June 19, 2017 — Meeting Transcript

Just making it clear that tonight is a public hearing for approval of the special development sub-district plan and site plan and architectural for the sub-district 2B of the Centene Clayton campus. So if you remember, we have the overall master plan that has been already approved for the project and that is called the SBD and it has a plan associated with it. and the SDE plan established sub-districts 1, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3, and 4. To date, 1 and 2A sub-district have been approved through the same process we're going to go through tonight for 2B. This is the only sub-district we are considering tonight is 2B. Sometime in the future when Centene is ready to seek development approvals for 2C, actually their residential portion of that sub-district, and three and four which are a mix of hotel and office and retail commercial. Those will come sometime in the future when they're ready to seek approvals for that. Tonight we're only considering 2B, and 2B is the corporate civic auditorium. so with that i'm going to hit highlights of our separate recordings rather lengthy and i will provide our recommendation and then i believe the applicant has a presentation So the Sub-District 2B is located on Forsyth Boulevard, directly west of Carondelet Plaza. It is 8.88 acres in size and will be developed with a corporate civic auditorium structure which includes 1,000 auditorium seats and a multi-functional lobby area. The area of the auditorium is approximately 94,116 feet gross square feet. Three levels will be located above grade and two levels will be located below grade. The total height of the structure is 74.25 feet, measured from average existing break to the mean elevation of the slanted roof. And the area of the building in Subdistrict 2B, including support space, is 110,400 square feet. Listed in your staff report are the criteria for approval. In terms of compatibility, staff is upbeat that the project generally complies with the vision of the downtown master plan and the sub-district development plan which was approved earlier this year or late last year. The proposed development is generally compatible in terms of use, mass, and height with existing proposed nearby structures. In terms of landscaping, City of Clayton streetscape will be provided along the street front of Forsyth Boulevard and Carondelet Plaza. Directly adjacent properties include Subdistrict 2A and 2C, which do not require buffering. The landscape area along Carondelet Plaza should include a variety of landscapes and sizes to provide screening of the blank elevation and positively contribute to pedestrian assistance. In terms of traffic and circulation, Subdistrict 1 and 2A will provide the parking needed to support Subdistrict 2B. So 1 and 2A of our event group. 2A includes the parking garage that is associated with the parking required for this project. Pedestrian circulation in and out of the auditorium will be provided through the main entrance located in the Subdistrict 2A building and a secondary access point along Carmelette Plaza. in terms of streetscape we went over that there's some minor changes staff is of the opinion that all the driveways sidewalks curbs and gutters are to be installed in accordance with city standards and that will take place with respect to parking the special development plan requires 250 parking spaces which are provided in the sub-district 2a garage and the workload parking provided in the sub district 1 garage The special development plan requires four loading spaces and three archipos underneath the building with access divided off of Cargillet Plaza. The special development plan required 13 bicycle parking racks and 13 archipos, however the plans do not indicate their specific design, location or layout. With respect to design and materials, the proposed project appears to be a generally well-designed high quality building that exhibits distinctive and identifiable characteristics. The proposed project will be a significant positive addition to the area and downtown as a whole. Generally, I'll just go ahead and skip to the conclusion. I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions and a lot of input from the applicant. The proposed project appears to be a generally well-designed high quality building that exhibits distinctive and identifiable characteristics. The proposed project will be a significant positive addition to the area and downtown as a whole. Staff is of the opinion that if revised as recommended, the project would comply with criteria for approval of a special development district and site plan review. Staff's recommendation is to approve the site plan and to recommend approval of the sub-district plan to the Board of Aldermen under the following conditions. First, in terms of public works conditions, A, a final streetscape design shall be approved by the City of Clayton Public Works Department. B, electrical and irrigation systems shall be connected from Sub-District 2A. C, remove all material from the streetscape easement that does not conform to city streetscape standards. Sidewalks shall be for city streetscape standards D, street improvements adjacent to Subdistrict 2B shall be implemented prior to completion of Subdistrict 2D. And E, the city's traffic engineering consultant is updating the TIS to consider the changes made to the site plan so improvements shall include but are not limited to the following. One, foresight freestriping and or widening to accommodate lane configuration improvements provided westbound left turn lane on foresight boulevard at the Subdistrict 2A garage entrance. And two, to implement signal retiming and optimization program The extent of the signals beyond adjacent streets that may need to be optimized is to be determined by the City of Clinton Public Works. In terms of other requirements, not associated with this specific department. A, revise page six of the site plan review application to list the correct stormwater runoff calculations. B, revise page eight of the site plan renew application to correctly label and break down billing square footage based on uses in SD2B. C, revise sheet S100 to note and outline the limits of SD2B, not SD2A. D, revise Sheet C100 to note the correct property area for SP2B. E, revise the material of the utility screen wall located along Caramela Plaza to match the home stone panels on the building facade. F, revise all submission sheets that refer to building height including application plans to correctly state and depict the maximum proposed height of the building from average existing grade to the mean height of the roof slant to be 74.25 feet. And G, applicant shall provide a landscape plan including a planting schedule approved by the city's contractor landscape architect prior to the issuing of building permits. The landscape plan shall address comments and markups from the review letter dated June 12th, 2017 And finally, H for my details of the proposed locations and the signs of the required bicycle racks. I know I skipped around quite a bit and I apologize for that. I hope it wasn't confusing, but I'm confident the others will be able to fill in.

