Architectural Review Board Meeting   7/6/2021

Hi, everybody.

Hey, Fred.

Hey, Frank.

Hey, Margaret.

Yeah, looks like everybody's here, and it's one o'clock.

Carolyn's got the recording going, so I'll call to order the July 6, 2021 meeting of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID disaster.

A quorum is present.

Architectural review board members present electronically are Fred Missel, Frank Hancock, Chris Henningsen, Frank Stoner, and myself, Dade Van Der Werf.

Opportunities for public access to this meeting are posted on the county's website at the county calendar.

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over phone, both as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

This meeting is being recorded and will be made available on the county's website.

This online meeting is a public record and subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

For all speakers, when it's your turn to speak, please first state your name for the record, and for everybody participating today, please keep your microphone muted, except when you're speaking.

For applicants making presentations, note that your presentation is limited to about 15 minutes, which you can divide among team members, and Carolyn will let us know when your time is up.

Those are.

No.

They're being known.

We'll go to public comment.

Thank you.

We have one item on the consent agenda, ARB 2021-63, Chantelle Beam fixed wireless, PWSF tier two.

Let's see, are there any, let's see, staff do not have a presentation prepared.

They can share drawings if necessary.

All right.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Thank you.

Yes.

Mr. Hancock?

Hi.

Mr. Van Der Werf.

Hi.

Thank you, everyone.

Regular review items.

We have one regular review item today.

Margaret Maliszewski from the Planning Division will be presenting this item.

Are you still seeing it?

Great.

This is a proposal to construct a four-story office building within the Albemarle Business Campus Development.

This site is located at the western corner of the intersection of Wahoo Way and Fifth Street Extended and it's across the street from the county office building.

The office building that's proposed is part of a larger development for which the ARB recommended approval of an initial site plan in December of last year.

The ARB also reviewed and approved the design of the storage building in Block 5 of the development earlier this year.

The proposed office building has a contemporary design that's not a strong reflection of the traditional architecture of the area, but it features glass corners and central building blocks facing the back.

The windows in the white brick walls are partially filled.

Sorry, if anybody isn't muted, if they could go ahead and mute themselves, I'm getting some feedback.

All right, thank you.

Windows in the white brick walls are partially filled with dark colored fiber cement panels.

This is not a traditional window treatment, and we've recommended that additional information be provided to clarify the use of those panels and the appearance of the windows.

The proposed materials are illustrated on a sheet of the architectural cemental, but no samples have been submitted yet.

We've recommended that those material samples be provided for review, and that would include the glass samples and specs, particularly because of the extent of the glass that's proposed.

Line drawing elevations have been provided with this in the middle, but they don't call out all the materials that are used.

So there's a recommendation to revise the elevation drawings to include more complete materials identification and also to revise the drawings to clarify the rooftop structure.

The lowest story of the building is set mostly below street level.

Retaining walls extend out from the building both to the west and to the east.

And the western wall has an opening

that provides stairs down to a park along the western building elevation.

The eastern wall dies off near the end of the parking row closest to the street.

The end of that wall doesn't appear to be coordinated with any site elements, so we've recommended that shrubs be added to help integrate the retaining wall into the landscape, and we've recommended revisions to provide greater coordination between the retaining wall and other site elements.

We've also identified a few other issues with landscaping, two additional interior

Parking lot trees are required as are rows of shrubs along the east side and along the eastern end of the south side of the parking lot.

The staff report includes a list of all the recommendations.

They're presented as comments to be addressed with the next of the middle.

Thank you very much, Margaret.

So for members that may have questions, Frank Hancock, do you have any?

I do not.

Thank you, Margaret.

I don't have any either, Dave.

Thanks.

Thank you, Fred.

Chris?

Margaret, thanks.

Great.

Thank you as well to Margaret.

No questions from me.

Yes, I'm here, Bruce Wardell, and I am the architect for the project.

Let me see if I can turn my camera on, see if that's successful.

There you go.

Good to see you all.

I think what I might do is, can I, it's been a long time since I've been in one of these

meetings with you guys digitally.

Can I share my screen?

Is that possible?

There should be a green button.

OK. Can you all see my screen?

Yep.

OK.

I'll make this fairly quick because this really is simply the submission that we made back in May.

And I will address a couple of things and then raise an issue or two that our client would like to have as a component of our discussion.

I think, as you all have seen, the site is along Fifth Street.

and the facade facing Fifth Street has canted itself out so that it actually fronts on the street square with the kind of curve that happens along Fifth Street along this area, which is one of the things that generated this corner.

of the building with the sloperoof and the large area of glass.

