Architectural Review Board Meeting   8/16/2021

That's the queue.

Wonderful.

Well, everybody, it being 1 p.m., I will call to order the August 16th, 2021 meeting of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with order 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

A quorum is present.

Architectural Review Board members present electronically are Frank Hancock,

and myself, Dade Van Der Werf.

Fred Missel and Frank Stoner are absent.

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 telephone.

Both is 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.

All speakers, when it's your turn to speak, please first state your name for the record.

And for everyone participating today, please keep your line muted except when you're speaking.

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

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

So we'll turn to disclosures.

Do any members have anything to disclose today?

No.

Thank you.

No, I don't either.

Next up is public comment.

Thank you.

Next is the consent agenda.

We have one item on the consent agenda today.

Okay.

Great.

And that item for the record, of course, is ARB-2021-76 Galaxy Farm.

Great.

So it sounds like it remains on the consent agenda.

I'll move to approve the consent agenda.

I'll second.

Thank you, Carolyn.

Okay.

Mr. Hancock?

Aye.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Next, we'll go to regular review items.

There's one regular review item today, which Chris Taggart will present.

That's item ARB 2021-77, Take 5, Oil Change.

Chris, are you making a presentation?

Yes, Dave.

The proposal being reviewed today is the initial site plan to construct a 1465 square foot oil change facility with associated site improvements.

Subject property is located on the north side Route 250 at the intersection with Pantops Cornerway.

ARB reviewed a rezoning for the overall Pantops Corner site in 2013 and since 2018 has approved site plans for the nearby self-storage building, hotel, and gas station.

To summarize the staff report, the focus is largely on the building materials and its location relative to adjacent structures.

As viewed from the entrance quarter, the mix of walled materials established as the primary building material and the proposed masonry is in a shade of black, both of which are not reflective of the traditional architecture of the county.

Staff also noted that the placement of the building is not aligned with the neighboring structures along the entrance quarter, but bringing the building closer to the frontage appears to be unlikely.

Regarding the initial site plan, staff is recommending approval with the recommendations listed in the staff report addressed with the final site plan submittal.

Thank you very much, Chris.

Frank, do you have any questions?

No and all.

Thanks, Chris.

Thank you.

Yeah, I don't have any questions either.

None for me either.

Thank you very much, Chris, for your presentation.

All right, thank you very much.

Let me share my screen here.

Can you see my screen?

Yes, thank you.

Great.

Good afternoon.

My name is Kevin Shaffer.

I'm the studio director for the Charlottesville Office of Design Development.

Joining me on the call today is Justin Shimp with Shimp Engineering who has performed the civil and site work for this submission as well as Austin Cox who is serving as the owner's representative for Take 5 oil change.

Thank you as always to both Chris and Margaret for their helpful guidance throughout the ARB process.

We appreciate the review and the thoughtful staff comments and we look forward to gathering input and comments from the board.

I'm pleased today to be presenting a proposed oil change facility along the Route 250 entrance corridor, immediately east of Free Bridge, as one of the remaining vacant parcels associated with the Pantops corner development.

Immediate adjacent uses along the vehicle-centric corridor include a Wawa convenience store and fuel dispensary, an O'Reilly auto parts store, and several automotive dealerships, including the Flow Mazda, BMW, and Volkswagen dealerships currently under construction.

The site itself is smaller than many adjacent parcels and therefore the proposed building is also comparatively smaller, but it is still within keeping of a corridor that houses various styles, forms, scales, and materials.

Take Five Oil Change is a rapidly growing national brand in the quick oil change service industry.

With over 500 locations across the nation, Take 5 is interested in the Pantops corner location because of the high daily traffic counts, the ease of access on and off the major corridor, and the adjacency to similar automotive service-based uses.

Understanding the Albemarle County-specific entrance corridor guidelines will alter the national brand standards for Take 5 buildings.

We are grateful that the owner and the national brand have approached the design with flexibility

to ensure compliance with the design standards.

Take Five's interest in this location is substantiated by their willingness to alter their brand design by taking direct cues from the language found in the design guidelines.

The proposed design responds directly to the entrance corridor guidelines to the following.

The traditional three-part composition found in traditional and historic structures within the area is on display here.

through the use of a strong, visually heavy masonry base, an eavesbody, and a cornice line marked by brake metal horizontal banding and coping trim.

The tower element features a traditional hipped roof clad in a traditional standing seam metal roof material.

The project takes many of its cues from its immediate adjacent context, particularly the material palette and roof forms found at the adjacent voilas

as well as the material and color palette of the adjacent O'Reilly's.

