Board of Architectural Review Meeting   9/20/2022

I'll kind of calibrate the response.

We're all working busy people

I think especially when we have a long agenda, I'm not saying we need to set a hard and fast rule, but if somebody danced in here this evening on an important building that's already been approved and they have 12 sheets of things that they want to engage on us for 45 minutes, one, I'm probably just going to push it aside.

I think we need some

I guess the second one is just

And we do that and yet they're still stopped.

I guess this week would say you know I'm glad Candy pointed out that we had missed that narrative so that was my bad I wanted to get it out.

But the comments that were coming in about projects, it's like, I don't know, should I, do I wait until the meeting?

Some thoughts just sent to me.

Yeah, there's some things we can, we've certainly got some examples we can build off of.

I lost my watch in the garden, so I'm kind of messed up, but it's a 5-10.

And I agree that the random row should have been on a consent agenda.

Robert and I just were a little bit sputter on the axle.

So that one's relatively clean.

Ben Wilkes will be here with United Way.

The mural would have been consent except for the addition of the butterflies on the side.

And he's like, well, we'll take it off.

I'm like, no, no, no.

I think it's relatively safe.

My suggestion to him was the BAR may not want as many, they may not want it big, or they may want to say specifically where they go.

Basically butterflies are not free to fly.

Chen, you know, we all.

The 1301 Wirtland, so just to clarify that is a, one of the things we call when we talked about the large scale projects and having

preliminary discussions and having a whole bunch of them and it was actually Robert who said well you don't want to have you know six preliminary discussions that and then suddenly they come in with the ready to go and and so for this one they've had two discussions and I talked to Kevin and I said now this needs to become an official need to become a formal request and

and with a formal request what that means is we are by our regs required to send the notice letters.

So it's really the only difference as far as the public, I mean people still know about things like this but what that changes is that just like with 612 West Main it's a

The submittal is not ready for a final review, so it requires either the board or the applicant to do the deferral at the end.

That was at the very beginning before even the first submission.

Yeah, that was it.

The house?

Yeah.

Well I think they were just even at that meeting they were just even testing the water to see if there was any appetite for that and I think we gave them enough that they probably investigated it.

Yes, and one of the things Tim Moore suggested, I think I alluded to it in the staff report, he said, you know, for a project like this, for any of these large scale projects, he said to come up with a, maybe some criteria specific to that project that are, the things that are

These are the things we're not going to budge on.

For example, it might be, can the House be moved, yes or no?

Just some of the things that kind of give us some guidance.

I realize it's sort of saying

Well, I'd like to do that, but maybe I should invite Tim as a guest to better explain it, but just a way to have on a large-scale project kind of some things that we always go back to.

Here are the five things we decided are critical here and sort of help with that discussion.

So that's in the staff report, just a little clarification on what that meant.

And then, 0 Third Street is a required preliminary discussion.

They did write the check and gave me the submittal, so we did do the public notice, but the requirement is that we have the initial preliminary discussion.

I know the applicant is really hoping to move

quickly if they can towards getting to you all what information you want.

I mean, we definitely have time limits written into that little preamble that you give for presentations.

I think we said we're just going to spend 10 minutes on this.

And I think that's where we've always allowed it.

and we'll do the same thing when they formally submit.

I understand.

I guess we so rarely get enthusiastic participants.

So it's kind of, but the other one is, I guess last thing would be, you know, with Jeff Dreyfus, 612 West Main, it seems his primary question is about an alternative to masonry.

and just whether or not there's any, before they go through a design, before they submit something, is there a willingness to consider some alternatives?

Yeah, possibly.

I mean, again, I don't know how anybody's building right now.

That's the opposite of what we should consider.

And that's the distinction of true stucco.

You know, we know we had the folks from the hotel in here a couple months ago.

And we remember with it peeling off the wall.

If you go to number nothing, there's a plaque on the wall now for the person to sit there.

It's EFS.

It was all on tape.

The applicant was trying to save this.

Thesis.

And I said, you're right, that's what it is.

It was my first meeting back.

The last items on the staff questions, I really think that's no more than 10 or 15 minutes.

you know, the church, the solar panels, it's a slate roof, the 1928 building.

I don't think anybody's, they just really kind of a, I just wanted to float with you all what

Well I was just curious why they were choosing, and I forgot to get on to the Google, it would look like the west, almost like west, northwest side of the roof over the east, southeast, or

The Solar Company kind of calculating how much you would need in order, they want a, they have a goal of how much of energy production.

Because I'd suggest Bill Owens is the architect who did the people work and all that.

But they put it on the secondary building and what I point out is the only thing we really have are the

the secretary of standard guidelines.

Our design guidelines don't say much.

Secretary guidelines say a little bit more.

The tendency is to discourage it on primary structures.

But then the metal windows is a non-contributing building with old metal windows in it.

So it's like you could demolish the building without coming to the BAR.

So kind of get some thoughts on what kind of replacement windows would we, we'll just kind of talk through that a little bit.

And then the one, I added something about the bank, once they put in a security camera, we can look at the image when we get to that.

So what, anything in here that

Maybe important for the chair to publicly state at the beginning of the meeting that there's no public hearing for that.

I thought we were allowing comments just like we have typically with the... With preliminary discussion?

Historically we have.

Okay.

Now for like questions and answers, no.

That's why I've been trying to break those down now.

But you all have the ability to clarify what's germane and what's not.

Just on Third Street that it's not a public hearing and there may be members of the public.

I mean, Jeff says we should allow comments.

Or to have it at all is my question.

I think given my

Expectations.

They could.

So the trick there is that

I think I can tell you're a lawyer.

I'm just a journalist, I'm a little slow.

It's taken Ron two years.

We don't have a rule that really applies to this.

I think it's just our discussion.

I can say a little bit about that at the beginning with our preamble.

Jeff, are you going to be making announcements about ways that people that are following online can participate?

Well, Remy and I are hoping I can.

I may end up pushing some buttons erratically, but I'm going to do my best.

And I'm assuming we won't have anybody calling in.

Oh, no, no, no, that's the chairs.

So I have access to, I can, I did.

So I can see who's, I have one phone call listener.

And if anybody raises their hand, Remy assures me that I'll be able to respond to it.

What's the command for raising your hand if you're listening in?

It's star?

Star nine.

There are no two clocks in this entire town are ever on the same time.

Except for our atomic watches.

Wherever my watch is in my garden, God knows what time that says.

Jeff, it's going to be like 10 years.

We'll be harvesting tomatoes.

Oh, that's where that went.

I find glasses that I lost a couple years ago.

I found a watch I lost a couple years ago.

I just, now I've officially lost all of them, so I really had no, this is it, and I'm not one of these teenagers that can look at my phone.

I know.

That's right.

All right, let's get this thing going.

I would just quickly say we have Tyler here tonight, a new appointee to the BAR.

Roger Birle, an architect and preservationist, also was appointed.

I think he's going to try and listen in.

They were just appointed last night, so we're hurrying here.

Carl Schwartz, you all know, was recently appointed as the Planning Commission.

Representative and good to have Carl back.

Carl is an architect and had formerly, had even been chair of the BAR, so I'm- And eight years on the BAR.

Yeah, glad to have that institutional knowledge and memory back.

But knowledge, memory.

So, and I think that's all and do we have

I'm just looking at the thing.

OK, so we do have a quorum.

All right, let's go.

Welcome, everyone.

Welcome back, Carl.

And greetings to Tyler and to Roger.

And thank you to the public who are joining us here tonight and on Zoom.

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

The way this will go is that staff will introduce each item, which is followed by applicant's presentation, which should not exceed 10 minutes.

I'll then ask for any questions from the public, followed by questions from the BAR.

After the questions are closed we'll then ask for comments from the public and for each application members of the public will be allowed three minutes to ask questions and three minutes to offer comments and we

Through some of the pre-discussion, we have several items on the agenda that are not official hearings, but they are preliminary discussions.

We're gonna follow that same format so the public that are here will have the opportunity to comment on those projects.

Comments should be limited to the BAR's purview, that is regarding the exterior aspects of the project.

and speakers should identify themselves and provide their address.

Following our discussion, the BAR's discussion and prior to taking any action, applicants will have three minutes to respond.

So that brings us into our meeting.

The first item on our agenda are matters from the public that are not on the agenda, or if anyone would like to speak to something that is on the consent agenda, which today is just meetings from a previous meeting, minutes from a previous meeting.

Are there any speakers that would like to speak to matters not on the agenda?

If you're dialing in, anytime you wish to speak, you may dial star nine.

Okay, on our consent agenda this evening, we have the meeting minutes for the November 16, 2021 meeting.

I'll move to approve the consent agenda.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

Thank you very much.

That's me.

And I beg everyone a little bit of patience tonight.

This is our first meeting without Robert, who dutifully had everything in its proper place for many years.

Yes.

Okay, I push share screen, and then I'm pushing the thing.

There we go.

All right.

Double click solves it all.

So this is the COA request for an enclosed patio area in front of the Random Row Brewery, which is located at the King Lumber Warehouse on Preston Avenue.

It's a IPP.

and so that's why it's before you.

It is also in an entrance quarter, but the IPP prevails during the design review.

So won't get too much into it.

We had an earlier discussion about the building and the story and what the applicant's requesting and this, the view here is the top photo and let's see if I can

The top photo is the existing canopy at the back of the warehouse building.

And this is the front.

You see where the tent and the umbrella are.

That's where they're proposing to construct the new.

And it will be essentially similar to what's at the back.

metal framing with a metal roof.

The framing will be painted black and the roof and the ceiling will be that Galvalume color.

So staff's recommendation was that it, you know, is it an industrial looking building and this kind of fits the whole framework of it and it doesn't,

So this is Gavin McElroy.

I'm one of the business owners at Random Row, and I think Bradley is also available.

Excellent.

One thing I'll just clarify, it technically will not be an enclosed patio.

OK, we'll open this up to any questions from the public.

None here in the room.

Stop share.

All right.

None.

I guess I have one.

Jeff, I think I sent you some updated drawings.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, so you mentioned the colors being black for the metal, or black for the structure, and then the galvalume for the roof.

The gutter and back, is that just like a white vinyl?

The gutter on the side?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I do see the one.

existing is white.

I think having it black would probably make it blend in better with the posts.

I have one other question.

So we have it basically matching the pitch of the roof.

