Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: You're live.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It's Thursday, twenty ninth. We're running a little late this morning, but we're finally getting started. We're gonna be working on the capital bill budget adjustment. We're starting off in section 12, which deals with the Agency of Agriculture. We have BGS with us as well as Agency of Ag folks. We're going to start out talking about our ag and environmental lab down in Randolph. It's at the BTC near the technical college based on their property. And we took a tour of it last year So in the Joe, it's all yours, and you do have some information for us.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yes, do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Walk us through.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Good morning. For the record, Joe, director of design and construction, the building of general services. So it's Section 12. Well, first in Section 12, we're gonna talk about the Vermont Agricultural Environmental Lab, largely known as Vail, the plant. In 2019, we constructed the lab down at the VTC campus. And during that time, the design was to connect to the what was known at the time, DTC, because now we're Long State University of Randolph, connect to their heat plant to save money. What we did not understand, did not realize at that time is that for one of the autoclaves that we need after the lab, we need 50 pounds of steam. The campus does not run at 50 pounds of steam. They run a lot less. And so they were having to boost their pressure. So in their boilers, we could have that steam coming down. Then what we also found out is during the summer they don't use steam at all during the summer, they shut down. Still needed the plant operating to provide steam to the lab, the autoclaves and also for air conditioning. What was happening then was the oversized boiler was just coming on, going off, coming on short cycling. And that really takes a toll on the boiler. So what we looked into doing and in the original design, it wasn't alternate to build a separate heat plant or connect to the ETC boiler. At that time, we obviously elected to go to the ETC boiler. Because of the issues that we've been having, we started out '25 with a request to construct a that boiler building that was under the original design and get off of the ETC. Last year, we pivoted a little bit with the administration and looked at what if we did summer boilers at the existing boiler for VTC in their building. That summer boiler then would take over during the summer months, provide the pressure that's needed to operate, keep bail. We're also looking into a localized steam generator for the steam that's required. Sorry, I lost that.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: We don't know this is for number four.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: For all the plates. And by doing that, we'll be able to reduce the pressure down. And so that in winter months, we'll be able to still use BTC, their boilers, and there will be a pressure issue. So this is what we're looking to do. We are also looking to do because the BTC is running off of number four oil, which has high sulfur content. We're looking to convert to number two. And the reason for that is the boilers we're looking to install for the summer are number two fuel. So I have both of the tanks, just have the one tank. The tanks that they have down there are over twenty years old. So we're having to look into new tanks, modify the burners going in, and also construct the one or two, maybe three, whatever the design ends up being, to put in several boilers. And the reason for multiple boilers is that you have your peak load where you don't need it, but it's maybe on Saturday, we can get that peak load, even though but they're not working. But otherwise, you don't need that boiler. And it's you run off of two. But it couldn't be a size that really need two boilers instead same of thing would go on. And then you cycle them off and on so they have the same wear. So that's the avenue that we're headed. We pivoted. Like I said, when we pivoted, we had put on an RFP for design. We had the results in. We had not generated the contract yet. And so we stopped that. And we were worse, and then went out to bid for doing the summer boiler instead of the new heat plant. We are working on that design. We have a construction manager coming on board. We're looking to draft the contract soon. And the reason for a construction manager in this incident is the fact that the boilers and the fuel tank have a long lead item.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Have a long lead time.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Long lead time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, okay. The company

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: What we're looking to do, once we get them under contract, we will preorder those items so that when they can show up on time, they'll be here when we need them. We're we the contract requires that one summer boiler be on the summer, which should be enough to handle the load. And then in the fall, have at least one boiler on so the campus can start up and then complete it. So the work should be done by Christmas of this year, if all goes well. You have provided past funding up to 6,800,000.0. And we have only expended to date, 144,000. And that was really doing some of the groundwork in the RFP that we had in place of going to at a separate boiler building for there. And now what we're doing is soon these funds will be encumbered once we execute the contract for the construction manager. All these funds will be at that point encumbered, and we'll start to expend.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I have a question. I see f y 27 bond, 1,500,000.0. There is no governors recommend 1,500,000.0.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Perhaps.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Perhaps.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: My dear.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Perhaps it doesn't belong there because your balance is 6.655, which is 6,800,000.0 minus a 42. Sorry about that. So there is no budget adjustment for f y '27 of 1,500,000.0 bond? That is correct. Look on the spreadsheet, folks.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: There's nothing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you had a total of 6.8. You got a balance of 6.655. That will cover you so by Christmas, the whole project will be done?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: That's what we're hoping for unless something bad happens. If that is, we gotta pivot.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: But I don't understand it. Do you you need 1,500,000.0?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: That was probably, what I'm putting the slides together, a copy and paste there. Okay. Something in that table and

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Well, it's part of that 6.65, right? No.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. No.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: It's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: not. You add 300. You add 1.5, you add 3.5. That brings you to 6.8. You see, FY '24, FY '25, FY '26, 06/2008. They've expended a 144,200. You take that away from 6.8

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: and then

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you do 6.655. So on the spreadsheet, the only thing that shows up because we do a two year budget, it's FY '26 and FY '27. So you're only gonna see 3,500,000.0 that we put in in FY '26. The 300 and the 1.5 came from two other fiscal years previous, our capital bill. Current capital.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Well, I don't I mean, I'm not sure if I'm following you. Because that if 300 plus one point five and three point five is 53.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Right. 5.3 would be the total.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: It's not 6.8.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's right. 6.8.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Don't do math in

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Don't do math in public. I took his word.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So and minus so then

