Architectural Review Board Meeting   7/19/2021

Carolyn.

Thank you, Carolyn.

You're ready.

OK, great.

All right.

Well, good afternoon, everybody.

It's 1.01 p.m. and I'll call to order the July 19th, 2021 meeting of the Omaha 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-19 disaster.

The quorum is present.

Members of the Architectural Review Board present electronically are Frank Hancock, Chris Henningsen, Frank Stoner, myself, Dave Van Der Werf, and also Fred Missel.

Good afternoon, everyone.

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

For everyone participating today, it's good practice to mute your microphone until it's your turn to speak.

For applicants making presentations, note that your presentation is limited to a total of 15 minutes, which you can divide among team members as you choose.

Carolyn will let us know when the 15 minutes are up.

We'll turn to disclosures.

No.

Fred?

No.

Greetings, Molly.

Thank you, Fred.

Okay, I don't have anything to disclose either.

So, moving to public comment.

Okay, thank you.

We don't have any consent agenda items today, so we'll move on to the regular review items.

There are two regular review items today, Chris Taggart and Margaret Maliszewski from the Planning Division will be presenting them.

The first is ARB 2021-67 Discount Tire.

Chris, will you provide your presentation?

An application I'm presenting on today is the preliminary review of architecture and initial site plan to construct a 7,600 square foot discount tire vehicle service facility in addition to associated site improvements.

The site is located at 1636 Simmel Trail.

ARB has reviewed no previous proposals for this site.

To summarize the staff report, the focus is largely on the forms and materials used in the building design and the site landscaping.

The forms used in the building design overall do not relate well with each other or those found traditionally in historic commercial buildings.

The design also heavily relies on CMU and corrugated metal, and the north elevation is a long elevation lacking architectural details or articulation.

The primary landscaping issue is the conflicts between the frontage landscaping and utilities and easements.

This can be resolved by increasing the planting area, but that will either require eliminating parking spaces or moving the building back.

The other primary landscaping issue is that there is insufficient landscaping at the retaining walls and blank elevations.

Staff recommends approval of an initial site plan with a condition related to increasing the planting area along the frontage.

Previous mentioned condition as well as the changes listed in the staff report are to be addressed with the final site plans bill.

Thank you very much, Chris.

Frank Hancock, do you have any questions?

Thanks, Chris.

No, I don't have any questions.

Thank you.

No, Dave, I don't have any questions either.

Thank you.

Fred?

No, thanks very much.

Really thorough staff review.

Thanks, Chris.

Yeah, no questions for me.

Thank you.

Similarly, and then for me, thank you very much, Chris, for your review.

Good afternoon, everyone.

This is Ryan Yaugur with Bowler Engineering.

Thank you, everyone, for your time this afternoon.

I will keep my presentation short and sweet.

I think Chris did a great job of presenting the case at hand.

Obviously, no one had any questions to start out with, but would like to narrow down the conversation today of two things.

One, just to say that we welcome feedback and we welcome the comments, and we're looking forward to going through this process as we continue through

the initial site plan review as well as the final site plan but also looking for feedback and suggestions on the type of facade and color amassing specifically on the north side of that wall from the board here today and looking for any ideas as we circle back as an architectural and engineering team to come back to you to present something that would be better of your liking.

So I understand it's kind of an open-ended comment.

The staff report was kind of open-ended as far as the north side saying it's rather blank right now, looking at different materials and ways to break it up, but would really like to hear some suggestions on the front end of things that might be agreeable to in the future if possible.

Well, thank you very much, Lynn.

We'll ask members if they have questions for you, starting with Fred.

No, thanks, Dave.

No, thanks, Dave.

No questions.

Thanks, Ryan.

Just one question.

This was pointed out in the staff report.

Just curious if you guys have looked at

It's possible.

Absolutely.

We are looking to that currently.