Being relatively small in scale, the proposed project continues to relate to a human scale and visually reduce its height by introduction of a horizontal band at the header of the 12 foot tall overhead bay doors.

Appropriate amounts of glazing and a legible and orderly rhythm help maintain a project of human scale while limiting any large swaths of blank ephs.

This band in combination with coping trim contributes to limiting any areas of blankness above the bay doors.

A simple legible material palette defines a cohesive whole complemented by a unifying flat roof found on the main body of the background building.

Long flat facades are eliminated by the introduction of this hipped roof tower element that elevates the roof to establish a hierarchy.

creating a location for signage and breaking the plane of the main roof by extending beyond the building formed by 12 inches.

Given the small scale and size of the building, the effectiveness of unifying groups is limited.

However, the repetition of the bay doors, the east columns, and the exterior lighting sconce does create a repetitive motif that contributes to the legibility of the cohesive whole and limits blankness along any facades.

We appreciate the staff's comments and would like to address them quickly now before we begin to gather feedback from the board.

We will be providing samples for all materials and colors as part of our final submission for site plan review.

And we're happy to add the standard window glass note to our architectural drawings.

A lighting plan will also be included with the final submission being mindful of the county's entrance corridor requirements as well as zoning requirements for lighting

including limiting light to below 20 foot candles at an individual spot, using fixtures with a color temperature below 3000 K and employing full cutoff fixtures.

We will be revising the landscape per staff's minor comments, including providing a three and a half inch caliber trees along the Route 250 entrance corridor and revising the plan to ensure the row of shrubs along that entrance corridor frontage remains within our parcel boundaries.

A sign permit application will follow separately, though the owners are aware of the entrance corridor sign specific guidelines.

We agreed with staff's comment number four regarding a dumpster enclosure that coordinates with the main building material palette, and we'll be proposing a six foot tall CMU dumpster enclosure that is clad in use and features composite board trim

Composite doors painted in the same Sherwin-Williams deep forest brown as the proposed metal trim and exterior doors found on the main building.

The dumpster enclosure will appear as an accessory structure to the main building, but will not draw attention to itself from the entrance corridor.

Regarding staff comment number five in the mechanical equipment, the majority of the building is unconditioned and open air, and the only conditioned area of the facility

are the manager's office, the waiting room, and an ADA restroom facility, all of which will be serviced by a P-TAC unit found in the facade facing away from the entrance corridor and therefore not visible.

Electrical service and meters will be located on the wall facing O'Reilly's and will also be limited from visibility due to the proximity of the adjacent structure.

Finally, we are interested to hear the board's thoughts on comment number two regarding revising the mix of wall materials to make brick the primary building material.

We incorporated the brick to help establish the masonry base of the building, and then used the east field to serve as the body of the building.

To us, the breakdown of the material was appropriate for the entrance corridor guidelines, and we took extra care to show score joints in the east in thoughtful, purposeful locations to incorporate a more panelized look.

that takes precedence from metal panels found throughout the adjacent automotive dealerships.

A concern in going to Albrick would be that the visually heavy masonry base that is being established may be lost.

However, we do acknowledge there are opportunities to either accentuate the tower element or complement the composition through the addition of more brick.

If the board feels staff's comment is warranted, we do have some options we would like to gather feedback on given the preliminary submission not requiring any action from the board.

And so with that, I'll conclude by expressing our gratitude again to county staff and the board.

We look forward to hearing any comments you may have, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Kevin.

Nice presentation and nice materials as always.

Just one, and I apologize because it's probably shown on the elevations, but

That would be break metal.

Okay.

And it would protrude from the EIFS to slightly a couple inches.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Thanks, Kevin.

Great presentation.

Just a quick question on the site plan.

I guess space between the building and 250, kind of that turnaround where you would come back around.

That would be in this location here.

I'll let Justin jump in here.

Yes, one second.

Yeah, Justin Shimp here, the engineer for the project.

So the turning radius, I did not measure those, but I think it comes from there.

It's actually, we're short by like five feet of the company's desired standard.

It is, if you have a couple of cars coming out, I think if somebody, you want somebody to be able to pull forward, like if they have to pull out and kind of walk in and pay or something like that, and then a car come out and around them.

I think that's the origin of that depth.

So it's,

Maybe it could be cut a foot or two but I think if you it's 50 feet so if a car sticks out 20 feet you have to come around them 30 feet it's probably pretty tight.

