Board of Architectural Review Meeting   2/15/2022

Yeah.

I can go ahead and get started with some brief instructions.

Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to the February 2022 Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review meeting.

We are now live on Channel 10, and we are continuing to stream on the city's streaming channels.

My name is Robert Watkins.

I'm city staff, and I'll be moderating tonight's meeting.

Before I hand things over to Brett Gastinger, the chair of the BAR, I'll just go over a quick few guidelines.

So first, for anybody who might be watching from home, let me introduce the meeting participants who are online right now.

First, we have Brett Gastinger, the chair of the BAR.

We're also joined by Cheri Lewis, the vice chair of the BAR.

Other BAR members who are online right now include Jody Lehendro, Ron Bailey, James Zehmer,

David Timmerman, Robert Edwards, Clayton Strange, and Hunter Smith.

We're also joined by Jeff Werner, who is my colleague on city staff.

Throughout the meeting, applicants and other participants will join the meeting as needed.

For members of the public who are on the call right now who'd like to provide any comment, there are several places in the agenda where you can speak.

At the beginning of the meeting, we allow time for comments from the public for items not on the agenda or items on the consent agenda.

And then before the BAR deliberates for each individual application, we allow time for public comment as well.

In order to provide comment, we ask that you register for the meeting if you haven't already.

And you can do that through the city calendar.

And then once you're an attendee, you can raise your hands during the comment portions.

For applicants who are online already, during your presentations, I will share my screen to pages from your application.

And if you want me to go to a specific page, you can just direct me to do so.

We'll have short periodic breaks as necessary and our chair or vice chair will direct us for when we need those.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to this regular monthly meeting of the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review.

Staff is going to introduce each item, which will be followed by the applicant's presentation, which shouldn't exceed 10 minutes.

The chair, this meeting, will then ask for questions from the public, followed by questions from the BAR.

And after the questions, then I'll ask for comments from the public.

And for each application, members of the public are allowed three minutes to ask questions, three minutes to offer comments.

Speakers, please identify yourselves and provide your address.

I will note that comments should be limited to the BAR's purview, that is, regarding only the exterior aspects of the project as they relate to our design guidelines.

Following our discussion and before we take action,

the applicant will have up to three minutes to respond.

And I'll just note that tonight I am zooming in even more remotely and I don't have access to a regular computer.

So please bear with me and I'll just ask also my fellow BAR members to help in helping prepare motions and getting to that point.

So with that, let us begin and with matters from the public not on the agenda

or for matters that are on the consent agenda.

For folks who are on the call, please raise your hand and I will allow you to speak.

Okay, then let us

Continue on to the consent agenda.

And tonight on the consent agenda, we have a COA for 617 Park Street, COA for 413 Ridge Street.

And now we can be able to see the rest.

We have the 511 North 1st Street and an SUP recommendation for 207 14th Street.

Thank you.

I will call a vote in the order that I see you on the screen.

Mr. LeHendro?

Aye.

Mr. Bailey?

Yes.

Mr. Timmerman?

Aye Mr. Zehmer Aye Ms.

Lewis Aye Mr. Edwards Aye Mr. Strange Aye And Mr. Gastinger Aye And Mr. Smith Aye Thank you.

Robert, did

Yeah, he's on his record watch list right now.

Excellent.

Then I think we can move to deferred items.

I'm working.

I'll just start from memory, though, before I get here.

So this is a COA request for, yeah, here it is, 310 East Main Street.

This is in the downtown ADC district.

This was discussed by you all in October of last year and had some questions for the applicant and they requested a deferral.

The alterations are to the Main Street elevation which is North elevation and the Water Street

which is the South elevation and both of the existing facades are 20th century.

I don't remember the date, but they were not part of these buildings when they had been originally surveyed with the district so the

I think as I recall from the discussion previously, there was no significant concerns for the BAR other than some questions about materiality that I believe have been addressed.

So, and I had noted in the staff reports, there had been that question of are the facades as they currently exist, are they

of importance enough that they should be respected, and there didn't seem to be a concern for that.

So we're now discussing the compatibility or the acceptability of the two proposed alterations.

So I'll hand it off to Robert to make his presentation unless you and the BAR have any questions for me.

I think that's good.

And Robert, I just know we do have three new members, so it might be in just a little bit.

I thought I recognized some new faces or didn't recognize faces.

Hi.

My name is Robert Nichols.

I'm a principal at Formwork Design Office.

We're an architectural practice here in Charlottesville, a small firm.

And we've, most of our, quite a lot of our work over the history of our firm has been in downtown Charlottesville.

A current project we have is the, this is 310 East Main Street.

It's the building that currently has Vita Nova pizza on the ground floor.

Maybe this is too much background.

And it's got, notably for the mall, it's got

very 1970s era curtain wall facade.

Very thin aluminum frames and glass.

That's all it consists of, really, on the mall side.

And in addition to a style that maybe has been exhausted, they are in dire need of maintenance and they just look tired.

and that same description holds up for the Water Street facade.

The building is about 22, 23 feet wide and it goes all the way through the block from East Main, the pedestrian mall to Water Street.

Last, it wasn't last month, several months ago, I think in October, we first brought this project before the board and reviewed our,

are strategies for redesigning, redeveloping, rebuilding facades, both front and back.

And generally had a good discussion and a positive response.

And we're back this month for, I think, two reasons.

One is the front of the building, what I call the front, the East Main facade,

has a currently has a an elevator shaft visible on the street it's kind of it's a convex circular shaft glazed in that curtain wall system and we're that's we know it's going to revert back to a flat

flat panel, planar with co-planar more or less with the face of the building, certainly parallel to the face of the other face of the building, the glazed face.

And it's just a blank panel.

We're not interested in seeing the elevator shaft in the way it is now or the car.

and so it's kind of a blank slate.

We considered it a blank slate for a decorative treatment.

I should say it already comes with a pretty great proportion being these kind of three stories high and eight and a half feet wide.

Because that was such a blank slate as I call it, I was,

and our schedule was such that we asked for a deferral just to give us more time to develop that and it wasn't necessarily tightly coordinated in with the rest of the work on the other construction assemblies on the building.

I guess I'll talk about that and then we'll go over to Water Street.

What we showed last time was what I'll call a

a composition primarily in two dimensions where we were experimenting with a little bit of relief, but mostly proportion and scale.

We had some bars in contrasting material that kind of populated that vertical facade in varying rhythms.

and it was, we got there really just by composing within this narrow vertical rectangle, a collection of elements that produce some pleasing proportions.

Where we are now and what we find very interesting is we've been working on a more systematic approach to creating a decoration on that facade and it's,

And what it relies on is many small pieces of metallic finish material that will come in many varieties of shape.

And the primary shape, maybe we should just go to, yeah, that sheet there.

The view on the right is obviously a computer-generated view.

It's a perspective which we tried to use to explain this thing.

It's this array of tiles or little angle clips where

The tiles go up in a regular array, but they have certain parameters which vary across the system.

And the varying parameters are the panel, each tile is first flat against the elevator shaft.

And then there's an angle where that tile is bent and it projects from the elevator shaft.

The length of the bent tab varies and the angle

at which the tab is bent varies.

And working with that as a kit of parts or a palette, it gives you an opportunity to develop by the combination of these many small pieces very interesting visual effects from a static piece of architecture

that will appear very dynamic and very interesting depending on the position from which you're viewing it, your rate of speed as you walk by it, and also function of what daylight is doing at the time.

And that is to say, so if you look closely at this piece on the right,

It may be not easy to identify that any given tile has an angle that's different than its neighbor.

But if you, and maybe squinting helps, look at the whole piece, you can see a kind of a larger, a graphic move at the scale of the whole, in this case, the whole building, where you get this kind of river of that contrasting color coming down through the middle of that.

In this case, the contrasting color will be the flat backing surface of the elevator shaft.

And that's gonna be a very thin bronzish color.

And these studies on the left are different demonstrations of ways in which repeated small moves of a similar material adjusted in a similar way

but in combination in aggregate create an effect that is commensurate with the scale of the whole assembly.

The ability to do this is made possible with what's known as CNC manufacturing abilities, which is computer numerical controlled maybe, something like that, where

This would be maybe less interesting and probably prohibitively expensive if each of these pieces was made by hand.

But this whole system allows for the work that we do here in our design studio to defining how these tiles relate to one another and what their angles and what their tab lengths are.

we can set that information directly into the CNC machine shops that will produce the multiple tiles, the many tiles automatically, not automatically, but in an automated way.

And so given this ability to make these subtle changes over many different tiles laid out in an array such as this,

We are using really mathematical formulas to account for kind of the effect of one course of these being stacked on another.

How do you change the variation as you go to each one and then how do you adjust that variation at each course or do you adjust it?

And then also, the parameters can adjust according to which course they're on, in other words, how high they're getting along the building.

The means of producing this and how it's derived is kind of moot once it's an object.

but we find it very interesting and also gives us access to a kind of effect and a kind of result that I think might otherwise be hard to achieve and I think the effect will be quite interesting.

One of the comments about this particular panel in the building from the last meeting was that we might consider integrating lighting into this panel

We've considered that and we had considered it before.

We've decided not to do that for a couple of reasons.

One is because this is up against the elevator shaft, we have very little depth available to us.

And so there's not much, we don't have the kind of depth that we often like to exploit to conceal lighting.

We didn't want to make lighting that needed to be, to steal depth from inside the elevator shaft would introduce maybe a need to maintain that from inside the shaft, which was unappealing to us.

But maybe more so we've had some results on the mall and particularly going back to when we designed the blue light grill many years ago, where we invested a lot of time and

in trying to develop a subtle lighting effect that looked pretty great in our mock-ups and our tests.

And when we got it installed, and this was largely our fault, it was overshadowed by the street lighting.

And we realized that a lot of what's happening, particularly from maybe

two stories or a story and three quarters down is street lighting kind of illuminates that zone through which people walk and that lighting other than interior lighting can have a tendency to be washed out.

In any event, in this case, we're relying on the backing material, this bronzer colored material to reflect light and so when

As one passes by and the varying degrees to which the bronze material is revealed, that would have an effect of showing a brightness and reflecting some color.

I'll leave the description of that panel at that.

The Water Street

When we came back from the last meeting, there were a couple of comments that we wanted to focus on and that we were hoping to come back with a good response to.

And they kind of, in aggregate, seemed to get at

Even though there's a fair amount of depth in this facade assembly, both just in depth of the framing members and the depth that's provided by the kind of primary frame around the tall glazing compared to the actual sash of the glazing units.

And then also we have increased depth in that vertical panel on the left over the street number.

We were talking about what some sun control might do on that facade, both to control sun for the benefit of the occupants, but also for the appearance of the facade.

And, well, I'll leave that at that.

So we came back, we were thinking about sun control, which is a real issue down there.

from an interior perspective.

And we thought, well, and what about, what are we going to get?

What opportunities do we have on the exterior of the building if we conquer that?

Take it on.

We evaluated some common way to address Southern Sun horizontal planes that project out from the building and essentially become visors over the

the glazed openings on the south.

And we also realized that in this particular location, late afternoon sun shooting down Water Street from a low angle is also problematic.