It will be some sort of combination of shifting the building further back to the rear to allow for some of the planting areas, as well as we're also looking at carving out potentially some landscape islands, not to remove all eight spaces, but get strategic of where a tree could be planted with an island and then have some sort of spaces there.

Those spaces right at the front as you can see from the layout will be very beneficial for the end user to allow a place for a pedestrian or a car user to come in and park, go immediately to the front door, and then be serviced right there as well as they go around to the bay.

If they were removed completely, it would just be the four or five spaces or so right where the ADA accessible spaces are.

Otherwise, a customer would have to go all the way to the rear of the site park and then walk back up.

So those eight spaces are very important.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's a great point.

It's a pretty narrow site.

Absolutely.

Great.

And Ryan, thank you for suggesting the focus of the conversation.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I will welcome, we do have a member of the architectural team here, Kwok, as well, that's listening in currently, but I'll be leading the conversation here as we start.

I will say from a overall site layout perspective,

We're going to be very limited in space to add any sort of landscaping feature along that wall when we look at the retaining wall, tiebacks, the drive aisles, meeting fire code, the building itself.

Frank, as you mentioned, that site is very

So I don't think there will be an opportunity there for any landscaping features.

However, we could look at an opportunity of breaking up that wall with a different material maybe halfway through.

I'm not an architect, don't pretend to speak like one.

And thank you.

Correct.

Certainly what we maybe we can ask members to offer thoughts and suggestions in the

in the discussion in a moment.

Thank you.

So why don't we start the discussion.

Sorry, Dave.

Yeah, I don't really have much in the way of comments.

I mean, I think generally they've done a decent job with the architecture.

It is a very narrow site in a fairly crowded area.

So I'm not as worried about the blankness on the one wall, although it might be helpful to actually see it in perspective.

Sure thing, Frank.

I'll give it a shot, but technically, we're not supposed to design the buildings for you.

We're supposed to help you understand.

But just based on some of the things that we've done in the past or talked about with applicants in the past,

You know, this is all driven by the interior floor plan.

You know, you have windows, it looks like, that come across the east elevation and then stop sort of three quarters of the way to the north.

Is there any way programmatically that you could add some transparency on the north side to wrap that a bit more?

Or is there storage or something in there that could be relocated that would allow that transparency?

I don't know.

Just spitball in here.

The other is, are there ways to actually, you've got to be careful because you don't want to try to make something look like it isn't, but are there ways to create some sort of a detail on the brick itself that mimics some sort of relief or inlay pattern that could potentially help to break down the scale underneath the discount tire sign?

Is that, I should know this, but is that material all brick or is it brick and block?

Right now, both materials are concrete masonry units.

OK, yeah, I you know.

Again, I don't know if there's something that could be recessed in that lighter block area.

to help create some sort of at least pedestrian scale because it just, you know, those two little doors, those two little tiny doors don't really help with scale a lot or something that could be wrapped at pedestrian level around the front and into that north elevation.

Sure, yeah.

Let me take a look at the comments.

That's great.

And then this is a harebrained idea probably, but I know that it is a tight site, super tight site, but there is, it looks like a slope between the site to your north and your property boundary, if I'm not mistaken.

And I don't know if there'd be a way to plant anything along that.

I know that it's not on your property, but if there's some sort of an instrument like an easement or something that you could ask your neighbors to see if there'd be a way to plant to help with visibility from the entrance corridor, because that's really what this is all about.

That's it for me, Dave.

Thank you, Fred.

Those are all great points, Fred.

And back to something Frank Stoner said earlier, too, is maybe landscaping.

Maybe there's or no, excuse me, maybe there's a it's a rendering or a visualization problem that if you just kind of demonstrate what the building what the north elevation looks like from the entrance corridor, you know, maybe we're we wouldn't focus in on the whole north facade.

Maybe it's that corner.

But then what I was thinking, just looking at the site plan, there is, or appears to be kind of a sliver up towards the front of the site on that north property line that maybe there could be, maybe it's more heavily planted.

