunity to make a movement, once again, better visibility for the pedestrians. Also, with the protected northbound left turn movements that we discussed, one of the main purposes of those was to eliminate that conflict with your left turning movements having to yield to pedestrians. So there are pedestrian improvements with this alternative. One of the things that we evaluated was bump outs to shorten crossing distances. Now there's pros and cons with, you know, any alternative you choose. The pros with the bump outs is shorter crossing distances. The cons are we would have to eliminate the parking or the bike lanes. And then also it impacts your truck turning. So Santa Monica and Hampton Avenue are both minor arterials. So their truck routes for the bus, in designated truck routes in the village. So for those vehicles to be able to make those truck turning movements, once you start extending those curb lengths, it makes those movements more challenging. So unless you wanted to designate this as a different truck route, you know, I guess there's pros and cons with each, you know, whatever you choose. So, and one of the feedback we got from the public involvement as well was, you know, having additional bike lanes. Hampton Avenue is a, on the sewer pack, long-term planning facility. bike plan here. So that's another reason bike lanes were added on Hampton.

So, I mean- Do you know what their timeline is on that, curiously? The sewer pack?

No, as far as when, I think that's probably- 2050 goal? Yeah. So, I mean, that, like, bump outs were evaluated. You know, we had to weigh a lot of different options, and there are, you know, pedestrian improvements.

with this alternative? Going back to one of my concerns about the length of the crosswalk versus the length of the stoplight signal. If you're not paying attention, you're all of a sudden walking against a red light. Was there any consideration in extending the medians into the crosswalks to develop a pedestrian island? One place where I've seen that work is MLK and McKinley down... You know, as someone who walked in that area a lot when I worked there, it's a very, very long crosswalk. And they extended the median, you know, into the crosswalk halfway through to, you know, for a pedestrian island.

Yeah, so I think Jacob did bring that up at the Public Works meeting.

Okay, and there's people that wonder if that just encourages... People to dash across the street just to stay in the pedestrian island. But at the same time, it seems to.

Yes. So with this intersection specifically, one of the issues Jacob had asked, I believe at the public works meeting, you know, could this be extended? The issue is we don't have enough space here to actually have pedestrian refuge. So you might kind of be providing a false sense of security if you extended that. Once again, if you extend this median and we make it eight feet wide, then we have other challenges that I've kind of already discussed with making these medians wider. So it was brought up, but I mean, given the intersection size and constraints, it would be hard to accommodate.

Matt and Chief Whitaker, my question now becomes, what if the lights were longer in all four directions? What would that do to traffic? And I'm hoping the answer is not much now that we have these extra lanes for people that are going to be dedicated turning left and right.

I think they are longer. I think that's why our traffic rates are going down when it comes to how many cars can get through at any given time. I think that was addressed.

Yeah, there's pros and cons to every, you know, every improvement or, you know, if you modify the timings to provide more, like let's provide five, 10 more seconds for pedestrians. your vehicle operations are going to get worse because you're giving that time to pedestrians. I mean, there's trade-offs to that as well. If you're-

Adam's point that that's all part of the traffic counts and the data collection that we had is we want to make sure it's a safe crossing. There's no doubt about it. And having ample time is reflective of other busy intersections within the village of Whitefish Bay. And especially with the LPIs, that's adding five additional seconds before even the traffic movement. So based on that, this whole entire design was reflective of pedestrian safety as a our number one goal. And if you look at the applications, the submission by strand, everything that we've done, yes, it revolves around vehicle turning movements, but it's under the purview of pedestrian safety. So what we have with existing conditions versus what's being proposed, 100% better for pedestrians. And that's, I feel confident with what we put together.

Moving forward, we should lead with that then. Because like I said, if I didn't bring it up tonight, I don't know if we would have even talked about pedestrian safety because it was not mentioned at all in this proposal.

I apologize about that. But again, I think how I kick things off is that I would say 70% of our public works committee with this agenda item dealt with those types of questions and if we didn't reiterate but that's reflective if you go back into those videos our discussion points was all of our pros and cons of different pedestrian features that were evaluated with those concepts so they might have not made alternative a b or c but we reiterated as part of our process of how we managed and looking at even bump outs that we could put bump outs there but then there's an adverse risk that there's this false sense of a security as i called it I'll put in a bump out there when you have a semi truck trying to make a right hand turn that's going on to a bump out area. Now you have people that think they're protected, but they're not. So there's been a lot of studies. There's been a lot of analytics to this. And based on the confinements of our available right away, I truly believe this is the best that we can do within that intersection of making those improvements.

Yeah, I'm going to give Adam some credit, too, because I grilled him pretty hard at our public works committee. And I don't think anybody just looking at this intersection If we had a blank slate, this would not be the ideal intersection that anyone here would design. But there were just incredible constraints. And the fact that we are getting this amount of funding put some additional constraints on it. And so I think given, like what Matt said, given the right of ways that we have, given what's available to us, given that we would like it to be largely financed by the state, this is more or less what it's going to wind up being. Yeah.

Jacob, can you help me understand what some of those constraints are? So we're getting this 90% funded. What are some examples? Because I think it's an important.

Yeah, I'm not the best person to talk about it, but I know that a lot of it has to do with trucking and how much space certain trucks need to pass through certain lanes and still provide safety. So I'm going to leave it there. But a lot of it comes down to trucking.

Yeah, so, I mean, this is a federally funded project. So, I mean, some of the constraints are with your environmental documentation, you know, with, you know, if we go outside the existing right-of-way, we need to acquire that. If we need to have construction outside the right of way, we can't get construction permits. We need temporary limited easements. That requires acquisition. That requires time. This project has an August 1st PS&E. So if any of those things get pushed, there's a sunset date on your funding too. It risks your funding for this project. So if you wanted to go into evaluating things further and it pushed it a year, that could risk your funding. You'd have to resubmit for your application. And all your HSIP applications are based on a benefit cost ratio. So there's a cost associated with every crash. And whether you get funding depends on the other ones that are submitted. So one of the big risks is getting your 90-10 funding split if you continue to, I guess, push this project. A lot of the physical constraints, I mean, yeah, as Jacob mentioned, with the truck turning, given these are both minor arterials, you need to turn certain size trucks. to be able need to be able to navigate the intersection so if you start you know putting in bump outs modifying medians you know it would be nice to be able to do that for for certain things but your local businesses still be you need to be able to get goods and services to them so so that's kind of why you have those functional classifications of your roadway um

Do you start to lose some of that 90% share if you infringe on that trucking route, or do you just risk losing all of it? I guess, like, what are the parameters around that?

Well, the funding, I guess, is one thing. The truck route is more how we came up with the geometry of the intersection and where the medians are, you know, where the turn lanes are. That's kind of how those were developed. I mean, truck turning is a big part of that, as well as, you know, intersection operation safety.

Okay. Well, just one other question, too, as I was reading this. So as you look through the different alternatives, there's some stakeholder bullets and call outs. So there's a lot from the property owners. There's the public works. Do you have any examples of through your public engagement, how people who navigate the intersection walking in the ways Jay describes may have felt that they have commentary? Did we integrate any of that into this design or was most of the feedback from the groups listed?

A lot of the public involvement did mention the challenging northbound and southbound left. They said, yep, I hate making that movement.

Driving or walking?

Driving. There was comments on pedestrian safety as well. The lady that was hit at this intersection was a pedestrian walking. Also, disregard for traffic control, red light running. Also, were mentioned in our public engagement. And from a engineering side, we can only do so much with that. You know, if someone sees a red light and chooses to run it, it's hard for us to engineer that, but we can do things to try and prevent that. So with the monotube traffic signals with lane designated heads over the signal lanes, over each lane, and having reflective backplates, that provides better signal head visibility to reduce that red light running where Maybe you're not paying attention. Maybe you're looking or, you know, if it's right above you, there's a better chance that you're going to see it. So, you know, a lot of the improvements do factor those in those things in as well.

One other question, too. I know there was discussion, and I apologize if we covered this. We're taking out certain parking spaces, correct, in one of these alternatives on the street? Remind me.

Yeah, so we're moving on-street parking here in front of, you know, on the south leg. What are we replacing it with? It's kind of what we'd call a parking pod here. So there'll be like four, it'll be about 80 feet. So roughly four parking spaces, which kind of lines up with where the carriage walks are for the funeral home. And one of the main reasons for that is, you know, queues historically have backed up through this intersection during your peak hours. So if you have vehicles parked along this horizontal curve, It creates sight distance issues for vehicles that are navigating this curve to be able to see if those queues have formed. So that's also a bit of a safety issue there as well to create better sight lines to not have vehicles parked there was another reason for eliminating that parking.

