Board of Architectural Review Meeting   4/15/2025

Thank you.

Are you in a booth?

We'll be ready to roll.

Everyone in favor say aye.

Aye.

I had also offered- And just to- Yes, ma'am.

This is the heirloom development, what we've been calling the Artful Watcher project, for lack of a better word.

One.

Because it was asserted that I was wrong.

incremental COAs, their instruction now is you can request an extension and indicating one.

but that proceeded.

And that's good for, what, five years?

Yeah.

OK.

But from here forward, this is the interpretation of that.

So then what happens if it goes beyond the second year?

So it's not a battle.

Just like these applicants have to tonight.

Mr. Timmerman and I have talked, probably appropriate for him to be there as the chair that evening.

Not Mr. Zehmer?

Yeah, he wasn't there, remember?

So it's already gone before council?

No, it'll go on that first Monday meeting, whatever the first Monday meeting is.

So James isn't available as our chair?

Well, because he presided over the meeting, I figured.

No good deeds were punished.

We read his notes, but he wasn't present.

What were, I forget, what were the changes that you wanted?

So I really want to keep you guys as short as possible tonight, but I had, I do have some, did I, is it sticking out of my head?

Are we on bullet point three?

Yeah, please tell me what I,

Have we started that?

Section 34.5, does that have to do with the limit?

We've had, if I brought something to you all and you say, and you have said, Jeff, I think you know what, we're fine with you okaying that, or yeah, something, that fence type of thing, where I brought it to you as a question,

If we as a board ask to see a brick color or some kind of a mock-up or whatever it is to follow up upon a review, I think we should all be able to see it and give it a chance.

Finally.

The city's been hoping for something up there.

I said on the front side the height probably wouldn't, anybody would ask, I said but on that back side and I referred to, what's that?

Is this the Dabney parking lot or is this the train station?

You have, I expect by no one application has already come in and it is for 1301 Wortland Street and it's to raise the Wortenbunner House.

Raise the what?

Oh really?

Likely dates to around 1830, but so does that mean the project that we approved to wrap it is dead I I haven't I haven't been able to piece that together yet, but just so you know applicant or Is it the same applicant?

So this address is?

They never did the apartment.

Yeah.

There's a development being proposed that would require raising those.

You mean it would be across the street from the new?

So it's going to be, I don't know.

Well, then you don't have to worry about the streak state anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

Did the university secretly buy all three of those recently?

So there's some things that are coming up.

Didn't we review one of those houses, one of the three houses you're referring to?

You may have long ago, but not in my time.

I think that was the last time I went over there.

then part of that requirement is that you all, every year, have one hour of training relative or germane to your job.

I remembered one of the minor athletes reviews.

The what?

The mosaic at University Circle in Toronto.

The other one that I'm getting is, yeah, to drive my car.

Like are they waterproofing under it?

I think they're not certain to what they're going to find.

Isn't there a way that you can insert like expanding foam under concrete and make it kind of pop back up?

But the other one that I am going to be asking you all about is, and then we're going to talk about conservation districts.

So this will be on the docket next month?

There was something you found in the survey.

a black church not wanting the window to be broken again would have put this wood insert in it.

I'm leaning in that direction, but I need to do somewhere else.

Frankly, why not put a stained glass back lid in there?

and I've responded that well that you're introducing something that wasn't there and backlighting and creating you know it's not artwork now you're you're suggesting windows where there were not windows so.

Is there any discussion of why not just turn it back into a window?

Most stained glass windows are experienced from the inside, not the outside.

It's just glass instead of plastic.

Well, we don't know yet because we don't have the specs yet.

I don't have that answer.

I don't know how I feel about an illuminated sign.

Did they say illuminated?

I made the joke about it looking like Publix, but it does kind of

It could be a detriment, I think,

Yeah, so I have to struggle with it.

Are they planning to use that as a sign?

Is that under what you're really receiving?

And it may not allow you to tell them what they can put up for signs.

Anything else on that list that popped in your head?

The surf board things.

Kate has actually moved her office across the hall and I keep forgetting she's now a few doors down for me so I'll walk over to the other side and we have to go through our get smart doors to get there.

We'll fight each other.

Somebody's doing something in North Belmont that they bring it to you.

They do not have a local district corollary.

But these, in and of itself, something being on the National Register does not mean we have purview.

It just happens to be our global designation overlap.

unless one of those falls within the local district designation, we do not have purview over it.

And I know I've used this example, I used it this morning.

But the county has no legal means to deny that demolition permit.

There's no local ordinance that they could say, no, we can't allow you a demolition permit.

allows us to have some say over alterations and demolitions.

IPP is just local, is that right?

So that's where, and every, go back a slide, and every national register district are not

Is it because everything else was local and then they wanted to fill in the gaps and so they made tax credits, right?

But it was that very real concern that there would be a people didn't want to be subject to PAR review.

Yes.

They don't want to do that.

And the Little High neighborhood, which we completed, the Rose Hill district we completed, Star Hill was completed.

Tethic Page.

It's not the deep dive.

When you go to put something on the National Register, that's a much deeper dive.

We make a recommendation then to the state review boards, well DHR is the state review board and Jody used to serve on that.

So that's a, it doesn't, it means now you can go back and if you wish to submit a nomination for the National Register, we'll accept it.

and in fact even to the point where doing a survey is, they're very wary of pushback and we dealt with that at 10 page.

And why do the homeowners want it or not want it?