I think there was some vegetation there, but yeah, I agree with my colleagues' comments.

I think maybe using one of the elements Fred suggested, establish some rhythm on that north facade,

would maybe help.

And then I guess one more point, visualization-wise, the renderings read like standard masonry, like a brick.

Just want to be sure that that rendering reflects the split face block.

And I'm sure you guys will do that when you submit the next one, but just wanted to make that point.

Thank you, Frank.

Yeah, I was going to make that point.

Also, the elevations clearly show the split face.

But then when you get to the rendering, and I'm sorry to make the comment because I hate when people do that to me, but the rendering really makes it look like brick.

as a material, in my opinion, looks better than the split face.

I know that's a budgetary issue, but that's something to consider, just that the, I think, rendering makes that masonry material look better than it would look as split face.

I also don't have much of a concern about the blankness of that one wall to the north, because I think

You really only get like an oblique view of it in reality if you were driving up or down 29.

So I think you could just make a few moves to kind of break up the massing a little bit on that wall and it would

you know, I think eliminate that issue.

If you look on the other side of the building, just the addition of those bay doors as something that breaks up that long facade adds, you know, a lot of interest that the other side has.

So that was about it for me.

Thank you, Chris.

No, I don't think so.

You know, it's a tough site because there's just no space.

Okay, great.

Well, appreciate everybody else's suggestions.

You know, Fred, I appreciate, as you said, and agree that we don't like to design things for applicants.

So we welcome hearing your thoughts and

suggestions next time.

I think, like my colleagues, I think it would be important to get the renderings to reflect what's really being proposed.

I think, personally, split-phase block is not as appropriate a material from my perspective for the entrance corridors, and something more like traditional brick would be more appropriate.

If block is a necessity for economy, I think looking at ground phase for decorative CMU that has maybe a finer aggregate and appearance would probably be a more appropriate material.

In terms of the north facade, I wonder, is the two-way travel lane absolutely essential at the site plan level?

Would it be possible for that to be a one-way lane or a 20-foot fire lane and get enough area either for planting at the north edge of the property or potentially along the north wall?

Or similarly, is the sidewalk necessary for egress and certainly, you know,

Is there perhaps just enough dimension there to get some landscaping either against the north line or possibly if there are any shade tolerant climbing vines with a green screen or other relief added to that facade similar to some of the things that were used at Stonefield.

Let's see.

Those were really all that I had to offer in addition to what my colleagues did.

Anything

All spokes would add before we move to looking at the staff report.

So there would be two actions today.

Are you able to see the word document?

Okay.

So you do want to make a motion for an action on the initial site plan.

And the recommendation again on that is for approval, but with that condition about the planting area at the front of the site.

And then the second action would just be to, we can run through the list of comments for the next submittal.

I guess I don't know if my colleagues share the interest in whether the two-way lane is required.

And I know we didn't have a chance to hear from the applicant as to whether that immediately is not something that can be considered.

It's something that we'll certainly look back and talk from a programming side of things.

I don't want to speak 100%.

Yeah, I would be cautious from my perspective to get that roped into the approval language.

Yep, that's right.

So to the list of comments that were in the staff report, you can see here I've added two ones in red based on your conversation.

I would just qualify that increase planting area at the building, not at the north side.

Also based on your conversation, I don't know if you want to amend the comment, comment two, which currently reads, revised the masonry to one with a more finished appearance.

What is the secondary block material that's in the darker brown?

Yeah, that's correct.

Margaret, certainly I think the applicants had a chance to hear our discussion today.

Thank you for highlighting.

These all seem straight forward.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's a reflect the proposed materials.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, there was a little background noise.

Chris, do you think we need to add it or was it already in there?

Is there a second?

Second.

Yes.

Mr. Hancock?

Aye Mr. Henningsen Aye Mr. Van Der Werf Aye Mr. Missel Aye Thank you.

Who seconded the motion?