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's right.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So the 1.5 so my question, I'm gonna is just again, so that 1.5 isn't there because it's not in the fiscal year bond. So where do you get that somewhere else? I don't don't need that. That's a typo

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: typo thing there. So what's already been provided, we're good with.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Okay. Good. Gotcha. So you're

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: not asking that, Marbury. Okay. Gotcha. Sorry. Thanks, man.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I took your math. That's No. No. No.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Because It's good with the 1.5 in it.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Right. The 1.5 gets to the 6.8, but 1.5 has got to come out. Okay.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: You made a comment that the tanks are twenty years old, and then you went right into, Sounds like we need to replace the tanks.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: That is correct. Because, well, what you gotta do is clean the tanks completely with number four. If you find at that time that there are pits at the bottom of the tank, you gotta replace it. At that point in time, it would be too late. So the tanks are at the end of their life cycle, so that's why we're looking to replace them now.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And rough order of magnitude, are new tanks? I could not tell

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: you off the top of my head.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's not A

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: lot of tanks last a lot longer than twenty years is what I'm saying.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: If we not switching fuel oil, we would have left the tanks in place.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How large are the tanks?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I don't know.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: On top of my head.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not like a household.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Oh, it is not. Yeah. There very well could be 10,000, 20,000 gallon tanks, but big. Big ones.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not like their own home. And how long have they been in there?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Twenty years. That's why I say much larger, lot more money.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But the bigger issue is you're switching to a number two oint.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Not a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: number four. You wouldn't be able to even clean out totally those two.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: You could clean out totally, but it's about you know, if you find some holes, then you're done. Yep. You know? And then you're

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then you're

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: potentially a six month, eight month Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You've made the projects because then you'd have to order it, and you wouldn't get it for another year.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Joe's seen this Campfire before. Fortunately, yes. I

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: got two tanks right now that we're looking to replace them. We're one location is running off of a temporary tank. The other one is if the fuel company decides not to fill it, we gotta bring a temporary tank. It's not fun.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: These are these above ground or underground?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: These are underground tanks.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Underground tanks? Yes. So they had to be

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: These are double walled.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. They were put in twenty years ago. But

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: we have seen over my lifespan here, I pulled out single walled tanks. Got the rain still on the tank. It looks like the day it went in. Yep. Double walled tanks had failed.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: It

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: is. It's like the soil that's in there and everything else is going on.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Sound like I feel the lumber guy.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I would say, we did that law back in 1985. Came out of natural resources, and I was on that committee, and we worked intimately in down with these underground storage tanks. It was quite the the ride that we did back then. Anything else?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Nothing else for Will.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Did I misunderstand you? You said the single wall tanks lasted longer than the double wall tanks?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: In some cases, yes. It is very interesting what's out it's a dog That's soils. Any, you know, electronic issues going to the ground and everything else. It it's

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: very interesting. Moisture content in between the two wall cavities. That's the interstitium.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Right. That that space. That that could

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Or if it's a single wall, it could corrode easier. It can. Depends on the soil. It depends on the

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: We have done some times. We pulled out of the ground and a lot of fell off.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And just for Kevin and I again, it is as perplexing as can be. Mean, I have a couple of very large ones on my property.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: But the thing is if a double wall fails, you're less likely single wall

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: fails, you're screwed right from the get go. But if a double wall fails, you guys have time to possibly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because if it's a single wall and it fails, you got a hazardous waste site

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Right off the bat.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Which is really expensive.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I understand. But we try to fix it. We make it worse.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It depends on the location. It depends on the I understand.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: And so with a double wall tank, you can monitor that space. And so if you get water in, that's the outside tank that's leaking. If it's oil, it's from the inner. And oil can have water in it.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: The easy way to explain to why it's better, if a double wall and

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: a single wall are in

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: the same place, the double wall is going

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: to be superior than the single wall.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You start moving them around, no matter what location you put

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: them in, the double is going to be better than the single. Just if you put a single in the right location and a double one around

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the location, single probably will last.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, also the difference between a single and a double, the double has the monitoring.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Single does not. So it could be leaking and you have no clue. Yep. Correct. And then you got a real issue. It really leaks. And, again, it depends on the soil. It depends where it's located. Mhmm.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Do you create do you have to do at this point this is a little off the beaten path. But when you put tanks in the ground like that, do you have to do, like like, a a pool, like, something that would hold it and then put dirt in that in case that did fail, it would

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. I know you do

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: now with the the cellos having to do up in the landfills and stuff there.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: If it's a buried tank, you're still looking it depends on the water table and the location that you're going to keep it from floating when it's empty. Otherwise, you're putting Keystone in around it. Yep. And that's it. So you're having to there's no third type of containment. You have a double wall. I just wonder. And you monitor that. We monitor have an alarm on checking constantly, daily checks, monthly, yearly checks that

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: are required. Yep. Mhmm. There's gonna

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: be size of tank with ANR and stuff like that. That's it.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Did you hear me cry about that $600,000 project?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: This is what my project was. Wow.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's why I asked about tanks. It's very, very expensive.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Very expensive, but in the long term, it's gonna possibly save you money because then you're not gonna have a hazardous waste.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yes. We

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the issue.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Once that law was cleared by basically, we spent a lot of major maintenance money to replace tanks that we knew were over twenty years. And then move once those are done, but it's still a single wall tank, look to replacing those just in case. Now that we've done enough double wall tanks, if there's no leak, there's no such space, there's no sense replacing the tank. But you never know until you get inside that tank and clean out the sludge that you have.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thankfully, you can still bury it because us citizens, we gotta put it above the both guns.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: You don't want a ten, twenty, 30,000 gallon tank.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I know. We've got to address. You don't have to.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we don't need a double wall.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: But if you did if you did do it, believe I the rate of requirements for a bug round is you do have to build a containment. I understand.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, I see.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: But if you don't have a