So the idea was essentially that the look would be more of an extension of the roof rather than its own structure.

So we just have it matching the roof line, which is also at an angle.

And then that would direct any rainwater

I was referring to the plan, but my colleague here showed me that the plan of it just matches the concrete below.

Yeah, that third one, I drew that one myself.

And I think that's the one that we had updated for an actual drawing of a CAD drawing.

Any comments from the public?

Yeah, there is.

I would just say, I had an email about this last night.

There's a little concern in my mind just because, not because this is a utilitarian building and because the proposal sort of is a reflection of that.

I think first and foremost this is sitting right next to what I think is a pretty

a great building on Preston.

And so we have one shot at this.

I think it's worthy of discussion to try to make it as best you can.

And I'm just feeling like when I look at these images that I don't see enough information to really get a sense of what, for instance, the canopy is tying into.

in elevation.

It doesn't appear to, at least from the first glance, doesn't appear to have a relationship with anything in particular.

Not that it has to, but it's a rather deep canopy.

and I think just a 3D visualization to sort of better understand the details of the posts.

I don't know how big those I-beams are.

They could be massive or they could be thin.

How thin or how fat the top roof is.

the connections maybe and like I say how it relates to the to the existing building which is a pretty nice little modern interpretation renovation of the old utility building which you know you know in a way the way

They originally detached it from the historic building.

There was some thought put into it, so I would just encourage that same sort of thought to be used with this small edition and would love to see if that's possible, you know, just like I say, a 3D or two.

It's hard for me to get a sense of what this is going to actually look like based on these drawings and then also based on the precedent on the back.

Yeah, so as far as the details of the posts and such,

You know, speaking with our builder, he suggested that we kind of make sure that this is something that the city is going to allow us to do before he gets details from the structural engineer on how big the posts need to be to make the structure, you know, to make it to where it's going to stand well.

Other discussion with the board?

If that's the case, I think it would be

I think that this would be perfectly fine, the concept that you proposed.

It's an industrial building, you're proposing kind of an industrial addition to it.

Well frankly I think I have enough information to go ahead and approve it.

I think I do as well, but that hasn't sat well.

Having considered the standards set forth within the city code, including the ADC district design guidelines, I move to find that the proposed patio canopy at 618 Preston Avenue satisfies

608 Preston Avenue satisfies the BAR's criteria and is compatible with this property and other individually protected properties and that the BAR approves the application as submitted.

Can I offer a friendly amendment?

Always.

Mr. Timmerman aye Mr. Zehmer aye Miss Lewis.

Aye Mr. Schwartz.

Yes.

Mr. Bailey.

Yes.

Aye

And I'm not going to call on you this evening unless you'd like to.

He has been appointed.

He can abstain, but he can certainly vote.

And I vote aye as well.

So the motion passes.

Ben?

All right.

So we're multitasking tonight, so there's a little bit of still fighting my COVID fog and my age, my advanced geriatric emergence, as I call it.

It doesn't get better.

It's like so many buttons here.

It's just it's really intimidating.

So got the screen I want to go to.

Let's stick with this image.

Everyone can see it.

All right, so this is a COA request for a mural that's to be installed at the rear of 113 West Main Street.

So this would be the side facing visible from Market Street.

And the haven is in that image to the left-hand side as you come up.

This is a 1913 building in the downtown ADC district.

It is contributing.

The applicant is requesting installation of this mural on the north wall.

and the piece that I mentioned this earlier this would otherwise have been a consent agenda item is the request for the butterflies on the west wall and the

Typically we discourage the painting of unpainted masonry.

This is somewhat different from that.

We discourage murals on the primary facade, so we're not dealing with that here.

But I thought that maybe, unless you all had absolutely no concerns with that west wall, my comment to Ben was that

you know maybe less or smaller or maybe established where the butterflies would go, the extent of them if there are any concerns.

This used to be for a couple decades was actually the interior wall with the neighboring building so not really obscuring any architectural elements that original to the building but we otherwise you know staff thinks it's

I think the butterflies sort of complete the mural.

It'd be nice to figure out a way to do it.

It's a nice visible corner.

And again, it's not a primary facade.

And this is only a portion of that unpainted wall being painted.

So that was our recommendation.

If you have any questions,

and Ben decided to come tonight.

Thank you.

Anything you'd like to add to that, Mr. Wilkes?

I think Jeff did a great job of describing it.

Okay, great.

Do we have any questions from the public?

Please use the raise your hand function if you're signed in.

I'm just going to continue with questions from the board.

And if we get questions from the public that come in later, just let me know.

OK.

Forgive me, guys.

I have to ask.

Yeah, if you could use the microphone, that's the only way the people on Zoom will hear you.

Great, good.

So I work at the United Way of Charlottesville.

One of our key goals is to connect our community in support of some other key goals that we have, which include reducing poverty in greater Charlottesville.

So one way that our creative team has envisioned connecting folks is around public art.

and we were able to get in contact with the building owner and a local muralist to create this vision for the artwork which is really centered around community uplift, especially for the target population of our poverty reduction work.

So we hope that this sort of conveys that message and I think the butterflies are a part of that though, an ancillary

part of the image.

I would just emphasize the collaborative effort between the muralists and the building owner who's really been a part of it from day one.

So that's been really exciting for us because I don't know how many murals the United Way has done.

I've only been around for about a year and a half, but we're excited to kind of step out and do something fun like this.

So I appreciate your consideration.

I don't know what kind of paint he intends to use.

Right, that's right.

With Hamilton Glass, who's from Richmond, I think they did it collaboratively.

And since Jay has done one outdoor at Ixart Park, too, I'm not sure if that went through the same review process.

But I imagine that he's considering those sort of things, but I don't know the swatch or exactly what he intends to use.

Yeah.

It has been previously painted.

I'm curious if the side facade has ever been painted.

So I had a question.

It is intended to be part of the mural.

There's a section between the two doorways.

It's probably a foot and a half to two feet wide that the building owner felt comfortable displaying that kind of information.

The QR code would link people to poverty data that's available publicly for Greater Charlottesville and the pie chart is a sample monthly income of

Would the code be accessible in that location?

Yeah, it's chest level.

I mean, how long do QR codes last, do we know?

It's a question I've asked all day.

Any other questions from the board?

Comments from the public?

And I'll go into comments from the board.

If something does pop up, just let me know.

Comments from the public.

So I guess I appreciate the message you all are sending.

Don't get me wrong.

My concern is that the pie graph captures one moment in time.

and hopefully, through your work, you'll improve things.

My fear is five years down the road, 10 years down the road, that's still up, painted on the wall as a message about our community, which hopefully isn't the case in the future, right?

So that gives me concern.

And I think maybe the, excuse me, the QR code is a way that, you know, that,

is just a graphic, right?

Sure, I mean, yeah, I think it's something that's,

something that may not be as permanent as a painted mural would give me more comfort.

I'll just say I'm questioning and I'm not I would say I don't have a strength in our side ordinance but

It does convey information, and a QR code is a very advanced technology for conveying information.

But the pie graph and the words also convey information in the respective rent costs, child care costs, food costs.

I'm not saying I know it's a sign.

I'm just raising that issue, that this is not just graphic art with artful representation that is interpreted in a different way.

I think the bottom part is a sign.

I would lean towards asserting that without looking any further at the sign ordinance.

I'm not saying whether that is good or bad or whether that means you get approval or not.

I'm just pointing out what there are different regulations.

And I would also say that we've never, and I know this is one of Mr. Schwartz's favorite topics, but we really have not updated our guidelines to address murals.

And we have had other murals come before us, and there's a sentiment that they offer a certain beauty.

and Permanence and loveliness to some spaces and certainly some facades that wouldn't be remarkable otherwise, that they're an opportunity and maybe even an opportunity to say things, which is what this is trying to do.

But our guidelines don't

are not really strong to tell us what should be permissible in these historic districts and what are not.

Would a recommendation then be a condition that I review with zoning?

And I have talked with zoning about these things, although the QR code is an interesting question I don't think we thought about.

But just to ask whatever motion you make, if it is to approve it, that I talk to Reed and clarify and resolve any concerns that he has.

It occurs to me that the information is really only going to be legible to people that are entering that door.

It's just not a particularly, it's not a place that probably a lot of people will be able to see or will go all the way up to.

unless you're really down in that parking lot, I think.

And so I wonder if it might even, if it were not part of the mural, but it was presented as information.

It's not so much advertising a business, but it's interpretive signage in a way.

or even out on the sidewalk closer so it's more accessible.

I'd even add too, I mean this is subjective, but just from an aesthetic standpoint you might argue that those things down below kind of take away from the power of the mural itself.

Let's continue with our discussion and then you'll have a chance to reply.

Yes, there is.

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting conversation about the graph and the QR code, but I would be in favor of approving this.

I would like some investigation into whether there could be some paint that's more breathable for masonry, just because

The brick that's used in the front of the building tends to be a nicer, stronger brick, and sometimes on party walls and back walls they used to use a less good quality brick, and I'm just worried about it starting to spall and whatnot if you start putting paint on it.

That tends to be a little softer sometimes.

I mean, they're small butterflies.

It's like the building's not gonna fall apart because of a couple butterflies.

Well, I wanted to comment about that a little bit this specifically.

I think I'm in, I agree with you, Carl, that on all those points, my comment on the size of the butterflies is that I know that this is a conceptual

and sometimes these murals take on a little bit of life of their own and they evolve as they're getting installed and maybe as shown and as proposed they may be fine but I don't know if there's any way of getting some assurance that we don't find out that they end up becoming two or three times their size or starting to cover a significant portion of the building.

Do you have a question?

This work hasn't been done yet, right?

No.

That was our intention.

Pending approval.

And I'm not, I didn't mean to put it on the spot.

I just all of a sudden realized it was this coming Saturday that was the announcement.

I mean, I guess, anyway, that doesn't necessarily put pressure on us.

But these are not legitimate reasons for us to approve.

Oh, no, no, no, there's no blame at all.

I mean, we only meet once a month and, you know, there's a process to some middles.

I also concur that I don't have a problem with the butterflies on the, you know, it's non prominent wall.

It is a street side wall, but I have no issues with it.

and unless the butterflies got really big, which I think would be difficult without encompassing the windows on that facade anyway, which would make it a little bit more complicated for the painter, I would imagine.

I'd be willing to approve as they've submitted, personally.