Thank you. Before we go ahead, I have a question of staff. We are only looking at sub-district 2B, correct? Correct. However, it refers to the loading dock which is actually both in 2A and 2C. Is that correct?

The access point to the loading dock comes off of Carondelet, but that road access point and then the loading dock is actually underneath 2A and 2B. So that entry point off Carondelet is associated with 2A and 2D, not 2C.

Could

I ask one last question? Let me finish. If we are going to consider approving Does that flow with 2E or would it be considered in 2C?

The access point, as it's shown right now, was actually shown that same way and approved to show the loading box for 2A as well. So there weren't any changes in the curb cut location from that discussion. So anything that would come with 2C that would change it would be coming at a later date. Today you would just be approving how it would provide access for 2B.

So that is already given the access point?

Yes. The location of it. The

location, yes. Okay, thank you. Did you open the public hearing? I apologize if you did, I didn't hear you. No, I'm sorry. Go open the public hearing right

now. Along the lines of our chairman's questions, 2B, which we're looking at now, refers to changes in 2A. But at least, you know, change to A since we're not, I mean just theoretically. How would that impact

2B? I understand the question but the 2A changes are mainly to the facade of the building

and the entrance lobby and the library. I thought that the lobby was now, or this structure was now 2B. So, the entry

question.

on the area of 2Cs into the 2A garage, which appears as part of the 2A ingress and egress . The ARV is, I understand it, is reviewing for 2D the architecture of the new auditorium. And a lot he does Well, it's changing retail to market, which just changed the usage of it.

So if this body didn't want to have retail, that could be from behind there. That would be probably that. So that's why I'm asking how. So that's how it is, yeah.

I think what we were viewing it as, and it is, I mean, correct if it's not retail as it was originally proposed, but it is part of, and maybe we should get into that at a different time when they go through their projects, but it is integrated in with this kind of street-level activity that the downtown master plan is trying to encourage there by providing and I'll probably get your terminology wrong, but kind of an open, not part of the auditorium, but part of an open space where activities and events and whatnot could be occurring as opposed to being inside the Thousand Seed Auditorium, being outside in that outside lobby area. So no retail, it's a gathering place for people, and that's the

way we've kind of looked at it. Pretty exciting. We intended to present a very detailed presentation on that. Well,

I'm just concerned that if we approve this, it's almost like we're saying yes to A, changes without giving it its due. So I'm just concerned about that implication, which makes me hesitant.

Well, we are going to be looking at 2A after the public hearing on 2D.

Well, I understand. So you'll have time

to see how the whole thing works. It's important to us and we think it's important to you and the community that you see how the whole 2A and 2D project work together. So as I understand it, We're in the public hearing for 2B process that the city goes through. And then we do intend to present changes to 2A that we think are modifications that also need to be approved by this body to accommodate them overall national plan that works best for track and field.