The other component of this is that the vast majority of traffic will be coming from downtown or the 64 interchange there.

And so it's a logical place to create a

of a moment in the building that sort of greets the folks that are approaching the building and sort of identifies it so that when they come in off of Old Lynchburg Road, reenter the site through the middle of the property and will then be kind of reintroduced to the building as they get into that parking area.

Consciously, I think Margaret identified the fact that

that the four-story building is mediated by the topography of the finished site that puts the first floor of the building essentially close to a full story below the road.

And that is reflected in this kind of plinth that the building sits on.

Obviously, this is a preliminary discussion today, and we wanted to

run this by you all to get your initial thoughts and concerns for the building before we took the time to do the final presentation.

This is that view from the southeast.

One of the things that is only slightly evident in this is that we imagine the ceiling of this top floor being a wood ceiling.

in this area of the building, which we would assume would be some sort of an executive suite or one of the higher end portions of the building.

So that the structure of the actual interior framing of that building would actually become visible to the civic area, to the street view.

In response to the concerns about the glass corners of the building that are not seen particularly as, or were reviewed as not being traditional, the idea behind this, again, anytime we deal with a building like this along a corridor, the issue is how do you break down the scale of the building?

And in this case,

When we wanted to have a building that was seen as a kind of cutting edge, more progressive kind of building that represents the kinds of tenants that would be in there, the idea of combining the brick and the glass became the method that we chose.

And one of the most effective ways to break down the scale of a building like this is to sort of

break the facades into pieces that are sort of smaller in scale.

And so that's what generated these kind of corners of glass that then will actually allow the volume of the building to read as a smaller scale, more traditionally scaled building.

and so that's what actually led to these corners was to create a facade that felt this big or a facade that felt this big and then have the corners as less substantial than the center portion of the buildings.

The plinth also reinforces that as well by

distinguishing the lower level of the building from the upper levels of the building, letting the building read as a three-story building when in fact the fourth story is below the floor level.

I think the landscaping, I think one of the discussions, let me switch back to this area, perhaps this one here,

One of the reasons that the landscaping was pulled back at the building itself was in fact to make a distinction between the landscaping that was screening the parking that's below the level of the street and then let the building have an actual presence on the street.

One of the things that has happened across the street, which we have a very nice building across the street, but what's happened is that the landscape has

essentially obscured quite a bit of that building.

And so our thought was that having a presence on the street was a positive component and that the landscaping would reinforce that.

And then finally, one of the things that we wanted to discuss, because there was a mention of some of these horizontal strips, whether they would be

They would be spandrel or some other material.

I think in the glass area, we imagine them being a black spandrel.

In the larger window areas, we imagine this material either being a high-grade panel, probably like a Nichiha panel or something like that, that frames the

allows the opening to be a larger scale opening while having the glass as a smaller scale that gives you a sort of secondary rhythm or secondary scale throughout the facade.

And one of the other issues that I think we would wanna make as a part of this discussion is that in a building where we do have this kind of glass in a relatively modern building,

whether there's an opportunity to perhaps have some kind of other color of glass other than the clear glass that might be able to obscure, you know, once you finally get desks and bookcases and credenzas and chairs and things like that in these buildings, the issue will be what happens to all of that stuff in the facade when that

when we have clear glass from ceiling to floor and whether there might be an opportunity to introduce, although I know that there's a long history of clear glass in the corridor, there might be an opportunity to introduce some other color.

And we haven't proposed that at this point in time because we knew of the precedent that has been longstanding

But we wanted to raise that as an issue of discussion so that we could respond to it when we make our final presentation.

So that's sort of what I have in response.

And again, as this is a preliminary discussion, I'm hoping that it is a conversation and would love to get you all's feedback on this.

And the owner, the client is here as well if Kyle Redinger is here.

And if Kyle, if you wanna

Jump in and say anything.

Yeah, I'm here.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you, Bruce and the ARB board.

I really appreciate everyone's effort on this one.

And I've been so excited.

Pre-COVID, I thought we'd build this thing a lot sooner.

So we'd love to build this building.

The issue I did raise with Bruce and the entrance corridor guidelines for the clear glass I think are challenging.

And I just want to put it in perspective.

You know, I have an office that's at street level on the mall.

I have a lot of windows and my blinds stay shut, you know, pretty much all the time for privacy reasons.

And I guess the question for

The board and Margaret is what sort of thoughts are we giving to how we're screening the interior

desks and chairs and wires and all the things that end up going next to a lot of glass.

And with the idea that if there isn't tenant privacy, you know, blinds or other sorts of blocking solutions happen on the interior of the building.