DHR is actually very interested in Greenbrier, which has a really interesting 1950s and 60s environment to it that they'd like to consider, but I don't know if that's possible.

I've had

One of the things Mary Joy had said, we'd always like to do South Belmont, but that's 1,100 properties.

So we've done them, and then they're now eligible, but just like with

And so it really, we want those neighborhoods to take ownership of it.

And that's what did occur with, let me put it back now, that's what did occur with the three conservation districts.

And the design review in those places is done by the Planning Commission.

I have a lot more freedom to review things in entrance corridors administratively.

One of the big differences, I used myself today by being creative, so the ADC district guidelines are about 120, 150 pages high.

But they're not that old.

And the conservation district guidelines are, I think, three or four pages high.

Martha Jefferson is part of the Conservation District established in 2010.

spent some time a couple weeks ago with folks from Fredericksburg interested in conservation districts and when you get out into these places and sort of I mean we look at the piecemeal but when you get out and walk around look at them you do see it really is an interesting there's a cohesiveness to this district that that that works I you know when you get further north things start to spread out a little bit but you know down near the hospital it really is interesting how how well in all ties together

There's a set of character-defining features which these neighborhoods have produced.

But what I think's really interesting about this district, and it's reflected in, you go to the next page, but it's these, you have these

So there's this rhythm, let me go back to the picture, that this is really what you all are charged with preserving and protecting.

Eclectic is the best word I can think of for the Willam Mills district.

We don't get much out of this district so we haven't had to

Primarily in a conservation district I will bring to you, well I have to bring to you demolitions and demolitions of primary, they, it doesn't, it's not clear but I

to have at least some level of review for new construction.

I think people would be supportive of it.

They're going to build.

But this is one where the guidelines, because the Martha Jeff, they were very involved.

a little bit of flexibility.

We will see how that goes.

So under required update, is that something that we need to do?

And so that's why I'm sort of teeing this up.

Do they have community organizations that are set up now?

I have a north downtown group.

I don't know when they last met.

So you can use them as the initial contact, but you really still have to reach out to everybody.

I'm not saying that they have meetings monthly, but there's certain leaders that are still, that you could send something to.

There are individuals in the neighborhood who, like we had the situation with 10th and Page.

It was like, yes, there were certain folks that were involved, but that didn't get us

So it's just something to be, we're going to have to be very diligent with it.

We do have the software we've purchased that the Parks Master Plan was done to engage the public and we have access to that now so that could be a method for... Were the neighborhoods engaged during the development code process?

and having neighborhood-specific meetings in 2003 and 2005.

Right.

Yeah.

I don't remember any of them.

It was a door outreach for the zoning code, I'm pretty sure.

And I think there's ways it could be.

But also, I think we have to be careful with the guidelines if we change them, that we change them for all three districts.

And if you have any questions, that's your 15 minute training on conservation history.

Did I hear you correctly that a survey would be 100,000 for a neighborhood?

So to do, sorry.

The South Belmont.

That's the rough budget to do a survey for property.

What's the action?

It was neighbors within the district.

But to just simply as a sort of rule of thumb, if I, the city preservation guy, went in and said, we're going to survey South Milan, I would have to budget that as $100,000, given the, you know,

Is it a house survey and a land survey?

and I was kind of laughing because only an attorney can read those things and not falsely.

So that cost is just crazy.

What is the woolen mill survey?

There's.

Well there's history on it.

A narrative.

He was, anyway, told a lot about the owner, 213 7th, the little white house, the Everett house.

And it was built by John Coles.

But to Carl's question, the survey's not on our city website.

There's a lot of stuff that's not.

So one, I just offer the South Belmont as an example of if we did a survey, it wouldn't be inexpensive.

Now I can't remember your question.

Ron had a comment.

That's my personal opinion.

Yeah, that's never happened.

Okay, well that's what I'm saying.

So you do get results out of these things.

Could the neighborhood come at Woollen Mills and say that we don't want to be a historical... So being on the National Register or not

from, if someone wanted to build a highway through the city of Charlottesville, they would have to, if there are state and federal dollars involved, they'd have to have a pretty darn good reason for bulldozing a historic neighborhood.

But could a historic district decide to dissolve itself?

So from a, at the national register.

No, I'm not worried about the national register, I'm talking about the city.

I don't know, I think that a community could, and also.

But it usually would come before us.

As a recommendation, right.

And it's legislation for them, they would be amending their city code.

They would have to change the text and then they would have to change the map that reflects.

So for inside these historical districts it is legally mandated if you wanted to demolish a building you had to come to the floor and then

For a local designated historic property, yes.

And the rest is a little bit soft as far as what our design guidelines are and how we legislate those districts.

The national registrar, though, you'd be- No such thing.

The thing is that property is, it's one large property and this school house is one of two structures and so I'm like, well I don't know exactly how that would apply.

Would they have to split the property?

They tried to do that before and that was not valid, right?

I haven't had, Cheri, you've probably had to deal with it.

Riverdale.

Yeah, I haven't had to work with it.

We went through that process and they were able to demolish it and it doesn't exist anymore.

They left it in IPP.

Those are the only two ones that I know of that have been deep.

And then 415, 10th got added.

the viability of that use or the viability of the building or anything else, you know we're in a reactive position almost passive frankly on some of these applications.

I will create a certificate suitable for framing.

Is there a quiz we need to take now?

I got 13 messages from my family, like what is going on?

Motion to adjourn?

So moved.

All in favor, stand up.

Ron, my son's moving into a new six blocks north.