And so we were evaluate and low sun typically comes from the west.

So it takes a different strategy to combat that different from

what you might use if you're combating primarily sun and sun.

So we had horizontal blinds, we had vertical blinds, we're calculating sun penetration into the building and it quickly became apparent that given the

The width of this building, about 22 feet, and in this particular case, we've got about 21 feet of occupiable space back here.

And the length of the floor plate is about 250 feet, I think.

That there was quite a lot of action that we were evaluating and proposing for the exterior of the building to

Okay, yeah, I'm sorry.

I have trouble knowing how long I'm speaking.

Anyways, we found that the investment in exterior blinds on the building wasn't going to

be the right way to combat sun.

And so we've integrated in the interior positions for automated roll-down shades, which those are showing up a little bit in the rendering.

Also, in the vertical tower over the doorway, we are suspending a fine mesh

panel, a fine, what do we call it there, a stainless steel mesh screen, which does act as a sunshade.

And this is strong enough that it also acts as a safety guard, a guardrail.

And so operating windows, or in one case, doors at that location can be opened and provide ventilation and a little bit of connection to the street without needing to add

guardrails proper there.

Okay, thank you, Robert.

If you'd like to provide comment, please raise your hand in the participant tab.

My question, Robert, is about the windows fenestration on the mall side.

You're showing glazed.

and what would that look like?

You talked about the clear glazing on the glass choice.

Well, I would have to bring samples.

There'll be a film on it that's part of the

energy development of it.

I don't know how, in what way you've standardized the criteria for windows on the mall, whether it's visible transmission.

I'm aware that there's been issues in the past about vision and tinting, for lack of a better word.

I would just point out that our guidelines for new construction at two different places say that glass should be clear and opaque.

Sandrell or translucent glass could be approved, but certainly darkly tinted or mirrored glass is not appropriate.

I'm sorry, what?

And I'm, of course, just reading through the guidelines verbatim.

What I would say, and I think we might have said this, but I'll say it for the new members, especially members of the public that don't have the benefit of our discussion in October, that the unique thing about this building is it was pretty much demolished.

you know there's really no historic fabric on this building and it's so unusual on the downtown mall so I think that gives the applicant a little bit more leeway because we're not looking at existing transoms or openings or you know a structure it was made into this huge wall within this

Round elevator tower, and not a whole lot more back in what 76 or whenever this happens so.

So I mean I say that I want to read from the guidelines and I think we're made to adhere to the guidelines but I think

where the guidelines might be silent or where they may equivocate.

I think we have more leeway with this application than we do with a lot of other buildings.

If I could interrupt.

So on the last page of the staff report, it is inserted a paragraph back in

Summer 2018, there was a request actually from the Planning Commission for what the BA are, how they defined clear glass.

We've had a

We've been using this as the visible light, the VLT percentage of not lower than 70 percent.

But there's so many different numbers that can be used to measure glass.

But this is the one that the BAR had some time ago kind of come down as the point at which

You go below 70, the glass starts to become a mirror.

And the primary concern being at the street level, you want to have those be permeable spaces into the shops and restaurants.

So you don't want people looking at a mirror.

But back in July 2018, the BAR had a discussion about this and it gave its

sell some latitude, some instruction on understanding that there's other criteria that can be evaluated.

There's different colors of glass.

It doesn't always have to be at the 70 VLT.

In fact, at Dairy Central, there's some windows where they went to 62 VLT.

And that was, I could say we had a difficult time even

discerning the difference between the 62 and the 70s.

So there is some latitude there and the primary, the conclusion the BAR reached was that open for

Flexibility, provided that there's a design intent behind it, provided that there's an explanation of why and not just we want to do it.

So sorry to prolong that, but that's the clarification.

Yeah, I just looked at that.

I always think of the trade-off between visibility being

with energy performance.

Typically beefing up the energy performance can fight that, but actually the more demanding or the climate condition that's best combated with a beefed up film is solar penetration.

And being on the north side of the building here, we don't really have that problem.

I mean, I love clear glass, and we're certainly not specifying a specific tint or a mirror effect or anything like that.

So I think, A, happy to provide samples.

I have a couple.

So kind of delving a little bit more into the front facade, the pedestrian-sided facade.

I'm having a hard time just with the 3D image understanding.

I understand you're looking at a bronze background, but the brake metal that's on top of that, that's creating the pattern, is the idea that that would be

Well, the, there's a can vary.

I think at the base and going up to say seven feet or so, or at least definitely above

Human range.

Those pieces probably wouldn't qualify as break metal in terms of thickness.

They'd probably qualify as bent plate.

And then the angle at which they're broken would be relatively shallow, so they don't project so much.

Their coursing would be a little taller, maybe six inches.

a piece, so that those bits are actually relatively stout and there are fewer of them.

Those would have their corners, would get a little touch with an abrasive to soften them up.

And again, their, what I'll call their reveal, the angle at which they're broken,

would be quite subtle, five degrees so that there'd be a reveal of maybe three quarters of an inch or something like that.

Once we get above that, that kind of human occupancy zone and gradually on the way up, those parameters would adjust all of them consistent with not needing to worry about a

regular abuse, vandalism or safety injury.

That makes sense.

And then over on the right-hand side, I would have some, it's hard to tell the renderings,

what to make of the storefront, if that's just a typical storefront assembly, or if there's something specific custom about it.

So would be interested to hearing a little bit more about that, as well as the brick selection that's surrounding.

If you look at page four of the current submission, that diagrammatic wall section describes the glazing system a little bit.

The main idea there is that

We've got one masonry opening, which is at the taller story, marking the ground floor and the retail presence.

And then the two upper stories populate a single, taller masonry opening.

with the division between floors two and three, the spandrel condition there is gonna be detailed in color and geometry in a way that suggests a kind of a steel or metallic system, whether it's cladding or structure, it's got a somewhat of a kind of a structural appearance.

It looks like the shallow side of a open steel channel.

The storefront system, the glazing system itself is relatively conventional.

Two inch frame with depth four or five inches.

So we're using that intermediate spandrel condition there that'll be in the same finish to try to kind of extend the reading of the storefront so that in this case it spans across floors two and three in a system that looks more integral to the building than just a storefront insert

I think that answered.

Oh, the brick.

The brick, we've just been working

We're just happy to use a modular size, which is what we're showing here.

That's the nominal four inches deep, eight inches wide, about three courses to eight inches.

We and our client were interested in contrasting with the red brick down there.

We intend to, we want to drop a sample off.

My suppliers haven't been able to get samples to me yet.

We're definitely proposing a mute neutral gray.

I think that one image shown on our print submission or digital PDF isn't very compelling.

Robert, I wonder if I could follow up on that with your elevation kind of shows it in a lighter gray, almost greenish a little bit in my PDF.

The perspective is a darker gray and then the sample is somewhere in between.

Your drawings also seem to suggest a darker mortar color, which samples a lighter mortar color.

I would say, yeah, all these ways of representation end up having kind of varied effects.

I would say it's a darkened version of the flat orthogonal rendering, sorry, elevation.

The rendering I think is a little muddier and more shadowy than we expect to bring to you as a sample.

And that little printed picture

It's really the kind of ranging and the kind of, I don't know if they would call it distressing, but that range in color and effect that they're allowing on the brick that is, to my eye, darkening that up.

To the extent that there's green coming through in the elevation, that's incorrect.

Other questions from the BIR?

What's going on right at the bottom of the facade?

And I don't see materials.

specified there.

I see there's a conflict between the elevation and the rendering.

You mean the two drawings separated by the section?

Yeah, the three-dimensional rendering on the right is correct.

The left implies something at a different scale going horizontal and that's not right.

I have a question.

Robert, despite your very detailed description of the CNC metal

I'm still having a hard time understanding what it is I'm reviewing.

What is it going to look like?

You're creating a pattern with the CNC program as it's cutting out the screen.

And if that's the case, what is the pattern?

Is it a tight matrix type of pattern or is it something else?

Is it spelling out the owner's name?

That's a good question.

The best I can do at the moment is to revert back to the view on page five.

And this is to say, at the moment, we haven't yet locked it in.

It's very hard to show in print.

Coming from the east, from the amphitheater end of the mall,

The pattern would be largely invisible until you get probably within five feet or the effect of the pattern would be largely invisible because the direction that the blinding effect happens, it just obscures the contrasting color in the back.

coming from the right, you would see the effect of this pattern much more.

But I understand what you're asking me.

It's an abstract pattern.

It's intended to be really, we're intended to utilize the full three stories to have kind of a building scale pattern where there's some continuity

of the visible bronze color all the way down.

And if you, I believe if you, you tell me, if you squint and look at that mock-up of the effect on the right, if you start to see how that, you start to get rivers of the bronze color coming through.

but as I said, there's almost infinite possibilities and I'm afraid we just haven't said to the fabricators and to ourselves and to our client that we've locked it in.

And again, this view, if say you see something interesting or see something legible at all when you squint, if I were to rotate,

Say I printed three panels of this, which maybe now that I'm saying this, I should have done and shown them at successively different angles, kind of emulating a walk down the street.

You know, at the intersection of Third Street, you have quite an oblique angle.

And then as you get to the bank, you're more direct.

Your perception and understanding that pattern would change.

Can I just offer a thought here is because I am looking at this kind of trying to envision it maybe this would help the BAR but it seems to be almost be a sort of a sculptural piece or we could think of it as a

three-dimensional mural.

So in that case, you know, there's a way of thinking this through is not necessarily the design of it, but the location of it.

I mean, certainly not, you know, the design doesn't matter, but it's as far as an installation at this location and what the result of the artwork may be.

maybe step away from that.

The other piece is that just some lessons learned from the code building, some of the metal panels that are at the street level, just durability, repairs, maintenance, things like that, pieces get broken.

So just, I'm not suggesting you treat it as a sculpture or mural, but it's one way to think about it.

And then sort of that durability thought.

I'm not sure where that is, but

So how, as the architects, will you all be sure you're getting what you want?

Are you going to be doing a mock-up of this and reviewing it on site?

And if so, can the BAR have the ability to review it also?

I'd like to know what it is that we're reviewing and being asked to approve before

That's correct.

There will be mock-ups at a relatively small scale to demonstrate fastening and other aspects of this that are essential to its construction and its

It's kind of performance, but don't describe the scale.

Now that said, you can actually, you can get, learn a lot from live three-dimensional modeling of it.

And that's how we're working on it.

And I would be happy to, in the same way that you might review a mockup,

share with you our final review of this thing in that same way.

We can emulate being at street level and then having a cone of vision that starts to incorporate the full building facade and then adjust for position.

I totally appreciate your question and

and we'd like to offer that now.

So that I'm kind of describing something, I was gonna say something live which maybe that's difficult to coordinate.

I suppose such a thing could also be, I think our technology would let us deliver that as a series of frames, a video really.

Well, I just bring up my own difficulty, my own hesitance in approving something that I don't know what it's going to look like.

And maybe the rest of the BAR members are willing to accept it on faith.

I don't know.

It seems to me that we go through an awful lot of trouble requiring mock-ups of traditional conventional

construction.

Well, I just know we need to kind of keep moving, so I want to just like make sure we get to the questions that are necessary and we can circle back around it.