If no one else is, then I won't bother with that motion.

I mean, I figure they could paint over the pie chart eventually in the QR code.

Could we see the elevation again of the doorway?

Let me see if I can get back to it.

Yeah, it's just tough.

I wonder how you're going to see it.

The scale is tough for me to understand.

the size of the pie chart and the QR code.

When you see a vehicle right there, they look a quarter of the size of a vehicle.

So that looks pretty big to me.

And I mean the lead up to that is private property.

So theoretically, if you wanted to scan that code, you would maybe have to

I mean, that wall is about four or five feet high at that point where it means you'd have to kind of stand below it at an angle or trespass.

I mean, I'm just pointing, it's not optimal if it is supposed to be publicly accessible information.

Is that where the United Way is located?

That's just the back door for the businesses that are there?

And I can't imagine, even as large as it is, that you could scan a code from Market Street.

I don't think our phones are that good.

They're not like telegraphic lenses or something.

No.

And whether it's a sign, I have to say.

Yeah, but when we looked at Starbucks, you know, same artist, we were pretty insistent that there'd be no words like coffee, Starbucks, you know, get your whatever inside.

But it would not be commercial.

And I'm not saying this is commercial, but it is information, which a sign is.

I just don't know our signed ordinance well enough.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with the butterflies.

I would support the mural without the QR code and the pie chart, personally.

I think I'd agree.

In the words of Elton John, butterflies are free to fly, fly away, fly away, butterfly.

Yeah, I guess I would share that with the pie chart and the QR code and I appreciate you all considering that aspect of it and I've learned things from what you've shared.

the intention was almost in like a museum or gallery setting where you have a work and then something that provides more context to it.

So that was our intention and I really like the idea of maybe separating that in a way that's more accessible and I don't know if this board approves, would approve that sort of aspect or if we would even need to seek approval for that but

I think there's general support for presenting that information.

It's just whether or not it is necessary to be part of the permanent mural that's affixed to the building, which is our purview.

Right.

And it sounds like there's support for approving it with the

I can try.

Having considered the standards set forth within the city code, including the city design guidelines for rehabilitation, public design, and improvements, I move to find the proposed mural at 113 West Main Street satisfies BAR's criteria and is compatible with this property and other properties in the downtown ABC district.

and that the BAR approves the application as submitted without the QR code and the pie chart as outlined in the submittal.

Any further discussion?

I hope you guys can find a way to show that information.

I think it's, I mean, otherwise it's just a pretty mural.

And I was thinking, maybe if the code were on the side with the butterflies, or it were freestanding

I don't know, I can't solve it right now, but I would like to just tell the applicant that I think we're generally, it's not that we don't want that information, it's just we're wondering if it falls into the sign ordinance, what our regulations are, it kind of creates another area of regulation that we're kind of unsure about.

So it isn't that we don't want for the United Way to share that information about our community.

That's where a lot of our heartbreak is kind of coming right now.

If they talk to the city and the signed ordinance ends up not being an issue with the signed ordinance, would it be okay for them to get something that is just attached to the building for those two things?

I think so, yeah.

Sorry.

A sign is a specific term.

So if it's a piece of artwork that zoning determines is not a commercial sign, it would be something that then could have fabricated and put on as a panel.

A flat panel might be a way to do it.

So I would suggest

And I know Craig and Reid have been involved in discussions about this.

No issues.

They didn't raise anything about a concern for a sign.

I do think the idea of a QR code or a random image is kind of ironic.

We live in a world that that is not a sign.

But I think that's the thing we have to probably discuss.

And I already sent a note to Reid and Craig about, does that constitute a sign?

I don't believe information, unless it says on there, come and buy this or come here and exchange money with us, doesn't constitute a commercial sign.

I'm understanding more about the timeliness of it, that it stays up to date.

And so I think that I would

I would say I'll ask for both of them.

I will get clarification from zoning.

Is either or both of them a sign?

And any element that is not a sign can be installed, but with Preference B would be a panel that can be updated.

But the same thing, it's something attached to the wall, and who's going to make sure that that gets updated?

I think the kind of blurriness of the sign is imagine if that QR code were three feet square and incorporated into the mural.

Anytime anybody takes a picture of that sign, it's pointing them to a website.

Would we be okay with that?

But that would not be the BAR taking responsibility at this point.

Can I read the definition of a sign for my zoning ordinance?

This governs section 34

dash 1200 definitions of our zoning ordinance which governs the guidelines sign means a structure wall or other object or portion thereof visible from the public right-of-way used for the display of any information or message including without limitation any device structure fixture or placard using graphics symbols or written copy provided however that this definition shall not include works of art or temporary holiday decorations

I'm just reading from our code, gentlemen, members of the public.

I'm not sure that the lower portion is not a sign.

I agree.

I don't think it's part of the mural.

Which I admire.

It should be done tastefully.

It does not necessarily need to be permanent to the structure.

I feel comfortable with the motion as presented and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Okay, I'll call the roll.

Mr. Zehmer?

Aye.

Ms.

Lewis?

Aye.

Mr. Schwartz?

Yes.

Mr. Bailey?

Would you like to vote on this one?

Okay, thank you.

And I will approve also aye.

So the motion passes.

Thank you very much.

It was interesting.

It was not where I thought it was going to go.

And what I was referring to is it's a sign that is regulated.

There are signs.

There aren't any, yeah.

If it's not a regulated sign, then it's not something we're going to look at.

I get calls all the time about stuff.

There's a plaque underneath of the artwork there on the wall by McGuffey School.

Nobody can read the plaque anymore.

It just keeps getting bounced around City Hall.

It keeps coming to me.

I'm like, I don't know who even put it up there because the plaques can't be read.

So I am the repository or I am the last place that things come.

Next item on the agenda is 1301 Wortland Street.

You know, if I start crying, will Robert walk over?

He only lives a couple blocks away.

He's probably in the studio.

He's laughing at me right now is what he's doing.

Okay, let me get to the

renderings that would probably be the most helpful here.

Oh my God, a lot of stuff.

This is why Cami used to just put one picture up for each project and that was it.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Okay, so this is a

and application for 1301 Wortland Street.

It's a request for a new apartment building on the parcel, but it is an existing house, the 1830 Wurtenbacher House, and actually doing a lot of trying to figure out exactly when it was built.

There's some reports it was built in 1816, some put it later, but it is

which Dinsmore owned the land but not sure if maybe he built it.

So there's just a lot of differing reports on that and I tried to, if you look on the last page of the staff report, I kind of tried to track the parcel, how it broke down over the years.

So that's why you'll see here 1815, 1830, 1842 for the construction dates.

and the request is again to construct a student housing apartments on the east side of the existing house on this lot.

It is within the working street ADC district.

It is a contributing property obviously with the existing house as well.

You all reviewed this back in February and March, both times a rather informal preliminary discussion, just sort of getting a sense of where the BAR might

You know, how it viewed the project in March, there was a suggestion by the applicant of possibly shifting the house, the historic house forward, creating some room and adding some prominence to the house.

That, in this iteration, has been the houses remaining in place.

and as I mentioned in the preliminary meeting earlier tonight, this is a continuation of preliminary discussions.

There will be no vote on this, but because of we've had two discussions so far and we think it's important to be able to buy a code where we're required to do

the public notice letters for a formal application.

So I've had requested the applicant make this a formal request and so therefore then we can get the mail out to the adjacent landowners and

but that also with the understanding that just like we did with 612 West Main last year the end of this discussion shouldn't end up in a vote of approval or denial but you will have to agree on a

deferring action until a later date, whether you all make the motion or the applicant requests it.

So there are, there's only a couple renderings in here and it's not a detailed presentation yet, but I'm gonna let, I think Kevin is here?

We are half an hour ahead.

Hey, Jeff.

There they are.

Beautiful.

All right.

I don't have to do any more.

Well, actually, that's what Remy was telling me.

Something changed last month.

Well, Kevin, we'll allow you to make your presentation.

If you could keep it to 10 minutes, that would be beneficial.

We have a long agenda tonight.

OK, understood.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff, for the thorough staff report.

I, too, appreciate your staff reports.

My name's Kevin Schaefer, and I'm the studio director for the Charlottesville branch of Design Develop.

I have with me Bob Pinnio, the principal of Design Develop.

Thank you for your time tonight, and we're excited to be back in front of you for this project here at 13

We've been grateful for the review of our previous preliminary proposals.

We're eager to continue to find creative ways to build consensus and work towards a project that is appropriate and perhaps even more importantly, a holistic benefit to the residents of the city.

I think everyone would agree that we have a challenging site.

But everyone may not agree on the best path forward here.

And as our city grows and evolves, we have to respect the city's historic resources while also providing people a place to live.

This tension between the two goals is palpable.

There is a balance that is required between preservation and growth.

And this balancing act happens at every one of these architectural review meetings, not necessarily just for this project, but for all these projects that endeavor to find the compromise between the old and the new.

The city is a better place because of this tension, without a doubt.

And the city is a better place because of the board's role, your role in holding that tension in check.

But what we have here in this site and what we have to consider that is on the table is such a tremendous opportunity.

And you'll hear me use the words opportunity and balance tonight as those are explicit directives from the 2021 comprehensive plan.

At the site we have an opportunity for students to walk to class, an opportunity for pedestrian and bike oriented transit to support the services and shops within a designated urban corridor at the corner.

There's an opportunity for 40 students per year to live where students are supposed to live.

to meet a growing demand for student housing while resisting the sprawl into adjacent neighborhoods at 10th and Page and Fifeville.

There's an opportunity to make better use of an existing surface parking lot to add homes, residences, places for people to live to facilitate growth

in a neighborhood where the zoning ordinance and the current comprehensive plan and the future land use map and all the inputs that we have available to us encourage density and promote pedestrian oriented transit.

We have the opportunity to be better as a city to serve the owner occupied residents of single family homes of the adjacent neighborhoods.

We have an opportunity to support our local businesses who have shops and restaurants on the corner and would love more foot traffic from nearby residents.

We have an opportunity to encourage mass transit use.

We have the opportunity to provide tax revenue to the city to support schools for affordable housing for parks and recs, whatever that may be.

And once more, consider the fact that from a zoning perspective, this project is by right in all aspects.

The project is under the allowable height and meets all required front, rear and side yard setbacks.

The project is significantly under the allowable density.

