[Speaker 16] (0:29 - 3:27)
In this lecture, we are going to look at how to solve the equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion

[Speaker 18] (3:34 - 6:32)
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[Speaker 15] (6:32 - 7:03)
equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for a fluid equation of motion for

[Speaker 23] (7:03 - 7:10)
And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 15] (7:12 - 7:28)
We just have one item on our agenda tonight. We will be interviewing and offering questions to the three finalists of the Hadley Elementary School Boutique Hotel Proposals. And with that, I will turn it over to Assistant Town Administrator Pete Kane.

[Speaker 4] (7:29 - 11:11)
Thank you. And thank you everybody for coming here tonight. Tonight we have three presentations that will be given, which are in response to our RFP for the Hadley Hotel redevelopment of the Hadley Elementary School.

Just as a quick overview, as far as the process goes, back in November 2020, the Hadley Elementary Reuse Advisory Committee was established. This was based on town meeting. It was then formalized by the Select Board.

And that committee then worked on looking at different ways to reuse the Hadley Elementary School when it is shut down and no longer operates as a school. In August 2021, the Hadley Reuse Report was published. That report provided options for how to go about reusing this property in the downtown area of Swampscott.

Based on the recommendation provided in that report, town meeting then authorized in May of 2023 the solicitation process for the redevelopment of the school property into a hotel. Along with that approval, the town also approved new zoning bylaw for the property regarding the use and redevelopment of that property. So the town then, through the Select Board, released an RFP, which is a request for proposals.

That was done in September of 2023. And by December of 2023, the proposals were due. As a follow-up to that process, we received seven proposals from various companies.

Our review committee, which was made up of Select Board members as well as town staff, has done a number of different interviews, questions, and met with those groups. And based on the evaluation process that we went through, we were able to shortlist three of the best project proposals and teams that were presented to us. And so tonight, we have those presentations that are going to be given for the public to get an understanding of what that project is, a little bit about their history and the teams as well.

The way we're structuring this tonight is we'll do one presentation at a time. The first group will be the Know-It-Not group at 6 o'clock, or a few minutes after. The Drew Company around 6.45, Clearview Investment being the final presentation at 7.30. Each presentation or presenter is given 15 minutes of time to go through their presentation. That will then be followed by questions for the public. We'll be taking questions both remotely as well as in person. Each person is given a one-minute time to ask a question.

It is strictly about questions to give to the presenters that are up here. Once the public question period for each presentation is completed, we then will move into Select Board questions, where the Select Board members will then be able to ask questions of the presenter. Again, for only 15 minutes.

This is just to respect everybody's time and make sure that each team is given the same amount of time. The presentation tonight is going to be focused on just the project plans, the vision, and team. And your questions should be focused on that as well.

What they're proposing for the project redevelopment, anything about their previous experience, and the operation of the hotel. Feedback and comments will be welcomed from community members, but that will be taken at the February 7th Select Board meeting. And there will be financial discussions that will be taken up by the Select Board in the next steps as well.

So tonight we're focusing on the project plan proposals and the teams themselves. So to get started, it being about 610, we're going to open up with the first presentation. And so I want to welcome the NOAA NET group up.

[Speaker 1] (11:34 - 16:47)
Can you hear me okay? Great. So thank you, Pete.

And Pete has exacerbated an existential crisis I've had for the last week or two coming in here, which I'm sure you all can imagine. As somebody who doesn't live in town, do I say swamp scot, or do I say swamp scot? And you've pretty much gotten the answer today.

When I asked Siri, which was the fastest way to get here, and she said, no, you have to be in traffic. And Siri even said swamp scot. So I'm like, okay.

So if Siri's got it, but then I heard Pete, and Pete said swamp scot. So I don't know what to say for the rest of the evening. But we'll try to take it from here.

So I am Jordan Warshaw, President and Founder of the NOAA NET group. Together with me, Mary Johnson, the President of Amon Seven Architects, and Young-Ju Kim, Principal of Amon Seven Architects. Is this one better?

Okay. So now you don't have to listen to me stumbling over how to pronounce your town's name. So we'll try to get through this in 15 minutes, see how we do.

The NOAA NET group is a 12-year-old Boston-based company that I founded after working for several other development companies for many years, including one called the Druker Company that was a company that has done very few projects over its 100-year history, and they've all been landmarks. And that was sort of the inspiration that I took in founding NOAA NET. We've worked on a half-dozen projects over the last 12 years or so.

Every project has been a project that is meant to be a landmark for the community in which it's located. And the reason Gary and Young-Ju are here with me tonight is Cambridge Seven is an incredible firm that also has really focused on landmark quality projects. Gary and I completed a hotel together about a year and a half ago that within a year after its founding was, we have no idea how, but voted by Yelp users as the number two hotel in the entire country.

So we don't know how or why, but we'll take it. And so it's been a great partnership, and we really consider ourselves partners. It's more than a developer working with an architect.

It's a partnership of our two firms. And that's why Gary's with me today, and Cambridge Seven is really more of a partner than just an architect. We've brought a team on board underneath Cambridge Seven that we've worked with on multiple projects, and our goal is to come in with the same team that we've worked together.

Lynn Chris is our manager. They're a fantastic manager of oceanfront properties, boutique hotels, and hotels of many different types. And we all intend to work together on creating something fantastic for the town.

So our vision, I think you'll all recognize these slides, if not these buildings. You all know quite well what Swampscott's, I'm still stumbling, Swampscott's hotel history was and the desire of the town to bring it back. And what we want to do is bring something back that is not just a summer retreat, but a vibrant year-round retreat that really creates a new destination for the town and something very exciting on the town's front door.

Our plan includes dramatic function space with a dedicated outdoor terrace, restaurant with roof bar. What you're looking at, by the way, all six of these slides are buildings that Cambridge Seven and NoAnit have done. So these are not stock images.

These are our images. Full-service spa with a rooftop pool and hot tub. Warm, friendly public spaces.

A speakeasy lounge. We've just opened one in a hotel we opened a couple of months ago. Lodge-style game room.

That comes from another one that we opened last year. We want to make this an incredible, fun place and gathering place, both for people from the community and for people that come to stay in the hotel 12 months a year. We do these things a little bit differently than some other people.

We do not come in with a design and say, this is what we think our design should be for your property. We, and Gary has been doing this for years in the competitions that he's been involved in, we come with a planning approach, but then if selected, we will work with the community for a design approach. So you'll see from the slides coming up that we have a wide variety of designs that our two firms have done.

Our goal is, if selected, to take one of the approaches that you will see here and then get together in a series of community meetings and meetings with town officials to talk about what the design approach and what the exterior of this building really wants to look like. Our first plan is what we call the garden option. This includes only the primary site with no additional space on it.

It includes preserving the entire Hadley School and replacing the annex with a new building. And as we get here, I'm going to turn it over to Gary to quickly walk through our plan options.

[Speaker 10] (16:48 - 18:48)
Thank you, Jordan. So this plan, as he's just pointed out, is called the garden option because we think that Linscott Park is as great of an amenity as the oceanfront site that you have. But the two together are quite unbelievable, and we really see this as a destination hotel for probably primarily social events, but we can also see corporate events taking place here.

Next slide, please. So this particular scheme gets 62 guest rooms, a total of 85,000 square feet. We would take the annex down and build a new addition on that end of the building.

We have shown it in this configuration with us coming out, this towards Reddington Street and stepped, because we want every room that can to have a sneak view of the ocean if possible. So that's why we planned it the way we have. And, as he said, this is really a very preliminary study because real studies take lots of thinking and much more time than we've spent so far.

Next slide, please. Just quick site plan. Linscott Park is to the top.

The ocean's off to the left. A new parking would be placed where the current annex is now. We'd add this building and renovate the school itself.

Lower level storage, mechanical, et cetera. Upper floor. Primarily the upper floor, you'd end up with two arrival positions.

You have an arrival court in the front with a front door into a lobby. That could also be accessed off of the parking lot. You'd come into a function space here that would actually have views to the park, an outdoor event courtyard.

Then you'd take an elevator up to get to the upper level for the first floor of the school itself. Next slide, please. Guest rooms above, pretty typical.

More guest rooms. And then at the very roof, we would build, using your new zoning envelope, we would build a restaurant with an outdoor terrace so that you have these spectacular views year-round towards the ocean and back to the park. Next.

Do you want to talk about this?

[Speaker 1] (18:49 - 20:14)
Sure. So this is our alternate plan. We've been in discussions with the owner of the commercial building that sits right along Humphrey Street here.

One thought that we had is how fantastic would it be for the town if this hotel actually had Humphrey Street access and Humphrey Street frontage that would really create an incredible front door for the town together with what the town will be doing across the street at the Anthony's site. So we've been working with Ms. Orloff Carey, the owner of the property, and if selected, we plan to spend a lot more time working with her about a concept, if the town likes it, to combine the two properties. It would create an access directly off Humphrey Street.

It would create a function facility that's pretty wild with the function space in here and a big outdoor terrace overlooking the ocean, and would also activate Humphrey Street by creating, in addition to the rooftop bar, which Gary will walk you through, there will also be street frontage as well so that the street, instead of just having commercial spaces, will have commercial spaces coupled with outdoor dining and a real connectivity of the inside and outside of the building. With that, Gary, I'll walk through this plan.

[Speaker 10] (20:15 - 20:29)
With the exception of the Humphrey Street component, this plan is pretty much the same, except it does get 70 hotel rooms instead of the 62. Next, please. That's the basic same-site plan with the connected building.

[Speaker 1] (20:29 - 20:43)
One difference, by the way, is where we had the porcu-chair entry in the standalone version, because we no longer have that entry there, we put a garden in this courtyard area.

[Speaker 10] (20:45 - 21:22)
Next level up, you can see that the ground floor would actually have a restaurant on Humphrey Street and facing the park. Hotel lobby would span between, connecting to the old school. Next.

Then the second level up would have that ballroom Jordan talked about with spectacular views to the park and to the water and guest rooms. More guest rooms. And then a terrace bar out here, you're right, with a pool up on the roof and spa and fitness.

Next. More guest rooms. And then some premium guest rooms on the roof.

[Speaker 1] (21:25 - 26:32)
One thing before we get to our sort of crazy wildcard plan is that what both plans have in common is that part of making this a destination is that we want to be sure that this is someplace that people have reasons to come during the off-season, not just during the summer. So you can imagine with, if you go back a slide, Yongjoo, back a couple of slides, both plans have a feature where we've got a very large spa, which is a destination-type place for classes and treatments and things like that, with an indoor-outdoor rooftop pool. So on a night like tonight, you can come in from the pool entry here right onto the roof, and the way that people do with ski lodges, dive in the pool on a 30-degree evening and have the indoor-outdoor hot tub connecting you.

Both of the schemes have that. We keep flipping forward, and it won't spend long on number three. We got a question from the town as a follow-up question that said, do you have any thoughts about the Hawthorne site, the old Anthony site?

And we looked at it and said, okay, here's a crazy idea. We said, if you hate it, forget you ever saw it. If you love it, well, great, which is we looked at your revisioning Hawthorne study, and option two was called the Swampscotown Square option, and that had a building essentially on the portion of the property that we're looking at.

And we said, what if you flipped the entire thing around and brought the hotel over here, kept a large public park on the waterfront piece of it, but then had the restaurant and all of the outdoor seating opening up to the public park so you've got this incredible activated area here, and then you move other town uses up to the school, take down the annex, and create a larger parking area? Who knows, but throwing it out there. Next.

So we're going to quickly spend the rest of our time flipping through some of the projects. And you notice that the slide before says contextually designed projects. That is really the hallmark of our two firms, is we really focus on creating projects that are not out of the Cambridge-Sanford playbook or out of the Noanta playbook, but out of the playbook of the community they're based in.

The first two slides you're going to see are one project my firm did and one project Gary's firm did that are probably the two most prominent hotels built in Massachusetts, without trying to sound too full of ourselves, probably in the last several decades. The new Raffles Boston and the new Four Seasons Boston. You'll then see an incredible work of historic preservation that Cambridge Seven did, and then we'll wrap up by going through a series of projects that our two firms have done that are really the new landmark town center projects for a bunch of iconic Boston communities.

So if we flip back two slides, so Raffles, a brand-new hotel opened three or four months ago, Travel and Leisure's U.S. writer called it one of the best places they've ever stayed. We've got five bars and restaurants, everything open to the public, no private amenities. It's an incredible gathering spot that has been getting some fantastic buzz, and it's a very warm, intimate kind of building, which is what we felt the back bay needed.

