Hello and welcome to the Parks and Rec Commission meeting for the City of Belmont.

Today is Wednesday, July 16th.

Happy summer, everyone.

It's nice to see everybody.

Um for meeting participation.

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So item number one, roll call.

Commissioner Cunha?

Here.

Commissioner Lieford.

Here.

Commissioner Whitmore.

Here.

Commissioner Lee.

Here.

Commissioner Hell.

Here.

Chair Emkin.

Here.

Youth Commissioner Perez.

Here.

Commissioner Michaels will be joining us late, and Youth Commissioner Venkatesh is absent.

Okay, item number two, the Pledge of Allegiance.

Item number three.

Community forum.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the commission on any city matter within the purview of the commission, which is not on the agenda.

The period for public comment at this point in the agenda is limited to a maximum of three minutes per speaker.

Do we have any slips or hands raised?

No slips and no hands raised.

Item number four, commissioner announcements or agenda amendments.

Any announcements?

Okay, we're all very quiet today.

It's fine.

Okay.

Item number five, consent calendar.

Consent calendar items are considered routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion.

There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a commissioner or staff requests specific items to be removed for separate action.

And we only have one item here.

This is the June 4th 2025 draft minutes from the last meeting.

I move that we approve the minutes as presented.

I second.

Commissioner Cunha.

Yes.

Commissioner Leiford.

Yes.

Commissioner Whitmore.

Yes.

Commissioner Lee.

Yes.

Commissioner Hill.

Yes.

Chair Emkin.

Yes.

Motion passes six and no.

On to items of business.

So the first item that we are considering tonight is tennis and pickleball court reservation software introduction.

All right.

Good evening, Commissioners.

I hope you guys are all doing well.

So about a year or so ago, I shared with you an update on our current tennis and pickleball court reservation system and some of the challenges we were facing.

These included limitations on customers, including the number of courts that they can reserve at a time, the number of hours they can reserve consecutively, the number of hours per week.

It also included we were receiving bots reserving reservations instead of actual humans and lacking the authentication process when making a reservation.

We had limitations with our current system on data reporting and the types of reports that we can pull, and the overall user experience was kind of lacking.

And so for all those reasons, um the Parks and Rec department has made the decision to switch platforms to rec.

And I'm happy to introduce Lindsay who's going to join us virtually.

She's our rec representative, and she'll provide you a demonstration on Rec and how it works and be able to answer some questions.

So I will turn it over to Lindsay.

Hi, everyone.

Can you hear me okay?

Yep.

Great.

Well, so nice to be presenting to you tonight.

I'm actually a Menlo Park native in our company Rec Technologies, is based up in San Francisco.

So it's been a pleasure to work with Cody, and we're excited to have another local partner on the peninsula.

So let me share my screen here.

Okay, so we're gonna just present quickly about who rec is and what we're excited to be partnering with the city of Belmont on.

So a little background on Rec.

We are a company of, you know, passionate outdoor enthusiasts, recreation enthusiasts, but also technologists and fitting for the Bay Area.

We have team members coming from you know places like Google, Uber, and Amazon, who really want to bring, you know, the spirit of really easy-to-use apps for things like you know, calling a car, ordering food, um, booking a vacation, booking a flight, and making that you know just as seamless of an experience for municipalities and particularly folks who are looking to, you know, book tennis and pickleball reservations or use it for their parks and recreation department services.

Um so we're based up in San Francisco, or we uh work with the city of San Francisco on their pickleball and tennis court reservations as well, um, a few cities down in Santa Cruz County, um, Emoryville across the bay, and continuing to grow uh all across the country.

So again, as is highlighted, we really want um recreation experiences to be super seamless.

Um, you know, ideally just like a few clicks to book a pickleball court rather than you know having to go through lots of steps to accomplish something that we think should be, you know, really frictionless experience.

So um, in terms of, and again, in terms of kind of what this entails, um, I'll jump into you know the city of Belmont specifically in a moment.

Um, but we really are like a you know mobile friendly um optimized booking experience.

So we actually, you know, have tons of folks who are now saying, Oh, I booked my kid, you know, into summer camp just on my phone and really making um making the experiences as quick and easy as possible.

Um, so in Belmont in particular, um, we're excited to be launching um pickleball and tennis pilot at Alexander and uh Hallmark courts.

Um, so you can see here, um, this is all dive into it on our website um at the end of the stack so you can see like a live demo, um, but have a really great kind of city of Belmont homepage where you can see all of the available hours for booking, um, and then jump right into actually booking a court and um locking that into a live calendar that I'll show you in a second, but is accessible um through QR codes at the court.

Um, so what will this mean for residents?

As Cody said, you know, we understand from him that you all um wanna, you know, have ways to get around, you know, bot mitigation, ways around folks, you know, over booking courts and not necessarily using them.

Um so you can see here, we're providing you all with custom signage so.

So this means not only showing court maps, but also a QR code that links to the live calendar so that if you're you know ever at the courts and wondering who's um whose turn it is or to play, you know, there can be a source of truth based on that kind of live calendar.

Um we're also going to be implementing mobile verification.

So this entails, you know, only uh one person in the system having one phone number that receives a text when they go to make a booking.

So it you know is is a tool against um bot mitigation as well.

Um, in terms of adjustable booking limits, um, we work with Cody to set um limitations on how much people can book uh for a day and also for a week.

So again, um you're not having folks, you know, say I'm just gonna hold the calendar every day at this time and only have the intent of showing up for a few of those.

Um and then similarly, just for admins and uh apologies, I should say admin and resident live support, um, we are just you know a team that is very available to support not only the admins using rec but also um fielding a lot of customer questions as well.

Um, and then again, as mentioned, I can share this deck um with Cody to share with all of you if you want more.

Um, but we're just you know so excited to be partnering with cities and again making this um making accessing recreation and finding out about recreation opportunities in the community even easier for residents, uh, so that it can take advantage of all the amazing facilities you all have.

Um, and again, I'll I'll share this over.

Um, so we'll pause there and jump into a quick demo and then happy to take any questions.

Um, okay, so you'll see here.

Um I'm now in the sit on the city of Belmont's page.

So this is actually also accessible with through rec.us slash Belmont.

So really short, snappy URL for folks to access.

You'll see here on this locations page, we have um Alexander courts and Hallmark courts, which are um, you know, no longer bookable for the day.

Um, but if I were to jump to Friday, for example, I can see all of the courts set up with available times they have to book.

So if you dive into one of these courts in particular, let's go to Alexander and I go to the calendar for Friday, you'll see that um, you know, the courts have been blocked off by Belmont Admin to reserve that time for community programming.

So community programming um always takes precedence in the calendar.

Um folks on the admin side can set this you know, months in advance to say, you know, we want open play at this time every week.

So you can block that out well in advance, and then we're working with like a seven-day court availability window so folks would be able to book out for a private reservation up to seven days in advance.

Um so you can see here this was this was me in the calendar booking a slot for 5 to 6 p.m.

on Friday, and you can see that if you book, you know, one of the pickleball courts that overlaps the tennis court, um, it blocks off that that kind of tennis court that's under the pickleball court so that folks you know are not reserving overlapping courts at the same time.

Um so I'll pause there, um, and again, you can feel free to check this out if you just go to rec.us slash Belmont.

Um we'll be making sure we kind of block out the calendar with um calendar holds before we begin the marketing so that folks when they go to book um later this summer will will know when the court will actually be live for them to start booking for real.

So uh thank you so much.

Okay, thank you.

Um first are there any public comments or questions?

No.

Okay, um, set on.

My question is, are you able to book um same day?

So if you get up, if you're uh if it's 10 o'clock in the morning and there are courts open, you know, at three o'clock, are you still able to book same day appointments?

Yeah, so you can book um same-day appointments, um, but another thing we actually can configure into the system is um essentially what we call like a buffer.

So this would say um two-hour buffer is what we worked out with with the Parks and Rec folks, but this would basically say um, you know, if it's noon, you can only book a reservation that same day for 2 p.m.

and later.

Um, and the goal this accomplishes is it kind of negates any conflict at the courts.

Like if someone's playing, you know, first come, first serve because no one booked, um, someone can't, you know, swoop in and book a reservation one minute before noon and take the court from folks already there.

Um so yes, the answer is you can do a same day booking, but we also have a parameter in place to ensure that um you can't just be standing at the courts and and kick someone off because you made a reservation on the spot.

Got it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Does anyone add, Cody?

Did you want to add anything before we do questions?

Okay.

So let's do uh commissioner comments and questions together.

Uh let's start.

Yeah, thank you.

Virtually.

Um I think this is great.

I think modernization of technology is a great step forward.

Uh little by little.

I love the signage and the QR accessibility.

I'm guessing that's going to be like on the fence right outside.

Um I was also wondering about the same day.

I was wondering about like cancellations if I'm interested in the two o'clock slot, and I go to the website and the two o'clock slot is reserved.

But what if somebody cancels?

Like, is there like a notify me option where you can like put your email in to get a notification of your time slot being canceled?

Like I I guess that would be kind of interesting because people things do come up and people do cancel their reservations, and we should have it open to somebody that would want to play.

So I was curious about that.

Yeah, good question.

Um, so right now that um the kind of notification for cancellation is definitely something we've heard feedback on from cities.

Um it's not currently part of the product, but is something we're looking at.

And um, similarly, just with the the whole notion of a live calendar um and with the buffer time is is someone you know can look at the calendar in that same day and see, you know, spots are still available for a couple hours from now, and especially with the buffer, no, they can show up at the court and um and still play, you know, with with short notice.

Awesome.

And then I guess this is a question more for the Bridget maybe.

Um she mentioned like in the intro, like uh summer camps.

Like, oh, I can't believe I registered my kid for summer camp.

Is that something that the city would look into later on, possibly with this app?

Is it at some point we are going to revisit our our um online risk reservation or registration system, but not at this time.

Right now, this is just something to kind of address the specific hiccups that we found with our existing reservation system for tennis.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

Um, how many other what other towns have got this implement?

Obviously SF.

I saw three of them, but what are the how many?

Yeah, so um you can see a good amount of them if you go to our um homepage.

Um we're we're kind of updating this interface so you won't see them all here.

Um, but in terms of court reservations, um, City of San Francisco, um, the town of Cortamadeira in Marin.

Um we have like Lincoln, Folsom, um, and Rocklin in Sacra in the Sacramento area, um, and now also work with cities in, you know, Ohio, um, Ohio, uh, Connecticut.

Um, we have some other kind of picnic rental pilots going in Texas and in other cities we're live with in Indiana, so um all across the country now, and it's it's been really cool to see the different uh pain points cities had before they use us.

Our our city in um Connecticut we work with, they actually had a phone-based reservation system before they switched to us, so um it's been really cool to see kind of all the different ways we can you know make this a more painless process.

So like more than 10 but less than 50.

Uh that's accurate, yes.

Okay.

Um how many bookings can a person make and how far in advance?

Yep.

So what we've set up with um the city of Belmont is uh two bookings a day, um, six per week, uh, which goes from Monday to Sunday, and then um up to seven days in advance.

And then if you're an instructor or something like that, is there a way to to make any distinction if you're doing paid or that gets done through us?

You cannot you cannot reserve a court for your own instruction.

Okay.

So those will be blocked off on the calendar as parks and recreation.

Um blocked off time.

Good.

That's it.

Thank you.

Uh I actually played around with this earlier today, and I really like the user interface.

I liked it a lot more than I was was the old reservation system on active network?

Uh no.

Okay, it was on uh acuity.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, if if someone tries to go to acuity now, will they be pushed to this or will there be a link to this?

It will not be pushed to this yet.

We're launching this on September 1, so we will be putting all the information on acuity as much as they'll let us.

I don't know how much they will actually let us put on there.

Um, but we will be directing people, we'll send an emails to everyone that's reserved to court within the last year.

We'll be pushing it out through social.

If there are no shows, the policy is repeated no shows, you could get your account suspended.

Right?

Theoretically, but that's really hard to manage through the current system.

Yeah, is there any way to report no show?

Like, is it just someone going to the court and seeing that it's it was reserved and no one?

Yeah, we haven't had like residents report like, hey, I I see this court setting empty every day at 11.

And so we'll and we can log into the system and see that user at this point.

Yeah, I see.

Um, and then besides court reservations um and summer camps, what are some other examples uh that rec does, or like what else can you do through your app?

Sure.

Um I can show you a couple um cities I think have have great pages.

So um you can see here this is the city of Madison, Indiana, um, outside of Louisville.

Um so you can see they actually use REC for very robust um membership options.

So you can see we offer um punch pass style memberships, um, but also you know, yearly passes, so things just based on like a time expiry date.

Um and then also um picnic rentals is another really popular one.

So if here in Lincoln, um California, this is outside of Sacramento if folks aren't familiar with the city.

Um, but they have a a really um streamlined kind of picnic table booking system.

So they've seen you know a huge increase in folks booking their picnic pavilions in their town.

Um our team was sort of inspired by Airbnb with this um kind of layout and really making it like a clean, easy to follow, um, easy-to-book picnic rental system.

Yeah, it looks great.

Is there is it only browser based or is there an app as well?

Um so I can actually here, I'll this will be the closest way to do it.

But um we actually are really mobile, mobile friendly.

So you can see here this is like a a mock-up of what it would look like um on my phone.

Um so we don't currently have an app which we you know are not opposed to, but um have found that sometimes downloading an app is actually more friction than just having it look really good on your phone browser.

Um, I appreciate not having an app for everything to do.

So that's great.

Thank you.

This looks great.

Uh thanks.

Uh a couple questions.

So you have to residents have to uh register for, is it a rec account?

Is it a Belmont account?

It's a it's a rec account and it's not just residents.

So this is for this is more of a residents and now, sure.

Yeah, okay.

And so this is and there's no linkage between this and Active Net or anything else, and so it's just another cut.

When you have an account, are you able to?

I mean, at some point when rec gets bigger and it gets San Carlos and Redwood City and San Mateo.

Are you having to register per city, or is it kind of a rec network-wide type of account?

Yep.

So yeah, you'll see here, um, this would is what it would look like if you needed to create an account.

Um, and then once you have an account uh on our system, it it works in in all the cities that um you might want to use it in, and you know, with separation for things like you know, credits or or residency, things like that.

Um, so especially in areas like Santa Cruz County and in the Sacramento area, um, where we have a lot of density, we we have folks who are booking, you know, seamlessly across organizations.

And then who gets the data for that information?

Is that something that this the place where it's booked as well as Rec keeps that information cross organizations?

Um so uh if you are part of you know the Belmont organization, if someone who is booked in Belmont is also booking, you know, in San Francisco, um administrators in Belmont would only be able to see the data for that user um in Belmont.

Got it.

But Rec sees the information.

Um Rec admins have access across across the organizations, yes.

I got and sorry if I missed this, but the to the point of the no-shows are are we requiring people to tap in or to QR code in?

Is that something that Rec offers, which is a validation of actually attending the event, whether it's using the court now or kind of tapping into the class, yeah.

So we we do have a check-in functionality for um, you know, kind of an admin initiated check-in functionality for things like memberships and um classes and all that.

Um kind of like staffless check-in for um for courts and like scanning that QR codes is something we we've you know discussed and in our kind of gathering from cities, like what are any you know privacy implications there or you know, geolocating concepts.

So there's a lot there, um, and then of course in other cities um they've decided to sort of address this with just having you know small fees as sort of a deterrent against snowstores, so um, definitely different ways to accomplish that.

Um, but as Cody mentioned, you know, um definitely decision with staff time of eyes on the court or or things like that as well.

Got okay, and then do you do anything with people getting well?

I guess one question is with the courts, if let's say Belmont wants to create a tennis tourney or something where they want to kind of take the weekend and have people register for playing against each other and then kind of tracking all that.

Is that something that rec uh supports or the functionality for something like that?

Um so we have leagues functionality on the platform that could be used um in that manner.

Um at this point in time, um, there would need to be, you know, input of scoring and things from staff, um, but the notion of like self-serve self-serve tournaments and and things like that is is something we've heard from other cities, but at this point it would be you know staff or an instructor um you know running the tournament and then being able to convey what what kind of point system needs to be be entered into rec.

Got it.

And sorry, just some more questions.

And then from let's say I want to play tennis, but I don't have anyone to play tennis with.

And is there almost I mean, I guess uh maybe a simple way is to reserve half the court and then see who else wants to reserve the other half of the court, or is there any social element to bringing people together in a way that allows them to be able to enjoy something where they may not necessarily have a uh a playing partner?