Is the trade-off with that, though, that you may actually increase speed through there without the parking? Or is it like if you think of if there's parked cars there, does that naturally slow the traffic naturally?

of define it or is that not a good way to think about safety i'm not well in the existing conditions there's a a bike lane uh well there's parking bike and then there's a buffer so there's there's quite a bit of room there in the existing conditions um you know they still have to be able to navigate this curve so if you go through the curve too fast um you know i guess A curve naturally slows vehicles down. If there's more room to do it, yeah, I guess they could potentially go faster. But the parking currently is behind your bike and buffer.

On the other side?

Yeah.

Okay. So I have one other traffic-related question that I want to go back to pedestrian stuff again really quick. What, if anything, in traffic studies... because Sam just talked about parking, the parking that's here along Santa Monica and I guess in front of the CVS. Have we talked, Matt, I don't know if this is you or Adam, or one thing that I've noticed in real life is if people are coming south on Santa Monica and want to turn west onto Hampton and if all of these parking spots are taken, it is a quick whip. Like they're going south and they're having to get into that right-hand turn lane really, really, really, really fast. And so I would personally like to see some of that parking gone so that you can turn right out of the CVS and right into a right-hand turn lane if you want to go west on Hampton because you can't go west on Hampton over here.

i believe we don't have parking uh that would be to the south of the cvs exit there and a couple what's that yeah yeah and currently yeah currently right now these two lanes aren't right turn lanes they're through right movements they're wide enough right now because they're bus stops there so those lanes need to be a certain width right now there's a bus stop yes there's a bus stop right here that's a high there's a lot of um That's a heavy bus stop. In our traffic counts, there's a lot of people that use this stop. There's also a bus stop right here.

So to be, it's technically not. Sorry. No, I did not remember that.

We actually eliminated more parking for that sight line out of CVS, if you remember, to the north. We extended that because there was some issues with parking in front of those multifamily dwellings. I remember that. So as far as like your queue and moving over in order to make your right turn, I think that's been improved even this year in order to have more accommodations when there's not a bus that's dropping off or picking up.

Okay. And I'm sorry, I forgot about that.

So you can make the right turn movement, but you know, the wider lane is for the bus stop. It's, it's not to have a right.

And Adam, you, you said, you said that these, these pedestrian safety initiatives would get people into the intersection sooner. How many, and this is going to sound really particular, but I have a reason for it. How many seconds do you think you're saving by adding these?

So the leading pedestrian intervals, the villages, what they have throughout the village, which is important for consistency because it's what Pedestrians will expect then throughout the villages is five seconds so they'll have five seconds before, you know, the, this, if it's, you know, they're walking here, they'd have five seconds before this indication here turn green. So they would walk five seconds into this crosswalk to make this crossing before this signal hand indication here and this near right here turned green.

Everything will be red, and then you'll have five seconds of the pedestrian walk sign engaged before another actual signal change, either a left turn movement, green, whatever that movement is. So what that does is the LPI, leading pedestrian interval, creates more site visibility where most people, when I see this engaged within the village, they're halfway through an intersection and they're visible, like Santa Monica and Silver Spring. They have LPIs along all Silver Springs. You'll see the kids, the pedestrians, Well in front, so then that way you don't do a quick right turn on green when they're stepping out and there's conflict. Okay. Well, those LPIs, this is one of our last intersections that does not have an LPI.

Okay. I just... I appreciate studies and I appreciate all of the work, Adam, that you have done and Matt, you as well. And Matt, you may have done this in your life. But one thing I would suggest before we make this a final plan is all of us to go to walk that entire intersection. Do it by yourself. Do it with a dog. Do it with a little kid. Because it is vastly different when I have to cross when I'm going down to CVS than when I'm walking the dog and I'm crossing one of those intersections. Or you see a lot of little kids going over to Dairy Queen from the east. And it's just... I... This is a once in a lifetime shot at this intersection. And I understand that there's federal funding involved. And I understand that that puts certain restrictions on this. But I don't want to hear, Jacob, and I'm paraphrasing this, this is the best we can do. We got one shot at this. And I don't want it to be the best we can do. I want it to be the best shot. fit for Whitefish Bay, all types of traffic involved. I fear that we are settling because 90% of this funding is being dictated by people who have never been to Whitefish Bay. That's my concern.

Is that accurate? I mean, isn't it mainly the truck route issue?

truck route and available right away.

And right.

If we wanted to purchase a more right away, that would be a hundred percent on the village. And as Adam gave in the public works committee, if we took any available private property, you're talking likely a full tape, which means a hundred percent of that property. So there's costs. It's all about time.

But it's not just like a little slice. I mean, it's kind of an egregious cost. It's not.

Yes.

Yes.

Millions.

So I guess I'm kind of challenging the concept that we're Yes, it's being funded, but I don't see these massive handcuffs that we have. It's that we would literally need to take property to make this an A-plus situation.

Well, that would just be for the roundabout is where you would need to have it taken.

Yes.

Okay. There's concerns with that as well.

The trucking out issue.

If you wanted a median, if you wanted the islands, all those who need more available right away in order to create refuge. So anything beyond what we show here, you're talking like you would have real estate acquisition and that's not part of our grant.

I guess I just, do you think what he suggested was accurate in terms of because this is a federally funded project, we're handcuffed? I would say no.

I think Jacob put it perfectly that given the available right-of-way that we have, we're making a lot of great improvements based on available resources, including real estate that we have and we own with control.

Okay, that's not what I've heard through this entire. I keep hearing that if we try to make any changes, it could impact our funding.

Because of time, I think it goes back to time. And if you purchase real estate, because you need more real estate to do those necessary additional improvements, that would risk at least one year, if not more, doing real estate acquisitions, budget amendments, and we'd have to reapply for HICP applications. So that's where the risk is, is dealing with real estate. And that's not part of our scope right now, except for limited easements.

But it's also the truck route issue, right? And that's just a sunk problem.

And the truck route is that it's a minor arterial road. We're going to have to accommodate for truck movements. And based on our available right-of-way, we have to allow for those turn movements.

Right. So I guess I'm trying to suggest that it's not just federal funding that we're chasing. It's the fact that this intersection has particular attributes to it, whether that's right away, but also truck route that just constrain the possibilities.

And we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit when we allowed the gas station to make adjustments based on the existing infrastructure instead of looking forward. Yes.

Well, I mean, you're not wrong. Is that a 50% thing or a 2% thing? I don't know. We winged ourselves in the little toe, maybe. Anyhow, are you exhausted with your questions? Sure, why not?

I've tired you out. No, I have a lot of other thoughts when it comes to

cues and approach but i think that's outside of the scope of what we're talking about tonight let's have one question so a quarter of this project is in the city of milwaukee have you have you one of you both of you engaged the city of milwaukee and do they need to approve this plan after we approve the plan so we uh we amended and we actually have a new um

agreement with the city of Milwaukee for this intersection. So we developed and it was approved by the village board for a new MOU for us to take responsibility this intersection. Currently, it is operated through the city of Milwaukee through a past agreement. With the new MOU, we are taking charge as far as the design, working directly with Strand, but we do have conversations, check-ins with the city of Milwaukee. So they are very aware of our three concepts, our recommendations. And financially speaking, because 25% is within the city of Milwaukee, they are basically the 10% split on the village. they are taking 25% of that 10%. So 2.5% of the total project cost will be billed to the city of Milwaukee. So that's all through the existing or modified MOU.

Thanks. My second follow-up question is Pandora's box. I realize that you don't have to answer this, but should we talk to the city of Milwaukee about potentially taking over an MOU of the trail and the crossing? And should we talk about that for future discussions? I'm not a part of this project. I watched the public works meeting. I've seen what happened tonight. I think you've done the best you can with the intersection. I think there's a great improvement. And I think the dollars spent are being spent properly. And I think we should take advantage of those dollars with the plan that we have. I believe it's the best. However, in the future, can we start those discussions? I mean, I saw the chief's post on this. It's a great post, by the way, on Facebook. I'll call it out right now. But any intersection that requires a Facebook post to explain how you should traverse an intersection is a problem. And frankly, I think it's a bigger problem than what this intersection is. There's more accidents at that intersection, I believe, than there is at this intersection. So can we have future discussions about taking an MOU of that intersection?

And should we? I'll answer no and yes. No, because it's truly outside of our municipal boundaries. So it's not anything as the post said. So we do not have any jurisdiction unless we wanted to reset our boundaries, being the village of Whitefish Bay, to be around the Oakleaf Trail. So can we do that?

Let's talk about that. It wouldn't be a one. It would have to have agreement.

Correct. That's correct. Changing boundaries.

Then the last thing I'll say then is, is can we offer encouragement? I mean, it seems to me like, I mean, I won't get into that. Like we'll stay on task, but if they're there, it's signed incorrectly. And so even if you sign it correctly, I think that intersection would be better. Is there a way that we can work with them to resign it?