I said I could prepare a video, really even a series of still images shot from here, here, here, I think would do a much better job, certainly than a physical sample of a portion of it, of describing, making pretty clear the effect and

would do that job.

I don't know why I didn't think of that for this.

Well, part of it is that we haven't nailed it down, but I think I know pretty closely what we want.

I think I may have been able to present you with 12 images that would have given you an idea.

It's like, oh, I understand what he's talking about.

I'd like to just request a little bit more information about the materials.

You know, are they going to be, as Jeff said, fragile?

Will they damage?

This will be at pedestrian level on the street.

You've mentioned bronze.

We know there's metal.

Just would like to see the thickness, what it looks like.

I think I might have to see some sort of sample of this.

to capture the image or the remar that you're trying to... Certainly along with the brick, we could submit a sample of three tiles, I'll call them, of representative size, the fattest ones we expect to see at the base, something in the middle and one of the finer ones from the top.

but we expect them to be painted aluminum and the bronze would be very thin.

The tiles will have blind fasteners, and then as an assembly, the thing goes up in panels of maybe six courses each, which will be assembled offsite, and then those panels go up in a more conventional way, as if they were an opaque piece of glass in a captured glazing system.

Yeah, the glazing system on the building proper side of that

fairly conventional aluminum extrusions and break metal with coated finish.

And yes, they're the same.

At the moment, I'm showing I have them three inches above.

Last questions, we'll move to comments.

Okay, any comments from the public?

If so, raise your hand using the raise hand feature or

What is it, star?

Star nine.

I don't see any raised hands.

At Friday's HRC meeting, I accidentally told people to press star nine for unmute, and then we just got a bunch of raised hands.

So it's good to know the different commands.

Okay.

Star nine.

All right.

We're open for comments from the board.

Would anybody like to kick us off with thoughts about the project?

I'll just jump in and say that I think it's a given that there's some concern just about exactly what we would be approving.

Well, I'll just say that I think the screen is a really interesting dynamic kind of reinterpretation of the weaving pattern you get with brick.

I agree with that.

I think it's actually a really good idea.

But I think obviously the number of questions that you've received already about what it's doing just points to the fact that we're interested in it.

Number one, in my mind, I question it because I think it's a great idea, but I want it to be really great.

And I'm looking at the image of your rendering and then the precedent images beside it.

and to me, that's very telling in a way.

Like I feel like the precedent images that you presented here really do show that moiré effect very well.

And for me, the moiré effect is this sort of like all about this sleight of hand, number one, where at some point you might look at something and it looks bland and then the sun comes out or the moon comes out

and all of a sudden you're faced with this really striking contrast and this really beautiful pattern, whether it's one bold strike or a wave, or maybe it's on the other end of the spectrum, it's just a very subtle screen-like effect.

So just to sort of follow through with some of the other comments, my feeling about the

the rendering that you provided.

I'm squinting, but I'm not quite feeling something there.

And so I think whether it's a 3D, I think these present images maybe are physical models that maybe you can do with a CNC machine.

If this is a CNC project, I don't know if there's a way to miniaturize it and make it something that we could look at.

But obviously, I'm very interested, would love to see more study on it.

I'm assuming that's where you're headed anyway.

And when you talk about nailing the thing down.

And then the other thing I'd just like to mention, as far as the front facade goes,

You know, I'm also interested in a little bit more detailing on the windows.

And I guess, first, I'd like to say, with some of those elevations, it would be helpful for me to see the context that the building sits in, not necessarily that I have to see direct relationships.

but I am interested in your comment about it being a proportional project and so I'm interested in seeing you know how the proportions of this facade relate to what's on either side especially given the fact that you know that's how we experience walking down the mall is it just a one after the other you know variety of kind of interesting detailing and you know

one object next to the other, you know, an assemblage of different facades.

So that would be helpful.

I'd like to, you know, in the same way I'm thinking about the screen, I'd like to see a little bit, maybe a more push of variety or something with the window patterns.

and I think this goes back to the guidelines and the way that all of this, we're kind of talking about decoration here and I think there's a decorative pattern to a lot of the precedents along the mall.

I think as we walk down the mall, there's the sort of copper metallic canopies that we look at and admire the detailing from the 30s and the 20s.

There's some more contemporary

detailing that catches our eye.

So in a way, I think that's pretty neat that this is sort of a detailing in a way decorative project.

And so I'd kind of like to see how that pushes a little bit more in the window wall.

Just as a for instance,

in questioning the intent behind the solids versus the glass.

You'd mentioned that the idea there was for a sort of a singular oculus or a singular opening, singular aperture.

And when you mentioned that, I saw it, but I feel like in a way that the big band going across it sort of breaks that up and

you know, maybe works against that singularity a little bit.

So, and then I also kind of, I'm interested in the, where the numbers are, the 310 and the kind of butt jointed of the glass.

I think there's an interest there that I'd like almost like to see spread out to the other sort of the more typical storefront,

patterns that happen everywhere else around in the same way that, you know, there's a huge opportunity, I think, with the screen.

And I think this kind of goes back to Cheri's original comment about how this is a tabula rasa, right?

There's nothing, you know, the historic context was ripped out of this thing kind of brutally whenever that was 40 years ago.

So

There's a great opportunity here to sort of bring back some ghost of the old detailing of years past on the Mall.

Thank you, though.

I think it's a good start to an interesting project.

I'll go next.

Cheri?

First of all, we haven't talked about the Water Street side, but I just wanted to say, personally, I don't have really any objections to it.

I think it meets our guidelines.

Anyway, no comments, no objections.

My concerns and focus are on the transparency of the glass on the mall, as I mentioned.

Happy that the brick color is more nuanced and that you've provided this sample that gives us a little bit more color than the elevation that was shown, which kind of looks like, you know, grayish, greenish, monotone.

Just interested to see the color of the mortar and more details as other people have said, including surrounds and so forth.

Personally, I think the screen is pretty cool and it's a great innovation and it's a much better solution than what you had before us in October.

I think it could be just fantastic, but I think we need more information about the materials and how it would work and exactly what you're going to spell out in Amare.

If there's secret code, we get clues too and run up and down the mall and do some geocaching or something.

I don't know.

Sorry.

It feels like it's later than it is.

I would also say along the same lines of David's comments that I am concerned about how these openings relate to existing buildings on the downtown mall and the first two guidelines under new construction definitely ask us to look at buildings, openings, rhythm of voids and masses

and proportions and make sure that those sort of are similar to adjacent or nearby structures.

So maybe just some elevations.

I think David had suggested that just showing us, you know, maybe anything in that block doesn't have to be really fancy.

It doesn't, these three stories don't strike me as being incredibly out of

character, but they do seem to have more of a commercial feel than other buildings traditionally on the mall do that have a little bit of smaller scale.

So I just like to take a gander at that.

But overall, I think I'm really supportive and it looks like a really neat project.

Other thoughts?

Maybe I'll jump in.

I'm really supportive of the project.

I think that the way that you've approached these facades has been really successful.

I really like the elongated proportions.

I think they're appropriate contemporary response to the condition that you've found.

The couple of concerns about the panel kind of echoed from David.

My concern is that part of that really great elegant long proportion I'm hoping is not detracted from by the treatment that you'll have to give the pattern in the lower seminary feet.

I just worry that it could get really flat and really less interesting and maybe

squeeze that you're kind of really amount of real estate that you're getting that effect.

I hope it wouldn't feel like a, you know, a very different material in that portion.

I'm also, I'm not convinced by the

of the effect in the rendering.

I'm concerned that the really beautiful ones, the white ones, are using the white material and direct light that creates shadow and creates a lot of contrast.

And yet what you're proposing is dark, using dark colors on a north facade that's not going to have direct sunlight.

And so I just want, I do feel, well, I do think the potential is there for it to be exquisite.

I am not convinced yet by what you've shown us.

And in addition, the proportion of the depth of relief that you are working with is much less than the small little paper models or the other examples.

I'm hoping that it doesn't end up feeling two-dimensional or kind of underwhelming for the amount of effort that is taken to create it.

I will note that in the earlier elevations, the bronze color

was really helpful in setting itself off against that primarily dark gray facade.

And I'm worried that we're really losing that color and it's gotten very, well, if it was more like the rendering, it could be very dark.

Maybe that lighter brick is helping.

And lastly, I just say that there have been a few questions about the windows and the storefront system.

And in some cases, in many cases, because the storefront system is fairly straightforward, we don't require as much information.

regarding that.

However, in this case, the storefront is essentially almost the entire facade.

That's- We're speaking about on the Main Street side,

Just correct the depth of how much detail is included in that section or if it's really the two-inch piece and the glass and the character of that glass.

Any other comments?

Maybe while we're waiting for other last comments, Robert, could you, I know you put this up for final COA approval this evening, and there's a number of questions about both samples and details.

Yeah.

I think we're pretty far along understanding, you know, having in our office the information that, say, your question that you just posed about the storefront and just on a finer scale, specifically what's going on as that storefront goes to the spandrel and back.

We understand that here, and so it would be fairly easy to get to you.

Oh, I say easy.

Could get back to you quite rapidly.

The development of the screen is ongoing.

I'm just not sure how to propose.

I mean, ideally, remaining questions would be addressed and approved in one

Phil Swoop, without setting aside bits and pieces to either come back or to be reviewed as samples in the conference room or something like that.

Just the kind of general construction and design schedule, we need to keep going.

But I think it seems pretty clear from your comments today that generally what's happening in terms of our choice of systems and basic structural conditions and material choices are

are acceptable.

It's very easy to isolate out the panel as kind of off the construction schedule.

And in other words, I don't really see what I would like to come, your questions and how I would like to address them.

I don't see that holding up our general work on the project.

I would expect to be able to come back probably not next month

but two, eight weeks roughly from now, we'll be working on our, just our work, our architectural construction documentation in the meantime.

Let's see if there's any, we'll come back to that.

Any other comments from the board?

So what I'm hearing is, as Robert said, general support for the direction and approach with some questions about some of the details and samples, and then understanding that there's a little longer time frame in finalizing the construction of the panel.

I don't know, Jeff, if you have any comments about ways that I know we

I think there's a couple things that I think we need to clarify.

One, just simply being the glass spec, do you have something in mind?

Variation is the 70 VLT, what you want, and that would be information provided by the company that does the storefronts.

The second piece that I'd like to at least make sure we clarify,

It's always been the difficulty of having renderings versus elevations and we get details that are slightly different.

For example, that soldier course in the front, below the front storefront.

I happen to notice that at the rear elevation, I can't tell if things are supposed to align or if it's just the way the rendering has it presented.

So an actual elevation, a little rendering is probably preferable just to make sure we see all the details.

And then it does seem like there's some material samples that you all want to see the front screen and then whatever the screening material is in the back.

I mean, clearly I hear support, but I don't know how you would phrase this.

I mean, unless you all have some really strong opinions or you wanna make some clarifications about the renderings so that we're clear about what's understood.

There really needs to be just simply bumped to next month

Yeah, and Robert, we're getting more and more guidance from city attorney and city staff about limiting or not allowing COAs with extensive conditions.