We are currently offering drop-in drop-ins designated drop-in times that are blocked off for tennis or pickleball, so you can come and kind of hopefully meet someone to play with.

Yeah, I was wondering if there's even things like just to predetermine that so I want to avoid drop-in because maybe there's 20 people that drop in.

Yeah, we also have we're starting a uh pickleball league that you can sign up for as an individual or a group, um, and those are starting in the fall.

Cool.

That sounds great.

And th you if you sign up as an individual, you'll get automatically assigned with the group to play.

Yeah.

And okay.

But I guess maybe, sorry, because is that is that a rec function too, though, to be able to that is that is done through our active system.

So you sign up through Parks and Rec through Active.

Yeah.

And then we kind of it's like it's an independent contractor that's running that.

Got it.

Cool.

Okay, and we have questions after.

So I'll put it.

Um one of my questions was uh the exact same question that uh Craig had related to check-in and requiring uh the user to you know QR code validate their their appearance there.

So if there's a way to you know, integrate that or work on that, or if you have other cities that are piloting that, it would be really interesting for us to see how that works.

Um so yeah, so you can you know scan the QR code, check and see if someone's supposed to have reserved it.

No one's here, great.

I can play, right?

Or they automatically get uh adjusted.

Uh and then the um the function or like the the challenge of residents versus non-residents.

Do you have any cities that use like priority for residents that uh residents of Belmont that are seven, you know, they get to reserve a week out and then non-residents can only reserve three days out.

Do we currently do that?

Um, or do other cities use a function like that?

Yep.

So I would say um the most common way we currently have cities do it is different price points for residents and non-residents.

Um another way we do it is um you can set the reservation window earlier for residents.

So say residents can book, you know, 10 days in advance, but non-residents only um only, you know, five.

Um and then we also have a city here um called Milford that they actually you know require proof of residency, and and you can only book if you're a resident.

So you'll see here because I'm logged out, I actually can't see any free spots available at all.

Um but if I were tagged as a resident, um, then those spots would show as available to me.

So those are kind of like the three different ways we see it done.

Great, thank you.

Most of my questions got answered already, but I do have uh one or two others.

Uh you mentioned how the part of the reason for doing this was bot prevention and preventing spam reservations, that sort of thing.

Um what exactly happens to stop that?

I mean, what's different about this platform versus another?

For instance, I went in, I signed up and put in my address, it didn't seem to validate anything, and I was instantly able to book a court.

Um it didn't stop me or make me do anything else.

So what what stops people from making multiple accounts so that they can book unlimited times and things like that?

Yep, so we're um we're still turning on, you know, the final switches, so as of now, and and while you know, we're we're training folks on the system and stuff as well, we haven't turned the mobile verification on yet.

Um but what this does is you know it requires you know that two-step process of um getting a notification on your phone um when you go to make the booking, and then you need to you know enter the code you received on your phone into rec um for the booking to um to go through.

Um so this is the step that if you were you know trying to to use a bot to generate this, um, you wouldn't you wouldn't be able to, and and similarly you would be um confronted with the booking limits uh that we'll turn on as well that would be that you know, two per day, six per six per week.

Does it send you a letter so that you put in a code or something like that to actually establish that you're a resident, like something that actually ties you to an address here?

Um so this is something we we defer to the cities on.

We have some cities that um you know require again.

Like you can see here in Milford require um proof of residency.

Others are um you know, do it in a more ad hoc manner, or it is it is um, you know, an honor system for for what the address you put into the system.

So we we defer to cities on that, but obviously have um ways of kind of auto tagging, you know.

If you're in the Belmont zip code, we could auto-tag you to the Belmont group, um, but we defer to cities on kind of what um what they want to put in place for the actual residency verification.

I see.

And uh last one, you mentioned or you refer to this as a pilot.

What are the criteria for it to be final of what you know and what would happen?

Or would we just switch to another one if it didn't meet the criteria, or is it just pretty much as long as the thing seems to work, it it's gonna be the answer.

Yeah, I think this is gonna be the system moving forward.

I don't know where the word pilot was listed, but I would say there might be some things that we going forward we could refine further, you know, once we see behavior patterns, you know, uh, even in our existing system, we made some adjustments in response to feedback from the community.

You know, hey, this person's booking everything right away, or we think there's a bot or something like that.

So I foresee that we'll do the same thing here, that there are a couple of different um levers we can adjust things going forward.

Okay, I did think of one more though while we were talking about it.

Um I know that there's been conflict between tennis players and pickleball players, you know, pickleball players booking tennis courts and then playing pickleball on them, and I saw that when I registered there were tennis courts and pickleball courts.

Is there any mechanism for people to go in and say, hey, we we want to play tennis here and you're playing pickleball?

Is there anything to help with that conflict?

No.

The courts are multi-use and you can play tick tennis or pickleball on any of them.

So you can book one of the tennis courts and go play pickleball on it, and that's okay.

Yeah, they overlap.

We have unlike a lot of other cities, we only have one pickleball court per tennis court.

So when you're selecting, you're selecting to on that particular court, you're gonna play either tennis or pickleball.

Oh, so we selected the pickleball on the one I did, so I didn't see that part.

So and again, for some of the commissioners that are new here, we did that a couple years ago when we resurfaced our courts with um state park bond money.

Um we specifically chose to just have one pickleball per tennis court to try to avoid some of those conflicts.

You're playing one or the other, the maximum number of people on the court can will be four, whether you're playing pickleball or tennis.

Um, and we did that because in the locations where we have courts, um uh neither park actually has off-street parking or anything like that.

So we didn't want to increase the um impact on the surrounding neighbors by all of a sudden having, you know, we could put six pickleball courts where we have two tennis courts right now.

That would be a significant impact to the neighbors who are directly behind these courts or you know, within within spitting distance of those courts, and we did not want to um create that kind of impact.

If we had something like the sports complex where you know we could put, you know, 10 10 pickleball courts, sure, we'd do it, but we um our sites are just not really built for that type of heavy usage.

Okay, thank you.

Hi.

Um you mentioned uh also my questions are also awesome, uh also already asked.

But you mentioned drop-in times where like people can come in and meet other people that want to play tennis or pickleball or whatever.

But um, is that also gonna be um on the site?

Will people see like drop-in times and it'll explain what happens or whatever?

Yeah, on the main homepage, we're gonna list out when the courts are reserved for our private lessons, when there's drop-in hours, when it's pickleball only hours, it'll all be listed on the front page.

Okay.

So that's on our homepage, but I think what you're saying is maybe to also have that at the courts.

Is that what you're saying?

I want I just I just I kind of want to know like how how are people gonna know about that?

Oh, because that's yeah, we can put signs at the courts too, like when there's drop-in hours for sure.

But the QR code would take the code.

But the QR code would take you to this website and the homepage will have a lot.

Okay, and okay, similar question.

Like, so when but when you select, like if it was if it's reserved for parks and recreation private lessons and you select, can you click on that and then it tells you what's happening or like gives you more information about that?

Like for drop-in court hours, tennis and pickleball.

If you can you actively click on that time block and says come on down, everyone like this gives you an instruction.

Seven people have registered to join this drop-in.

Yeah, you can't click on that anymore.

It's not a button.

So, that's the right.

We don't register for drop-in.

Well, no, but I'm just gonna like to the sorry, continue.

Uh, I apologize.

Oh, so yeah, right now this is not um not clickable.

Um, but again, as as Cody mentioned, there's lots of different places to call this out um in the calendar.

Um we also have a guidelines tab.

You could put more information here, um, and then you know, on your on your Belmont website as well, but the QR code will link directly to the calendar.

So if someone is is looking for that day, um, they'll see the the calendar with any, you know, um drop-in hours that are blocked off.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, that's all I think.

But maybe we could add to the guidelines a little more information about what is what is drop-in court hours mean.

That means you don't have to register or just show up or something like that.

And I think um I can't see it on this screen here, but on the guidelines.

I think what we had talked about before was for no shows after 10 minutes or after 15 minutes of somebody's reserve court time.

If it's if there's a no-show after minute 11, you get the court.

Yeah, that's on the court rules on the signs on the course already.

Okay, yeah.

Um, I have a couple of questions.

One of them has to do with I think it's the Alexander Court.

Not Alexander the courts, the other one, the Hallmark.

There are two courts there, right?

But one's reservable and one's not.

Is that correct?

Are they treated differently?

Because I think there's been contention sometimes of who's got a reservation on what court and which ones drop in and how that works.

So, they're both they're both reservable depending on the time of day.

There are some courts, one that are reserved, two may be open.

Some days two both one and two are reserved for private lessons.

It just kind of depends on the day and the court you're looking at.

Okay, because I think sometimes there's confusion about what what's happening on which court and whether or not it's open for people to play.

I don't know if this system can resolve any of that or if it's more a signage issue of when drop-in hours are and what courts and things like that.

But let's make sure at the courts and also that the photos clearly depict which court you're reserving.

Exactly.

We just have one for one and which one's what we do.

That's like that can be confusing.

So let's make sure that that's real clear.

Just because there are two courts at that location.

Um so when you the I like this, it's very clean.

When you sign up, do you get a confirmation email or how do you know that you're that your reservation went through and how do you get reminders?

How does this work?

Yep, you get uh a confirmation email um when you book and then um also a reminder.

I think it's either I think it's about like 8 p.m.

the night before um your reservation.

Don't don't quote me on the exact hour, but but around then.

Um and then um I'm also just showing here on the maps um if you if you share them, yeah, thank you.

Um you'll see here these court maps um clearly show like which court is one and which court is two.

So folks can kind of match that up with the the live calendar and and view the map and know, you know, oh I actually book court two, I thought it was court one and and resolve any conflicts that way.

Excellent, thank you.

Cause yeah, I think sometimes there's some confusion which they were observed and which one yeah, beautiful.

And then um how easy is it to cancel?

Do they have to log back in or is there a button in the email or some if it's last minute and they need to cancel, is it really easy for them to do that?

Yep, they they can jump through the email um or uh we also have like a really clean um now that I'm logged out.

Oh, you can see it here.

Oh, you saw it for a second, but basically there's a reservations tab up here that you can click into and that will show you um any like upcoming and past rentals, um, and you can also cancel in your profile.

Great.

And then I know this is we're gonna kind of pilot this for a while.

Is it pretty easy to make changes if they if you decide that you need a bigger buffer between when you can make a reservation or all those things?

Is it pretty simple to go back in and change things?

Yep, yeah, and things like you know, changing hours, or right now we have, you know, all the um slots are are one hour in length.

If you decided, you know, we want to offer 90 minutes and two hours as well.

Um that's really easy to change.

So as yeah, in the nature of the pilot, all these parameters are are very flexible.

Excellent.

Okay, I think we have a few more questions.

Sorry, a few more questions inspired.

That's okay.

So the when I register for a court, I I get that information, but is there a simple way to kind of join my buddy so that rec could remind them without me having to remind them?

Yeah, this is something um we we've been asked about as well.

Um at this point in time, it's um it's not something on the on the platform, but um, you know, with with a lot of um like Google calendars and things these days, it'll actually pull the confirmation from your email and then and create like a a hold on your your Google calendar, for example, so that's something that's you know very easily shareable as well.

And then I know the focus is on tennis and pickleball here, but I'm just curious, do you support any field or any type of or right now from a field perspective?

Is it tennis and pickleball from rec platform?

Um yeah, we have a lot of cities um that are using us for field reservations.

Um what's great is you can, you know, actually do kind of payment installments for things like fields.

If it's like a soccer club, you know, renting every Wednesday for three months, you can kind of partition out, you know, the the invoicing of that.

Um so we have a lot of a lot of great stuff here.

If if you're ever curious to learn more, um, but yeah, field rentals, picnic rentals, um, you know, room reservations in like a city hall or multi-purpose center.

Um so yeah, quite a we actually have a um I think uh a jet rental spot on the on the on rack in in Arizona.

Um so all people are using it for all sorts of things.

And I'm not saying we do this here, nor do I know what this would look like, but I'm just curious.

I mean, Belmont is rich in open space, and I'm just curious if you thought about trails or bike activity or those types of things I mean effectively open space as a field and what that could mean and I don't know if you have other cities that have tried to do anything in that regard.

Yeah I think right now it's more in the class context where um we're launching with the city of Malibu um in a couple weeks and they're putting a lot of you know kind of like hiking programs um on the system so it would more be right now it's more in the context of like a a class that people would be you know have having a nature space be like the location on on recitally you know more to explore there as well.

Uh a couple more do you do anything with equipment and whether if someone wants to play and they designate that they need equipment for example is that something that the platform supports that could notify the department and you know magically the equipment's there not sure how that would work but maybe that there's an equipment locker and then there's a code and the code changes and I'm just curious about that.

Yeah so we have um a store on rec so um if that was something you know that you want to support we have you know form questions that can be added on to classes and and facility rentals um so it could be like do you need equipment for for this rental or um for a lot of our facility rentals you know people will be adding on like a staffing fee if you have like a speaker and microphone fee.

So that concept of like add-ons to to classes is is pretty robust um within the system as well.

Cool and then for sorry just beyond what we're doing now just curious I just want to kind of make sure that we stay with the agenda topic here I think we've sort of wandered away from tennis and court reservation and I do kind of want to reel that back in a little bit.

Then the last question related to that is do you besides check-in is are any organizations looking at cameras or geofencing to help kind of monitor and and understand whether people are playing who is playing and is that something that you've seen or that you support for for the court reservations.

Yeah it's it's definitely a question we've gotten before um or similar similar vein I guess like integrating with like lighting systems.

We know there are companies that more you know specialize in in sort of heat mapping of of foot traffic and and things like that.

So at this point in time um those sort of integrations are are things you know again we're continuing to collect data on from cities in terms of how anecdotally how they would use that um but not something on the product at this point in time.

Okay thanks.

I have one more is this a sick system of record now has it cut over or is there a cut over date like I booked one for Sunday is that actually a reservation for Sunday now we're launching on September one.

So my thing for Sunday is fake.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah we're launching on September no one has seen this yet but you so we're launching September one and then the reservations will start seven days before that for September one.

So I can book now for September and it counts or seven days before September 1st.

Seven days before September first got it okay yeah to the hour.

Nice try.

Sneak in there you know are there any more questions from commissioners or comments?

Anything from the public come up no okay excellent well this system it looks really good looks like it's addressing a lot of the issues that we were having so I'm looking forward to it because we want people out there playing pickleball and we want everyone to get their chance to have a reservation and have it not be confusing.

So this seems like a a very nice system and I like I like that there's a QR code that they can at the court look and see what the schedule is and see if it's actually reserved or not and looks like it's pretty easy to make changes and that we can make changes on our end as well if things if we want to tweak things.

So I think it looks great.

So Lindsay, thank you for your presentation.

So now we can move on to thank you, Lindsay.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Have a good night.

We can move on to item number two or item B.

Group four architecture, Belmont Community Center Master Plan Refresh.

Okay.

Good evening commissioners.

I am here to introduce Jonathan Hartman from Group 4 architects.

Group 4, some of you may recall was the firm that we engaged back in 2019 to do a lot of community outreach, community engagement to come up with a conceptual design for a potential new community center at the Barrett site.

So that was in 2019 and then we all know 2020 happened and and a lot of things got put on pause.

We are now at the place where we wanted to revive that effort more robustly than we have in the last couple of years and last couple of months.

I've done a lot of outreach and done had open houses and conversations with folks but it's time to kind of refresh the design as well and so we um we're happy to re-engage with group four to get us to that next level to take us a little bit beyond the conceptual design sort of reaffirm some of our um our programming needs incorporate some new recreation trends and and interests and best practices and see what that now looks like again for a community center at Barrett.

So with that I'm gonna hand it off to Jonathan.

Thank you, Bridget and uh good evening.

Pleasure to be here good evening Chair Emkin and Commissioners.

Again I'm Jonathan Hartman one of the principals at group four I also happen to be a Belmont resident I know I've made that pitch to several of you at different events over the last many months so we won't belabor that.

But really pleased to be here and to be able to talk about the master plan refresh.

So we'll um we've got a quite a few slides tonight so we're gonna jump in and I'll I guess defer to the group as to whether how if we were gonna hold questions to certain points or we're gonna just go as we go.

Chair Emkin do you have a preference?

I think we can how about we ask questions as we go is that okay with everyone if you have a question on a particular slide or something comes up maybe address it at that point if especially if there's gonna be a lot of material so if you have a question uh feel free otherwise you can hold them to the ends as well so great.

