Board of Architectural Review Meeting   5/18/2021

Gotcha.

So it is 5.30, and as people start to trickle in, I will go ahead and give my introduction.

Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to the May 2021 Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review virtual meeting.

We should now be live on channel 10, and we're continuing to stream on the city's social media channels.

My name is Robert Watkins.

I'm city staff, and I will be moderating tonight's meeting, at least on the virtual side of things.

Before I hand things over to Carl Schwartz, our chair, I'm going to go over a few guidelines and housekeeping tips to make sure that tonight's meeting runs smoothly for everybody participating.

So first, for everybody who might be watching from home, I will introduce the meeting participants who are online right now.

First, we have Carl Schwartz, our chair.

We're also joined by Brett Gastinger, the vice chair.

Other BAR members include Tim Moore, Cheri Lewis, James Zehmer, Andy McClure, and Robert Edwards.

Members Ron Bailey and Jody Lehendro aren't able to join us this evening.

And we're also joined by Jeff Werner, who is my colleague in city staff.

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

For members of the public who are on the call right now who'd like to provide comments, we ask that you register for the meeting through the city calendar, which is on the city website, and then you can join through Zoom or you can call in.

There are a couple of different public comments portions of the meeting, which our chair will clarify.

But when it comes to that point you wish to provide comment, you can raise your hand using the raise hand feature, or if you're calling in, you can press star nine.

For applicants who are online already, you are currently in the meeting as an attendee, which means that you have limited audio and video capabilities.

When your project comes up on the agenda for review, I will promote you to panelist so that you'll have mute and unmute capabilities and we can see you.

When I promote you from attendee to panelist, you'll be booted out of the meeting temporarily and you'll come back automatically as a panelist.

So just hang tight for that.

Also to applicants during the staff and applicant presentations for each project, I will be sharing my own screen to scan through pages of your application that you submitted for visual aid for the board.

While the BAR deliberates, I'm happy to share my screen again to reference specific pages or drawings and just give me a page number when you want me to go to an illustration or drawing.

Also, like we've done in the past, we will have short periodic breaks as needed, and our chair will direct us to when those are necessary.

With that, it is time for me to hand things over to our chair, Carl Schwartz, but please let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime.

Thanks, Robert.

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

Staff will introduce each item followed by the applicant's presentation, which should not exceed 10 minutes.

I will then ask for questions from the public, followed by questions from the BAR.

After questions are closed, I'll ask for comments from the public.

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

Speakers shall identify themselves and provide their address.

Comments should be limited to the BARS purview that is regarding only the exterior aspects of the project.

Following the BARS discussion and prior to taking action, the applicant will have up to three minutes to respond.

Thank you for participating.

So now we have matters from the public not on the agenda.

And I just want to make clear that there is going to be a moment or a time at the end of the agenda to speak about the statues, if that's what you wish to talk about.

So please reserve your comments until after we've gotten through.

We only have one item on the agenda before the statues.

So if you could just please wait until after that is done, we will have an opportunity for the public to speak.

So if you'd like to provide a comment right now, please raise your hand by pressing star nine if you're calling in or using the raise hand feature in the participant tab.

Great.

All right.

So like I said, the consent agenda consists of our meeting minutes from January 20th, 503 Rugby Road and 167 Chancellor Street.

Thank you.

I will call a vote.

Mr. Gassinger.

Aye.

Mr. Edwards.

Aye.

Thank you.

Ms.

Mr. Schwartz.

Yes.

Mr. Zehmer.

Aye.

Mr. McClure.

Yes.

All right.

Unmute.

All right, everyone.

This is, let me get to the top of this, sorry.

This is a COA request for a three-story apartment building at 605 Preston Place.

This property is within the Rugby Road, University Circle, Venable neighborhood, ADC district.

It also is an IPP.

The city designated as an IPP several years prior to establishing the district.

This property is what remains of Windhurst, or not, I guess, the house to the north of it, but this is the house there known as Windhurst.

It was the manor house of a 100 acre farm that is now the Preston Heights section of the city.

The typical two story, three bay, double pile, white, weatherboard class house with Greek revival details.

It is situated sideways on the,

on the remaining parcel facing south, basically facing the back of the brick apartment buildings there on Grady Avenue.

So again, this is a COA request for a construction of the apartment building, including parking, landscaping, and site improvements.

I've summarized in the staff report the materials, some of the details, the lighting, color palette, landscaping.

I know that when the parking lot was discussed, there were questions about the landscaping.

There are two large cedars on the west side that will be retained.

Construction will remove six trees, 36-inch oak, three eight-inch dogwood, a maple,

one described simply as tree.

There will be, the new planning includes 15 trees, black gum, check bark hick tree, and white fringe tree.

I've addressed the landscaping for a review of the tree city's master tree list.

White fringe tree is not identified a list, however it is identified

In fact, the Virginia Native Plant Society named it the wild flower of the year in 1997.

Mr. Gastinger can maybe shed some light on that.

The parking below grade access will be off of Preston Place on the west side.

There will be a couple parking spaces still on the surface there.

The some questions that have been raised about the historic designation so that we're all clear.

And Windhurst, that being the house and the property is listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and on the National Register Historic Places, both as an individual site and and also as a contributing structure to the Rugby Road University Corner Historic District.

And that's the historic district on the state and federal listing.

being a contributing structure on the state and national register doesn't carry, it carries no less importance than being individually listed.

So to be clear, so the term for when contributing structures are used in the national and state register, it's to express that a district is important due to the sum of its contributing parts.

However, when terms being individually listed,

on the state and national register certainly expresses the importance of the resource in and of itself.

But the thing that matters relative to the BAR's purview and oversight is that local designation.

And back in September last year, you all held a preliminary discussion, include the notes in the staff report if you want to refer to them.

Some of them are a bit informal, but

Still, in general, the applicant walked away.

The primary question was, is this thing

is it worth bringing back to the VAR or is it dead on arrival?

And the response was that you all would consider it.

So you didn't say you approve or anything, you would consider it further.

As I mentioned, I've spent a lot of time looking at this relative to the design guidelines.

simply different circumstances from what was presented in the parking lot.

One of the things that will be raised certainly is the encroachment of this structure onto the historic house.

We can, you all have guidelines that begin to address that, but to be clear when it comes to new structures, the guidelines are fairly clear about allowing

allowing things that are complementary but of a more contemporary design.

Then as far as on the street side or the side setbacks, the guidelines talk about what a general range and so looking at this, the front setback is relatively consistent with this side of the street.

almost identical to the setback that Windhurst on the other side is set back from Preston Place.

So, this isn't up on the road.

And it's certainly, there are other properties in Preston Place that are set further back but

You all can see in the staff report, I felt like it generally fits relative to that.

Same with spacing, the massing and the footprint.

I think that the numbers in this would be the square footage of the footprint itself.

It seems to relate to the majority of the surrounding structures there.

Height and width, certainly this is a taller structure.

The guidelines say that the height and width should be within a maximum of 200% of the prevailing width.

So most of the things there are one and a half, two stories, certainly the four story apartments, but 200% of two stories is four stories.

So at three, this is within that height.

The width is within the guidelines.

Materials and design, you know, it's brick consistent.

I think it's got a, you know, again, a contemporary design, but the shutters kind of bring something that reflects what you see with the other houses around the court there.

Brick and stucco.

Wood features.

The color palette I think is somewhat subdued, if you will.

You know, it's not a bright white stucco or bright white siding.

So I think it fits a little bit better than something that jumps out.

We've talked about the landscaping.

Lighting levels.

Everything seems to fall within at least what was presented.

They have

Lamping that's available within our guidelines, but I think that we all should make clear in any motion that the lamping will comply, and that would be the dimmable color temperature not to exceed 3000 K, color rendering not less than 80, preferably less than 90.

I also, because in the parking lot discussion that was referenced back to the Secretary of Standards for treatment of historic properties, I've included that in here relative to designing new onsite features.

And so you can refer to those directly.

does say designing new exterior additions to historic buildings or adjacent new construction that are, this is what is recommended, that they should be compatible with historic character of site and preserve the historic relationship between the building or buildings and the landscape.

I think we all can acknowledge the historic landscape of Windhurst is somewhat

It's been eliminated except for the site where what's left and to what extent that how you interpret that and that site in the context of these guidelines, that's for your discussion.

The staff does recommend it if approval is considered.

I will say I think there are still some things that need to be answered.

There's some questions.

I think the folks in the neighborhood are going to ask some questions.

So this may not be heading for approval tonight, but certainly wanted to say that staff would recommend it.

Again, the comment about the lamping.

we always look for an opportunity with new projects to underground the electrical service.

So that could be pursued.

And also there are some existing stone walls.

Now they may be within the public right of way, but I think we need to clarify that the curb at the stone curbs, any remnants of stone walls, regardless of being the public right of way,

At the apartments just south of this, we had a lot of damage to the curbs and so the BAR should address that and require documentation prior to any construction and that if anything's damaged, that it's repaired or reconstructed in order to get the final inspection.

I wanted to say that no site plan has been submitted for this.

One will be required

So you all know that when a site planning goes through, often there's issues, utilities, et cetera, et cetera, causes something to move or change or be modified.

So again, in consideration of COA, please understand that there might be subsequent revisions or modifications to what was reviewed.

And I think you all should make clear that that could very well require a new application for you all to review.

And then finally,

I'm looking at this somewhat similar to the quartz project over at Levy Building.

This site, at least according to the available maps, appears to be undisturbed, at least, you know, since 1920.

And in the city's comp plan, we do recommend that during land disturbing activities,

that developers are encouraged to undertake archeological investigations.

It's, and also the secretary standards, which referenced in the guidelines, they also recommended archeological resources be protected.

So phase one,

I don't know how archeological level survey made it through spell check with a K, but my apologies there.

But some discussion might be had recommending a phase one archeological survey of the site.

And with that, I ask if there's any questions.

I know the applicants are here to make their presentation.

So any questions for me?

Sorry, a lot going on there.

Okay, great.

Thanks, Robert.

Hi, my name's Kevin Riddle.

I'm representing the owner of this project, and I have John Matthews here with me, so if you're here, pipe in.

Don't be alarmed.

I can go through the packet pretty quickly.