So I was thinking, you know, maybe there's a way that we can solve this problem that allows us to use either some colored glass or other, you know,

and my transparent architectural solutions.

And certainly we don't want to vary from the entrance corridor standards, but given how close this is to the street and the design that Bruce and his team have done, I really did want to hear some discussion or ideas in that direction if there's support work or not.

So that's kind of where I am on this design.

I love it, but I am a little concerned that we're going to get cluttered

But also, as we have that discussion, I'd also say that, well, no, we can have that discussion when we have it and we'll bring up those issues.

Well, thank you, Bruce and Kyle.

Let's see.

Sure.

Yeah, thanks, Bruce.

It's great to see you as always.

I feel like this is a little bit of the Karate Kid master versus student thing that you've taught me so much being on the ARB.

The question that I have reminds me of a question you had for an applicant about white brick.

Yeah, I think my guess is that as we get into the detail of this, that the idea is not to use the white brick to pretend that it's stucco.

I think the idea would be that as we focus in on some of these openings, that there would be a system of

You know, maybe soldier courses or roll locks that sort of frame the opening in the way that you would normally see a masonry opening framed.

I didn't imagine this facade simply being held up by red steel lentils, that you would see some detail at those openings that

that sort of recalls the way brick is normally detailed.

Whether that ends up being a rollock, a soldier, I think in this style, I wouldn't expect jack arches and that kind of thing.

But I think in this style of building, I think we probably would employ a series of rollocks and soldier courses that frame those openings.

Obviously, the bottom of each of these openings is gonna have a brick sill.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

It makes me think of the Trader Joe's where you recommended some detailing, some relief, and on the white brick itself.

And I think that's one of the best characteristics of that building.

So that's helpful.

Thank you, Bruce.

Great.

I guess my question relates to those large areas of glass and I know that there is a question on the table about tinting the glass.

Is there a plan B?

Just because I know large areas like that can

In addition to the privacy concerns, you can get a lot of solar heat gain in those types of areas too.

Well, I think

There are a couple of responses that I have to that because particularly if we look at, are you all still seeing my screen?

Let's look at this facade on the upper right here where we have the glass that is the three-story glass and then the glass over here that's a two-story glass there.

Those details I think are all well within the

the kind of typical size and configuration that you would find these kinds of glass systems working in.

One of the thoughts that we had that we have talked about with Kyle and some of his folks is whether there might be an interior film treatment that could happen in these areas.

The building itself, one of the reasons that

In the orientation of this building, this upper right hand side is the south facade.

And one of the reasons that we have the large white openings and then we've reduced the scale of the glass on this side is to in fact reduce the area of glass on the facade.

In these corners, I think that we would

We would probably prefer to use a kind of film application or if we end up using a, and I'm not sure tinted glass is the right thing yet, but if we end up using a secondary kind of glazing, what might end up happening is we might end up with an additional horizontal detail or frame

in this area that ends up sort of doing some of the screening that Kyle was mentioning and reducing the, obviously we would be using low E glass and use all of that technology that we can there.

But I think the addition of either interior film or an actual, almost like a,

Chair rail height framed in there would probably reduce that.

Might actually help the texture of that corner as well a little bit.

Whereas if we look at this view, my guess, I'm almost certain that we're going to end up with in the final configuration, we're going to end up with a couple more horizontal details along in here.

This amount of

Vertical glass probably just isn't going to happen.

And so I think we would be dealing with some of the same issues that we probably would come with another horizontal frame there and then deal with the glazing in the same way.

This side of the building is actually the northeast side.

So it's the least subject to this kind of solar variability.

and the southwest side, if we go back here, sorry, where am I?

Sorry to keep jumping you around here.

The southwest side actually has the least amount of glass there.

So I don't know, hopefully that answers your question.

Great, thank you, Chris.

Thank you.

Thanks, Dave.

Thanks, Bruce and Kyle.

I find this to be a really intriguing design.

I like the way you've broken the scale down using glass.

I think it was a really interesting conversation that I'm less prepared to have and I'm sure

Those of you who have been on this board longer, but this whole issue over tinting and reflectivity and where it's appropriate and where it's not appropriate.

And I know the example I often think of is the one on 250 West where UVA kind of tore all that reflective glass off the building kind of across from Boershead or just past Boershead.

And so there's

I'm really torn because I agree with Kyle's comment that the cluttered appearance of what could be inside might actually be distracting, might lead to a lot of blind use that otherwise could be avoided.

So I'll be curious just to have that conversation, understand where the county's policy came from.