Next, Gary's firm did the Four Seasons. I think I'll just take it, Gary, because we're getting the three-minute warning here, which is, for any of you that hasn't been there, amazing hotel in the back bay, also incredible inside and out. Next, Cambria we did together.

This is the one ranked number two in the U.S. a year after opening. Incredibly warm inside spaces, fun outside spaces, and Gary's architecture is off the charts for a place like Somerville. The Liberty in the heart of Beacon Hill, incredible renovation of an old jail.

Belclair, the old Wellesley Inn, was a signature building of Wellesley. It had been taken down about ten years before we got there. We built a new building that is the new signature building of Wellesley Square.

Williamstown, Gary's done the same thing at the heart of Williamstown, where Williams College is. Gatehouse 75 is the new entry to Charlestown. As you come into the city, the Charles Hotel at the heart of Harvard Square.

Atelier 505, winner of the ULI Urban Land Institute Award for Excellent, the top award in the whole industry, in the heart of the South End. Heart of Hanover, where Dartmouth College is, that Cambridge 7 did. The Longwood Medical Area, the Lubin O'Donnell Center, that I directed on behalf of a nonprofit, the Windsor School.

And as a last note, the reason we put that last is that was done with the school. Atelier was done with the Boston Center for the Arts. Raffles was done with the University Club of Boston.

Public-private partnerships are what we do, and landmarks within their communities are what we do. So we thank you for the time and look forward to answering your questions.

[Speaker 4] (26:38 - 27:03)
Perfect timing. Great. So we're going to open it up to public questions.

If you would raise hands in here, we'll also ask those joining us on Teams to raise your hand. I'll pick out people one at a time, and then we'll go back and forth between virtual and in-person. We will be using the microphone up front here, so please feel free to come down.

And if we have – yes.

[Speaker 30] (27:08 - 27:24)
Bob Powell, Precinct 4, lots of chairs of various committees. Could you talk a little bit about the range of funding costs for these options, the sources of that funding, how confident you are about that funding, and also what you're projecting for occupancy rates and room rates?

[Speaker 1] (27:26 - 28:12)
In all honesty, because we're really focusing on this as a design presentation, I don't have the numbers in front of me. We fund our projects with, at the general partner level, our development team's equity. We then typically will bring in either a high net worth or an institutional partner for the institutional portion of the equity and then round that out with bank debt.

As far as our occupancy projections, I don't have those in front of me this evening. They're not dissimilar from the ones in the study that Pinnacle did. We have a little bit of a slower ramp up than Pinnacle projected, but we've got a slightly higher stabilized number than Pinnacle had.

[Speaker 4] (28:13 - 28:22)
Just as a quick reminder, we're focusing on the project scope and the vision for the redevelopment as opposed to any financials. We'll handle financials at a later time.

[Speaker 1] (28:22 - 28:27)
And happy to provide info after the fact as well. Yes, Maura.

[Speaker 13] (28:35 - 29:56)
Hi, folks. Good evening. Your work is beautiful.

It's just candy for the eyes, and it is beautiful, so thank you for the work. I have been on record and will continue to be not a supporter of this, but I'm really trying to do what Katie asked the other night, which is keep an open mind. So with that thought in mind, the scale of your project I find concerning, and I'll just sort of rattle off my questions, and then you can take them.

I found that it was just built right up to the sidewalk. I'm very sensitive to the fact that it is in a neighborhood and that the scale, and if you were able to size the scale down, would that still be a viable project for you? And then if you could speak to any green initiatives, because, again, the scale would then have a very big impact in terms of a footprint.

And then also if you could speak to the work in terms of your build-out and also your employees, would it be union-contracted work, and would your employees have the benefits of being union employees? Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (29:56 - 31:18)
Okay. We'll see if we can remember all of those. First of all, on the scale of the project, as I mentioned early on, we showed conceptual drawings because we really plan to work diligently with the town on what people think is right for the site.

So you saw three options, two developed, one less developed, and would we be selected? We would be sitting with groups like this to talk about questions just like that. Is our setback from the street appropriate?

Does it want to be set back from the street more? Does the massing want to be more to the northeast or to the southwest, that type of thing? Green, 100%.

We are absolutely committed to that. You probably saw the solar panels on the roofs of our buildings and over the parking lot. Gary and the mechanical engineers that we have on the team, the electrical engineers, are state-of-the-art everything that they do from a green standpoint.

So we should be we expect this to be an extremely green building. From a union standpoint, it is not typical for union construction to be used outside of the city of Boston. Union construction is more common within the city of Boston.

And as far as hotel unions, our hotels have some positions that have union employees, some that don't, but it's very premature to make a decision as to what direction the hotel would go on that front this far before opening.

[Speaker 4] (31:19 - 31:22)
We'll take a question from the panel.

[Speaker 10] (31:22 - 32:08)
Can I just make one more comment about the scale? I assure you that every single picture that you saw on the screen just now of the buildings that we've built have had that same question asked. And I appreciate that question because I know how concerning it can be to a community.

And every one of those buildings had the same question on the Four Seasons Hotel, which is 781 feet tall. We had that question a lot. Here, I think it's very important that we work together and to make sure that we understand right down to the microcosm level of how the building should be attenuated with the street and how it should feel appropriate to the Hadley School.

I will assure you that I will do everything in my power to make sure that the building is scaled appropriately for the neighborhood that it sits in.

[Speaker 4] (32:10 - 32:16)
We'll take a question from Teams. If we can enable Lois. Lois.

[Speaker 18] (32:18 - 32:19)
So, Ian?

[Speaker 22] (32:22 - 33:20)
Hi, my name's Lois. Just wanted to speak real quick. Quick question.

So, in one of the, you stated that you were working with the, you were in discussion with the owner of the building in front of the school. I know that there is three, quote, four, like, program in another occupied place there. Would this discussion that you had mean that you're engaging in discussions that would actually close businesses?

And, I mean, could I have a little bit of a concern that this early discussions of possibly being able to build in and close down businesses? And if that does go through, making that an entrance, would that cause traffic because there's no pulling of cars being able to drop off and pick up?

[Speaker 1] (33:20 - 34:19)
Those are both very valid questions. With respect to the tenants, in any project where you're proposing to build something on a property that has active businesses in it, that's the first question that comes up is what happens with the tenants. And the question is, will they want to come back when the building is completed?

The businesses that are there now could very well be great businesses to have when you activate the Humphrey Street frontage. I have not had any conversations with tenants yet because it's so premature. First, we would need to be selected.

Secondly, we and the owner of the property would need to come to an arrangement that this would happen, and then collectively we'd need to talk to the tenants to find out what their long-term and short-term goals are and figure out how to accommodate them in the short-term and long-term. With respect to your – okay, I'm now spacing out. Your second question – remind me again?

[Speaker 22] (34:23 - 34:42)
Second question was that your thought process is that if that dig goes through, the front of the building would be the entry, and that would be a drop-off and pick-up spot, which could cause major traffic concerns because it's not a dip-in like a pull-in. It would cause traffic concerns. What's your thought process on that?

[Speaker 1] (34:42 - 35:39)
Yep, it's a very good question and a question that we often face with buildings that are on major public ways, which is really most of them that we've done. And we would either need to come up with some sort of a vehicular solution where the parking lot is on the side of the building so that when people are coming to park at the hotel or park for functions, they are directed to the parking lot rather than to the front of the building. So then the front of the building only is used for drop-off and pick-up.

If you were to envision there being a wedding there and 100 cars coming for a wedding, you do not want 100 cars on Humphrey Street. That would be a nightmare. So the directions are going to be to the parking lot.

And as far as making the drop-off and pick-up work, part of our team will be a traffic engineer and will work with the town to figure out what the best traffic patterns are to avoid causing problems on Humphrey Street.

[Speaker 4] (35:41 - 35:43)
Is there another question in the room?

[Speaker 18] (35:48 - 35:49)
Yes.

[Speaker 25] (35:59 - 36:31)
Good evening. Jared Germa. I am on the Historic District Commission, but my question doesn't really have anything to do with that.

The adjacency to the Historic District, this does not sit in it, but the views to the school are pretty primary in establishing how the look of that area is. So I'm very excited to hear a little bit about the way in which you engage the town and the process of coming through the design. So if you could talk a little bit about what those processes look like, what those meetings look like, and how those have been run in the past.

[Speaker 1] (36:32 - 37:36)
We're a little bit unusual. We're a small company. We're very collaborative and open and open book about what we do.

And we actually enjoy the process of sitting with people to really understand what it wants to be. You're going to continue to see across Linscott Park the side of the school that faces it today. As far as what you're looking at on the new part of the building, as mentioned before, we did not put a skin on it because it may be that the town is adamant that we want it to be red brick.

We want it to have the same feel. We want it to have the same character. Or people may really feel like don't go in that direction.

We want to see something new. Gary, let's see three or four options, and let's walk through them, and let's see what people like. So it's actually an exciting part of the process.

And with the creativity that these guys have, and you saw the slides, and you saw the kinds of things that they've done from highly contextual at Williams to highly modern in Somerville, there's a lot of ideas coming out of these guys' heads that we're excited to sit and brainstorm with the town about.

[Speaker 10] (37:39 - 38:21)
Let me just add to that because I think it's a very important question again. And the way we've done it in the past, and we do it all over the country, we do it in different ways, but the way we've done it in the past is we'll work with the town in this case to set up some kind of a committee, and then they will invite neighbors and constituents groups in, and we'll sit down. And what we like to do is a bunch of charrettes.

We like to actually sit there with tracing paper and computers and whatever we have to actually work some of these problems out in real time with real people. And it's really quite a rewarding experience. We've done this for the city of Cambridge.

We've done it for the city of Berkeley, California. We did it for the Liberty Hotel, and it's actually quite memorable, and it's quite exciting.

[Speaker 4] (38:23 - 38:26)
We'll take a question from Teams. Rupert?

[Speaker 20] (38:29 - 38:32)
Hi, thanks. Rupert Deese, 26 Lewis Road. Can everyone hear me?

[Speaker 4] (38:33 - 38:33)
Yep.

[Speaker 20] (38:34 - 39:17)
Awesome. So now I hope that like I want to be, I'm sensitive to preservation and, you know, of course preserving the character of the town, and I hope people won't read this question the wrong way, but I'm kind of curious whether or not there are any sort of constraints, either like specified in the RFP or just having to do with the lot itself that, you know, you guys found kind of challenging to work with, right?

You guys, like if you had more scope for your vision for the property, like, and this is kind of you addressed this with the proposal three, which incorporates the Hoffheim. Yeah, I guess I'm just sort of curious, you know, if there are any things where you're like, oh, we really wish we could do this, but, you know, we don't have enough height, or we don't have enough, you know, X, Y, Z.

[Speaker 1] (39:18 - 40:51)
Well, I don't want this to sound like we're kissing words that I'm not sure if you can say these days or not, but there's one thing that made this exciting to us is there's been so much preliminary work done by the town, and the town brought Pinnacle Advisory Services, which is the best hotel advisory service probably in the country. They've got some real expertise on the town's boards and committees. I'm not going to say names and let heads get big, but they've got really good pre-work such that the envelope that was decided for the building is the right size envelope for the hotel that should be in this market.

If the envelope was for big enough to fit a 30-room hotel, and the hotel in this market couldn't be successful unless it was a 130-room hotel, the answer to your question would be yes, we've got a problem. But when we look at the ideal size that our data analysis, the Pinnacle study that our own experience gives us, the right size hotel is really in the 60- to 75-room range, which is exactly what the building envelope that your town and your town's consultants has come up with. So it was really a breath of fresh air to go through this and see, you know, this is the right envelope.

This is something that we can really work with. So I'm happy to say that the answer to your question is we think there aren't crazy constraints here, as we faced on, you know, plenty of things that we worked with over our careers.

[Speaker 4] (40:52 - 40:54)
We have time for one more question.

[Speaker 33] (40:56 - 41:15)
Hi there, Ian Holland. I live on Elmwood Road along Linscott Park, and given all of your experience, you probably know the estimated number of parking spaces required per, you know, square foot of hotel development. Do you know what that number is for what you're proposing?

[Speaker 1] (41:17 - 42:37)
The parking that fits on the site is a little bit short of what would be needed, in all honesty. One thing that would kill this probably for us or any of the competitors would be the need to do underground parking. It is so incredibly expensive at this point.