Dave, I might also suggest maybe to the applicant that this is a good one to bring back for a work session before they go final.

Yeah, no, thank you for suggesting that, Fred.

I think it's a good suggestion, and certainly we are happy to hold one if you would like one.

Great.

Well, thank you to everyone.

We'll move on to the next regular review item, which I believe is SF 2021-25 and SE 2021-26, Stonefield Town Center Block C2-1.

Margaret, will you provide your presentation?

Sorry, just need to, I need to unshare my

Displays are doing odd things.

Just a second.

Margaret, I thought you had mentioned there was two motions.

I missed.

Just one of them.

Might have been misheard for the previous.

Actually, I was confusing.

That was fine.

OK. Yeah.

Are you all seeing my presentation?

Just seeing the participants.

Okay.

Great.

Okay.

So this is a proposal to revise two of the requirements of the Code of Development for the Stonefield Town Center.

One revision is to transfer 73 residential units from block E to blocks A through D, and the other is to increase the maximum number of stories from five to seven.

And those two changes would allow the construction of a 112-unit multifamily residential building in block C21 of the Stonefield Town Center.

And C21 is located on the north side of Bond Street, just east of District Avenue, and it's that area where the red button is.

Increased building height can result in a grander scale and greater visibility, but the C21 block is situated at a distance from both of the entrance quarter streets.

And that's approximately 800 feet from Route 29 and about 450 feet from Hydraulic Road.

And those distances can help mitigate impacts.

And when the building in block D1 is constructed, visibility from Hydraulic will be further reduced for the C21 block.

and also there are approvals for similar heights for other buildings in the Stonefield development.

The ARB reviewed and approved with conditions a proposal for a Hyatt House Hotel in the block that's currently under consideration in 2019.

That's the image at the top right of this screen.

The Board of Supervisors approved a special exception for an increase in height from five to six stories for that building.

A special exception for increase in height was also previously approved for the block D1 apartment building

with approved heights ranging from five to eight stories.

And that's the bottom right image.

The apartment building in block D2 is six stories high.

That's the bottom left image in this slide.

And the Hyatt Place Hotel was approved at six stories tall in its upper left.

So we don't currently know what the proposed architecture for the building looks like, but that will be reviewed with the site plan submittals.

In the staff report, we stated that orderly and attractive development

The building design is compatible with existing and approved stone field buildings and if the building mass is broken down sufficiently.

Massing diagrams were included with this request and they show that there is an intent to break down the mass of the building, more so on the Bond Street and District Avenue sides and less so to the north.

but with the breaking down of the mass with sufficient fenestration and with materials and colors that are compatible with the surroundings, the height is not expected to have a negative impact on the cores.

The final massing, fenestration and details will be assessed with future site fundamentals.

Our recommendation is for no objection to the requests.

Thank you very much, Margaret.

Chris, do you have any questions?

Fred?

No, thanks.

No, no questions.

Thank you, Margaret.

No questions from me either.

Thanks for your presentation.

I am here, but John Byrne from WW might be trying to get on.

I think you're muted, John, too.

Yes, we can.

Yeah, thank you for joining.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

What was the question?

I just wear the portion where you guys have an opportunity to present.

No, we don't have a presentation.

I think Margaret gave us everything we need to know on that particular subject.

OK, thank you.

I'll just ask members if they have any questions for the applicant, starting with Fred.

No, thank you.

OK, thank you.

I have none either, so thank you.

OK, thank you.

Seems pretty straightforward.

I mean, based on what we looked at with the hotel,

Thank you, Frank.

Yeah, I'm in complete agreement with the recommendation.

Thank you.

Yeah, I guess the only question I'd have, Dave, is there, I assume there were some open space proffers in the original plan.

I don't know whether this was conceived to be retail.

but it doesn't look like, it looks like all that green space goes away.

Yes, this area was initially approved as a commercial space as part of the initial site plan

and on the final site plan as well.