Bruce, I did have a question with regard to these sort of shadow panels, if you want to call it that.

I think the black panels, which in the upper right hand corner almost kind of read as a shadow line.

implying that the face of the building is actually further out than it is.

And I think it, again, is a really intriguing idea.

When I see it in the lower right-hand corner, it seems a little less successful.

And I'm wondering what the actual depth is.

Is it just the thickness of a brick between that panel and the outside face of the building?

Or do you envision it being bigger and

Are there other color options that you guys looked at?

Just the black, again, close up feels a little bit harsh, or star, I don't know what the right word is, but anyway.

Yeah, I think the,

It reads as black in these renderings.

I think in reality, we would be probably specifying a kind of slate gray.

I think the idea was to take a reading off of the gray brick that we're using as the base.

We wanted it to be darker than the gray base, but it does come across as

And I agree with you, black would be way too harsh and way too stark as a contrast.

So we would come off of the black border, but it would probably be a slate gray.

There are five or six grays that you can use that are all in this range.

And the renderings, I think, are a little unfair in terms of making it a little more harsh than we would imagine it being.

I also imagine that this detail, that the jams of these windows, in my ideal world, the jams of these windows would be a full brick deep.

So you'd get the eight inches of brick that gives you a shadow line in addition to the frame of the window, the cladding.

And if the cladding isn't black, you actually would get that second shadow line on it.

If the cladding were a slate gray or a little bit lighter gray, you would then actually get three different kinds of lines out of that detail.

You'd get the edge of the white brick, you'd get the shadow line of the jamb, and then you'd get the frame of the window system.

So again, all of that trying to

trying to create a kind of texture, a series of textures on the building that would change during the day, change as the sun moved around the building during the day.

What other question did you ask?

Yeah, just color in the inset.

In the inset, yeah.

Right.

And actually to go back to that famous building on 250 West, that was the perfect foil for every building that ever wanted to have anything but clear glass on in the entrance corridor.

And I wouldn't for a minute imagine any of this being reflective.

I think that we would be thinking of it as something that

uses something other than just the absolute clear glass as a way of, again, kind of giving the building a little more nuance than just either clear or not clear, you know, clear or opaque.

And so I'll just be frank.

Kyle's been pushing me to put blue glass in here for months and months and months.

And I just wanted to have this conversation before we started to investigate that, because I think some of his ideas could be very, very intriguing.

But I also know how much we spent, how much time we spent identifying what clear glass was in the corridor.

Yeah, thank you, Frank.

Thanks, Bruce.

Hey, Bruce, thank you.

That was a great presentation.

Just one question.

Curious about the the parking lot side of the building.

I guess that's the northeast.

If you guys looked at an opportunity to kind of provide access to the multiuse path on that side as well, or if you

Yeah, that is actually that upper right drawing shows that connection on the screen.

That's a doorway.

That's actually a mid-level entrance on that side.

The grade on the south side is about three and a half or four feet above the lowest level of the floor.

So what you're seeing on that south side is a kind of mid-level entrance that serves both the lowest floor and the second floor.

And that in some sense, again, we haven't really done the landscape design for this, excuse me, the detailed landscape design for this, but in some sense, that connection would happen there and connect to that pathway.

And then that pathway goes up to the stair.

And then there's a pretty generous bike path and walkway along the entrance corridor.

I think we show that.

Yeah, right there.

And there you can see where that stair is right there.

That may show up in a better drawing.

Well, there you can see it here.

That stairway down there.

And I think we have a view that doesn't really show that well on this drawing here.

Thank you.

And looking at staff's comment about the kind of the retaining wall relationship with that, the gladness.

Yeah, I'm looking at this view right here.

Just curious if there's a

That's interesting.

Let me go.

Let me I hate to jog and I know how jogging it is when you're not controlling the screen.

So let me let me see if I can get back to the site plan.

It does, this area is, there's a larger elevation differential between this area along the street and the parking lot down there.

In

and over in this area back in here is where we're providing a majority of what the screening landscaping is for that parking.

I think, you know, and maybe this, Kyle, you might want to jump in here or not because I think there's the idea that this, in the overall landscape plan, that this connection here through the garden and the parkway

and then a very textured intersection here that is probably more primarily pedestrian than vehicular.

And then the path, obviously these paths are diagrammatic at this point in time, but this path all the way through the site has been the main connector.

Kyle, do you want to jump in?

Yeah, sorry, I don't have that.

I have a rendered site plan that looks, that shows us pathways a little bit better, but there is, to the right of the parking lot on the office pad, there is a planned sidewalk access down there.