If you don't do an NYU, I've reached out to the County already, both our County supervisor and, um, And I believe that what I was told was it would go first to their Parks and Recreation Committee. So I emailed the chairman of that committee as well and haven't really heard anything.

Imagine that. so i personally met with the parks department as well as the city of milwaukee at the oak leaf trail in order to look at what can be done as far as modifications to the trail so those discussions are happening behind the scenes between all three parties including myself right and then with that part of our meeting with the city of milwaukee was exactly that conversation that no this is not part of our hissup grant application no this is not part of our intersection improvements but what a great synergy that we're working with the city of Milwaukee on this intersection. Can we start to have these conversations because the village as well as city residents use that Oakleaf Trail and what a great connection corridor that we don't want to miss the opportunity between two projects. So the city heard us loud and clear and they're actually been engaged in separate conversations with Strand because Strand is the most intimately knowledgeable about this intersection now. how to create that corridor. So they are open to conceptual renderings and looking at TAP grant funding. So then that way, if there's funding concerns between the city and the county, hopefully the same as we did, there's other federal grants out there in order to do maybe a phase two, where they look at available real estate right away and a better connection of that Oakley Trail corridor. So those conversations are happening.

Great.

I think we've exhausted our Village Board commentary, but are there any members of the public that were interested in, why don't you come up to the microphone and state your name and address and tell us your thoughts?

Thank you. My name is Deborah Marcus-Watton. My address is 9289 North Fairway Drive, Bayside. And I'm the president of Milwaukee Funeral Services, LLC, which operates Goodman-Bensman Funeral Home at 4750 North Santa Monica Boulevard. And I want to begin by emphasizing my support to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, but also to let you know that I don't see very many bikes that are biking north on Santa Monica in front of the funeral home. And after our discussion tonight, I'm actually quite relieved to tell you that because As you talked about the driveways, the funeral home has two driveways on Santa Monica. The gas station has two driveways on Santa Monica. And so the bikers are infinitely more safe if they turn off on the trail. And they do. Most of the bikers that I see, and I'm out there often because I have therapy dogs at the funeral home, I'm walking them constantly. Most of the bikers that I see are traveling south on Santa Monica to turn off to the trail. And those that might be coming north almost always are coming off of Berkeley. They are not taking their bikes on Santa Monica in front of the funeral home. If it was up to me, as you all just rightly stated, there'd be some sort of like light or something at that crosswalk to get them onto that trail. or at least to slow down the traffic coming around that curve. Because if there was something marking that Oak Leaf Trail crosswalk right there, I think that would be one of the best reasons for the traffic to slow down. So I'm not here to ask you to abandon the proposed bike corridor. But I'd like to work with you a little bit more closely to achieve those goals while minimizing the adverse impact on the funeral home. As you probably already know, our funeral home has been there, I think now over 70 years. And because of the age of our building and the nature of our business, we do rely heavily on right of way for parking. And that's not just for the parking for the people coming to visit the funeral home. That's loading and unloading. That's staging processions to the cemetery. That is UPS, waste management, FedEx, lawn maintenance, and also those truck deliveries, as you mentioned, that's a huge truck right of way there, that are delivering to the gas station, both across the street from us and also next to us. So for us, the curbside access is not just convenience, it's actually an operational necessity. You should also know that we have a couple of communities that engage buses. that bring groups of people to attend funerals. Those buses have to unload on the street. We can't get them turned around in the parking lots. So eliminating virtually all the curbside access requires our families to walk further or our vehicles to actually stop in active traffic to load and unload. And I think that creates safety concerns of its own that really don't advance our shared objectives. especially during the winter. So if we take away all the street parking, and I note too that we've been parking there for decades around that curb without incident, but especially during the winter, because now we're forcing the folks who are coming to the funeral home to park further away where we don't have cleared sidewalks and they're walking on the ice, they're walking on the snow, or they're going to be parking across the street now and attempting to cross Santa Monica. They're not going to walk back to the intersection to cross and then come around to the funeral home. I just don't think it's practical. I've seen them do it. I am encouraged by the proposed gap and the carriage walks that will allow us at least four vehicles to park directly in front of our building, although we're losing about 12 to 15 spots. It looks like there's some mature trees that are going to be sacrificed there, but I do appreciate the consideration of that accommodation. It is an important step toward a workable solution. It's also my understanding based on my correspondence with Adam that street parking will resume immediately south of our south parking lot and north of Berkeley, which is also going to help. With that in mind, I ask you to consider one more compromise, and that is to allow limited street parking exemptions during the most difficult winter months. or maybe alternatively permitting parking for limited periods, like for three-hour stretches when we have a chapel service. During the winter, the impact on bikers is going to be minimal if we allow parking in that bike lane because they're not biking in February. But the benefit to the pedestrians avoiding the snow and the ice and being able to get into the funeral home safely will be significant. So again, I don't think this is going to undermine the overall purpose of the bike corridor. As I mentioned, and again, please, I second the idea of coming to walk the sidewalk. Please, please come and take a look. Most of the cyclists are turning toward the Oak Leaf Trail, which is a fabulous trail and indeed the safest place for them to be before they even reach our building. And once the proposed corridor ends at Hampton, as was rightly stated tonight, it doesn't go anywhere else. It just stops there. There's no bike lane further up on Santa Monica. It's starting and stopping sort of in that finite space. So a limited parking accommodation, particularly during the winter or for short periods of time, like a three hour stretch, would provide meaningful access for our patrons without compromising your broader safety objectives. To be clear, we are looking to partner with you in this process, and I appreciate your efforts to address these concerns. I hope that we can continue the conversation toward a solution that works for everyone, which is the village and the bicyclists and the pedestrians and the families who depend on us during the worst time of their lives. So again, I encourage you, please take a short walk down our sidewalk. It's a remarkably more clear perspective on how our patrons park and access our building. I would welcome anyone to come over, chat with us. I would meet with anyone. Let's just take a walk down between our parking lots so that you can see what the actual ramifications are for patrons of the funeral home. Thank you for your time and your consideration. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. So Adam, you've heard this before from the funeral home. What is your response to those problems? Do you think that your pod of four somehow properly, I mean, basically what she said was compelling. And so I'm a little concerned that this alternative with a pod of four parking spots We got kind of, we got led down that path, not knowing the severity of the issue with that funeral home.

Certainly there's seven parking spots basically between, I don't know if we have any of the exhibits we can bring back up. But for those northbound movements. So it's going from seven to four. So they're losing three parking spots. And yeah, there's pros and cons to each of these. And, you know, as alternatives as a whole, you know, trying to find the best alternative that fits the community as a whole. There's a lot of different options. So, you know, we went from seven on street parking to four. Yes, it's it's reducing the parking on the northbound side, but they're losing three parking spots. And what we're gaining is the improved operations, the safety at the intersection, the bike lane that from what we heard at the PIM, you know, from. constituents that came there, they, you know, that, that was a priority, um, for there too. So there, there's a lot of different priorities that, you know, sure.

Uh, what, what did you think of for the solution of having buses apparently that come and drop people off or pick people up? And I'm not sure what that was. So like, how, how, how is that going to continue in, in alternative B?

I mean, buses that could drop people off could use the parking pod that's there that's 80 feet.

It looks like that's a non-starter for that business. Right. You'd have to be blocking that off.

Yeah. Can I give you some photographs?

Sure. Sure.

This is one of the buses waiting for people to come.

This is one of the vans.

This is how we're parking all the way down the street. This is the edge of our north parking lot. And this is at a medium sized . And this is just to show you also that we do have a number of trucks, deliveries. They're all going to be along that corridor.

I'll just hand this over and you guys take a look. Her argument seems compelling, and I'm not sure. The pictures are good, and so we'll keep rotating them around because it does seem like a function of their business to have a significant amount of cars and vehicles and delivery, et cetera.

Can you talk through the trade-offs? So if parking were to remain the same as it is now, what would be the sacrifice in the design?

It would be large queuing on Santa Monica at the Wilson.

Just as large as it is today, though, right?

Well, no, it would be further because we're adding the protected only northbound lefts. So to provide additional storage for those protected only northbound lefts.

the volume of people taking left turns there is going to remain the same. So why would having, I apologize, but why would having it protected be any different?

Yeah. So right now, how they can make that movement, there's a protected left, which gives them a certain amount of time. And then it turns to a green ball where they can make that movement. They can yield to make that move.

Yeah.

And since there's lower southbound through movements, there's more opportunity to do that. So it creates better operation. So if it's a protected only movement, but it's just a green ball, they cannot make, you know, if it's a flashing yellow, there won't be a flashing yellow. So they can't make it.

Oh, it'll be basically a red arrow.