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: a containment kind of situation.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: We deal what's the over 1,500 gallons I should say? 15? Yeah. It's soil.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else on this? Okay. Stand at the big Break down.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: My project manager, Jessica, time. We'll take over from here. I'll just drive the slides from the side. Okay. Fantastic.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And, again, there is So Trevor's gonna is Welcome.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Here you go. Thank you. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the Big E, this is ongoing. They have, I think, a five year. You have a five year plan? Five, six year plan? Sort of. Spend longer. Spend longer. Mean, you start

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: We end 2029.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Before, you were doing it just a little here and a little there, and then you developed a plan so that we know what is in the hopper coming up. So we put in one point five million FY '26. We put in one point five million FY '27. Governor did not change these numbers, does not mean that we won't change these numbers based on testimony. Welcome.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Thank you. Thanks, Chairman. My name is Gregory Lowell. I'm the assistant director of the Development Division at the Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets. Trevor

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: has amongst

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I do have my own I did send them to the committee assistant. I think there were two deaf. Are you able to share them? Building.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Something you can eat for the holidays. Are you a dummy in the ground? I think it's good stuff. I just banned myself. I'll take a look at it Yeah, it's

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: negative 17 in Thompson. Wow.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It was minus eight in Springfield. Was minus three up here, so it's colder down south, which is kind of weird. Usually, it's the other way around. While Trevor's working on that, what's your name? Troy.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Mike Marcotte said to me they're on board with the letter, you can date it today.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We're going to sign it. I'll date it Monday. Get signatures on Monday. Tuesday. That's not?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Wearing You're wearing a different color than you normally wear.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Are you talking about my shirt?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Pink.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I've worn pink before. I don't know if I've worn this tie before.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes, a tie.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's a little narrower than I typically like.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: See, there's an opportunity there. We could all depended that it was a different color than Alice thought it was pink. But now it's not The

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: tie is a little pink. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's just a different look for you.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I appreciate you noticing, madam chair. That's good scene.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You are definitely kidding.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anyway, let's get back to the biggie.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, so thanks again for having us. I just want to start off with some gratitude towards the partnership with BGS, the Agency of Department of Tourism, Department of Labor. There's a lot of state agencies that touch this event, touch this building. It's been a really strong partnership. And then gratitude for the team that I work with at the agency to pull it off. It is kind of a bear of an event.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Bear of a building.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Bear of a building as well. So just a quick history. Some of you, I think, have seen this, so I'll run through or be succinct here. But the Eastern States Exposition started in 1916. It actually started as Joshua Brooks was trying to wrest the dairy convention away from Wisconsin and bring it back to the Northeast. So he bought some acreage in Springfield, Mass, and then he started down this path of inviting all the New England states to have a presence at the fair. So Vermont was, I think, the third New England state that actually stepped up and took the invitation and built a building in 1929, the building that we still have today, coming up on 100 years old. The biggie is a huge event. So it fluctuates every year, but it's generally the fourth or fifth largest state fair in the nation. The attendance record, I think, was set in 2019 overall at 1,700,000 people who came through the gates of the fair over those seventeen days. It's not uncommon to have more than 100,000 people a day on the fairgrounds. A record of 178,000. On weekends and busy days, that's pretty standard. So we've had many days where we see upwards of 150,000 people. And then it's a huge regional event, so it's a big platform for youth agriculture. 4H and future farmers, a lot of Vermonters, young Vermonters are down there showing animals. They auction off. They have a great auction that they've been raising money with. It's a big hub for a lot of press screen events. So all that is happening at the same time that the fair is happening as well. Just kind of a sense of where we are. We're in Springfield, Mass, which is in the middle of some major metropolitan areas. We did a marketing study several years ago to kind of look at the typical fare goer that was coming and visiting, and what we know from that is that the majority of them are from Massachusetts and Connecticut, then the much smaller slice is made up from the other New England states and further appeal. So I mentioned this to kind of give you a sense of the marketing opportunities that this building provides, the businesses that we support. We have folks coming from New York City, from Albany, from Boston, And it's a really great platform for the businesses to come down and get this kind of exposure, that many eyeballs, that much foot traffic. So, the Avenue Of The States is a kind of an event within an event. It's a very unique part of the Eastern States Exposition Fair. So, Eastern States Exposition is the nonprofit that manages and puts on the fair every year. They own all of the infrastructure and the buildings, except for the Avenue Of The States. Each New England state owns the little posted stamp of land and the building. We have joked in the past that it's almost like a little embassy in Massachusetts. I think it's the only state building that exists outside of the state boundaries. As mentioned, it was built in 1929, and gives you a sense of where it is on the fairground. New All England states are lined up next to each other. So people come through the fair and run through the avenue as one big event. Then we know from that marketing study that the majority of folks who come to the fair also prioritize visiting these buildings. It's about 94% is what that study showed. You can assume that anyone who's coming through the gate, the vast majority of those folks are probably coming through the building as well. How

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: long does the fair run? Two weeks?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Seventeen days. And it's typically the second to third week in September is when it starts. So see if this will play. This is inside the building. This is a kind of average weekend day. It's not

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: like So weekends? Yeah, this is a

