Quechee
“Everyone agrees that something has to be done,” Selectboard Chairman Dick Grassi said Tuesday evening, right after the board visited the site, an expanse of broken concrete between the Simon Pearce building and Quechee Covered Bridge.
In September, the Selectboard voted to do engineering on a $378,000 reclamation plan that would stabilize the sites and create a small multi-tiered park with gates, benches, walkways and landscaping.
That plan was seen as a middle-ground option between debating factions, some of whom favored a more expensive option that would do more to bolster the area’s draw for tourists, and some of whom favored a less expensive option that would do little more than stabilize the site and cover it with soil and grass seed.
Clay Adams, the CEO of Simon Pearce, was one of about 10 members of the public who attended the site visit.
“I would just like to see the Selectboard do something with the abandoned lot,” he said, adding that he wasn’t necessarily advocating for the more expensive plan.
Simon Pearce owns a narrow strip of the land that would flow into the pocket park, and Adams said the company is ready to cooperate with whichever vision the town implements.
“I have money in our annual budget so our design can mirror whatever you do here,” he said.
In September, Selectboard members seemed to think that their vote had settled the debate, but fresh concerns from two federal agencies have reopened the possibility of going with a different alternative.
In addition to the agencies, Grassi said that he also is concerned that the project could run afoul of accessibility requirements in the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Selectman Mike Morris questioned whether wheelchair ramps — which in the current plan do not extend to the lowest level of the park — would satisfy ADA requirements that visitors with physical disabilities have substantially the same experience as ambulatory visitors.
“How is the experience the same when it’s 30 feet away and 10 feet higher?” he asked, referring to the difference between the proposed accessible portion and the lowest level.
Lori Hirshfield, executive director of the town’s planning department, told the Selectboard that she was working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in an effort to get approval for a revised version of the plan.
FEMA initially responded to the town with a letter that said it objected to the plan because the lowest tier of the planned park lay within the flood plain of the Ottauquechee River.
Hirshfield and Public Works Director Richard Menge said they could find no federal statute that prohibited development within a flood plain. Hirshfield said that when they spoke with FEMA staff, they received verbal feedback that was supportive of a slightly modified plan, but Grassi said he would like written approval before moving forward.
Hirshfield said FEMA staff had said they probably could process a revised plan in two or three weeks.
Grassi said there is no consensus on what revisions should be made to the plan, and there won’t be a consensus until the board’s next scheduled meeting, set for Tuesday.
The revisions discussed by staff included removing one of two benches from the lower level and replacing the concrete floor with a more permeable surface that would allow flood water to drain out.
During the discussion, Morris suggested doing away with the lower level altogether.
In addition to ADA and FEMA concerns, staff also are fielding questions from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, which, like FEMA, provided some of the funds to purchase and do preliminary work on the site in the immediate aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene, which destroyed a building that used to stand on the site.
Hirshfield said that the Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Planning Commission, which is acting as an agent of HUD’s interests because it administered the funding, is required to do an environmental assessment of the site. While no soil testing has been done at the site, a preliminary review of former occupants on the site and another site on the other side of the bridge that also is being developed raised concerns that the soil could contain pollutants that would need to be addressed.
Hirshfield said she was pursuing a possible solution of bypassing testing and capping the site as a preventive measure, but that she was unsure of whether HUD would sign off on that plan.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com.