Exactly. Yes.

Well, that's interesting.

Yeah, so the trade-offs would be worse intersection operations. And then I guess depending on how the configuration is, if it was similar to how it is today, you know, eventually bike lanes could remain. But you might, you know, you could sacrifice bike lanes for parking too. That would be another potential trade-off if you want to use that space for parking instead of bike lanes. So there's trade-offs with which whatever option.

I mean, I hate to, I was unaware until right now that you were going to switch that from a green arrow to basically a red arrow where people couldn't take lefts, even though northbound traffic can go through. Did I state that correctly?

Yes, yep.

That always feels like a wasted period of time, but you're saying that you're doing that for safety purposes.

Yeah, and because of the negative offset intersection.

But that negative offset will be repaired, right? It'll be improved. It'll be improved. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.

Is it a red at all four sides of the intersection? Or just in those left-hand turns?

For the left turns, there would be flashing yellows for the eastbound and westbound because those have a neutral offset. So vehicles can see if there's oncoming traffic coming.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of what you just described. I find there's this situation on Silver Spring and Port Washington Road where it's a protected left turn and it turns red and all the traffic is going north and south, but perhaps there's no traffic and you can't take left because the sign says it's... But you're saying it's going to be a red arrow or a blinking yellow arrow?

For the northbound left and southbound left, it would be a green. Then it would turn yellow and red.

Let's talk about the arrows. I get the green.

The arrows would be a green arrow, and then it'd just go to yellow to red. There'd be no flashing yellow. It'd just be a three-section head for northbound and southbound lefts.

Not a fan of that, just gonna say it. I think that that's why your queuing is so difficult is that you've reduced the amount of time that people can take left turns, even though there may not be any southbound traffic.

Yeah, that'll be one of the reasons. And then the other will be, there will only be a few cars that can be stored at the intersection if you keep the...

Does the camera help you with that? Perhaps keeping it, you know, if there's no southbound traffic?

To an extent, yes. I mean, you can optimize the operations as much as possible, but given that there's like 300, 300 vehicles an hour, that's when you start to look at dual less typically at an intersection. And this is, there's obviously not space for that here.

This is software changeable, correct? Well, I'm just saying like the operations of the, the arrows are something that can be configured in the future.

Yes. Okay. You can change your signal time. Okay.

All right. Where are we? Was there any other members of the public that wanted to speak on this topic? Okay. So before us is Tara. I think Tara has her hand up. Sorry. There she is.

Well, I mean, I'm rather sensitive to the concerns of the funeral home as well. So I was just wondering, I kind of like the idea of saying parking for funeral home only, you know, or having certain areas that are available when there are actual funerals happening so that we don't have additional... I'm just trying, I'm looking at this trying to make sure I'm understanding it correctly, but... I am very sensitive to the concerns that the funeral home has. And it seems to me like there are ways that we could adjust the parking so that we minimize and maximize the ability for there to be a bike lane there when there's not a funeral home, when there's not a funeral. Does that make sense?

Would that be a topic for another public works committee meeting?

versus tonight, because it, yeah.

Yeah, potentially, as long as we're not, yeah, that's fine.

So you, you know, are you suggesting option A, B, or B with an asterisk, I think is what?

I think B with an asterisk is what I'm thinking.

Okay. And I think that's what Matt is recommending tonight, yes. Is there any further commentary whereby has the funeral home and their pictures and their commentary been compelling enough to switch back to A? Is there anyone here who thinks that we need to switch versus B with an asterisk and figuring out parking during those times where it's partially a... Is that going to be a problem? Partially a... bike lane sometimes, and then sometimes it can be blocked by processions.

Like be with the asterisk as we take all of the commentary we've had here tonight.

And is that appropriate to have bike lanes that are sometimes not a bike lane? I mean, that just seems strange to me.

I think you see that in other places. I mean, it's not...

Okay. I've seen, I've seen my, my parents live across the street from a church and it's parking except on Sundays. You can't park, you know, so there's restrictions that can be made. We can decide what we want to do.

Well, if it's going to be a shared parking lane, um,

I mean, is it even legal to do something like a dual use parking and bike lane? My guess is, my thought would be the answer to that is no. So, I mean, if the answer is no, then does that change anybody's mind?

Yeah. All right.

A little bit different. That's definitely, yeah, just different sizes of roads. All right. Anybody, I guess you'd, somebody, if B with an asterisk is not possible, does that change anybody's answer to A?

I think the, the asterisk is not specific. It's just incorporate our feedback. Try to, could you have, we have kind of honed in on that we are going to pursue and now we can start to fine tune that.

Right. Thank you.

I don't think we need to get granular about parking restrictions and... Well, it just, if it's possible or not, that's, I think the bigger issue.

And correct me if I'm wrong, the major difference between A and B in your ability to design B is those parking spots. Correct. So I, I guess I just don't want to create the illusion that we could retain seven parking spots and still have option B. I think it would be maybe a shared scenario. I just want to be clear about that. And maybe we could find a solution, but that is the difference between those two designs.

Okay, well, I think we've probably given staff direction enough to figure out some sub notes on option B, but in which case we would need a motion to continue with alternative B, which is presented in your packet. Would anyone like to make that motion?

Move that the Village Board approve the Hampton Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard alternative B traffic signal and intersection design concept as shown in the meeting packet, memo, and exhibits, also including board commentary from this evening. Thank you. Do I hear a second? A second.

Thank you, Brian. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, well, that was a good hour longer than I thought it would be, but here we are. Difficult intersection. All right, we will move on to discussion action on design concepts and survey results for the Clody Warming House. Good night, Counselor.

All right, I will tee this one up as well. Really quick, because I know that Pete with growth is going to go through all the survey results and look again for guidance and feedback regarding the quality park warming house and where we stand to date. So as Pete gets his stuff ready, as probably all the board members know, we went through the process of engagement, not only with the village board to have three concepts, but we narrowed that down to two that we wanted to put in front of the public to engage with their feedback. Awesome responses. We had 465 responses and that just shows how much the level of interest this project is with the overall community. And I think we gathered a lot of great feedback that we'd like to present this evening, share with the village board and have more pointed conversations to really the importance of this meeting is narrow it down to one. And I know we'll have time to work on small details and nuances and maybe some aesthetics that go into it. But from a site plan, layout, square footage, those are the big boulders that we need to accomplish this evening to hit project milestones and schedules to get this thing built next year in 2027. So this will be an important meeting for the village board to narrow Pete's direction. So with that, we just wanted to give some of the survey results and then see if we can get more of a crystal clear idea to move forward with the warming house project.

Good evening. As Matt said, we kind of run through quickly how we got to where we are. I have some pointed questions that I'm looking for some feedback on tonight. There's about six of them. So get ready for your pop quiz at the end here. So overall, just to outline kind of where we are and how we got here. So very quickly, my group, the architects, city staff initially got together, reviewed the RFP, reviewed the site, kind of came up with... Some thoughts. We did two listening sessions with the community, one with adults and one specifically for children, at which point we developed the three concepts. We reviewed those with village staff, with the village board. We were able to narrow those down to two concepts that went out to public response. As Matt mentioned, we got about 465 responses. Of those, not everybody answered every question, so I want to be clear on that. As we get towards the second half of the survey, I would say there was about half of the results. I don't know if we want to give Kelsey and Sam just a quick minute to get back, or do we just want to...

Probably not Kelsey, but Sam, we... I'll give them two minutes.

Keep going? Yeah. All right. So overall, we provided a summary of the results of... So we collected results both digitally through a SurveyMonkey, but also there was a paper copy available at the village for people to fill out that weren't comfortable with the online version. What I'm happy to report is there seems to be a pretty clear direction from the village. About 65% of people approached preferred option A, the building, about 62% of people preferred the location of option A's multi-use pavilion. So there was pretty much general alignment in those. From a feedback perspective, I guess to tell you how we got to where we are, what we did internally was we took the 430 some responses and We developed an Excel spreadsheet that listed all the raw data that was provided to the village. From there, we went through, there's three staff members, including myself, working on this. We did an AI summary, kind of compile our results. We read that AI summary to see if it passed our sniff test and then went deep into all of the comments and kind of verified that what we were getting as results from our summary aligned with the real feedback. And then we provided a human written one page summary that I believe was provided to you in your packet that kind of hits the high level I'm going to run through that super fast and then get to the few questions. So as I mentioned, about 65% of the people liked the direction of option A. Items that were cited as reasons they liked it was the architectural character. The functional layout, the covered outdoor space, the proximity of the pavilion to the building, and the outdoor fireplace were listed as major reasons. While option B was not the preferred choice, there were two or three consistent positive comments. The stone and material palette was well-received. The larger windows and the simpler building mass were all things that people gravitated toward on Option A. There were several concerns identified. For Option A, respondents expressed concerns regarding the darker material palette of the exterior. the longer kind of ranch-like appearance, which is the opposite comment to why you would like the breakdown mass of option B. So there's a lot of kind of that yin and yang in here. And then concerns, there was a perception that the building felt, this is option A, too residential. I can kind of read into that in my own way. Then there were three or four items that were identified consistently as not included in either option that the residents thought we should consider, covered bicycle and stroller parking, safer pedestrian connections and circulation, a family or all gender restroom, and then amenities for beach users, such as an outdoor shower or longable storage cubbies. But as I mentioned at the beginning, overall, the feedback was pretty consistent in a direction, which is nice for the design team. We're not trying to parse through, you know, an A and a B 50-50. I will pause for a few quick questions before I start peppering you with my...