The developer just did not move forward with actually building on that current block.

And I know that the current developer has offered up the closing down potentially and doing like, you know, sort of a, you know, closing down that portion of Bond Street to allow for events in order to help offset the removal of that area.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks, Dave.

I have no comments.

I think it's very logical that the density is in that location with other buildings that are previously approved.

So I have no concerns with the staff report

Thanks.

Thank you, Fred.

Likewise, I think the massing and density should be compatible with the other approved development there and also mitigated significantly by the distance from the entrance corridor.

So support this, as staff recommends.

Let's see.

Why don't we take a look at the motion?

So it's a motion of no objection to the special exception.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, Carolyn.

Mr. Hancock.

Aye.

Mr. Van Der Werf.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Let's see.

Now, previously on the agenda, the next item was a presentation of the Rile Corridor Plan, but that will be rescheduled.

So I believe we still have some other business.

Are you able to see the PowerPoint?

Okay.

Let me make one other change here.

I can see my notes.

Okay.

So we have received applications for signs for buildings D and F in the Hollymead Town Center area B just last week.

The comprehensive sign plan that's been approved for the shopping center includes all of the town center buildings that are shown in this image.

This is a street view from 2011.

So this is already a few years after construction.

And you can see that the buildings are visible through the trees, but very much at a distance and filtered through the trees.

This is a street view from 2019.

You can see the trees have filled out some.

It's really more difficult to detect the buildings beyond the trees.

although the view does open up in the winter and when the signs are illuminated at night even at this distance they are much more visible than they would be during the day like in this view.

But the question for today is does it make sense to keep reviewing signs for buildings C, D, E, and F given the distance from the street and the minimal visibility with the landscaping as it's grown up

or is visibility now sufficiently reduced such that signs on those buildings wouldn't have a negative impact on the entrance quarter street and we wouldn't need to continue reviewing them.

If you think it makes sense to stop reviewing the signs for those buildings, we do have recommended motion for you, but that's basically the question for today.

Thank you, Margaret.

Yeah, I think the visibility from the entrance corridor itself is so minimal that I don't see a need to review signs on those particular buildings.

Even if the landscaping wasn't there, there's a berm such that I think, especially unless you were walking on 29, I don't think you even would see much of those buildings, particularly at 45 miles an hour or 47 as I drive sometimes.

So yeah, I agree.

Thanks.

Thank you, Chris.

I'm thinking, well, all those signs are already reviewed administratively.

They would only come to the ARB if there was some

some part of the design that was not consistent with the guidelines and we couldn't come to terms with the applicants on it.

So we are reviewing all those administratively now.

I think that we would I'm recommending that we don't review we don't do entrance quarter review on those signs for signs on those buildings.

Sign permits would still be required and they would still have the standard zoning review.

Yeah, if we weren't going to be reviewing signs for those buildings, then anything would be approvable under the ordinance requirements.

OK.

Thank you, Frank.

Thanks, Dave.

Frank, I kind of had some similar questions.

And Margaret, I think you answered it.

In the extreme case that somebody wanted to put a big pedestal sign that came up over top of their building, for example, so you could be visible from 29.

They couldn't do that, right?

It would still have to fit within the facade of the building and still have to meet zoning.

Just wondering, is there anything they could do that would make it more visible?

Yeah, I don't think I would be comfortable saying there's no possible way that somebody could never think of something to make it more visible.

But rooftop signs are not allowed by ordinance.

So that particular thing couldn't be done.

Sure.

But lighting, for example, would still be regulated by zoning.

So it couldn't be like a strobe

Signs with flashing lights.

That might be good.

Otherwise, I don't have any problem with this.

I think it is with your comment about

Having a note in the motion saying if things change and visibility increases that it could it may then need to be part of the comprehensive sign guideline.

We could add to the motion.

Or we could postpone this until the next meeting where we can double check on those two items.

Well, I know that rooftop signs are not allowed and you can double check on the flashing.