Jeff's summary was great.

Thanks, Jeff.

It's a proposal for a small apartment building, three stories.

We did bring this to you informally back in September of 2020.

And it's evolved quite a bit since then.

The significant changes would involve the parking.

Originally we had proposed a lane that would cross from west to east connecting Preston Place along the southern boundary.

and we had parking that was partly under the building, the south side of the building.

We had changed course and now the parking is located under the building and it's accessed from a single drive at the northwest portion of the property.

So Robert, if we look at the site plan, if we could just advance to that, we can talk about

And even, actually maybe if we go to the plan at the parking level, that's I think two pages down from this one.

There we go.

So you can see where cars can enter the site from Preston Place and then park most of them under the building.

There are three spaces that are out at the end of the drive.

So the parking is mostly concealed from view.

Now you go back to the site plan, Robert, two pages previous.

The outline of the building, the footprint, and the massing,

been refined and involved rather significantly since our last meeting.

It's a building that's stepped back its northern wing from the southern wing and there's a large stair that accesses the apartments in a deep recess.

And so from the front

from Preston Place, looking from the west toward the building, what you see appears to be kind of two volumes, more so than a single building.

As Jeff mentioned, there are quite a number of shallow balconies and

Since we first brought the project in September, we have had a number of meetings on site.

We've met with the neighbors, I believe, on at least four occasions.

So we've had this out there and we've been discussing our process with everybody who lives nearby as much as we can.

And we've listened to the neighbors.

We certainly haven't accommodated.

All of their concerns with the changes here, but we tried to address what we can while still keeping the project viable.

Some other things to mention.

The two most prominent trees on the site are these Diodora cedars that are at the southwest and we plan to keep those trees and do our utmost during construction to preserve them.

Trash cans will be located underneath the building.

except on trash day, so that'll be out of the way.

There's a couple of transformers that currently are located out pretty close to Preston Place and those would be relocated further in and largely concealed by the landscaping.

The site immediately adjacent to Windhurst, we don't plan on

I'm doing very much there.

There are some plantings proposed, but by and large, the intent here is to leave it largely as it was for decades, you know, since the 1920s up until recent construction.

So there is a rather short lawn in front of it.

We do show a modest path of stones that would lead around Windhurst and back to a couple of parking spaces

that are there at the northeast off of Preston Place.

And then as Jeff mentioned, the materials in the proposed new building, we believe them to be compatible with what's elsewhere in the neighborhood.

And I think the illustrations largely speak for themselves, so I'll leave it there and we look forward to your comments.

All right, thank you, Kevin.

So first, we're going to go, are there any questions from the public?

Please raise your hand or press star 9.

I see a comment from Paul Wright.

So I will go ahead and allow him to talk.

And Paul, please give your address when you

Sure.

My name is Paul Wright.

I live at 612 Preston Place.

And I'd just like to comment a bit about the balconies.

It was said that many of our concerns were addressed.

And I personally don't know how that was done in the drawings that I've seen.

And I'd like them to address how our concerns about the balconies were addressed.

Any other questions?

Nope.

All right.

I would just say that if I said explicitly that many of the concerns were addressed, I guess I didn't mean to phrase it that way.

Carl,

I don't know what point you want to review the letter that was sent.

When we get the comments.

But yeah, I'll read that out.

Thank you for reminding me.

I've got a question.

We do have an arborist report and we can pass that along.

I've got a couple of questions if no one else wants to jump in.

The driveway, I'm guessing that's about 24, 25 feet wide.

Yeah, that's a good question, Carl.

When I look at the zoning, when you have a two-way

travel on a driveway that doesn't have parking on either side, it appears the city expects 24 feet, but if we could reduce that down to 20 feet, you know, like you might have for a drive aisle with parking on either side, you know, I think that would be great and it would be

with this being a rather small lot anyway.

I think narrowing that down and having less asphalt would be good.

Okay.

I think there is language that says the BAR can recommend a narrower curb cut.

But yes, if you guys could investigate that, that would be great because obviously you have to go through your site plan process.

Yes, it is.

And we haven't had an opportunity yet to explore just how much from, say, a street level you would be able to see those.

Obviously, there's going to be portions of those enclosures that would not be visible from the street.

And so a brick cladding there wouldn't be necessary.

However, there are enough places, like if you look at page 17, our view from the southeast, there are places where the parapets are going to be

turning and I believe visible.

And so it would seem to us that continuing to use the same brick cladding in those locations would be pretty important to preserve this appearance.

The wood soffits and the wood underneath the balconies.

Yeah, the little section detail there, perhaps it divulges a little too much with the construction approach.

It's a little bit of a placeholder, honestly.

I think

In fact, we don't really want water to be dripping through or spilled drinks coming through from one balcony down to another.

And so our intention actually is to have that balcony floor to be covered.

I don't think it's going to be spaced.

I think we're going to slope that slightly to drain water away from the balcony and not to encourage it to get into the cavity space.

And so I think architecturally,

I think that does.

The intention is you're not going to have, I guess, water drips or any sort of warping or everything because you're going to have the water drain off the top surface is what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

It is a minor question, but your lighting for the little bollards, it looks like your lighting plan may be not quite coordinated with the final site plan you have.

This kind of implies, well, maybe it is.

I think the intention with those bollards, Carl, is that they would actually be mounted to the wall, the surface walk.

And so there would be presumably a flexible conduit used under the wall before it's poured.

Yeah, they are a little more prominent than, say, sort of a recessed or a flesh walk, it's true.

But this is based on an early round of discussions we had with our lighting consultant.

And so this is what we

Yeah I mean I think that's one where you know we'll

confronted ourselves as we get further in the process.

Any questions for anyone else?

Kevin, is your building 36 feet to the parapet?

You've got 591 on one of the drawings, 591 and then.

Parapet and roof.

Yes.

And then I know that there are members of the public who are concerned about the relationship between this building and Windhurst.

The Eves of Windhurst, they are about 27, 28 feet, between 27 and 28 feet up from the ground level there.

And so what you see, if you look at, say the south elevation,

And to some extent you can see it in the southeast perspective.

You can see that the brow that we have there over the stucco portion that extends out is roughly equivalent to the eaves of the house.

Yeah, yeah.

We have some elevations noted on the site plan.

And so, for example, you can see along the walk that's at the southern boundary that we are stepping up as currently the grades do so that the walk can meet with the landing of the stair that leads down into the Preston Court Apartments courtyard.

And as you get over to Windhurst, you see that it's about four feet.

I do have a quick lighting question.

The wall packs, the wedges, the affixers along the parking lot wall.

I was wondering if it would just, you know, your perception of brightness is also related to color temperature.

I'm just wondering if it would make sense to knock those down one temperature range like to 2,700.

Keep your, you know, keep your candle

Right.

I have a couple of material questions.

Kevin, could you clarify the, I'm looking at the West perspective and it's clear that like in the synapse between the two volumes, there's a lighter colored material.

Okay.

The second is about the paving material.

It's called out in the drawings as a stone paving.

The photo looks very clearly like a bluestone, and the wall cap is called out as bluestone, but the renderings are a little bit lighter.

Is there a particular thought about the stone choice?

Yeah, it is, but that's a good question, Breck.

We haven't picked out a particular stone for the paving on the walks, but we think, as this is proposed, it would be similar to the capstone zone if we could have a slight distinction so that there was a slightly darker color for the

Capstone along the walls.

I think that would be nice, but we just don't have samples yet of what we might use for those walks.

OK.

And the last material question also related to paving is there is an existing per the per our previous reviews of this project and per the survey, there is an existing stone patio on the western side of

of Windhurst.

At the moment, we hadn't planned to reuse any.

It's in rather rough shape.

It's pretty deteriorated.

Whatever its former edges were are hard to discern.

But we have yet to do an investigation of that little terraced area you're referring to, to see if materials there would be salvageable.

Yeah, yeah.

And again, it just helps minimize its sort of more slightly canyon-like effect.

And I use that term loosely.

Yes, that's true.

Well, yeah.

A question came in from the public and I just want to read this.

So it's from Ms.

Turner.

So she's asking, when was the side yard of the only remaining formal facade of this historic structure carved off as a building lot?

What is the obligation of the owner to preserve the historic structure and setting at 605

Is the current owner developer getting tax credits for the historic property?

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Again, it's Ms.

Turner from 630 Preston Place.

I guess it sounds like that question just goes to zoning, not really to architecture, right?

Because it's a lot where this building is allowed the size and the use.

And we're not touching the historic structure with this building.

It is all the same parcel, correct?

It is.

OK, it is.

And so the lot hasn't actually been separated off.

OK.

All right.

Thank you.

Any other questions or should I allow public comment?

All right, we can always come back.

So now the public is allowed to ask questions or allowed to comment.

Please raise your hand or press star nine.

I see a raised hand from Scott Holly.

Well, there are two of us here, Christine Colley and Scott Colley at 611 Preston Place.

Our house is a very old cottage that came about 30, 40 years before Windhurst.

So it really is one of the older frame houses in Charlottesville.

And naturally, we are concerned about the

flavor and the sense of neighborhood as the university encroaches closer and closer.

We had a joke in the neighborhood about a wall between the university and us.

And yet that wall has been breached.

Now that's nothing official.

I know about the zoning.

Anyway, Christine Collie is here.

Yes, this addresses the historic district in relation to the massing and scale and infill of the new building.

This is a historic district.

And if we are serious about having a historic district anywhere in Charlottesville, it's important to make it financially possible and desirable

for buyers to buy and renew and maintain and nurture historic houses.

There's no source of money for keeping these houses going.

And all of you know how expensive that can be.

This house we're sitting in, we bought six years ago because we loved it and then spent approximately the price of the house again.

And this is on a house that had a wonderful renovation

circa 1970.

Houses need attention periodically, especially old houses.

And if we make the living experience of the area less desirable by great infill, high density, high concentrations of students,

So far, we're getting along fine, but I think if we fill in the areas, then selling the idea to people who would otherwise be charmed and delighted to be part of historical preservation is going to become more and more difficult.

And this is part of the thinking behind Scott and I's attitude on this change, and I think a great many of our neighbors as well.

So I see two raised hands from Paul Wright again.