So not right next to the building, but adjacent to Wahoo Way, coming in off of that mixed-use trail at that corner, that bottom right.

Over here, right?

and then wrapping around back to the office building and crossing the street right there as well.

So the grade's really challenging where you mentioned right where that retaining wall is.

And I thought that retaining wall, I have to check with Shim, but I thought that retaining wall tapers off.

It does.

Well, from the roadside, it stays almost at grade.

You can see there, but the level, you can see that the grade of Fifth Street goes down.

Gotcha.

Yeah, to me, maybe there's an opportunity there to kind of peel that back.

you know the grade changes isn't as severe and I think it's a really nice moment too where you change direction in the building with the glass you know and how that meets the plane that's parallel with the parking lot and maybe if that's more visible or more legible that might be an opportunity there but I think having those glass volumes on either end I think is really important and I think really good in relationship to the corridor so

Thank you, Frank.

Great.

And Bruce, thank you for the presentation.

I agree with my colleagues.

It's a nice presentation and an intriguing design.

Appreciate your remarks about the ideal brick jam depth.

I would love to see that on this.

I think that would do a great deal to really reinforce the strength of the brick portions of the facade and appreciate

Fred, highlighting the texture that I, and you're describing what kind of texture you can bring to it.

In terms of the corners, do you have any thoughts, Bruce, about the roof form and how we can best relate that to the county's traditions?

Boy, Dave, yeah, good question.

Let's see, I think, well, the roof form itself is an unconventional way of creasing the corner of a building.

This is actually a grown-up version of a smaller building that we did on 250 West a couple of years ago for F&R.

And we creased a little piece of cardboard in the office and then tried to figure out how to build it.

So the form itself is a kind of surprising way to do a corner of a building.

I think maybe instinctually that's why I wanted to show the structure inside where you could see some of the framing and some of the way that the actual building was built.

Again, in an ideal world, that would be timber up in there.

It may end up being steel, but depending on what kind of thing, if that corner were framed with timber, I think that could be a really kind of beautiful conversation between a very contemporary way of dealing with a skin and then a very traditional way of dealing with a structure.

And you can sort of see that intimated in here with at least a wood color in there.

And so that's probably the kind of balance I was trying to strike in that corner.

And whether or not that happens on these floors, these lower floors as well, maybe that whole corner gets framed in a way.

So that's- Yeah, well, I think maybe in that line of like expressing structure and support, there's a good rationale for it.

And is there, you know, to Kyle's concern about visibility and sort of the potential

disorder that happens in furnishing and using an office behind the glass facade.

My guess, again, this has a nonspecific tenant at this point in time.

But anytime you have a building like this, what do you put at the corners?

You put the conference rooms, you put the executive offices, you could even do kind of break.

I think it would be delightful to have a break room or something like that on the corner where you actually see people in the spaces and you have less of the wiring in the back of your computers, in the back of your desks and things like that.

And I appreciate your remarks about exploring maybe the texture of the corner as it relates to breaking up the glass.

I think and also exploring how the vertical expanse of glass ultimately gets supported and divided.

I do think I would be interested to see what you come up with as you explore sort of that texture and certainly on the face of it wouldn't be opposed to you're considering different colors of spandrel and

glazing there in a similar way to the sort of shadow material and the large openings in the brick facade start to create some layering and depth and texture.

I'll be interested to hear maybe in our further discussion from other members their thoughts about opening up to either tinting or filming.

I know we did recently, I think, allow some filming on the storage building on this site as a way to include windows that were

breaking up the facade, although I think that was fully filmed windows and not sort of gradated ones.

Certainly there's been a lot of work to develop, a lot of work I'm sure you contributed to as well, Bruce, to shape the glazing requirements for the corridors.

Well, great.

Data, I'd like to just point out one thing.

I may have

contributed to some confusion about that retaining wall, the one that I described is coming up, the east side of the building.

I was picturing that wall on the street side as having some height to it.

Yeah, it wouldn't have some sort of railing or

or yeah, and I think, Margaret, when you were suggesting landscaping along or in this area along in here, I think one of the comments was about bringing the landscape.

I think doing that along this edge of that wall would be ideal where we could bury some sort of rail in the planting.

I'd still like to try and keep the planting quite low in front of the building itself.

but that's probably true.

It's still a preliminary or an initial design.

And I believe that there is landscaping between the shared use path and the road, correct?

Yeah, I was going to ask the same question.

I think they were included in the overall

Yeah, that's right.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

Wait a minute.

I've got to stop sharing, don't I?

Let me just get to that.

There we go.

So right now the plan is showing street trees along Fifth Street extended.

And you were recommending the additional shrubs on the north side?