It's a project killer. So one of the things that we actually talked with the town about when they called us, or we got on a Zoom with follow-up questions, is what do we do with the excess parking when there's a demand period where there's more than the lot on site can hold? There are several ideas that we've talked about that involve working with the church because the peak periods for the hotel would not be the peak periods for the church.

I know that's not a unique idea. I'm sure everybody's had the same thought. In some instances where there isn't, for example, at our Raffles Hotel downtown, there isn't enough parking on site, and we have a valet company that has made contracts with private landowners nearby to bring the cars to those areas.

So your question is a very good one. If the site was a little bit bigger, it would hold the full demand, but that's something that as we go through the planning process, we'll need to continue working on. We'll need to talk with the church in particular because that's the quickest and simplest and closest solution, but it's something we absolutely need to figure out.

[Speaker 33] (42:37 - 42:41)
As the pastor of the church, First Church Swanscott, I look forward to the conversation.

[Speaker 1] (42:42 - 42:44)
Let's meet after we're done.

[Speaker 4] (42:47 - 43:02)
Thank you. We'll now move on to select board questions. So we'll start left to right.

How can I top that? If you are prepared, Peter, we'll start with you.

[Speaker 12] (43:03 - 44:34)
Yeah, happy to. Thanks for being here and making the effort. We've asked you to go through a lot of different processes to get here tonight and appreciate, and really your work in Boston is quite beautiful.

You know, this goes without saying, this is not Boston, right, and we're a small community, and it's not going to be a formal economic partnership potentially, but it is a partnership in that everybody is going to work for success. And so projects like these are hard, right? This is not an ordinary run-of-the-mill, let's just say residential project where you're building something and then you're going to sell units or you're renting units.

This is something that has an ongoing operating issue and opportunity here. So I would like you to speak to how you have engaged with similarly sized communities like us to deal with and maybe give an example of problems, right, things that haven't gone well that's required you to go back to the community and work through problems and just talk about your experience doing that because that, to me, seems like a really important thing for us to really understand as we move forward that we're going to have a counterparty that's prepared and understands, you know, this is not Boston. This is a different and that we have specific and unique concerns, but we also recognize that there probably will be some issues that we have to deal with. So if you could just share your experience of how you've handled it in other projects in similarly sized communities, that would be great.

[Speaker 1] (44:35 - 46:32)
Sure, and even with the projects in Boston, Boston is a big city, but Boston is composed of communities. So whether it's dealing with Wellesley, which as any of you who know Wellesley can imagine, the people there have a lot to say about a lot of things, or whether you're dealing with Charlestown with a very different population, but also very proud and very concerned with what goes on in their community. Within Boston, the South End, the Back Bay, all people who have things to say with their communities.

So everywhere we go, we are working in very concerned communities. We don't do projects on Route 128 or on Route 495 where they're in the middle of nowhere and nobody cares. Every project we have done has been with a community that really cares and really wants to be involved.

And so it's really the only thing that we have done. We've only done projects where we've had intensive, extensive community involvement and spending many nights sitting in rooms doing the types of things that Gary talked about, whether it's a design charrette, whether it's trying to solve the parking issue, whether it's talking about questions such as the one raised on the phone as to how you make sure that you're not creating traffic jams on Humphrey Street.

Every bit of it is the same process within the neighborhood that you're in. And being a company who's only done projects that are major landmark-type projects within their communities, those draw more attention than any other types of project. So, Peter, what I would say is that what we will be doing here is what we feel most comfortable doing and what I have spent my entire career doing from my first days working at the Druker Company through the founding of Noanit and all of Noanit's projects.

And I think Gary would say the same.

[Speaker 12] (46:32 - 46:34)
Thank you. Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 19] (46:36 - 46:49)
I liked your slide that shows putting a hotel and a park on the Hawthorne site. That was interesting. But I'm also really more focused on the financial end, too, so I'm going to have to wait for my questions.

[Speaker 36] (46:51 - 46:51)
Doug.

[Speaker 17] (46:58 - 47:15)
So can you say just a little bit more about why you even proposed the third option? I mean, is it just blatantly obvious that this is kind of more financially beneficial both for you as a developer as well as the town, and that's the reason for it? And that's, you know, or is there more to it than that?

[Speaker 1] (47:15 - 48:30)
Well, no, there's not a lot more to it. In the follow-up questions we got after we submitted our initial proposal, one of the questions was, what ideas do you have that might involve the Anthony's parcel, that might involve the Hawthorne site? And we chatted about it, and Yangju actually drew that sketch and said, this is kind of similar to what the Re-Envisioning Hawthorne study had for its option number two.

And we chatted about it in one of our meetings and said, this is kind of crazy. It could be that the town thinks this is the worst idea they've ever seen. But if this hotel happened to be directly on the water and its public areas opened up to a new, big, beautiful public park on the water, the economics of the hotel improved even better.

And, of course, if the economics of the hotel improved, then the package to the town improves. Of course, the question is, does the town have uses for the school? Would the town rather have the entire Hawthorne parcel for its park?

We don't want to get involved in that. But we threw it out there so that if it's something of interest, once again, we could sit with all of you and talk about whether this sort of wild card that we threw into something that has any interest.

[Speaker 17] (48:31 - 48:43)
You may not be able to answer this, but on an order of magnitude, is this a marginal improvement in the economics by being able to construct a new hotel closer to the water, or is this kind of like a 2X type of situation?

[Speaker 1] (48:44 - 49:45)
I don't know that I'd put a quantification on it because it's very qualitative. You sit there with yourself and your management company in the pinnacles of the world and say, if our average room rate on the middle week of July is $500 a night, would it be $550 a night if you're right on the water? Would it be $560 or would it be the same $500 because people are going to come anyway?

So it's a really subjective type of question. But I think from a just sort of general standpoint, you have to think that if it's on the water, it's going to be better. Now, it's probably going to be more expensive because, as we know from just the last couple of weeks and the storms that wiped out half of Maine as well as up and down the coast, building anything near the water is risky and expensive these days because of the resiliency you need with what's happening.

So it's going to be a more expensive build, but it's also kind of an exciting concept if anybody has any interest.

[Speaker 36] (49:45 - 49:47)
Thank you. David.

[Speaker 15] (49:50 - 50:30)
Jordan, Gary, Yanju, I just want to thank you for your presentation. I certainly had a number of financial questions. I will reserve those for a more appropriate time.

But now that you've gotten to spend so much time in Swampskate and you've gotten to learn a little bit about the history of the town, you've met some people, and if you're selected for this, great. I think you guys will provide an incredible product for our town. But if you're not selected, my question is, would you be interested in doing something else within the town of Swampskate?

[Speaker 1] (50:31 - 51:19)
Could you imagine me standing up here and saying no and then come back again? But, of course, I've been up a couple of times. I've had a chance to spend time with Sean and Pete and Marzi and others, and it's been a pleasure.

And I'm not blowing smoke. It really has been fun. It's been such an open group that is excited.

What Gary and I talked about when we came up for the first meeting at the school was the enthusiasm that starts with Sean and bubbles down through the rest of the staff. It's awesome. I mean, it's fun.

I mean, I sincerely would say that if we get selected, we're going to have fun working together because enthusiasm is not something you can fake. Let's just leave it with that. So when you meet with an enthusiastic group of people, you get excited about working with them.

[Speaker 15] (51:20 - 51:22)
Thanks, Jordan. Thank you.

[Speaker 24] (51:23 - 51:50)
So my question is more about how we transition from development to operation. So you all have done this before, but we have not. So if you could just sort of enlighten us about once you've sort of figured out the plan, started, everything is being constructed, what's the process that then begins with how the hotel becomes an operational hotel, a successful hotel in town?

[Speaker 1] (51:50 - 53:32)
Sure. So we've done this on multiple occasions, most recently three months ago. And hotels typically open a little bit slowly.

You know, you don't expect to get to full occupancy typically for three years. So you will probably see in us and in the other firms that you're speaking with tonight a ramp-up period because you're not going to have all your rooms filled right out of the gate. Your goal is to have your food and beverage operations, your restaurants and bars, your amenities, your spa, your gym, your pool, things like that open right out of the gate.

At the hotel we just opened, for example, our food and beverage options opened with the hotel. They've been doing gangbusters. They're filled every night.

The community has come in. The press has been in. Everybody's been in and is super excited about the building, even though opening a hotel in the middle of winter in Boston is never the best timing.

So I would not tell anybody in the room and the other hoteliers that are here tonight would probably tell me I'm a liar if I said it, but I'm not going to tell you that our guest rooms are full the night that we opened. But the food and beverage is great. So the energy that you'll see, and it's going to be true with any of our groups, that if we come in and we've all got good food and beverage, hopefully you'll see this thing open, and next weekend you're going to be fighting to get a reservation in the restaurant.

And within a couple of years, hopefully the guest rooms will be quite full in the busy season, and if we do it right, they'll also have great occupancy, especially on weekends in the non-busy season.

[Speaker 23] (53:35 - 53:54)
Great. Gentlemen, I just want to thank you. I don't have any questions.

I get too many opportunities to ask questions, but really appreciate the passion and energy and enthusiasm. Your projects are terrific, and we've got a really tough, tough decision. So I appreciate your time.

[Speaker 1] (53:54 - 53:55)
Thank you all for your time.

[Speaker 4] (53:56 - 55:04)
Thank you, guys. We now have – I'll give a few minutes while people get situated. You can test it if you want.

Yep, you're good. All right. We'll get started with our second presentation.

With us now is the Drew Company.

[Speaker 3] (55:05 - 58:07)
Well, good evening. I'm John Drew. I'm the chairman of the Drew Company, and this is our team.

My son, John, who's the president of the company. Theoni Alejandro, who is our COO. And on my right hand, Adam Cuomo, who's with CBT, Phil Casey with CBT, and then Vicky Alini with CBT as well, who are our designers.

And quite frankly, much like the earlier group, these are people who we've worked with on a number of projects, and we see them more not as a developer, designer, but basically as our team. First of all, I want to congratulate you on asking – on thanking – first of all, I want to thank you for asking us up here, and I want to congratulate you on, quite frankly, the other two teams in the selection. I think, really, you have three good teams to choose from, and quite frankly, I think a variety of ideas.

And what we may say tonight may sound very much like what my predecessor just said. I think the idea of coming to this town and developing in Swampscott is something that, quite frankly, excites us. We hope to be involved in the town, to answer a question that was asked in other ways as we go along.

I think the other thing we'll try to show you is that we have, like others, been very, very involved working with communities in the past, and small communities as well as larger ones. We are known for having very, very successful developments, as with the Drew Company, that are joint ventures with the public entities, like the Port Authority and others, so that they, in fact, own land we developed on, and that process was very involved with us working with the public entities. So working with the community is something that we're extremely comfortable with.

Working, quite honestly, with the public sector is something that we feel that we have expertise in, and we'll talk a lot more about that as part of the presentation. I must also say I was asked by some of you when we were going through the early part of the interview why the Drew Company is interested, and I will tell you my answer is the same answer I gave a few weeks ago. We like to see ourselves as a company that's involved in transformative projects, projects that make a difference.

And whether that's a seaport in Boston or something we're doing down in Atlanta right now, it's really something that we feel that has lasting importance, makes a difference, and quite frankly creates, with it, more value for the area we're in and for the people who basically live there. So that's what interests me here in Swampstead. I think the attitude of the town in welcoming us and inviting us in has been extremely positive.

I think you're a very good group of people that we've had a chance to work with so far. They're very talented, they're smart, and they ask good questions. I think the other side is that there's an opportunity with this project to really make a difference in Swampstead, so that we, in fact, take the school, look at Humphrey Street, we look, obviously, over at Anthony's, the Hawthorne, and say, okay, yes, this is going to make a very, very significant difference.

So I hope we're able to show that to you tonight, and I don't want to – we're short on time, we're tight on time, so I'm going to move this over to my son and to Thione and then on to Phil and everyone else.

[Speaker 7] (58:08 - 1:00:28)
Thanks, John. Seeing how quickly 15 minutes goes by, you just covered a lot of my notes, so got it. And I'll just start with a disclaimer that I grew up in Marblehead, so please don't hold that against me.

It's been 20 years there. I don't know if that helps or hurts this presentation, but John already covered the first slide, really. I think every one of our projects has a public-private component.

I guess a lot of development projects do, but we really seem to find projects that are potentially challenging, but, as John said, could be really transformative to an area or the city that we're operating in. I think we'll go to the next one. So we were started in 1982.