So I won't read through the whole agenda but you can see it um on the screen here we're gonna as Bridget said we're gonna touch on sort of the past master plan a little bit of a recap of where things have trended in the last few years kind of that revalidation of the needs which I think are are self-evident to you but we're gonna we're gonna state them for for purpose here and then talk a little bit about the foundational framework sort of moving forward as well as kind of where the design and the programming is sort of trending and this is not a design commitment but really just trying to paint pictures in your mind's eye tonight and then what the next steps are next slide.

And so here you can see uh the schedule and uh apologize that the fine print is indeed very fine here but in the big big picture what we're looking at is uh right now you can see the red line is where we are today and so we're we're well on our way in the programming update and again that's validating the the types of spaces their sizes and their sort of uses and this is really again a refresh we're not starting over from 2019 we're building upon that and working through those design architectural updates in parallel with that where we're working on a cost estimate update which is important and I think some of you have probably received some of the phone polling and other polling that's going to the city's conducting that's not coming through through my team but that's coming through the city's team in parallel with that that's really starting to look into the funding strategies and obviously we're trying to marry those two things together here sort of the the funding capacity for the project with the uh the wish list for the project and the that'll refine the spaces together.

So there's not there's not hard numbers tonight necessarily in square footage is because there's going to be a a reconciliation of that as we as we move on forward.

Next and so here as Bridget said you can see where we are so we are still in the master plan phase so we're not uh doing sort of um capital A architecture yet.

We're really working on making sure we've got those spaces and quantities and we've got things in the right spot on the property.

And then we as we move deeper into the design evolution, which we're calling conceptual design schematic, and then as we get into the the nitty-gritty literal nuttonbolt details of construction documents to make it buildable, you know, those are the next phases that would come after this, and then obviously going on to bid an award and the eventual construction of the facility.

So many steps to go.

But really, again, what we're looking for, what we're looking at right now are these best practices and making sure we're overlaying those with the work that's had been done in the past and the work that we're trying to do moving forward.

And so you can see these sort of six best practices that we're we're targeting right now: the community-driven approach, holistic wellness, accessibility, adaptable spaces, uh sustainable design, and efficient operations.

And we'll dive into each of those a little bit more on the following slides.

And these slides get a little wordy, so I'm not going to read all of them, but as Bridges said, we have been engaged for years now in an extensive community uh-driven process, and back in 2019, it's on one of these slides, somewhere in the deck.

Uh we reached out to over 3,000 residents, either through the online surveys or face-to-face through interactions.

Bridget's continued that and her staff uh through the pandemic and beyond and continue to reach out, and really this is about creating a Belmont specific place.

This is really about creating that third place for Belmont, and that this should be a Belmont responsive design.

This isn't a sort of a cookie cutter or formulae thing.

This is really about what Belmont needs, and this is the process that we go through to define what those needs are.

And you know, one of the one of the things that continues to grow in this industry is this notion and implementation of holistic wellness, and so this is not just the physical wellness that we're displaying in the photo here, which happens to be a nice way to document some of that, but it's also a little bit some of those more passive things, those social interactions, those meetup spaces, those opportunities to connect without being actively involved in a registered program.

So we want to make sure that that holistic wellness is really looking 360 degrees at all of those features.

Um accessibility, of course, um, is something that's important here.

Uh it's important in our community that we're really creating a physical architecture that's accessible to all, but also creating a physical architecture and uh placemaking within the entire campus of the community center that's welcoming and inclusive for for all uh physically, emotionally, otherwise.

And adaptability continues to be a big trend, and so really this um gets to sort of I'm just gonna call it the turnover spaces or the ability to use spaces for different functions throughout the day, and um and so that really um begins to speak to revenue generation and other things as we as we move forward in uh the design exploration and being able to have that flexibility within the building footprint itself and have the storage to be able to have those uses be nearby and easily convertible as spaces change from morning to afternoon to evening events.

All right, do you do you see this going beyond just the structure itself?

I know we've talked before about parking and other kind of hardscapes that happen and how to think future proof and kind of manage whether it's even if it's just time of day and it's not a lot of parking required.

Can that space be you know, a basketball court or a hard court or something?

That how does that approach fit in?

So we have started to explore that.

We'll see that in 20 slides down the road a little bit.

Um but yes, there's there's definitely opportunity for that at a lot of different levels and scales, and we can try to touch on those.

And if I forget, I trust that you're gonna call me on it, but I'll I'll do my best to remember that.

Uh sustainable design, um, you know, this is something that um uh continues to grow and evolve, which is exciting.

Um, and frankly, it's become more and more uh even since 2019, baked into the fundamental building code for California, which is good, and um, and so we have some opportunities here on this project to you know do not only the minimum but do better.

Um, and I think Belmont and its climate uh gives us additional opportunities to do that that we don't always have in other parts, even in the Bay Area.

So we've listed some of the things here in the last one.

I think, especially the climate resiliency, you know, that means different things for different people.

I think it was two or three weekends ago, my power was out for four times in one weekend uh here in town.

Um, and so you know, things happen, you know, and uh so it's nice to have these centers, and we found that community centers um are becoming more and more of those places, whether it's just to charge your phone, uh get Wi-Fi for a few hours or whatever it is to maintain that connectivity in those ways.

And of course, efficient operations, uh, this uh is in many ways at the heart of um sort of uh under underpins a number of the other pieces that we're talking about this evening.

Uh sort of obviously fiscal sustainability is essential uh for for this facility, and so we want to make sure that we're um doing that the right way, both in the materiality that's being used, but also the way that we just organize staff spaces and where they're located and where their work points are and making things easy and ergonomic for them so that they can be efficient in their work and uh get that sort of multiplicity uh of that cost value equation.

So one of the things that we looked at in 2019 uh was kind of creating this list of all these things that were being asked for, and we overlaid that against some of the national park and rec survey stuff uh that's come out recently, and the check marks are the sort of Venn diagram of those two things.

And so you can see that um our uh the proposed plan uh from 2019 that's continuing to be refreshed now, uh addresses so many of those things that are on the hearts and minds uh of folks nationally uh within the park and rec community.

So we're super uh pleased about that, and this is also a chance for course correction.

Uh if something kind of jumped out here that wasn't uh wasn't on the list.

Sorry, uh this may be a jumping ahead and I realize this is beyond probably the the architecture, but I do think from a sustained operations point of view, how again over the years things have changed just like you said, but just thinking about all of these included elements and you know how how has the city maybe thought more about the budgeting of or the planning for to be able to, you know, besides just building it, sustaining it, and and also kind of balancing between the needs of the space for you know, for example, we talked about a real dog park kind of space has to be quite considerable given dog behavior, and what's the cost of that versus field use or something like that, or if you look at uh making sure that the rec programs, you know, are we planning for sustained revenue for the pool, right?

It's only getting more and more expensive to support aquatics, and how how does that plug into or continue to revise the planning model, maybe, and to think about that.

Do you want to take a shot at that first, or would you like to go fine?

So you're right.

So there's um certain spaces and certain programs that uh cost more to operate in staff than other spaces.

So, you know, one of the things about the current facility is that it's um for lots of good reasons, it's radically inefficient as a community center, right?

So from a staffing model, right?

There's a certain sort of fundamental step forward that we're making uh that we get the advantage of.

So when we're looking at sort of the city's budget overall, like it's not gonna be quite the quantum leap that other cities might see in terms of like the program specific things.

Yes, aquatics costs more.

Um, there are different ways to think about that.

I think what's being proposed, what's been requested and what's being shown, is an outdoor pool, and usually um those are most cost neutral or uh closest to cost neutral when they're seasonal.

Um so this would be this is because you're thinking not only from the the actual energy of operations, right, but also from the staffing side, right?

Well, where do I when are my collegiate lifeguards most available?

You know, they're available in the summertime when the weather is good to operate the pool, and Bridget can say this more eloquently than I can.

But you know, these kind of trade-offs uh um are the things that should be considered at this point and that we are talking with with the staff about.

But is that what you're asking?

Yeah, a little bit, but sorry, is the plan for the aquatics to only be seasonal, or is it it'll be built to support year-round, and it just up to it can operate year-round.

I'm just saying that if you're talking about from a pure cost recovery standpoint, the seasonal is more cost neutral, you're saying because you get staff and you could get revenue from that.

Right, and you don't have to heat it year-round.

Right.

But then, but when you're not space inefficient.

When you're not using it, it's it's otherwise unusable space.

So that is a that is something that we we're gonna have to look at to be honest.

Staffing is a real challenge in Belmont and up and down the peninsula and all across the country.

Um, that's a challenge.

So I know.

I know firsthand.

Yeah.

Yes, you do, that's right.

So the uh pool consultants also have a lot of data to support, you know, so when we get to that place, uh we can go more granular on that particular topic for sure.

And that that's a big one with a with a wide spread as you're as you're alluding to other.

I have one quick question.

What does trails mean in the context of the community center?

Uh in this case, uh it's just gonna be the connection to sort of wider network.

So I mean, within the sort of Ralston corridor, you have the ability to connect to uh a variety of trails.

I mean, it's the the community center is not it's off trail, but it's not off path, so to speak.

I will also jump in there.

The conceptual design does have a walking track uh around the sports field, and um as we've learned from lots of outreach, people love walking in a circle, and um, so maybe it should be trailslash walking paths to be on that side.

That's fair.

Anything else here?

Ready?

Great.

Uh so uh I think you're all well aware of the state of the current facility, so I'm not gonna spend too much time on on these slides, but um obviously uh it has done well over a life longer than it expected to live.

Um, and uh so we're looking forward to the opportunity to make those upgrades.

And it is self-evident that while it was designed to modern earthquake standards at the time it was built, um, and frankly, it designed as a school that was designed to exceed sort of minimum standards, it's not gonna meet those standards today.

So one of the things for context that we've been looking at and we've been collaborating with staff on is um how does how does the center, the feature center at Barrett relate to the surrounding communities?

And we have a couple different slides to talk through this.

Um, but we just wanted to kind of look at it.

This one's looking specifically uh mostly within um the city boundaries here, you know, how does it relate to other city facilities?

Um how does it relate to other fields?

How does it relate to things that are just right outside the city border, and just trying to figure out where where is it, you know, it is geographically uh fantastically centered, but how does it relate sort of programmatically uh within the broader community?

And so it's uh just a helpful exercise for us to be able to try to identify these.

If you think we've missed one, by all means please let us know.

Um we're we're trying to trying to hit all of them.

And so you know there's ones that have different things, so like blue is about um athletic facilities, uh you've got some some of them that have public-private partnerships.

So you that's where we've got um other vendors that are coming in to provide services at public facilities.

Um I can I can go on and on, but I think we'll let's go to the next slide.

Well, one thing I want to point out here though that has changed since 2019 is that Kenyatta College now has a fitness center and a pool that was I think under construction or about to start construction when we start when we started in 2019.

So that's another I would say significant um change that's happened that I think we need to consider as we decide what sort of amenities to offer.

So that's a great transition to this slide which is actually pool specific.

So here you can see uh there's this whole series of pools that we've mapped in these again if you look at the legend if that's legible uh on the right hand side there so there's existing public pools is the top one private pools is the next one then there's some that are uh in construction now and some that are planned and desired and so you can see that Kenyatta college pool down there at the bottom and we've tried to circle the ones that are uh sort of hottest off the press uh here just for for context and to kind of think about that aquatics discussion as Bridget said in the context of the regional opportunities and things that are available which continues to evolve uh especially since 2019.

Also I think it's off the map but Minlo Park has uh a nice community pool I think it'd be off just to the south but they have a one that's accessible to they have the most successful one but one that is struggling right now I know that's why that's why I mentioned it because they are having trouble making that model work and that's a nice pool.

And somewhere down near the bottom also I think there's an Elks Club pool.

I don't think we've got that on here also there's imp imperfect accounting and I'm not sure how far we should construct the screen for CSM.

For CSM you can uh there's no rec.

So that's no gym for the public to use they only have um they only have classes and and fitness things so no recreation right that's what you mean there with no rental I think CSM they're they have swim classes for kids I think it could be wrong.

No that they have them for kids.

They have the uh the CSM they have an instructional pool uh with uh swimming lessons where you can participate in like and have your you know yeah normal swimming lessons uh the master's group swims there but there's also a membership component like you have to be a membership of the recreation like you're like a you know 24 hour fitness in order to use the pool as an individual.

Right.

So I think what it means is no recreational swim is that's what it means I'm sorry right yeah okay yeah so and we may have it mislabeled so that's good correction we our research wasn't exhaustive but like for example like King Swim Academy like you can take lessons there but there's no there's no free swim technically I think for one hour on a weekend there is free swim but only if you're already taking lessons.

And like Carl Mount High School is seasonal essentially for recreational use right there sorry no no and Sarah is keep going.

Oh that's a good one seems like there's one with the dotted line is that right on the on the graph uh correct San Carlos and there's a I mean there's a big distinction between planned and desired and so I mean obviously just with one it's easy this well I actually I don't know is if it's clear is it desired or is it like where on that spectrum and why aren't why isn't um the Belmont community center on there as well just if you're trying to pair um I believe it is in the early planning stages.

I'd have to go back and look I don't know what their funding situation is.

You know we could say the same about Belmont.

Okay.

So I like like plan feels well one it it feels I mean that's a wide spectrum and so I wonder how to better account for that.

Uh yeah uh that's a that's a fair comment um I the line has to be drawn somewhere so we could include or exclude that.

Or you just make it or right yeah I mean I'm still like hairs right you could make it two right ones that there's active community coalition for something and then there's one that is okay the city's made some some level of commitment that you could define that says it's there.

Yeah we can definitely look to uh to refine that better absolutely has the city and also looking back at the last slide is there any opportunity for Belmont residents like the city pays for resident discounts or something with other pools you know if like you know is there we'll have reciprocity right if we'll have a pool um so that's one thing to consider if we do have a pool but the other is it are there partner you can can the city engage in more than just a like a a listing and have it more of a partnership with a rec center.

Well as an example I mean I know Menler Park's a little too far away to go to swim but they are you know at their at one of their pools they would love to have more patrons that's the challenge is that they are not meeting their their um yeah patron visitor goals yeah I mean distance is a factor so and yeah I imagine Highlands is smaller and they may not want that level of opitus or or access but I'm just wondering okay so we did the same uh type of analysis for for gymnasiums.

So you can uh we just distinguish between public and private here um and so you can see this one did go outside the boundaries of course um but the ones within town uh in DNU uh Notre Dame High School uh middle school crystal springs carlm and then you know Terra Linda just off the off the edge of the border there um you know there are there are some you know I think technically the King Center in San Mateo they call their room a gym that that's uh um a little bit of a athletic leap um but you know we can we can split hairs on this one a little bit too but there's definitely and you can't really see uh PJCC on this map because we covered it up with uh text I think so while this got really faded and I apologize for that there's actually a map of the United States underneath this graphics so if you if you squint oh yeah um but the the the big meta messages uh read through so we're just gonna go with those so you know one of the things that we tried to look at again for context is to look nationally at what the standards are and this is obviously just one metric uh to benchmark against but one of them is uh recreation center or gym where I'm gonna use those words a little bit sort of interchangeably tonight um the recreation center is going to equal gym for the purpose of this conversation um obviously you can recreate in other ways um but that's that's that's how we're defining it right now and so you can see nationwide one for 33000 the southwest is a little bit different obviously climate plays a big role um in that and um and then just looking more broadly at that three quarters of a square foot to two square feet per residence for indoor community facilities at large right this is not gym specific necessarily this is or centers with gyms this is just looking at community centers at large and so um with that sort of context then we started looking a little bit more granularly a little bit more locally um so we kind of took that uh 0.75 to two square feet per resident and then started uh looking at well what is the typical size of of a facilities so a multi-generational center you can see the sizes there and then when we start adding the gym it's gonna grow obviously for context um a middle school gymnasium plus or minus is in the 10 to 12 thousand square foot range a high school gymnasium is gonna be in the 14 to 1600 square foot range and we're not really talking about when we've got like radical telescoping bleachers and stuff we're just kind of talking about courts with a little bit of margin around the edge just trying to paint that picture for you and uh next slide.

And so here you can begin to see sort of the the tally, if you will, for Belmont.

And so you can see on the left, we've tried to uh list out the um facilities, parks and rec facilities city wide um so not just looking at Barrett's campus, and then within Barrett for line six, we've actually split that into two categories.

We've split it into what we're gonna call community center proper, or not proper community center, non-teen child care.

So the teen child care would be your the preschool space, and teen spaces there, and then the other uh almost 11,000 square feet is your heartbeat dance, uh footsteps after care uh stepping stones and the other assorted spaces that are used on the campus there.