In fact, in this proposal, we're at about half of the allowable density based on the university high density designation.

And that proposed allowable density is only going to increase for the future land use map and the zoning rewrite that is shaping up currently.

The 2021 comprehensive plan calls for more housing at all price points and notes that the market pressures have resulted in increased rents and home prices as well as displacement of low income households.

The gentrification of 10th and Page and Fifeville neighborhoods is real.

And as students who require housing pushed into these neighborhoods, which have long been owned by single family residences, and then not have been used as student rentals, it puts pressure on these neighborhoods.

So much pressure so that these neighborhoods have been designated in the new comprehensive plan as sensitive community areas.

The goal of these areas is to mitigate displacement, to keep legacy residents in place, and creating a focus area for owner-occupied rehabilitation.

But our neighborhood on Wortland Street, on the other hand, calls for higher intensity residential of up to five stories and with a minimum of 13 units per lot.

So all indicators that we have point us to this location for student housing from the current zoning ordinance to the existed adopted comprehensive plan to the future land use maps and our future zoning rewrites.

In section four of the twenty twenty one comprehensive plan, which is the section that covers land use, urban form and historical and cultural preservation, goal three calls for balancing the conservation and preservation with change.

This section gives us strategies to develop in this location.

Strategy 3.3 states to develop partnerships that can bring underutilized properties, including historic properties, into productive and sustainable applications that will support increases in residential uses.

Substrategies in this goal 3.3 include developing an inventory of underutilized properties, which this parcel would certainly be on that list, to consider strategies such as rezoning, rehabilitation, reducing off-street parking requirements, and to provide other incentives for development.

Section 3.3 also encourages adaptive reuse and potential increases in intensity for use of existing buildings, including historic structures.

particularly areas identified for higher intensity development in the future land use map, a zone in which this parcel is located.

Section five of the comprehensive plan covers housing, a topic important enough to have its own designated section in this document.

Goal two calls for support for diversive housing throughout the cities.

Substrategies in this goal promote housing redevelopment and infill development that supports bicycle and pedestrian oriented infrastructure and also supports robust public transportation to better connect residents to jobs and commercial activity.

We can also look at the 2019 Comprehensive Regional Housing Study and the needs assessment that was published by the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership.

which cites increasing rents and low vacancy rates as barriers to residency within the city of Charlottesville for all users from low income to medium income to student housing.

There is just a shortage of housing in our city.

We can look at the affordable housing plan which calls for even more aggressive revisions to the regulatory and development review process in an effort to increase production of multifamily housing and expansion of buy right development.

We look at all these inputs that are directions to us from the city, and they direct toward densification and growth in the name of a healthier, more vibrant city.

And yet, even though we are in the midst of a housing crisis in Charlottesville, and even though we can collectively agree it may be insensitive at best to retain a surface parking lot in a prime location with this associated zoning designation solely in the name of preservation,

We will jump ahead to here.

So all of these positives that are on the table, all of this opportunity that's on the table, understanding that you are not arbiters of the comprehensive plan and the zoning rewrite, but acknowledging that

you know, growth and the existing structures have to reside in this tension.

There is opportunity on this table that is right for the taking and there is successful precedence within the city that we think have successfully achieved that balance and that balance is the goal that we are striving for today.

Slide 10 from the booklet that's in front of you articulates some of the lessons that were learned from the previous iterations.

This tries to outline a baseline of consensus, we could say, which includes some general directives for improvements.

These include identifying the existing surface lot as the only location for development on the site, identifying the need to retain the relationship of the historic structure to the street, and identifying the need to address the deferred maintenance on the existing structure and the existing landscaping.

From this baseline of consensus, we gathered great feedback at the two preliminary previous submissions.

To summarize what we learned in our January submission, we needed to break down the massing through a more sympathetic street wall.

We needed to simplify the glazing arrangement and simplify the amount of elements that were on the face of the building, particularly in locations that were adjacent to the historic structure.

We needed to avoid the cream brick and wood combination, and we needed to give adequate consideration to the subgrade parking entrance.

At the March review, which is the lower image on the screen, most board members appreciated the revised street wall massing with generous step backs, and they encouraged the fourth story mass towards the rear of the parcel if it unlocked those step backs and smaller street wall on the front.

However, some board members spoke passionately about the importance of retaining the large setback from Wortland Street of the Wortenbacher House.

Moving the house forward, it was argued, though it would make the house more prominent, it dislodged it from its historic context.

So the proposed design achieves this balance.

We don't have the luxury of moving the house forward and therefore putting massing towards the rear of the parcel.

And yet we're still faced with the challenge of accommodating those front setbacks that create a more appropriate street wall.

We are proposing to have a two-story brick mass at the street, a mass that is a little more scale in keeping with the adjacent Wertenbacher house, as well as the two-story residences across the street.

We've simplified the glazing arrangement to be more organized and rational and more typical of a punched opening condition found in a typical brick facade.

At the guidance of the

the board.

We've gone away from the lighter cream brick of our first submission, and we're employing darker, more muted materials to help minimize the visual prominence of the rear of the structure and serve more as a backdrop for the historic structure.

This revised material, the dark red color brick, is more typical and considerate of a traditional brick material found throughout the district.

Additionally, we've internalized the stairs, previous exterior stairs kind of cut down in front of the building mass.

We've done that to simplify the facade and to provide more spatial relief to the historic structure.

At the front right corner of the historic structure, the distance to the facade at the exterior balcony is nearly 20 feet.

The internalization of the stair also creates visual voids that serve to further break down the building mass that faces the Wertenbacher House.

We've removed the vertical wood screening and the wood slats that were found on the first iteration as well as the very large overpowering roof overhang.

This scheme employs small parapets that keep the roof from extending past the exterior walls as a way to visually limit the impact of the building.

We're stepping the building away from the historic structure on the fourth level as well as at the street, and we're suggesting a front court area that is less contemporary, grounding the historic house in its context rather than serving the new building as a primary user.

Organizationally, we've simplified the diagram of the building, having two brick masses that bookend a central secondary background form.

The secondary building form steps back from the more prominent brick masses to break down the scale of the whole building.

In this elevation, the voids that accommodate the internal stairs are noted, breaking down the facade into three distinct building volumes.

The generous step backs at the street level will provide rooftop terraces that can help engage the street, engage the pedestrian, and create a building of human scale.

Finally, we've revised the

Drive insurance to have lower site walls that taper with the existing grid.

And we're proposing a change of material at the entrance drive, most likely brick pavers.

Plan to utilize the existing curb cut.

And we've engaged with the local civil engineering firm Line and Grade to perform initial grading studies, site analysis.

a site line analysis, site wall design for us in parking ramp requirements.

As you can see, it's only a 6% parking entrance ramp and the layout, shape, size and entry sequence of the parking will not be substantially different from what exists currently.

All of these revisions have been direct results of the comments we received previously.

and we're grateful for them as we believe the project has improved and more importantly achieved a better balance of conservation and preservation of historic resources with the desire for growth and change.

It's important to note that we speak passionately about projects such as this one, meaning infill projects on grave fields that support our urban cores.

I would just add one more thing which is in this proposal which is not necessarily outlined in this proposal would be the

physical rehabilitation of the existing structure, the stabilization of it.

It's in need of some maintenance and part of the benefits and part of the balance is the ability to unlock the economic needs to bring that house back up to structural stability, physically rehabilitated for the Secretary of Interior standards.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

Do we have any questions from the public either here in the building or on Zoom?

Kevin, did you say that it was infeasible to relocate the house?

Yes.

So there's a couple of things.

As a condominium community governed by both private association documents and public state condo laws, the acquisition of a common area, which that dry vial that cuts in front, is a common area.

It requires the unanimous approval of each individual owner and also each individual lender.

So from there, it was tough to provide insurance in light of a requirement for unanimous approval from 75 different parties.

and it just proved to be too big of a legal challenge to overcome.

Additionally, I think we heard from the Preservation Committee and certainly, you know, former member Jody LaHindra spoke passionately about it was moving the House forward does dislodge it from its existing context.

You know, one of the things we talked about in the meeting last time was the skew

and the missing tooth and how it made the house unique and it made it more noteworthy in its existing context.

It has been considered and I can actually I won't worry about jumping back to a floor plan, but

We did consider it, and it can be accommodated.

There was some considerations for the alignment of the garage entrance and kind of the composition of that front facade.

Kevin, this is Cheri.

That's correct.

I believe there to be 45 individual condo owners and then with those 45 there's an additional 30 lending partners.

The ownership team that is on

I've actually done this with the condominium association with 280 units plus almost that many mortgagees.

And there's a way to shortcut the mortgagee approval process.

Your attorney probably is aware of that, or the owners.

But it doesn't require the affirmative consent.

You can give them notice, and with the tolling of a couple of months, their approval is taken, their lack of reply is taken as approval.

and it's not it I'm not saying it's an easy process but I've done it once and it's not impossible because most mortgages wouldn't necessarily approve of selling common area that maybe it's not being used or maybe you know would bring would bring some amount of money that could be used for reserves in a condominium like this and could bring benefits to it so I just would point that out I'm not I know nothing about

this property.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And one of those areas, what Jeff has mentioned, we would need to come back with further detail.

Currently we're showing like a vertical B-groove wood rain screen system whether that's a composite product like a Nichiha or a true wood like a cedar I think is still yet to be determined but certainly something we would value input on.

The trim would be a series of steel

I-beam steel C-channels that are exposed and then other places where it's like as a parapet cap that would be like a break metal trim piece to match that.

One thing that occurred to me as I was looking through the proposal is that it appears that the volume and the height of the project has grown significantly from the earlier models that we were shown and I'm curious if the

The initial concept that we showed, which was that singular bar, and I don't know, Jeff, you're able to go up to those kind of previous massing options on your screen.

It's a page.

87, yeah.

The previous.

Submission from January did not employ any setbacks at the wall.

We were using that whole volume.

It was a three-story volume that was basically, the entire building footprint was extruded up at that point, and that's how we got that three-story mass on the front.

In coming down to the March iteration,

We did show four stories and we showed a very similar mask there.

The step backs are slightly reduced in our current submission but the four stories was available, was presented at that time and we were essentially taking some of the masks that we were utilizing for our step backs and

incorporating it into a fourth realm element.

That's sort of the same way that this is played out.

We've got a rear setback, step back, we've got a front step back, we've got a couple front step backs, and then we've got a side step back as well.