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: not atypical crowd of folks. It will be like this all day long from ten a. M. Nine a. And so just kinda gives you a sense of the foot traffic in there, the volume of folks that are coming through.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are the vendors finding because it's so crowded that a lot of folks don't stop at their booth?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's a big discussion. And when we work with vendors and how they showcase their products, we actually will able to bring in a contractor to meet with a lot of the vendors to look at their booth setup and think about traffic flow. What are you selling? What's going to grab people's attention? How do you kind of, in this really attentional environment, do It's you get not like a typical trade show. You really have to be out there. You're at a fair, same way that you see those folks who do fairs calling you in and trying to get your attention. That's a lot of the strategy. But yeah, it really depends. And different booths are set up very differently.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think too, if you show at the very top, underneath that blue sign, folks are going be turning to the left. Can't go straight there through underneath that blue sign, right?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: You can. So if people come in from this side mostly, which is what we call the Connecticut side, and then there's a horseshoe shape. You can't come across here. It's The trance fancy, flow. Just for whatever reason, people are very accustomed to doing a full horseshoe. This little corner is actually the corner of our tourism booth, So it acts as a nice kind of front of house. A lot of people encounter that first. They ask questions. Tourism is there signing them up for the foliage newsletter, answering questions about where folks can vacation, different activities they can do in Vermont. A stat that I really like to cite around, again, just the volume of folks that come through this building is it gets three times as many people visited the Vermont building in those seventeen days, then visited the Gilbert Visitor Center in an entire year. So if you think about the Vermont building, if it was a visitor center and was part of that portfolio, it would make up 60% of the foot traffic to all the visitor centers just in those seventeen days. Yeah, as I mentioned, the tourism is there. We've had great partnerships with DOL They're promoting jobs, and we work with a lot of nonprofits. We put a lot of effort in the outreach around, again, just leveraging the opportunity that this building provides.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How many vendors are there? There you go.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We have 29 this year. The majority of vendors have full fare contracts with us, so they're there for the full seventeen days. A handful of them, what we found is that that's a really intimidating place to start if you're just getting into the Big E. So we offer some half fare contracts as well. So we do a turnover mid fare. So some of those 29, we don't have 29 boosts. We have probably, I think, 24, 25, depending on the year. We have done a lot of shifting over the years to create more spaces and take advantage of different areas where we can support businesses. So I think this is the most we've had. We've also been able to open up the back patio to food trucks in the last couple of years. That's been very successful, just trying to maximize that. We also have two days where the Eastern States allows us to have vendors on the lawn. So, there's Vermont. Every New England state gets a day that celebrates that state, the Vermont day. Then there's what they call Harvest New England day. On those days, we have an opportunity for vendors to come down and just try it out for a day. So they'll bring their pop up and their booth and set up like you would at a farmer's market on the lawn. That's a really nice on ramp for a lot of folks to come down, see how their product might sell in that market, get a sense of the crowds, what works well and what doesn't. So, twenty nine is the folks that we actually have contracts with, and then there's additional businesses that come on those days as well. So this is a little bit of a crude schematic here, but gives you a sense of the layout. So I mentioned this is the Connecticut side where people are coming in, and they typically come down and exit out the back. It doesn't really show the back patio area where these are just placeholders. Those are the vendors that were in the back with Vermont and Marshmallow. So there's a concrete slab in the back. We have a food truck back there. We also have a shed that was built several years ago. So one of the vendors is in the shed, and then two of the food trucks are out there independently. And then so people leave, and then they come back in and come up here and then exit on the main side.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: When we were down, as we BGS and agency event put a day for our committee to make it go down, it was all blocked up there by Ben and Jerry's in around that corner. It's really blocked up there.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: What do you mean by traffic? By traffic, yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because everybody wants ice cream. Yeah. And that's where you turn and let you go outside and come back in, but that tends to get blocked up there.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: When the discussions around this construction project, a lot of talk around traffic flow, how can we make modifications to make booths more accessible, address the pinch points where people are getting kind of backed up. BMSMA, that's the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association. They've been in the building since the 70s, I think. It's a great So this just shows our thinking around what we're trying to actually do with this building. So we think about it in these five major goals here: provide a safe, positive experience for fair doors and vendors offer diversity of products that are unique, that are high quality, that represent the state, our culture, our history, our values support Vermont businesses. So providing this market access, providing an opportunity to really get their brand out in front of a new type of customer. We have lots of folks who get approached by distributors, by wholesale buyers. So even though it's not a trade show, we have lots of stories of businesses who have come down and left with new wholesale accounts or new distributor relationships. So it's not just the sales that happened at the building, it's those opportunities. It's also that post fair sales. So we see a huge bump. These businesses get a lot of that early Christmas buying after the fair. They get their name out there, they get their cards, they sign people up for their newsletter, and they see a lot of impact to their online sales after that. This partnership with tourism and other state agencies is a big part of this fourth goal here, just promoting Vermont as a destination, both for tourists and for folks to relocate to. Having DOL out there promoting the jobs that are available, really selling Vermont as a place to live and work. And then this final one is meeting our commission needs. So we charge 15% commission on sales for every vendor. And that money is really what has helped keep this building afloat, help pays for the personnel and the staffing costs that go into running this event.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Is that in addition to a vendor booth fee? There's no vendor booth fee.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So the revenue, the sole revenue channel is through that commission. So we collect a receipt the following morning of every day of the fair. They report their total sales from the day before. We track that and then invoice them at the end of the fair for amount. They pay that 15% commission on their gross sales. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you also have to balance out. This is a seventeen day affair. People are traveling a minimum of 100 miles, probably more like 200 miles. They have to stay there. They have to stay there overnight. They're either renting hotel rooms, or some of them have campers or whatever. There is a real expense to that business. If they have staff, they have to pay them. And they have to make sure they have enough inventory. And I can imagine, I can imagine they're probably making a trip back to get more inventory at some point during that three and a half weeks. So there's a real expense that the vendor is putting out to be there. If anyone who's ever done any work at a fair or craft fair, anything, there's a lot of behind the scenes work that those folks who have those booths that are putting in, and you don't realize.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: The prep as well.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The prep has a lot of I mean, they're down there before it even opens up because they have to set up the booth. And then at the end, then you got tear back down. Emoji vehicles.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: We have two members of this body that do work down there, I would encourage anybody who doesn't know this, talk to them because they'll say- It's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: like Nigro and who's the other one?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: No, I'm