John started the company. We're based in Boston. We have offices in Atlanta, in Washington, D.C., and Dublin, Ireland, actually. We have developed millions of square feet of mixed-use properties primarily focused on hospitality. You know, John developed the Seaport Hotel World Trade Center complex in Boston, which is a mixed-use development there, and managed it for many years. It was a privately branded hotel that's still in operation, won many awards.

We also developed in the Seaport over 500 residential units that are close by. We managed the Reagan Building down in Washington, D.C., which is a 4 million square foot operation that we host over 2,000 events a year. We have our own hospitality team down there and 500 employees.

So we manage all of our own events. We manage the building as well. Since we put in this proposal, we actually have opened.

Our grand opening was last weekend. The Signia Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, which is a project that we developed with the Atlanta Convention Center Authority down there, Georgia World Congress Center. That's a 976-room hotel with eight different restaurants and venues.

We were involved in that project for many years. It was from start to finish, from design, through selecting the operator, through negotiating the contract there, and it was obviously a big moment for the company, and we're excited. That's also in a part of town that's going to transform and bring a lot of downtown.

It's created a new doorway to the convention center there, so we're very excited. And we're in the process of developing another hotel down in Boutique Hotel with a very similar kind of concept and feel to the Hadley outside of Georgia as well.

[Speaker 5] (1:00:32 - 1:03:42)
Thank you, John. So as both John and John mentioned, a lot of our projects do have opportunities for bold transformation. We're a small company, as you know.

We're very selective in the projects we do pursue, but you might wonder, you know, you just heard about a 976-key hotel, so why would we be interested in opening a 60-key hotel here in a town north of Boston? So for us, it's really not about the size of the project that matters as much as the size of the impact on the communities in which we work in, and for us, that's really the key here. That's why we're so interested in this project.

On the screen here, you see a rendering of the project that John just referenced. It's a small town called Eatonton, Georgia. It's about 20 miles outside of east of Atlanta.

It's a small historic building. It fell into disrepair many decades ago. It used to be a hotel.

We have purchased that from the development authority there, and we are in the process of designing that hotel. So we'll renovate the hotel itself, preserve as much of the historic structure as we can, add on a new component for new construction. It's got 56 keys.

It's got some vibrant food and beverage opportunities on the ground floor as well as the roof tech. So it's got a very similar scope to what we're contemplating here. Again, it's all about how do we transform these projects, how do we revitalize an area, how do we revitalize a site particularly, and really serve as a catalyst for economic growth, and we really see a tremendous opportunity here for this project where we can complement the existing downtown opportunities that we have, where we can highlight these captivating views that you have across the ocean, and really just try to create a vibrant opportunity for places, for people to gather and connect in meaningful ways. And whether that's the community as a whole that's going to be meeting at this hotel, eating in our restaurants, or whether it's serving the guests of the hotel in the various venues that we have there. Also, as John mentioned, we do have a significant expertise working with federal, state, and local authorities.

This ranges from Massport to GSA to the MBTA. A lot of our projects are all about public-private partnerships, and the key is all about that last word, partnership. As Peter just mentioned, this is not just a development opportunity.

This really is a long-term partnership arrangement. Most of our public-private partnerships do have ground leases that we have developed on and have operated on for many years. So that's a long-term partnership.

This isn't where we just come in, we design a building, we build the building, and then we leave. This is all about having a long-term, hopefully 99-year ground lease arrangement. So the key for the successful P3, in our opinion, is all about finding the right partner.

And what do I mean by that? What makes you a great partner? I think if you spoke to most of the agencies we've worked with in the past, they'd probably tell you that we're very collaborative, we're transparent, we're very responsive, we're very creative in solving problems because all these projects are very challenging.

They do take a lot of effort in order to make them happen. And we follow through on what we say we're going to do. We're not the type of developer who comes in and just promises you the world and then just doesn't deliver on it.

That's not how we've earned our hard-earned reputation. We're a family business, as you can see, and we really feel very strongly and are very proud of our track record.

[Speaker 7] (1:03:44 - 1:04:53)
Well, interesting time moving along. But as I said, every year we host about 2,000 events down in D.C. Our average tenure of our employees down there is over 10 years. We've hosted events from small meetings to 2,000-person events, and that's with ourselves.

We're also comfortable working with management groups as well. I think what makes us very unique is our ability to activate the places that we operate. We have, again, using D.C. as an example, over 300 events that we self-produce each year that just draw the public in, that are free and open to the public, farmers' markets, live music performances, cultural events. This is something that we do in all of our venues as a way to keep things active throughout the whole year. We think it's pretty unique, and our team does that ourselves. Connect to the community is a key.

Anywhere that we operate, and maybe a lot of people will say, well, we dig in. We really are connected with the charitable groups, with the community groups where we operate. It's just part of our culture and what we commit to, and we also feel that it enhances the visibility of the brand and the hotel.

These are just multiple events that we've done. Let me hand it over to CBT. In the interest of time, who can walk us through our vision?

[Speaker 11] (1:04:55 - 1:08:35)
Thank you, John. Good evening, everybody. Phil Casey with CBT Architects Principle there.

Just a little bit to start about CBT. We're a 150-person design firm based in Boston with architects, interior designers, and urban designers, so really designing at all scales, giving us that opportunity to work on a range of typologies. At CBT, we have an extensive history of partnering with the communities that we work in, really about revitalizing and enhancing those neighborhoods, and how do we do that?

That's through that strong community process. The idea of sitting down with everybody, hearing their vision, their comments, and then iterating on that, a back-and-forth design process, so everybody is part of that shared design vision so that when we come to the table of the final solution, everybody is really vested in that. A little bit about us, too.

We have extensive historic and reuse, which is one of those things that really gets us excited about that, too. You can see here the Alexander Hotel in the south end. Similarly, an existing building with a new hospitality component, the Newberry Hotel, the restoration of that in Boston, as well as the Hotel Indigo, so a number of hospitality brands we've worked with.

Next slide, please. And then a little bit about the overall concept and vision. You know, to a T, everybody on this team is so excited about this site.

The idea of this site being integral in the middle of the community, the idea of the natural beauty of the resources, the adjacency to Linscott Park, the walkability and the connectability to the downtown Humphrey retail district, how do we harness that and make this a true community asset that everybody is proud of and really revitalizes and feels vested in that this is something that they can call home and visit when they want to? Next, please.

Next slide. There you go. And then just quickly about our project vision, how we've conceptualized this, again, leveraging Swampscott's coastal charm and the amazing vistas.

You guys are well aware of that. That natural beauty, how do we bring visitors in and reinvigorate the site? Preservation of the existing Hadley School, something we're incredibly excited about, hopefully you've seen in our design process.

We understand that you're vested and that's a piece of the community, so how do we preserve that, build on that, enhance that, and create a very unique character from the hospitality component? The Linscott Park, that adjacency, how do we revitalize it? You can see in this rendering here the idea of amenity spaces spilling out, activating that, bringing a real community aspect to it with that ground floor being very publicly accessible, food and beverage and whatnot.

A vibrant mix of uses, obviously, with the hospitality, again, bringing that concentration of use and activation that will happen there. And then, again, that ground floor activation. I think Adam and Vicki will talk about that a little bit.

But inviting the community in. This isn't an exclusive private hospitality component. The idea that the community can participate in all of those components.

Next slide, please. And then just briefly, as we talked about, you know, the site here, you can see looking at it really at the center of the community. Again, that adjacency to the Hawthorne site, how can we harness that?

How can we make that something that really builds off the center of town? The retail activation along Humphrey Street. And then really starting to craft the building.

We've put an additional component for program and hotel rooms to it, but setting that back from the street, really being cognizant of that adjacency to the residents across the street. A very different scale than from the downtown. So how do we respect that and make it contextual?

Looking at green buffers, et cetera, and really starting to contextualize this within the town. So I'll hand it off to Adam Comer, our Associate Principal, to give us more design. Thanks.

[Speaker 9] (1:08:35 - 1:10:21)
So we start to focus on the design proposal here. You can see one of the first things we're really trying to do is create a welcoming identity to the site from the Hawthorne site and from Humphrey Street. And so we've done that by positioning some public amenity retail at the corner here, the front entry to the hotel itself, but also the presence of the rooftop, publicly accessible rooftop restaurant.

And so as you start to rotate down and look at that vantage point at eye level, so you see the Humphrey Street, Reddington Street intersections here in the foreground where standing in the proposed Hawthorne site, which is currently the Anthony's Pier 4 building looking back at the Hadley, you can see all of those things. So you can notice the public retail here in the foreground with the entry into the hotel, and then also the presence of that publicly accessible restaurant at the roof. We have one minute.

Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, so this is really showing that side entry along Reddington, the promotion of the retail as a welcoming atmosphere and activating it with outdoor patios to help promote a community engagement.

And then further down Reddington, now looking back towards the waterfront, seeing the proposal here, the addition in the foreground, which were really driven by two things. The first was trying to create as much of a setback along Reddington as possible to create as much breathing room between us and the existing residential fabric as possible. And then also you'll notice that the architectural character of the new building is very much inspired by the existing Hadley building, and that was on purpose to create something that felt holistic and create something that was seamlessly integrated.

And then we'll go through the plans during the Q&A session. Great.

[Speaker 18] (1:10:21 - 1:10:27)
Great, thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:33 - 1:10:48)
So similar to the last time, we will do another 15-minute session of public comments or public questions. And if anybody in the audience has any questions, please raise your hand. Feel free to come to the microphone.

[Speaker 34] (1:10:55 - 1:11:14)
Hi, Martha Smith, Precinct 4, chair of the Renewable Energy Committee in town. Just wondering about your experience using sustainable building practices. And more specifically, are you intending to make this a green building?

Will you follow the specialized energy code?

[Speaker 5] (1:11:17 - 1:11:55)
I can take a quick shot, and then I'll hand it over to the design team. But pretty much all of our developments, we have some form of LEED certification, whether it's gold or silver or certifiable. The Cygnea Hilton that we just talked about, 976 keys, that's LEED gold, which is pretty amazing for a hotel to achieve that.

So we certainly expect to have that sort of an aspiration for this project. We also expect to try to utilize as much of the existing materials in the building as we can. We've talked a lot about could we use the gymnasium floor, for instance, and reuse that somewhere in the hotel.

So we certainly want to look at those types of opportunities for sustainability. And then as far as energy code, I'm going to hand that to my...

[Speaker 14] (1:11:56 - 1:12:24)
Yeah, and I can just add, obviously, absolutely sustainable, but we are on the cutting edge of all of that healthy materials research in our firm. I just gave a whole talk at Urban Land Institute on what healthy materials are going to be in our upcoming world of carbon neutrality and net zero pursuits. And we just built the first gold well-certified building in Boston.

And so we're very, very committed to being on the cutting edge of those things.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:25 - 1:12:49)
I would just add one thing. We're doing a project down in Scituate, which is 78 apartments, and that's being certified, LEED certified, too, for, I think it's silver, which is unusual because there's five separate buildings in the housing. So it was a challenge, but that's what we set out to do with the town support, so we've been able to accomplish that as well.

[Speaker 9] (1:12:51 - 1:13:32)
Yeah, and then also just to your question about the specialized code, I'm not sure Swampscott adopted the specialized energy code yet or not. It's kind of changing pretty quickly. But in general, as a minimum, we always try to go above and beyond what the code is.

And this project is sort of uniquely positioned to take advantage of that, it being an adaptive reuse project. So the footprint's already a lot smaller. And then with the, you know, individual climate zones in the hotel rooms versus something that's a more global space conditioning, that also allows for a lot of more optimized, more energy-efficient systems in the building.

So there's a lot of those things that we'll dig into as the project moves forward, but that's always a driver for us in the early conversations.

[Speaker 4] (1:13:35 - 1:13:37)
Is there anybody else that would like? Yes.

[Speaker 13] (1:13:47 - 1:14:38)
So a couple of things real quick. If you could speak to, you know, one of the things that is really driving this project is anchoring it to downtown businesses and helping them and supporting them. So if you could really speak directly to that, because, you know, I understand you're going to have your own amenities and you're going to want to support those amenities.

So that would be, you know, an important point for us to point out to support, you know, our community. And then if we could kind of just answer kind of the same question, union, you know, in terms of construction and then also in terms of employees, that would be really helpful. And then is your top structure two?

So, like, is your top structure looking to be a two-tier, you know, from your or is it a single? Okay. All right.

Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:14:38 - 1:16:30)
All right. Let me see if I can go back over these things. Union, non-union.

We've actually priced the construction both ways. The union costs come in higher, obviously. But we're going to debate.

I've built in Boston everything union, just so you know. And when we've done in situate, we've gone basically open shop, so we have union and non-union, and it's been successful. So it's all a matter of cost right now and just who can, in fact, help us build this project with the right at the lower amount of money but with the right to basically do it well.

It's a challenging project as we've looked at it, because in a sense you're gutting out the school in many ways. So you have to have a contractor that's capable of working in that kind of environment successfully and developing it, and often that leads you to a larger contractor, leads you to a union contractor. So that still has to be finalized, but we did explain in our proposal that we're working.

We have also priced it and worked with two different contractors, as I said, one union and one non-union to see what we could do. So we'll pursue that. As for the employees, Seaport has some union employees now.

When I started it and ran it, we didn't. We paid the same as union, and we paid above union. But the difference there was basically we wanted to get basically a workforce in there that was talented and had the right personality.

So we hired independently. We went and trained people at different programs around Boston. So they were trained to, in fact, learn about hotels, knew about hotels, and then we selected them.

Now, over time that's changed. We have union and non-union here. In Washington, it's a mix of union and non-union as well.

[Speaker 13] (1:16:30 - 1:16:45)
Thank you. I know this is one more question, and I'm sorry I'm going to get yelled at. Geothermal, you know, Framingham has a fabulous project where this is town-owned property.

I don't know, geothermal and being able to sort of utilize that, I don't know if that's a possibility.

[Speaker 14] (1:16:47 - 1:16:54)
We would definitely evaluate that with our engineers when the time comes for sure. Yeah, that's a great source. Yes.

[Speaker 28] (1:17:03 - 1:17:49)
I'm Chris Mancini. I live on Walker Road. I'm also the CEO of Save the Harbor, Save the Bay.

Full disclosure, I've known John for a couple of years, and, you know, from your experience, we're neighbors in the seaport. And I've just to what you said earlier, you know, this is a long-term partnership. I've just seen that firsthand with your relationship to investing in the community, in the cleanup of the environment down at the seaport.

Strangely, that's not where my question is going. My question is about the activation. Examples you were giving in Washington, D.C., you know, it's a huge project. Is that something that you're envisioning as part of this project, a smaller project in a smaller town, and what do you envision for that?

[Speaker 7] (1:17:50 - 1:18:06)
I mean, absolutely. We treat it as part of our marketing budget down there. We see it as a way, especially when the hotel gets open, as a way to work with the town and find ways to draw people here and also across the street.

We think it, you know, it gets people to the retail establishments, gets excitement about the project. It's something we've always been committed to.

[Speaker 14] (1:18:11 - 1:18:52)
Since we didn't get to talk about the plan, but the ground floor on here has been planned purposely to invite people in. The entire ground floor is public. And so you can see that everything from the lobby, which has seating in it, to the lounge, all the way out to Linscott Terrace, is meant to bring people in.

This is meant to be a community living room. You can come and hang out here. You can work in here.

It has a small library. It has a cafe below, so food and beverage. It's really intended to be a place for the community.

Any time of day and night, as long as this place is open, this is open. It is not privatized in any way. So that is part of the activation and keeping things moving, really keeping it lively.

You don't have to go to the top to really participate in this hotel.

[Speaker 28] (1:18:53 - 1:18:53)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (1:18:53 - 1:19:12)
The only other thing I'd add there, Vicky, is when we talk about the Hawthorne site across the street, we think there's tremendous synergies that we could have to collaborate together. Whatever the ultimate use is for that site, I mean, it's going to be a phenomenal amenity for the town. And we can help activate that because that's going to benefit both sites.

So we're looking forward to working together on that.

[Speaker 3] (1:19:12 - 1:20:11)
I would even go one step further. On the site across the street on Hawthorne, we would hope there's been some talk here, obviously, about using that for town purposes. We'd hope that as you do that, there may be conferencing space and other things like that that we could tie into what we're marketing here at the hotel so they work that way.

There is also the possibility that we could even talk about managing that type of space for you and begin to tie it in so that hopefully we maximize basically both the Hawthorne site and the Hadley site so that they should work together. It's a gateway in, and we shouldn't ignore that. So we would hope to work on it.

We didn't go much further in our planning process on it, only because I know you have a separate program that you are going to go through with the community before you make any decisions. So we would just hope to be part of that and be involved.

[Speaker 28] (1:20:12 - 1:20:13)
Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:14 - 1:20:17)
Great. We'll take a question from Teams. Eric?

[Speaker 32] (1:20:22 - 1:20:49)
Hi, can you hear me? Yes. The prior presenters, they mentioned that one of their potential deal breakers or issues they saw would be parking and that the parking in their design was not necessarily enough to fill the full capacity.

How does that look for you, and are there any other potential deal breakers or non-negotiable items that you have?

[Speaker 9] (1:20:51 - 1:21:42)
Yeah, for the majority of the day-to-day operations of the hotel, we have enough parking on site. We have 60 keys, and we've provided one space per key, which in my cursory review of zoning is what you need to be compliant, but we will obviously dig into that in much more detail over the course of schematic design. And then we're showing five additional short-term parking spaces on the site because we do also have a small retail component on the ground floor and then a restaurant at the roof.

So there's 65 spaces, so besides high-demand events like weddings or if the venue at the rooftop is rented with a 200-people guest account, 90% of the time we should be able to accommodate the operations of the hotel on site. And talk to the pastor for the other 10%.

[Speaker 3] (1:21:42 - 1:22:17)
With the town about this, there was discussions with another pastor, so now we have two pastors, about using some church parking. We feel that that would be very important for anyone's program here, us or the other two, because quite honestly, I think you need that as overflow parking. So for events and whatnot, you would have to be talking about additional off-site parking.

I think that is not a deal-breaker in the sense that I think there's been progress made in all of that, in that discussion, and we can follow up on it.

[Speaker 30] (1:22:18 - 1:22:32)
So if I read your proposal correctly, you're calling for 60 guest rooms. The pinnacle report calls for 40, if I'm not mistaken.

[Speaker 5] (1:22:33 - 1:22:38)
That's correct. Yeah, that's correct. Okay.

Yep, that's correct.

[Speaker 4] (1:22:38 - 1:22:44)
And we have time for one more question, which we'll take from Teams. Ann, if you would like to ask your question.

[Speaker 31] (1:22:45 - 1:22:59)
Hi, thanks. Thinking about a rooftop event with 200 people, I'm wondering about noise control measures and other things that would make it work within the context of the site.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:01 - 1:23:05)
Yes, we can answer that. We've got to find the right person.

[Speaker 9] (1:23:07 - 1:23:26)
Yeah, I mean, that type of venue is always under a permit from the town and follows the town's sound ordinances. And so things like closure and things like that, managing the time of it is something that we would work with the town from the permitting standpoint. Does that answer your question?

Was that virtual? Where did that come from?

[Speaker 4] (1:23:27 - 1:23:27)
That was virtual.

[Speaker 18] (1:23:27 - 1:23:28)
Oh, yeah.

[Speaker 31] (1:23:30 - 1:23:47)
Would there be any use of surfaces or landscaping or other sources of mediation? I understand that rules are rules, but would your design sort of take care of any part?

[Speaker 14] (1:23:47 - 1:24:29)
No, it's a great question. We just put the Contessa Restaurant on top of the Newberry Hotel in a very sensitive back bay neighborhood. And you can imagine the neighbors there were even closer and jammed up against that building.

And there's a really strong relationship between the hotel management and the neighborhood and where we close off the windows, the acoustic quality of the exterior envelope, the landscaping. Nobody goes out after certain hours, so the terrace is closed, so it doesn't ring through the neighborhood. So all of those things are managed through the hotel management group and very sensitive to all of those issues.

We want this to succeed and to continue to have events. So that is important to everybody, for sure.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:31 - 1:24:37)
Thank you. We'll now shift to select board questions. I'm going to start at the other end.

Katie?

[Speaker 24] (1:24:39 - 1:24:50)
I was not prepared for that change up. So I would just like to talk a little bit more about the relationship to Linscott Park and how you all envision that occurring.

[Speaker 9] (1:24:57 - 1:24:58)
That was supposed to be your slide.

[Speaker 14] (1:24:59 - 1:25:50)
It's like I set you up. So as we had said on the ground floor, that ground floor is really designed to pull people through and connect to Linscott Park. We think that is an incredible amenity.

We want the view from every part of that lobby and every part of the interior amenities to be of the park and the outdoor space and of those spectacular trees. We worked hard to preserve the largest trees on the site and to really make this a place that people will want to spread out into. So there could be events, and we've talked to the town about is that something that's desirable?

Could we imagine that we might activate some of the park with other events? So I think it's an amenity that you have, and it's phenomenal. So the connection of the hotel, the front door, and the lobby, and all of this, the terrace, even the rooms that overlook it.

The idea is that it all works together.

[Speaker 9] (1:25:58 - 1:26:49)
The guest terraces? The Linscott Terrace. We're going to work with the town and hopefully get an easement for creating an actual way for people that are in the bar lounge, in the ground floor of the hotel, to come out and access and activate the Linscott Terrace and walk down to the Linscott Terrace.

So that's what you're seeing here in the foreground. We really felt like it was important for us to do that because all of the other edges of Linscott Park are street edges, whether it's Monument, I think it is, and then Elmwood. And so this is our only opportunity to actually activate a program along the edge of Linscott Park itself.

So we're trying to do that as much as possible. And driving up and seeing it. Yeah.

[Speaker 15] (1:26:59 - 1:27:25)
David. Yeah, another fantastic presentation, so thank you. John, you had mentioned positive impact to community as well as this hospitality asset being a catalyst for economic growth, which is something that we're certainly focused on in Swampskate.

So any concept and idea as to how many jobs would be created through this?

[Speaker 3] (1:27:26 - 1:29:58)
You know, I wish I could give you a good answer on that. I don't know. On site, I mean, we have 60 rooms, so we'll have a core of people working on site, and that will probably create literally at least 120 jobs, I would say, plus the rest, including some of the restaurant and maybe some of the fast food.

But I think I could possibly exceed that. When we're talking about the activity, the activity that we envision is going to be something where we hope working with the town, you're doing activation on your own in that park. You're doing activation with other people using it.

We're hoping that we can build off of that, that you will continue to do that. And I would, as John has pointed out, in D.C. what we've done is we've taken a farmer's market and grown it into a much bigger event. And we've used that now with charitable groups and whatnot so they can build off of it and create more activities.

Now, those aren't direct jobs. But if you're looking at revitalizing the gateway coming into the town, I do think that's what you want to start working on. In our project outside of Atlanta, they have a whole bike program, believe it or not.

They have bicycle races, all sorts of things like that that the town sponsors that we're going to build off of using the hotel because we want to create that kind of activity. I think we know how to run those things. We know how to do those events and how to find sponsorship for them.

What we need is a partner on the other side, you, that is willing to sort of consider those things, knowing about the traffic coming up the shore drive, coming into the town, various things like that, that you're fully aware of so that we don't create more problems but we basically find solutions for it. But I think that's what we would hope to find. Could that lead to a lot more jobs?

It could certainly underwrite a lot of the small businesses is what it could do. It could preserve jobs. Could it lead to jobs, I think, sort of on the weekends or during the events while you're having them?

I think it could. We would hope to be the sponsor of those events with you. So that's how we would get it.

In other words, it's not just pushing it over to you. But, you know, making sure that things work, making sure the traffic works, making sure the neighborhood is comfortable, we have to work along with you on that. But I think also what we need is basically a blessing to go do those things.

[Speaker 15] (1:29:58 - 1:29:59)
Thank you, John.

[Speaker 17] (1:30:00 - 1:30:24)
Doug? Hopefully a couple quick ones. In terms of community engagement in the design process, you've kind of portrayed this as it appears as relatively thought through.

This is what you're proposing. Is that your common approach or do you expect this to be kind of a lot of give and take? We're going to say absolutely not.

[Speaker 3] (1:30:25 - 1:31:04)
No one's had an experience in this part of Massachusetts who has not gone into basically a prolonged discussion that takes into account what the community is interested in, and making changes and adjustments. A little bit different in our approach than the previous approach is we think it might be better to have us present something and have you react to it as opposed to trying to, and again, I'm not, it's a style issue. It's nothing tangible in the sense that they will do an excellent job working with you, and I'm quite sure the third group will do an excellent job working with you as well.