We do actually have a fair amount of landscape room really if you look at the plan here there's I think 20 feet or so probably more space maybe than the Wawa had so we do need to pull our shrubs in so they're on our property but I think we were able to strike a reasonable balance here but I do but I think the reason for that sort of

Thank you.

OK, yeah, thank you, Frank, and I appreciate your asking that, I guess, to tag onto it.

Is there room between sort of the northern drive-through lane and then the northernmost return drive lane?

So it's a small landscape island perhaps right in front of the office we're talking about?

Yeah, I think we, I need to double check with the site development, but I think we probably could put a little landscape island after, maybe Kevin could remind me of the doors.

I think the door comes in that side of the sidewalk.

Yeah, that's correct.

There could potentially be a small right.

So for example, directly in front of that wall, not really there as easily, but really in the front of that, we could have a small landscape island in that zone.

And likewise, behind where there's the AC unit vent is there, I think there's some space for a little landscape island.

So to your left there, right there,

Great.

It seems like it might be a nice way to relieve a bit the expansive asphalt there and maybe create a little more landscaping and buffering to the building.

But one related question is, does that return drive lane have to be on the north side of the building, or is there any chance that it would work equally well on the south?

So basically mirror and essentially you drive around so you drive in

Again, I want to talk to the developer about that.

I think the only thing about that is it puts it sort of in a backwards circulation pattern when a driver's used to, you know, if it's in a one-way loop, basically, you kind of come in, you stay to the right and you swing around.

So I think, I think it's probably just an operational preference.

You know, it could be done, I think, but operationally, I think that would create sort of a crossing motion.

Some confusion.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

That's all of my questions.

Although I know you mentioned, Kevin, you had some options.

We haven't been into discussion about materials.

Personally, I think it would be interesting and worthwhile to consider some alternatives to EFS and adjust the overall proportion.

Recently, I think it was a Jiffy Lube and a Sleep Number installation.

I think both of which may have had some EFS, but

significantly less than as proposed here.

OK. Yeah, that sounds great.

Happy to show.

One of the things we were considering is how to keep the legibility of the, you know, kind of the dark, visually heavy base that I keep referring to while introducing a brick field.

And then I think there is an opportunity to use the material to

Elevate the tower element and continue to establish that hierarchy.

One of the things we're still discussing internally is does the brick go on the tower element or does the the eafs go on the tower element?

Does the eafs go on the main body of the building?

We chose in this representation to show a gray brick that would

be on the main body of the building to further limit the amount of ephs we were having.

And one of the things that the ownership group asked me to discuss with you would be maybe the appropriateness or the acceptability of a thin brick.

This is a product that we're looking at from Glengarry, a thin brick veneer.

looks like a brick, but it's just a much thinner brick version.

Glengarry is a relatively high quality brick.

This would potentially be a brick that we would suggest for this color palette.

It still allows for the legibility of the dark masonry base.

And one reason that we felt the thin brick could be worthwhile

appropriate was that then we could have a water table at our base that kind of accentuated that base element and protruded proud of this main wall brick.

So those are the systems we're considering and sort of the application that we're considering going back to the thin brick in the body of the project.

Great, thank you.

Yeah, man, would you mind zooming in a little bit?

It's tough for me to see.

Yeah, sorry.

We tried to put four on a single page here, but.

Thank you.

You know, I don't know off the top of my head.

I can do a little bit of research and ensure that, but

Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, thin brick, it's a real brick and it has a real joint.

So whether it's four inches nominally thick or one inch thick, it's what you see from the surfaces is the same.

The corners are the only place that you could

kind of tip your hand as far as it not being a real brick.

So just my personal opinion is that I would have absolutely no problem with a thin brick as opposed to a full brick veneer because at that point you're just talking about the composition of the wall and not what you perceive as the material of the wall.

Well, I'm inclined to agree with you, Chris, and appreciate you asking.

I share the same question about the corners, and I think as long as they can be convincing that it's a full dimensional brick, and they appear to be in the marketing material that Kevin is showing at the moment, would have no concern about that.

I think for my take, you know, if the facade facing the EC could be

fully brick or even more fully brick with brick at the tower element and the walls.

I think that might be still even more appropriate in the interest of economy to the extent that the facade's not visible from the EC.

Noted.

One of the challenges that comes once you have a brick element on these tower is now we've got to structurally support that clear span, but obviously if it's the thin set brick that gets a lot more easy and simple.

At one time we had talked about the dark brick really taking over that whole

Well, and if it were helpful in the same way that the panel behind the take five signage might be EFS and framed into the overall brick tower, you can panelize potentially the sides of the tower.