Hi, Paul Wright again, still 612 Preston Place.

I'm opposed to the project on multiple levels and urge the board to deny the application, as Pegasus flies over top of me, as you hear in the background.

The project will cause meaningful harm to the historical fabric of the protected district, allow incompatible architecture with little meaningful reference to either protected structure next to it, and significantly eliminate a historical view of a contributing structure to future generations.

In a 6-0 decision, the board stated that a parking lot was not compatible with the individual protected property.

It's difficult to understand how this new proposal would not cause greater harm.

I was actually in favor of that project as I've been in favor of every project proposed in this neighborhood except this one.

at Section 34-335 states the purpose of the Historical Conservation Overlay District is to preserve buildings with special historical, cultural, architectural, and architectural significance.

And the most important part of that is which serves as important visible reminders of the heritage of the city.

It's hard to fathom how this student apartment will completely shield the protected property from view as one enters press and place does not fail to meet preservation standards on this rule alone.

but the proposed structure also will not be in harmony with scale and character of the existing buildings.

The building is proposed is out of scale and proportion as it relates to Preston Court departments and Winhurst to maximize the number of students that can be housed in this location.

A shorter height that establishes a step down from the taller Preston Court apartments will provide greater compatibility.

While the bar does not want to create a replica of historical buildings, it seems that the contemporary style of the proposed building emphasizes a colder, harder, angular characteristics that will not be in harmony with the scale and character of existing buildings and nearby protected properties.

Also, the balconies will do very little to do other than diminish quiet enjoyment of the neighbors.

The parcel represents a bright line between the university and Charlottesville, and an approval will allow further encroachment into a neighborhood that has been fighting to preserve the historical character for decades.

I urge the board to deny the applicant a certificate of appropriateness.

Thank you.

Thank you, Paul.

I do have the letter from Ms.

Turner.

I see that she's part of, or she's one of the attendees.

I don't know if she's able to speak.

I could read her letter if she's not going to.

I don't see her raising her hand.

Very good.

Yeah, my wife is here with me, Beth Turner.

We're both at 630 Preston Place.

I submitted a group of photographs.

I don't know to what degree the members of the board are familiar with this neighborhood.

But what I wanted to suggest, and actually I want to endorse everything that Paul Wright just said.

Beth and I agree with him completely.

The building is completely out of scale with the neighborhood.

The point I was going to make through slides was simply to demonstrate this, that the proposed structure is oriented to the south in terms of what it's picking up on in design materials.

Whereas from every other direction, if you look at the slides that I've taken, it's all two-story family houses.

It is a variety of different kinds of materials.

And what is being proposed there is as a three-story building with these balconies, it's completely

incompatible with the neighborhood.

Oh, no, Mr. Good, I can navigate to any page that you need me to.

Okay, if you can keep moving forward and keep moving forward.

and to the next.

Yes.

I just want to demonstrate that this is an area of small wooded lots.

Could you go forward?

To the next.

And to the next.

and then to the next, this is the little cottage that stopped there.

This is the little cottage that's right next to the building site.

And you can see how very close these places are.

There is a little wall immediately to the right in the foreground that just on the other side of that will be the driveway into the basement parking garage.

It is,

Just, I mean, a matter of a couple of yards max from this house.

Could we go to the next?

and this is the view, the building itself is not an apartment building.

So the context in which they are inserting this apartment building is a neighborhood of two-story residential buildings, not apartment buildings and they're not student apartments.

This is a residential neighborhood of mostly professional and retired people.

Could we go to the next please?

Mr. Good, if you... I'm about out of time.

And next.

And next.

And this is Scott and Christine's house.

And again, I view it as completely out of scale with the proposed building and completely out of relationship to the materials that they're proposing.

I also want to say the neighborhood is totally against these balconies.

They are a source of constant noise and irritation from the Preston Court apartments.

And there is absolutely no reason why they need to be directly opposite our house.

That's my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I guess it's two people.

Sorry.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

I'm Elizabeth Turner.

I live at 630 Preston Place.

I want you all to know that I'm not against housing units, adding housing units to Charlottesville or to our historic district.

But I am against this proposal.

I do not believe it is appropriate.

I do not believe it has an appropriate design.

I think the roof line, I think the fenestration, I think the materials are wrong.

And they do not do anything to complement any of the other structures.

The only structure they want to reference and to emulate, I might add, is the Preston Court Apartments.

which is totally out of scale and it does not help.

It also is not appropriate to the setting.

to the historic structure that this is the setting for to the hill, to the cedars, to the historic relationship.

And it is that relationship with the landscape that I really want you all to think about.

The terrace and the house itself need to be acknowledged and a place can be put.

for more housing units on that lot if that's what the zoning calls for.

But I think the appropriateness, which is your purview, on the design and the historic preservation angle is something that we're counting on you to really think about and to acknowledge.

Current owner made it clear to us when he bought that parcel, he was going to build an apartment building there.

He was going to move the old house to another lot and he was going to build an apartment building.

He bought the property with that intent and communicated that to us.

He couldn't move the old house.

So now he's chosen to ignore it.

And he's building this structure that abuts the old house that takes away from the terrace.

The terrace has steps that go down to that side area.

Those should be acknowledged.

that building has been allowed for the number of years that he's owned it to the roof is not painted.

It's being allowed to fall to rack and ruin.

So when he tells you that that terrace, oh, I don't know what the materials are.

Oh, it's falling apart.

Well, that's intentional.

So I think that disrespecting the house, this design does disrespect the setting and the house.

And it does not

have the appropriate materials.

Thank you, Mrs. Turner.

I appreciate that.

I'm going to read Mrs. Price's letter.

There are two qualities that define Preston Place.

The first is the variety of architectural styles among the houses and how this variety is held together within a shared approach.

The use of setbacks, creative massing, and detail.

The proposed building, however, is basically a large shoebox.

It may take Preston Court Apartments as inspiration, but that building features more complex massing and a wealth of decorative detail.

And although the new building should not have the same degree of monumentality or ornament, it has so little that is essentially nothing more than a

I parallel piped with some typical surface cutouts.

Tim, you're going to have to help me with what that means.

And while I appreciate the attention that has been paid to the landscaping, the design totally ignores the second defining quality of Preston Place, the steep hillside that wraps around.

The arrangement of houses, especially on the inside of the street where the new building will be, is varied and picturesque.

If you look up from the hillside westward toward the even higher Rugby Road area, the whole effect is that of an Italian hill town.

Mitchell Matthews' new proposed building, however, is flat with a strongly defined broad axis and thus imposes a new and large rectilinear complex, Windhurst, Preston Court Apartments' proposed building, onto the irregular pictorial arrangement of buildings that is there now.

And if the new building is to be considered as infill rather than imposition,

I would like to see a rendering of how it would look next to the property it will, but I cannot fathom how the current design works either by style or scale with 625 press in place pictured below.

And again, it's the little white house just to the north of the project.

Are there any more comments from the public?

Last chance.

I guess Mr.

Richard Crozier, I see a raised hand.

Okay.

Yeah, I just, as a 40-year resident on Preston Place, I would like to say that I certainly second the motions of a lot of the other residents here.

It just seems like the wrong thing to do, and particularly if one considers that the Windhurst House is an important piece of Charlottesville history,

It is really one of the visible remainders of some rather dark Charlottesville history, slavery for one thing.

And I think that if we want to not hide as much of the history as we are likely to hide, we should probably really try to keep that thing visible.

Anyway, I don't have too much to add.

I think a lot of my friends and colleagues have been a lot more eloquent than I can be.

But the other thing I would mention is the balconies on the Preston Court Apartments are almost like a megaphone.

I'm three houses away.

I can stand in my living room at night and I can hear individual conversations from those balconies and I'm half deaf.

Thank you.

Ms.

Turner, I apologize.

I need to keep it to not allowing the public to make more than one comment.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

All right, how about I'll give you just about 10 seconds if you need to clarify something.

Is that all right, Robert?

Sure.

Hi, did you mean Beth or did you mean me?

Well, that's interesting.

Your name pops up as Elizabeth Turner.

OK.

Yeah.

That's all right.

My name is Lisa Kendrick and I'm at 622 Presa Place.

And, you know, from from the beginning, you know, this I just feel like it's so important that the House

and the property is seen as one.

It's not been divided.

And so what's happening is we are losing sight of the house and the grounds around it.

And I just feel like for a historical neighborhood,

The city has to decide, are you going to preserve these?

Are you going to stand up for these neighborhoods that you've determined to be significant?

We live here.

We take care of it.

One of the reasons that he's having great success in renting out the property and wanting to build more for others is because it's really lovely.

We take care of it.

And you know what?

We stay here and he goes home, right?

He doesn't hear the noise.

He doesn't hear the sounds that happen.

The more you develop this property, you're just adding to the intensity of the student population here.

And it's not just professionals.

It is not graduate students that have

I already expressed a lot of the yayas.

I mean, it's happening so intensely that it's like, it's hard.

It's just like, it's almost hard to take a breath because of this constant noise that has increased so much by the Preston Court Department.

They're only half full.

They're about to be fully full.

and to add another building that is going, and I'm not even sure how many students are looking to put in that building, but it doesn't, like, I agree with everything that all of our neighbors have said, you know, we live here together as one, well-harmonized, well-oiled unit.

and we take such good care of the area that it just seems like we need the support of the city, the bar to recognize we're trying to maintain this historical neighborhood.

And it's just so hard and has been so hard for almost five years now.

that I just we're looking for support, you know, from the bar.

It's not it's like Beth said, you know, we're not trying to stop development, but make it appropriate to the historical site.

It doesn't have to be massive and take up all the yard.

It could be something really beautiful.

And so I'm asking you,

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sure.

It's Lisa Kendrick, K-E-N-D-R-I-C-K at 622 Preston Place.

You're welcome.

I see another raised hand from Emily Steinhilber.

Hi, Emily Steinhauber, 626 Preston Place.

We've heard from a lot of folks who have been on this loop for many years.

We actually just purchased the home at that address about a month ago and have been cleaning up the interior of the home and we'll get to the landscaping shortly.

But what really drew

was the neighborhood.

And if this building is built as proposed, that will be our view from the front yard.