And then when we look at the proposed new, you can see a series of different sort of options here, and we can kind of think about this on that graduated scale.

So a um all the numbers stay the same for all the other facilities, rows one through five for small community center, and then we're just saying that look, you've got about 15, 16,000, 17,000 square feet in Barrett right now as a community center.

If we set another small community center, apples for apples is 20,000 square feet, you know.

You can see your total square feet for the city is 35,000 square feet.

You know, if we look at the 2019 program for for the Belmont Community Center at 31,000 square feet, you can see where the citywide total would get you, and kind of how that stacks up against that per capital population, and the same for the large community center.

So again, looking at the previous slide, had that 20 to 35,000 square foot range for a community center that doesn't have a gym, and you can see sort of where that where that falls, and then you can see where our program was in 2019 with the gymnasium.

I have a quick question.

Just out of curiosity, I know this has Belmont City owned facilities.

Is the library not considered in this, like the library square footage as kind of community space?

That's a that's a good question.

No, it's not while we own the building, we don't manage any of the operations inside.

So that's why it's not on here.

That's a good question.

Ready?

Yep, that is accurate.

And so then again, sort of looking um at some of the uh local cities here and trying to benchmark them uh uh Belmont against them, and so you can see the green is kind of the conditions today, and then um boy, the colors really didn't print well here.

But um if you can imagine in your mind's eye that that invisible color for new community recreation center goes all the way to the edge of that orange bar on the right.

Uh-huh.

It goes to there.

Um you can see sort of how the proposed changes for the Belmont Community Center or the proposed build out would affect uh the Belmont bars here on this graph.

Sorry, so to relate to the previous graph is the 2019, the 31,000 column.

Is that the two colors that we see?

And then then is the the 40,000 going all the way to the edge of the chart, or is that not?

I I you are thinking about that generally in the right the right way.

I'm going back to look at the previous slide on my laptop to try to make sure I'm not misleading you here.

But I believe you are thinking about that in the right way.

So, right here, if we if we did it with the gymnasium, we would go from you know, with current population, just a little bit over two square feet per resident, and in 2040 it would be a little bit under.

Yep.

So that's that's about here, in 2024, and then in 2040, slightly under two.

Yep, gotcha.

Whoops, do we get that one twice?

We might have to think what's new here is the recommendation here, but I think we've already talked about that, right?

And so again, um kind of rounding out some of the context and kind of gonna step back here for a second back to sort of some of our framework pieces.

Again, we reached out to a lot of people in 2019 that reach outs continued.

Um I'm gonna keep going through these slides here.

Next slide.

And so, in addition to this, and to addition to the efforts specific to the Belmont Community Center, there's been other work that's been done that's very complementary.

So we have the conversation surveys, which Bridget has led over the last few years.

Survey results there at the bottom, really looking to modernize and expand programs and services, and I think that dovetails nicely with some of the themes that uh came out of the open space master plan last year that you can see on the on the right hand side.

And so trying to can condense some of this into our foundational framework for today for this year, really looking uh focusing on those multi-generational and multi-functional spaces, uh being able to really multiply their uses over the course of the day, that sustainable design, the holistic health and wellness services, and then this resiliency center, which continues, especially in the last few years, has really um sort of nationwide risen to uh prominence in community center design and is something that we want to make sure that we are addressing here in a way that benefits Belmont.

We've touched on a number of these things.

Um we'll get to a couple fun pictures here in a few minutes.

So I'm not gonna read all of this, but really again that multi-functional multi-generational, multi-functional, the idea that that space in the morning could be used for seniors while the teenagers are in school, in the afternoons that can flip to be a teenage space, and in the evenings that can be a space for something totally different or a repeat for one of those two groups, really trying to find those synergies as we think about the programming, so that we're maximizing every space for as many hours of the day as we can.

And again, that health and wellness, you know, a lot of that does come down to the sort of capital A architecture of having that connection to the outdoors, having the natural daylighting, having those spaces for gathering and impromptu interactions, and and having it be uh while it's a space of incredible activity and and in that way in physical intensity, it's also calming and welcoming, and there's those eddy spaces within there that you can kind of step aside.

Sustainable design continues to be a theme, and obviously we're working to dovetail that with the city's climate action plan.

You know, we're seeing a lot of cities uh moving towards a net zero energy goals.

Um, some of us are doing this in our personal residences.

Some of the cities are also leading by example with some of their new facilities, and so that's something to explore here.

You know, what is what does that really look like for a community center?

How does that affect potentially the architecture, putting photovoltaics on the roof?

Um, you know, does it involve battery storage?

Does it involve other things and how do those relate to some of those resiliency goals as well?

And so trying to kind of get our arms around some of those things, and again, resiliency.

This is not resiliency just for clarification, is not sort of that uh red cross station with cots in every room spread out all over the floors.

Not that in some extreme emergency that couldn't happen, but that's really what the schools are set up for.

So there's already an emergency network countywide that has those facilities designated, that has the storage space, that has the showers with locker rooms and all those things to promote sort of multi-day use by by the same individuals.

You know, a resiliency center is really more of that place to a touch point place, a place for supplies to be distributed for your cell phone to be charged, if you need quick medical assistance or reorientation or access to resources, you know, this is a place that can do those things, and you're gonna return to your own dwelling afterwards, as a general statement.

Since showers are part of that, even if we didn't have a pool in the new community center, would we still have showers to meet those requirements?

If if there is a pool, there will be showers.

If there's a gymnasium, showers are optional.

Um and so that'll be a uh we'll see how that how that plays out.

Um, yes, I mean there is there is the possibility that we can sort of be resilient plus uh depending on the programmatic elements.

If we do a full sort of formal, I'm gonna call it an emergency operations center type of a thing, which some cities do for community centers, um, then we're really talking about literal storage of cots and blankets and other things that take up space in the building that we're not using for programming.

And since those things exist in a different type of capacity elsewhere already, um the proposal to date has not been to replicate that level of intensity for this facility.

And I'll just add to that um there are some other um building code requirements if you name yourself sort of a higher level like shelter.

Structural requirements structural requirements that um that then drive up the cost of the building, and so we're trying to find that sweet spot where we might have access to some infrastructure funding that's what I was thinking about.

If we engineer our building, yeah.

Yep.

And so you can kind of see where uh the Barrett campus lies within the broader uh emergency map or hazard map.

Uh so it's in a great place, not only centrally located within the city, but it is you know, significantly outside of the primary uh identified hazard zones uh within the city, which is which is good, and we've just shown an exam example of uh what a resiliency hub could look like where you've got different tables and stations set up in sort of one of the larger rooms in the facility that can be a one-stop shop for people should should they need that type of a space.

Is it also outside of flood hazard zones?

Do we know?

I believe it is also.

I think it is, yes.

And the flooding would be on the other side, so it's nicely our lowetting is is further downstream on the other side of Alcamino.

Yeah.

Um compared to other facilities, I know Twin Pines here, we also have some resiliency measures, right?

Like what does it look like in context of the rest of Belmont?

Like our facilities?

Um basically my question is we have some facilities here in Twin Pines, right?

How would um proposed initiatives in the community center look like compared to these facilities?

That's a good question.

So the community center the Barrett Community Center would be located a little more centrally than um than Twin Pine, so um maybe a little more accessible to more people, um, and it would have more facilities and more accessibility than we have right now.

Right now here in Twin Pines, we have sort of a collection of buildings.

For example, our park and rec office and the manor building are not ADA compliant.

They're older buildings, so um, so to have a newer facility um that would increase accessibility and be more centrally located is what we're aiming for here.

I see.

So a lot of the resiliency centers that we see on the peninsula that would be similar in context to this, have you know emergency generators that are able to, you know, air condition three quarters of the building or something so it becomes a cooling shelter, you know, it becomes different things uh at different times because it has those extra those extra measures and those are have been in the last few years very um things that we can fund uh through other means have other funding opportunities for.

Right.

In that respect too, our buildings here in Twin Pines are some of them are a little more outdated, so they wouldn't necessarily have the air filtration systems that we would need to have for a you know for a bad air quality day and that sort of thing.

So the baseline is just better than what we have in Twin Pines.

Yes.

Um I've no clue.

I'm I'm totally speaking just without any understanding.

Is there anything with uh like communications networks like would you do these places for resiliency put up a cell tower to or have some wide area magic network that when things go down the city could still even if it's just first responders could still have a communications network or things like that?

All of those things are possible.

Um the first responders communication network is a countywide network, a mesh network county countywide, and is very specific.

So this facility, we haven't s seen a community facility on the peninsula yet that's been enmeshed in the way that you're describing.

Um in that way, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen.

I think the way that generally speaking, the way the mesh network um is geographically organized is mostly on high points in hills and low points on the edge of the bay, and this doesn't meet either of those criteria.

And you tend to go to ham.

You go to two meter and you go to ham radio for emergency.

So that could be done within like the slightly separate parallel context of you know, could this have resilient fiber connections or other things to just provide basic connectivity?

Could it have a dark fiber connection to something else?

Yes, all those things conceptually um can be done, and we just need to provide the emergency power to make them beneficial at that time.

But yeah, absolutely, those things could happen.

Sorry, in terms of these considerations, like there's a lot that can be done, right?

Um, is there any other further each shot or like um how are you gonna decide what you want to implement in terms of safety?

Like as future planning goes on.

So, some of this will be related to further conversations with staff, you know, like the IT department.

Do they need this?

Is this a hole in their system?

You know, that conversation at that particular level has not been had yet, right?

That's part of the process that we're working through now.

Okay, I understand.

So, in terms of like the what I'm asking is like specifically the stakeholders who they'll be meeting, like um, is there someone you can reach out to ask about like to safety, or is that within parks?

So we'll be talking to um police and fire uh about those things, and as um Jonathan mentioned, the IT department.

You know, in one of the prior slides, we talked about maybe having sort of server redundancy, and maybe there's some other 9-1-1 relay redundancy that we could have at Barrett, that kind of thing.

So we can gather the wish list from those stakeholders, and then we're gonna have to kind of right-size that with the type of funding that we have.

So that's gonna be the constraint on the other end, right?

Our wants are here and funding reality is going to be somewhere else, and then we're gonna figure out um uh what gets valued in and what gets valued out.

Okay, um so uh this is looking uh again back at the 2019 plan, because that's really our basis for uh this refresh, and so just uh for orientation, uh north being generally up on the screen, Ralston being at the bottom, uh, and Bellbourn being at the top, and so the existing centers essentially, you know, along that top edge of Belbourn, essentially where this says softball field, you know, stretching across the majority uh east to west uh of the site in that area.

And for those of you that were part of the 2019 process, uh you may remember that you know there was a series of criteria uh that was developed and thought about where the building wants to be, where the parking wants to be, and so one of the thoughts that move the building towards Ralston was just sort of the physical advertisement of the building, you know, that you know Ralston is the main drag, and you know, not that the uh signage along the fence isn't um a pretty pretty great thing for for what it's able to do, right?

But it's not quite the same as a building along the street that's glowing at night as you drive by.

Um, and so being able to, you know, really celebrate the fact that the community center is right along the main street is a great advantage.

Moving the parking on to the west hand side um was uh specific, not only because it's partially the way that the site orients now, but also it was in respect to the two immediate neighbors to the to the east that are next to the play fields that were very concerned about having headlights shining in their living room window on that side.

Uh, and so looking at looking at that, and then um also the fact that in a phased construction scenario, the community center can be built in the soccer field right now, while the existing center stays operational.

So preschool can stay operational the whole time until they move over to the new center, et cetera, et cetera.

And then the sports fields here can be built as an immediate second phase once the new building is occupied.

So kind of looking at it that way.

Obviously the parking is expanded and being able to connect whether you're coming from the the north side or the south side, having that through connection there.

Commissioner Michaels, you talked about sort of dog parks and parking.

So we are showing the sort of the main parking lot is inboard of the houses.

There's sort of um the secondary or ex overflow parking is is in that light green color that's up against the western houses.

And you can see that the there's a dog run there out towards the street by the Chase Bank.

Um so those are all uh different opportunities uh that can be captured in different ways.

Uh certainly one of the things we've been talking about with staff on terms of you can see in the middle there, there's the dedicated child care play yard right outside of that is sort of the traditional um I'm gonna call it K-5 playground that's right outside of that to the north, and so the dedicated play yard would be fenced, of course, for security during preschool hours, but is there a way that um that space can be opened up um for weekend use um so that um the younger kids have the opportunity to play on stuff that's their size and we're not buying that equipment twice?

Similarly with the sport court basketball court just to the right of that.

You know, is there a rationale that we should actually fence that um so that for after school programs or summer camps or something that that can be contained, but that after hours or on the weekends, there's the opportunity to open up those gates and it's just uh you know, we go back to the rec app.

And is that is that an open play or reservable space and other ways that we can kind of get that multiplicity of those exterior spaces, just like we've talked about multiplicity of uses for interior spaces.

Uh the community garden stayed the same.

Sorry, in case that was a thing still there, same place.

So I I know exhaustively you looked at all the different parking configurations and things like that.

So I'm not I one thing that for the drop off, can you have the not great person standing, you know, just kind of hogging the drop off and still get around, or or is that if someone just sits there, right?

I'm just thinking like if you look at the airport, right?

Are you are you gonna have to have people constantly getting them to move because that is a choke point, or is there enough through space that someone can bypass someone who's dropping off or picking up?

The goal is definitely bypassed to have a bypass.

The goal is that there's enough space to have a not good person and and to be able to bypass that.

Yes, that is the goal.

Is there a dedicated bus stop there at Ralston, or could there be like to thinking about like public transportation and how like users could be you know the quickest access or closest access to that?

So there is a bus stop up at Alameda, um, closer to Alameda.

I'm trying to visualize exactly where that is.

I think it's on the on the safe way side of Alameda.

I think that's the closest bus stop.

That's the closest westbound.

Westbound bus stop, if that's what you're asking, and then um eastbound, I can't remember if there's one sort of across the street from Vivachi or not.

I'd have to I'd have to think about that a little bit harder.

But it's a little um if we're this is just that special part of Ralston that's only two real lanes.

Um, and so if we start if SAM trans was to agree to a bus stop somewhere here, uh we would need to create a carve-out space for that to make to make that work.

So that's something that if there's that demand or need, we could we could look at that.

And we're not taking boats, but I'd rather we had less parking to encourage people to walk and use other modes of transportation and as opposed to putting 161 spots for cars to park in ingress and outgress right in the middle of the busiest place in the city, but you know, I d maybe that's neither here nor there.

How many parking spots are there right now?

Um I'm supposed to have that number.

I don't know if I have it for you.

It's it's it's less than 161.

Um, I guess it's got to be like 20 or 20.

It's 60.

So the 60?

The 161 also counts.

So just to be clear, we um sorry I don't have the comparative number for you, but the 161, if you read the fine print there, which I know is impossible to read, it does mention that in the current accounting, we do count the um south side of Bellburn, like in other words, where everybody parks.

We we count that as part of the current parking count, and so to be fair, we counted that as part of the current power.

Or whether there's parking over by the current gym gymnasium or the current part of the city.

Yeah, and so there's a little mini, there's a little mini lot there.

There's the lot on the south side.

So it's it's more.

The other thing I would say about the parking is that you know there are there are benchmarks for that sort of national benchmarks for community centers.

Obviously, you're not meeting those currently.

The goal to your point may or may not be to meet those in the future.

The city is in the process of revising their parking standards sort of citywide, and so this is the 2019 plan.

Like when we get the 2025 parking things, we're gonna redo our numbers.

I don't expect the numbers to go up necessarily.

Um maybe they'll go in the other direction as you're suggesting.

Right now, as you mentioned, there's quite a bit of parking on Belbury on both sides of Belburn now that's impacting the neighbors.

So this should be an opportunity to streamline the traffic patterns and pull some of the cars off of the neighborhood streets and bring them on site.

It looks like maybe sixty or sixty-five spots, okay.

Something like that, yeah.

I have a question, but what do you mean exactly by overflow parking?

So there's basically um an extra parking aisle that we're showing in the kind of darker green tone there.

Um it's being considered, or there's the opportunity to treat that surface in a different way that could allow for other uses.

But on if you're having a huge event and you really need, you know, in other words, maybe you only need 100 parking spaces for 80% of the time, but there's certain weekend events or things where you really need that extra 60 spaces without impacting the neighborhood, you know, there would be the opportunity to unrope, so to speak, the access points into that overflow lot, and you could use that for overflow parking, or the rest of the time it's potentially programmable space or a space that you can walk your dog on leash or do something else, right?