And so it was kind of just the reassignment of the spaces.

It seemed like from the March hearing that the step backs and presenting a two-story mass that did rise to four stories was pretty favorable.

and the successful precedents of that.

And so we tried to, again, retain that step back, the two levels of step back on the street wall that got us down to a two-story brick mass.

And we also, you know, it's structurally challenging, but to try and step that building in away from the historic structure, just to, you know, again, try and any move of respect towards that historic structure seemed to be a worthwhile endeavor.

Other questions from the board?

Okay, I'll go to comments from the public.

Do we have any comments from the public either here in person or on Zoom?

Yes, we have one hand raised here.

Please come forward.

I'm Jean Hyatt.

Good evening.

I live on Meadowbrook Heights Road.

This evening, I'm speaking to you as a former resident of Wortland Street and a former member of the BAR.

I moved to Charlottesville on July 10, 1976, on the same day that Queen Elizabeth paid a visit to Charlottesville.

In fact, we walked over to the rotunda to see the queen as she visited UVA's academic village.

This underscores the importance of

Wortland Street because of its proximity to an internationally recognized historic site.

I lived directly across from the Wortenbaker House when it was still owned by the Humphreys family.

And when Mr. Humphrey, it's M.W.

Humphrey's, elderly daughter still lived in the house and rented out rooms to students.

Mr. Humphrey's was a professor at UVA in the early days of the school.

The Wortenbaker House

Built around 1830, it's the oldest house on Wirtland Street.

The owner, William Wirtenbaker, and I think it's Wirtenbaker, served as Jefferson's second librarian for 50 years, and Wirtland Street is named for him.

This gives the house significant importance on the street.

When the Humphreys family sold the Wurton Baker property, the new owners built a large set of apartment buildings behind the house, carved a driveway through part of the front lawn, and rehabilitated the house.

So owners of the Wurton Baker property have already made use of this land to build a large-scale apartment complex.

The Warren Baker House sits on the north side of the street with a 95-foot setback.

Other owners of property along the north side have built large apartment buildings in the back of the main structures.

The houses on the north side of the street were built earlier and have extensive front lawns, while the houses on the south side were built later and are considerably closer to the street.

According to the staff report the average setback on the street is 35 feet However, this is confusing as there's a difference between the properties on the two sides of the street I would like to see the staff actually look at just the average of the contributing houses on the north side of the street The Wharton Baker house is at the beginning of the ADC district line and the apartment building to the west at 218 West

Wortland with a setback of 30 feet built before the district was designated is not even in the district.

The apartment building just east of the Worton Baker House, 1215 Wortland, was also built before the street was designated.

It was designated in 1999.

It is a non-contributing structure in the district with a setback of 25 feet.

Still, these two apartment buildings have longer front street setbacks and the plan of a 15 feet

Foot setback for the proposed building.

The rest of the historic houses on the north side of the street have large front street setbacks.

As you can guess, I do not support the approval of this new infill project.

Its design is not harmonious with the historic buildings on the street.

It doesn't contribute to the human scale of the district and it lacks a reasonable front street setback.

So I urge you to delay this development proposal until there are major changes in the design and its location.

I'm flipping a lot of buttons.

I forgot to push the three-minute button.

Okay, if you could turn it a little bit.

Sorry, multitasking.

I'm gonna stop the share here.

I do not see any...

All right.

So Kevin, I apologize because I hadn't seen the two previous versions of this.

So I'm going to come in and probably say some things that are different from what others have said before.

First, I am ecstatic that the house is not moving because the setback is it reveals the history of the house.

And I'm glad that it didn't work out because that would have

I would have found that pretty disturbing.

The massing of this I think I can generally get behind.

Where I'm finding problems is I think materiality and detailing and aesthetics basically.

I am a little worried about your exterior corridors.

They have a

Motel sensibility to them.

And I don't know where you're going to put the HVAC units, but my eyes are instantly imagining window units sticking out of the walls or through all things like you'd see on a motel.

I'm sure you guys have a better idea for that.

It's just kind of what I'm visualizing right now.

The brick portion of the front I find attractive, but I also find it very commercial and office-like.

And the language on the street, I think every single building, even the not so well done apartment buildings from the 60s and 70s,

use a more residential language.

And this feels very office building with a motel behind it language.

And I know you're trying to be contemporary and it's just the way it's reading right now and it seems very foreign to the rest of the street and out of context.

The only other comment I've got is the idea of creating that nice open space and cleaning up the space in front of the house, I think is beautiful, fantastic.

But I do think you're getting rid of one, well actually you're getting rid of quite a few large trees by building this.

I know it might block the house, but I'd like to see some street trees put into your landscape plan.

So that's, I don't mean to, I'm really not trying to be rude at all with my comments on the aesthetics, it's just that's what I'm seeing right now, and it does concern me.

I know previous comments from the board had asked you to go with darker colors, and I'm not gonna argue with that, but I'm just kind of worried with the way that this has materialized for this iteration.

I guess I think Brecht kind of touched on it in one of his questions, but I think it's unfortunate it's gotten up to four stories.

When the earlier massing was showing three, I think the challenge with this project is just the fact that it's going to overshadow the historic house no matter what happens really.

which is unfortunate.

I think the earlier, as the speaker from the public pointed out, the earlier apartment buildings that have been built in this neighborhood have largely been put behind the historic houses on the street and or at least at a respectful distance.

and I think that's the biggest challenge with this site is they've only got but so much room on their property so I think reducing the height would help I think I think kind of this

The setbacks within the building along the side that is adjacent to the historic house is helpful to break it up.

Yeah, that might be some of the fenestration, the way that those openings are working within the brick volume.

I think that the two-story volume at the front is probably a good solution and maybe the right height.

I'm just really concerned about the way that the volume

volume and height seem to have shifted relative to the Wurtenbacher house.

Whereas when the house, the historic home was moved forward and the four stories were introduced, almost the entire four story mass is behind the building.

And in the current proposal, the four-story mass is almost entirely in front of the building, which is going to significantly increase the amount of shade that is cast on the structure.

Really aggressive relationship relative to the historic home.

I fully believe that a structure is possible on the site, and I think we've talked about ways that that could happen in some of our previous conversations, but I'm really concerned about that.

The other concern of mine, while I think that it's very successful the way that you're playing the one material off of the other to break down the volume,

I'm really concerned about the third and fourth stories of the gray material.

It seems like the apertures are not adequately protected.

It seems like it could be a material that would be especially exposed, could look very bad over time, it looks inexpensive.

It doesn't seem fully resolved and doesn't seem to meet even our guidelines relative to establishing a cornice on the structure.

The guard rails end up becoming a really prominent feature, giving it a very almost ship or deck-like appearance, which is awkward and a little bit different, you know, not really in keeping with

anything else we see in the district.

So some significant concerns on my end.

I totally agree with your first 10 minutes about the need for density.

I think that this is an ideal place for students to walk to school, and this is something that we're all kind of progressively in support of, all of us that are into this sort of densifying the urban fabric.

but I just think this is a really tough site, a tough one.

I'm kind of with Breck on the, I was feeling better about the house being moved forward and using the same arguments and that a lot of the higher stories were sort of blocked

from view and that there was more of a relationship between the setbacks.

But I also agree with Carl's point that you lose something of the history, you lose all of the history in some ways when you start moving these things around.

So when Carl was mentioning that, I was trying to think.

I think moving forward, I agree with Breck in that I believe there's a solution here.

I think there's a way to do this.

I'm thinking in the back of my head, maybe part of that is somehow relating to that historic, whatever those historic traces, those historic roads, the historic

figures, if there's some sort of way to kind of bring those back and relate the landscape that then relates the house somehow then to the building, I'd encourage a deeper dive into that.

But at the end of the day, I just feel like looking especially at the 3D where you see the full extended length of the interior portion of the west facade, I just didn't feel like there was a good relationship.

or a relationship that enhanced the historic structure the way I feel like it needs to be.

It's a beautiful house.

It's a house that needs to be respected in some way, shape, or form.

That doesn't mean that we're looking for a replica of that house.

Maybe the solution is to do something that contrasts it.

I felt as if the current design, there's almost like too much going on which sort of causes some distraction from the main house.

And so I was just looking at some of the

Some of the lines in our guidelines and a few things struck me in the setbacks, for instance, on number eight, we have a line that says that transitional sites between two distinctive areas of setback, for instance, between new commercial and historic commercial, consider using setbacks in the new construction that reinforce and relate to setbacks of the historic buildings.

Well, I think we know what our

You know, it sounds like the setbacks are what they are, but I'm curious about pushing that in a poetic way or in some way, whether it's landscape or other design features that relate to that a little bit more.

In the spacing section, number two, or I'm sorry, number four says multi-buildings should be designed using techniques to incorporate

and respect the existing spacing on a residential street.

I understand your context photos relate to the project that you're looking at.

You've put a lot of multifamily on there.

However, I think the public individual who's up and speaking brought up a good point, which is there are still a number of single family or older historic buildings on that street.

And so in a way, those context photos don't tell the whole story.

So I think there's a balance.

there.

I also think that those context photos are not the things we want to be looking at as precedent.

I think this site, because of the complexity and because of the difficulty of it, really is looking for a new, unique solution.

and then finally on the massing and footprint I just prefer you to number two new infill construction residential sub areas should relate in footprint and massing to the majority of surrounding historic dwellings so I'm just reiterating those because not that I have an answer but

If I can interrupt.

In the guidelines, and I agree, Dave, what you're saying is because, for example, it says setbacks within 20% of setbacks of a majority of the neighborhood dwellings, spacing within 20% of the average spacing between houses on the block, massing relate to majority of surrounding historic dwellings, and height and width.

It talks about prevailing height and width.

and this is where, you know, maybe what a decision point that you all could make.

So this is the map of the historic district, the local historic district, not the National Register District.

The black shade indicates the city has designated these contributing.

So you can see almost everything there is called contributing, historic or not.

I guess that discussion could be had, but this is what the city has established as what we're

what we're concerned about within the district.

Obviously there's, and I think that's what the staff report tries to point out, is the whole range of spacing and setbacks, but is there something prevalent?

Is it the section of those former, the larger houses there, the eastern section of the street, is there a,

So maybe there is something that – Well, and the guidelines kind of presume a same age district and we, I think through earlier conversations, discovered that this was a very

unique quixotic.