And you are taking two separate votes, so I apologize if I misunderstood your concern. I don't want to have to vote on TV before it changes to TV. We agree. Right, and I think that was one of the reasons why we switched it so you can have the overall concept of how projects are integrated, but certainly you can vote as you wish in terms of...

Are we ready to go forward on the plan review for 2D?

site that's almost 13 stories tall and the progress has been just amazing to watch. But just in the last six, seven months Centene continues to grow and our need for space just continues to magnify and we continue to take additional space moving around the county just to get us to the point where we can occupy our new building here. But I just want to point out some things. Centene now has 31,000 monthly employees. We hired another 50 or so in today. Since we appeared last time, that's a couple thousand initial employees. We've jumped on the Fortune 500 list to number 66, and that is just really impressive, and we're really proud to be that company here in St. Louis. When you're making fortunes, our forecast is growing company in the United States. That's incredible to think about. A couple other things, we now support and provide services to over 12 million members in the United States, and over a million members internationally. So the growth of Centene just continues. But while we grow, we've always taken time to step back and encourage charitable giving and leadership by our executives and our corporation. And this, I think, says a lot, this slide. I just want to leave it up here just for a minute. I know we're ready to get into this stuff. But this is just a good kind of representation of some of the organizations that our company is behind. Again, here's another one that is out there that's just really impressive. And it continues to grow. As Centene's good fortune continues to grow, we continue to give back globally to the community and to these great charities. What is Centene doing for Clayton? Well, I think most of us, most of you on this board are probably keenly aware that some of the public may not be. We're continued supporters of the Clayton Police Department, their cadet program, Special Olympics, Fire Department, even Clayton Chamber of Commerce, Parties in the Park. It could go on and on. You guys can see this for yourself. But again, it's our commitment to the city of Clayton. This is where we envision our company to continually grow. And this auditorium that we're putting together is going to be a training hub to support the growth of our organization all around the world. We will be bringing people into Clayton on a weekly basis to get training to help advance our business. Tonight, you know, we're going to get into it. We've got Bob Clark here. We've got Eli Washington from HOK. But some team is committed to Clayton, and that's the message from Mr. Nightingale and from the nearly 31,000 employees scattered around the world here tonight. So at this point, I really just want to introduce Bob Clark. He's been here before and Bob can come up and say a few words. And very few Bob. And then we're going to get right to Eli and get into the fun stuff. So thank you. Thanks, Bill.