Um that's kind of set aside.

Do we have a number for parking without overflow?

I do not have a number without overflow, but we can provide that.

Any other questions on the site plan?

Um, or we'll come back to it.

So uh ground floor plan.

Remember, this is the 2019 plan.

These things are gonna continue to evolve.

Um, but you can see there's kind of four quadrants to this plan, and in 2019, there was uh requests to kind of make sure that there was a way that the plan could um have all options on the table.

And so that's what you're you're seeing here.

And so if you look at the plan kind of in quadrants, the left-hand side of the um the building, the blue and the yellow and orange uh parts, that's what we're gonna kind of call the base building.

Um, and then you know, there's the opportunity to have a gymnasium, there's the opportunity to have the aquatics um component on the right hand side.

And so on the left hand side, you can see in the upper quadrant, upper left quadrant is the child care quadrant.

That's what we're gonna call the preschool quad quadrant.

In 2019, we were looking at three preschool classes because that's what they that's the that's the current model, and we're replicating the current model sort of one for one.

As a mandatory TK has come into play.

Um that's changing the numbers a little bit here, and so we're now considering possibly with staff looking at only two preschool classrooms here, and so that oper that frees up one room, whether it stays in that position or not, to become a different type of use in the building.

If for you know, reuse that square footage in a different way.

At the south side, that multi-purpose room, A, B, and C, you know, that's really thinking about having one big room that has sort of those nice hotel style dividers, those panel dividers, not the scary accordion ones that everybody hates, but the ones that actually have some acoustic properties and can allow for three separate things to happen, or to have one big room happen there and have a dedicated patio space or outdoor space for that, a little catering kitchen off on the side.

You know, we're not trying to uh do senior meal programs or other things like that here.

That that's that's for a different facility.

If that was ever a program that needed to happen, this is really just for for catering support, or if you need to do some very light cooking to support whatever your uh Boy Scout Club activity is, or something to that effect.

The community lounge uh may or may not actually have walls, it may be just part of the larger lobby space and kind of that community living room for those casual interactions, or the place for a parent to plop down with their laptop for 45 minutes while their kid is in some kind of a class.

Uh the staff space you can see is centrally located, so they kind of have physical connection to all the spaces down the corridors at their check-in desks, so very different paradigm than what is at Barrett right now, and then you can imagine how the outdoor pool and the lockers would work.

Um that whole hallway from the brown staff line going backwards towards the gymnasium and the outdoor pool for a lot of community facilities.

We see that have a paywall feature there, so there's a turnstile.

You know, you're you don't go through that unless you're wrist-banded or something else, so you don't just have people wandering into the pool or the locker rooms.

You you've got to kind of be checked in and have gone through that process, and those are things that are operational that we can work out, but that's kind of how that would work.

The pool shows a couple different configurations.

Um, you know, this is really looking at a recreational pool.

We're not trying to have massive swim team practice here.

You know, that's for CSM or somewhere else.

Um, so this is the one that's shown on the left is you know, six lanes.

Uh, you can take out the lane dividers and put in um inflatable obstacle courses and other things to you know make it a more recreational pool or open swim pool, or you can have you know your kind of uh kid classes and things like that in there.

Um, not saying you can't do some uh lane swimming, you know, in the mornings when everyone's at school, but it it's not gonna be your 50 meter pool.

You know, this is your smaller, this is a 25-yard kind of pool.

The alternate pool plan shows a little bit of that same kind of idea on the right-hand side where you can have some lane swimming, um, or you can take out those and play water volleyball or something else like that in there, and then the left-hand side of that curving line is really talking about sort of that uh bay club style thing where you've got kind of a zero-zero threshold entry that slopes down to 12 inches, you've got a little spray play structure in the middle, and you know, it's not that you can't do some swimming lessons in there, some very basic things, um water immersion things, um, but it's really more of a recreational type of facility.

The on the right, are you even getting 25 yards of length or um I I think if that's the target, we're there's a way to make it work.

Yeah, you know, we may end up rotating it um like 90 degrees so that anyway.

There's there's I mean, is 25 kind of like the minimum for someone who is looking to swim somewhere?

Yes.

I mean, if you ask my kids a few years ago when they're trying to swim 25 yards, they would say no, uh 15 would have been fantastic.

But but yeah, if you're 25 is kind of your standard high school uh lane, if you will.

So if you're a uh a youth swim club or swim meet, you're doing 25 lane things, and if you get into the upper levels, um, then you're going into the 50 meter, you know, the Olympics.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I would just say the 25 seems like you don't want to.

Does this lay out by that take into account maximum sun or the shadows of buildings?

So, yes.

Thank you for that setup.

That was fantastic.

I'll I'll I'll take that.

So it is south is on the south side of the property here, so we are getting that nice solar exposure for a good chunk of the day.

Um, but it's also this is a the left-hand side of the building is a two-story building.

So in the afternoons, you will get some western shadows, but that's also the two-story mass of the building is intentionally there to block the pool from the Belmont breeze.

So the idea is that and we've done some wind modeling to kind of substantiate that.

Um that's that's the reason for the orientation.

And it's certainly, yeah, the gymnasium, well, in a perfect world, right?

Then you've got kind of all the Belmont breeze is blocked from all sides there.

That's the goal.

The this is more of a city question, and I I know that having it focused on the site, I mean that's what you're building for is hugely important.

But also, you know, when you have that map of other areas of rec and activities.

I mean, I just have to think that, and it's hard, but the the sports complex, right?

Longer running trails to go around, you know, it's there is a building there, and is you in the five years since the beginning have there been thoughts about well, let's take a look at this as a system more and be able to I'm not saying offload, but um it's it's like a yes and type of uh approach to talking about things.

Like put what if we put a gym at the sports complex or or small gym or or like uh more of an indoor-outdoor gym type of thing.

I mean, that could certainly offload some of the requirements.

I'm not saying take it away, but it's just one of these look we're trying to put everything into this uh understandably, but also know that well there are spaces that the city has that if you step back, then it could be a even bigger story.

Yeah, I would say um, you know, we're we're also kind of footprint constrained at um at the sports complex as well, um, because that dirt lot does not belong to the city.

Uh and the beauty of the Barrett site and trying to put a whole lot of things there is it's its location at the crossroads, the the nucleus of the city, and um, and to have that be operationally efficient by having you know one lobby, one staff person to check you in and and do all that.

If we had different venues, we would be asking parents to you know bring you know have kids at two or three different places.

The beauty of this is gosh, you might be able to have enrichment classes for three different children at the same place at the same time.

Yeah, so that's the vision.

Ready?

Yeah, I'm good.

Um, so I had one more question on that.

Um a lot of the newer community centers kind of have a uh indoor-outdoor flow.

So, like on the gymnasium side, does it open up to the outside or is it uh a wall that's there?

We were just talking about this uh Monday.

Um so the gymnasium has many opportunities to open up in many different directions, um, other than maybe directly to the east where we would really frustrate that neighbor, yeah.

Um there will be from a code perspective if the gymnasium option is implemented, there would be doors that open up to the north.

Um we were talking about how big those doors should be and what you know, what are the can we have the whole wall slide away?

Can we do you know many different things there?

The answer is yes, many different things can happen.

I think one of the things that we want to balance with staff here is um sort of what those potential uses could be, and the gymnasium floor is one of the most expensive floors in the facility, and so tracking uh grit and things from the outside directly onto that floor through a aircraft hangar door is technically possible from me, but um may not be beneficial um in the big picture.

So there are some other options that we brainstormed uh recently, and um, yeah, I mean it'd be great to enhance those connections, but we want to be a little bit thoughtful about how we do that.

But we do envision sort of an indoor-outdoor capability right here with these with the multi-use room and the path.

I saw that so those might that might be a different kind of space, not not active space, but um passive.

And this is showing sort of the whole kitchen, sorry, the first floor plan was showing the the whole kitchen sink, right?

That's assuming that everything happens, right?

That there's funding available for all all the bells and whistles there.

So if some of those components are don't meet that that meshing as we get further along in the process, then there's gonna be more open space and some additional configuration tweaking, right?

Um on the second floor uh again, there's more of these multi-generational uh program spaces, um, and this one we're showing a little bit of a terrace again, looking out towards Ralston, um conference room, fitness studio here is uh really talking about uh what maybe we would think of as a dance or yoga studio.

Again, it has that sprung wood floor, that gymnasium floor that allows for that resiliency.

Um that's really important for certain activities, and we don't want to put that in every space.

The arts and craft floor ironically is sort of the exact opposite of that.

That's more of like a polished concrete floor that has nothing on it, so that every time you spill paint or something like that, you can pretty much power wash that room.

Um, and that room would have you know clay traps in the sinks and all of those sorts of things to support those more messy activities.

Could you use that for uh a book club?

Absolutely, right?

But it's got it's got some extra bells and whistles on it to support those messier activities.

Um, so that's the second floor.

You can kind of see the dashed lines of the the aquatics area, the um the preschool play yard to the north, and then the gymnasium here, one of the things that's noted on here is the optional walking track.

So um, you know, along that sort of balcony or mezzanine level, you know, that's a great opportunity if we're gonna have a big volume like this to allow people um outside of the paywall to be able to um circulate on that track potentially um while there's uh different activity going on underneath in all weather.

Have you all mapped out how many how many more staff members you might need for the city?

Yeah, not yet.

That really depends on is there a pool, is there a gym.

So this is just sort of the um, you know, the the menu of options um or permutations if you will.

Uh so again that red one is the what I'm gonna call the base building, you know, that's kind of that core that core community center building, and then as we start to transition beyond community center into what I'm gonna call the recreation or aquatics facility, you can see the green one adds a gymnasium but does not add an aquatic uh facility.

So there's some open space there to consider what to do with, or we need to flip the gym in a different orientation or something needs to happen there.

Um aquatics facilities, the same conversation sort of in reverse.

And then um, but we still get that nice building shielding in this configuration even if the gym's not there.

And then obviously the far right is is the whole the whole um all the options together composite.

So um one of the things that we didn't have in 2019 is we didn't have any sort of visuals to think about, and these are again not intended to be capital A architecture.

Um these are intended to be pretty uh vanilla, um, but really just um one of the questions that we kept getting in 2019 was well I can't really imagine how big this building is on the site, or I can't I can't visualize what this looks like from point A or point B.

And so we've tried to put something together here just to kind of provide that sense of scale, but by all means, like as this moves forward further, there will be very specific conversations with you and many other people, including the community, about what the architectural nature and materiality of this building wants to be.

So just if with that caveat in mind, you know, we're standing here basically at the uh sort of in the chase parking lot, uh if you will, looking backwards towards the existing soccer field.

So you know, Ralston's on the on the right hand side here.

You can see the those existing trees that currently are along the Ralston fence line remain in the right hand side of this image, and then you've got those program spaces and that uh second floor terrace and things that are fronting the street, working our way back to that uh circle drive where the paving changes colors, and that's where the building entry is uh in this scheme.

Um this picture, sorry.

Um the bicycles in this picture reminded me, do we have um dedicated like bicycle or like motorbike parking space?

There will be dedicated bicycle parking spaces, absolutely.

And and beyond just dedicated spaces, also secured bicycle parking, kind of at the next level.

That's something that is also being incorporated into these kind of public spaces.

Absolutely.

And so, here from the circle drive, again, trying to negotiate that bypass here.

So I think we can see the uh the loitering folks in the bypass zone, and then you can see conceptually a you know, front door overhang towards the preschool play yard.

Um, you know, someone asked the other day why the vero's flat, you know.

Uh again, this is just for scale.

Um, but I would say that um, you know, compared to a mission style tile roof, you know, it the low sloped roofs do offer some additional opportunities for photovoltaic panels and things like that, sort of when we go back to that, those conversations about resiliency and net zero and things like that, um, when all your slopes are going in a controlled direction that's favoring the sun, we have some more opportunities to do some things from from an energy production.

But that doesn't dictate the architecture, that's just a consideration that we would we would want to make with you.

Next slide.

So this is actually looking sort of from uh stepping stones or you know, uh kind of the um picnic area or the um existing building, existing um Barrett Community Center on the south side, looking back towards uh the building.

So here you can see on the left-hand side is the edge of the soccer field.

Uh you've got the K through five playground in the middle there, along with we're showing a little bit of a splash pad or spray area where you could have you know water fountains coming up out of the ground, could be a totally different feature there, could be a bigger playground, could be many things depending on what the community wants.

Beyond that, we have the preschool playground and then the building itself here.

And this this includes the massing of the gymnasium here on the kind of middle right or middle left, excuse me.

Parking would be on the left beyond the picnic tables.

Parking would be on the right beyond the picnic tables.

So looking at that uh larger multi-purpose room downstairs here, again, thinking about this as sort of a uh in this case that resiliency center, that one-stop shop where you've got lots of different tables and booths and things for people to get resources all in one place.

And then in the next slide, uh, this shows the partitions pulled back.

The next slide, the same room, just thinking about this.

If we were going to do a uh concert, uh kitty concert, or there's a author talk, or there's something else that's happening here.

Same room, different configuration.

Thinking about the arts and crafts room.

Again, that uh that bulletproof floor, uh, lots of uh places to gather and do things and some extra supplies and shelving.

This by no means is a design proposal.

This is just trying to paint a picture in your eye, if that helps.

And again, the preschool area, one of the things that the preschools heard is that um parents really like that indoor-outdoor connection that they have with the big windows that face north to Belburn, um, and that that's a positive they see that as a real positive thing for their kids.

Um so we wanted to make sure that we're including kind of lower windows even than what we have in the current center to be able to engage their private play space.

In that last photo, is that would there be much pedestrian travel outside those windows while classes going on or no, no, so that's a great question.

So certainly um we want to respect the privacy of the kids there.

And so the idea here is that you know, these windows would front that enclosed play yard, um, and that enclosed play yard, you know, we will have to work together with staff to determine the sort of visual porosity of the fence uh that surrounds that.

It's the similar to how it is now where it's the strength.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly.

And then thinking about that upstairs fitness room again with that sprungwood floor, that gymnasium style floor, you know, a mirror wall, um, normally for the ballet classes, you would use portable bars, but if you need a stretching bar, there'll be one on a wall in there, and we'll we'll kind of continue to work with staff to figure out how that works.

But um, these spaces are incredibly popular in other facilities that we've worked on.

Um, and so we would expect the same here.

Okay, any other questions about the the images?

No?

Fantastic.

Um, and so just looking again, sort of in wrapping things up here, got the last few slides.

Um, so again, though that red stuff on the right hand side, the red bar community center, that's kind of that base building program that we're looking at.

Um again, we've made a couple of tweaks here from 2019.

You can see there's only two preschool classrooms listed here.

We've gone to seven multi-generational program spaces where before we had six.

Um, so trying to make some of those adjustments in here, and looking at teen spaces here, which was not quite as big a focus in 2019, but but honestly, your hideout program is really strong, and um it's it's an important thing for us to continue to dialogue with staff on and find that right balance of dedicated space or space that's multi-use, but they really feel ownership of.

Um, we know that's a really important part of all team spaces.

Um, and then looking for the opportunities on the right hand side um that are still being uh evaluated, whether we go kind of that recreation center route, the aquatic center route, or you know, we we get it all and so you can kind of see that range and that range of square footage really is gonna depend as we do that reconciliation work on the on the funding side to figure out what what can be done, and we can work back and forth with that number and staff uh to figure out how we're gonna refine some of these quantities and things on the on this on the screen here, and uh same same thing here.

This is just looking at the the base uh base program again, base building program.

You can see the parking requirements are a little bit lower in the bottom.

Again, those are gonna get refined.

Obviously, the more square footage we add, the more parking, the formula says we're supposed to put with that, right?

That's what the international traffic engineers manual says we're supposed to do.

Um but you can see again those pictures of the what the spaces could be and the spaces on the left.

Next slide.

And then just highlighting that if we were to add the gymnasium, you can see that the parking goes up a little bit, and the different spaces that go into that.

It's not just the gymnasium, it's the support spaces that go with that.

There's gonna be increased staff space for that extra staffing level.

There's additional storage and support spaces that go with it, it's not just the gym room itself.

Same for aquatics.

Um obviously there's the pool, but then there's changing rooms, there's that party room for birthday party rentals, um, or for lifeguard training or whatever it needs to be.

We need that multi-purpose room that's right off the pool deck for those uh features, and also for revenue generation.

Uh, all the support spaces, which are myriad for a pool, the chemical rooms, the pump rooms, all those things need dedicated spaces.

Um, and then obviously the additional staff spaces for that as well.