We're limited in our ability to go back and approve pieces in a piecemeal fashion.

So certainly, as I've seen things tonight, it would certainly be my preference to approve this at a later date.

Yeah, okay, I understand that.

And as I said,

That's fine.

We obviously need to develop.

Of the things we have, they're fairly easy to convey.

Of the things we don't have, we need to develop them to get.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm glad I've got great comments here.

Honestly, particularly on that panel, which there's so many variables and it's such a flexible system, it's great to have several interested observers and comments here.

Someone like to move to accept the deferral?

I'll move it then.

Okay.

And a second.

Okay.

So I have a motion from James and a second from Brecht.

I will call a vote in the order that I see you on my screen.

Mr. LeHendro.

Aye.

Mr. Zehmer.

Mr. Strange.

Hi, Miss Lewis.

Hi, Mr. Gastinger.

Hi, Mr. Edwards.

Hi, and Mr. Smith.

Thank you.

Before we close this, I just want to make sure, were there any instructions on the glass that you all

Anything specific that, well, I think we've discussed some of the other details.

I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be VLT on the mall side.

The conditions where we have allowed for less than 70 have typically been south facing facades and not at a ground level with the street.

That's helpful.

Yeah, I was just going to say, Brecht, the courthouse is coming up and there are a number of Steven Weitz in the list, and I assume they're all associated as well as Elliott Roadside.

I'm going to all promote you to panelists, which means you're gonna be booted out briefly, but then you'll come back in the meeting with video.

That's great.

And once we figure out who we'll be presenting, I'll just note again, you know, I know that there's a lot to talk about here with the Courts Building and certainly there's new members, but we will have, we will certainly give the time that we need

We all set, Robert?

So while it's taking that time, so what else did you tell us?

So the way our agendas are set up, items that were deferred come after the consent agenda.

And I know this may be a long item and the next one with the Park Street might be quicker, but something we could keep in mind next time.

It's not set in stone to do it this way, but this is why I didn't rearrange it to the end because of the deferred items.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

I see one Steven White.

Okay.

Steven, okay.

The others aren't promoting for me, so I don't know if the others listed are going to join the call as well.

Do you need other?

Robert?

Can you have Drew Taylor join?

Yes, I will.

Thank you.

Yeah, I am, and that's fine.

Okay, sure.

I just wanted to make sure that everybody was on who needed to be.

Yeah, thank you.

All right, so just very quickly, we discussed this in our preliminary discussion, so I don't have to give too much overview.

Again, this is a COA request for, the address is 350 Park Street, also Zero Park Street.

There's also, I believe, a parcel on East High.

This is for the City County Courts Complex expansion.

As you know, the last, or a year ago,

The raising of it to create space for this was approved by the BAR.

So the conversation is now into the design of what the expansion will be.

I have, as I mentioned, had a lengthy conversation with Eric Antman and I know Eric

Can't join us tonight, but while this is a formal request, the Africans understand that, well, they will be requesting deferral at the end of this.

So while we're not asking the BAR to make a decision tonight, I really want to stress we've got on the

Pages two and three of the staff report and also in that email that I sent out to you earlier is to really have two objectives.

One is, you know, address any issues, design issues that the BAR has, and the other is to identify

what type of information that you all want to see.

And I know we have some new faces on the VAR, but traditionally for a building like this, as I've told Eric, is a series of wall sections, particularly helpful.

Window and door specifications, particularly on the glass types.

There are some materials and details in these drawings that maybe a little finer grain would be helpful to look at.

Lighting, for example, is also not addressed.

If there is exterior lighting, make sure we understand that.

But I really want to be, you know,

again addressing the design issues and also addressing what in subsequent submittals you all on the BAR would like to see so that we can move this thing forward.

Okay well thank you Jeff and

Thank you to the board tonight for your time and attention to this project.

Again, my name is Steve White.

I'm a principal with Ventris Architects in our Washington DC practice.

And we have last saw you all in July of 21.

And we got a lot of really productive comments and feedback, which we appreciate very much.

We've been very diligently advancing the design inside and out for the last six months and our intent tonight is to show you, as Jeff was saying, what we've progressed with and with our plan to come back again a third time, or actually a fourth time technically, but a third time for design with regards to more granular detail.

So tonight's presentation is divided into four sections.

And I will try to go through the first two sections rapidly.

I know there are a couple of new board members, so I want to respect that and let you have a chance to be oriented to the project.

And they are the history as the first one and then the site context analysis as the second.

The third part of the discussion or presentation will be on the building design, which is the meat and potatoes of the project of the presentation tonight.

And then the fourth and final is material materiality.

Okay, so just to orient everyone to the site, North is up and we're looking at the parameters of the building site.

We do have Park Street on the west on the left there.

We have High Street to the north.

We have the Jessup House, which is a county owned property to the east or to the right.

And we have East Jefferson Street to the south.

And then finally, we have the Redlands Club, which I know you all were chatting about earlier in that southwest corner.

There is a 1980s edition that is, there's a gray poche over it in this, that will be demolished as part of the project.

What will remain, of course, is the original levee structure from 1851, which is in the top left corner.

Next slide.

So real quickly, the quartz complex, the history really starts in 1803 with the building that's on the right hand side there in that cluster of the two building facades.

And it was added on to a few times over a number of years, over at least a hundred years.

The facade you see there actually was a hundred years after the original one was built, but it is a

a wonderful cultural resource that you all have in your wonderful city.

And it will be the circuit court and will remain as the circuit court when this project is finished.

So I think it's important to know that the project that we're discussing tonight is actually a lower court.

It's the general district court.

The building to the left there is a 1938 addition

that was actually originally an administrative office building and it was converted to courts and we will have the remainder of the circuit court or higher court functions going on in that structure.

So that is just a preamble really to what we're gonna be doing across the street.

Next slide.

These just give you some historical research that we've been diving into over the last year

The Redlands Club is noteworthy in the top right corner there.

And I believe that is John Jewett on his horse there.

Next.

And then of course, just for us understanding the context of the region and of the Shenandoah.

Next.

And then the site itself, we did fly a drone over the site and actually use that to do investigative work

related to facade restoration.

And we had them pop up here to get a good bird's eye.

And this is looking west.

And the next slide is looking east.

So you can see there on the top portion, you have the Levy Building on the left, the 1980s addition kind of far back in there beyond with the parking lot.

That is what will come down in this project.

and I think the Redlands Club is hidden by the tree over here on the right.

All right, next slide.

So these three facades certainly are very important to us in the makeup of the character, proportion, scale, the identity of this campus as a court's campus, a judicial facility made up of four structures, the fourth being the new structure.

So I think that's also important

for us and keeping that in mind as we figure out the identity of this new structure.

Next.

And these next two or three slides are simply just Google Street views.

They're really more for us than for you because you know these views and drive them every day.

and then in site analysis, this is just a sampling of the things we were looking at, but we looked at traffic patterns, we looked at viewsheds to the site, viewsheds from the site, the site topography, high points, low points, solar orientation, et cetera.

Okay, so I included in the package three or four pages of written narrative and the intent there was to provide you

with a narrated response.

Steve, I apologize.

When I converted it to upload it to the website, it did that.

But I did just an hour ago send out the correct one back to the people.

It's not for tonight anyway.

But for the board, I encourage you to, if you have time, to read through that.

But it does go through.

carefully the comments we received and our response to those comments.

All right, right here is good, Robert.

So this is our current site plan, and there are a couple of things that I want to point out about the site plan.

You'll see as you look at the model as we get further in the discussion that the building is made up of a series of building forms, and the forms are really

driven a lot by the function that's within simply because we have large courtrooms.

And the large courtrooms, they're two, they make up the primary building mass.

And then we have a series of what we're calling saddlebags that essentially support that primary mass with building judges' chambers to the north.

We have the building entrance in Portico.

And then of course we have the hyphen or connection to the Levy Building.

So you see the Levy Building in the top left corner.

There's a hyphen between and then the building forms really and they're very much a contextual response to the building masses that are adjacent to

our property, and the lengths of walls, the heights of walls, the steps, where the steps occur, and so on.

And you'll see that as we go through this.

The other piece to this site plan that I want to point out is that we have, since the first presentation, the entry plaza really is our most important space.

It's a public space.

It's an outdoor space.

that is essentially an outdoor room that is framed by two buildings that are 150 to 200 years old.

And then the third side is the new building in Tree Portico.

And so that really becomes the place where you meet your associates, you meet your attorney.

There are serious discussions before going in.

There's serious discussions after coming back out.

And so this is really intended to be a place of calming and respite and to be a civic space that is indicative of the gravitas of the court system.

And so that's really what's going on in our mind when we're thinking about the creation of that outdoor architecture.

All right, next slide, Robert.

So real quickly, the plans, just again, so you can understand the function here.

The blue is essentially the public spaces.

Behind those blue spaces is all functional areas like the clerk's offices.

They're very highly trafficked spaces.

So they're on the first floor.

The Commonwealth Attorney is in the Levy Building, and they actually take up the entirety of the Levy Building top to bottom.

So you actually enter the main

Portico at that center portion where the elliptical form is.

And if you're going to meet with the Commonwealth Attorney, you would actually then turn left and make your way around to the leaving building.

You would not be entering the building anywhere other than that entry Portico.

There are stairs that flank the north and south ends of the building and those are also expressed on the exterior and help break down the scale of the mass of the building.

Next slide.

So this is the piano novele.

This is the really where the most important functions of the building are, which is the courts.

So you go up through a double height rotunda space and then into this linear corridor that feeds these courts, the two courts.

One is the county general district court and the other is the city general district court and the judges chambers to the north.

And again,

Commonwealth Attorney space is stacked up on that upper left corner.

Next slide.

And this is the roof plan.

We do have a mechanical screen wall, which I'll describe later, but it has been deeply recessed from primary elevations to be discreet as well as functionally moved off of the edge of the courtrooms.

so as to mitigate noise that occurs as a result of the units.

All right, now we're going to shift gears slightly to the portico, and these just give some precedent of the top three images.

Well, certainly two of them you're very well familiar with, but those are traditional porticos that reflect civic or government or academic functions.

and then the bottom three are all courthouses, either at the state or federal level, which are modern interpretations of those traditional porticos.

So some things that we looked at in the design of the front entrance.

Next slide.

We also studied carefully the proportions of the facades of the buildings, particularly the buildings that are part of the quartz complex.

So the Levy Greek Revival on the top left there, the 1803 original structures additions from the 1870s and 1890s, and which are in ionic order,

and also just even the book ended Rick Balls.

Next slide.

So this is a rendering of that entry plaza.

You can see that it is a formal symmetrical space framed by the Redlands Club on the right and the Levy Building on the left.

The portico is a modern expression

and steel and glass that we'll describe in further detail later in the presentation.

There are honey locust trees which frame the left and right as well and create nice dappled light and shade for benches that are left and right.

The elliptical form we've studied quite extensively and we're still studying

different patterns for that elliptical form which on the west end or the end that's facing you creates the building signage.

It also separates the ADA access on the right from the stair access on the left as the site slopes from right to left in this frame.

Next slide.

These are studies of the elliptical form, all predominantly in brick with highlights in bluestone.