In this area.

Right in there?

Oh, okay.

I thought you were mentioning on the right.

Oh, actually, and then, yes, and along the edge of the parking lot, yes.

Bruce, what's,

That'd be a weird place for a bike rack, but

So I'll have to go back and check with Justin to see what that is.

When you mentioned it, I thought I zeroed in and I said, I have no idea what those are.

Yeah, I think bike rack is probably the best guess.

Yeah, I'd move those bike racks.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, there's also no sidewalk immediately adjacent to it.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, great.

Well, thank you, Margaret, for bringing that up and for clarifying what's going on.

Great.

Well, I think we've enjoyed a good discussion.

We can continue that just a little further, taking a look at Margaret's recommendations.

Great.

So I guess, yes, yes, I can see that.

So from discussion today, any suggested revisions?

In terms of number one, it seems like the brick elements folks are comfortable or well-connected.

Nate, I don't know if you would add it here, but I think I'd be interested in learning more about the brick detailing, like I discussed at the very beginning.

Great.

You know, I think, as Bruce said, it's not one with a direct traditional precedent or antecedent.

Certainly, I mean, the F&R building is successful.

It's at a very different scale than this one.

Shed roofs are common in the county.

It's sort of a shed on a corner, I guess, if you want one way to look at it.

So I don't think I object to it, I think, comfortable with it in this case.

Yeah, I guess to me, the overall kind of massing and look of the building is so clearly contemporary.

I don't know that just personally, I don't feel that I need to see, you know, traditional forms per se.

back more to, you know, is the proposal compatible with the historic architecture of the area?

And the answer for me at least is that it is compatible and that it's, you know, even though it's not a form that you

see that often it's consistent in and of itself as a building so I think the use of the brick as a material is a nod to that material that is traditional but using the white and gray color on the brick is a

a good way to kind of incorporate that traditional material in a contemporary way.

A couple of thoughts.

I'm sorry, Dave.

No, please go ahead, Fred.

Just a couple of thoughts.

One,

I don't know what the final material will be.

Bruce, you mentioned something about potentially timber up at the peak or maybe something, some wooden ceiling that you could see through.

To me, it's also part of the transparency of that element that brings value to it.

And I think if there's a way that it could have that sort of warmth brought to it with wood, it would be really, really helpful.

I think and the reason I asked about the brick is just because I think you know in the images and I realize they're very conceptual it just feels a little stark and cold and I think when you actually see it and you see the detailing that I know you'll bring to the to the project that will create warmth and I think maybe more maybe more appropriateness with it with the detailing as that's understood.

I also think

We have to consider, as we have with these different entrance corridors, we have to consider context in the buildings that are around it.

And we're not right next to the Rotunda or Monticello.

I mean, it's more a contemporary space generally around there.

So I feel like the building would fit well within its context.

And the glazing is another question, I guess, that still needs to be worked out.

Thank you, Fred.

Yeah, I don't really have any reservations about the shape or the contemporary nature of the building.

I think we struggle with contemporary buildings all the time because we're trying to find some way to anchor it back to our history.

And sometimes it feels a little strained.

I just think

Good contemporary architecture should absolutely be a part of what we celebrate in the county and without it being kind of in your face.

And I think this building does a great job of that.

I don't have any reservations even about tinting the windows if the tinting was not too strong, but I guess that's a separate conversation

Thank you, Frank.

Yeah, I agree.

I think less important to relate it to some pole barn structure in a rural part of the county than to talk about the glass element

and what that does for the building and the relationship between the building and the corridor.

I think contextually looking in the other buildings are set a little further back off the road.

And this building is up pretty close to the corridor, which I think is a positive.

So having those kind of glass ends or more transparent kind of lighter ends, I think helps this building feel

Right, thank you, Frank.

Super Bowl, any other suggestions or observations about the staff comments?

I don't know if you want to do it now, but

Yes.

You know, I think for me, at least personally, it would be a narrower pathway that would not risk as much upsetting the other blazing precedents if, you know, if the applicant pursued strategies that involve sort of opaque materials, either spandrel glass or the fiber cement and finds ways to maybe break up and articulate the corner a bit further in that way.

But I know other members will go around the horn.

And I also, I guess, Kyle has his hand raised.

I just was, you know, I know that's going to be a challenging issue.

So I was thinking, you know, we've got a fair amount of stuff that's relatively straightforward to work on.

And maybe we come back and bring a couple of, you know, when we're in person, we bring a couple of examples of the glass.

I asked Bruce and his team to render a couple options and

We can make a decision with options A, B, and C instead of trying to get a specific guideline now, because I think it's going to be hard for us to incorporate that without seeing options.