That's it for me.

Well, the zoning review would not include a review of color.

So any color that was proposed could be approved, would be approved.

Well, so the approved comprehensive sign plan applies to all those buildings that were shown in that image.

So is it possible to leave the code in place and just eliminate the review?

So it's a

I'm not sure how what you just described is different than what we're doing right now.

It's an administrative review that the sign application comes in.

We look at the proposal.

We compare it to the comprehensive sign plan that matches the plan.

We approve it.

I see.

The entrance quarter review of it, the particular design criteria that are included in the comprehensive sign plan that have nothing to do with the sign ordinance, the sign ordinance part of the building ordinance.

That would go away.

The sign ordinance review would remain.

I just wonder, does this open up?

Because there's lots of scenarios like this, especially along this corridor.

I share the questions that I think other members have raised, Margaret.

I appreciate you proposing considering it.

I think you suggested maybe tabling this until you have a chance to review

just what doors or loopholes it might open a little more fully.

I share others' reservations about it.

I agree in this context, it seems like the impact would be minimal, but I do wonder how much we'd be opening, having to revisit or tailor comprehensive sign plans for a whole host of developments along the corridor if we open the door here.

Do other members wanna,

No applicant has requested the change.

The challenge is that an application comes in for a sign and if I don't think it's visible from the street, I feel like I shouldn't be reviewing it.

But we can just continue along this way.

When the applications come in, we can do a quick review, sort of assess whether or not visibility is like we illustrated in the presentation today.

And that may be a standard that then could be uniformed across the plans.

If the applicant can demonstrate that if it's not visible, that the review is not required.

Yeah, that might be difficult.

I think to the extent that the signage ordinance and zoning exclude, you know, bright signs or flashing signs or other things, I think

We understand where that ceiling is for those things.

While you're talking, I'm just trying to pull up the prohibited signs.

So, among the

Prohibited signs and sign characteristics in the sign ordinance are things like floating signs, lighting that illuminates outline, signs that imitate traffic signs, signs that contain or consist of searchlight, beacons or strobe lights, signs that contain strings of light bulbs,

and certain types of signs including animated signs, banners, billboards, flashing signs, moving signs, group signs.

Maybe a dumb question, but when we do comprehensive sign guidelines for shopping centers, do we

Do we exclude the ones that are not visible?

Well, for the more complicated shopping centers like for Stonefield, Town Center, Hollingbee Town Center,

We would have the elevations for each individual building that we're looking at.

That's right.

That's true.

So earlier on, if we had a shopping center that's more just like a strip mall and it's a single building,

We would just assume that whichever elevations were visible from the street, that's what the criteria applied to.

Got it.

Okay.

The shopping center owner or manager could apply those regulations regardless if they wanted that level of consistency they could do that on their own because if they are approving each sign as well.

Some

Thank you, Margaret.

So from that discussion, is there consensus that we won't take a motion today?

Okay, thank you.

Let's see, we'll move on to the next item.

Take a look at the continued discussion of the entrance corridor guidelines.

That's right.

did up a, well, the multi-page, one-pager for the Greenwood section of Route 250 West, which is a rockfish gap turnpike.

So I had the benefit of

using that entire section of 250 falls within the Greenwood Afton National Rural Historic District.

And as such, there was a survey completed in 2010 as part of that national register survey.

I don't know if they literally cataloged every structure in that entire district or not, but it seems that they did.

So it's listed in their PDF by address.

So basically I was able to take that document

which lists the date of construction and whether or not they considered it to be a contributing structure or non-contributing.

And then I have driven it, but once again at 56 miles an hour, it's hard to see really anything.

So I use the,

Google Street View and just kind of cross reference that against the addresses on Rockfish Gap Turnpike.

And my criteria was any any structure visible from the road that was considered a contributing structure was kind of included in that one pager.