You have good competitors here.

[Speaker 17] (1:31:04 - 1:31:04)
Great.

[Speaker 3] (1:31:04 - 1:31:20)
But I do think that, quite frankly, for us, we want to bring our ideas to the table, see if you think they're good, and then if we're selected, we want to pursue them. There's got to be some, there will be adjustments made. There will definitely be adjustments.

[Speaker 17] (1:31:20 - 1:31:37)
Great. My second question is this, as the gentleman asked earlier, between kind of what Pinnacle recommended in terms of the number of rooms versus what you're proposing and not uniquely, and how you see that being outsmarting what Pinnacle reflected, or how do you kind of bridge that?

[Speaker 5] (1:31:37 - 1:32:05)
Yeah, I mean, we think that there definitely is some room there on the potential demand. There's no other supply up here in this market, effectively, until you get into some neighboring towns. So, you know, we think going up to 60 keys from the 40 that Pinnacle had initially looked at, we adjusted our occupancy rate down a point or two to address that issue.

We have had conversations about the feasibility of having 60 keys. We think that that's absolutely doable and would be supported in the community.

[Speaker 7] (1:32:06 - 1:32:30)
The other thing I'd add to that is that we bumped up, we really are confident in the F&B program as well. We think, you know, kind of knowing the area a little bit, how confident, just how popular this might be as a destination for local people and events. So I think we've bumped up our numbers to kind of see that in our pro forma as well, which allows you to have some more rooms, potentially.

[Speaker 3] (1:32:31 - 1:32:32)
I know that's another discussion.

[Speaker 7] (1:32:32 - 1:32:35)
Yeah, well, we'll get to that. Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 19] (1:32:36 - 1:32:46)
So I'm going to stick with that question. So you went with 60 rooms. So do you feel like you could even add additional rooms across the street, like having an annex?

[Speaker 5] (1:32:47 - 1:33:06)
Potentially. I mean, I think it depends on what ultimately happens over there. So I think that's why we want to kind of collaborate with the town on the use of the Hawthorne site.

If we think that we can increase food and beverage opportunities, more event space, things like that, we'd have to take a look at that. I think that's definitely an analysis that we would like to engage with.

[Speaker 19] (1:33:06 - 1:33:13)
So are you saying that you feel that there is a market? Because I'm hearing you saying that there is a market for it. Am I hearing correctly?

Above 60?

[Speaker 5] (1:33:14 - 1:33:16)
Yeah. I think we'd have to take a look at it.

[Speaker 19] (1:33:17 - 1:33:18)
He said yes. I'm going to take the yes.

[Speaker 5] (1:33:19 - 1:33:22)
If you get to a point where you have too many rooms on the site.

[Speaker 9] (1:33:25 - 1:33:27)
Yeah. Do you want to say something? Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:33:27 - 1:34:16)
I think what you have. Yes. I'll admit.

I'm old. So, therefore, the fact is that that's my excuse in here. But the fact is that I do think is you want to think about future growth.

And that site does give you the potential for future growth and room to meet room demand. Okay? So that's number one.

I think all of us will point out, across the street, close to the water, if you could have some rooms over there, there's a magnetism to that that helps strengthen the location. So how you break that down initially on the first go around needs, I think, more study and more work. Also, quite honestly, I think there's a timing issue.

This could be ready to go before you're ready to go over on the other site. Things like that all have to be talked through and worked on.

[Speaker 19] (1:34:17 - 1:34:47)
So my next question was on timing. If you were to be given a contract and you would take how long to do your, what do you call it, your final analysis of your due diligence. I think, what do you have, due diligence, 90 days?

Yeah, 60 to 90 days. So after your due diligence, how long would it take to construct this to the point where somebody would be able to use the restaurant, use the hotel?

[Speaker 5] (1:34:48 - 1:35:10)
So from award, I want to say we were looking at about 18 to 24 months to kind of get through design, all of our diligence, et cetera, closing on funding, about 18 months for construction. So 18 and 18 is 36, so three and a half years or so.

[Speaker 19] (1:35:11 - 1:35:12)
Thank you.

[Speaker 36] (1:35:13 - 1:35:14)
Peter.

[Speaker 12] (1:35:14 - 1:36:03)
I'm going to stay consistent with my question from last time, just ask it a little differently, which is you guys are doing, I think you called it the driftway in situate. If we were, one of the steps here is eventually we'll be asking you and talking to counterparties that you've done projects with. And if we were talking to the select board in situate, you know, what, besides, you know, I guess in an interview they say, what's your worst quality?

You say, my worst quality is I work too much. Aside from what you, the political worst quality is, you know, what's going to be kind of the feedback from situate through that permitting process if I was talking to a neighbor or if I was talking to a select board member, which we ought to do here in this process to kind of what are they going to like? What's going to be their frustration?

Share that little color with us.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:05 - 1:37:17)
Well, first of all, John lives in situate, so if you want to do a project in your hometown, you have to really seriously consider doing that. But it was a really successful process. I think they would tell you that we were super collaborative.

I mean, we spent a lot of time. That's a really large project. It's 78 units over six buildings in situate.

For situate, it's a huge project for them. It was in, it was an old parking lot that the MBTA had. It was surplus parking, so we had the T involved as well in working through some of those discussions.

And it was a very collaborative process. We went through, I don't even know how many meetings with them, six meetings or so at least to get through the process and to be responsive to some of the concerns that they had. We were very collaborative in trying to figure out solutions for storm water management and other issues like that.

So I think they'd tell you we're open, we're transparent, we're collaborative. And any time there would be an issue, we had some runoff issues with a few storms early on in the construction process, they got addressed super quickly. So I think they'd tell you that we were great to work with.

We also enabled them to get a MassWorks grant that was really vital in helping the town beef up some of their infrastructure. And they used our project as a catalyst for that. Any other thoughts there?

[Speaker 7] (1:37:17 - 1:37:45)
One thing I'd add is that we, as a question kept earlier, we had multiple voluntary meetings with the neighbors and everyone around that we sat down in a local kind of bar, invited people in just to hear about the project, ask questions. That was not required by the town. We coordinated with the selectmen.

We did countless, I think, meetings with the town to make sure that people were comfortable with this. It was a very, as Stanley said, large project for the town, but, again, transformative for this part of the town.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:45 - 1:39:29)
The only thing I would add, too, in addition to the planning board that we worked through, we also had they created a design, which was an advisory board, to the planning board. And we worked with the design team down even to the selection of the colors of the buildings. I mean, we went through the whole thing with them.

And with the colonial history of the town and things like that all taken into account so that we try to reflect literally what they thought was most appropriate for the town and what we could build. So that whole process went on. To go back to Mary Ellen's question, it probably extended our development process by close to nine months.

That was additional work. But it was additional work that, quite frankly, left us in a situation where the town was very pleased with what we were doing with us and with the product. So it was time well spent.

But there were a lot of meetings. And it's because the project was much larger than what the town was used to dealing with. And then we had lots of issues that were unexpected both on their part and our part.

There was a water problem in the town. There was a sewage problem in the town. We had to basically help them with the mass grant that was $2 million to get that to solve other issues around the town.

Or situate that weren't caused by us or by our project. But literally they could use us to basically help solve those problems. It cost us time, but it was time well spent.

I would hope what they would say is if you select us, how good we are to work with. I would also tell you I'm absolutely convinced that another project comes up around situate. We would have their total endorsement and support.

Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:29 - 1:39:32)
We have just under a minute, but Sean, if you want to close it out.

[Speaker 23] (1:39:32 - 1:39:53)
I just want to thank you, John. I want to thank the team. John, I reached out to you prior to the pandemic because I followed what you were doing in situate.

Frankly, it is absolutely incredible to have you here. Helping us envision what this site could be. Thank you.

I'm grateful. I really do hope.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:54 - 1:40:26)
I want to tell you honestly, you've got two very, very good teams. One to hear from next and one you heard from already. You really have selected, I think.

You've given yourself a very, very good, hard choice, but I think a good choice. You won't come out in a bad spot. Honestly, I would tell you that.

It's a tough problem to have. It's a good problem to have. We would like to be selected, obviously, but I would applaud you on who else you select as well.

Honestly, you have people who really do care. They walk the walk. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:26 - 1:41:20)
Thank you. I'm going to give it a few seconds while people get re-situated. All right.

Our final presentation is with Clearview Investment. And I will turn it over to Charles Mallory.

[Speaker 2] (1:41:21 - 1:50:15)
And this is my son, Dixon Mallory. So we have another father-son team. They just left the Phil Craft lookalike and the taller son.

But I'll tell you, a friend of mine from Swansea has the expression, having a high-class problem. And I really reiterate what John Drew just said. You have a high-class problem here because those two were winning presentations, I can tell you that.

So we're honored to be here. We're here and delighted to be here to share our story and vision for a full-service Delamar hotel and spa in a very special location in your beautiful town. Location, location, location.

The Hadley School has it. And therefore, it is extremely important to respect the Olmstead Historic District and the historical context of the Hadley School in your community. The town has gone through a thoughtful process to reach the conclusion that an iconic hotel can reestablish Swanscot as a vibrant year-round destination while celebrating its past.

Having been involved my entire life in historic preservation and having served for a combined total of 50 years on the boards of Mystic Seaport Museum and the Shelburne Museum, amongst others, the opportunity to be a part of this project and its adjacency to the sea, Olmstead's last commission in 1885, the town hall and the library is humbling, challenging, but ultimately exciting and hopefully rewarding.

As a side note, this is a wonderful new book which has just come out about Olmstead and H.H. Richardson who sort of collaborated and lived next to each other in Brookline in the 1880s. And it's really, really fascinating to share his history of town planning amongst other things. His biggest master plan was in Buffalo, New York.

And I've always been a longtime Buffalo Bills fan, so you can share my empathy. Anyway, it's actually true. He's for some reason a Buccaneer fan.

I don't quite get it. But anyway, this is the sort of project we thrive on. Including the Delamar's, we have preserved, restored, or positioned seven hotels in the last 25 years.

Delamar Greenwich was a grandfathered, non-conforming motor hotel built at a highway exit on a former waterfront coal yard when I-95 opened in 1961. It had no architectural merit, a checkered history, and was more of a liability than an asset to the town. Given the non-conformity and needing to retain the square footage and structure, we literally put lipstick on a pig.

Which was to totally gut, renovate the interior, and redesign the facade. Today, it's arguably the most successful hotel and restaurant in Connecticut on a per-key basis or on a per-square-foot basis. The Mediterranean Revival lipstick we applied, however, was applied thoughtfully.

The Steamboat Road address is anchored at either end by the Bruce Museum and the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, which were both period examples of the Mediterranean Revival genre. Delamar Traverse City, built in 1968, was the reverse. It was one of the last commissions of Alden Dow, a celebrated mid-century modern architect from Midland, Michigan.

The clean mid-century modern design had been ruined by subsequent owners by applying badly lipstick over lipstick. We stripped off the excessive ornamentation and brought it back to its roots. We tried to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but the multiple additions and reconfiguring of the interiors made it impossible.

This difficult and not-still-completed repositioning during COVID has taken the hotel from 32nd to number one in a very crowded market. Artisan, our beachfront restaurant with a magnificent water view, is ranked as the number one restaurant in Traverse City, maybe even northern Michigan. Ironically, this very successful three-meal-a-day restaurant replaced a nightclub called Shimmer's, which never took advantage of the water view because it only operated at night.

Maybe that's why we got lucky when we bought it. Delamar Southport, in the beautiful 18th and 19th century seaside village of Southport, was purchased unfinished from a bankruptcy in 2008. We were the only buyer.

It was deemed a white elephant. Decisions to alter the sense of arrival to the restaurant, as well as closing a space to eliminate highway noise and create a fun three-season banquet option, has made Delamar Southport our most successful hotel from a financial point of view. I have a letter from the First Selectman of Fairfield, which I can share with you if you would like to see it.

I'm not used to doing these presentations like the other guys, so I apologize for this. The Delamar West Hartford is a ground-up, 103-room luxury hotel that opened at the end of 2017. We having won an RFP from the town of West Hartford.

It is safe to say that it has redefined the hotel experience for the greater Hartford area, and I would encourage any of you to visit it. We are very proud of its design. It's also easier to get to than anything on I-95, where all the others are in Connecticut.