For the pool, would everyone go through the main doors or do you have to worry something about even like the the flooring to support what feet or what you know what what outfits are the like how like to manage that flow is kind of different than people going into kind of the you know the classrooms and things.

Yep.

So um the general flow for a pool, yes, from a uh control, program control, um access control, um, everybody goes through the lobby to get in and out of the pool.

Um, but then in order to actually go from the lobby to the pool, you're actually going through the locker room spaces.

There's not a direct door from the lobby to the pool, right?

So there's a transition that happens in both directions through the locker rooms, and that's not requiring somebody to change, but it does address some of the wet drippiness to a certain extent.

Um, and so the flooring will be responsive to that as well.

I mean, the flooring will be responsive no matter what, whether we have a pool or not, when it's a rainy day and the lobby floor gets wet, we have to we have to meet that criteria.

So we're gonna we're gonna meet it.

And this is the San Bruno pool, right?

This is the San Barino pool.

So San Bruno, if you haven't been to their recreation center, they've got the gymnasium with the walking track, they've got the updoor out upstairs fitness area.

And in this case, they do have that same kind of gymnasium pool uh turnstile paywall if you've been there, and so in order to get to this outdoor pool, you actually go through the turnstile through the locker rooms.

Generally speaking, you actually go through the indoor pool to get to get to the outdoor pool.

And then it's not that there's not gates here to for emergency, but you go back, you reverse your steps.

That's a that was one of our projects.

Um any additional questions or can I go back to anything for anybody?

I have a kind of a question.

Let's try to phrase it.

It seems like there's kind of three different options.

There's kind of the base model, which would replace the existing community center and maintain that, then there's adding a gymnasium, then there's adding aquatic center, it's a kind of modular approach.

In the event that we only ended up with the very base model, and we didn't end up having the ability to do a gymnasium or the aquatic center, would it still be a two-story structure with then just a bunch of space on the side, or would you then build a one story?

Would it just be a complete new redesign if we only ended up with that?

Um this is a Bridget smiling because this is something we've been talking about.

So if it's the base building only, then you are a hundred percent correct, there are a number of opportunities and decisions that uh of we are available to.

Um, and so if the decision is that um if the city decides that they do not want to reserve space for a future building addition, um, then our recommendation would be absolutely be to consider going to a one-story scheme, and that um we don't get the benefit of the kind of compact volume of the two-story space, but we are, you know, this building will have two to three staircases in it to meet fire code.

It'll have an elevator.

You know, it has things that have cost and square footage implications, and if we start clawing those things back in a one-story scheme, you know, there may be additional program space that we can create, you know, with that square footage and and dollars.

So there's some trade-offs to have to be had there, depending on how the city wants to look at the long-term future of the site.

Absolutely.

Yeah, um, I had a question about the arts and crafts room.

I think it's a great idea.

Um, I know in the library we have they have like a dedicated maker space.

Um, I think that kind of thing is like very popular among like artists, and it could be a great like community building opportunity.

So makerspace generally, if we're thinking like 3D printers, like laser cutting, that's what they've got in the library.

Um, just like it's a bit more expensive than just like simple arts and crafts.

So if that's something we could think about, I think, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, the arts and crafts room has the ability to do other things, has the ability to do ceramics, you know, light ceramics.

It could do heavy ceramics if that's the goal, but we need to add some extra rooms for that.

Like we're not proposing kilns here.

Um, but other community centers have that, right?

That's that's a thing.

Um, other community centers do have 3D printers and laser cutters in theirs as well to complement the library.

Um we don't want to replicate anything.

I think that goes back to that meshing of community resources.

Um, so those are those are all options.

Um, but you know, historically, Barrett has also had some other programs that would be perfect fits for that room, like um, I don't remember the exact name, but it's John the Kids Carpenter.

Carpentry.

Um, which I know my kids did at one point in time, and I know he's still around.

Um, you know, there's things like that that we they don't do at the library that we could do here in that kind of room.

So speaking of that, uh this is getting into like a a swallish detail, but it's almost like you could never have enough storage space, and so thinking about third party providers, and is there enough space that they could house some of their things in between classes versus having to always cart and uncart.

Yeah.

So go go ahead.

No, I'm I'll I'll follow you on this one.

So we have the benefit here, I think, of s of being sort of the um, I don't know, the last mover, but far further down on the list, we've seen all the other cities around us um have this exact challenge.

And uh I think if I surveyed all the parks and rec directors, many of whom have worked with group four and they put in as much storage as they could, they would all say we could still use more storage.

Yeah, and so um I think we'll learn from them sort of what some you know rules of thumb are, you know, a yoga studio just as an example, the image of the yoga.

That it's not just the yoga mat that people come in with, right?

You've got the blocks, you've got the hoops, you got the balls, you got all the all these other things that need to be stored somewhere.

So we really do need to think about that to be able to maximize the functionality of every space.

And even maybe there are sheds off building, right, for things that don't need day-to-day access that could be interesting as well, and also thinking about outdoor community events and other programs, concert or those types of things to be able to have access to storage more at the place of the event versus having to wheel it from the build the main building out, and so that could be something as well to consider.

Right, right.

And just also think about in all the rooms.

We saw some images of the rooms with tables and some of the rooms without tables, so that means you're gonna have table storage and you need to have chair storage and you need to have you know IT storage and all those things.

So all of that gets factored in.

Yep.

And somewhere along the way, the council will ask, you know, can we hold council meetings in this thing, and all of a sudden that uh two more IT racks for the gentleman that's over there right now, you know.

Um, and we've we've done that many times, right?

It just these are all things that take up space and have have trade-offs.

Um, yeah, but absolutely storage is a big one, and so we've got a pretty healthy factor in it for right now, and as Bridget said, she'll never be satisfied with whatever it is.

That's that's exactly right, right?

So that's our that's our our target, our unreachable target.

I have a question.

Speaking of lessons learned, um I remember walking around the Burlingame community center and staff talking about the terraces and how they were kind of an underutilized spot.

So I was curious to know like what is like our thought behind where we place the terraces and what do we imagine happening in those spots.

So that is true.

I was on that tour with you.

Um and others.

Um the terraces, um, everybody seems to have kind of their own.

They're pretty, they're very pretty.

Um, they cost money, so if we're not going to use them, we should do something else with that money.

For sure.

Um, so I think on this particular project, there's a couple of terraces that are proposed.

Um, I think those are things that are very much up for discussion.

Um, so one of them is off of the arts and fitness room, and so um we have had a couple of communities where they really wanted to have small like morning stretching classes outdoors and things, but they didn't want to be down on the basketball court, they wanted to kind of have an indoor outdoor thing.

So they wanted a terrace to be able to do that, or people want to be able to do certain arts and crafts things outdoors, but they need the access to the sinks and all the stuff that are next to it.

And so having those opportunities come with trade-offs, and so that's something to evaluate how many people can we get out there.

Um, does it make sense from a programming standpoint?

Um, the terraces off of the program rooms generally um just provide a respite for people that need a breath of fresh air or a place for the teacher to go outside and scream into the wind for a second before they come back in and engage the second graders.

Um, but those are value decisions that we need to look at carefully.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, there's a ground floor terrace that I has a lot more multi-function opportunities as well.

I mean, this is probably more just a striping kind of decision, which is very late later in the process, but just thinking about if the city has shuttles or if there are buses for transport or other things, how do we make sure that's balanced well and and aesthetically pleasing if if for example the city I'm making this up has three shuttles to take people around, where do they park, where do they sit, and you know, do they need to be maintained or or things like that.

I'm not saying that's what the purpose of the rec center is or it's even contemplate.

I'm just really trying to think through how can we get people off of their cars and thinking about even it'd be it'd be helpful, I'm sure you've done this is to maybe in the refresh presentations to think about like what's the walkable kind of radius, what's the bikeable radius, and even put some estimate numbers to that.

I'm not saying this changes the parking space number, but just it shows that I can't just completely make up a number.

There's 3,000 people that could walk to you know reasonably or or that's or it's only 300 people, I don't know.

Yeah, there are some there are some tre uh uh we can certainly do that.

It'd be an interesting overlay.

There are some traditional planning metrics for walkability and bikeability, but those are those are flatland metrics before e-bike.

So there's a number of sort of emerging technology or not emerging anymore.

There's a number of technologies out there now that I don't know that everybody has recalculated the metrics for.

Um and then we have sort of the the topography north of the site that changes the metrics, at least on the walking side.

Yeah.

Um but yeah, we can we can definitely look at that.

Um I'm I'm I'm conceptually within walking distance, uh, at least on the downhill uh from my house.

Um so yeah, we can definitely look at that.

You just touched on one of the things I wanted to say about e-bikes, you know, and scooters and all those other things.

You know, people would use those kinds of things to get to and from.

I mean, they've exploded since twenty nineteen even and uh are only accelerating, it seems, but they're also expensive, right?

People don't it's not like you can just have a couple of hoops in the cement and lock them to the thing and expect them to not be stolen, right?

So having places where you can actually lock them up and and maybe even charge them and recharge them so that they could actually use them to get to and from every everybody that does that, it's one less car in the parking lot, right?

100%.

100%.

Yeah.

So these are that part is emerging, right?

I don't think the sort of design community has fully kind of cracked the nut on that, but absolutely just look up and down Ralston, right?

Just watch all the e-bikes that are zipping up.

And it's it's it's only gonna accelerate from there.

It's fantastic.

And and ride sharing, other the Waymo phenomenon, uh, there's a there's a number of different things, you know, like you know, would I what I put my teenager in a Waymo, you know, instead of putting them in an Uber, like but I feel better.

You know, I mean there's a there's a lot of things that affect the car usage here, right?

Which we have.

Sorry, it's not a parenting seminar.

I'm gonna step back from that.

But yeah, which ride share is a great point because you can look at San Francisco for example.

We have tons of issues with rideshare.

And just where do they drop off because Waymo doesn't care?

They will pull over anywhere.

So are we identifying drop-off locations specifically for rideshare so that Ralston doesn't become a chaos?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, these are these are the real world things.

They they are a little bit outside of my personal scope on this project, but but they are they are real, and and this could be a spot, right?

There could be a place in the parking lot that is on the Waymo map, right?

That's not gonna clog up everything.

So before we do commissioner final comments, do we have any questions or comments from the public?

Uh yes, we have two speaker slips.

Alright, Mark, you can come on up.

You'll have three minutes.

Okay.

That's okay.

That's okay.

Does it have to do with Barrett?

It does.

Come on out.

If it has to do with Barrett, then we'd love to hear it.

So I uh I emailed all of you last night, I think, yesterday afternoon.

Um I wanted to uh uh remind everybody and uh and give you a uh a real world view of what's going on at Barrett uh during the off-leash hours for the dogs um and for everyone else.

Um it's a fantastic feature.

Um and I don't know if you got a chance to see the videos that I posted, but if you did probably put a smile on your face.

It's like this is community in action.

So we're all very happy about that.

Um I wanted to talk to you guys about it for a brief moment, just to ask.

Um, well, first, the first question everyone asked me.

We've got a lot of new patrons that show up.

Everyone asks, why not the weekends?

So that's one of the things I wanted to have you consider.

Um, uh I'm I've been a little unplugged from it for a few years, so I don't really know what's going on with monitoring of any of the issues that we were having very early on.

Um I think we resolved most of them.

Um but uh definitely everyone's looking for weekend time because everyone shows up on weekday time.

So that's one thing.

Uh the other thing that I wanted to ask um is a review of the watering schedule.

So uh the the fields have been a lot damper in the evening at one point um we had modified the watering schedule to water in the evening after the time that we were there, so that the fields were less muddy.

Um that the dogs are more attracted to something in the dirt, probably fertilizer.

So I think that's it.

Any questions?

Thank you.

We can't go back and forth, but if you want to email me your concerns about the watering schedule, I'll be happy to work with awesome.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you for that.

And uh was there another one as well?

Uh yes, we have one for Catherine.

I know.

Happy to be here.

Um, I'm on the same page with uh uh Barrett and the space for dogs.

Um I see there's a lot of things for kids, which is great, but there's a lot of uh people uh parents and uh older people and it's our community.

Um there's been times not only are the dogs all happy, but the people are so happy.

And there's been times when I have a giant dog and I don't walk them by myself, but uh I walk with Mark.

And uh there's been times where like our dog was not feeling well, and so I went down to the dog park because I needed a walk.

I wanted to see my neighbors and their dogs, and it's just really important and I've talked to people about this, and it it's as much about the adults and the humans there as it is the pets, and um it's just you should go down there in the evening, and it is, and it's such a short window in the evening, uh in the summer.

When is it like six or eight seven day seven weeks?

Oh, oh, number of weeks, yeah.

Eight weeks.

Eight weeks.

And and like we were saying, you know, if it could be open on Saturday and Sunday evenings, you know, uh, and we t everybody's mindful and watching and you know, making sure everything's picked up and they're not digging in the dirt, and we're really it's a it is a community and it brings people together.

And I just wanted to emphasize that.

So, thanks.

Thank you.

Um just for clarity, I want to point out that um as commissioners we're not allowed to talk about things that aren't explicitly on the agenda, which today is the community center redesign, which is what the only reason we can't directly address comments that are made that are not related to that, but we do hear you.

Thank you for coming up.

And actually that Jonathan, I have a question now for you.

Um I know in the new design there's a dedicated dog space, and that's kind of narrow and long.

Will there be a fence around the field so that we could still do uh the the off leash hours like we do now on the the new field, or is that not something that we'd be able to continue doing?

Because the dog space, the dedicated dog space is rather small, but so would we still be able to do off leash on the new field, or is it not fenced, or is it because of the baseball thing?

Would it not be possible?

I don't know that we've fully gotten there yet.

I mean, some of those choices are gonna be, you know, some of it's about the cost of fencing and all those things, but also the the nature of the surface of the field, right?

Is it a natural field or an artificial field?

Um and those things remain you know in design.

Okay, so we don't know yet if we'll if we'll be able to maintain off-leash dog hours if we have a new field at Tony Bear.

That's right.

But clearly it is something to consider because it's important to the community.

Okay.

So with that, um, if there's no hands raised or somewhere, okay.

Uh let's do commissioner final comments.

If you have to do that, thank you so much.

I feel like I just learned that was a lot of information, so still digesting for sure.

Um, really excited to see like the refresh and how it kind of plays out into your updated plan.

Super excited about the net zero goal.

I think every yeah, everybody's doing it.

We should definitely try to do it.

Um I love green spaces, green walls, living roof.

I think that really is a good cross section with like that third space and outside, inside.

Um, it would be really cool to incorporate some of that.

But overall, like it is a lot to consider.

I say go all the way, like that is my, you know, like if we're doing it, let's do it big, but I understand obviously the cost is playing into that.

Um, but you guys are doing a great job, and I've seen some of your other projects and they're outstanding, so excited.

That's probably my first comment is having seen some other stuff you've worked on, it really gives me confidence we'll get to the right answer.

Um, I'd want to really um I'd like Bridget that we've got provision for storing bikes, because especially with electric bikes, I'd love to go and see the number of I'd love to see the the car spaces decrease and the space for for dogs or for other things increase.

Um just actually the today prompted the thought about this whole transition because it sounds like we'll be losing a field for a period of time.

Um and I'm also happy to see the community garden won't be affected.

So that kind of maintained that.

So I'm great to see the progress.

Thank you for all your hard work.

Yeah, thank you.

That was great.

Um the everything was wonderful.

You in the presentation you had a photo of the pool in San Bruno and it was on a sunny day and it was clear.

That is really quite the feat.

I love that.

Um is there any thought in incorporating the history of Barrett or the history of Belmont into the space or into the technique center?

Absolutely.

Um so if you go to the San Bruno recreation signal, you'll see up on the wall above the um the check-in desk, there's actually a part of the the center circle of the old basketball court is actually mounted up on the wall.

So there's always opportunities to celebrate um the history, and we can find the right way to do that.

Um here, 100%.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah, amazing.

So thank you.

Thank you for your resiliency in uh all the years of this and absolutely something that the community needs and the city would greatly benefit from.

So I'm I'm very excited.

I'm excited for the Belmont Community Foundation to start raising some money for this and get the show on the road.

That's all without cars though.

On the road and walking and busing and biking and all sorts of modes of transportation.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'll I'll like echo that.

I only lament that we're gonna have to wait years to be able to actually enjoy it from this point.

Um I just want to reiterate the, you know, I I hope we can focus on alternative transportations because I think we all know what Ralston looks like whenever schools get in going in and out, and this will be just one other set of schedules where everybody's piling in and out of one area on Ralston.