Remind me again, I'll be in here somewhere when I do the paper copies, the bathroom situation.

Yeah, if you don't mind.

Is there a reason that they're men's and women's versus just like multiple, multi-gender?

Sure. Yeah, either floor plan works if that's available. The short answer is the multi-stall bathrooms are significantly more efficient. That's the simplest answer. We did in one, I think. Okay, great. In one version, we did not have this back and we were able to extend these end stalls to be kind of fuller size. We were able to get an adult changing table in there. And our general thought at that time with that option was that stall served the function of a single use bathroom, right? Somebody could go in there with a companion of the dignity and privacy that they need. This is kind of an up-to-you, well, I'll wait to ask that question, but I have a question about bathrooms for you. Any other questions?

How many family-style restrooms could you fit? So I'm thinking, it was actually mentioned here, the Northwestern Mutual Playground, I think, is all kind of individual restrooms. If you were to do that entirely, how many could you fit here? So it's less efficient in this footprint. In the footprint that we have. Yeah, in a reasonable footprint.

three to four, so you would lose two toilets or two urinals.

I feel like it's kind of a good trade, but...

You think it's kind of a good trade?

I think it's kind of a nice thing to consider.

I know.

It was pretty consistent feedback.

With a second child, sometimes when we're at a park, whether it's the Northwestern community or even Chloe here, it's kind of nice to be able to just close the door and not have to worry about them crawling under the stalls or you're just kind of locked in there together. And so the family room is kind of nice. And I think it also offers the benefit of... It's more inclusive, you know, whatever you got going on, it can kind of just happen in there and there's less, I don't know. It contains the chaos, at least that's how we use it.

I've had similar experiences, so I agree.

So are you suggesting basically swapping out, you know, four toilets?

I'll ask my question because I think it'll help clarify this. So what we wanted to do is, does the village want to consider a family restroom? What I would say, my answer is, is we're creating another room. So we're either making this a little bigger or we're losing some storage or something to create that family restroom. What I would not... necessarily suggest to do because of the efficiency is to create a bunch of individual so I think we're going to kind of three bathrooms right a men's multi-stall a women's multi-stall and then a family is how we would suggest we go about creating that just to maximize the number of fixtures and try to include that inclusivity piece. I would be the chiefest here. I think this is not something that's an everyday occurrence, but I think it's worth mentioning. We've had communities land on both sides of the single stall argument, and usually sometimes it comes down to safety concerns. having a stall in a public bathroom that you can lock. Some communities look at that as a concern that they don't want to take on that liability of what could happen in that room.

That's what I was going to say. I didn't want to...

I don't like to make decisions based on that kind of thought process, but I wanted to express it to the community.

As the resident person who's written and read terrible stories about things happening in public parks, I would have a hard time with a closing lock with no access. I mean, currently that's what Clooney is. I know. I don't like that.

Could we compromise and have the larger stall have doors or panels that go all the way to the floor so you could eliminate the kids crawling underneath?

The answer, I think, is yes.

But if we do create that larger space in the back for an adult or a companion bathroom, I'm not sure if I'm using the right terms here, wouldn't that also have locked doors? Wouldn't that create the same safety issues? I don't see the difference.

Yeah, I mean, generally we would design it so that the But the room doesn't go to the floor. There is some noise in theory, you could, I mean, we're getting kind of into the what if weeds, and I don't want to dwell on that. There's always a what if moment. So I guess my, I think the question is, would, we're not going to sell the design today. Do we prefer to explore the use of a family bathroom or a multi-generation, multi-gender stall?

I personally do. Now, eliminating the single gender, you've convinced me that's maybe not the best plan, but I'm curious what one single or a family stall would be.

Because I guess maybe to kind of take one quick step back, my goal today is to kind of gather this information so that we can come revise an option. So this isn't the last time we're going to be talking about this, and we can present some different design solutions. Just want to know if that's a priority or not as we go through the next few steps.

And I think we'll make sure it is for more than everything has to do with money.

Right. Yeah. Like, yeah, it sounds like a great amenity to have. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm curious how much costs, what it does to the footprint. Tara?

Well, I was just wondering if there's a way that we could incorporate that, like a family-style bathroom, but within that same room, so that we don't have the possibility of a locked, solid door with a completely separate room. This would instead offer a little bit more privacy, but still be within that same space, so that if there's something happening where someone might need help... people may be in the bathroom and may hear. There's a difference between a solid door and a solid room and then dividers that are more substantial. Just a thought.

Yeah, I think my takeaway is what I'm hearing is yes, we like this concept. As a design team, we'll go back and look at a few different options that we can review with city or with village board and staff. Is that a fair summary?

Yeah, that's awesome.

Thank you. First question, easy one. I want to confirm that we're going to move forward with the survey results and we're using option A as our base design moving forward with potential modifications that we'll talk about. But I want to make sure that that's where we're starting.

Yeah, I love option A.

Yes.

Perfect. Continue to be.

Location of the multi-use pavilion. There's option A, which is here. and then option B, which is kind of, yeah, you can go back to, yeah, here you can see it, I guess, would be kind of at the west end of the ice skating arena, if you will. It's a vague answer, but it's the approximate location. Survey results were for A, for the one by the building. I want to just confirm or not?

I'm OK with A, as long as it's currently directionally due south. And I would prefer it to be directionally into the southwest, I guess it would be. Isn't that omnidirectional? Well, I mean, look, this is a band shell. And if you have bands playing, currently they'd be It's not symmetrical. You'd be playing out to a third of the, let's just call it the basin. Instead of tipping it and directing it to the southwest, then at least you're diagonally going through that area. Otherwise, I wouldn't put it there at all. I would put it where option B is or the opposite. So that's my commentary. Like, I don't like the way it is at all that way. I would at least want it angled.

We can explore kind of some tweaks to that location. We did set it up that it had the four symmetric gables so that, in theory, you could push it either direction. And whether we twist it, that still works. I understand what you're trying to get with your orientation.

I think the direction we need in that regard is where we're sending the sound to. Because, I mean, that's the limiting factor, right, is you were trying to do the designs to send the sound to the south. If we have opportunities to send sound in different directions, that makes these options very different. And it's a very important piece for staff to have in place.

Well, I mean, the way it's presented, it's sending it due south right at Bell. And that's where it currently is, right?

Whenever there's anything over there, the band always faces south.

And I always envisioned this as facing south. It just would have been in the middle instead of, you know, 70 feet to the east. Yeah. So what I would say, if you're concerned about sound, is actually pointing it diagonally attenuated better.

Yeah, we were sending it out to the lake. Sorry, I said south. I meant east. So we were trying to send the sound out to the lake.

Which would be a different position. Then you'd move it to option B, which is on the west side of Clovis. There. Excellent. I'm good with that spot, too. I'm good with that spot. Just for the sake of argument, flipping it from the west side to the east side, where people would have views of the lake, but the sound is going towards Lake Drive, I did a little Google mapping to see how far would a stage be to the front door of someone at Lake Drive, and it was 460 feet, which... that's a pretty solid distance to have sound traveling. In our pickleball comments, they said you had to be 500 feet away. So whether it's there on the west or there on the east, I think is, either one of them I think would be okay for sound issues.

Just, I mean, It could be here all night. You probably are going to be here all night. But if you put it there, it's somewhat isolated. The one thing I like about having it by the pavilion is that when there's not a band there, you can throw a couple of picnic tables under there. People want to... covered bicycle and stroller parking if it starts to rain you just roll them up under the pavilion like it feels like a natural extension that can also have bands or something else this option b or the one that's uh over by the basin that feels like a very specific like you're going to host the world cup here's your stage you're going to have a concert here's your stage i just like them i like the flow too i'm with you except that we do have that overhang

And so the overhang is going to fulfill the needs of, oh, it's raining. I'm going to go underneath the overhang.

Yeah, but I just think this feels like an extension of that. The other one feels disconnected.

I'm okay if you angle it in. I think we're good.

