Architectural Review Board Meeting   10/3/2022

OK, great.

It's 1.01 PM.

Margaret, could you call the roll, please?

All right, thank you.

Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting.

The public may access and participate in the meeting electronically.

Instructions for doing so are posted on the Albemarle County website at the Albemarle 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 meeting is a public record and subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

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

Applicants who are making presentations note that your presentation is limited to a total of 15 minutes, which you can divide among your team members.

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

If applicants in the meeting room have team members attending virtually who will need to present, please make that known when you come to the podium.

Everyone who is participating virtually, please mute your microphone until it is your turn to speak.

Do any ARB members have anything to disclose?

No, no.

I actually have a disclosure for

Item ARB 2022-78 5th Street Landing South Storage Site Plan.

I don't have anything to do with that building.

I'm just going to check in with Vivian and see.

All right, thank you.

We have no consent agenda items today.

We'll move into our regular review item, which we have one, will be presented by Chris Taggart.

It is ARB 2022-78 5th Street Landing self-storage site plan.

The application I'm presenting on today is a review architecture and site plan to construct a self-storage facility in addition to associated site improvements.

The overall site is located along Fifth Street with the Prose building southeast of 601 Fifth Street Landing and north of I-64.

ARB approved a final site plan for the overall parcel in 2018 with one of the buildings since constructed.

To summarize the staff report, there are minor comments on the site plan that need to be addressed, but the focus is largely on the building design and it's viewed from the Fifth Street and I-64 entrance quarters.

The building design is largely reflective of contemporary commercial design.

However, the use of tower-like elements, storefront windows would top with metal canopies, and the variation of materials provide minimal connections to the historic architecture of the county.

The use of the brick is another tie.

However, while the tower elements were fully phased with brick, brick proposed non-tower wall areas is limited to the first floor of the building, which will have limited visibility impact on entrance quarters.

The ethos on the upper three floors will have greater visibility and scale is monumental in nature.

Four story buildings in the zoning district require a step back above the third story on the street facing elevation.

A special exception has been quested by the applicant to waive this requirement.

A step back could help with the scale of the ethos as viewed from the entrance corridor.

However, design that does not include a step back but revises the distribution of materials and architectural elements could be appropriate.

An item not mentioned in the staff report is the potential visibility of the rear of the tower elements from the entrance quarter.

The lack of detailing on the rear of these forms gives them an unfinished appearance not appropriate for the entrance quarter.

Revising the rear of these elements to provide detailing that gives more finished appearance would be appropriate.

Staff recommends the following points of discussion, and staff recommends the changes listed in the staff report be addressed and reviewed at a future ARB meeting.

All right, thanks, Chris.

I was curious about the previously approved landscaping plan, because I noticed in the staff report that the landscaping plan presented for this project and the previously approved one were set side by side, and I was just curious how they

related to each other.

The previous approved landscape plan was brought up in the aspect of the landscaping and the base of the retaining wall that has not yet been planted.

No, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for me.

I don't have any questions either.

Thank you.

Good afternoon members of the ARB.

My name is Kelsey Schlein.

I'm a planner with Shimp Engineering.

I'm just going to bring up my slides here for you all.

So as I said, I'm a planner with Shimp Engineering.

We're the civil firm working with Centennial American Properties, who's the contract purchaser of this property.

Here with me today is Rachel Moon, one of my colleagues.

And joining us remotely is Barry Bird with Barry Bird Architecture, who is the architect for the project.

So I'm going to go over a quick intro to the project, a few revisions that our firm has made in response to staff comments from the civil side.

and then turn it over to Barry for the primary points of discussion.

So the context of the site here, so the property has frontage, currently has frontage on Fifth Street.

In total, it's a four acre property.

However, concurrently with the major site plan amendment, we'll be pursuing a subdivision for just this portion of the property.

So it will have visibility from both Fifth Street and I-64 that you can see down here.

This was the previously approved site plan for the property.

So you can see this is kind of the original program that was imagined for that site.

So with this application we're pursuing a site plan amendment to the previously approved plan.

This is just a quick concept showing the overall plan.

So the building footprint here, primary access to the site from 5th Street Landing Way, and then a loading area is accessed through the building with a few parking spaces outside.

This area here is the portion that was referenced in the staff report about the landscaping at the base of the retaining wall.

And so that is outside of our limits and disturbance.

But we will be coordinating with staff through the site plan on that landscaping in that area.

And so what we showed inside our limits of disturbance is the new landscaping that we're proposing.

Just a few site sections of the property just to call attention to the elevation changes.

So the proposed building is proposed at a finished floor of 390.

The 64 elevation, Route 64 elevation is quite a bit higher in a few areas around 408.

The elevation of Fifth Street is about 392.