Well, thank you.

I agree it would be helpful to have something more specific to respond to.

I do think at least opening up, tinting a blast, this is a fairly big issue to open up countywide.

So I think if you all could consider as well options that avoid introducing that sort of new term, that may be a more straightforward way to consider those.

Great.

All right.

So these are preliminary comments for the next.

OK, excellent.

Thank you, Margaret.

Great.

Thank you all.

Very thoughtful discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great, there are no work sessions scheduled for today, so we'll turn to other business.

We have one item of other business, which is a continued discussion of the entrance corridor guidelines.

Frank, thank you, Frank Stoner for carrying the work forward and taking a look at filling out some of the information for 151.

Sure.

I don't know, Margaret, if it's worth putting the presentation up on the board.

I found as I was looking at this corridor specifically that there are so few architectural precedents on the corridor that are in Albemarle County that it made it really difficult to address a number of the sort of architecturally oriented

criteria within the sort of outline prototype of the presentation.

But I started wondering whether it wouldn't be easier, at least for corridors that don't have a lot of material to work with to consolidate or maybe consolidate some of the architectural feedback just within the established architectural precedence.

If you look at the outline.

Yeah, Mara, if we could go to the outline.

When you get down into the character

of the quarter segment historic use pattern, then you get down into predominant landscape features and architectural characteristics.

I see there being a lot of repetition as you move through those elements.

And so I don't know, Margaret, what your thoughts are about how we might be able to consolidate some of this stuff and package it in a way that's a little easier to digest and a little easier for you guys to create.

I guess my thought was that we wouldn't be duplicating, we wouldn't have multiple examples of buildings that had the same scale and form and materials and colors.

We'd be picking out, in quarters that have a lot of buildings to pick from, we'd be picking out sort of representative

examples of different scales and different forms so that there wouldn't be that repetition.

In hindsight, maybe Route 151 was not the best one to start with.

We thought that simpler would be easier about finding one that's got more examples to pick from.

Yeah, I mean, I think they're quarters in which the whole outline might be necessary, but if it's possible to keep it flexible so you could use, you know, you can refer to things when it's important and not have to go through the drudgery of repetitive kind of image.

Yeah.

I think certainly, you know, whatever's going to work is best and just going through the motions, just to go through the motions isn't for me.

Right.

Agreed.

Yeah, so maybe we could go down through those and I guess get folks to comment about how we might modify that.

So we again, we have like three buildings, three or four buildings, two of which are not even in Elmore County.

So I included the ones in Nelson because I think they're so significant in the overall context of the corridor.

But I think this church may be the only one that's in Elmore County.

And I didn't really know, you know, it felt like you could summarize all that.

And I mean, the picture kind of speaks to a lot of it, but I'd love for those of you who are actually professionals in this, it'd be great to get your thoughts about how we might, you know, use this, use the information we have in a concise, but also,

Yeah, good point, Frank.

I appreciate the

desire not to repeat things too much.

I guess I think there's probably some use to us assembling a deep appendix that perhaps does risk repeating itself just in the interest of having been the evidence that might allow us to, in the spirit of the 151 corridor, distill the lessons of what's taken there.

And I think from the evidence you've collected, I feel like

Thank you for those updates.

Sorry.

Can you hear me now?

Frank, maybe to add to some of what David was thinking too, I think part of

The obvious character of each of these is the landscape.

So if you think about one characteristic that we could be thinking about, it's how do these or any future building forms fit within the landscape in an appropriate way, even more so than or at least equally to the representation of scale and setback and so on, roof forms and all of those things.

Yeah, and I guess I just was I had a hard time figuring out how to describe that in a way that's useful or

Technically accurate, I guess.

Yeah, it's hard because if you start thinking about setbacks and other things that aren't governed by entrance corridor guidelines, right, then you start kind of like to say the setback needs to be substantial may go against the zoning ordinance requirement for setbacks.

Right.

So how do you balance that?

And I think one way is street trees.

Then you have to ask yourself, well, is a really regulated formal street tree treatment here the best approach?

I feel like that's a good point.

Am I still frozen?

No, you're good.

No, you're good.

A great point, Fred.

And I do feel like, I think maybe it was Frank Hancock who said that there are important viewsheds in this Western part of the county.

And so it seems like successful development, both sort of buffers or it sets back far enough and nestles into, I guess, which is another technical term, but the landscape in a way that doesn't obscure it or diminish it.

Yeah, I know it's in our guidelines.