So it will kind of fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood.

And what we've seen in our short month in the neighborhood is the close knit community and that it is a residential

I hope that you will consider that in your decision.

I know the challenging

role that the bar has in making these decisions.

And I appreciate your service and and your decision.

But just thought we would say we appreciate our neighbors who have been in the neighborhood much longer than us and their their views.

Thank you very much, Ms.

I'm not seeing any more raised hands.

I don't either.

All right, board, your turn.

So someone recommended that I should just go around and call on people.

So we'll start with that.

Okay, fair enough.

I have

A number of thoughts.

I appreciate the commentary, both from the architects and from the concerned citizens.

I agree with both of what they have said.

I was opposed to the earlier project that had a parking lot on this site, and it seemed that in that case,

The parking area was not sufficiently deferential to the adjacent house, which is very important to telling Charlottesville's early history.

But it also didn't seem like a use that was necessary that was worthy of the damage that it would do to the reading of that structure.

I do think that that is possible to imagine

contemporary structure on this site that is complementary of Windhurst and that is relative to the scale of the surrounding neighborhood.

I think that there are some aspects of this project that definitely do that.

I actually think that the materiality and the color that is proposed in the model and the renderings

is actually quite a quiet approach towards this site, and it actually recedes quite a bit, especially in relationship to the very bright white structure of the historic home.

In other words, it kind of pops it out.

I do have some concerns about the scale, and I wish I had a little bit more information relative to the adjacent 625,

and to the adjacent Preston Court Apartments.

I just feel like it's a bit, this is a, it does sit in a kind of a transitional location within the block, but I am, it is, I'm not sure that we really fully appreciate that's relationship to 625.

I'm concerned about the removal of

of the Oak and maybe the moreover the way that the drive aisle might be damaging to the experience of the neighborhood.

I do think that it's an improvement over what was proposed earlier that had the drive aisle going through the block and had cars parking literally near the foot of Windhurst yet again.

So I do think that the approach is

a better one, but I am concerned about the height of that retaining wall, how blank it might be and how close it is to 625.

I'm also concerned that while the oak would have to go, it still remains in a lot of the perspectives.

So it's really,

Hard to tell what the impact of losing that tree is.

They've kind of have to remove that tree, but it's still providing a lot of green in the perspective, so it's a little bit misleading.

Thank you, Breck.

Tim?

I agree with Bracken that I don't, I really don't have a problem with the materiality of it.

It does seem, I mean, I do see where the, you know, it's a little problematic in the sense of the massing and that it's, you know, a full blown apartment building kind of sliding even more into the district.

I mean, of course, that all really started with the construction of the rest of the place to begin with.

I think the objections to the balconies, particularly facing the side yard toward the house to the north certainly is very understandable.

And I guess one question I have, I mean, one, I definitely didn't feel like the parking lot was an appropriate approach.

I guess one question I have, and I don't know how this affects the metrics of this

but whether the wing to the north should, say, lose a floor.

And I do think the driveway is, regardless, is kind of problematic in terms of its scale relative to the neighborhood.

I'm assuming what's driving that is because it's got to be a two-lane driveway.

And at the same time, not having any parking also is deleterious.

I mean, they've already got enough parking issues in that area.

I'm just sort of torn about it.

I mean, I understand the logic of more housing, but at the same time, it is not really housing that is

really works with this neighborhood.

I mean, it's obviously, this is all a series of single bedrooms and shared common space.

I mean, this is student housing.

These are not apartments.

And maybe that in and of itself is a questionable item, but that's also dealing with function, which is not our purview.

But I think it's really, to my mind, it's about that north edge and whether or not the massing of that should be reconsidered.

And if there's something to be done about the driveway, I know, I think there was an earlier version, I believe, where the road, the driveway went straight into the building, which does get you the gaping maw issue.

But at the same time, that would allow

the green space in the yard to come down.

I mean, you know, I think the way that the existing doors work and along that edge, it works pretty well.

I think the real issue is to the north toward the smaller building and also just obscuring completely the the Windhurst building from that street.

You know, it's sort of a mixed bag.

And as I do this, if you guys want to, if you don't want to comment or you want to pass and talk later, that's fine.

I wanted to echo what Mr. Moore said about sort of addressing the neighbors' comments.

and basically our lack of jurisdiction over a lot of those comments because this board looks at ADC architectural design control district guidelines and we look at the application in front of us and decide whether the application meets those guidelines.

We may deal with zoning issues tangentially because they inform the massing and size and other forms of the building itself, but we don't dictate zoning.

And we also don't dictate use that was established when the underlying zoning

was rezoned, upzoned in 2003, 2005 by the city and made, I think this is, forgive me, I think it's medium density if I'm correct, university medium density, UMD.

So I just want to acknowledge that it is quite a change in the neighborhood and

but this board doesn't have a say in all of the objections that the neighbors have voiced, even though we may agree with them.

I lived on the street.

I lived on the street almost 40 years ago, embarrassingly, as a student right across the street from the slot.

And at that time, that's 632 Preston, it had just converted from single family

a year or two before into a group home, a sorority house, which I lived in.

So it was students, and it remains a student housing, as does 630 Preston, as do the fraternities on the far other side.

But they are directly across from Windhurst, 606, 608, and also 600.

Preston Place is one of the most charming

Places that you can live in the city really is the variation of architecture, the preservation level of very old structures.

It's just a really lovely place.

But long ago, the zoning was changed and long ago started sort of multifamily

You know, intrusion is one would say on the Grady side into this block or or or Preston Place in general, a couple of blocks.

So I would note that that this application, although it places a new building there, it's not changing.

We're not changing the zoning.

And certainly I don't think we're changing the use all that much.

Like I said, as a student, I lived across this lot 40 years ago.

So students have been in this area for a while.

I do want to just say that I think there are certain things the applicants done correctly and done right.

And maybe it was done in response to preliminary discussions that may have been had.

last year or just informally, I know that the balconies have been reduced so that there'll be no lighting on them.

And they're basically places that I don't even think you could put a chair out there.

I haven't looked specifically at the dimensions, but they just give a little bit of, they do engage the street, but hopefully in a good way, but not in a way that maybe people are out shouting and congregating in the same way that

The Preston's Court apartments, which are much more ample, allow people to do.

The building also has, it's a large building, the massing, I think is something that my colleagues have noted.

The applicant's done a pretty good job just with articulating the building, breaking it down in its design, including those balconies, which break up the massing of the exterior.

And I do agree that the dark color is a nice contrast where the white clapboard of Windhurst

It's not competing with the white collaborative Windhurst, and it shows Windhurst off as best a contemporary building can.

The applicants also responded to earlier meetings with us and that they've relegated the apartment, sorry, the parking to underground.

There was surface parking before, and I would think the neighbors would appreciate that.

I do wonder if the applicant might be able to pursue a waiver from the city, which can't be obtained from this board, but a waiver to reduce that lane that goes underneath the building.

You know, see if the 24

feet could be choked down a little bit or just to one lane, considering how few spaces are under there.

I don't know how many times you would have two cars, one car going down, one car coming up at the same time.

So it seems like it could be a little bit of helped a little bit there.

So I would I think that that's something we could look at just so that we can

Make sure that there is a decreased impact on joining 625.

I think those are my only comments at this point.

And I, you know, I would tend to be in favor of this application.

But

kind of leaning that way just because I think for reasons in the staff report that it really does meet the guidelines.

I just don't find anything really objectionable about this under our guidelines.

If our guidelines were different, our consideration might be different.

Thank you, Cheri.

Robert, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, I don't really have anything to add.

I agree with the fellow members.

I do feel that this meets the guidelines, as Cheri said, but I hear what the residents are saying.

I hear

Thank you.

I think Robert at the nail on the head, there's a lot of cities that require the neighborhoods surrounding projects to kind of sign off or at least come to meetings like this to voice their opinion as a group.

But we're limited in what we can do in situations like this.

It really kind of sucks.

Yeah, so I went over there this afternoon and took a couple laps around Preston Place.

I'm hoping the rest of you all may have done that.

But if you haven't, please do.

Obviously Cheri lived there.

and I gotta say, I feel that Preston Place Apartments really, it addresses Grady Avenue, right?

I don't think of that apartment complex as part of this neighborhood.

It's on the same block, sure, but it faces Grady Avenue.

It's got sides and it's rear elevation kind of addresses this neighborhood.

It sort of turns it back to this neighborhood.

And I do agree there's a lot of student

housing in this general vicinity.

Like Cheri pointed out, there's a fraternity with a new addition right across the street from Windhurst.

And there's some on the other side of Preston Place.

I noted on the Sanborn map that it used to be called Windhurst Circle instead of Preston Place Drive or whatever.

So I think that still speaks to the significance of Windhurst as a house.

necessarily think that blocking the, I guess, west view of Lindhurst is such a horrible thing just because I don't feel like it's the primary facade of the house.

I think the facade that faces the back side of Preston Place Apartments, the principal facade, and then the one that faces east with the sort of bowed

Part of the facade is very architecturally significant, but those are kind of the two principal facades.

I think that for the proposed design, I think the color palette, I do like the color palette because they kind of draw off some of the earth tones that I think are one of the character defining features of that neighborhood.

The neighborhood does have sort of an arts and crafts field.

Just my quick couple of laps.

where you do have sort of cottages and houses that are nestled into landscapes all around in that area.

And, you know, have softer lines, really.

I think the proposed project is a little bit more harsh.

So I decided to do it with a color palette.

I guess my wish would be for something here that can both fill a need for

adding more housing space, but maybe something that looks a little more residential in nature to better suit the neighborhood.

You know, kind of looking over the, not the application, but the staff report, sort of the thing that jumped out at me is just in terms of our review criteria generally, you know, city code states that in considering a particular application, the BAR shall approve the application unless it finds, and then point two,

The proposal is incompatible with the historic cultural or architectural character of the district in which the property is located or the protected property that is the subject of the application.

That kind of jumps out at me like I don't really feel like this fit in or is compatible with the historic cultural or architectural character of this district.

So I don't think I would be able to support the design as proposed, but I wouldn't be opposed to

Thank you.

My two cents are, you know, I think this typology is actually fitting for a neighborhood like this.