So we're just a bit higher with our finished floor from Fifth Street, but just calling attention

to a few vistas and sections and how the grade works in this area.

This is the north and west elevation, so as viewed from 5th Street, north and east, and the south elevation from 64.

A few revisions that we've incorporated in response to staff comments.

Changing out the ornamental trees from ornamental to medium deciduous.

So we changed from a dogwood to a European hornbeam and revised that to a two and a half caliper planting.

We swapped out our interior parking trees to note that they will be two and a half caliper planting.

And then a revised note here that approximately 11,000 square feet of

I guess what should have been planted within the property boundary to remain outside of the limits of disturbance.

And again, so we'll be coordinating with staff on that with the site plan amendment of that landscaping in that particular area at the base of the retaining wall.

Some additional revisions, just calling attention to the 3000 Kelvin note.

And we did have a few locations that were foot candles in excess of 20.

And so just revised that by adjusting the spacing between a few light poles on the site to get it below 20 foot candles.

And added a note that the proposed pole finish is a proposed bronze.

So those are kind of the extent of the changes that we made in response to the staff report from the civil side.

Okay, I'm on.

Is it possible to be able to share my screen?

Yes, it should be.

Okay.

All right.

We have two items and we have reviewed the comments made and have made some revisions to accommodate the comments.

One of the main comments referenced a project that

We brought before you a few months ago.

That was a Hollymead project and it was asked that maybe we change the brick here and also increase the amount of brick for the project.

So we have revised our elevations and renderings to take the brick up three stories.

which is similar to what we did at Hollymead.

I think that's referenced in this list of requested items.

So we have done that.

All HVAC units on the building will be on the roof.

They will not be visible from view due to the line of sight.

We have a

Color board that we've attached.

And I think those were the major comments that had to do with the building itself.

Okay.

This is as was mentioned earlier, this is a rendering from Fifth Street.

Again, we brought the brick up, we have delineated what would appear to be windows in the brick in a three dimensional form all around on all four sides of the building.

This would be the other elevator.

This would be looking from the main highway at the building in rendering form.

The glass or glazing on this would all be clear.

It would easily meet the requirements of your glazing.

We use a Solarband 70XL, which is a very, very clear glazing.

One of the more clear glazings on the market.

So that's what we propose to use for this facility.

The

These facilities typically, when you look through the glass in these tower elements, you would typically see the green doors, although we've rendered these with a white door, which might be more pleasing.

And I think that was one of the responses, or excuse me, one of the items on the list also, could that be toned down?

And I'm sorry, I was having a few computer problems before we got started.

So I'm really spread out on our conference room table.

All right, well, I guess we'll just go into questions.

If any board members have questions for the applicant.

I think there are two that come to mind.

One is in looking at the site plan.

It looks like there's additional area that could be planted at the east and the south.

Would there be any concern on the applicant's part with adding additional trees there just to deepen the planted buffer?

The second is I appreciate the applicant expanding the extent of brick.

In looking at the views, I think the tower element on the east side in the middle at the automotive entrance to the parking, not the parking to the storage, it is slightly different in its expression in the corner.

Windows, which have sort of a brick base, then has the smaller fenestrated portion on top.

I wonder if for consistency sake, it might take on a character and appearance somewhat more like the corner elements.

Yes, that certainly is something that we could do.

To be honest, I'm not sure why we didn't think of it.

That's a very good comment.

And in response to your landscape comment, so we do, you know, on our site plan, we'll have some additional area to accommodate those plantings.

I think we could at the moment.

We are working through a stormwater amendment on the property and so

Thank you.

Thanks.

Yeah, I guess I have two.

So the first is, I noticed in the staff report, there was a question of coordinating the color of brick with the previous, the building A, I believe.

We did change on our boards, and when you get forward to this in your final, we have changed to the RIC that was listed in the comments.

Okay, great.

And then I think my comment speaks a little bit to this question of sort of scale and the appearance of blankness.

And I kind of agree with staff's assessment that increasing the amount of brick, especially on those sides facing Route 64 or I-64 makes sense.

But looking at the elevation from Fifth Street or the perspective, could you go to the perspective, please?

Yeah, that one.

I kind of wonder if maybe this one tended to feel a little bit less big when the brick was brought down and the ephus was there with the color contrasting panels.

And to me, I didn't have as much of an issue with that version.

It was more that there was this corner, the corner that's not

sort of detailed like a tower, that to me, that portion in Ephis was made a pretty prominent statement of that sort of less, I don't know, that material.

So I actually wondered if this one might be more successful retaining the Ephis as before, but detailing that corner to be consistent with the others.

and that that would sort of both add a little bit more visual interest because the brick with those recesses doesn't communicate the same level of contrast with the Eastis panels and sort of detailing that corner differently

would help it to read less like monolithic, I guess.