We have not settled on a particular pattern yet, but we are investigating various patterns in the design right now.

Next slide.

This is a colored rendition of the plan of that space.

So you can see the six, we had two on either side previously.

We've now actually pushed the building back about 17 feet and added an additional honey locust to create a, frankly, a better outdoor room, a better proportioned outdoor room, and a more ceremonial space as a forecourt to the entrance of the courthouse.

And the next slide essentially is a diagram illustrating the accessible routes.

Next slide.

And again, a blown up version of those same accessible ADA routes to and from the entrances and from ADA parking, which would be parallel parking on the street.

These two sections simply illustrate the benches and the trees and the site walls for that space.

This is a view from Park Street looking at the plaza and this is a similar view rendered.

of the scale and character of that space.

The building forms have been deliberately kept low.

It's a two-story structure that sits approximately 35 feet and steps such that no portion of the new building is taller than the cornice line of the Levy Building, which we felt was important.

This view is just further north on Park Street.

Next slide.

And then, Robert, if you zoom in slightly, just in terms of the sort of rhythm of that front facade, the last time you saw this, it was a five bay order running across the entirety of that saddlebag.

and we have changed it to an ABA rhythm with a three bay order in the center and then bookends left and right, which actually worked very well for us in terms of the function in the interior with queuing and screening.

But also I think from a scale point of view in relationship to Levy just was working better

to create a sibling, if you will, of the Levy Building that is somewhat of a reflection, but different.

This is a detail of how the Portico, the way we're thinking of the detailing at this time, and that is that it's a galvanized architectural steel

Architectural Finish Steel, which for the architects on the board, they understand that.

But basically what it means is that the welds are done to a certain level of quality and there's no writing on the steels.

And you'll see where they write, you know, which plant it came from and so forth.

None of that is on there.

It's very clean.

But if you galvanize it and paint it,

and it can be a very nice finish.

The roof of it is actually a brise soleil and the anteroom or weatherlock which is the muntained one-story element actually is a roofed space.

So that's where your weatherlock is and it's sort of nested internal to that larger element.

The muttoned portion would be clad.

So it would be an aluminum clad storefront system that would not be the exposed steel per se.

So this is sort of shifting gears a little bit.

This is the north side.

So this is up on High Street.

with the Levy Building on the right and the addition that will be removed on the left.

And this next view is the design of the new structure.

And you can see that that saddlebag that is the judge's chambers is very similar in scale to the Levy Building.

and sort of left to right or east to west, its dimension in that direction also is very similar.

And then the step back to the left with the recess panel and the garage entrance, which is for... One thing to keep in mind with a courthouse, there's very specific functional criteria.

We have, just as an example here, we have

It's essentially a sally port for detainee transfer.

So going down the ramp and into a secure space.

It's also a secure zone for our judges to park and the chief clerks to park.

So that was a very important functional requirement for us.

So anyway, that is tucked away and it also aligns with the face of the

with the Jessup House that's on the left.

Next slide.

All right, this gets into a little bit of the detailing of the brick.

I will say that our intent here is to really finesse the facade with very subtle details and to not

overplay our hand so as to be somewhat deferential to the historic structures, but yet be pleasantly detailed in proportions that are really nice.

So the steps, if you zoom in slightly, the steps in the facade are essentially two to four inches, depending on where you are.

But those primary pilasters are all two-inch changes in plane.

The entablature is a series of corbels and there is cast stone that is intentionally a similar color to the brick so as not to create a heavy striation that can be distracting and also can be seen as mimicry to the historic structures, all of which have that white trim.

So it's also indicative of the function of the courts.

So the courts are on that upper level.

We have very tall ceilings there and we have light that is borrowed through clear stories into those courtrooms.

So that's the reason for the really tall window.

Alright, next slide.

This is the elevation of the east.

So that's the Jessup House in the foreground, just letting you all know that it is by and large covered because that building is only about 10 to 15 feet away.

Since you last saw it, the facade has been broken into an ABABA rhythm rather than

one long strip of windows and pilasters.

We thought that it broke it up nicely.

It also is indicative of the two courts.

So there's one court on the left, one court on the right, and a space between.

And so the facade is telling that story, but it also is breaking down the scale, I think, nicely.

You can see also the very subtle saddlebags.

So again, the

the saddlebag on the right for the judge's chamber.

You see how that cornice line is picked up and there's no pericot wall.

So very subtle steps that are occurring along and around the facade.

Next slide, Robert.

This is again the north, so the levee on the right, the hyphen on the left.

You can see how much lower that hyphen is.

from not only the main structure, but also the saddlebag of the chambers.

The long element kind of between the hyphen and the element on the left is the stair, and that stair egresses out to grade.

So that expression there is slightly different, and the window is at the landing.

So again, just trying to create some interest and some variation to help

mitigate the fact that we've got a pretty large institutional building across the street from a residential neighborhood.

And then this facade is the south facade.

So here you can see the Redlands Club in the sort of ghosted thing there on the left with the levee behind it.

You can see the relationship of the Portico and the Weatherlock

to the saddlebag of the entry element.

And that element there has windows according to the interior arrangement.

But that proportion is very in keeping with all the townhouses that are nearby.

And then there's a couple of slight recess panels.

You can see it kind of between the stair.

and the entry element on the left.

There's a two inch recess panel to create some interest along the Redlands Club parking lot.

Steven, I just wonder if I could just ask you to continue with just in the interest of leaving enough time for conversation and questions to kind of move at about 20 minutes and

Oh, I'm sorry, Brecht.

That's my fault.

I can speed it up for sure.

This is just an aerial view showing the south and east.

And then you can go to the next slide.

And then these are the materials.

We're actually at the end.

The materials, so we have three brick blends that we're studying right now, all with darker mortars.

An example on the bottom left there is the National Building Museum where it uses a sandstone, a red brick, and a red mortar as a way to differentiate it from its neighbors.

We're also using a Norman brick.

The trim color is in that last slide is a sort of bluish slate color that we think works nicely with the brick and is also a departure again from the

from the white trim, mottled windows that are predominant.

These are slides showing materials for the exterior plaza spaces.

Excellent, thank you.

If you wish to provide comment, please raise your hand and I will unmute you.

I'm sorry, can you explain that a little bit better for me?

You used the word mimicry.

And I see the way that you've kind of reinterpreted the classical forms from the adjacent buildings through the use of brick.

Well, maybe there was some misunderstanding that we were intentionally not

trying to use mimicry.

I mean, I suppose I guess my main question is there's so much use of a single material.

I just find it a little bit odd and I find it strange that you wouldn't make better use of contemporary ideas about brick.

in order to address the kind of classical language in a new way.

It seems very much to me like a very one-to-one relationship in a way between what's existing and what you're proposing, but using brick as a kind of paintbrush to do that.

I guess that's more of a comment.

Okay, we can come back around to that in the comments.

That's all right.

I thought I read somewhere in there that the MEP penthouse was sort of a

The MEP penthouse?

Yes, sir.

On the roof.

I thought I read that that was if needed.

It is absolutely needed, yes.

If it was written as if needed, that was an error on our part.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sure.

I didn't get it.

I was trying to blow through the very end there.

It would be a metal panel that would be likely in a vertical orientation, but it would be a butt seam, so there would be no shadow line per se.

I think I know the answer to this.

No natural light in courtrooms.

The only natural light

in the building is going into the hallways that ring the building.

I mean, is that just the way it is with courtrooms and court buildings these days and just the lack of natural, of windows around it?

I mean, it looks like a fortress.

And it's just a lack of transparency, a lack of penetration.

And it's just hard to believe that courtrooms can't have natural light.

I guess it's a question.

Well, this is a very astute question and I appreciate you asking it.

Well, first of all, there will be light in the courtrooms.

There will be a clear story light that will be high, similar actually to the, not too, it's somewhat similar to the city general district court.

If you've been in that courtroom, there is a clear story there.

The reason, without getting into too much detail, it's essentially a security and egress-driven issue.

I don't know if you're aware of how exactly a modern new courthouse works, but there are three essential elements.

There's the public, there is the judiciary, and there's the detainee.

They're all three separate independent circulation routes.

that can never cross except for in the courtroom itself.

So they are very much a driver.

I will say that I designed a courthouse recently for the federal courts that did have windows on the edge.

The way you achieve that is by having extra stairs in the back in order to not have to have the circulation wrap around.

We could do that here if we had more sight.

And actually that was something that we tried to achieve at one point, but we're really hemmed in with our size of our site to be able to get that to happen.

Stephen, I don't see any clear story windows in the building facades.

Well, if you'd like to show the slide deck,

If you just go to any of the facades on the back.

Yeah, right there, that detail one is fine.

Yeah, that's quite tall.

Do you see the 16-foot dimension?

So those windows are about 12 feet tall.

OK, so that goes directly over the hall into the courtroom.

Thank you.

And Steve, what's the remaining material

Oh, just regular vision glass.

It's clear vision glass?

but you said there's no natural light coming in it.

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the term vision glass.

I'm sorry, did I say there was no light coming in?

Well, the question was, I don't see any clear story windows, show me the clear story.

And so I was pointing out where the clear story is.

But those are actually, when we say vision lights, that means that they're lights you can see through, they're clear.

So basically from the floor to 12 feet above the floor is a large window, which includes that horizontal band, which is called a clear story.

So there are, there is a lot of natural light in these courtrooms.

Well, I think, I think the confusion was that there's a corridor.

If you go to the plan, Robert, I don't know how hard it is to get to that, but the corridor... Around the exterior?

Yes, ma'am.

It is part of that requirement.

It's a security requirement.

But essentially, it bounces light into the courtroom itself.

And the courtroom itself has bands of light that are up high.

Yes, I've practiced law in there, thank you very much.

Yes.

I've been to all four of the local courts and they all have natural light in them.

And they're not federal courts, they're state courts.

Right, and there's natural light in this one as well.

Alright, a quick quick question.

Sorry, just a quick question about maybe you could explain the front portico as it as it's designed.

At this point it looks like am I reading that correctly and that

The vertical columns are disengaged from the portico below.

And so it's almost like two separate structures there where the columns are outside of the glass and the box, the one story box below.

That's right.

Yes, that's correct.

And is that, is my interpretation of those windows and that would be like a steel, a thin

Yeah, I would call it a steel aesthetic.

I don't know that it will actually be like a hoax window, but it'll be a steel aesthetic.

And I had a similar related question just about this new space you call the weatherlock or vestibule or whatever.

What was the origin of that that's new on this iteration from what we saw before?

Just wondering,

Yeah, no, it's a very good question.

One thing that we did is we reduced the size and mass of the entire structure, most of it being in that lobby sequence, and previously that whole weather lock piece was essentially the first 17 feet of the entire building, which

contained the queuing as well as the weather lock.

And what we've done is we actually took toilet rooms and pushed them around and then pushed the atrium inward.

And then we still wanted a weather lock because they're very functional.

It can get quite cold and it's not good for energy use to not have a weather lock.

So this was essentially getting us back to the weather lock.

And I guess related to that, what was the reason that the building was reduced by that 17 feet?

I was being facetious, but, and for all the architects on the panel, you know how much pressure there is on our buildings right now.