It was developed in a very syncopated way that led to a lot of different kinds of conditions.

And this was not a street that had a common street wall at any one time.

It was gradually infilled by a variety of different strategies.

I'll go next.

So thank you for bringing this back to us.

My first concern is with the height of the proposed new building.

The fourth level would figuratively and literally overshadow the historic structure.

In fact, because it is on the west side, it would cast a shadow on it, certainly if it's a full story above.

And I do wonder about that.

Not only would it cast a shadow at a certain part of the day and certain days of the year on the historic

but it would create quite a shadow on all of the existing parcel.

I guess, so that's comment number one.

And I would refer to the massing and footprint guideline that David just read from.

It's D2 that says the new infill construction and residential sub-areas should relate in footprint and massing to the majority of surrounding historic buildings.

We all understand what's capable of being done under this high density,

District Zoning, but that doesn't mean that the BAR under our guidelines would approve that type of massing.

And I think that's the trick that the applicant, the magic that the applicant needs to make here.

For me, I would almost, if you're looking for a little bit more volume and if I could maybe

If I had my druthers, I would be less offended by some changes to the east facade in favor of a really nice treatment on the west facade side that adjoins the historic structure.

I would almost, like you've got some volume cutouts on the east side and

I would sacrifice those for a little bit of thoughtfulness and breaking up some of these, what I would call this, it's currently a cruise ship that's dry docked next to a 200 year old building, breaking up some of those long balconies and masses that are right next to this historic building.

I'd be less offended by what is done on the other side, frankly, if that helps the applicant at all.

I would just point out to the applicant finally that what needs to be done needs to be, as several people here have said, harmonious.

Our guidelines refer to harmony, not just with another historic property on the very same parcel, but also within the sub area and obviously on the street, which is such an important street with a lot of different things going on.

There's a lot of things that

this building could harmonize with.

I'm not sure right now whether it's harmonizing with anything.

So I think that's kind of the trick that needs to be played is it needs to just fit in a little bit better.

Mr. Schwartz referenced that it has a commercial look.

I hope that all of our comments have been helpful to you and not off-putting.

Let's just check.

Well, I'm looking at the area and there are a lot of ugly buildings there already.

I mean, the apartment infills that are already there are clearly inferior to the design that we have in front of us at the moment, frankly.

And perhaps, and I'm a little puzzled

by the notion of somehow turning, if I misunderstood you, Ms.

Lewis, what I thought they were trying to do with that particular facade is to in a certain way showcase the building to the residents of the new building.

No, just that they can, if they had to, for lack of a better word, exploit

any facade, it would be the east facade, which we're not going to see from this historic building.

This is the west facade right there.

I understand what you're saying, but it sounds to me like that it does ultimately end up being kind of a blank wall.

I know you didn't.

Yeah, but that's what I'm translating.

What I'm hearing is what you would have to end up achieving at some point.

They could also just not build it out to the maximum density that's allowed under the ordinance.

I completely understand.

But if you're looking at the aerial photo of that particular area, a huge amount of that space in the historic district has been devoted to cars and parking.

and I like the fact that they're trying to put the parking underneath the building.

I approve of that.

I think it's a great idea.

Again, I'm not offended by this apparently as many other members of the board are.

I think it's a much better effort than earlier iterations and I do like the fact that they have tried to break up the massing as they've done.

I do understand, I do wonder

since other people objected to it, if there's a way of making the staircases entirely internal to the building as opposed to the motel look as referred to by Schwartz here.

But those are some of my thoughts on that.

I was going to kind of respond to that in that the majority, at least to me, the majority of the

Residences on Wortland Street still are not necessarily single family, but the scale of a single family home.

The large building that's currently just to the east of the Wharton Baker House, which I guess according to their submission was built in 1965, I think.

I mean, that's sort of the most regrettable because it breaks the line, so to speak, and brings a large apartment out to Wortland Street.

if it weren't for that, you'd have a pretty continuous block and a half of residential scale houses.

And so to plop this cruise ship down right next to Wortenbacher House just doubles that line, doubles that thickness.

So again, I think we've talked about the

You know, Cheri spoke to literal shadowing.

I think it's just also figuratively overshadowing the historic structure.

I think pulling the setback off the street line could help it be successful.

Yeah.

Thank you to everyone, of course.

There's no hard feelings or anything like that about.

And we appreciate the guidance.

And I think we hear a lot about the harmonization.

I think those are great comments and things like that.

What I would hope that we could discuss and come to grips with are specifics on what's going to be appropriate from amassing.

Because right now, at this point, we've gotten kind of back and forth.

We did a three story amassing that got panned.

And then we did a four story amassing that was approved.

you know we came to you to try and understand the feasibility of moving the house and you know kind of much to our regret at this point is everybody's latched on to this idea that legally isn't feasible and just isn't really gonna isn't an option on the table and so we still took you know the pretty aggressive step of having 12-foot step backs on a four-story mass which seemed to be appropriate previous iterations and now we're hearing that maybe that fourth story wasn't ever actually appropriate

I would also just clarify that we are not max density of this at all.

We are at half density.

So the idea that we're going for kind of the full density.

And I think that the board has to grip and grapple with the idea that the zoning, the next zoning rewrite increases density in this area as well, as well as currently promotes up to five stories.

I think that there's a lot that is not being considered with the costs associated with this land and also the rehabilitation of this house.

150 year old houses need a lot of maintenance.

170 year old houses need a lot of maintenance.

And that I don't think has been yet adequately considered in terms of an economic consideration to development of this parcel.

And I think it's unfortunate that, you know,

This is where we're impaired and told to provide student housing.

I mean, this is a great location for it.

And we certainly want to balance the respect to that historic house while balancing the need for growth and density.

So to kind of circle back to that initial topic, if we could maybe get specific requirements on, from a massing perspective, what is going to meet the board's

needs.

And Jeff, Mr. Werner alluded to this in the pre-meeting and his discussions with Tim Moore.

If we could just maybe set some boundary lines.

Is it a 20-foot setback?

Is the fourth story 100% absolutely a no-go?

And I say these things just to let you know that this project may quickly become economically infeasible if we start to

I sympathize with that position, Kevin.

I also find it, I think it's going to be difficult to find specific consensus on exact volumes and massing guidance with board members coming with different points of view.

I think what we are tasked to do is review what's in front of us and apply our guidelines.

I think that you may find that there's a variety of opinions.

Some of us have expressed support for the thing as shown.

Others have concerns about it.

And I think it's fair to say this is significantly different than the volumes that we were shown previously.

Others might feel fine with a larger massing if the materiality were different I think that's one of my concerns is not just it's a combination of mass and material and Concern that this this building is not going to going to age well relative to this really primary facade of this historic home so

I don't know that we are set up to really give you that information in a concise way.

What I would suggest is that you look back at the notes from this meeting.

If you need to follow up with interim meetings with the members of the board, we can do that, I think.

I think we can probably get a general poll of what

You know, the first iteration had three stories, the second had four stories, but the four story version had the house move forward and therefore it helped hide the four stories.

It was very vertical as it was.

It has setbacks.

But I guess what I'm trying to parse out is, so massing as is with the house where it is is a no-go.

It won't pass.

It's just got two people supporting, four against.

the setback from the street.

I guess I have an issue with this sort of polling.

We have two newly appointed members.

One is abstaining tonight because he hasn't had a chance to review the materials, having just been appointed yesterday.

We have one who was supposed to attend, and then we've got another third member that is still on our roster that is not here.

So I wouldn't want the applicants to hear, only two people favor this and only three favor this.

We've got three people that are not participating, and if you come back next month, it could be different.

I'm reticent to do that.

The two that favor the massing could not be here.

the month that they come back.

So I think it might be helpful for them, but I'm afraid of us being held to straw polls.

And then they come back and say, well, most of you liked this and the rest of you didn't like this, and we moved in this direction and responded to what we thought of at the poll that night.

And I think it was a preliminary discussion.

We've had a discussion.

Could I add just one more comment to follow up on Brex?

You talked about massing and a few other things.

I think for me the biggest issue, other than the detailing, I think that you've rightly pointed out, Carl, I think the biggest thing for me is scale.

And I think that from a

from a footprint standpoint, this kind of has to be, in a way, the way we're looking at it.

But I do feel like there are clever ways through design and manipulating the scale that breaks, in a sense, visually breaks that massing down.

And I think the complexity here is three part, though.

It's not only

creating a great design, but it's addressing the historic building, and then it's also addressing a historic building that's way back, like a telescoping distance back from the street.

But I think, and when I look at the east elevation, I'm encouraged, as opposed to the west.

Like in the west elevation, I feel like

The scale is of the one big building.

The two side elements are kind of so minor that the thing just feels is one big thing, whereas on the east side, you're looking at sort of an A, B, C breakdown.

Understood.

Thank you for that.

Right.

All in favor?

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

I will say I think that project is a prelude to a lot that's you know coming in the city and even in the entrance corridors we're dealing with that I think I don't know how council voted last night on

Carl, you got a lot of fun with big new apartment buildings this year.

So the next project up

is a COA request.

There is a formal application, but this is a preliminary discussion for a new residence on the vacant parcel at 0 Third Street Northeast.

And I'm sure at some point in time,

Molly will assign an address to it, but right now all I have is 0 3rd Street This is in the North Town Town ABC district There's no record of anything ever being on this site.

I haven't been able to locate anything historic maps or aerial photos I think it used to be Hedge Street, but the city never built Hedge Street the

As said, the applicants here tonight, this is a preliminary discussion and the goal tonight is to discuss, as presented conceptually, I know the neighbors have raised some issues and corresponded with you all and me, and also to, you know, any questions about materiality, what sort of details and in what form you would like to see things presented

as we move forward.

So I know we're running short tonight, so let me find the thing on my screen and we'll dive right in.

Candy, do you wanna?

You can tell me which images you want.

I think if you can pull up

Your sheet number 13, that's sort of relevant.

It's actually a photograph.

Sorry, I have too many.

Yeah, that's good, and then maybe the elevation later.

Okay, thank you.

My name is Candice Smith.

I'm an architect in Charlottesville, helping a client with a new home on this sort of, it's a lot that's been vacant for a long time.

It's an infill for the city, an opportunity for additional housing and even maybe an additional ADU.

We haven't, you know, we're working toward out a lot of the details.

And we do have questions for you.