So I really hope we can think outside the box about how we can uh you know get there and away from there um more thoughtfully.

Um, and and I agree about you know, fewer cars, more dog facilities would be fantastic.

Um, and I think you mentioned that the surface hasn't been decided, you know.

Um I will say that going to the field on natural grass is so much nicer for the dogs and the humans than the Cipriani dog park where it's dirt and you know more uh it's just much less pleasant.

And and I think you see that reflected in the number of people that actually go and take care of it.

So I hope whenever we get to that point we think about that surface and think about making it um better than what we currently have.

So um, but the renderings are beautiful and you know, spurs the imagination.

I'd love to go there today if we could possibly do it.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

And this is super interesting to see.

Um my favorite part of the of out of all the concepts is probably the resiliency center.

I think was that what it was called?

The resiliency center.

Okay.

Um I think it adds to the idea that like we care about the community, and I feel like people will feel like a lot safer knowing that there's like a place that they can go to if they need anything.

Um they don't even have to like be part of what whatever Barrett has to offer.

They just need to stop by.

I really like that idea.

Um I walk everywhere, so if I needed something, I really like the idea of having of like having somewhere to go if I need anything.

Um, yeah, this is really interesting.

I'm excited, and I hope that in the future that there's somewhere where we put a map for this, like, because that was a lot.

There's a lot of rooms and stuff.

Like I feel like we're gonna need some sort of directory when this does happen.

It'll be simpler than Barrett is today, so um, I really love all the ideas.

I think it's such an amazing plan.

It like blew my expectations out of the water.

Um, I think something I really liked was the idea of a teen lounge, you know.

Um, after school you'll see like hordes and hordes of people like at the uh from Carmont, like at the library, like off to school just hanging out.

I think if we had like a teen lounge dedicated space, I think it would definitely be used.

And um I think it'll be really helpful.

And the other thing that I liked also was um the basketball court.

I know a lot of people just go there casually, like shoot hoops.

Like if you go in the afternoon, you'll see one or two people there.

So I like I really like the idea of keeping that open to the public and not fencing it off.

But um, yeah, it's an amazing plan.

Thanks.

Um thank you for the presentation.

I love the design.

I hope that we before we close the item.

We do have one more speaker.

So that just came in late.

So, okay, yes, that's where you go.

Well, there you are.

Oh, man, sorry.

Um I just want to say thank you, Jonathan, for a fabulous presentation.

Thank you, commissioners, for all of your time and attention to this.

Um I think that your presentation created a lot of um, I know in me, excitement and longing, maybe.

Um, but I did just want to make an announcement about the August 9th event um that is meant to bring people to Barrett to see the current state of the facility and also to see the vision for the future.

We'll have another opportunity to hear from our fabulous architects, group four, Jonathan, um, and others as well, I believe.

Um, and there will be a whole lot of other things happening at this event.

We have um many, many craft vendors, many, many food vendors, um, lots of free activities for the community, a lot of kids' activities.

Um we'll also be doing tours of the site, um, scavenger hunt created by Bridget herself for kids, uh, community garden tours.

Like I mentioned, there will be a presentation by the architects.

We'll also have um a looping video about the project that will also be in the multi-use room.

Um the architect's presentation is at 12 30 on August 9th.

Um, and food I mentioned, um, and we'll even have Devil's Canyon there, um, and we'll have a little a little beer garden area.

So it should be a great and Mr.

Softy.

Um, so it's gonna be a great day.

Please, um, as commissioners, spread the word as best you can to your networks, to your networks to post on, you know, whatever you post on.

Um, and just we want to get as many people there as possible to um, you know, get everybody on the same page about where we are and where we'd like to be.

So thank you all for your time, and um thank you again, Jonathan, for that fabulous presentation.

All right.

Have a good night.

Um I I just want to make one other um comment too that uh while Barrett today is very child-centric.

Um the plans and and and maybe there's something else we need to show differently in the plans to really demonstrate to the community that a new center will be for the kids, but also those same spaces can be flipped you know in the evenings for adults to have formal or informal gathering spaces and and also be welcoming, not only to people that that come with their pets, but just for the public in general, and an example for those of you that were that came to the Burlingame Community Center, you saw that that that some of that common space, that indoor-outdoor space just was a an organic third place the way we're we're trying to achieve.

So that is our goal is that that the new facility would be for everyone and for all ages, not just kids.

Um I have one final question.

If the public wanted to access this presentation or um the just the pictures and stuff is um, yeah, um that's a great question.

We will make sure that it's available um on one of our project websites, and then we'll put out some social media about that.

That's great.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, so thank you for the presentation.

Um I agree.

I I love the idea of it being a third space that's for the young, the old dog lovers for all of us, because right now we don't really have a space for the entire community together, so um, it's great.

I love that you took this pause, our little pandemic pause to go back and revisit and refresh this.

We're kind of using that to our advantage now because we had a great plan in 2019 and it's it's even better now.

So I really I really hope to see this built, you know, especially in in the time frame that my kids can can be using it and myself and my dog.

Um so it's lovely.

Thank you for the presentation.

I hope this uh is just the start of some forward momentum for this particular project.

So if that's all.

Okay, so we do have another item of business and then um some updates.

I was wondering if given that it's 9:30, if anyone would like to take a little 10-minute comfort pause or if we want to power through.

Who would like to take a pause?

A 10-minute pause.

Yeah, I think we'll be fresher if we take a 10-minute pause.

So it would five, five-minute pause.

We're gonna take a five-minute pause.

Um so we will reconvene at 9.36.

Um, so five minute pause and then we will come back.

Okay, welcome back.

Um, so moving on to our next item of business, it would be public art presentation.

So um commissioners, I want to introduce you Chen Shi.

Sheu Chen is a uh college student who is a summer intern for us and is doing a um project to take a look at our public art opportunities, specifically uh to kick off our centennial year and see how we can meld, you know, Belmont's history with Belmont's future and Belmont's commitment to art throughout the city.

So without further ado, in the interest of time, I'm gonna hand it off to you, Chen.

Yeah, so um good evening, commissioners and um community members who are remaining.

They're all online.

They're all at home watching.

Yeah.

Um so my my name's Yu Chen and I've had the privilege of working closely with the Belmont Parson Rec um department so far this summer on um the centennial public art initiative.

Um this is a really exciting project um as we approach the city's 100th anniversary um to celebrate the rich history and just um building on the themes of community that we've heard about so far um in our meeting today.

Um so I would like to highlight that this is only a proposal at the moment.

A lot of this is still up in the air.

Um nothing's really that concrete yet, but I would just like to present this preliminary framework to gather some feedback from residents and just um people who um would want to contribute to how Belmont would be shaped and have 2026 and beyond.

So I want to start with this quote that I extracted from a book that was given to me by the Belmont Historical Society.

So I'm actually not from the Bay Area.

So I think for this public art project, I would really like to foreground the sense of gathering and the rhythms of community life that unfold in nature.

Yeah, so in 2026, we hope to celebrate Belmont Centennial with a public art initiative again that not only honors our history, but also sparks storytelling, reflection, and creative collaboration across the entire city.

The final vision will remain flexible in terms of the actual medium that we choose and what kind of art we produce.

But overarching goal is to create an experience that feels site responsive, so tailored to all the sites who we eventually end up choosing and community-driven.

So we want to make art a tool for connection and conversation and to link Belmont's past to its present and its future.

So there are three themes that we are currently thinking of to be the central themes for this entire project.

First being community and collaboration, again, to really honor Belmont's history of civic engagement, not only now, but just since the very beginnings of the founding of the city.

And the final theme being education and legacy, especially from what I've observed, just Belmont's layered history with its educational institutions and cultural milestones that makes it play such a unique part in the larger peninsula community.

So right now the format that we're thinking of is a series of murals and related installations across the entire city.

These are some inspiration photos from other successful projects and so the one on top is from Colma.

I actually spoke to an artist, Julie, last week, just to see how that project was realized.

Uh Redwood City.

So just with these photos, I would just like to highlight how we want to build a flexible and highly sex-specific approach to celebrate Belmont's distinct character as these projects have done.

Yeah, so again, we're going to create a series of artworks across the entire city that are interconnected.

So it'll I guess one way to imagine this is like you are going on treasure hunt across the entire city and just make the pedestrian also driving experience a lot more fun in my opinion.

Um starting with um the anchoring site, which is Twin Pines Park, featuring probably land acknowledgement um project that um will be more so like an installation, so that's kind of a starting point that speaks to the park's history, but also uh just a cultural history of Belmont starting from um the indigenous people here.

Um and um so the next few sites that I'm presenting here are not finalized yet.

These are just some ideas that we have, and uh we could either scale up or scale down depending on how uh depending on what the community eventually wants, but uh right now our plan is to prioritize uh a couple of these sites uh depending on what we get from artists who respond to our open calls, um, and just continue working with either new sites or um these sites on these uh um this presentation um just starting from 2026, so this might go well into the future.

Um so one um the first site that we're thinking of is there's this entire empty space in front of the Caltrain station on Old County Road that at the moment has absolutely nothing and it's um kind of just barren.

Um this could be uh more of an installation that um would explore Belmont's history as a transit hub because of its location, and then um we're also thinking of projects along Ralston just because it's such an important road in the city, um, maybe creating something similar to what we see in Redwood City, a visual timeline mural um that traces Belmont's history.

Um and then even though the Barra Community Center, as we just heard, will be um transformed in the future, but um for August 8, August 9th event, um we're thinking of creating a youth focused mural that would be temporary but uh could be potentially preserved, partially at least partially preserved to be showcased in the new community center just as a celebration of its past history.

Um so this would involve student created art during that day, so during the event, um and um some other ideas we have are um creating murals um in the train underpass and also along um close to Waterdot Lake, which is um one of the most central um natural sites in the city, um just to again um go back to the theme of nature and um environment.

Um and um the last site that I want to talk about is actually a really popular choice among um artists I've spoken to so far, which is the Belmont Library.

Um, I don't know if um any of you recall, but there's this these strips of walls leading up to the library that's um sort of on slope, and a lot of artists are really excited about the idea of how this um not only mirrors the hills of Belmont in some sense, but also just the fact that these walls are formed in such a uh interesting way, could be a great um opportunity to uh depict Belmont's educational history.

And um as part of this initiative, we're also exploring how to uh build on existing beautification efforts in the city, which includes um the utility boxes that um so we've painted a few um in the past few years, but we're hoping on building on this effort uh and uh maybe also um restarting the Happy Hydrants project in communication with the water department.

Um another idea that we have at the moment um is a centennial celebration in 2026 that will involve the enveloping of these artworks and also just as a way for the community to come together to celebrate the city's 100th anniversary.

So if you are aware, back in the 20 early 20th century, there used to be these historic picnic trains from San Francisco to Belmont.

And we just thought that this is a really interesting idea that even though it's discontinued, but really shows how Belmont is a place for people to come together and uh enjoy nature.

So we're thinking of maybe having a picnic event in Twin Pines Park or another similar site to bring everyone together.

And also just as a Gen Z person.

I don't know, I feel like I would like to contribute to perspective that these are really in vogue right now with the entire I guess Virtual Americana trend going coming back, which might be something that's fun to do.

Yeah, so to guide the project, we're proposing the formation of a public art collaborative that is some that is similar to the ad hoc public art subcommittee as outlined in Belmont's public art master plan, which was established a couple of years ago, I think in 2020, and it will be modeled after past programs like the utility box art program.

So this will include representative from city staff, local artists, students, and community members, um, to ensure a collaborative and inclusive process, and the subcommittee will oversee the selection process, review artist proposals, and ensure alignment with the broader goals of the commun of the city and just entire centennial project.

And this is not only limited to the centennial, it's also just a framework that we want to bring back again, starting from this project and into the future.

So the artist selection process will begin with an open call, so a request for qualifications for artists to submit their portfolios and uh potentially some concepts concepts that they already have, and then um uh short lists fine uh finalists will be invited to submit a full design for review that well um that will be um discussed upon within um the public arts um subcommittee.

Um so the timeline that we're thinking of at the moment is um in the fall we will begin um the open calls for um the murals and this could be we would have artists either um propose designs for one site or if they're um available multiple sites and um none of the sites that we have at the moment are finalized, so it really depends on whether they're interested or not, and we might cut down or increase um sites um depending on our response and depending on the responses that we receive.

Um and then starting from spring 2026, we'll begin um the fabrication process for the murals.

This will usually take around one or two months depending on the scale of the project and also the weather.

And hopefully in summer 2026, we'll have a few prioritized projects unviled and um starting from that point onwards, we'll have more public art uh projects um following.

So yeah, um thank you for uh your time and listening to me talk about this project.

And again, I just like to remind everyone that everything that I've talked about so far is preliminary, so uh not finalize it, and we're always welcome to hear more feedback um from the community.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Um before we do commissioner comments and questions, are there any public comments?

No.

Okay.

So commissioners, we can do comments and questions together, I think, for this one.

How we start on this side this time with our youth commissioners.

Oh, okay, cool.

Um I have a question regarding the timeline for the creation of the subcommittee so when is that something we'd like to get started and like what would that process maybe look like.

So we're thinking of um chartering the subcommittee by the end of the summer.

Um just having like the people that will be involved in this committee uh finalized and starting from there then we could begin um you know to open calls and the selection process.

I heard it so I'll just step in a little bit on that.

Um so typically what we do and maybe we do it at our next uh commission meeting is um ask for some commissioners that are interested and then we would also put something out to the community um at large U Chen has sort of put together a whole list of uh people interested in art and and and artists themselves who might be helpful in this we probably want to reach out to the school um to get some of their arts uh faculty involved as well so trying to make it a collaborative uh committee sounds great um I just really like the presentation I think it was really well thought out and I love the idea of having like murals all of Belmont I'm like overjoyed um I have um I'm also not from Belmont I am from the US but I'm not from Belmont.

Um my hometown Selena's is like there's murals all around the place.

I have like a very deep connection to what you're proposing because I think um I recently found out my dad helped some of those murals out um in Selena's I'm I think it would be so great.

Like the moment you mentioned murals I got so excited.

I think um just from personal experience being Selena's I love driving past murals.

I think it's something that stands out and it really does like and no I feel like there's something that changes um the moment I see it like it's buildings buildings buildings smoke shops grocery stores blah la and then you're driving under like a bridge or something and there's just the murals around and it's really pretty.

Um I mean if you want to think about possible challenges I feel like when the murals do happen, if they happen um graffiti might be something to think about.

Um but otherwise I'm like super excited for this.

I also think it would be a great opportunity for any artists in the areas because I feel like here it's very much like I feel like there's different uh like in this area specifically there's like programmers or whatever but I feel like specifically with the artists I feel like anybody even not in Belmont like in St.

Carlos or whatever that might be available I feel like this would be a big opportunity for them.

So I'm like I I really like the idea of this happening.

I I'd be so excited.

Yeah.

Yeah I think the energy um that this stuff would bring you know the the energy with the art would be fantastic.

I am looking forward to seeing it.

I don't have any real questions but I also want to congratulate you on your presentation it was uh lovely.

I was really excited about the the actual like the slide layout and how you put it together in the color of the background but um the I'm encouraged by the potential of in sort of the thought process and kind of strategy about linking these together in from different parts of the city and how uh along with other initiatives as part of this celebration but either like introducing or reminding or uh you know the connecting the community to different pathways and connections between these physical spaces over time.

Uh and how this can potentially turn into something that's more permanent.

Um and then also I'm sure you guys are thinking about this but when we're talking about like finding artists you know this as a college student that is probably really talented people that are looking for opportunities uh to have this uh canvas um at our universities that are just here in the Bay Area, right?

And our stu high school students and uh not just uh like resident artists artists in our in our cities.

So this is great.

So so exciting I love the themes, the story you're you've told, I think it all kind of weaves together really nicely and it feels very homegrown.

And so I appreciate that.

It took a lot of time I'm sure to think through that and to the def definitely enjoyed hearing the stories and can't wait to see see things.

A couple of maybe yes ands in a sense I wonder in the spirit of making the art exhibition more open and accessible so thinking about like a digital aspect to it as well and so could there be digital submissions that forms you know in more of the spirit of today and in the future how how those experiences could be felt and kind of enjoyed and maybe there's it's a lower lift for people to submit and to kind of create more of a digital mural or a mosaic I I think there could be something interesting again I know that's not covering everything.

There's lots of other centennial stuff, but are there photo submissions that could turn into a collage or again doesn't have to be it might be interesting physically to kind of put that out as well or what are ways that an individual in the community could contribute something to the art story that isn't at the mural scale and so if it's in the four by six kind of photo submission or something that could kind of come together nicely and so maybe that there's an avenue of that type of curation and producing that could be uh done.