Yes, I certainly can.

There's a hyphen currently that's there now.

Maybe Robert, if you go to that, not the render, but the actual photograph before the render on High Street, yeah, you hit it.

And that hyphen right now engages with the cornice.

You can see, if you zoom in on that cornice, there's actually a railing up there for maintenance people.

And the cornice is really jammed into the other cornice.

I don't think very sensitively at all.

But what we did essentially is align the hyphen and plan so that the hyphen puncture into the levee is exactly the same spot.

So we're not making any difference of a hole in plan, but in elevation, we're going down in order to restore that

One last one.

Did I understand you to say that the Lee Building, its historic entrance and the way the architecture is designed to emphasize the entrance to the current building, that will no longer be an entrance?

It will no longer be a public entrance.

So it'll be a private entrance for the Commonwealth attorneys and for the staff.

Okay, I think we can move to comments.

Any comments from the public?

All right.

Comments from the board.

I'll start.

Sure.

Can you all hear me OK?

All right.

Okay.

I need new headphones is what it boils down to.

So I had a couple of comments.

I guess maybe to piggyback on what Clayton was talking about, I feel like the building as a whole is almost too monochromatic.

It's just a huge block of red.

and I was wondering if there might be an opportunity to pick up on, you said the trim of the windows was sort of a blue slate color and I didn't know if maybe even just some detailing like the windowsills as a blue stone or something or even belt coursing or something just to kind of break up just the big mass of red that I feel like we're getting.

I don't know what other members of the board think, but that kind of came to me as potential.

Let's see.

The weatherlock.

Robert, if you can go to page 169 in the packet.

The detail.

I worry that by having this

Muntin enclosure with such small panes of glass feels to me like a cage.

And I would be worried that someone who is innocent until proven guilty would not feel comfortable walking through there.

So maybe just trying to pick up on larger pane glass or something.

The answer about the penthouse, I think, you know, we'll definitely want to look at details of the penthouse once you get to that.

I think in our guidelines, rooftop screening, if roof mounted mechanical equipment is used, it should be screened from public view, screening material and design should be consistent with design, textures, materials, and colors of the building, and screening should not appear as an afterthought or addition to the building.

So right now it doesn't, I mean, it's obviously just very schematic and conceptual, but I'll just point out that's what our guidelines say once you get to detailing that.

Right.

Yeah.

And I feel like the portico, like I, I respect the kind of, I'm a classicist, but I respect the departure from that.

You know, I was pretty intrigued by your precedent images, and I just wonder if there is an opportunity to make that have a little more pizzazz, you know?

But if you want everything to kind of recede back, that's an approach to it.

Those are my comments.

Thank you.

I would kind of, I would echo the, what you said about the portico.

I also think that the precedents kind of had more to offer and I also appreciate the contemporary take on the portico but somehow I feel like there's a degree of kind of governmental transparency and embodied by the examples that you showed that it's kind of lost here and the way that the fenestration is very very similar if not exactly the same behind the portico

And then the fact that the weather lock basically occupies the entire portico.

I feel like the purpose of the portico is to create a kind of indoor outdoor space.

And when the weather lock is in that space, it kind of almost negates the functionality of the portico in my mind.

And also, if you go back to the image, the image on,

Forgive me, on page, the large image of the portico and the public space.

I know it's a very delicate kind of game.

to kind of be deferential, but also to not be kind of unremarkable.

And when I look at the image of these two buildings together, there's no question that the new building is not kind of competing with the Levy building, but also it's not a very, I don't know if exciting is the right word, but the materiality of the portico looks very dark and it kind of shrinks compared to the size of the overall facade.

and I can't help but thinking that it's not doing the kinds of things that the Portico do on some of the examples that you showed in terms of kind of creating a nice surface or a moment of engagement for the building with the public space.

So I guess I'm echoing the notion that the Portico itself could do a lot more and really engage this very nice public space a little more effectively.

And then the one other comment I would make is I wonder if using the same architectural language to connect to Levy Building is the right approach.

Because as I understand it, this is a building of many masses, as you explained.

And I wonder if the mass that connects the existing building to the new building

should be articulated in the same way or if it should have a different kind of, it should be a different kind of connection that really lets us know it's a connection and creates a kind of buffer zone between the new building and the old.

Could I say something?

Thank you.

Hi.

Part of the thing about the portico is, and I think I'm feeling like Stephen here is going to have a bit of whiplashes, people were complaining the portico that he offered the first time was too big.

And now that he's shrunk it, it's too small.

I know you weren't.

Well, I will say that I think that there's been some improvement in the way that the roof lines and the volumes of the buildings have been clarified.

I think that was part of it, Ron.

It was not just the size of the portico, but its relationship to its adjacent roof line.

And actually, for my comments, I definitely hear the commentary on the portico

and also the concern about the cage like a reading of a steel facade, you know, tightly grained fenestration.

But my big concern is

going back to something that Clayton was trying to be very diplomatic about.

And it's the unremarkableness of the rest of the building.

And I'm very distressed about the direction that the building and its detailing has gone.

The lack of any kind of differentiation in the material

leads to a reading for me, frankly, of just a really big brick box with about the least amount of detailing possible to get it past the BAR.

And to me, it's not proportional to the scale of the building.

It's not using detail in a way that breaks down the building to make it feel more approachable from a pedestrian standpoint.

The facades on High Street are really

disasters.

Because the foundation has only the most minimal treatment, it is a full eight or nine foot tall brick wall with no differentiation.

And you guys have chosen this way of articulating using classical proportion to modulate the building, but the detailing is so skinny and so thin,

It's not proportional at all in the way visually to the weight of a cornice should have, the shadows that it would cast.

I could buy that, you know, maybe it doesn't need to be a different color, but if so, it seems like it needs to have a deeper, thicker proportion to create the kind of differentiation that you're hoping for.

I think

while I certainly appreciate and don't know, can't even begin to imagine budgetary concerns that are approaching this building.

This is a building that we would hope to be living with for the next hundred years.

And I think it's just really underwhelming at the moment.

It's really difficult to imagine.

In fact, somebody said to me that today, they said they're not from Charlottesville.

I said, I can't imagine that a court building

in Charlottesville would be an underwhelming structure.

This is something that really is important about the county and the city.

I won't pile on too much.

But I concur with all of what Brecht has said.

I'm especially disturbed by the high street elevation and the pedestrian lack of experience on High Street.

Brecht's word was right.

Maybe I'll

mentioned something brief in defense of it.

I suspect that the approach with using brick as a kind of monomaterial is a kind of attempt to make this not just a complete kind of copy of something classical, but I wonder if there aren't other ways, and this is kind of what I was alluding to in the beginning, I guess, I wonder if there aren't other ways to use brick that are not

super classicist that might relate to classical proportions, but could kind of imbue the facade with different textures, for example.

I agree.

And I think some of the examples that were shown as precedents offer some other ways of doing that too.

I think even bringing in, as you said, Steven, some of the more of the gray blue of the steel of the entry portico into some of the more detailing or even into the lentils or in some of the precedent show have a dark blue or steel gray

detailing, I think that very much could be a way of offering, you know, improving the articulation of the structure, even with its current modulation.

Steven, I wasn't here due to this like two others, but I was given the images of the previous submission and I noticed on High Street at eye level, there used to be windows down there.

Is there a programmatic reason why you took them out?

Oh gosh, I don't even remember, David.

Yeah, we do have some programmatic function in the basement, but it is very, it's mostly sunken.

We may have been exploring that at one point to try to get some high windows into those service spaces that are down there.

I mean, I'll reiterate what the other folks said, I guess in a different way, which is

You know, this street, High Street, while it's not the front of the building, it's really important to all of us.

I mean, the whole site is really important.

We live in a small city, not a lot of real estate.

These projects don't come along very often.

So I think when they do, obviously we want to really capitalize on them and not end up with something somebody said underwhelming, I think is a good term for it.

and you know in that particular location we all have experienced you know walking around the front building which you know the Levy building which we all love and you know as you walk around that building and you walk down high street we want something else there as well I mean we're not looking for a background I don't think necessarily so you know I think

I think there's a certain amount of focus that needs to obviously be paid to that elevation beyond kind of what the seemingly current expectation is.

And then underwhelming was the word that came up for me looking at the front portico.

I actually, looking back in some of the previous

Project renderings actually sort of favored the older one more than this one.

This one seems diminutive.

It almost seems residential in scale.

And while I certainly appreciate the sensitivity that you're going for as far as breaking up the massing somewhat.

And I do appreciate the,

The idea of opening up the public space in the front, I think that's a really important moment there.

There's a lot going on.

And so I think seeing that open space is like the number one important step as you move into this other public sphere.

You know, I think seeing that elongated was good.

But you're left with this kind of little, you know, contraption on the big red brick building.

It looks sort of like a added on appendage.

Whereas the original design, at least the front sort of started to create its own pattern and its own texture, maybe breaking up.

the rest of the big block behind it.

I really liked Clayton's idea too about the transparency that we're looking for in these kind of public buildings, especially in this day and age.

And the idea of a portico is a first step to sort of bridge that gap between the inside and the outside.

And that

The diminutive appendage that's there now just seems to be more of a barrier than anything else.

Mr. Chair, so I wanted to thank the applicant for two things that were achieved from the last iteration.

One that this weatherlock, this vestibule area, we had

noted that we wanted a place that where litigants and attorneys and other people coming to court, witnesses would be gathering.

And I know that that the creation of that space was a response to those comments and might have made those comments.

So thank you on that.

also the breaking up of the huge wall on East Jefferson Street really appreciate the windows that have been inserted and the detail and how that's articulated and the fact that it also wraps around to 7th Street on the other side you know what you can see of the building on the other side of the Jessup building so thank you on that I actually wished we had seen I think a lot of us are wishing that we

had seen some of this with this slate blue accents that you're talking about, whether they be lintels or whether they be window surrounds or whatever that looks like.

But it might have addressed some of the comments that my colleagues have about the solid brick.

I think the brick samples that you've given us would make the building a whole lot different than it looked in some of these renderings where you've just got a monochromatic red wall

So it would be great to see that and what that looks like.

I have a real problem with the High Street side.

I've said before in our last meeting, my office will face the side of this building.

My office is on East High Street and I'm sitting here right now.

I just got off camera to do a little site visit so I could just look at what's there now.

But 50 feet long of nothing but nine feet of brick.

with nothing else is just, that's not going to happen.

High Street is an entrance corridor.

It's designated as a very important corridor in our city.

And that is just not going to fly for any of us.

And I'm just, I was disappointed to see that.

I understand that the garage entrance needs to be there, but then there's an entire, I don't even know, it looks like 40 feet above that of nothing but brick.

above that entrance.

And I think there's got to be a little bit more detail on that as well.

I understand that that's programmatic and can't go away, but that just gaping hole on that side is, you know, on a really important street with nothing to mitigate it.

It's just a shame.

I'll definitely add support to Clayton and other members' comments about the Portico.

I know that we sound like we're giving mixed messages, but

The width was reduced, but which I think all of us sort of agreed with that.

And I know that the building shape was changed as well with the saddlebags now, as you call them.

But the depth also was brought in.