I think that idea of it being designed appropriately with the landform that is on the property is important, probably more so here than a lot of places that are in urban settings because you get to read the landform from a distance.

To your point, Fred, just about setback.

I don't know what the setback is.

This is all RA land, I assume.

You can always just add the phrase within the ordinance,

Yeah.

Well, what if the ordinance is not consistent with what we think it should be, I guess is what, like, what's, does anybody know what the setback requirement here would be in an RA zone?

That's a good question.

If you all want to continue

Well, I guess 25 feet, but I'm not sure.

One thought about our template.

Maybe we don't have to fill out the template for every corridor.

Maybe the template grows and it's the full template on corridors that are more built out or have more historically significant structures.

And maybe for a corridor like this, we just do a couple of bullet points.

Maybe it's the map, it's the history, and then maybe it's a paragraph or two or three sentences of the character.

You know, and maybe our template is kind of progressive that if you have a really intense corridor, you fill the whole template out.

You know, instead of trying to like squeeze so much out of these like a fence and one church, you know, we can just be really simple.

I mean, it would need to be like an eloquent paragraph of, you know, what's the quality of this corridor, but, you know,

We don't have to make a bunch of stuff up if it's not there.

Right.

And I hate to agree.

Yeah, I hate to complicate things, but I wonder if it would be useful to differentiate between corridors or sections of corridors that are primarily rural in character versus ones that

do actually have a architectural precedent and character because it occurred to me after the last meeting that 151 might not be the easiest one.

It might be like one of the hardest ones because they're really, I mean, there is a pattern of development that's occurring on Route 151, but it's not really in the county.

and really the section that we're looking at to me just feels like the ruralness is the overriding character of that section and I wonder if there was a

you know, two-track kind of situation where if you're dealing with a rural corridor, then it's more focused on kind of site and kind of preserving a certain kind of preserving that rural character.

Whereas if you have a corridor that's

That's a good idea.

Yeah, I imagine we may discover as well different characters between sort of more intense commercial ones like on 29 and suburban and maybe transitional through the search.

I think it's a good point, Chris, to think about what unifying sort of corridor types there may be that we may have more general guidelines for.

Yeah, I was hoping that, yeah, it's really like you said, getting the raw material into this format or something like this and then

Yeah.

Margaret, could we go back to the outline real quick?

I wouldn't mind just kind of

As we look at these identifying, again, maybe the most time and space efficient way to address all these, because yeah, to your point, if every one of these gets a separate page for, and you have a separate page where every landmark

Building or a structure on the corridor or segment.

Yeah, it just, it feels overwhelming.

I mean, could, for example, predominant landscape characteristics be a single page and all the things below it be reflected in photos or

Yep, that makes sense to me.

But then I think just to the extent if members prefer just to have individual slides with individual photos that staff could in the future collage and collect into a summary sheet, that's fine too.

I think, Margaret, would that be fine by your?

And it may be rather than having to describe fully for each picture the billion points we want to highlight, it could be once the collection is there to

Yeah, I think that'd be a great next step.

I don't know if folks would be willing.

I think the fact that 151 is about two miles, it seems like in most of the corridors we've looked at, most of us have found sort of roughly two to four mile

Segments that Cohere, I wonder if we might take a corridor and then just divide up some of the segments and give it a try over the next couple weeks.

Yeah, should we start at the east and work west?

Starting at the east, yeah.

Okay.

I'm happy to share, I don't have it right here with me, but we could maybe just take the first five sections.

There's what's sort of like the Emmett Ivey either out to,

Oh, that's quite all right.

I'll tell you why you're pulling that up, Margaret.

If I may, I might move ahead to the minutes approval and then we could circle back to assignments.

I second.

Second.

Mr. Henningsen?

Aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you, Carolyn.

And then I think also for our next meeting date, currently scheduled for July 19th.

Any members not planning to attend?

Okay, great.

So it sounds like we'll have a quorum.

And thank you so much, Margaret, for pulling that up.

So I don't know if these are the right names.

Well, there happen to be five segments.

Yeah.

She's as delegated as you see fit, David.

Sure.

If everybody wants to participate, why don't I just follow up with an email, and I'll sign each ARB member one of these five segments.

And I think you all should still have a link to this, but I can email you another link to what was originally

with David put together.

And I'll make a little tweaks to the PowerPoint template that the information should be dropped into based on today's conversation.

And I'll just email that all out.

Thank you all.

Yeah, wonderful.

Well, is there any other business today?

Well, thank you, everybody.

Appreciate your time today.

Our next meeting will be July 19th.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, please.

Thanks, partners.

Thanks, guys.

Have a good week.

Bye.