I think we have examples throughout Charlottesville in some of the older neighborhoods where, you know, a three story walk up apartment building does fit into a residential neighborhood.

and I mean, just, you know, over in university circles and there are some examples over there.

There are examples scattered around the rugby neighborhood or rugby vinnable.

I agree that, you know, some of my colleagues that the, you know, I'm frustrated that this is very obviously a student department.

I wish you hadn't shown us the floor plans because it's just so clear that that's what it is, but that's not our purview.

you know I'm also disappointed that that's what has become of you know the the press and court departments I mean that's we it's it's sad but again not our purview I think you know I agree with a lot of what Cheri said you know I agree with you know a breck on the materiality I think it's

The brick and the stucco and the color scheme does make it recessive and does, I think it fits in a residential neighborhood.

The steel on the balconies, I'm kind of wavering on.

It's definitely contemporary.

It's not something that you find in the neighborhood.

But then again, it's attached to iron railings.

So maybe that

makes sense.

I think I'm most bothered by the open stair.

I don't think that that's buying you.

If the intention is that it looks like two buildings, I don't think it does it.

I think it's gonna look, I think it's gonna look messy and maybe make it look a little more like an apartment building than a, I'm struggling to get the words out, but it's, I think that open stair is not helping the compatibility with the neighborhood.

If you just glazed it, I think that would go a long ways.

I'm leaning towards approval with some modifications.

So I do want to see what you're thinking of with how you handle the water on the balconies.

I think we've discussed various items that seem like they're not fully fleshed out yet.

It would be good to know.

Obviously, when this thing goes through site plan, it's going to change and it should come back to us.

So we know what implications are of that.

I'd like to see the

I think your curb cut is significantly wider than any of the other curb cuts in the neighborhood.

So as much as the city will allow, I think you do need to reduce it.

And Tim, I think made a really good point about adding a tree right there.

One of the beautiful things about this neighborhood is that the tree canopy is very complete.

And it would be nice to maintain that.

I do appreciate you adding the

the gum trees adjacent to Winters because that's definitely a hole in the tree canopy that currently exists, so that will benefit.

All right, that's my ramble.

Well, I was just going to say that if we

If we don't take action on this tonight, I feel like there's just a few more drawings that are necessary to really adequately assess the impact of this on adjacent properties.

I feel like longer elevations with the, I mean, we're getting just little hints of Windhurst or, you know, just little hints of dressing court or 625.

I would agree.

I mean, I know in other parts of the city, we've asked even for 3D modeling where you pick up adjacent buildings and that sort of thing.

But one of the things that ironically isn't

apparent by any of the drawings is how much bigger that facade of precedent place is than this piece, than this building.

So I mean, you have, it is in a transitional space where, you know, Winders itself is a pretty sizable building.

The colleagues immediately next to it is quite small, and the same is true of 620 or whatever, the White House, you know, so you have this major drop off in scale right there, but then across the street,

on the other side of this building, you know, you've got a large fraternity with a very large parking area.

And then, so you've got a number of houses in the immediate vicinity with quite large parking lots.

So to my mind, it's as much as anything, it's trying to maintain that, as Carl said, that Sylvan quality and the density of the tree canopy and basically embedding the building, doing a better job of embedding the building, whether that means manipulating the height of the,

that has some appeal, but I can also see where it would just become architecturally problematic having one of the blocks taller than the other one.

And as Carl noted, we really can't address use.

Carl, if there's a moment here, if I could just comment on some of the comments that were made.

That's okay.

Yeah, I just wanted to echo something I think Cheri was bringing up that the zoning is R3 for this property.

So everything we're proposing as far as use, density, size, all entirely appropriate and

within the zoning regulations.

The one thing that's come up a few times that I should have clarified earlier, the large tree that's close to the boundary with 625, it was misidentified on the surveys in oak.

It's an ash and

The arborist who did inspect it months ago pointed out that it is currently dying.

It has limbs that are dead.

And so it does appear to be at the end of its life.

But that's certainly a report that we can include in materials that we subsequently present.

As far as talking to the neighbors, a few members brought up how the discussion could be important.

I said it in the beginning, but just to reiterate, we've had multiple meetings with the neighbors.

We've met with them on site.

We've exchanged emails with them.

Ahead of this meeting, I sent them a preview of our presentation book.

So we've done a lot to keep them in the loop, even though I understand there is a great deal of opposition.

As far as the massing of the building goes,

I mean, it's worth pointing out that if you were to build, say, a single-family house or a couple of townhouses on this property, you could build them to the very same size.

As far as modulating the massing goes, I understand that some personal preferences might be for there to be greater modulation, and I could imagine a project where that would be interesting and exciting.

But I guess the question for us is what we're proposing, does it cross a line into being inappropriate or not appropriate?

And that's a bit of a struggle for us to understand how this would be deemed inappropriate for its massing, considering what's allowed in this neighborhood, considering what Jeff mentioned about it staying within a range or percentage range of heights of nearby buildings.

Comments too about the building looking harsh.

Also a little bit hard for us to assess when we're comparing it to guidelines.

One last thing that some have mentioned, desiring or wanting to keep a view from the west side of the circle to Windhurst.

And I guess I understand where people are coming from, especially if they're very used to having that view who've lived in the neighborhood or walked around the circle for a long time.

But at the same time, you could argue that empty space that's been there, the grounds that they've been there, it takes a little bit from what could be perceived as a kind of a street wall along that edge.

And that this building comes in and fills a space

and I also just the interpretation that the Preston Court Apartments belong to Grady Avenue and not to Preston Circle.

I guess I just don't see that.

I mean, the Preston Court Apartments to me, I look at them and I see three significant facades and they're in the West, South and East.

So I see it as a building that participates almost inevitably with this circle.

And it's worth noting too that in the guidelines for this particular historic district,

It's noted specifically that Windhurst was among two farms that were initially kind of subdivided and sold off in the early 20th century, largely for the sake of housing and expanding universities, faculty and students.

And so, again, even though the demographic of the potential tenants in this building are not something that the BAR can address,

I guess I'm not opposed to it.

And I guess, and I don't know if he was commenting on my comment, but the word I was, I wasn't using the word inappropriate, the word that I was citing from our staff report was incompatible.

So that's where, again, I think I could support the building here.

So James, are you saying that you could support it in concept, but you'd like to see some significant changes?

Yeah.

Okay.

Is there anyone else in that same boat that, and I'm talking significant changes, you know, things like Tim mentioned,

stepping back the northwest corner or do they need to completely change the materiality or is it too big?

Is it too close to Windhurst?

Is there anybody that falls in that category other than James?

I'd say not major changes but James's comments were very persuasive to me that

I mean, I'm trying to, I'm at a loss to think of one architectural detail of this building that takes a cue from another building on Preston, except for Preston's court apartment, I agree with that.

But to the extent that a lot of the street, as James said, is vernacular or sort of primitive looking and has, I mean, there are lots of different architectural styles.

And I wouldn't want to borrow from all of them one time, but

But it would be nice if this building reminded us of some of the other really beautiful buildings further down the street.

So I am persuaded that, not a wholesale, but just somehow that it, that little, that would get me over, I think, I don't know about James, the objection to, you know, to compatibility.

I also wanted to just dovetail on what you said, Carl.

I kind of think that I do agree that that stairway, for lack of a better word, and please forgive me, but the exposed stairway is a little new dorm for me.

And I can say that because I lived in the new dorms.

You've got that Motel 6 in the middle.

So I do wonder if you just were able to, you said, glaze it or shade it or somehow obstruct that, at least from the street view.

And there might be a design opportunity in that space, at least with that sort of facade that shields that.

But I think I would agree with Carl on that one as well.

I also wanted to say with regard to the balconies, it sounds like the group is in favor, but just one more sort of hilarious, historic, when I lived across the street at 632, I was in the room that has the balcony on it.

So I can say that balconies on Preston have been used for at least 40 years in time by misbehaving students.

I do think Kevin that you are trying to put some residential details in there.

I think the shutters are a nice addition that does, you know, you've got a contemporary building, but it is kind of, it's a nod that, you know,

Yeah, I know there's various takes on this.

We were going for something that we viewed as just a rather simple building with materials that we do see elsewhere on the block.

And just a concern sometimes that when you're trying to sort of pick and choose kind of quotations from around the circle, it can converge into pastiche in doing that and kind of cutesy detailing that we wanted to be cautious about incorporating.

But it's a pretty eclectic circle.

And I think that's one of its virtues.

And the Preston Court apartments coming along in the 1920s really caused a big change.

And then even further circumscribing and kind of diminishing the original presence of the historic house are all the houses that were built around the circle and the circle itself.

I was going to say also, you know, even if this was a single family house,

the way it would probably get developed, you know, if you cut this lot in half the way it would get developed, Windhurst would probably be pretty much blocked from view from the street edge anyway, right, if it was broken up.

I mean, it does seem like this is fundamentally an addendum to, you know, an addendum to the original big building.

But I do think Brett's point about having a better sense of the

So I want to figure out how we can kind of tie this up in a way that makes sense, because I'm under the impression that we're not going to get an approval tonight.

Well, Carl, I do want to ask along those lines, because I believe the owner would like a vote tonight.

And I guess I'm wondering, you know, if you

That is, we can do that.

That is risky in that we cannot have administrative approvals.

So we have to either

design things tonight or it would be better to defer.

But yes, we can do that.

Well, as a show of hands, who thinks that they could approve this tonight with conditions?

That looks like nobody.

So,

I think you're better off requesting a deferral.

If you want to vote, I think you know what's going to happen.

And we don't want to do that.

At least I don't want to do that.

So I think you've got enough hope.

I just want to say I think I'm largely supportive of the approach.

And I want to know what you're going to do with the balconies.

And I very, very strongly suggest enclosing that staircase.

I'm not sure if this can be a deal killer for me, but I think that's really important.

Cheri, you said that made sense.

Does that make sense to the rest of you guys?

I would say besides just aesthetics and compatibility with neighborhood, I would think that an open stairwell would be a noisy place for neighbors.

And if the consideration here is to lessen the impact on an apartment building, I think somehow enclosing those stairs might be a better way of accomplishing that.