And that it's such a rural district and the properties or at least the structures are set so far back from the road generally that ended up being very, very few structures.

but I thought that was, back when I was doing the Route 240 analysis, part of that route was also included in a National Register Historic District and I think where, at least where that's applicable, that should be,

figure strongly in the consideration of further development and also is a great resource as far as just documenting significant buildings along that route.

So Margaret's scrolling through.

So these are basically the structures that you can see from the road that are listed as contributing structures.

a couple residences, two churches and the Greenwood Grocery and Greenwood Garden Center.

So that, yeah, so these are the structures that are contributing and that was kind of the significant,

I didn't quite know how to approach it.

There are several significant buildings along this stretch also that you can't see from the road.

So I didn't really know whether or not it was worth it to include those since, you know, if there's, you know, Monticello, for example,

Monticello is not visible from the road, so as far as the entrance corridor is concerned, it's what Monticello looks like.

isn't really applicable to that entrance corridor.

What you see from the road is really kind of if you're just on that entrance corridor, it is your experience of Monticello.

So I've included some of the estate entrances in the section on

patterns of organized site development or designed, sorry, designed landscape features and their characteristics.

So these estate entrances are designed landscape features.

I'd say the other significant design landscape feature on this section of road is the kind of

three and four board pasture fencing, which is quite prominent.

Elements of visual order is once again this four board pasture fencing with the mountain views beyond.

and buildings tend to be set kind of back from the road and within that kind of either open pasture type environment or in typically like a heavily screened kind of wooded setting once again.

generally far back from the road.

So I think, at least on this section, it's the rural character of the entrance corridor, at least along this section, which is more prominent than individual structures along it.

So there was one notable exception, which is under the features of pre-entrance corridor development, which is notable just by its difference from the rest of the road, which is the Sunoco, which is very close to the road, very non-traditional in appearance and color, and

That's really, I'd say, one of the few sites along this section of road that's not just very rural and pastoral.

So I think that's about all I had.

I think that the takeaway was that the

that rural historic district designation was a great resource in putting this together.

And I think.

That certainly as we go through the other entrance corridors.

Definitely something that is helpful and we should maybe use those resources when when they exist and when we can use them and

I'd say for a section of road like this, really the important thing would be to kind of maintain that rural historic character.

And that may be an overriding concern in terms of new development proposals along that corridor.

So I think

And thank you, Chris.

Yeah, great presentation.

Thank you for finding those resources.

And I agree that's a great help to our considerations.

Invite other members to comment and discuss.

Yeah, thanks, Chris.

You bring up a good point about what's visible and what's not, and that we should know that these are part of our historical resources that

you know, could be drawn upon or that, you know, helped define the character, you know, that we're kind of seeking as a, or seeking to protect maybe.

Yeah, like distill that was, yeah.

As we look to shrink down, the things get bigger.

You know, we go from going the opposite way.

No, I really appreciate that.

I think the way you spoke about the landscape and kind of the views to me is one of the, you know, big takeaways for this corridor, especially when there's not as many

Architectural resources to draw on as a way to kind of review something in this context.

Thank you.

You did your homework on vacation.

That's the takeaway.

Fred?

Thanks, Dave.

Thanks, Chris.

Yeah, I appreciate you doing that.

It was really helpful.

You know, one of the things in addition to what Frank was mentioning and Chris you also mentioned was

I'm just wondering, what do we need to think about in terms of distant views?

And I don't know if that's something that we would take into consideration here, but I just went up to Hazy Mountain Vineyard a couple days ago or yesterday, and it is a completely cleared mountaintop, and it's a non-traditional architecture, and you think about

Is that visible from an entrance corridor?

Hypothetically, is it visible from 151?

So it's far, far away, but it's very clearly visible.

I've been sort of thinking about those things that are immediate, like within 500 or 600 or 700 feet from the corridor.

But I think, like also with Sentara Hospital from 64, just thinking about the longer view, I think it's important for us to continue to think about.

And I realized in my own research, having done work from Google Earth, you don't always see those long views.