Okay, I'm sorry. By angling it in, do you mean so more people can see it? Or are you talking about sound travel? Because my bigger concern with option A here is that You're cutting off line of sight to anyone over here. You're cutting off line of sight right there.

Is anybody against twisting it?

Yes. Just visually, I think it hurts my brain.

Interesting. Anybody else other than Jacob? I like straight lines.

I don't know.

I agree with Jacob, actually.

I think one thing to also add into this mix, you can see in this rendering pretty clearly, this pavilion sets up that space between the building and the pavilion to be a really multifunctional space. You know, it's big enough to host, you know, 100 plus people kind of standing and milling around. It's not big enough, right? I don't think you're going to host your concert seats there. But I think that orientation and those relationships, you'll find that space gets occupied really quickly. And I think you'll find that things like a pop-up market or the beer truck vendors are gonna utilize that space pretty quickly to do different things. So I think that's a piece, a wrinkle to add into how you're gonna use that pavilion in relation to the rest of the site.

I'm sorry, can I ask a quick question of Kelsey? Has the Civic Foundation seen this yet?

Yeah, I showed them pretty quickly. We had a 4th of July debrief, and I showed them pretty quickly. The sense, I forgot who else was in the room. The sense I got, I mean, obviously, this will change their layout for their concerts, and I think there was a little bit of pause about that, but there was an extreme concern that I heard for who else was in the room for that.

Awesome.

I explained to him the sound piece, which I do think is really important to understand. If the board wants the bands to be facing in a certain direction, that is the design guidance we have provided. If it's open, it can go in any direction. Well, then you could maybe do an extension of the building off to the south and keep a pretty similar layout to what had happened before. There's more flexibility there. But then the sound is going to go to the sound.

And I don't have a particular issue with that. I mean, if we were talking about using this for concerts 150 days a year, then I think the neighbors in the South would start to get busy. But I think that... continuing to face south is not an issue to me.

My guess is once it's up and running, you are going to have someone's going to play an acoustic guitar, and it is going to be to folding chairs in the middle section there. It is going to be smaller. It is going to open up a lot of options. There is a lot of grass to the east, so you can certainly host concerts and face it that direction.

I think that this allows us to I mean, yeah.

I apologize. So you're contemplating having concerts going both south and perhaps east? You could. And west. I agree. The one thing is like... Hopefully, there will be a PA system. And so you would have to choose one direction or the other to put that PA system.

Just mention a screen if there was going to be screens. I don't know if it's a PA system that we mount versus just some PVs that you bring out and face whichever correction.

The dream is to have speakers and lights that will be there for any kind of performance. Nothing amazing, but just something that would be functional.

We, yep, go on.

I just want to point out that Sam was on the Civic Foundation for three years. I was on it for 10 years, and I put on the festival for four years. So I'm pretty intimately knowledgeable about how we use it for the 4th of July, how we use it for the 2nd of July village band concerts. And so I'm pretty sensitive to it now. the way it's displayed here and to Trustee Saunders' comments that if you do point it that way, you'd probably lose a third to a half of the potential viewing audience, which let's face it, the Fourth of July is kind of why we have a lot of these conversations.

Can you change the shape or design of the pavilion to make it so like this feels like a square? Can you make it a shape that better allows you to face in different directions or work on the design of that? So if you want to use it to point south, it kind of lends itself to that, but it's. Yes, that makes sense. I mean, yep.

I mean, I think we tried to do that with the square and the gables, the next shape that I would look at if you really want to be out in the direction of some sort of circular shape, or you say you pick a direction that the band shell faces, and it's designed to face that direction. So whether that's south or east or whatever it is, you got to pick a front. So can we explore it? Absolutely.

And then the other question is, spacing-wise, if you space it out a little further, does that improve the viewing to the south? If we move it out closer to the lake, not terribly far, but a little further east,

I would say if you did that, it would make the situation worse because there is a tree there. There's a tree on the right-hand side. You can kind of see the tree.

Okay. It's hanging over. Okay.

So you, you know, yeah, that would kind of just obstruct that.

I really don't think the sight lines and the sound lines are going to be that bad. I think. I mean, I could be original when you're like hugging the building and when you're over by like the pickleball course, but I don't think they're going to be too bad. I think. And the other thing is once you do this, if I were stealing the food trucks over to the other section, you're not going to have people that's where people are going to be queuing in line for beer and corn dogs. And so like, I think it's all going to work out pretty well.

I like it. I kind of like the way it's connected and not move like it, you know, when Jacob hosts open mic night and, and it faces to the West, you know, you got people congregating there between the building and the bandshell and,

I don't think we're going to design it, the final solution tonight. So can I summarize what I've heard of? We generally like this location with some concerns about sight lines, particularly to the south and to the west. We can look at continuing to make it omnidirectional and to tweak that orientation or the footprints a little bit in that general location to achieve some of these objectives. Is that a fair summary? Okay. Awesome. Parking. So one of the things that came up was parking and pedestrian access. I think if you go back to the site plan, we've added some not parking stalls, but I think we've separated some parking and some loading opportunities, some places to park the food trucks or things like that, beer trucks. So I think those have been addressed. There were some considerations for additional pedestrian connections. I'm looking for some comments if we need to think about pedestrian connections. I sort of read that at the time of that's a little outside the scope of the warming house as when we received kind of the public feedback. in those listening sessions. A lot of that discussion was about pedestrian sidewalks and parking along, sorry, I'm losing my mind here. Is it Sherman on the right? Or is kind of the area that seemed to be identified the most. So I guess I want to ask the board here of, do we need to consider additional pedestrian improvements or expanding any parking beyond what was currently shown in this option?

Increasing traffic and parking on Shore Drive, I think it's kind of a non-starter. I mean, I don't know what you guys think, but I don't want to make Shore Drive going through the park some big car-centric area.

Why would it do that?

If you're talking about adding any parking here onto Shore Drive.

Don't people already park on Shore Drive?

One side.

West side.

Yeah, I finally had commentary about pedestrian access interesting in that it's a park, so it's a green space. You just walk on the grass. I mean, that's a one that I'm... I mean, maybe they're talking about access from Lake Drive and crossing Lake or crossing Bell. Sorry, go ahead there, Jay.

Unless they're talking about ADA. Yeah, I think... But...

I think it's outside the scope.

That feels comfortable to us. That's great. Awesome. We talked about the family restroom. We got good direction there. Are we going to, should we consider any of those items for beach goers? My kind of initial feedback was a little surprised by kind of why we do this. I didn't consider the beach goers maybe as part of the warming house. I think an outdoor shower, when I talk about an outdoor shower, I'm not talking about an enclosed shower. I'm talking about an open that you can rinse the sand, the whatever off. So we're not talking about kind of creating shower stalls, if you will. My kind of general feedback is we can do that on this building if we want. I think the proximity to the bluff, you know, that's a pretty healthy walk for somebody. I would... suggest that we take that in consideration. And if that was something we want to look at, we would create, you know, a little showerhead splash pad for lack of a better term, kind of at the top of the bluff with maybe some waterproof lockers. If that was, I think that makes more sense.

So away from the warming.

Yeah, kind of at the parking lot.

Yeah, the first thing I would suggest is we have a drinking fountain. And on it, it has a hose with a sprayer that I think the DPW supplies. And so, you know, the next step of that would be to put a stock up and have some kind of shower facility and maybe even, you know, some... you know, wall structure that would shield people as they, so I, I think that's, that's on a scope. Yeah. Yes. I don't think this is the right location.

We should definitely talk.

I think it's a great asset and we should take advantage of it, but like, it's not a warming house. Truly at the moment that is kind of fulfilled. If people want to wash off their feet, that's why they had the, the hose there. So perfect.

Yeah. All right. And then the last thing I got for tonight is one of the things we're going to strongly consider and study is that exterior material palette. It was pretty consistent that people like that lighter stone from option B. Yes. We're going to kind of figure out how to combine all that. So that is one area that we, I don't have answers. I'm not, maybe asking for permission or maybe I am, but we're going to study those exterior materials to see if we can find a happy middle ground between an A and a B and utilize those.

That was my only concern would that be that we are taking the more expensive project and then we are grafting upon it the most expensive component.

The stone and the brick kind of depends on which stone we kind of drill into, you know, Fortunately, we're going to pick locally quarried stones. A lot of the stones that you see in the magazines are coming out of Colorado, Montana, and you pay literally a truckload to ship them in. So I don't, I mean, we're constantly evaluating the cost, the size. This won't be the first or last time we talk about the budget and design pieces, I don't think. But yeah, we're trying to balance, always trying to balance budget and design costs.

I thought there was faux siding that was stone.