But does that get to points about like behavior and to remark on whether it will be noisy or not?

Well, it is if you could insulate noise from a stream.

I don't know.

Thank you.

I mean, I liked how Cheri described it.

It has a motel-y feel to it, unfortunately, with the open stair.

I mean, just the connotation that every time I've seen an open stair, it's very rarely done in a way that feels residential or feels compatible with a neighborhood of this type of character.

Well, if you look at the west perspective again, the view west, I guess I'm not seeing cheap there, to put it bluntly.

I mean, and I guess I would be concerned that in closing the stair with, I guess, some sort of glazed sort of volume that it might take from the

Well, that's why I'm curious if it's just Cheri and I that share this opinion.

I don't think you're getting two buildings out of this.

I think it's still reading as one with a hole in the middle.

But again, that's me.

And if you do glaze it in, you'll definitely, you know, unless you step in way back, you'll definitely, it'll definitely continue to, it'll definitely read more as one solid block, I think, even though you'd have to push it, you'd have to get that glass line

I think significantly back behind the corner.

Are they in plane?

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Right, you can see in the floor plan that the landings even project a bit beyond the north wing.

You know, I haven't artificially enhanced that.

I mean, I know it's an illustration, so it's, you know, but there would be lighting in there that would help to kind of enhance this space when people are going up and down the stairs.

Yes.

No, I understand it.

I mean, you're putting nice materials on here.

Well, it looks like it's just two of us.

Next, we did approve just recently a very similar approach on the Virginia Avenue apartment building.

But I guess it's for the BAR to decide if that detail, if the context has a different impact on this neighborhood.

I think that one also had, if I remember correctly, I think the upper level, if it wasn't fully open to the sky, it was partially open to the sky.

But I'm not sure that that would, for me, I'm not sure that would help here.

My bigger concern really is that driveway edge and just that delineation separating the sort of cleaving the site there more than anything.

I do think the massing, once you bring in the other building,

facade and get more of a sense of the street.

I don't think the massing is all that.

I just don't think it's going to seem as big as it does right now.

The building's very front and center as we currently look at it.

And the building immediately to its left is considerably lower.

But once you start taking it in the aggregate, I don't think it's probably the one thing that would soften it maybe would be

if it had a pitched roof on it, but that's also kind of antithetical to the building to its immediate right and also to the aesthetics of this building.

It doesn't make sense.

So I think it's about working on the street edge and doing something about that driveway, making that less of an object.

And maybe that retaining wall has

you know, a planter edge or something like that where it starts to have stuff spill down and soften.

And I wonder your elevations, you showed vines or something coming down one side.

Um, but I think, I think a lot of this can be handled, starting to bring in, you know, things that just make the detailing more residential and less commercial feeling.

So Kevin, you've got, I think, not, I mean, you've got pretty good support for the projects in general, it sounds like, with some modifications.

Do you have questions?

I think this has been very helpful.

Regarding the balconies,

Tell me if this sounds right to you guys.

I know in the neighborhood there's opposition to them, but they are rather shallow balconies.

And my hunch is that if we were to eliminate most or all of them, then it would then create an even kind of greater challenge to

potentially incorporating the kind of detailing that would give it a greater sense of scale to give it something of a residential touch, which some people are looking for here.

Can everybody that agrees with that raise their hand?

Somebody had mentioned possibly not having them on the north side, that we kind of overlook all the, you know, right into the backyards of a lot of the neighboring properties.

Maybe that's a consideration.

And since I've got the mic for a second, I think Tim phrased it really well in terms of trying to have detailing that's more residential in nature than

commercial in nature.

I guess one of the things I was trying to say, so I want to echo that.

And looking at the view west slide, I think that big retaining wall, the driveway going down, I'm wondering if maybe material there, like consider stone or something, make that retaining wall not feel like so much like part of the building, make it more natural.

Right, right.

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good suggestion.

I like that.

Well, I think

As it turns out, based on what you guys have said, I think we actually are seeking to defer.

I don't know what the owner is trying to do, but if

It would be nice if you started the site plan process while this is going on, just to get some assurance that it's not going to get all changed on us, but I know that's up to the owner.

This was just mentioned more in the question section, but I do think that that western entrance to Winters is an important story to that house, and to the extent that

Some acknowledgement of that terrace and doorway could be made in the design of that interior space.

It's very difficult to see kind of what's happening in there.

All right, so the applicant has requested a deferral.

Thank you.

I will call a vote.

Mr. Zehmer?

Aye.

Mr. McClure?

Yes.

Ms.

Mr. Edwards?

Aye.

Thanks, Kevin.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

OK, I appreciate that.

All right.

Guys, do we want to just try and get right through this, or do you want a break?

I would find a five minute break.

You want a five minute break?

OK, let's do that.

Five minutes.

Hi everybody.

Robert Watkins just replaced Robert Edwards, what happened there?

We're hazing.

Carl's messing with the... Jeff.

Robert Edwards.

We only had six months.

He's already red shirted.

And that Robert the other night in person, he's a big guy.

Okay.

So waiting on Andy and James, make sure I've got what I want to say.

Still have a little bit of public left.

To the public that is here, thank you for your patience.

I know that was a long agenda item.

Well, it looks like we're all here.

All right.

Excuse me.

You all have the staff summary that I put together and I

It's seven pages long and about 3000 words, so I'm not going to read it verbatim.

And I'm going to, let me just move this so I'm looking at you all while I speak.

but I will briefly summarize the request and background section.

And I also, I suggest that the document itself be the formal record and not what I might verbally paraphrase or summarize, let the document be the record.

But just quickly on May 3rd of this year, a council adopted resolution authorizing

Publication of notice of council's intention to remove, relocate, contextualize, or cover the statues of Confederate generals Lee and Jackson currently located within two city parks.

With that resolution, council requested that the BAR consider the intent of council's intent and to provide comment to council prior to their public hearing, which has been scheduled for June 7th,

Next month.

And Council's priority is removal of the statues as soon as possible.

And they may decide to cover or contextualize the statues during a period of time prior to their removal.

The statues are located within the city designated North Downtown ADC District.

However, neither is designated as a contributing structure to that district.

And as such, per city code, the BAR has no purview over their removal or relocation.

However, also per city code, the BAR serves as an informal advisory body to council.

And so that we're clear with everyone, it is in that capacity, in that advisory capacity, the council has

requested the BAR's comments and recommendations.

So just quickly, some background, the Lee statue was unveiled in 1924, the Jack statue in 1921, both are listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

These listings represent state and federal recognition of properties.

However, they do not create any legal obligations for requirement for the city or other landowners

and the list of their properties listed in the state or national register.

Again, it's only the local designation that brings about any activity by the VAR.

As outlined in the staff summary for the past several years, council has expressed its intent to remove, relocate, contextualize or cover the two statutes.

And until recently litigation prohibited the city from taking further action.

Back in 2016, council established the Blue Ruby Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces, which recommended the statues be either removed and relocated or contextualized in place.

And more specifically, the commission stated the Lee and Jackson statues belong in no public space unless their history as symbols of white supremacy is revealed and their respective parks transformed in ways that promote freedom and equity in our community.

This past April, the Virginia Supreme Court released the city from the prohibitions of the legal action.

I know I'm not saying that perfectly, but the ruling allowed city council to, per the state code provisions, to move forward with its intent to relocate, contextualize, and recover the two statues.

Again, on May 3rd, council adopted the resolution authorizing publication and notice of its intent and scheduling a hearing.

And again, that's when council requested of the BAR's input.

And following the hearing on June 7th, council plans to offer the statues to any museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield, excuse me, and to transfer ownership to that entity, allowing for the relocation of the statues.

Removal of statues from the city parks will likely result in their being delisted from the state and national registers.

However, if they are transformed to transfer to an entity that wishes to maintain that designation, there is a review process that allows continued listing to be considered.

And finally, I won't get into all of the points offered in the discussion, but the VAR has been asked to discuss and offer comment on council's intent to remove, relocate, contextualize, and recover the statutes.

Council has filed a statutory process referencing the state code, which requires the statement of intent, a public hearing, and will offer the statutes to other entities.

Once those steps have been taken, council has the sole authority to determine the disposition of their statutes.

And prior to any final decision by council,

Council may take interim steps such as covering or contextualizing statues before removal or relocation and or before a redesign of the park is undertaken.

So finally, offering comment on the disposition of the statues requires an assessment that falls short of the BIR's usual focus on architectural matters involving landscape and design, et cetera.

That said, in our summary, staff has outlined several recommendations from the design guidelines

that we think might provide some context and offer a framework for your discussion.

And with that, I'll ask, are there any questions for staff on the summary or anything I just said?

All right, thank you, Jeff.

So now is an opportunity for public comment.

So I just wanna remind everyone, you're limited to three minutes.

Please identify yourselves and state your current address.

And just a reminder, as Jeff said, this is not an application for a certificate of appropriateness.

We are just acting in an advisory role, offering counsel advice and recommendations.

Counsel will be taking this up on June 7th.

And that's another opportunity for you to make public comment.

Your comments tonight will be put into the record.

But I do encourage you to speak to counsel at that time.

I see.

Generally, we won't be responding to questions or engaging in dialogue.

Well, that's OK.

So we have the big, long staff report that staff has developed.

Does anybody want to add to that?

Nobody wants to go first.

We don't need to do that.

I have some thoughts if nobody else wants to go.

Go for it, Brian.

Shall I go?

OK.

And I pulled together some notes, so please bear with me.

Even though we've been, you know, this is the first time that we've been asked formally to opine about the statues.

Of course, all of us as citizens have been thinking about this and as members of BAR for some time, for years.

We, per our zoning ordinance, we're a volunteer board that's appointed by city council to act on the community's behalf to preserve and protect the historic cultural and architectural heritage of designated districts and properties.

And, you know, in short, we act on the public's behalf because there are so many projects, so many design decisions, things that happen on a constant basis

It's way more than the public or even city staff can keep track of or pay attention to.

But in this case, this is a project that has had the focus and the attention of the community.

And so that calls into question to what we can bring to that process.

This has already been the subject of years of conversation, and Charlottesville has gone to great lengths to conduct a public process to understand

the history of these statues and the hurt that has been associated with these places.

