7Days: "Montpelier Seeks Proposals for Its Once-Problematic Parklet"

 

According to a recent Seven Days article, here, the City of Montpelier is currently seeking to have the lot, which formerly hosted the Guertin Parklet structure (before the city had it removed in early May of 2022), developed; ironically, potentially, for housing:

The Montpelier City Council is seeking developers’ proposals for a half-acre downtown lot that drew locals' complaints and repeated visits from police in recent years after its gazebo became a gathering place for people experiencing homelessness.

[...]

“It’s one of the pieces of the housing puzzle that the city can help with,” said Josh Jerome, Montpelier’s community and economic development specialist.

The gazebo that previously occupied the city-owned lot had become a shelter of sorts, and bad behavior there promoted complaints to the city and calls for emergency services. People who lived in apartments next door reported finding syringes and 

sleeping strangers in their halls and stairways; merchants said they worried the park activity was deterring visitors.

[...]

Above photos: Former Guertin Parklet structure (aka Guertin Park; taken by Morgan W. Brown). View additional photos (via Google Photos, here.

View the archived video of the city council meeting (discussion on the former Guertin Parklet structure, agenda item 11, begins around the 2:27:46 hour/minute/second time mark):

View the meeting agenda, here; the action item re: property RFP Final for 12 - 16 Main Street Development, here; the RFP, here; and, the map, here.

Images: Screenshots of street views, via Google Maps, of the currently vacant 12 - 16 Main Street lot in Montpelier.

My personal dream and vision for the currently vacant property, however, which if I ever had the means (read: resources) as well as muscle (read: might) to make something happen along the following lines, would be to have a three or four story structure designed and built that would house a bottle and can redemption center as well as a community center located on the first floor

(including a small laundry facility for those living unhoused or those otherwise residing on one of the floors upstairs), an emergency shelter with single rooms for people living unhoused outdoors on the second floor (with available shared kitchen, bathrooms, showers and lockers), transitional housing units on the third floor (with shared kitchen, bathrooms and showers) and, if there is a fourth floor included, permanent housing for the same population. The building would also include an elevator in order to provide much needed accessibility to those who require it. 

The bottle and can redemption center could primarily employ people who were currently living unhoused as well as those who had formerly lived unhoused as paid employees.

Among other functions that it could serve, the community center could become the primary meal site providing meals to members of the community as well as surrounding area, currently served by various churches and hosted at Christ Episcopal Church on State Street on weekdays, yet do so seven days a week and serving both breakfast and lunch. It is hoped that the churches would use the site to host the meals currently hosted at Christ Church. Besides the usual volunteers, the meal site could train as well as employ those who either are currently living unhoused or formerly lived unhoused in the culinary arts as paid employees, helping to prep them for further employment in commercial kitchens and restaurants in the region as well as beyond. 

That is merely my own dream and vision for the property, though I am certain there are others who have their own.

Update 1: After emailing the author of the Seven Days article that this blog post was penned and posted in response to, they recommended that I consider penning and submitting for publication a letter to the editor responding to their article on the subject, which I did (drawing upon certain excerpts from this blog post), here.

Update 2: Having finally viewed the archived video of the agenda item 11 segment, if I understood correctly, I learned that city zoning code and policy allows for building a six story structure. Therefore, it could be possible to design and build a six story building that included either a first story parking structure (with the above mentioned floors above it) and the sixth floor being mixed use housing or, absent a parking structure, the fifth and sixth floors could both be mixed use housing.

Update 3: Commentary: Building a Community of Hope (as submitted to various publications), here:

Commentary, as published:

• Times Argus, here;
• vtdigger, here.