I also in in the spirit of the nature I wonder this is a a big ask but when I I visited a long time ago Australia there's like this beautiful sculpture walk that happens a certain time of year from the beach to beach like Bondi to another beach.

And I just wonder from in the open space if there could be some installation like look at that as a potential canvas that isn't maybe necessarily like one big thing but kind of just like the uh fire hydrants and the utility boxes are there I mean postmarkings that you know do we convert all the trail markings for something that could be kind of fun as well and then the the picnic stuff is really sweet and I I think pretty will be very special so I highly encouraged to do that.

So yeah.

Yeah um I think just going back to um the d and nature um part that you're talking about.

You're actually personally talking about how um parts of Twin Pines Park are going to be reconstructed and uh potentially there's an opportunity to integrate um an artwork in that process maybe a commemorative paver walkway or something like that.

Um and just from my experience I think Belmont's definitely one more pedestrian friendly cities um in the Bay Area just because there are so many like hiking trails and also just um a lot of things to look around.

Um so I I definitely really agree with that point and also the digital aspect um uh I I think it would be really beneficial if we could uh do like a digital archive of the murals and also have um one thing that I would really wish um to be realizing through this project is to have more collaborative elements from within community from students um maybe um college students from the area and emerging artists or just community members um contributing a small piece of your own work um or a message to a larger mural so it doesn't have to be like an entire design that's professionally um done by an artist um so I think that would be more down to earth and um build more space for storytelling I think um yeah yeah the other thing that you kind of inspired me to think this is very 2D in a sense and so again, thinking about today in the future, more of those immersive types of pieces.

And so are is there indoor space that could be for one, you know, an artist who thinks more three dimensionally or more immersive or more kind of analog digital kind of integrative?

Like, is there something that there's I don't know space in city hall, right?

That could be an interesting kind of exhibit type of interactive kind of installation that could be pretty neat and also probably open up to a whole different genre and generation of artists that think of it that way.

Thank you for all the work you did on this.

Um I really loved how the themes kind of changed throughout the city by their location, what they're near.

Um the one spot, it actually made me realize that we had a lot of like bare concrete throughout the city.

It was kind of sad, but I'm excited to see that change.

The one spot down by Caltrain that is the empty lot, um, would it be would your idea be on the wall of the Caltrain station or in that lot create a space?

Um so we'll probably have a piece of art um on so and uh underpass area, and then as you uh I guess turn um you have that lot and then probably a more physical installation there, just because the wall is actually a stone um brick wall that is very hard to paint on, so that's not as ideal, so probably have a uh alternative project over there, and it'll be an experience of you know, seeing mural and then turning around and see another piece of art.

That's a great idea.

That that spot that you're thinking of, does the city own that or does Caltrain own that or is it?

The city owns that personal cool yeah.

So it's been used for a staging area for a long time and um it could potentially be a development housing development at the city owns a lot, but what about the concrete that the first part?

So that's something we may have to uh we've we've talked about that a lot of some of these locations for the murals.

We need to be very clear whether they are city owned or private property owned.

So we'd kind of have to work through that.

Thank you.

Um you have me inspired about other ideas.

Uh like the one on one overpass.

Do we have any control over that?

'Cause that goes it goes right across.

What a great spot, right?

See, let's work with Caltrain first.

Let's do that.

I'm not doing Caltrans.

Sport sports complex.

Yeah.

Oh, that's yeah, right.

Um, and then it seems like if we get this rolling, you get some of the businesses downtown that have got spaces along Ralston to kind of tie it together.

It could be kind of fun.

And the library has got like a little amphitheater area, so um I really like the thematic thing about uh depending on where it was, you had different themes.

I thought that was really good.

I'm curious, uh 2026 and Twin Pines, won't this be getting ripped up in next.

Okay, good.

Not all of it.

All right.

I'm I'm happy then.

Yep.

Um I was thinking that that would be problematic.

Um, I love this.

This is really creative.

Thank you for the thank you for the hard work.

And we were all admiring your slides.

Very creative slides, so thank you.

But it it's funny though that you've all mentioned you're gonna drive home tonight and you're gonna see walls that you haven't seen before.

You've been driven driving by them all.

I was thinking in the top of Ralston, like near right near coming off.

The top of Ralston, we were meeting in my office today, and I sort of interrupted you Chen mid sentence and I said, There's a wall right there outside of the manor building that is right in the park.

So I've been looking at that for seven years, so that's the thing I was thinking of.

And Philoli, they have got trolls in the garden.

Oh, yeah.

And so we could put some trolls out here in twin pines.

Right.

Right.

And just mean the whole installation development.

Take it over.

Yeah.

Middle of the night.

All sneak in and carry out the troll.

Thank you so much.

Are you good?

Okay, thank you so much.

I mean, I'll echo all that.

That was a great, beautifully well done presentation.

Um does the city have a budget for this, and we do.

We actually have a um we have a public art fee that we um impose on developers, and so they have to pay a certain percentage of um funds to us.

Um I think it's one percent of their total um building project.

Um sometimes they have the option to incorporate art on site, and then they are then the fee to the city is waived.

So for example, Artisan Crossing, um, over on Old County Road.

They have uh public plaza out front, and then they have an art art installation in the front.

Firehouse Square, somebody was asking about a nod to history, somebody was asking about that.

Firehouse Square incorporated some of the um of the design elements from the original city hall and fire station that were in that space, incorporated that into their design, so that then excuses them from the public art fee.

But other developers just say, you know what?

I just want to put up a building, I don't want to mess with art.

Here's the one percent.

And so we do have some funds, and we have allocated some of them for um CIP projects for this year that could fund some murals and even this fiscal year, and then even more next fiscal year.

So that would kind of get us through 2026 and beyond to pay for some of these types of things.

That's awesome.

And does that also fund the maintenance of the pieces that we were talking about?

Good question.

And as far as the graffiti, you might uh you might have experience with that as well.

Um, I do um want to commend the city of Belmont.

The places where we have put art, um, the utility boxes, those were put in in 2018, I think, 2019.

Not one has been um uh damaged or impacted in any way.

Our library boxes, not all of them are perfect, but for the most part, they the art is very well respected here in Belmont.

So while we would obviously put an inter-graffiti coding on anything that we do, um I um I have faith in the Belmont community that they would appreciate the murals.

That's awesome.

Um yeah, just and I just think about like sculptures and like any engineering that would have to happen depending on the location, take that into account.

Um, but no, this is super exciting.

I love the art trail like how you're saying we can pathway, you know.

That's awesome.

Really exciting.

Thank you.

Great.

Um, so I love everything about this.

I loved the presentation.

Um, I love the quote at the beginning.

I just it's it was so charming the quote at the beginning and kind of your description and summary of the the things that that we love about Belmont, the community, the nature, that we have all these educational institutions, um, the picnic train history, which I was aware of from going to the history museum, but um I think there's probably a lot of people who aren't, and it's such a nice theme to bring in.

So um, yeah, I love everything you presented.

Um I I think the murals, I mean, already we have the boxes and the hydrants, and they add a lot of um character to the community.

So just more public art, I think it's just gonna add even more character to Belmont.

Um, I think I would say my only suggestions kind of along Craig's line if I don't know if there's any other things we can do like um like music, like things other than visual art, if it can be open to all different sorts of artists, video artists, if there's other ways to bring in artists from Belmont or the surrounding area who have ideas related to the history of Belmont that isn't just the the visual art, but um the visual art aspects of this are phenomenal, and I think it's gonna be a great project.

Oh, thank you very much.

So, you know, maybe you chen doesn't get to go back to college because this is gonna be a lot of work here.

So she's gonna have to say that.

So this is a several year project.

We can just keep mapping it out.

You can transform Belmont to this art destination that people will come to see the beautiful public art that we have.

No, it's been really great to work with you and and how quickly Yu Chen captured the things that make Belmont special.

That was really I commend you on that.

Yeah, that's within the first couple of slides, and we're wow, she really gets Beaumont.

Yeah, so yes, very good.

Yeah, good.

Um thank you.

And I want to say that uh I read I think in one of the utility box applications that uh Belmont wanted to be known as the City of the Arts, and I feel like we hopefully this is ambitious, but uh we could make a step towards that name.

Great.

Be a good thing to be known for.

Yeah, right.

Okay.

Well, well thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so next, um number seven, other business uh and updates.

So we'll start with department updates.

Okay.

This seems like forever ago.

Um early June.

Um BCLC had their end of the year celebration.

Um they they don't call it graduation just because some kids were staying through the summer or still attending, um, but all the different classrooms they did little performances and then afterwards they got to celebrate with some shaved ice.

Um it was very very cute.

Somehow we are already halfway through summer.

Um so Camp Sor has been they've been having a lot of fun.

Um they've been at Barrett this summer, um, so a little different for them, but they're making it work, going on lots of field trips, and yeah, they're really enjoying the different site there.

And then aquatics as well, they're halfway done.

Um lessons have been booking up quickly.

We do still have some spots available for session three, which starts next week.

Um, all the different levels, um, but we've been getting a lot of positive reviews.

People have been having a lot of fun in the pool this summer.

Uh over the weekend we had our first lemonade day.

We had seven or eight um different stands throughout the city.

Um the kids had to come up with their own business plan, they had to like design all this stuff, get it all set up, um, and they are very cute little entrepreneurs.

Um I don't think we have the sales totals yet, but we will be announcing those um once we have them, who made the most, and then we also have winners for uh most creative and then the best tasting lemony as well.

So we'll be sharing that out on our social media shortly.

And that was so fun.

They were there at the they were at the music also, so it was it was brilliant.

I love it.

Um speaking of the music, uh, Sunday we had our final summer concert of the year.

As you can see, it was very packed.

Um, this was our forty-th 47th summer in a row.

Um, and then this is just some thank you to our board members and other people who helped throughout the summer.

Um, and other years, now we're unveiling the theming for our chatty benches, and it goes beyond that, um, just the whole kind of idea.

Um, we're calling it Belmont Belongs.

Um I have little packets for all of you.

Um we talked about at the other meetings of um if you guys wanted to go to different parks or different benches and kind of kick off the program.

Um so these they'll have the logo, um, and then our first page here just kind of lets people know what a chatty bench is, and then our QR code goes to another page that kind of talks about um how chatty benches came to be, um, what it means if you're sitting there and everything like that.

Um, and then we will also include some conversation starters because I can be hard, you know, if you're meeting someone for first time, what to talk about.

Um, so I have one of these for all of you.

So if you want to take one and be inspired and go to a park and get it started, um we will be talking about it more on social media shortly and kind of doing a little campaign for that as well.

So we're excited to get that move in, get that off the ground.

And then as we talked about earlier, the Imagine Together Face Festival, um, as well as wanting people to come.

We're also looking for volunteers, um, set up, tear down.

We have a bunch of different like game stations, face paintings, stuff like that.

Um, so you can go to their website for more information on that and sign up for the different um shifts and time slots that they have there.

I'll let you talk about this one.

Oh, um, if you have not done so in the last week and a half, um, take a walk to the back of the park and see some pretty dramatic changes right now.

There's actually um quite a bit of earth movement and and actually uh removal of earth, so there are quite a few big trucks that are going in and out on Ralston uh every day.

Um it's pretty significant.

And if you know any children from the ages of four to seven who enjoy watching trucks move around and move dirt.

Come on down.

This is 46.

I'm sorry, or forty six or forty-six, okay, that's right.

Um so uh it's great progress.

It is on schedule, um, and it's it's really fun to watch the project.

And um, for some commissioners, uh Hill and Lyford um and everyone else.

Um the Salston Trail Repair Project uh is happening.

We had a kickoff meeting, Project Kickoff Meeting last Friday.

And there's still a few permits and some biological monitoring, nesting bird surveys, and that sort of thing that have to be done before they can actually start moving any dirt or or um or uh removing any trees.

There is a dead tree that we need to move out of the way and one other tree still to be determined what its fate will be.

But uh, but the project will be starting, and we want to let the community know that, well, we the trail has technically been closed since 2023.

We're not kidding now.

The trail will be closed when the project starts, probably in early August.

There will be fencing that will make it very difficult for hikers and bikers to cross that area.

So we're asking everybody to please plan their tours through our open space accordingly.

We are gonna have these very signs at all of our trailheads.

It's on the Salsa and Trail Project website.

It's gonna be this or similar information is on the um is on the parks direct department's open space websites, and we're gonna um send this information to San Mateo Parks as well because we know that some people come into San Juan through Laurel Wood Park and Sugarloaf Mountain.

So we want people at the top of Sugar Loaf to know that if they come down, they may not be able to go the way they intended to go.

So it's happening and it is planned to go probably through mid-October.

So the trail will be shut down from our salsa trail, but it'll actually impact the salsa trail that comes down as well.

So it's going to go.

It's gonna go well into that.

So the closure will only be on our salson trail, and just for folks, there are two different trails named Salsen Trail in this area.

Um, the our Salsen Trail is the one that goes from Marston to Bartlett Way or and Laurel Quick Canyon, um, uh Laurel Creek Road, excuse me, right?

Lower Creek Road.

Um, and they're one, the not the entire trail is going to be closed, but just a section of it.

So you're not gonna be able to go from one end to the other.

There are other pathways and escape routes you can take, but you can't, you can't always get where you want to go.

But if you come down the San Mateo Salsen Trail to ours, that will be closed.

No, at that at that intersection from the main Salsen Trail from Sugar Loaf to our Salson, you can get there.

Oh, okay.

You can get there.

So it's just but there are a couple of other trick routes from the top of Sugar Loaf down to our trail.

Those you cannot, those you'll get stuck.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um we will be having our second um fire safety shipping program of the year.

This is just for specific houses east of Alamina.

Yes.

Um if your house is in the area, you may have already gotten one or you will be getting a flyer in the mail.

So it's only for those specific houses.

Um the shipping date is August 26th.

We ask that everyone that gets the flyers if they want to sign up, they either call or email our office by the end of day on August 25th.

And they need to, if you do communicate with us, you need to give us your address, and we need to make sure that you're on the list within those boundaries.

So it's not everybody east of El Camina, uh east of Alameda.

Um, so if you got a letter, then you're eligible, and then we need you to register.

And there is only one day, there is no makeup day, it's one time only.

All right, and then some upcoming stuff.

Um, there is a senior scam seminar on July 19th at the San Mateo uh Senior Center.

Uh we'll have our second mobile recreation of the summer um on Thursday, July 31st at O'Donnell Park.

We had one yesterday at Alexander Park.

Um, and then our first movie night in the park of the year will be August 15th here at Twin Pines Park.

Um movie will begin around sundown, but we encourage people to come earlier because we will have um our mobile rut games and different activities going on as well.

Um, and we'll be watching Inside Out as voted on by the community.

I think this was the number one vote getter.

Um, then our police department will be having their community police academy starting on Wednesday, August 27th.

Um if you go on Belmont.gov under the police department page, you can sign up there and they have more information on all the details.

Um, and then the water dog run will be taking place in September this year.

Um, registration is already open, and their early bird rates will be running until August 24th.

The only other thing I have is isn't it inside out too?

Yes, it's the movies inside out.

Inside out too.

They're both awesome.

Yeah, just want to be clear.

Okay, do we have any questions or comments?

Lemonade Day was great.

How are you gonna decide the best tasting lemonade?

Did you try all of them?

Did he try every single day?

I think so.

Yeah, he went to every site, so I'm assuming that's amazing.

Only the fairway.

I love that so much.

Any other comments or questions?

Do you have a question?

I have a quick question.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I this year for swimming, was there a day where people could go and kind of try out and figure out what level they were gonna be at?

Did we do that?

And did it so was it?

Um Michael introduced this year, it was the Friday before the first session began.

Um, and it was only for people that were already registered, just so they could make sure they were in the correct spot.

Um hopefully eventually, maybe next year or years prior, we'll open it up more to more people.

Um, but it was very successful.

All the time slots filled up.

We had people just show up and hoping they could get in, and we had enough staff where they could.

Um, and we were on site there, transferring them as we could, moving them up, moving them down, such.

So we had very positive feedback about that.

Okay, excellent.

So that sounds like it was a good addition.

Yeah.

Okay, so if there's nothing else, any other item B, any other commissioner questions or comments?

No, okay.

If that's the case, just want to remind everyone that this meeting was our combined July August meeting, so our next meeting will be in September.

So thank you everyone.

I will see you all in September.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thanks everybody.