We have coordinated with zoning on requirements for

Setbacks, heights and widths, you know, are trying to respond to not only the, well, certainly the architectural design guidelines, but the thing that you should sort of know about this site, if you haven't walked it, is that, I'm guessing that it was a borrow site, that the soil that was there was dug out and pushed down the hill for the house that's, you know, was built at least in the 20s down, I'm calling that the downhill neighbor on the right that you can't quite see in this picture, and then the uphill neighbor on the left.

So you'll hear me using those two terminologies quite a bit.

But the site is challenging because about a quarter of the property is easements and driveway.

So we are left with three quarters of the property to build the house on.

It slopes approximately 12 feet from the road up.

to the back left corner.

It slopes downhill across the front of the property about seven and a half to eight feet.

And we're trying to find a level way to bring up a finished floor height.

And it actually maximally slopes from the back left corner to the front right corner almost 18 feet.

So there are some issues with grading that we really have been trying to work with.

This picture I think is relevant because it shows the downhill slope and the property on the left has its home set up on the property and set at the back property line and it has its finished floor elevated above that level.

We're proposing something similar where we want our walkout.

We want to be able to walk out of the first floor at some closer to grade if we can.

So we've elevated the first floor to be closer to the back property line.

Although we're thinking we may have to even put a little retaining wall and drop that down a couple feet so we don't have as much height in the house going on.

But this house on the left, it's first floor.

will be at our, probably close to our second floor height.

because it's higher than us and its first floor is higher.

So its second floor, I'm sorry, its first floor will be at our second floor height.

We haven't shot the grades of the downhill neighbor, but our first floor height will be at the next house's down second floor level.

So there's sort of a continuity of the finished floors basically stepping down almost a whole story as the hill, as you drive down the driveway, as you drive down Third Street that transitions to Park Plaza.

So that I think helps you understand a little bit of the grades that we're having to deal with.

I do think that we've been trying to work with setbacks because we are, there's going to be this driveway on the left that's mandated and the property on the right has a porch that runs along the left side and we have been working very hard to try to make sure they have enough daylight so the structure on the ground level allows for a driveway, a small ten foot driveway at the front to go into a courtyard

and it's a courtyard that allows you to turn tight left and get into a garage or go forward into a little one-car small garage.

That face of that garage on the right, the front of the house is at 21 feet from setback which is by zoning with a 10-foot porch allowed to project into that space.

The garage that you see that's set back is almost 60 feet back from the road.

So it's at a pretty considerable distance Likewise the house on the right We have garage doors if you can go to the next side elevation Jeff one more

One more, sorry.

This one.

There are garage doors, well a single garage door, but it's recessed eight feet back from a double-story porch.

So we've tried to downplay any of those sort of ground level pieces and we've added porches both on this side, the north side, and on the south side to try to provide as much active life and openness to the structure as possible.

And from this elevation you can also see the

Right side of the main house has the lower ground level and then the first floor level and it stopped at that point so that we don't just bring that full story of the house out to this edge to try to give a little bit more distance from the downhill neighbor.

Let's see.

The footprint of the house, including the porches, is around 1900 square feet.

The neighbors uphill and downhill, based on the GIS square footage, a real quick take-off, is 1830, so we're about 1900 square foot, including porches.

Without the porches, we're at 1600 square feet, so we're at or

very equal to or very very comparable to the footprints of the neighbors on the uphill side and the downhill side and let's see I had one more point

talked about those garage doors trying to be as far set back and hidden actually as possible.

And then we do know that we have a tight site so any place where we have to have, for example, a retaining wall, as in this instance, we will drop

the ground floor lower if we need to for grades but right now it's coming in off the street at a reasonable height and it's elevated above the downhill neighbor's property line.

So we will need a little bit of a retaining wall there with

We're very open to, I mean this is something the owner's been talking about a lot, is that if there are any of these tall walls that need plantings or, you know, we can have a landscape plan provided, but we can certainly along that

elevation where the garage doors are recessed eight feet deeper than the porches.

We can certainly plant or get greener along this wall and obviously there's a structure that's allowed in the rear of the property that will be used and it will be planted on certainly on the south side and we're looking at actually the grades are crazy.

It drops like

six or eight feet right at that corner.

And we may actually try to put a little, uh, occupiable space underneath there.

So it isn't just a giant amount of backfill.

So there'll be some windows and things on that rear structure accessory unit.

Thank you.

So this is a preliminary discussion.

So we will have a brief period for questions.

And then for anyone that would like to comment on this from the public, we'll also have a comment period.

I have a quick question.

No, that's the footprint of the house.

I see.

The finished square footage is different and I do have that information right here.

I'm not sure it's relevant either.

Yeah, so I'm comparing the footprint of this house to the adjacent properties.

But I did bring up finished square footage.

I said without the porches it was only about 1,600 square feet.

Actually, if the narrative was sent out before I'd edit it, it said south, but let me get you oriented.

On this road, on this plan, third street is to your left and Park Plaza continues to your right across the bottom of the drawing.

The right side is pointing north, and the driveway and the uphill neighbor are on the south.

So we will have a little bit of a retaining wall to hold up that courtyard near that neighbor.

And that's where my question is going is, well, I guess

Right, so we don't want to have the first main living floor embedded and below grade.

So if we look at, Jeff I'm sorry, do you mind pulling up the elevation that does look at the Head Street driveway easement side?

Elevation, I'm sorry.

to the north.

But I keep going up the driveway, so one more.

The one that I first, yeah, this one is good.

So you can see that there's, the green line is actually pretty much the slope of the existing road that we have to maintain.

And it actually climbs a little bit more, but you can see a little kind of retaining wall on the left that we're trying to recess the house to not make it as tall.

But we don't want to embed

the first floor.

Just like the uphill neighbor, he walks out a couple feet above the top of his hill, we're trying to at least get to that level.

Yeah, I figured I guess that was a leading question maybe a little bit.

Okay, but it is, I guess that, I understand the perimeters now.

I'm looking at the house to the right.

Where did the windows, I don't know if we can go to the plan, but I'm just curious where the windows remain.

So the double porch has French doors and windows on both floors.

And there's some windows on that one story, well, one story over ground floor that you see just a roof plan there.

Are you talking about on the right?

I think it's a different plan.

Let's see.

Maybe go down to the other.

The ground floor?

Yeah, the ground floor.

There we go.

Yeah, I'm just wondering where... The side plan?

So the two-thirds of that house on the downhill side on the right, that's part of a wraparound porch.

So two-thirds of that is up against our courtyard and we don't have our building.

Our building is about...

35 feet away.

Let me see, the garage doors are 31 feet away and the property, the two story porches are 22 and a half or 23 feet from that neighbor's house even though we're allowed to have a five foot setback.

We're trying to get as far away from that house as possible and that's why the back right corner of the house is one story.

And along the right-hand side, is that a brick wall up a certain height that defines it?

I think the best thing would be to bring it up to catch the courtyard and then have a wrought iron railing that we can grow things on that would allow for some porosity.

Although, I'll be honest, between where the current property is in that house, there's a privet

Dents Privet Fence, which is at the front and our property line actually bifurcates that.

And that whole side of the house, if you go to picture sheet, I think it's either 10 or 12.

It's the one that sort of steps back.

It's a photograph looking at the site.

There.

That is the view of the right house and you can't even see it because of its landscaping.

It's pretty dense in there.

Thank you.

Yes, and that's why there's stairs up to a front door and a front porch.

Any other questions?

Okay.

We know that there was a lot of correspondence.

We received a lot of correspondence about this project and that was taken in and absorbed, but we certainly invite members of the public that like to comment on this project.

You'll have three minutes to comment and then we'll have discussion amongst the board.

Thank you.

If you could state your name and address and speak clearly into the microphone.

OK.

My name is Roxanne White.

My husband, David, who is also here, and I live at 505 Park Plaza.

First of all, we appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this analysis.

And we also appreciate the interactions that we've had with Mr. Lorry so far.

He's been very cordial and we also welcome him as a neighbor.

Also accept the fact that a house is going to be built next door.

I think also that we appreciate that the architect, as what she has just said, seemingly has tried to reduce the impact of having a straight three-story wall on our southern exposure by incorporating that courtyard design, which does allow light and air to come into that courtyard space on our property line.

So we think the courtyard concept would be lovely if it was open to some livable space with some windows and doors that could be used as other livable space.

But right now it doesn't feel very lovely or very acceptable.

because it is really planned as what we see as a driveway or a parking lot.

The courtyard functions as a driveway or heavily parking space, and as it's designed, it is actually right on our property line.

I mean, it is on the property line, so it is immediately adjacent to that covered porch that we have, which is used very heavily throughout the year.

It's like an additional room.

So it proposes no buffer to our outside living space from either the noise or the pollution of a driveway or a parking lot.

So a minimum requirement that we would ask for would be some type of a heavy landscape buffer with actually specific details as to the spacing and the type and also the size of the plantings.

To us it seems unnecessary to have parking spaces for four cars on the site unless these are plans for this house to be used as an Airbnb or to house multiple families.

Our neighborhood allows two street parking spaces per family and two guest passes.

So actually there is also street parking available.

So that is what the rest of our neighborhood does.

So if more on-site parking would be a critical need, just an idea that the garage that's on that current side of the driveway could be expanded to house maybe two vehicles rather than use all that level space for cars.

Having a full level for cars and storage forces this house to be a full three stories, which again does not fit in with the neighborhood.

Okay, gosh, I timed this at home and it was exactly three minutes.

So, anyway, I did want to just say that Mary McKinley, who was here before, is our neighbor across the street at 510 Park Plaza, and I think she also submitted comments for you, but had to leave.

My name is Sarah Johnson.

For the past six years, I've been the owner occupant of 500 Park Plaza, which is the home that is directly across the street from the subject property.

It's on the corner of Hedge and Park Plaza.

I previously submitted written comments

and a letter from architect Andy Orban, who's been assisting me in evaluating the proposed house.

I ask that this material be included in any record of this meeting.

I will just cover two or three key points in my oral presentation tonight.

Overall, I believe the design submitted is fundamentally in conflict with the scale and character of the historic district properties and the homes on Hedge and Park Plaza.

that are outside of the boundaries but in close proximity to 0 Third Street Northeast.

The owner proposes a large structure for a small upward sloping lot.

For Third Street, people will see one or more garage doors and steps leading up to the second floor living quarters.