And here we can rely, we have relied on the excellent work of the Blue Ribbon Commission, their report and the recommendations that they've made to city council, who as an elected body has made decisions on the public's behalf and on how to move forward.

and courts have litigated those decisions and that's what's led to the current city council statement of intent.

All that being said, we have been asked by city council to consider their intent and to provide comment and so I think there's a few things that we can add, some readings that we can either lift up out of the staff report

or from our own reading of the guidelines and also from national preservation legislation organizations that support removal.

In our guidelines in section 1E number three, that describes the BAR and the guidelines role in reading our landscapes and fabrics as quote, physical records of its time, place and use.

Changes that create a false sense of historical development will not be undertaken.

So it's important to know, knowing that the National Historic Preservation Act, it states that properties or structures like sculptures that are primarily commemorative in nature, those that are designed or constructed after the occurrence of an important historic event or after the life of an important person,

that they serve less as evidence of that person's productive life, but as evidence of a later generation's assessment of the past.

Essentially, there's been a misconception by some that the statues are themselves historic, but actually they were explicitly created to shape a historic narrative.

And that's not my reading, that's the reading that's documented

by the Blue Ribbon Commission that these statues as a whole tell incomplete stories and that they champion false, painful, and damaging loss cause narratives, which would go against the guideline, the spirit of the guideline that I just described.

Furthermore, in section one, the architectural design control districts, they detail

our guidelines detail and point out properties and elements that define the district.

In the North Downtown ADC description, there's no mention of Lee Park or the statues as character-defining features.

In the sub area of Jefferson Street and High Street West, it also makes no mention of Market Street Park, Quartz Square Park, or the statues as important or character-defining features in their district.

So that maybe for some that's debatable for us who are bound by the guidelines.

There's no guidance related to the role that these statues are playing or that they contribute in a positive way to the landscape character of the district.

Section two of our guidelines, site design and elements does not address statues in public parks.

Section six,

Jay, number one, does suggest that existing public art and statues should be maintained.

However, the following point, number two, notes that public art is preferred that offers a placemaking role in celebrating and communicating the history and culture of the districts.

And as I've kind of noted already, the BRC report already tells about the misleading and damaging role

of the statues in telling us very specific lost cause narrative, which is meant to include some in the community and to include others.

And clearly that that narrative isn't compatible with contemporary values.

Beyond our guidelines, I think it's really important to note that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has really led

the charge for historic preservation in this country and historic preservation legislation has issued multiple white papers describing support for removal of Confederate monuments from a preservationist perspective.

And in particular, I'll quote the most recent one that says that the National Trust supports the removal from our public space

The National Trust supports their removals, the Confederate monuments, from our public spaces when they continue to serve the purposes for which they are built to glorify, promote, and reinforce white supremacy overworkfully or implicitly.

So our community has been active in conversation about race in public space for many years, well beyond us.

Leaders in our community both

Elected and unelected have created the processes to facilitate these discussions in public way and they yielded really careful recommendations.

Council acted with the benefit of that public process and that has been litigated.

In short, our community has spoken and we honor that work.

So it's in that spirit I'd like to propose a statement

text of a statement for your consideration and see if you agree with it or disagree.

I can paste the text of it into the chat so you can read it more carefully, but this is what I've written.

With careful consideration of our design guidelines, with guidance from respected national preservation organizations, and in acknowledgement of the Blue Ribbon Commission's public process

and work to better understand the history and harmful legacy of these statues, we wish to state our strong support for city council's intention to remove the Lee and Jackson statues and to temporarily cover and contextualize the statues during a period of time before removal can occur.

and I will put that into the chat.

Thank you, Brick.

Mr. Chair, could you give us a few minutes to read this?

I don't know.

I have not seen this before.

I'm a little slow on the uptake, so I just want to read what was just put in the chat box.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm a slow reader.

I apologize for rushing you.

So is this, does Mr. Gass, does Breck present this?

Sorry, I'm getting tired.

Is he presenting this by way of emotion or like what's the proposed action here?

You know, it was really hard to not be able to have had the chance to discuss this until now.

Yeah.

We're there.

So I felt like I thought we needed language to at least

to be able to review and discuss.

Whether we amend, I'm fine with Brecht's language and if it were a motion or action by us, I'd be fine with it.

I'd like to just say the second half,

I'm actually much more sort of emphatic about the second sentence.

I really look forward to seeing what can go on in these spaces, and I think that will be a very interesting design process unlike you know the removal as unusual as the removal is not as awkward as it feels for us to be weighing in on that.

The design process of two parks and what could go there is a really neat opportunity for us and just an amazing opportunity and I'm excited to see what comes forward from the public and from the city and to see what improvements can be made when installations can go there.

Yeah, so I think that's the silver lining about, you know,

if we're uncertain about what we're trying to do here as advisory to council, I think that the second sentence is sort of more akin to the job that we do normally.

And I would also just add to Cheri's statement in that, you know, this has been a really painful time for the city and being able to help hopefully heal but also looking forward literally in terms of redeveloping a new future for these spaces and, you know, helping downtown re-energize after, you know, the sort of twin punch of

of the rally and then COVID.

It's, I think, really important that we make these spaces vibrant or do our best to make these vibrant spaces, whether we help with RFPs or whatever.

But I think it's a great opportunity.

And I think also, I think Brecht's language works for me.

I like how concise it is.

And I also think that

I just want to, you know, I don't think any of us are, uh, not like-minded when it comes to this, but I, I'm, I just, I guess I don't understand why we're saying the middle part.

We're the board of architectural review and there are comments in there that have absolutely nothing to do with the board of architectural review.

And while I would say them personally, and you may say them personally,

Why are we sending a statement to city council saying something that has nothing to do with us, I guess?

I mean, maybe we're just taking that opportunity because we haven't, but can we talk about that for a second?

Well, I think, thank you for the question, Andy.

I, I have been really, as I've pulled together my notes and thought about this and, and I've been very, tried very hard to separate my personal feelings about this from what I feel like star purview is VAR.

I think what's really sinister here is that these statues make it harder to tell a story of this community because of the false narratives.

And so I think that very much, in a way, if we're a board that has

the charge of working on the public's behalf to protect the historic and architectural heritage of this community.

These make it harder and they have made it harder.

And so I think that we have good grounding from our guidelines and from other preservation organizations for

for that will work.

Yeah, I don't have any specific suggestions.

It seems, I mean, I'm relatively new, right?

I've been doing this for 16 months at this point, but as far as I can tell, we've never made

personal statements about an object.

Yeah, and to be clear, when I offered in my discussion a commentary about the, I tried to rely on actually the findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission, not my own.

The thing I was just going to just sort of acknowledge Andy's point and not to take away from the Blue Ribbon Commission and basically the logic with which Brett constructed this, but for instance with murals, you know, we don't actually comment on the content, right?

We look at scale

and color and that sort of thing and try to determine if it's appropriate at that level.

But we do steer upon content.

But in this case, the content is pretty unavoidable for any variety of reasons.

I think it's an important part to include in the statement that, Andy, you're talking about the thing that we strongly support the city council's intention to remove the statues.

I mean, I think that's important for us to include because I think that is what council is asking us as an advisory body.

Is that what Andy was talking about?

I'm just

Well, it talks, uh, it talks about understanding history, harmful legacies, strong support, um, intention to remove.

I just, it just seemed, it's kind of like, uh, Tim was saying about murals and we may really like a mural or really hate a mural, but we, in my, again, in my limited experience, we never talk about the mural.

I mean, that makes sense.

And that was kind of my point, James.

It's like you're, you know, them asking us in the first place seemed odd and then we couldn't really find a way to vote on it, which is odd for what we do.

And then, you know, part C of that is if, if all of that, if A and B are true, then aren't we just, isn't just one line saying, yeah, yeah, we're okay.

You know, here's the thumbs up from the BAR.

I don't know.

I'm not trying to take your words away from you, Breck, obviously.

Right, right.

No, I mean, I think because what honestly what was a little confusing to me was basically City Council's charge to us or request to us to consider their intent.

And when you really think about the words, consider their intent, you know, OK.

We're considering it like they didn't ask us to actually

opine or offer our opinion.

Technically, I don't think that's the spirit of their request, but maybe they should award her the risk better.

So we could have a simple statement and include the notes from this conversation.

So, and I'm, you know, if we're trying to have a simple, it sounds like you guys are, you're understanding that we should kind of say yes, no, am I, I don't think you guys are disagreeing with that.

So then what part would you take out of that?

Because it seems like the dispute right now is just on the whole section.

But that seems to be the section that is being, sorry, Cheri, go ahead.

I'm confused.

I'll answer your question.

Because I, we've all been looking at these words, you know, the part that I think we

I personally may agree with, but that skews political in what Brecht has written.

And again, like Andy said, I don't disagree with it, but it's where we are opining about what a harmful legacy is.

That's where it is for me.

Because that just harmful legacy is an opinion.

And that's for me, that's politics.

And that's what this board typically does not do.

I don't know the rest of the board answer.

I feel like council is the direction and policy maker for the city.

And then the city manager and staff were supposed to execute on that vision and those decisions.

I just, I don't know.

I would ask people that have been the BAR for a lot longer than me, but I just don't remember the last time we took in a position, and I'm not saying this is a political, I'm just saying the language, that language is political because it forms an opinion about what a legacy is.

And I don't, you know, start to be way too oblique, but what a legacy is is very debatable.

People could think that it's not harmful, but it's something else.

And I'm not saying a good thing, but there may be another descriptor there that somebody would use that's stronger.

I guess I agree with Andy in spirit and I'm trying to figure out how to get to a place where we can all agree on what Brent has submitted to us and get past it.

But Robert, I'd love to hear what you, you know,

Well, obviously, I agree with everything Brecht said.

And to me, it didn't sound political at all.

It sounded like facts.

And I'm obviously new, much newer than Andy.

So I'm not sure how you guys approach murals.

but I agree with the statement.

I agree word for word that those things not only have brought a lot of pain on people of color, but they brought pain to the city and unwanted international media attention to the city of Charlottesville.

And we're still having this conversation while people are still dying in the streets and in their homes.

We're talking about a statue.

So I don't really care about the wording that Burke used.

because they're facts.