So that's the main reason. We are very proud of its design, its performance, and the value it has added to the West Hartford community. I'll next mention the soon-to-be-open Delamar Mystic Seaport.

We won an RFP to build a hotel in Mystic Seaport on the Mystic Seaport campus, which is in a historic district. Mystic Seaport is the largest and most important maritime museum in the country, and its direct waterfront site is spectacular. It's where my family began its journey in the maritime world in 1816.

This gives me an opportunity to share the origin of the name Delamar. It was meant to connote of the sea or by the sea, but it is not an accurate translation in either French, Spanish, or Italian. It's too long a story to share here, but it is also a nod to a forgotten but very fascinating entrepreneur named Captain Joseph de Lamar, whose obituary in 1918 in the Boston Globe described him as, quote, a man of mystery, unquote.

In summary, we try to infuse our hotels with local color and charm, make them fun and whimsical, but always different from each other. The consistency is the quality of the design, the food and beverage offerings, and lastly, and by far most importantly, the exceptional service. As has been mentioned earlier, for hundreds of years, hotels in Europe, in small and big towns in America, have really been the, should be the living room of the town.

And that's really a true concept, and we should strive to do that. And the other participants brought that up as well, and I think that's very important. At this time, I would like to introduce Daniel Coggins, our Vice President of Strategy, who will discuss our hotel operations, and my son, Dixon, who bought this opportunity to our attention and will go over the more specificity of our proposal, which he authored.

I'll look forward to answering any questions later. Thank you.

[Speaker 8] (1:50:18 - 1:53:14)
Thank you, Charles. How much time do we have left? Are we still doing good?

Yeah, so in addition to the development side of our company, I want to just touch on the operational expertise that Greenwich Hospitality has. We have a deep understanding of the luxury independent boutique space, and over the years, we've built a management platform, a highly sophisticated management platform that allows us to deliver best-in-class restaurant, hotels, spa operations, revenue management, sales and marketing, HR, accounting. And over the years, we've continued to refine and develop those systems, and it allows us to have the very best service that we can create.

We're a people-centric employer, so by prioritizing the wellness of our staff, we have very high retention rates, and we're very proud of that. Many of our staff will have 5, 10, 15-plus years of service with us, and by combining the retention with the training that we conduct allows us to deliver a very, very high level of service, something that the Delamar is known for, and that's demonstrated in the accolades that we have here on the screen. We also have a big presence in the press.

Erin Spiegel, our director of PR and communications, does an amazing job. She has a very deep network of contacts with editors, both local and national, and influencers. Last year, we had over 125 press placements in magazines such as Vogue, Forbes, just to name a few.

And these weren't paid. These were organic, bringing editors out to the properties and seeing what we do. Quickly, I need to touch on the restaurants because we believe the food and beverages are critical components of the success of the hotels, and I want to give Dixon some time.

But we have a very strong operation. Our corporate executive chef has been with the company 20 years. Our regional director of operations, 15 years.

Our regional director of catering and banquets, 20 years as well. So we understand food and beverage. Our restaurants have their own unique identities.

They are institutions within their own communities where they exist, and the success of those restaurants really feed the banquet component of the property as well. I'm going to hand it over to Dixon because I know we're running out of time. But I will answer some more questions in a bit.

[Speaker 6] (1:53:15 - 1:56:14)
Thank you, Daniel. So rightly or wrongly, we took the approach of historic preservation quite seriously here. We're not really manipulating any part of the exterior of the building to any great degree.

You'll see here we're proposing a rooftop amenity. Over the main building, here we have solar panels over the annex. Given where we are on height restrictions on how far we go up with the rooftop amenity on the main building, we can certainly add some solar panels on that as well, obviously.

So quickly we'll run through this. I can just kind of control every part of the process from development, construction, management, and obviously ongoing brand management. Site plan.

Right here we have 83 keys. As you saw, we didn't really manipulate the existing footprint of the building and the site. We wanted to try and maximize our parking, certainly initially.

And if we can peel back some of that afterwards to create some green space that would work with Lanskit Park, I know we would certainly do that. In terms of floor plan layout, the basement, it actually works out quite nicely. There is an entryway that could be dedicated off of the main entryway that would spill right into the spa.

We have a gym facility. And the rest of the basement in the main building is dedicated largely to back office functions, storage, office, kitchen, what have you. In the annex, we just envision converting that into guest rooms.

Working up to the ground floor, again, maintaining that lobby right off where the current principal's office and the nurse's office is. And that would spill right into our restaurant that would overlook Lanskit Park. And here, for those of you who have not been in the building, really tall.

I'm about 5'11". I'm not quite 6 feet. So you can really see the dramatic height that you'd get there.

So a real sense of drama. You walk into the restaurant off the hotel lobby. Great big windows overlooking the park.

We would propose a terrace that would extend off of that restaurant to capture seasonal dining. This is just a photo of our restaurant in West Hartford that shows a restaurant dining room with some pretty dramatic ceiling heights, although not nearly what we'd get here. Moving on to the second floor.

Not a lot to talk about. All guest rooms. Third floor, same story as the other group proposed.

There would be terraces, natural terraces, off of those rooms that are overlooking Lanskit Park. One minute. All righty.

And on to the rooftop. In terms of layout and programming of the rooftop, we would propose a number of rooms. One, two, three suites.

As well as a rooftop amenity event space that would certainly cater to events on peak season. But then also have an a la carte dining bar on the rooftop for transient diners as well. So I think, at the buzzer, got it in?

Our hotels are dog friendly as well.

[Speaker 4] (1:56:16 - 1:56:22)
If you could, you had mentioned when you were showing the site plan, you mentioned 83 keys. I believe you meant 83 parking spaces.

[Speaker 6] (1:56:22 - 1:56:36)
Oh, my apologies. 83 parking spaces. Yes, sorry.

That plan that we went through is about 58 keys. Again, that might mix a little bit. I think as of right in the zone, it's 60 keys.

Yeah, so. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:56:36 - 1:56:45)
So we will open it up to public questions. I'm happy to take any questions online or in the room. Feel free to raise your hand.

Yes.

[Speaker 26] (1:56:52 - 1:57:38)
Hi, thanks for coming. I know that you've – I know you talked to Sean and Pete and the select board and – but that area does have a lot of challenges. Parking.

We've talked about parking. With the addition of 100 or whatever, 80 staff members, people working there. So now they're driving.

And then we talked about maybe, what do you say, 83 to 90 keys. So now we've got 83 toilets and 83 showers.

[Speaker 2] (1:57:39 - 1:57:40)
It's 58.

[Speaker 26] (1:57:40 - 1:57:56)
Oh, 58. I'm sorry. So you have 58 toilets and 58 showers.

How would you handle that? And has that come up in other developments that you've worked with?

[Speaker 2] (1:57:58 - 1:58:48)
Yeah, first of all, it's – there are 58 rooms as shown in 83 parking spaces, which is considerably more than the other programs. But I will tell you, parking is a huge issue. And don't underestimate how important it is.

We solve that in our other hotels by valet parking. But you can never have enough parking, especially, you know, here. Now, in terms of toilets and water and sewage, to your question, that is absolutely something that we would work with the architects and the engineers and the city, the municipal agencies to make sure that everything is absolutely appropriate.

[Speaker 4] (1:58:51 - 1:58:54)
Anybody else with a question? Yes.

[Speaker 36] (1:59:00 - 1:59:01)
Hold on.

[Speaker 13] (1:59:03 - 1:59:56)
Just real quick, in terms of inside some of the full-time to part-time, it sounds like you did a great job telling us all of that. So if you could just talk a little bit about full-time versus part-time in terms of staff, that would be terrific. And then you did a great job in your delivery, talking in your RFP, giving us some really good concrete pieces of information about thoughtful, mindful green components.

Materials is the only thing. You know, there's just – staff have such high exposure to materials all day long, right? People are just sort of coming and going, sleeping there.

But being mindful of people's long-term safeties in terms of off-gassings with materials and, you know, anti-flammatory things and stuff like that. Is those things that you've had to bring up in other, you know, builds, has that been mindful?

[Speaker 2] (1:59:58 - 2:00:52)
Yes. The West Hartford Hotel was built to a LEED gold standard. We are very sensitive to that.

Our hotel in Greenwich had solar panels on it 25 years ago, which we use for heating our hot water. The materials that would be used in the interior renovation of this building and, for that matter, any rooftop pillbox would, of course, be safe and the state-of-the-art in terms of being efficient. So that – we'll be very mindful of that, as any responsible builder or developer would be.

That's just – you know, you can't get away with using bad materials or unsafe materials today. And I think there was one other piece.

[Speaker 4] (2:00:53 - 2:00:54)
It was full-time and part-time.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:54 - 2:01:39)
Oh, yeah. I see 120, 125 people as being employed here, and that will drive more, you know, other employment locally as well. And that's 125 full-time.

That's assuming the restaurant is a successful restaurant. That's the big driver, the labor piece. But our hotel in Southport, Connecticut has only 44 keys, 45, and that's got 125 people working there.

It seems like a very big number, but you'd be surprised how, you know, three meals a day and, you know, there are a lot of jobs.

[Speaker 36] (2:01:41 - 2:01:42)
Do I have another question?

[Speaker 21] (2:01:56 - 2:03:23)
Hi. I'm Jonathan Lehman, and I'm on the Historical Commission. I was very impressed when I read your proposal because I felt it paid a lot of attention to historic preservation and adaptive reuse.

And, obviously, that was no coincidence based on what you've said tonight. There, besides the outside, the school, the Hadley School Annex is the only school in Swampscott, I think, where the annex actually matched the original building, the bricks, the exterior, the design. A lot of thought was put into it, and all of any proposal would involve using the entire space, whether it's a new building or an old.

So I was delighted to see that you're using the original because it is so beautiful and it's impossible to duplicate perfectly. And I also like the fact that the solar panels, which are very important, are on the roof where you can't see them because those don't add to the aesthetics at all. So in terms of historic preservation, I feel like you folks have hit it out of the park, and I certainly wanted to thank you for that.

Jonathan, do you have a question? Just a comment.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:25 - 2:03:26)
We're taking questions.

[Speaker 21] (2:03:27 - 2:03:28)
But thank you.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:29 - 2:04:03)
Can I answer the question? We did a little drive around the Olmstead District, and I happen to own an Italianate Victorian built in 1889 in Lime Rock, Connecticut. And I felt I was surrounded by my cousins.

It's just such an incredible body of architectural history. And the shocking thing to me is it's virtually intact. We saw about three houses that were not period correct.

It's stunning. It really is.

[Speaker 4] (2:04:04 - 2:04:07)
I'm going to take a question from Teams. Andrea.

[Speaker 27] (2:04:13 - 2:05:05)
Hey, y'all. Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay, wonderful. So this is a question for the folks at Delamar as well as a thought for the other parties who are there as well. I'm really appreciative of all the thought you guys have put into these presentations.

I live down the street. My kids go to Linscott Park pretty much every day. So we are also very excited about this hotel coming.

I think, you know, we've heard a lot about the beautiful Ontario amenities and the views. But guests are going to leave the hotel and interact with the town as well. Many guests and people who have just moved to Swampscott are unaware that King's Beach was closed 91% of 2023 due to high bacterial count due to raw sewage.

How do you plan on having your guests interact with King's Beach?

[Speaker 2] (2:05:11 - 2:05:13)
I think I'll let my son answer this one.

[Speaker 6] (2:05:19 - 2:05:50)
Good fun here. Well, in that instance, it doesn't sound like we'd have much of a choice. But what we will say is, you know, interacting with the water, you don't always need to be in the water, right?

Walking along, there's that beautiful walking path that goes right down to – you probably walked in a hand on that path. So in terms of getting outside, having the park right there, being able to walk around the beautiful historic district, there's no shortage of opportunities to get outside of our – what we hope would be a beautiful hotel on the inside. I don't know if that sufficiently answers the question.

[Speaker 4] (2:05:51 - 2:05:53)
Yes. Yes, Jared.

[Speaker 25] (2:06:05 - 2:06:30)
Good evening. Jared Germa again. Thank you for the presentation.

I really appreciate it. And I just had a couple quick questions for clarification. In the other two presentations, the architect was present.

Is there a specific architectural firm you work with or plan to work with for this project? And how does that generally go when it comes to the community engagement again?

[Speaker 2] (2:06:33 - 2:07:10)
We've worked with multiple architects, and this assignment would be open. We've used someone to help us with the renderings and the floor plans who's from a very, very good firm in Greenwich. He may well be the candidate, but we would – at this stage, we're still open to talk to other people, including people in Boston and, for that matter, Swampscot.