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: They'll tell you. I mean, is, like Alice said, there's a lot more that goes behind it, including those long drives and either a hotel room or finding somebody's couch. It's not everybody makes that much money. I mean, some people make good money, they're out money. But they're putting it out, everybody that I've ever met that has ever done it said it's worth the sacrifice, but it is a

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, it's lot. Mean, it is a bearer event. If you have a brick and mortar operation, you've got to pull staff from there to try to staff it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And inventory. You've got to start building up your inventory like now. Yeah. Exactly.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Is there a list of those vendors that have not been admitted in? I mean, you've got people who'd like to show there but can't.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, our demand exceeds the available space every year. So we run a competitive application that's actually, I think it's open now. So annually, we accept applications for people to bend. We have a review committee that looks at those applications. It's trying to consider all of these goals as far as representation of different products, different things that Le Mans is well known for, things that are going to sell well, that the fairgoire is interested in. But also geographic diversity. It's a lot easier to pull businesses from the southern part of the state, so we put a little more effort into trying to recruit folks from the North, acknowledging that that's really challenging. A lot of factors go into those review decisions. And then we do contracts of one, two, three year lengths. We typically start people with a one year just to try to see how it goes, give us the option to bring them back if they'd like. And then the other challenge is that the fairgoers, while they appreciate seeing new products, there's a lot of tradition in this fair. So we had Cold Hollow in the building for a long, long time. They've been gone for probably almost ten years. We have people who still come in and say, Where's the apple pie back there? I said, We've not been here for ten years. I've been in arguments with people. We've said, No, I was here last year and there was an apple pie then. I said, No, I signed all the contracts. I'm pretty

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: confident I made money.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You had apple pie probably in my handshakes.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Our goal with the commission really is to try to just keep it at a sustainable level to provide us the funding that we can pay the staff, fix the leaks in the roof. And that's really how the building has been maintained primarily in the past. So we like to keep that commission rate as low as possible, again, just knowing that there's a lot of expenses for those businesses coming in. But it's a challenge. Eastern States, if you apply to Bend on the fairgrounds, if you're a food and beverage vendor, you pay 35% on your total sales as a commission. We've had folks who've come and started with us and then graduated to the fairgrounds, and I think that's a success story as well. This gives you a better look at the back patio with the food truck. This was a couple of years ago. Folks, Soulful Sisters, are still with us, and then Broccoli Bar was one of those businesses that started with us and now is Bennington Fairgrounds. Last year, there was a business called Sustainable Eats, I made Brent do a nice job. And then this is the shed over here where we have our marshmallow vendors and have a spotlight on. So Alex started with us several years ago. That shed was always there was very low demand from vendors to be in that shed, partly because it didn't get a lot of traffic. People were making that turn in front of Bennington Jerry's. And she started out there and she actually got some press. So local news named her the best new food item at the fair in 2022. And all of a sudden, she was swamped. People were coming to find her from all over the fairgrounds, take Instagram photos of her, and then she's really grown since. So now she's an institution at the fair. People know the marshmallow lady. They go seek her out. And as you can see, it's really had a huge impact on her business, her ability to grow, increase wages and hire folks. So another What kind

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: of marshmallows are they? She

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: makes homemade marshmallows from all around. They're square knot. It's like a whole other level from different flavors.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Where is she located in Vermont?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I was very intrigued by Marshalls.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No, actually, it's a good question.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Do you

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: know what she's located?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: What's the Jericho area? I don't know.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: What's the name of it?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Vermont. Vermont, Russia.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's from Vermont. Just kind of a sense of our sales over the years. South 2020 is

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: South Burlington,

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: There you go. Yep.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: 2020 is the first time they canceled the fair since World War II, I think. And then 'twenty one was, we still saw a lot of challenges with vendors not wanting to be in a big public environment like that. So we had a partially filled building in 'twenty one, and you really see that in the sales. But we've really rebounded from that, and we had a record setting year in 'twenty four. We just missed the mark in 'twenty five. Attendance was down a little bit this last year, so that drives a lot of sales, obviously. And you can see that in this next slide here. So the orange is the Vermont sales, and then the blue is the Biggie attendance overlaid on top of that. So I think it's a nice just look at this and see in 2022 how we really started to increase despite attendance generally fluctuating up and down a little bit. We've built on those sales numbers over the years. So, from a programmatic standpoint, the age of the building, the years of deferred maintenance and issues that have just compounded present a lot of programmatic challenges. Electrical is a huge one. So we have a 300 amp service to the building right now. We are operating right on the edge of that service. So we've done a lot working with vendors. We audit every appliance they bring into the building. We try to juggle a little bit which plugs and panels they're connected to to try to balance that load. But we're basically at the limit of what that building can support from an electrical standpoint. We've had lots of leak issues, water issues, issues with the general envelope over the years, plumbing issues. The ADA accessibility continues to be a concern of ours. So the only bathrooms in the building are on the 2nd Floor of a double staircase. So we have some vendors who are older, or the gentleman who's in his mid-80s, who we have to cart to a different building on the fairground when he needs to use the restroom.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Golf we would