That was kind of my thought.

So it might net out being about the same or maybe even less brick on that side.

All right, thanks.

I appreciate the increase in the amount of brick, but there's now a lot of kind of what I would call bricked in window statements in the brick portion.

And I was wondering, are those recessed at all?

They are three-dimensional.

The brick band around the outside comes out to put texture in the building there basically.

One item that we could do, which really maybe addresses the comment from the previous panelists, and I apologize for not getting your name, but we could take these brick windows, if you will, and put a different color brick inside that frame.

Yeah, because I think that that's sort of, that was my reaction is that in expanding the brick, it reduced the amount of color contrast that was happening on that facade.

So if there were a color contrasting brick that was maybe similar to the Ephus or some other color that you could pull, I think that would work.

I don't know that it would necessarily even have to be the whole panel.

Maybe if you could do like a,

A different soldier course at the head of the window or something.

All right.

Well, I guess I would just follow up on yours, Chris, just to, yeah, I had assumed maybe and incorrectly that there was some recess to the brick within the described window, but it sounds like it's intended to be flush with the other brick and then the brick around it is projected.

It would, the reason we pulled that border out was to make it appear to be recessed, so it would have the appearance of being recessed.

All right, thank you.

All right, thank you.

The ARB will now go into discussion.

No, I don't believe so.

Yeah, I also appreciate the updated version that we saw.

And I guess just to address something that Chris mentioned that was not in the staff report, but I also noticed when I was looking at the elevations,

was the kind of unfinished appearance of the backside of some of those tower elements.

In looking at the site sections that were provided, it didn't appear that those would be readily visible, but if there's any kind of further demonstration that they wouldn't be visible,

or if they would be, if there was some way you could treat that, I think that would be good in a subsequent submission.

So what we've recommended for today is a list of comments to be addressed to have the design returned to you.

All right, Dave or Tara, do you have any suggestion changes to the motion as it's presented?

Yes, so let me just scroll down a little bit.

I guess if to Chris's point could we because I know that the site section was taken at that particular point but I'm just trying to think about that section of 64 I wonder if you go higher further back I guess it would be great to verify with a rendering from the height of 64 to address the unfinished sides of the towers and the mechanical equipment

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What I added as 21 was add more trees on the east and south sides of the site.

I guess as coordinated with the stormwater issues.

None for me.

Thank you, Chris.

Yeah, thank you, everyone.

Well, no motion then.

I'm good.

Thank you.

All right, well, thanks a lot.

That concludes the regular review items.

So we have one work session today, which is on the entrance corridor design guidelines addenda.

Yes.

Today we just have one corridor to present to you.

So we integrated with the map design the intersections of other entrance corridors shown in the dashed line.

And an 11 by 17 version, I think they blend nicely into

into the map image to communicate that there is a entrance corridor there.

So we're trying to stay away from needing a legend, but we might need to include a legend if much more gets added.

So for the most part, what we found with this entrance corridor was that the condition is pretty much the same all the way through.

So we thought that we would just do a corridor spread and include two images at the bottom.

What we could do if you would like to see more white space is do these two images blown up on a second sheet.

like we've done with others.

There isn't a lot of development along this corridor, so there aren't really buildings to pick out.

I guess that first part of this corridor where the county is on one side and the city is on the other is where those sound barriers are located, which are mentioned in this page.

But they're very dominant over that section.

I was wondering if a shot of those should be included, but I don't know that that's really something we would want to duplicate anywhere else on the corridor, so maybe it's better to just leave that off.

That was my only, kind of my only thought about that was here's a very prominent thing, but it's not shown in here, and I didn't know if

I think we struggled with the same thing.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, I think it's a good point, Chris and Mariah.

I don't know if maybe it is worth noting it, just because on the one hand, I agree they're overly dominant and unrelieved, but they are fairly nice pre-cast barriers compared to what one can do.

There are some areas where I think I've seen some volunteer vines coming over the top and some volunteer trees coming up from the gravel buffer.

Even if we were just to include a note saying, you know, if future barriers occur, they should be at least as

have as much texture and variation as these and should have increased landscape buffer.

Because I guess with the scale of some of the development, like at the intersection of old Ivy, that may be of a density that in the future VDOT could justify additional barriers.

I've never really been able to figure that out.

I know there are campuses right there and I don't know if that

And then I guess it just makes sense to push all those images onto the next page.

And then I think it seems good to me.

Nicely done.

Thank you.

One interesting thing that we found with this was that the wooded buffers on the south side are much more extensive than on the north side.

South of 250 West.

Yes, yeah.

I guess it's just a consequence.