Yeah, I mean, there are those products. We will explore all of them. I'm going to get on my architect soapbox for this project. I would live with natural materials. The honest architecture here, I don't want it to feel Disney-like. Sure, sure, sure. When people start to get up to that stuff, they know it's not...

I just think that you're correct that most people preferred stone, and I'm guessing that the entire board did too, so...

Yeah, so we're going to do a little study of those facade materials.

My favorite part of option A, though, is that we have to keep just Clody Park signage. I think that's my favorite.

I thought I heard that was Saunders Pavilion.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

yeah with a donation it could be 100 well i think i got the feedback i was looking for tonight um i think our next steps right is we're going to kind of refine option a to get to kind of a final solution um we're going to touch all the boards and staff and you know arc review this board etc so uh won't be the last time you hear from me up here.

One last commentary I have is potentially as opposed to turning the pavilion, what about potentially expanding the pavilion? And would that also kind of solve what we've been talking about as far as facing different directions? If you bump it forward just a little bit, is that enough to give you enough room where you can turn it a little bit? So you can still keep it square, but just make it larger potentially?

Yeah, I think there's a handful of things that were rattling around in my head to try to work that. And I think we can also demonstrate kind of a viewing triangle, if you will. So like If you are an audience member and somebody's on a stage, whether they're facing south, west, north, whatever direction, we can kind of say, hey, here are the comfortable viewing lanes and give you an approximate number of people that could fit in that cone. And we can evaluate whether that's sort of where we need it to be.

There was one other thing that kind of never, I brought it up a number of times and it hasn't been resolved. And that is getting vehicles into the basin. Currently, they just drive to the west of the building and they just drive through that. You are blocking that. So we need to come up with another solution.

I think I can still do that. My answer has always been they're going to drive on the grass at some point, right? We don't want to put in a gravel drive, I don't think, for the one-off.

We need a way. And maybe that's just, maybe it's a curb cut somewhere.

Well, I didn't plan to have curbs around this little pad, but maybe we need them. Engineering will get there. But yes, my goal is that we can still take a vehicle in here and

Honestly, the easier solution might be a curb cut of right here somehow, just being able to get vehicles up there. And then you don't have to do anything. And we just do a little concrete work because there's nothing magic. In fact, the trucks themselves... Sometimes it's a beer truck and it's relatively large. It's actually easier to have some ability to send it that way instead of going through the parking lot, which is a terrible idea.

How does DPW get their trucks in there?

What I just described. It's not just for the Fourth of July. This is a DPW problem too. You deliver the lawn tractors and any devices that you, any, you know, tilling or machinery that you need is there. They all have access to the basin through there. So we're going to need an answer to it. And maybe it's just a curb cut.

Is there a curb cut on Lake right now? About.

Yeah, there's, there's a curb cut like right there. Yeah. It is on Lake. It is a little bit of a, I mean, work with the DPW and figuring out where's the best curb cut. Sure.

And then do you want to talk about the amphitheater? I asked him to design a larger, kind of more significant one in case fundraising opportunities present themselves. So I just want to make sure everybody's on the same page.

You've talked, I mean, that's kind of a request is to basically come up with a plan nicer amphitheater that could be packaged for a donor. And so that it is a picture we could show to somebody and say, this is nice. Do you want to put your name on it for X number of dollars?

When we're talking about amphitheater, are we really talking about an amphitheater or are we talking about a larger band shell or a nicer band shell?

A nicer band shell with, you know, stone around it and, you know, perhaps the same, could be the same footprint, but definitely with some accoutrements that you would suggest a donor would be pleased with, like, you know. lights and speakers and some form of recognition thing at the top, or floaty or something. So something that we could sell to somebody. I don't think that would be a million dollars. I have no idea what the scope of these things are. What do you think the cost of this particular?

We did a little research and I know Kelsey has sent this to me, the Fiendsville band shell that's in their park, kind of by their village hall, which is kind of a pretty generic. That has a nice dome kind of shape or post raised up on two or three steps. You know, those, there's different companies around that you can kind of get those kits of parts. So we went to one of those, it was called Polygon, and just said, hey, this image, like, I know it's probably not exactly what you would give us, but We were in the 300-ish range for kind of a simple thing. Now, I got to be careful about, does that include all the footings and foundation, or is that kind of what's just above? We didn't get to that level.

Probably anything south of 500 is probably in the right world. Sure. Yeah.

And $200,000, you can add a lot of zhuzh to it. I'm glad.

Sorry, what was it?

That's the point. I think that's all I had. If there's other questions, comments. We're good. Awesome. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Well, that was fun. And now we're moving on to another fun topic. Discussion action on new Silver Spring monument signs to be paid for by private development projects.

So this topic we have discussed now on several occasions. It's been presented to the village board, to ARC, BID, and CDA. So what's happened is I've taken that feedback from the initial developer submittals to the feedback we initially heard from Village Board. And we have different proposals and those proposals in the packet basically have been modified following the meetings based on the feedback from those meetings. We are getting to a point now where I'm feeling like we need to start making some decisions.

We will. We will.

Oh, so that's great. So I'm looking for feedback so that ultimately Gropus, who I've been working with on this, can take that feedback, design a final plan set that would be presented to Art, and then hopefully built here in the next few months.

Just a little bit extra context in that we've had one village board meeting. This is the second one. We've had two CDA meetings, I think, that talked about this, a bid meeting and an ARC meeting. So the reason I bring that up is that what I've, there's been a couple of things with consensus and then just a whole bunch of opinions. And so in the end, I don't think we're going to come to a perfect consensus on these things. And we're just, the seven of us are going to need to pick because each one of those groups had different ideas about The first concept or the first bit of consensus I would say is that the fonts and the fish and what is on the text, what I will call the inlay, where it says at the top there, Village of Whitefish Bay, like that would remain consistent throughout all designs, right? And I think everybody agrees with that kind of consistency. There's definitely been a split of opinion whether or not it should match, whether we should match Sendik's brick and have it consistent from the one in Sendik's and the one on the Bank of America one. Should it be a consistent brick? But there's also thought behind that saying, no, this should look like a village brick. uh, you know, design with our own kind of branding. Um, and then the next piece, so it could be brick, it could be the same brick and it could be, you know, complimentary pallet brick. Um, and then the next piece is, well, how, what about it not being consistent and instead having brick in front of Sendix and having stone in front of, um, Bank of America. So that's actually question one that I want to get a consensus on, or at least some form of vote, because that is like the first decision tree that we need to make.

Consistent. Keep it just one, make a sign, make two signs, however many signs, that should be our sign. That's how it is.

And I am team consistent as well. We kind of already are. I would rope in that we already have a brick sign on Hampton. I believe we do in another spot. I'm team consistent throughout the village. Okay. Sam? Wait, let's go with Tara.

Agreed. Consistent.

So by concision, both signs look the same.

All signs. This is the new Whitefish Bay brand. I agree.

Okay. They're similar, but maybe not exactly the same. You want it to be the bread from the other side.

Well, so that's a separate question. And that is, do you want, there were some folks who were very adamant about, well, the Sendix people are very adamant about matching their brick. Of course they are. And then there's people who are like, no, no, no, we should definitely have our own palette. I wouldn't want to make it ridiculously not compatible. Does Sendix have extra brick? I don't think we need to go into that, but OK.

I think they're concerned about it just being slightly different and it not looking good with some different kinds of variations.

Like a Canadian tuxedo, but of that.

And I get both concepts. I find their brick is very uniform, and it's just a uniform red. I'm not a huge fan of that. Quite frankly, I would prefer some kind of multicolored red brick. That's just me. So I think now we need to have commentary on, do we want to just have Sendix red brick throughout this whole thing or a complimentary color palette? And again, I don't know what that is. I leave it to designers to figure out what that complimentary color is.

Oh, we're, we're not, changing, or we're not changing the one on Hampton, correct?

I'll say not yet, but I wanted to see that as a project. I mean, the Hampton one, the Santa Monica one, perhaps there'll be some on Lake.

I just, I asked that, that was a leading question, because if we are not changing them, I think that we should be using the same you know, to be consistent.

I think you'd have to change them because if you're going with branding, like the inlay of white is different from what is currently like... No, I meant the brick itself.

The... Not the inlay, the... Just... I mean, I know the one on Hampton doesn't have an inlay. I'm just talking about what would surround the inlay is what I think should be consistent.

Where else is Sendik's red brick found? I feel like I see it throughout Sendik's. But where else would it be?

I think just as a comment, I think Marquette uses that. Sure. Oh, well, then we don't want to. Was the Masonic Temple red brick? No. No?

That was. That was. It was a different brick.

It was red brick.

What?