It's not a lock on the architect. We'll choose the best architect for this job on a given day.

[Speaker 35] (2:07:25 - 2:07:33)
Hi. Lori Lubben, Precinct 4. Can you talk a little bit about how your project will activate the town center and create community engagement?

[Speaker 2] (2:07:35 - 2:07:41)
I think I'll let Daniel answer this because he's been involved in the opening of some other hotels.

[Speaker 8] (2:07:43 - 2:08:27)
Thank you, Charles. Yeah, so, you know, if you look at some of our other projects, we're very active in the community. We have letters of recommendation supporting that.

I know there was talk earlier about events in the park. We would absolutely support those types of events. You know, one of the things we pride ourselves on is creating experiences with our guests.

Again, we're a management company as much as a developer, so we're here for the long-term success of this project. We're going to be here on the ground. So we would work with the community, brainstorming the local CVB, the town.

[Speaker 35] (2:08:27 - 2:08:32)
If you go back to your first floor plan, are there spaces that will be accessible to the general public?

[Speaker 8] (2:08:34 - 2:09:16)
Yes. Yep, the lobby, if we go back, Dixon. Obviously, the restaurant as well is a key component for the town.

We have one more. These two guest rooms here as well, we've also discussed potentially turning this into a sort of lobby lounge bar to create some additional space for the community as well.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:17 - 2:09:21)
We'll take a question from Teams from Rupert.

[Speaker 20] (2:09:22 - 2:09:53)
Hi, Rupert Deese again. So it's clear just from your presentation that you all attach significance to historical preservation, both from an aesthetic and an integrity perspective. I guess I'm curious whether or not there were any modifications that you considered or whether you approached the proposal with the kind of full preservation of the property as kind of axiomatic.

[Speaker 2] (2:09:56 - 2:09:59)
I'm not so sure I heard the last words.

[Speaker 20] (2:10:00 - 2:10:13)
Oh, I'm sorry. Basically, just whether – the simple form of the question is whether you considered any modifications to the building underlook or anything in coming to the proposal that you put forward.

[Speaker 6] (2:10:14 - 2:10:47)
The short answer is no. What we did explore was potentially creating kind of a bridge between the annex and the main building because you'd have to provide ADA access to the annex. So in the floor plans that you see here, we only are connecting the ground floor, the two buildings on the ground floor, with elevators, really a service elevator and then two elevators for guests in either building.

But beyond that, no. I mean discussing the rooftop, the programming of that is still to be determined. But all along we were – decided we want to keep the annex building.

[Speaker 4] (2:10:49 - 2:10:51)
We have time for one more question.

[Speaker 29] (2:11:07 - 2:11:42)
Ted Dooley, a member of the planning board. First, thank you for coming and putting a proposal before us tonight. It's impressive to be able to see this.

Two very brief questions. First off, I noticed that a lot of the other properties that you manage, you have executive or long-term stay options at your hotel. Is that something you would envision possibly for this property?

And secondly, what are the type of events that you would look to advertise your hotel to host? Banquets, social events, corporate events, what are the type of things you typically host at your other properties?

[Speaker 8] (2:11:46 - 2:12:09)
So on the event side, last year we did about 150 weddings across the portfolio. And then we've done countless social events, corporate meetings and functions as well. So it runs the gamut on the function side.

What was the other question?

[Speaker 6] (2:12:10 - 2:12:46)
In terms of the long-term stays, the property in Southport that has a few apartments, that was already there. That building existed. So we just took on that building, finished off the hotel, and those apartments were there.

In West Hartford, we created – the top floor of the property does have rental apartments. And we just liked that idea of having it be additive not only to the hotel but more people in downtown West Hartford in that instance. They use the restaurant.

They use the spa. So it's really just kind of creating a community within a community, if that makes sense. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (2:12:47 - 2:12:53)
We'll now move to select board questions. I'm going to start in the middle. So Doug, it's your turn.

[Speaker 18] (2:12:54 - 2:12:55)
You ready?

[Speaker 17] (2:12:56 - 2:13:25)
Yeah. You and your proposal certainly were kind of most detailed about your sustainability measures. I know you mentioned you did one project that was LEED Gold.

I think there's, like, a lot more one could do nowadays. There's a hotel recently opened in Connecticut that was Passive House certified. Can you speak a little bit more granularly?

I would have loved to have asked everyone the same question, but can you kind of push the limit there about how far you're likely to want to go?

[Speaker 2] (2:13:27 - 2:14:54)
That hotel I know very well. It's called the Marcel, and it was developed by a guy called Bruce Becker who happened to be in my wife's class in college. And he did an incredible job of creating a zero, you know, net zero product.

I don't think it would work here. I think that was a building designed by Marcel Breuer. The windows were fixed.

It's really a completely tight envelope. You can't get outside in that building. There's literally no way of enjoying an outside moment.

You know, I worry about the longevity of that hotel, to be very honest with you. It's in a great, you know, it's a new haven. It's next, you know, it's not too far from Yale.

But I think this is a place where you want to go outside. I mean, you can't create a building that's airtight in this, you know, in the Hadley School. You want to bring the outdoors in.

All the other presentations in ours speak to that. I mean, the Drew, you know, terrace. I want to take a piece of that park, too.

I didn't have the guts to ask for it. And I can tell you, there are a couple of trees that aren't so great, which they were selectively left.

[Speaker 17] (2:14:55 - 2:14:58)
Yeah, well, a passive house doesn't require keeping people locked up.

[Speaker 6] (2:14:59 - 2:15:25)
I mean, as, you know, with our proposal in keeping the two existing buildings, there's only so much we can do to improve, you know, the tightness of the building. Obviously, new windows throughout the main building and the annex. You know, right now the building is, you know, he's from steam power, which is not the most efficient.

So we'd use either geothermal or heat pump systems or a combination of the two. But in terms of, you know, again, tightening up and making it a more efficient building, there's only so much you can do with an older building.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:27 - 2:15:29)
We'll move to Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 19] (2:15:32 - 2:16:02)
So one of the questions that I have is because you did keep it very original, how confident are you with the amount of time you've been able to look at the building that you're going to be able to do your due diligence and there's really not going to be too many changes or you're not going to have to come back and say, hey, select board, we just found this or this or whatever you might think you could find. And then all of a sudden you want to make some changes in your offerings.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:04 - 2:16:43)
Well, we're pretty confident because it's been a school up until now. And I don't think any of you people would want your children to be going to a school that was unsafe in any way, shape or form. So I think this building is a great starting point.

Obviously there's work to be done. But if it had been abandoned for 20 years, which some hotel projects are, but this is a school. I mean, I'm sure that it's been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by everyone in the town who's responsible for it.

So I think we've got a great jumping-off point. So does that answer your question?

[Speaker 19] (2:16:43 - 2:16:44)
Yeah, it's great.

[Speaker 4] (2:16:45 - 2:16:45)
Peter.

[Speaker 12] (2:16:48 - 2:17:30)
Thanks. Again, different version of the same question. You guys were very nice.

One of the follow-up questions that we asked you was to provide us examples of the ground lease, for example, in West Hartford and other communities where you've actually had interactions with the community as the counterparty. And so focusing specifically on projects where a community like Swampskate is your counterparty that you had to negotiate with, assuming you were selected, we would then have to negotiate with you. Are there things, without getting overly legalistic, I'm going to ask the question a little bit different, are there things in the ground leases and agreements that you had to agree to in other communities that you would not want to agree to with Swampskate?

[Speaker 2] (2:17:31 - 2:18:46)
That's tough. You know, off the top of my head, no. We had a very smooth lease negotiation with West Hartford.

You know, it's a negotiation. There are lawyers on both sides. There are towns on both sides.

It's just a negotiation that happens. In the case of Mystic Seaport, that was an institution that, you know, the whole property is a historic landmark. They were very concerned, actually, that my family's involvement was so great there that they had to hire another set of lawyers to make sure there was no conflicts of interest.

I mean, it was totally buttoned up. And, no, I just think, you know, you've got to start with a proper lease form and then just talk it through. So I know, you know, parking was probably the biggest issue that we really dealt with.

[Speaker 12] (2:18:46 - 2:19:04)
Let me just ask, in staying with arrangements which had a public counterparty or an institution as a counterparty as opposed to just a one-off sale of a property, have you in the last 10, 15 years, have you walked away from transactions after being designated or entering into negotiations?

[Speaker 2] (2:19:05 - 2:19:18)
No. No. Every time we've entered a project, we've actually won it and built it.

Have you ever walked away from anything? Thank you. David.

[Speaker 15] (2:19:22 - 2:19:47)
I had about a half dozen questions. I have one left. But first, I just want to thank you, Daniel, Dixon, Charles, for making the trip up from Connecticut.

Really just curious about the timeline of the process and the construction timeline. So if you can just help to educate me and educate those watching here in the room and on TV, most appreciated.

[Speaker 2] (2:19:48 - 2:20:14)
You know, our homework was already done for us by the Drew Organization. I mean, everything they said was bang on, and I honestly mean that. I would just take what they said.

These are very experienced, much more experienced than I am in the Boston area. They build all sorts of big projects. So if that's the timeline they gave you, I would not want to say we could do it any better.

[Speaker 6] (2:20:16 - 2:20:36)
And just to add to that, and the developers will, I'm sure, agree, doing a ground-up project is not always harder than doing a redevelopment of an existing building. So even though we're not changing any of the standing structures today, that's not going to say it can be done six months quicker. It just doesn't work that way, unfortunately.

Fair enough.

[Speaker 15] (2:20:36 - 2:20:39)
So just for clarity's sake, 36 months or so?

[Speaker 6] (2:20:39 - 2:20:40)
In that neighborhood, yeah.

[Speaker 15] (2:20:40 - 2:20:42)
Thank you. Katie.

[Speaker 24] (2:20:44 - 2:21:12)
I was just hoping you all could speak a little bit more about your relationship to the water. I know we all chuckled when the question came up about the situation at Kings Beach. But we do take our relationship to the water very seriously in town.

So I know you guys do as well. So if you could just sort of capitalize on that synergy between your view of the ocean, that would be great.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:15 - 2:22:26)
You know, again, the name of the hotel was created of the sea by the sea. It's not accurate. But I think we want to try and use the water as much as possible.

I don't think we have a boat that can be part of the hotel experience. We'd love to do that. We certainly want to encourage everyone to use the beach, and presumably the water will be safe.

I mean, there were thousands of hotel rooms here in 1907, and they were all using the beach. So I think this is the opportunity to start that ball rolling again, personally. And I think, you know, I do believe if this hotel is successful, I can guarantee you there will be room for another hotel.

Absolutely no question in my mind. And so let's hope it's successful, because then the great vision that the first group have, you know, if it's not there, it could be somewhere else, maybe, if there is another place. Maybe there's not.

Sean.

[Speaker 23] (2:22:27 - 2:22:56)
No questions. Just really want to express my gratitude. Dixon, you've come up here a few times now.

And really, I appreciate your passion for historic preservation. Charles, I'd like to borrow that book from you. Look, this is a tough but wonderful problem for us to have.

I really am grateful. And so thank you all very much for your presentation and your passion for what you do. It shows through and through.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:56 - 2:22:59)
Well, thank you very much. We're really happy to be here.

[Speaker 4] (2:23:09 - 2:24:20)
All right. So just a couple closing items. Tonight was the first public presentation for these three proposals.

This is not the only process piece. The select board will be holding discussions and reviewing these proposals over the next couple of meetings. So at the February 7th and the February 12th meetings, the board will be reviewing and discussing the proposals and will also be taking and reviewing comments from the public.

So I definitely encourage all public members and community members to review the video. We do have the video. We will make it accessible online.

We will also publish the presentation files on the website so you'll have access to all of that material. Feel free to review those materials and come to the future meetings. You do have a great opportunity as well.

We do have the companies here tonight. So feel free to ask them questions if you would like. Always respect their time, though.

They did travel out here. But if you do have questions, feel free to engage with those members. Thank you again for coming out tonight, and we'll see you at the next meeting.

Oh, Dave has to close it.

[Speaker 15] (2:24:20 - 2:24:42)
And just one thing, just lastly, I just want to thank all the members of the public for coming out and certainly want to thank Noanit, the Drew Companies, and Delamar for their incredible presentations. So I look forward to learning more and having additional conversations in the future with all of you. Thank you.