I think that east of that is held by UVA and the foundation and west of it, most of it until recently, including just a strip between the subdivision, I think, and the road was held by the foundation.

And I think it may have at some point been in UVA's master plan as part of an overall green reserve.

Okay, so moving on, we've been updating the maps to integrate the approximate entrance corridors.

So I just wanted to give you a look at what those are looking like.

Those are the updates that we're integrating into the previous corridors that you've seen.

And then the image to the bottom right is the image for Route 250 East, Richmond Road, which you have not reviewed yet.

And so I just wanted to note that.

And then I had a question for the ARB.

I've noticed in reading and sometimes writing, but also in laying out the information that there's a propensity to organize information in a way that radiates out from Charlottesville city.

Is there a direction of travel that we should be organizing these materials or is it something that's dismissible?

So for example, when we did the Route 250 West corridor, we really started from the edge of the county and worked back towards Charlottesville.

And in a lot of our others, we're starting at Charlottesville and radiating out.

It could.

What we could do moving forward is organize our new corridors and segments in a way that takes one path.

in or out, but we would need to revise previous sections.

I'm not sure to what extent.

Some of them already follow certain paths.

They emanate from Charlottesville Center.

But then there are some like Route 250 east, sorry, west that move in.

To the extent they are entrance corridors to the county.

Conceptually in my mind means they start at the county borders and come in.

But again, the enabling authority is related to their conveyance to historic sites.

And I imagine we could find historic sites in any direction and justify it that way.

So I mean, it makes sense to me that in our reviews, we contemplate the character of the corridor going both directions.

Yeah, considering just my personal opinion is that it could go either way.

You know, it hadn't even occurred to me that this distinction that we're talking about, so I don't think it's necessary to like redo anything.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

I wouldn't want you to go back and redo a bunch of stuff you've already done.

But if you go forward with, I guess, exterior inward, did that seem appealing to both of you?

So that would be a good way to do it going forward.

And then if it looks really weird at the end of it, we can go back.

I think when we all perceive it, we kind of go along our own paths of travel, which is usually our homes out to the country or however you travel.

But what I've noticed is that it's mostly inward out.

So just a question to the ARB.

I very much thank you for your respective staff's time in putting these together.

Yeah, I think I didn't make sense and that that sounds good.

Right.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

So we will move on to other business.

First of which is the draft rules of procedure and remote participation.

I had one which Margaret was good enough to look into the answer to, which I thought I would share with everybody, which is just that the limit on two absences is related to the specific personal matter item.

And you can have other unlimited effectively remote participations for personal illness or the other enumerated categories.

I don't think we took the same leap.

Let me go back and find the email.

I thought that it was just limited to each person could have two, each board member could have two under that category.

And that was it.

That was my understanding.

It'll take too long to find that here.

Yeah, I think it would be good to revisit this when Frank and Frank are here also just in case like

Sure.

Yeah.

There's no rush in adapting it.

It's, you know, just for your use whenever you might need it.

And you actually could, the way your rules of procedure are written, you couldn't adapt it today.

For most of the boards, it is a requirement.

I think there are a few committees that you do not have to be a county resident, but I think that's- Okay, because I don't know if it's possible to be 60 miles away in the county.

I think it's like,

If you're going to have your meeting in a

Unusable location and it makes it impossible for one person to attend.

Yeah, I did the same.

I measured.

That's right.

OK, so I think that makes sense to check when the other board members are here.

And I had the same question as data actually about the medical and

Family Medical.

So I think that would be something that maybe we could all revisit the language again.

And in general, I'm pretty supportive of it.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

So we are now onto the approval of the September 19th minutes.

Yes.

Aye.

and despite what the agenda says, the meeting time and location would have to change for the 17th.

We would have to be in room 241 and it would have to start at 10 a.m.

So then we'd be reviewing the new language, not two weeks from now, but four weeks in this room.

Yeah.

November 7th, okay.

Sounds good.

All right.

So we just had a quick question.

Staff has received an inquiry regarding adding some murals to the facade of 29 Place Shopping Center.

The current building design went through ARB review, so this would be considered a minor amendment.

Quick run through of kind of street view highlighting one of the locations and an example of one of the murals proposed.

and another street view at another location to highlight it.

And then another example of another one of the murals proposed.

Just add that this building, this shopping center does have ARB action on it.

So whereas just painting a building itself wouldn't require a permit because there's a previous ARB action that deals with materials and colors.

That change would require some level of ARB approval.

Could possibly be a minor amendment done at staff level.

Seems fine to me, especially the way that we had to zoom in very far to see it in the entrance corridor.

Thanks.

All right, in that case, this meeting is adjourned until the next meeting on November 7th.

It is 1 54 by my watch.

Thank you.

Thank you.