I can't think of anything. Anyways. I'm fine with the Sendix red brick. I think it's identifiable. I get their concerns. I think they've been here long enough to, you know, if I have to pick between U.S. Bank's concerns and Sendix's concerns in the moment, I'm going to, they've earned the right. So let's, yeah. You mean Bank of America for the record? Oh, which one did I say? U.S. Bank. Oh, well, you know.

Yeah, devil's advocate. I mean, when I looked at the pictures of all of the signs in front of the two buildings that we're looking at right now, To me, actually, the stone looked the best in front of both. I mean, if we put the red brick in front of the other bank and they're going to go with some kind of orangey brick, it's going to look bad. We're really hemming ourselves in if we go with specifically red brick. If we go with like a Lannan stone, it's neutral. And then it doesn't matter if the building behind it changes in the future. And it matches kind of everything and it's classy and it, you know, there's a lot of land and stone in Whitefish Bay too.

And then we can, oh, sorry. Oh, that's all. I was just going to say, and then, you know, if we're thinking ahead, we were talking about putting certain stone on the floating warming house. We could match that. I agree. I think the white looks classy too.

Agreed.

I totally agree.

In my opinion, In my ideal world, I loved Proposal 4, but with the white brick and Village of being centered.

Excuse me, what's Proposal 4?

Proposal 4, updated growth designs based on CDA feedback.

Although that wasn't brick. It wasn't stone. You're saying?

Yes. Okay, so let's try it again. We were going down the brick line, the yellow brick road. Anyways, now perhaps the tide has turned. Are we now more convinced about stone and some sort of land of stone? I like the land of stone better.

Agreed. I'm team red brick.

You're team red brick, okay.

Yeah, I like red brick too.

Okay, so we got two bricks and four stones. I think that's what Tara said, yes?

Yes.

Okay. So I think we've got a... I think we've got stone. And then... So the next piece, so consistent stone. The next piece is, yeah, what we see up here. Well, I guess this is just about the cap detail. And cap one is a sphere. Two is kind of a disk. And three is a swoosh. Wave.

Is that a disk? It's like a point. I think it's a pyramid.

OK, a pyramid. I'm team pyramid. Yeah, me too.

I'm team cap detail one with the circle.

Yeah, the sphere, okay.

I'd be fine with one or two.

One or two. Jay?

I like two more than one, but it's not like I'm going to go home and cry on my pillow if it's one.

I think it's three and a half then. What do you think, Tara?

My vote was also two. I don't hate one, but my vote is two.

Yeah, I'd go, hold on, we have...

No, please.

Go ahead.

Aren't you one of us now, my new? Option two, given the height of these signs in the vision triangle, we're at 42. With that pyramid design, we're going to be able to give the sign more presence. We go with the balls. So there's not really a strong opinion between one and two. I would encourage people to increase the size of the sign.

Based on that, I'll go with two then. Based on that commentary, you can't design it out. That has to be inside the vision triangle?

Yeah, the location was kind of said. It's probably a much bigger backstory than I know, but nothing can be above 42 inches on this side.

On the Sendix one. Including a detail like that.

On the Sendix one.

Right. So we went through this, that on the Sendix one, you have to say 42. On the Bank of America one, we can go, it's not on the site triangle. And so it was suggested that we would, because of having flowers planted in front of it, that we would raise it maybe like a foot.

It is higher in the designs. I forgot. 52 inches. 52.

So it went up basically roughly a foot. And I think everybody's, even though that'll change things, it'll change the dimensions a little bit, but very insignificantly. So that's great. I love it. The one random thing is I was trying to look for caps, cap detail, and I did see some that were lit. And I thought that was really clever because this will be electrified, right? And the lettering and the fish will have... lights behind it.

I bet the lit caps look good for a year. And then I think it's a constant issue of maintenance. Well, I mean, all of it's going to be maintenance because of the lighting situation.

Of course. The one I saw was literally very much like a pyramid, only it had some lights around it. Yeah. It looked very classy, so maybe it can be sourced. So further, Trustee Saunders, you mentioned centering or not centering?

For the love of God, please. Village of needs to be centered.

Village of needs to be centered.

As it... as someone who used to write headlines and just the pure optics of it, I just, to have it, to have it push left, it just, there's so much wasted white space to the right of, of, and again, this is really in the weeds, but I just, I hate all that white space.

So anybody against centering? I'm with you on that. I think it looks odd.

Did he used to write village?

Now we got centering.

All right.

You like it up to the left?

I like it up to the left. I'm not going to fight about it. But I don't care. And you know what? Long term, I would say centering it is probably the safe bet. Visual styles change fast. I think in 20 years I might be like, oh, it looks cheesy to have it off to the left.

Not to mention, just so if it says established 1926 on Sendick's building, that is centered. It is. So the next piece is that 1892 on the right column. I like that.

It looks like an address.

It does look a little more dressy. I was thinking it should say EST on it or something.

Oh, yeah, I like that.

I like... ESTU would be fine. What I really didn't like was where it said village established in 1892 under Whitefish Bay. Okay, we're not... So I just... All right, so...

Perfect. Ding, ding, ding. All good with EST centered. The EST is going to be above the 1890. Above or below? It happens both.

What I would do is the lower font for the EST.

Okay, here we go. So the next... Let's get it right. So personally, this is going way faster than I thought it would, so I'm thrilled. The one last piece, and that is something that has been brought up before, and we don't have an actual... Well, we have a couple of examples where these monuments are... rectangles roughly with something versus what they had provided. Here, that's a picture of one. What Sendix had provided and what is currently there have like wings on the rectangle and they're kind of curved. I appreciate it having some architectural angle to it, whether that's a wing or a curve or a some kind of feature that makes it a little bit different than just a straight line. Now, knowing Jacob and his straight lines, you anti-curve or anti-wing?

I don't know if I...

I think it adds a feature to it. It adds something distinctive. Yeah?

Just to clarify, would that be just the set mix location?

I'd say both. I'd say both, sure. Yeah. We have the space, and that was what they, that's what both designers came up with before. So the one for, where do we see, the one for Bank of America was actually inverted, and the one for Sendix had, like, wings.

I actually do like the straight ones.

You know what?

This looks like you're going to a paintball ring.

I'm sorry, I'm totally with Jacob on that.

That's fine. For you, straight or curved? Great. Okay. Three. Sam? Great. Okay. There it is. Tara?

I can't see what you guys are looking at, but I'm thinking straight, too.

Okay. Well, that's the end of that. I think... Is there any outstanding questions?

Yes.

I think that was it.

What about the logo? Did you guys prefer the blue or the gold?

Oh, blue or gold. Team blue. Team blue. I'm gold.

Uh-oh. That's all right.

Whitefish Bay is blue. We're the blue dukes.

Thank you. So the lettering is black.

Yes? Black? Are we going with the stone? Are we going with the stone or the brick, remind me? Maybe the lettering could be... I'm okay. Because that's gold. Yeah, the gold looks better on the stone, I feel like. It could be black. So wait, what...

Yes. Expert in the first row, raising his hand. Go.

Color generically we want. I would say the dark right now. I don't think we've kind of said black or dark gray or dark bronze quite yet. I think those are all small things that we can make based on the stone. I might suggest making more of a dark bronze than a black. I think that'll just soften it a little bit. So I bring that up to say with the logo, one comment is, so we called out the currently it'll be a symbol, right, that'll kind of glow. So we can do one of two things. We can make the logo itself the same color as the words, and then we can use the colored LED that we blow at night. So when you see it all at once, it's just, in the day, it's all consistent color of the dark. And then at night, the logo itself, it can blow a little more. If you're going to I don't know if I could go this far and say this with confidence. You might be able to halo the letters with glue. I think that might look a little strange to the passerby, but you could do it if that's an option. So that's one way to get color. And the other way to do it would be to just make the shape of the fish, if you will, the standard white fish bake glue. So that's two ways to kind of get that color in there.

lighting differences I think might be a little I don't know that's hard to I envision it in a way that's distracting yeah what backlighting well like one thing is backlit in blue and the other one is backlit in white I mean it's kind of a cool idea but

I think the only, personally, I think the only thing that needs to be backlit is the logo. Are we not?

And the letters. Yeah, the lettering is all backlit. Do we need to backlight the logo?

Well, there's three ways to light the light. One way we're not going to do, which is some sort of ground-mounted fixture, right? Floor lighting. The other way is a halo. So basically, the back of the letters are open. So the light washes out and kind of gives you like an outline. The other is channel lit letters. So in the back of a letter, there's a channel and it makes the letter glow from behind.

I've done a great job of explaining, but it's working.

So I guess the channel lit would be the letter, right? You'll read a W with an H. With the halo lit, there'll be a nice field of light behind and then the letters are just kind of a void in front of that. Yes. And I don't think both are very standard. Both generally function the same way. I don't think we can make that decision per se today. I guess the only thing I'm thinking of is maintenance.