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: cart. Golf cart. Yeah.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Just anyone hitting that image. Thanks.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Not a handcart. No. And then I think there's the issue of just the visible decline. So again, a lot of people come and see this building. A lot of people leave with an impression of Vermont after they've come in and met presenters. And some of that impression, I think, is undermined a little bit just by the state of the building. Definitely getting better, but we'd love to be able to really showcase a modern, clean building that doesn't have visible rot, leak stains, and stuff like that. So one

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: thing when you're in doing this type of work, you have to abide by code.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: yes, we own Milena, but we're in a different state. And that's been one of the issues. What code do we Vermont code, or Massachusetts code, or even the city's code. So we have to work within that. And sometimes they're much more stringent but different than from us. Is that true?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah. I think

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Further after Jessica Time, BGS Project Manager. Yes, that's what we found immediately in 2019. That's when we started. The agreement signed after a project where we discovered they're not okay with us continuing to act like it is our embassy, our rules apply. The precedence for that was if they were going to service it with their fire department, they would like us to follow their code. So we've been hit with little projects like installing sinks. We get hit with concerns over plumbing because they do not allow pecs, they do not allow products that are used in plumbing in Vermont. It's not Massachusetts code. So they're actually asking us to bring the building into their state and follow their code as we move forward, and that adds to every project that we do.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Their codes are more stringent than Vermont codes in some cases. In that respect.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. But differences can matter. Yeah. Right? Even if it's not more stringent, Different

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: materials used.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Is the do you find the permitting process down there, owners? Not that ours are always great, but probably.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Actually, they have a new AHJ authority having jurisdiction like every year, so it changes. It's very political down there, but what I've seen is that they have a very fast primitive process. Just

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: a couple of visuals to give you a sense of what we're talking about. This is the bathroom. You can see on the right there is the stairwell that you have to come up. There's two of these identical on either sides of this upper mezzanine area. It's a picture of some of the old windows. These are right in front of the building as you come in. This is a dry storage area, so it's kind of elevated, again, like a little mezzanine area. This is stain on the plywood there. Those staircases go up to a skylight, which provides roof access. That has leaked one of the areas that has leaked over the years. This was I think this was actually repaired last year, but not a comprehensive way just to kind of address the visual here, but see a lot of this with the old trim. This will be my last slide, because the rest of the slides I had actually I think Jessica will cover anyways. So 2029 will be the one hundred year anniversary, since we've talked a lot over the years about trying to really use that as a target to get this building in a really good place, where it's really showcasing a great image of Vermont, and it's really functional. It's able to support those businesses that really are getting a lot of value out of this experience. That was electrical. Think thinking that that's a big priority for us, trying to upgrade that system, simplify and modernize the building interior a little bit, address those issues like traffic flow, those issues of having the right spoof setup to be able to really manage the sales opportunities, the marketing opportunities for big businesses, and thinking about the vendor experience too, the visitor experience as well. I think we'd like to keep supporting as many businesses as possible, so we're going to keep with that strategy while also trying to align with the limitations of the building. And then there's some facility issues, obviously, just trying to provide ADA accessible bathrooms would be a big win for us. And I think overall, trying to reduce these stock gap maintenance needs where we're patching a hole in the roof and managing things in a more emergent way instead of a more strategic way.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The bathrooms are not open to the public, or are they? Actually just to the they're vendors.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We're not required to open them to the public.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just to the vendors. Yes. Staff that may be there.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So any questions for me here?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Thank you. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Joe, you're on. Welcome.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Welcome. I'm just at time. Again, built buildings and general services project manager and architect. Been working on this building since 2018 maybe when we started to discover challenges. We are three years from the hundred year anniversary. It's going to be a big celebration. Already, one of the buildings on the avenue was celebrated. They got special spotlight, things like that. So it it's going to be a big year for the building. When we started planning the renovation, we were looking at a huge list of deferred maintenance and rehabilitation needs for today's fair, which key to that is, I know Trevor's recent numbers for attendance have kind of gone up and down. But prior to that, they had expanded significantly. So every building there is getting more crowds than they are were designed for. So the renovation was meant to address the visitor and vendor experience as well as the major maintenance that has been deferred and systems and functionality throughout the building. You can see that the appropriation to date including the f y twenty seven bond is 6,000,000. We've expended half of that at 3,000,000 and rounded, and we have 2,900,000.0 remaining. The request for f y s 27 has not changed, so this is what was in the original appropriation for 1,500,000.0. You can go to the next. So what we've been doing in the last year is we've completed or we're 75% complete through the exterior restoration. The whole slate roof has been replaced. We are continuing to work on the cupola, the masonry, painting, woodwork, all of the pictures that you saw in Trevor's slides of what looked like an abandoned building. A ghost building. We kind of had a few references. This year, there was significant improvements to the front facades that people saw. And the the coming season when when we open, the exterior will be substantially complete.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what's work is going on? Are BGS folks down there at all overseeing this? Or do you have a project manager?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I am the project manager. I am down there.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And you're down next? Are the construction's going on? You want to bid for the work. Are you doing that Massachusetts contractors, Vermont, Connecticut?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: We always invite Vermont contractors. And and the seasons that we've seen where labor short is short, Vermonters are busy enough that they're not going down there for these renovations.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I would think it would be more expensive as well because you're gonna be paying for the travel time. Right.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So we went out to bid publicly, and DA Sullivan is doing the work. They're located right right there. So that's the most