You see more street views.

So I think it's at some point helpful for us to actually drive and look up a little bit into the distance.

That's just a thought.

But yeah, that was very helpful.

Great job.

Thank you.

Chris, thanks.

I wonder if I noticed you had the same problem that I had to some degree that there aren't a lot of structures that are kind of within the corridor.

and you end up having to use the same images over and over again.

Yeah, I did feel as I was going through this, there were a lot of categories where

You know, I needed, or felt like I needed to check a box in terms of the category, but I didn't feel like I was adding much to the content itself.

And it didn't become immediately apparent to me, and I don't know how you would distill it, but it felt like there's still a lot of,

Information that somehow needs to be condensed into a more digestible format.

I think, for example, the architectural characteristics like massing materials, colors, I just kind of punted that because the four pictures I had were the only four pictures I had.

So that was, you know,

That demonstrated a variety of colors, materials, and form, but basically in terms of what you see on that corridor, that pretty much described it.

So I guess the problem I see is that the more general you get about

The description, the more kind of opinion gets injected into it just in terms of enough to mention.

But the solution to that problem, you know, I don't know how, you know, take your card or like this and kind of distill it into something that is, you know, short and sweet, but is kind of,

Yeah, very, very good points, Chris.

It seems like it's difficult to, I mean, in some ways, having the deep look and repetitive evidence might give us more support for having a one-pager that is perhaps a little bit more

Well, maybe it's somewhat subjective, but then there's more objective evidence behind it in terms of supporting the conclusion.

So your point about visibility of structures, it seems you can almost generalize that structures generally should not be visible from the corridor.

But yeah, I wonder, Margaret, maybe this is a question for you, if and when

Do you mean taking Chris's work and now transferring?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it could be, you know, I imagine we could fit more images on one page.

I think that this is great as a way to distill what the images each of them sort of relate to, but thematically clustering them.

And it may be in, you know, in different districts, there are different things to highlight, you know, in green wood, siding landscape, and, you know, it seems our primary, you know, there are areas with perhaps material and form become more important.

But certainly really appreciate your work, Chris, and thank you for enriching the discussion today.

I'm just wondering whether you could reorient this and make it sort of image-oriented in the sense that those key images end up being the foundation for

Whether it's the one-pager or in this case a PowerPoint with more than one page but when you have that picture of Emmanuel Church up there basically everything about Emmanuel Church that's relevant to the entrance corridor is addressed in that on that one slide as opposed to

then having to go back and look at the form and materials and like all these kind of in separate slides, just some way where you could condense it all into one side and the number of images you have effectively defines the number of pages you end up with.

Are you saying so to change it up so that you're talking about a particular one property per page and everything that's significant and relevant would be appropriate to copy for new development would be all on one page and

That's kind of right.

Then essentially your outline gets applied to each of those images and you kind of distill.

Right, right.

Excellent.

Well, folks are ready to move on, we can turn to

Actually, Dave, I know some members have been asking about timing and what's expected.

I think if folks have

ability and inclination to continue the research.

It'd be great to continue gathering the information.

If folks agree that it's useful to sort of gather the evidence and then distill it to conclusions and format, I think it would be helpful if members are willing and able to keep on going in parallel.

And I think we have the benefit

I believe the next regular meeting we don't have a quorum so we may have about a month until our next meeting if folks have an opportunity to fit in a little bit of time on the research it would be a good break in the other regular review items that we have to look at.

Great.

Great, well let's see.

Second.

Mr. Stewart?

Thank you, Carolyn.

And thank you everyone for your time today.

Any other items before we adjourn?

As I mentioned, our next regular meeting, the August 6th meeting is canceled due to the lack of a quorum.

So our next meeting will be Monday, August 16th.

Yes.

I'm not sure, Dave.

There's a good chance I may not be able to.

OK. Well, thank you.

We'll check for a quorum as we get closer.

Great.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.

Thanks.