If the corner is red as brick, I think that would be,

OK.

But I think, you know, overall, the form scale, massing, hierarchy, you know, got a good job with that.

So appreciate your willingness and the applicant's willingness to consider further refining the material.

Are there any other, sorry, I guess we've entered discussion for a bit.

I think all the other comments were relatively straightforward.

One thought on the dumpster enclosure, is it tall enough?

And that could be depending on, you know, what what goes in there, but.

No, I appreciate it, I appreciate you showing an option too, I think.

that the option you showed with an additional brick I think is more appropriate.

But I don't have any other questions.

If we're in, are we in discussion, Dade?

Well, I just wanted to see if there were any other items to discuss.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I think great presentation.

I'll go ahead, Dade.

You know, I appreciate the economy of the site plan.

You know, if we could get a little landscaping in per Dade's suggestion, I think that would be nice.

Just it's just a large, expansive asphalt that it's not going to have any parked cars on it.

You know, it's more

that might be noticeable and might have an impact on the corridor.

But yeah, I agree with Dave, your comments on the massing, the scale, I think the composition is nice.

It's very similar to the Wawa.

I don't know how visible it will be just because of its size and the building it's right next to.

And there's a decent amount of landscaping

from the Wawa site coming down the hill.

Yeah, and I agree with staff's comments, but nice presentation.

Thanks, Frank.

Yeah.

share the compliment on the quality of the presentation as usual.

And I guess to address a staff comment that we hadn't talked about, I personally am fine with the use of the non-traditional brick color.

I think just the use of brick is a nod to the traditional materials of the area.

So I think

using the gray brick or a combination of the dark gray and a lighter brick color would be appropriate.

And also to kind of share my agreement with Dade's comment about the massing, which I think is done very well for this application.

Great, thank you, Chris.

Well, I'm just sad that I agree with my colleagues.

A nice presentation and appreciate the flexibility and willingness to work within the county guidelines and adjust the palette.

First to ask comments, I think like Chris, I'm comfortable with the use of gray brick and with some other contrasting color and the other brick above that to preserve that strong sense of a base.

Yeah, so I look forward very much to seeing the next

Next updated submission.

Are we ready to go to a motion and review of the staff's comments?

Right.

Chris, may I ask if you could zoom in a little?

I am, yes, yeah.

And let's see, are there comments included here regarding the architecture for the applicant's information?

Yeah, so I think that one can remain.

Up here as full-dimensional bricks.

I don't know.

OK. And in terms of the, I guess we're approving the site plan today.

Is that correct?

So do we, if regarding the island and planting, is that something that we need to add, or we would add that as a recommendation or a requirement?

Okay, this is initial site plan, so we're still, we're gonna see the final.

So should we just add an item of 10?

Or 9C is fine, yeah, either way.

Yeah, so I guess, you know, create a landscape,

Islands, between the travel lanes adjacent to the office and waiting area.

I think the only thing is, should it be consider adding?

And do we need to add a comment about the height of the dumpster enclosure?

And I just need to be ensured dumpster enclosure, you know, wall height exceeds dumpster height or dumpster is fully concealed.

And I guess we didn't discuss dumpster enclosure material.

I don't know whether others agree it would be preferable if it could be brick if exposed.

I mean, if it's heavily landscaped and screened, it may be less of a concern.

And thin brick is certainly probably aesthetically okay, but practically, it might be worth considering dimensional brick in that area just because of the sort of abuse that it might take.

Yeah, maybe just that it matched the building material coming from that pile of materials.

Well, actually, I think- No, actually, yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, Chris, you've got it covered.

Great, you're well ahead of us, thank you.

Great, anything else folks would like to adjust?

I'll move to forward the recommendations outlined in the staff report

To the agent for the site review committee as follows.

Item number two amended to include thin brick is acceptable provided that the corners appear as full dimensional brick.

And add item number 10, consider adding a landscape island between the travel lanes adjacent to the offices and the east end of the site.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second the motion.

Thank you, Chris.

Yes.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you for your presentation.

All right, moving on to other business.

Thank you, Chris.

I'll second.

Thank you, Frank.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you, everyone.

Great.

No, I'm good.

Great.

All right.

Well, thank you very much to everyone and Chris and Carolyn for your time.

So our next meeting is September 7th, 2021.

That's a Tuesday meeting.

Yes.

I believe I should be too.

Great.

So we'll have a quorum and maybe even be complimented by Fred and Frank as well.

Great.

Well, with that, we'll adjourn.

Our next meeting is Tuesday, September 7th, 2021.