And I think that's one of the things that makes it sort of unremarkable.

And I really think it could be quite remarkable.

You know, the portico is a face on the building.

And this is just not a very pretty face.

And I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about what we're seeing now in the building.

So I really regret that there's no natural light in either of these courtrooms.

There's a way to figure that out.

There's bulletproof glass.

There are plenty of things.

This is not a federal court.

And half of the cases heard in these courts will be civil cases.

There are no detainees in civil cases, by the way.

There currently is no separate quarter in any of the four local courts.

The city, the county have circuit courts and general district courts all within one to two blocks of this court complex currently.

and the detainees are brought right in the way the rest of us come in currently.

I know that's not ideal always, but that's how it is.

So I think we need to just think about this is not a prison.

And my last comment is about what is called this weatherlock.

I completely agree with James's comments.

I want to tell you a little story, Mr. White.

the city general district court until Judge Downer arrived on the bench about 20 years ago, it shared an entrance with the police department.

And no judge and no local bar even thought about the fact that you had to walk into an entrance that above it said police department in order to take a left-hand turn and get into the courtroom.

And it was very bothersome for Judge Downer and he said, we've got to create a separate entrance.

It's a building on Market Street that's shared, but he created a separate interest so that there was, I mean, it's a ridiculous, you know, you can't

Anyway, so we have to look at the separation and that I had the same impression as several other colleagues have that it looks like a cell to me and it looks like a place I don't really want to be.

But the idea of having something that insulates people from the elements is very appealing.

Just the way that is done right now is not ideal.

Other than that, I'm sorry for my long comments, but it's a really important building for us.

And thank you for taking the time on this project to listen to all of our comments.

Thank you.

Any other comments from the board?

One last, I'll just note that I think there were a number of sheets dedicated to the plaza.

I think that has developed nicely and seems flexible with the changes made to the portico.

I would encourage the design team to think carefully about the amount of brick in that plaza, especially given the comments about the amount of brick in the facade.

Very bricky, pretty quick.

I would also encourage the design team to continue to make sure that the detailing allows for enough soil volume to make sure those trees thrive in a pretty hard surfaced plaza.

I could just dovetail onto that.

Maybe you're aware of this, Stephen, but on the mall, actually, they use a utility brick for the bricks that go on the actual plaza.

So that's also one way to think about kind of differentiating between plaza and building if that's an issue.

Well, I certainly got your impressions, and I appreciate you being frank and honest.

One thing I don't want to leave you with is a sense that we're neglecting your

your court complex.

We have a dedicated group of people who are working very, very hard on this.

Actually, we were there yesterday climbing around historic spaces, getting data.

So please know that our heart is for this to be a cherished structure.

We have a lot of pressures

that we are faced with, both in terms of the Virginia Court Design Guide, which stipulates a lot of these things that we were just talking about, actually mandates them, and the economic pressures that we're under.

I will certainly say that we will endeavor to, and I appreciate very much the comments about the robustness of the

articulation on the detailing and really looking at that carefully, the scale of the cornice and tablature, the scale of the steps and the pilasters.

In terms of a departure, I think that's a very, very complicated

Road to go down in terms of making a serious departure, which, you know, I'm a modernist, I love modern buildings.

But here we're trying to be very, very careful about making this read as a complex of buildings.

And for Judge Higgins and Judge Worrell, who are in the Circuit Court, which is the higher court,

they need to know that their court is the dominant court.

That is the courthouse.

And this is the lower court.

And not to say that this should be, I mean, I heard some pretty painful words tonight, but it should not be underwhelming.

And so that's our design team's charge now is to make this not underwhelming.

and to come up with something that is thoughtful, particularly on High Street.

I hear your comments.

Ms.

Well, thank you very much, Stephen.

And certainly all of our comments, we understand the kind of crazy pressures in different places, what different directions you're being pulled.

We don't want to minimize that at all.

And we just want to do our part in applying our guidelines and make certain we have a project that the public feels is appropriate to its pretty significant historic context.

So thank you.

Thank you.

So I believe tonight you're going to request a deferral.

Is that correct?

Thank you.

I'll go ahead and call a vote in order on my screen.

Mr. Lehendra?

Aye.

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Ms.

Mr. Timmerman?

Aye.

Mr. Gastinger.

Hi.

Mr. Strange.

Hi.

And Mr. Smith.

Hi.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.

I guess that there's probably some energy for a short bio break.

Would everyone be with five minutes or so?

We'll get moving again maybe at a quarter past.

Yep.

I'm just checking in here.

It looks like the timer has been set for age 30.

Did people need that much time?

I think Remy, who's communications set the timer, but we can probably get started.

OK, I'm happy to give a few more minutes, but I just didn't want people to leave or not be present.

I don't know if there's a way to get a word to the last presenter when they resubmit.

I know like our purview is the exterior, but if they had a cross section of the building, I think that would help explain how they're getting natural light into the courtrooms.

Yeah, no pun intended.

I think the floor plan, if you look really closely at it, seems to suggest there's windows in the courtrooms that face onto the exterior hall circulation wall way, and that the clear story lights that.

So anyhow, if there's a way to kind of, I don't know, Robert, if there's a way to send them a note or something.

Gladly.

This is kind of an aside, but in Williamsburg, the Williamsburg James City Courthouse that was built in 2000 has these really big monitors that were pretty controversial to get light into the courtrooms.

And I'm not endorsing them.

Virgin state.

Well, thank you all for commentary on that project.

I know that was, it is a complex one, but I thought I was really grateful for all of the comments and even the new guys jumping in.

Excellent.

Okay, let's see.

I have to go back and check the agenda.

Thank you for your patience.

My computer keeps telling me I have unstable internet, among other things.

So if I disappear, Robert jumps in.

Nice to meet you, Jeff.

You knew up new BAR members, so that prior discussion is why we would go have a beer after these meetings.

Can't do that anymore.

Well, soon enough.

All right, good evening again.

Deep breath, be energized.

This is a COA request for 540 Park Street.

This is a house built 1900.

It is in the North downtown, ADC district.

It is contributing.

There are two outbuildings that were listed as contributing.

One is a garage that we know dates possibly to the origin of the house.

The other, for whatever reason, was a,

the pool house, which was constructed, I think less than 20 years ago.

So, and we had prior discussion about this in December, I believe, and they're very supportive for the BAR.

And I think the primary thing to take out of that was that the understanding that the pool house is not a historic structure.

I'm not sure why it was identified as

contributing.

And so we've decided to not separate it out as a separate demolition request.

There are a couple pieces to this.

There's a landscaping element Mary will speak to, and then Ashley will address the architectural changes to the house.

And then there's the construction of the new pool house.

The

I think that we've again given you sort of the breakout of the criteria we normally would look at and this is somewhat of a cut and paste from the preliminary report and I apologize, Robert and I have had our hands full the last couple of weeks and so some of the

Shortcomings you're seeing in some of the staff reports I apologize for.

Typically, I'd like to make more of a recommendation on some of these like this one, but it's just we're not able to get to that.

But I think that the applicants provided what you all had asked for.

And again, it was a very positive discussion last December.

So if you don't have any questions for me, I'll hand it off to Ashley and Mary.

Ashley, you're welcome.

Great.

Thank you.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Ashley Falwell with DGP Architects.

I'm actually going to turn it over to Mary to start.

And Robert, if you could go ahead and scroll to our first drawing sheet.

Thank you.

I'm Mary Wolf with North Jersey Landscape Architects, everyone.

I have presented this before, but I will

quickly walk you through the plan and then a few updates since the last presentation.

But for this property, we're essentially renovating the front yard of the property and the side yard along Ferris Street and then creating some new landscape in association with the new pool house.

The renovations along the front include removal of an existing large walnut tree that's in poor health.

We're planning to reshape and repave the existing crushed down paths in front of the house and create a new landing at the front door.

We're also proposing to regrade some of the front lawn to make it a

A little bit gentler slope and just more functional for the family since this is the only real lawn space.

on the property, and the owners have two young children.

As part of that leveling out, we are proposing a low seat wall, stone seat wall inboard of the property.

25 feet from the sidewalk.

We're also proposing along Park Street, we'd like to remove the existing tall hemlock hedge

that exists.

It's sort of part hemlock, part arborvitae.

It's probably 12 to 14 feet tall.

We're proposing to replace that hedge with a boxwood hedge that we'd like to ultimately be four to five feet high but that you could see over it.

and then we would back plant that with some deciduous shrubs that would allow views into the property.

So the house sits

pretty low down from the sidewalk.

So it's one of the, I think the only house on Park Street that has that sort of low siding relative to the street.

So we feel like having a little bit of height and buffer along the street without blocking views is really necessary.

for the prospect of the house.

So that's the front.

Along Ferris Street, we're also proposing to basically upgrade a lot of the existing stepping stone paths.

And we're also proposing to remove two large ash trees that are growing very close to the existing shed along

And if you want to go to the next slide, this just shows an overlay of what's existing and how we're proposing to modify things.

These are images of the existing paths in the front and the side of the house that are being changed.

images of the street.

The upper left is the existing Hemlock, urban mighty hedge.

The lower left is a view from the house looking out.

So you can sort of see how low it sits and just we'd like to be able to block the view of the parked cars.

and then the other images on the right are other plantings across the street and down the street or adjacent to this property.

These are the two ash trees that are growing into the shed and a view of the black walnut that we're proposing to remove.

at the bottom.

We are proposing as part of the landscape to go back in with two additional canopy trees in the front.

One to replace the

Black Walnut that we're taking out.

So we'll be locating a tree in that vicinity up towards the street.

And we're also proposing to either transplant or replace the seven inch oak that's in the front yard currently.

It's kind of awkwardly located within the front yard and we've

to make the front yard more functional we'd like to transplant or replace.

It's still all the size that we could transplant it if we can get the machinery in to do that but if not we will plant another oak of similar size.

Great.

So I will talk about the architecture a little bit.

So we're looking at just sort of a zoomed in, a little slightly zoomed in version of the site here with existing building, existing pool house.

You'll see the red hatched area is the proposed demolition.

So we'd like to take out an existing exterior stair to the north side of the main house addition, and then the pool house that

Jeff mentioned was probably built in the year 2000, somewhere between 2000 and 2002.

Scroll on to the next one, please.

So the gray hatched areas are new building footprint or altered footprint.

So we are altering the shell of the east addition to the main house.

So it'll be within the footprint of the existing east addition, but we are making some changes to the exterior that you'll see in some elevation sketches coming up here.

And then we're also showing the proposed

We're really trying to create a aesthetically unified sort of rear courtyard around this existing pool and set up a more of a dialogue between the new pool house and the East addition.

So go ahead and scroll on.

So these are drawings showing what's there.

You'll see the east edition, south view of it, east view.

And that footprint we are keeping, sort of altering the shell of the lower level and essentially extruding that footprint up.

to the first and second floors.

Scroll to the next slide, please.

So south view showing that addition.

We are going for a bit more modern expression with this addition, but trying to keep the color palette very similar, high quality materials.

Scroll.

Scroll on one more.

East view.

So we're looking at a low slope, flat seam copper roof stucco for the first and second floor, but a smooth finish.