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So how much are you spending down there? I mean, this is done off season, winter.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. I have so you're looking at the schedule. We started in July and will be completing in June. I have been down there weekly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: A couple weeks.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: That's atypical, but for this building, it's a historic building. There's things that you find. It's they're expected surprises. That makes sense. As you open things up and you find rot and you handle handle the rot, certain amount being expected or not. Actually, the photo there is one of them. The balcony is where 1,600,000 people enter during any given season. They had been repaired many, many times, but that scabbing on was no longer an option. So it's a huge effort on our part. What will remain, so this next season, when everyone comes to the building, the exterior is complete. The only remaining pieces are the rear doors and openings and the flat roof, which has life in it still.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I wanna get back Mhmm. Of your time. You're down there a week at a time sometimes? No. No. A few days.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I go down for a site meeting where I'm seeing all the progress, and we meet to discuss all the issues.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'm just trying to follow the money. So this comes out of BTS' general operating?

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Correct. For her travel time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For her time. Yes. And expenses, that comes out of your general fund.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not out of the project costs. Correct. So people can track the money. So it comes out of the general fund. It's in their budget in the big bill and appropriation.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So phase two is beginning. It's a mechanical and electrical maintenance, but it's it's an interior project. Now we're turning to the inside of the building and the functionality. Most of this project is electrical. Trevor mentioned the electrical service being undersized. You need to go through the building and replace panels that are at that are at the end of their life or are buried and inaccessible. So it's a lot of code concerns with that. Replacing the rear overhead doors, those are just residential. Well, they're really falling apart wooden overhead doors. Every other building has something more significant back there. And dealing with the plumbing code requirements, which we are required to do, we have a letter from their code official, As well as functional booth renovation and floors. I oh, I meant I forgot to mention the restrooms. We are moving two restrooms downstairs. That's how we're working on accessibility without having to have an elevator. And we believe we can get to one of the restrooms and the funding for this project.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I have a question

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: here, Shawn?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: What are you bringing in electrically? How many amps? 600. Good. Yeah. And then just do

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: That's that's the next size up.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So That's great.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. There's an on between.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Better. And then with the doors, the garage doors, are they allowing you to put something that's not wood?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: There is no designer review in this district, if that makes sense. So we it is our building.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So are you putting, like, steel doors or aluminum doors that will last a lot longer and they're a lot easier to maintain, or are you putting wood garage doors back in that are gonna be a pain and cost a lot of money? I know what the answer is. You don't have to tell me.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: You you wanna know.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I'm glad I'm not doing

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: this today,

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: but addressed that yet.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Okay.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: We started to work on the that issue, and it requires some interior renovation. So there's other big issues with doing something that would look nice back there. Yeah. Also trying not to have an overhead door. The liability of a door falling on somebody's head is a concern.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Good. That's it.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: No matter how well maintained it is.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah. And we're not even thinking about air conditioning.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: The building is not conditioned at except in the office and the rest rest kitchenette upstairs. Right? That's where the conditioning is now, and that's where we would put it in the future. I think that is actually something that we've talked about not doing. It's seems BGS feels it's prudent to do.

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, I mean, I think any heating and cooling has been an ongoing conversation, but again, this building is used currently for a short period of time. If it was heated and better insulated, would we have opportunities to post Christmas markets down there or other activities? We've kind of played around that, thought about it. Heating isn't an issue during the fair. Our plenty of warm days, some of our vendors are struggling a little bit with chocolate products that don't do well on the heating, but generally having some big open market style buildings. The doors are open. The doors are all around the building.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm not suggesting, I just was assuming we're not trying to shut down. I don't like to assume.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And did you say, or do you

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: know where the bathroom I don't know which floor plan I should be looking at. Where might they go?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: That's coming in the next Actually, that's the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: first one. Can we go back to phase two? Yeah. So when are you starting phase two, or is it already starting?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Phase two design is starting.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Phase two design starts. Yes.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: And I have a schedule at the end, so we should talk about where where exactly you stand.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what you're doing this summer is trying to be

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: finishing the the first phase. Finishing the first phase and designing Second. The second phase. And that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and that will use up all of the 2,900,000.0 you have left, or is that also gonna be going into construction?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Construction of phase two and the start of design on phase

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: three. Okay.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: We can't afford to pause.

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. I just wanna get you all of the dollars.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So I think you guys understand what the project is. It's it's really looking at this building, getting the ADA improvements downstairs. Curious where the restrooms are going at each of the main entrances, which is pretty minimal. What is upstairs as a kitchen for the vendors would be moved downstairs. And that would be, again, the place we'd have air conditioning, if any, because it can get I think we've seen mild seasons, so everyone's positive about not doing it.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Not asking you for that.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I know. Know. But with with the seventeen days, a lot of people work over hours during that course of that. So it's not only long, long hours, a lot of intensity, a lot of noise.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I've done trade shows down here for ten years, so