You're in the right group.

You know, nobody disagrees with that.

I think that I think the question, Robert, would be, is it on one hand, is it the Board of Architecture Review does not object to the city councils trying to take down the statues?

Or is it something more elaborate like what Brecht wrote?

And, you know, we're probably belaboring the point at this point anyway.

I think Andy actually struck something with me with what you just said and that we don't object and I think that the reason that struck me is because people do look to the BAR as a preservation-minded group, right?

They see this body as a group that typically tries to err on the side of

saving things and preserving things.

And so it is a little bit, I don't know if irony is the right word or hypocritical, I don't know what the right word is, but it's sort of backwards, right?

We're showing support of removing something that some would see as an historic object.

I think we built a pretty good case of saying like these statues are not listed,

really anywhere, at least in the city, at the city local level, as being historic objects.

So that gives us an out, if you will, but it also gives us a way to say like, they're sort of not within our purview.

But I think that's the trick is that I think a lot of people just on the surface think like, oh, it's the VAR, they're there to protect and preserve our historic features and character defining features of the city.

why aren't they saving these statues?

And it's like, clearly we know we have our reasons why we're not.

And so I think that's, to me, why it's important to chime in, find a way to chime in on this.

I think the tricky part is also not setting a precedent where something else 20 years from now, people wanna get rid of a building because, you know,

This is a crazy example.

I don't really have an example.

Like, you know, is this setting a precedent to get rid of something else just because of a political view?

Whatever it might be.

Like, I don't know if that makes sense.

Well, I guess I really appreciate the conversation.

It's an important one to have.

And I think for those reasons that you just mentioned, James, because it is important for us to state the grounding of our reasons of why we object.

And that's what I had hoped to do with the statement.

And I don't want to undermine our statement by appearing to step outside of what our jurisdiction is.

What I might suggest as an alteration, given the conversation, I had thought that, say, the terms of the history and harmful legacy was related to not our own personal views, but to the Blue Ribbon Commission's report, which was, as Robert says, that's a fact.

That's part of their report.

That's part of what they do.

But it's not necessary in terms of our statement.

We could take, say,

Breck, I think the words that you put in the beginning are, that's the reasoning, that's our backup, that's why we're doing this.

Because as James said, there are people that will expect the BAR to preserve anything that's old.

And there's a lot of research into why

It is appropriate at this time to take these statues down.

And it's, you know, there is potential for people to argue with us and not understand.

I mean, my read of this is that better understand the history of harmful legacy of these statues is the conclusion drawn by the Blue Ribbon Commission and as well as

the National Preservation Organization.

So we're not drawing that conclusion.

I agree with Rick and Tim having re-read it.

So I'll just withdraw any sort of, you know,

to comment that we should take that out because I completely agree that's qualifying what the commission did.

Like Robert said, their findings, it was such a comprehensive process.

I can't believe this report.

I haven't read it in a while.

I don't know if we want to talk about this anymore.

I did want to, just because this is on the record, I don't think the BAR is

I don't think we're appointed now that our job is to preserve history.

You know, we're supposed to define what history will be and what the future will be.

You know, I'm on here as a member of a commercial, I guess, commercial property owner in a commercial district.

I've never seen my job is to preserve anything.

It has windows in them.

We're slaves to weld.

We have to preserve those.

I'm serious.

We do not get rid of those.

I'm serious.

But there's a good reason for preserving that.

But I've never seen that as our job.

As a preservationist member of the BAR, I think my role is to... That and also we're a quasi-zoning board, James, in case you didn't know.

Well, again, the end result was going to be the same, so if everybody's in favor of the letter, then there's no reason not to send it.

Second.

Can I just get a clarification?

So we have a staff summary.

We'll have minutes of this discussion and you all have a statement that Mr. Gaskin prepared.

So we can

I think that makes sense.

You've got the, what could be the BAR statement as a, yeah, the general cover.

And then you have your, you have the staff report and the discussion as backup.

And the staff report is our supporting material, which is fundamentally what our statement is synopsizing and referring to.

Facebook forever, guys.

Okay, I will.

There's a second so I will call a vote.

Mr. Moore.

Mr. McClure.

Yes.

Ms.

Mr. Gastinger.

Aye.

And Mr. Schwartz.

Yes.

Thank you.

No, and I know this is something we've been working on internally and this isn't easy.

It is difficult.

It's difficult.

And I think everyone understands that.

But trying to understand that we're saying it correctly.

or appropriately, that's just not going to roll off the tongue.

I mean, so I appreciate the discussion and the hard work.

And certainly the feedback that you all have given me and Robert in allowing us to prepare something, a lot of good comments from you all over time have allowed us to present the things the way we did.

So I appreciate your patience with a seven page, 3000 word

summary.

So thank you for that.

If we can, I have, I know I always put on there the design guidelines as a comment or something to speak to.

And you all were correct.

I still haven't finished transcribing all of the handwritten notes over old documents.

My apologies, but we continue to move forward.

And

So, and I will also say that coming up in June, we have quite a few window projects on the agenda.

So we will certainly have, well, read up on it.

And so that we're prepared for, because I think that they are gonna become more common than we would like, but so be ready.

Other than that, I have nothing to report.

Robert, anything that,

No, we're fine.

Nope.

Oh, yes.

May 30th.

There's going to be a virtual unveiling of the new Daughters of Zion historic marker.

Just if you've been following that, the marker has been updated to reflect the archeological findings that there were likely many more burials there than previously thought.

So there's a new marker that's being installed, paid for by the HRC.

Yeah, and there's going to be a virtual unveiling, and it's an annual ceremony anyway.

It's not just for the marker.

I'll send you some sort of link once I find it to the BAR email list.

And I guess if anyone cares, there's still the comp plan opportunities to comment.

Yeah, there were some odd things last time I looked at it.

There's quite a bit in there.

As far as I place, I believe is trying to go to a quarterly meeting things.

I might actually make it to more place meetings as somebody wants to go instead.

But, you know, I think right now is the last the last meeting was quite a bit of discussion about West Main and whether that how that's going to move forward.

It's just disappointing that it's kind of, you know, really taken a hint.

And then I guess it isn't really placed, but I'm assuming everybody noticed, you know, the Belmont Bridge is having some budget spasms now.

I got a note from Jim Rownsville, my tunnel will be in already.

So the Belmont Bridge staff has found the $4 million from additional grants from the state.

So all that council has to do is approve to spend state money.

There is not a hiccup with that.

Wasn't there, I mean, I hate to bring this up, but wasn't there something, didn't the lighting have a hiccup?

Isn't there something going on in the lighting?

The lighting will be a surprise when it's installed, I'm guessing.

Sorry, just reading a question about the guidelines.

but I think that train left the station.

So that's okay.

A point just be made to anybody that's listening is that we are in reviewing the guidelines and that's all of that, including some of the things that were mentioned during the statute discussion, things that maybe the BAR thinks need to be addressed.

So and in section six or chapter six, which is the public,

places.

So there are opportunities for those changes, anything that you all suggest to be addressed during that.

So that was just the question that I said, we'll bring that up later, but thank you.

Sorry.

Yeah, and I encourage you all, and I said that's when I spoke with Carl and Brett, the chair and co-chairs, we always do before a meeting.

Certainly, there's a lot of opinions, and I encourage everyone to, that's an opportunity to speak personally, and I don't need to treat this as you've expressed your view.

If you've got something you want to say, I encourage you to do that.

I'm not sure exactly how that meeting will,

It'd be an interesting Zoom experience, but we're going to be little teeny tiny dots everywhere.

So mark your calendar for that.

So Breck and I did speak earlier today.

There are sites in the city which I think the BAR could, as a group, champion.

sites that are important to the local black community.

Oakwood Cemetery, for example, the southern end of Oakwood was the city's, the colored section.

And we know there's a lot of unmarked graves there.

We know it's in a section of, that is topographically not the best, it doesn't drain well.

This is something that Edwina St.

Rose had mentioned to me

So there are, you know, things that maybe we as the BAR could elevate in invisibility with counsel and say, you know, what about this and how can we, how can we approach this?

So, again, not in terms of CUA, but, you know, maybe there are, maybe there is something in the comp plan about Oakwood possibly being an IPP.

So these are things that the BAR has a role in and

For IPPs, is it required that the owner goes along with it?

You know, I guess I would say it's, I don't know what happened in the first go round.

I mean, my house is an IPP.

I don't know what the owners thought back in the 70s.

But the,

You know, and it also the kind of the question of, well, what would that mean for a cemetery?

Does that mean, you know, COAs for every, you know, headstone?

But there are, I think the idea of elevating the awareness of, and I've mentioned it to you before also with Maplewood, you know, Daughters of Zion, the Hebrew cemetery, and certainly we're looking out there at

at the Mark Reyes at Penn Park.

And these are all burial sites that the city has owned and is responsible for.

And so, I don't know, just some things we can, you know, can raise, but also just simply the conditions that might be there.

And there may be, you know, sites within the community that haven't been recognized that, you know, the BAR can maybe initiate some discussion on.

Maybe we won't get tent in Page neighborhood

as a historic district, but maybe there are sites within there that were identified.

Similarly, what we did with the Burleigh Middle School or Burleigh High School being listed on the National Register.

So I just want to put that out there as opportunities to take the comments that were made tonight and be proactive with them and not just reactive with them.

And the BAR is a good place to do that.

So, and I will stop being cerebral and pedantic.

Just a curiosity, and maybe I can take this offline with Jeff, but speaking about cemeteries, so I live around the corner from Jackson-Vaya Elementary School, and there's, on the, which way are we, kind of north edge of that property, there's a small fenced-in area that has a lot of yucca plants in it, and it's otherwise overgrown by poison ivy, but something just jumps at me like that

It might be a cemetery.

Like it's pretty small.

And I know the via homestead is right across the street by a family.

So it doesn't show up on a tax map as a separate parcel.

You know, it's shown as part of the elementary school plot.

Interesting.

I think it might be worth taking a look at.

and there's the Goyne Cemetery and then there's the Orange Dale, there's a small cemetery of like eight to the 1700s.

I usually think snakes first, but we'll go out with pots and pans.

That usually works.

All right.