The existing house has a pretty textured stucco finish.

new metal clad windows and doors.

Overall, I think I mentioned this at our last presentation, but the historical reference sheet for this original house references the noble and serene quality of the existing house enhanced by its bucolic setting.

I just appreciated that

the terminology, noble and serene quality.

So we're trying to carry that into the edition and the new pool house.

So one more.

So this is the new pool house, kind of a low bar of a building to really create sort of a courtyard space and have a little bit more of a modern dialogue with the East addition.

Stone chimney, copper roof, again metal clad windows and doors, and similarly going to use some smooth stucco for the exterior walls.

And then we've got, I think last time we presented the board was looking for maybe a cut sheet on windows and doors.

So we've got, we're looking at using a Pella Reserve contemporary clad wood unit.

Manufacture is sort of pending, but this is the quality and kind of detail that we're going for.

something pretty contemporary clean sort of thin thin sorry words are escaping me thin profiles and kind of a dark finish for for the clad so if you want to scroll

Keep scrolling.

We've got some exterior reference shots.

And it's really sort of the bottom three that are the area that we're affecting.

That's the east side and two shots of the south.

And if you want to zoom in even more, we are looking at referencing the stone on that existing privacy wall, picking up some of that for the stone chimney in the pool house.

So you've got a hint of that there.

And then this is the existing pool house structure that we would like to demolish.

I think someone last time said that it has sort of the proportions of a birdhouse, which that stuck with me.

I think it does sort of have that character.

And one last just reference adjacent properties.

So we see there's

A fair amount of architectural variety on Park Street, all of pretty high quality.

And yeah, I think obviously the landscape has a pretty significant impact on how these buildings are experienced.

Well, thank you, Ashley and Mary.

Do we have any questions from the public?

Okay, questions from the board.

I have one.

Yes.

So we don't have any sort of close-up images, but I wonder if we might be able to zoom in on some of the reference existing sheets.

The stucco on the main house now has a significant amount of texture in it.

And I think they were trying to sort of imitate that on the pool house.

So we're definitely looking to do something

Fairly smooth.

That's not really going to have a mottled texture at all.

Thank you.

Any other questions from Warren?

Any comments from the public?

I don't see any raised hands.

I'll say that I think this is a huge improvement to the way that this house is presented and to be visible from the street.

Thank you for that approach to lower the existing hedge and improve visibility of this pretty remarkable house.

I think, at least for me personally, I find the additions really appropriate in the back, not particularly visible from the public street and in keeping with a contemporary addition to historic building.

Any other commentary or would someone like to make a motion?

Having considered the standards set forth within the city code, including the city design guidelines, I move to find that the pool house demolition, new pool house construction, rear addition alterations,

Second.

Thank you.

I'll go ahead and call a vote in the order that I see you on my screen.

Mr. Bailey.

Yes Mr. Lehendro Aye Mr. Zehmer Aye Mr. Timmerman Aye Ms.

Lewis Aye Mr. Gastinger Aye Mr. Strange Aye Mr. Edwards Aye and Mr. Smith Aye Thank you very much.

The vote is unanimous.

Thank you.

Okay, by my count, that brings us up to our zero pressed in place, a preliminary discussion.

That is correct.

It went later than I guessed at.

So this is not a formal application.

It is a preliminary discussion.

This is zero pressed in place.

These are three lots at the north end.

They don't have an address yet.

And Lee can correct me.

I believe it's only the two lots that I've shown in green.

But it's less about which parts is about really getting into what of the design that's here and having a good discussion again about how this design fits relative to the design guidelines and

and then what type of information that you all would want for any subsequent applications.

Preston Place is a street that we've looked at a lot in the last couple of years.

Quite a bit has gone on.

In fact, when Mary Joy was here, I think back in 2017,

One of these lots had been approved as the relocation site for Windhurst, which is where the apartment project was approved earlier or late last year.

So I've gone through and a lot of similar circumstances that we had with 605 Preston Place,

the widths, the setbacks, the massing, the heights.

I did a somewhat abbreviated look at that.

I wasn't able, and you'll see that also with Workland, but actually I'm sorry, Workland abbreviated, but had a lot of the information that we had looked at from the 605 Preston Place project relative to widths, heights, setbacks.

So able to use that here and

In general, I think other than the length of this structure, although it is broken up, it certainly falls within those recommendations.

So I think there are

Yeah, I'll just hand it off now to Lee.

Lee, introduce it, and then BAR, like you said, I think there's a pretty good list to follow in the staff report, in the discussions.

Oh, that was it.

So I know that this, we talked about this previously, some of the old garages that used to be located at that north end, and I think there's remnants of that,

of at least a wall that might still be existing.

I don't know how that's being addressed or how you all may want it to be addressed.

But that's why this circa 1964 Sanborn map is here.

And it's just to be clear, the city has a 1929 base map.

Over the years, the Sanborn Company would come in

You can see where changes and revisions have been pasted.

So we don't have the 29 map because it's underneath all of these patches that were added.

This is not shown on, we don't have the 1920 map, doesn't go that far, but we at least know the location of what was there probably the early 20th century, at least into the 60s.

So if you have any questions about how to interpret the Sanborn map, I can help with that.

That's all, any questions for me?

Okay, great.

So we are proposing, well, we're proposing to build a single family residence, a three bedroom, two story home that's a mix of materials like a stone core and then a horizontal board siding wings.

and a porte-cochère that attaches a three-car garage.

And the three-car garage would be, the doors would not be facing the street so that we had sort of a private court in the back, a motorport.

We are planning to use all of the existing, almost all of the existing stone walls

that used to retain the storage container on that site.

And we are planning to do like a horseshoe drive with a little parking court in the front center of the house.

The house does have a number of porches,

and, you know, looking around at other houses within this design control district, you know, I did notice a few on University Circle with lots of porches and the massing of the center, you know, the core of the house and the wings are very much in keeping with other

Holmes within this neighborhood.

There are a lot of hip roofs.

There's a mix of materials.

A number of houses are stucco or brick, but then there's one right next to this one that is siding.

So, let's see, what else should I say about it?

The landscape plan that is shown here was

That's okay.

The driveway and the parking court and all of that are pretty much what we want, but I'm not a landscape architect and I did just a general planting plan just to kind of show you what we were thinking, doing, you know, just as far as like, there's a privacy fence between the property to the west.

and we would just do plantings along that and we're planning a private garden area in the back just inside that existing stone retaining wall.

Great.

Well, Lee, since this is a preliminary discussion, it's a little

We don't have a set format for it.

Anybody have any, maybe first, any clarifying questions?

Anybody want to start off with any initial reaction or guidance for Lee?

Actually, I do have a clarifying question.

You said, Lee, that you were going to be reusing the existing

Some of the all of the existing walls that are on site.

I just want to make sure almost all.

I think it would be really important to to document what you would be reusing and not.

And I didn't know if you meant reusing by like reusing material or actually keeping them in place.

Right.

It'd be keeping them in place just as they are.

There is a portion that actually has to be removed in order to to follow the new

and the property line because this was, you know, they were redrawn basically to create two lots.

So there's one break in the retaining wall, but we would continue a new retaining wall that matches it just to follow that back edge property line, the northeast corner that kind of

Edges along the motor court area.

Yeah, I might suggest that that you know, because you'll be retaining some historic fabric and creating some new retaining that would generally like to see some differentiation between the new structure and what would have been.

historic fabric.

I offer, I guess, maybe a couple of comments or questions about I think my I think generally that there's the homes along Preston Court are quite varied.

There's a lot of different

Stiles, a lot of different approaches to the street, setbacks from the street.

I don't see this as incompatible with that.

I think that it's the massing and the residential character is in keeping with that street.

The only maybe concern, the biggest concern I have is more with the garage structure.

Not with its massing, and I certainly appreciate that the doors would be hidden on the back.

But I think that for me, what I'm reading as a front door, but it's going into the garage, is maybe a bit confusing about what the structure is.

I could imagine it could be a little bit more

honest about its character as a garage and the character of the cupola to it seems a little bit over.

I might just say that maybe just a second thought about how, I mean, this is a big house, it's a big footprint and it's an interesting

site looking at the Sanborn maps and then hearing a little bit about the walls.

I think that was a great idea of diagramming those to really cement in everyone's minds what the old patterns of this site were.

And just curious if there's some design elements or some massing

or something about the house that might reflect that or engage with that somehow.

Just be it fitting this house into this sort of interesting shape of a parcel, it could be an interesting design inspiration and it could tell

Maybe even a small story about the site.

Yeah, it does have kind of a strange shape to it.

I guess the other thing too is that

You know, because it's so angular, the site and the way that the house spreads out the way it does.

I'm just curious how it engages with the house next to it.

It's hard to kind of tell on your site plan because there's no figure ground of what else is around it.

So, you know, there's sort of the I could imagine

That little corner on the left hand side gets sort of elbow, start elbowing the house over the adjacent house.

That house actually has a big privacy fence right along that line.

And I was thinking it would be really nice if they could take that down, if we planted something really pretty instead.

and they have their parking structure on the street.

There's like a little structure right off of the street where they park.

So yeah, it's an interesting edge.

It really is.

I had a couple of thoughts.

Robert, if you don't mind, put up page 224.

And I'll just start by saying I agree with Brecht in that this particular neighborhood around Preston Place, you do have a really mixed bag of different styles.

So what I have a little bit of an issue with, if you could sort of zoom in on the house, the center portion of the house.

Thanks.

So you've got kind of this very center section stone and then just adjacent to it and you've got siding and then siding kind of concludes all the way around the back.

I feel like that is kind of fake.

I feel like the center mass of this

It feels like it wants to have been built at one time and then perhaps the appendages got added later, you know, if you're trying to kind of give it this sort of built up approach.

And I just, I just am concerned about having, you know, you've got a stone to a corner and then you basically turn the corner and it's siding.

Well, that was kind of the

The idea was that, OK, this is a house that was originally stone that was added on to.

But if you follow it all the way around, it's not like.

That's that's my guess when you call it there.

Right.

because I'm going to see where the stone returns on the next sheet a little bit in the center, but maybe the fact that the roof line kind of stays the same.

It's hard to tell now that this view is here.

When you look at the front elevation, the roof looks like it's kind of continues all the way across and then drops down, back up.

Yeah.

So that's

Maybe if you were able to pop that center roof out a little bit more, that might start to give you that feeling of an addition.

And then maybe have this intersection read as stone on your elevation.

So the homeowner's actually not sold yet on the stone at the center.

They're thinking, oh, maybe it should be all siding.

And I kind of like, I mean, there's a stone house around the corner and I like sort of the relationship with the stone wall in the back.

I just feel like it makes, it breaks it up and makes it more interesting.

I hear what you're saying.

I personally like the stone.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

The only other thing I would add, Leigh, is I think there is quite a bit of variation in your front facade, even though all the pieces generally are pushing up against that front yard setback.

because of the porches and the roof overhangs that there is variation along there but I think to the extent that you are able to create more variation or more depth would help break up some of those volumes in a way that's appropriate for

You know, this residential neighborhood, it's unusual to have a kind of a double lot.

And so this has led to a very long, long set of facades.