[Joe Aja (Director of Design & Construction, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I know it's hard. Okay.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: So we would continue in that phase three with all the interior building systems. Remaining electrical work will only be through 70% of it. Finishes, food service improvements. A lot of our food service functions are very limited with electrical services that we have now and interior doors. And we would continue to work on that visitor and vendor experience, opening the building up low, good air quality and movement and light. And you can see that the there's also a budget for site work that we'd like to achieve this more recent improvements by the agency of agriculture have been on the site and just really looking at utilization and getting the most representation we have for the event.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So phase three, the rehab, the actual construction would really be for money, would be FY 2829. So 02/2009 isn't gonna get you through. I I believe it's Would it design work for phase three, but the actual construction?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. We could complete it with f y '28.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And what you have for mine?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yeah. Depending on what we have.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Just putting that on the table so people know that next year for the capital budget, there'll be more requested to finish the project. But 29 isn't gonna get you to the end of phase three.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Well, I mean, it's three point six years here for the next the next capital growth.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Have there been any unforeseen issues that have popped up?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: I mentioned the balconies. There was rock found at the balconies. It's amazing because the front of the building, which is the most ornate and and represents the building incredibly, There was nothing found. Right? So the work at the cupola has found some hidden challenges. The work at the back where where Trevor showed rot on the cornice, which has been repaired at this point in time, there was some hidden structural concerns there. So I don't think any of that's unanticipated given the building's age and the amount of work that was always done to make it look good. Not necessarily good. Yes.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Need a Band Aid instead of fixing it?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yes. Yeah. And some and to some degree, that's appropriate on this building over the course of its life. But but at this point in time, the goal is to make sure everything could last another fifty years. So one of the interesting things with this is that we we are requesting that we hire design the design team for the remainder of the project. All of the interior work is related. I don't wanna be in the position of doing two different electrical engineering teams on this, and the schedule dictates that. So the construction manager as well would like to be hiring for phase two and three because there will be some overlap as we look at the following slide, Joe. Here's where we are with completing phase one, that first green bar. Each of the gray bars is the month roughly that we take off for the big E And here's the centennial. So green is construction. The next phase of construction, you know, we're starting design, which is the blue bar on phase two. The next phase is longer because we're ordering that 600 amp equipment, and that's a over a year lead time. So we will encumber the money, but the work won't get done until that year plus time has passed. So we're really kind of sitting and not doing a lot of work during that time because so that's why I'm that way out here. And that kind of forces that third phase to be happening also at the same time as that second phase in the building.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: This is a beautiful milestone start.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It will change.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes, it will.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It will change. You never know what will pop up.

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: And and we mentioned winter and every time it comes up in this you know, our our construction season, because it's not a heated building and because of the fair, is cut is cut down significantly. With July, right before the fair is also when we receive our capital bill request, you know, the discussions. So my intent also is that next year when we come in to talk to you, we would be in early design on that phase three. And we could make adjustments, right? Get your feedback, make adjustments.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else, or Pete?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That's excellent.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Anything that the Agency of Ag wants to weigh in real quick? We need to we're going to take a quick break. But I want to give you folks an opportunity if there's anything else. Do you folks want to weigh in?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I would just say, think in the past, I'm invited members of this committee to come down to the building. We are happy to host folks. We're happy to organize travel and whatever would facilitate that. I think it is really nice to get down there and see. We can also if folks want to come during the fair, we can facilitate that as well. I think it's really helpful to just get a sense of what's happening down there, gather possibilities of what the building could be and how current it currently is, but with an eye towards the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: future. Great.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: And obviously, you're not going to fund projects on this, but the net commission revenues, are probably somewhere around $300 currently, do they cover your variable expenses? Do they cover the overhead? Operational Is expense in surplus or is neutral?

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Been a bit of a moving target. We used to have a 12.5% commission rate a couple of years ago. We had to go up a little bit. And because there has been so much deferred maintenance, a lot of money has come out of that commission revenue to address the building. So we're trying to right size a little bit where we can have kind of a more stable, predictable maintenance schedule and expenses, and then relook at the commission rate. So right now, we feel pretty good where it's at, it's covering our personnel costs and staffing costs, and it's giving us that additional revenue to fix something if it needs to get fixed, which happens every year. We have to put some money into some project here or there. I think the goal, again, is to get to the point where we can feel like the building is in really good shape and be able to better predict what those maintenance expenses are, and then relook at that commission with the goal of keeping it accessible.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else before we finish up and take a break?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Check this.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: If you've already covered this, I

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: apologize because I had to step out for a second.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: On the question of bathrooms, I know Brian started asking this in the lab. Does the moving of the bathrooms downstairs cut into any retail space?

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: Yes. So when you saw that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'll put I didn't

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: see you saw the plan, we are going for so we have 18 booths today. Some of them are are grossly oversized, but you can't remodel them without funds. When we move the bed that down, it immediately changes how that booth gets used. Right? So there's there's some adjacent renovation necessary. But as a whole plan, we are able to renovate the building and get 29 booths and

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: reconfigured Right. So it's it's getting more regular,

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: which would really help when they have them to determine where But they don't have well, we have one giant one and one Yep. Little scrawny one. We're gonna stick you in the scrawny one. Right? Right. Making the booze a little bit more

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that was part of the talk vendors about some of the booths just aren't conducive to some of the vendors laid out. So that was also taken into consideration way at the beginning of this project, was what was vendor needs.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Well, thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we feel like we can get an

[Jessica Time (Project Manager & Architect, VT Buildings & General Services)]: improvement rather than suffer from it.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay. Thank you so much.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So let's take a really quick break because we have a couple of safety ready to come in. Five minutes possibly, and we'll be back on YouTube. So if you can go

[Gregory Lowell (Assistant Director, Development Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: out