If there are windows on the ground floor, I didn't see them.

I believe I heard tonight from the architect that there is one.

I don't see any meaningful relationship of the structure to the street.

I don't see the proposed design as harmonious with the neighborhood context.

The rest of my comments focus on two design modifications for which your consideration is requested.

Number one, a deeper front setback.

Number two, the elimination of one of the two proposed driveways.

specifically the one through the front on 3rd Street.

The 21 foot front setback for the proposed residence with 10 feet setback for the porch is inadequate.

The staff method should be reconsidered in so far as it is based in large part on dissimilar lots that is level lots and downhill sloping lots

I am requesting the comparison of apples to apples.

If you combine, if you take the seven historic district properties listed in the appendix that have a similar upward sloping lot and you average those setbacks, the result is a 43 foot setback.

What's important here

are not just the numbers but the street relationship.

That is what we are trying to solve for.

What is the street relationship of this structure?

And we receive insight by looking to similar lots.

On driveways, I request, as noted, the elimination of the third street front.

And finally, in conclusion, I request more information from the applicant.

The city code calls for the submission of a 3D model.

including all buildings to be constructed on this site.

I respectfully request that Barr direct the owner to submit this exhibit, which will help the neighbors understand what the owner is proposing, the impact of massing and how it will affect their living environment.

Thank you very much.

I see Mary.

Ms.

McKinley is OK.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you.

My name is Mary McKinley.

I've lived at 510 Park Plaza for forty five years.

I'm a retired professor from the University of Virginia, and I welcome the possibility of having a residence, especially an architect designed residence, put up on that vacant lot that's been there as long as I've lived here.

But I really feel that this house is much too large for the lot and for the surrounding houses.

It will really dwarf

the house that Roxanne and David live in.

And I realize that that lot is challenging to build on.

But I think calling it a two and a half story house, if you would look as you have this evening at the elevation that I would see from across Park Plaza, it's really a three and a half story house.

and no other house in this neighborhood.

The material that accompanied the drawing referred to several homes in the larger neighborhood, but none of them are within view of this immediate neighborhood.

All of the other houses are much smaller and on larger lots.

And no house that I can think of in the north downtown area

has three garages, the one under the house, the one at the end of the so-called courtyard, and then the one up the alley and behind the house.

As Roxanne said, there's parking available on the street.

Some people, most people who do have garages in this neighborhood have a one-car garage.

So I'd like to know what the owner has in mind by including space for

really three garage spaces on that site.

So I'm sorry I had to leave, but I'm glad I was able to join you on Zoom.

Thank you very much.

Do we have any comments from the board?

Go for it.

So I drove over to this site before the meeting this afternoon, and I would like to echo a lot of what the neighbors have said, both here and on Zoom and in their written correspondence.

I think it's sort of why I asked the question about what they consider the front of the house.

I feel like if the front of the house is fronting onto Third Street,

Looking at the neighboring structures and houses, the first floor is pretty much at grade along Park Plaza and Third Street.

I think the map that's submitted in the application, they're using properties that, for comparison,

whereas a couple are sort of adjacent, the majority of them are over on Second Street, which is over the top of the hill and behind this site, and really don't, I feel don't have a good relationship to the site.

I would encourage the applicant and architect to look really more towards the houses on Park Plaza, that street, for inspiration.

The house at 505, which is right next door, the front door is at street level.

and I think that the argument that they want to be able to walk out onto the private driveway that could kind of be where Head Street may have used to or should have gone over the hill is still achievable.

It would just be from the second floor if you were to sink this house down.

I think that would bring it into scale with the rest of the neighborhood quite nicely.

I will say there are some houses that I noticed that have sort of large steps going up to the front doors in this area, but those are actually higher up on the top of hills on the other side of the street, and so I think that's just related to the topography.

So those are my general comments.

I think that pretty much

addresses the garage concern.

You know, I think it does seem like three garages is excessive.

I don't know if that's under our purview or not.

Thank you.

Like several of us, I also live in this neighborhood and I'd just like to address the garages and I want to tell a story that maybe some people here might remember and maybe it's good history for some of us.

But there was at one point a three, actually four garage structure planned for Second Street.

that's near Mr. Bailey's house.

And I represent the neighbors who opposed that.

There was also going to be a dog run.

And it had a little bit of the programming that was similar to this.

I believe there was supposed to be a ground floor, garages, and then the house.

And that was a very different, deep lot, very large lot.

It had other conditions.

It was, it's terraced.

But the neighbors were able to convince the BAR that

for which I you know we would concede as excessive but and then I think they might have proffered it down to three at one point or two was excessive because you don't want to look at garage doors right at street level only a few feet step back and so the BAR actually ended up approving

ended up disapproving the application and agreeing with the neighbors.

It was appealed to council and council agreed with the neighbors and again denied the certificate of appropriateness and the house was never built and the lot sits there to this day.

I appreciated the pictures that staff gave us about garage conditions throughout the neighborhood.

A lot of those are really super modest and have some historic aspects.

They could well be sheds currently, really.

They may not even garage automobiles.

I'm not sure some of our SUVs could fit in them any longer.

But it was good to sort of have a good inventory that staff provided.

But my comment is that

most of us in this neighborhood actually park on the street.

And I just don't know why anybody would need that many garages.

It's just not the style of north downtown.

And in fact, sort of pooling into a suburban style garage where you don't have to look at your neighbors when you emerge from your car, don't have to greet the person who's walking down the street with their dog or their child is

anathema to what downtown life is like.

Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm really bothered by the approach of two garages from two separate streets for this project.

I'm going to jump in there because I 100% agree and I also live nearby and have walked by this site thousands of times and I'm so excited that something is going to happen there.

I know it's a difficult site and I think

the architect and the applicant have done a lot of really nifty things to try and be responsive to this.

It is a boundary, kind of a transitional lot topographically, stylistically.

It is not an easy task, that's for certain, but one of the

things I think that one of the joys of living in North downtown and this house in particular is that it's this is an incredibly walkable neighborhood it's one of the one of the more walkable places than probably 98% of the United States and to have a house that is is grounded by parking areas I do appreciate that it that there is a steep slope on the backside but there's

I would think, looking at it again today, it seems like there's really good solar access to both the east and to the north and that there could be a lot done even with parking at the rear and a second story access.

It seems like it's possible.

I appreciate a lot of the concerns from the neighbors.

Some of them I agree with, some of them I don't agree with.

I think actually the height is

Not my biggest concern.

I think that it is stepping down the hill and there are a number of houses that sit very high on the lot due to the topography.

I don't think it would feel as planned that out of scale.

I think actually in this case the polling, the narrow front setback would probably be a good thing to encouraging parking at the rear rather than in a courtyard at the street level.

So I think there's a few things that might be a little bit of push and pull.

But the combination of the tall elevation of the ground floor and the slope essentially leads to about a 16 foot piano novele that's parking.

If I may join in, to finish up the story that Ms.

Lewis was telling, my wife and I live at 572nd Street Northeast.

And part of the reason I sought to join the BAR was because I came to that meeting where the Freed Home was being discussed, going to be built two blocks,

Lots further up from us.

Interesting thing about that terrace lot is that people forget is that that lot used to be nothing but parking.

Every building, they had these old buildings there that were garages.

And now people are going, well, we don't want new garages there.

And I found that a little odd.

And I actually came to the BAR meeting, basically my wife and I did, to say that we liked the design.

We lost.

But one of the things that came out of that meeting was when it was being defeated, one of the members of the BAR, our house was pointed out as being only two lots away.

And one of the members of the BAR said, and you know, if I'd been in the BAR, that house would never have been built.

We love our house.

It's lovely.

And I think it fits in the neighborhood very well.

I will also point out our parking is directly in front of our house on gravel.

We don't have a garage.

You can look at our cars.

I don't know if people like that or not, but that was the design that we have.

Also, our porch is not accessible to anyone unless you go into the house.

On the other hand, we've been known to sit up there during the pandemic, have cocktails, and wave at our neighbors as they walk their dogs.

It's a fairly friendly neighborhood.

I am a little concerned about why all the parking, why all the garage but I'd like to see another design and you know frankly my preferences would be something perhaps a little more modern.

Okay, I'll jump in.

So, what a great precedent in my mind.

The fact that the neighborhood really doesn't have garages.

That's a wonderful precedent to have.

My neighborhood's the same way over in Fry Springs.

There's a house there that has a large garage off to the side, forefront of the house, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

So go with that.

I think that's a great observation that didn't even occur to me.

Taking the next step, if the garages were not there or they were significantly diminished, I think the pros you find are obviously less cost.

in a lower structure.

And in the current design towards the east elevation, I find the stair a little intimidating.

So that would certainly help that situation as well as relate the front porch to the rest of the street, which is always a good thing to have that connection.

I will say that in the design I think the side courtyard has a lot of potential.

The massing of how it sits on the site I think is very good.

I appreciated the neighbors' comment.

about envisioning a potential garden there.

I think that's a wonderful opportunity, not only for the people that are gonna be in this house, but for the gracious neighbors next door.

Obviously, you're gonna have a lot to deal with while this is under construction, but at the end of the day, seeing the value in that is really encouraging.

and I love that idea of walking down the street and having this sort of wonderful little pocket garden in between the two houses.

I didn't know, I don't know anything about it.

Yeah, this lot was a community garden for a long time.

Yeah, so that's a great, another great precedent.

The one thing I would say, I don't know if the height is, I don't know where the height is.

And so this is, you know, a commercial request usually.

It's a little weird and residential, but I think it's necessary here.

that elevations moving forward need to have the two houses on either side so that we can understand the relationship with the design to its surroundings.

I think that's just important from a streetscape.

I think that's the sort of proper thing and considerate thing to do for the neighbors as well to understand where the heights of the overall massing is coming in, where the windows are.

I'd even be

interested in seeing what I was questioning before where the sight lines are out in plan from the houses just to, again, an additional level of consideration so that we're not looking at something that we could potentially, well, we might rather look at something else.

So those are the thoughts I have.

I think a lot of important points have been said tonight.

I think in North Downtown, not on this street, but in North Downtown there are precedents for basement stories.

First Street has a number of them.

I think we recently approved modification to one of those, moving a door for a window or something.

There's a precedent for basement stories in the neighborhood.

Admittedly, it's not on the street, but there is a precedent for that.