Well, this is good to be back. We're very, very excited about the progress we've made. We're going to wrap it up. Thank you. So we, um... Totally agree, Joanne, that you need a kind of full picture. We thought instead of just crashing forward that we would just take a minute because of the size and because of the commitment that we've made all along to transparency and really trying to get feedback. As you know, we started the process over a year ago, June 6th, with more of a meeting to just kind of open the project up to the community It wasn't a formal request kind of meeting, and I think tonight we're ready to start the next process. We're very excited about the Civic Auditorium, which will also act as a performing arts center in the community. This was something we first broached the subject of the project with the elected officials and other people in the Clayton community. was actually asked as a part of the development, is it possible to do some kind of larger auditorium than just a corporate auditorium? And Michael listened and he took that to heart. Michael Bagrow, Mr. Nigel. You're going to see, I think, tonight that he has really emboldened the entire development team at Richmond Wingfield. He is an absolute amazing expert in Chris Reeder's shadow in terms of how these centers really work and how they can be the most productive. H-O-K, world class architects. And Flaco, we'd like to take for the leading builders and the architects. So we think also it's important for us to go through a little bit of history. And so I think it's, I personally have got a lot of questions and comments about the development and the zoning. And so there were some questions about what was actually approved for the zoning. And I think it's just worth taking a second to go down memory lane. We first received SDB approval and went through a whole very public, intense process as you all remember and are aware of. And then this was approved by the AARP and then this went to Board of Aldermen and received man's approval. Subsequently, we had continuing conversations going on with our neighbors. I won't say any particular group like the but also the plaza and neighbors to the north in the neighborhoods had continuing comments on the subject of the real need to move Lyle It became a major discussion point and we went back and re-evaluated that and it really shook up our whole design. We think that in this case the whole dialogue caused us to end up with a much better overall project. We submitted our SDE plan, reopened the discussion, and the major changes, and I'm going to, if people will be patient with me, I'm going to toggle back and forth just a little bit. But essentially, when I go back, you'll see that we, in the new SDE approval, which was also approved by ARB unanimously by the Board of Aldermen on January 10th, What we did, the major change was that we left Lyle in place. This did a handful of things that were extremely helpful to the project and particularly to anybody that lives in Crescent to the north side of the building. This opened up the Lyle and that became a real like bullet park which would be landscaped on both sides of the city. and we also agreed to lower the heights of the parking structure here and here so that it would really open up a window for the people who live in this area here. The other thing that happened is that we redistributed our parking, and we made this parking garage SMALLER EVEN THOUGH WE INCREASED PARKING FOR THE 2B AUDITORIUM WHICH WE'VE ALREADY PRESENTED AND GONE THROUGH. AND THEN THAT SHOOK UP SUBDET DISTRICT 3. I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT JUST FOR A SECOND, TO RECRUIT PEOPLE'S FAMILIES. BEFORE WE HAD A VERY LARGE BLOCK OF STRUCTURED PARKING. IT WAS A BIT UNALLICIT. And we're wrapping this parking garage with 120 residential units. So when we went to the redesign, the new zoning plan, we moved the auditorium from over here to over here. more central location. I think sort of the whole Toronto Latin classic district bedroom is more accessible. It makes more sense for it to be directly across the street from the Ritz and it was a little bit tight on this site here and then that caused us to move 80 of our residential units to sub-district three which is positive because it's more of a transportation district oriented project and the metro link is immediately to the east. And that left us capability to add 40 or so units on the south side of the parking garage. So basically, we would encapsulate two full sides of a parking garage and keep in this area right here, the very residential field that we committed to when we had our multiple meetings with the Crescent neighbors one time. So those were the major changes that we made. And then this is a plan of before approval and the subsequent approval on January 10th. So again, we had a large parking structure and we were relocating bile. At the time we had really good reasons for why we were doing that. But as we started looking at the whole new plan with the community, it just ended up shaking out to be a much better plan by leaving Lyle here. So we moved Walbridge from here to be at the corner of Forsyth and Clayton. We think from a planning point of view that's an excellent outcome. And then we have moved 40 or so of residential units, which we think is a great location for that future building. We'll do a wrap around some of the parking on the core site. We think that will be, you know, give the project the mixed use labor that you all were pushing us for. So those are the major changes that we made. I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail about this because Susan did a really good job, but this whole section has been approved. The architectural review has been approved. We were under construction. We're making great progress. And then we've gotten 2A approved in its current form. We have a permit and we're under construction on that building. And then today we're presenting 2B And we are not presenting, not ready to present, haven't really done a plan yet on track three or track four. And we're not presenting 2C because we're just not sure what the final program will do for that one yet. But we're focusing our attention on 2D tonight and in that road, some of the things changes to 2A, which we also need to analyze and study, and hopefully see approval over time to both of those components. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Eli Hoisington, who you all have heard from before, and he'll do a great job of presenting the whole entire project to you all. Thank you. As Bob said, really what

we're going to talk about is a quick recap, and I'm going to do that only to illustrate where the things were we needed to focus on, some of the things that we had heard. And then I'm moving to the 2B corporate auditorium, and that's going to be presented sort of holistically so you can understand its relationship to the block. And then we can come back and talk specifically about being modifications to 2A. So that's kind of where we're headed. Again, to be brief here, this is the overall image that you all have seen. This is where we left off in January at the Board of Aldermen. Quick diagram here to illustrate just very clearly, we had a garage structure with these kind of vertical gray panels and we had attached to it this thing that looked oddly like your computer mouse, which I can be critical of now that we have something different attached to it. And we made some commitments to everyone on this board and to the Board of Aldermen, and this is reminding what we said we would do. One of the key things we said we would is in the beginning of the process, we actually had two drives on Curanda Lab. We agreed to consolidate those into a single point. with loading access adjacent to that garage access. Again, in the interest of one of them instead of two and then consolidation of that loading services. Remember we actually had one off in the alley that we brought over to one spot. This also implied that we were gonna look at enhanced street scapes. We talked a lot about that in sub-district one, that the city minimum is a certain dimension and the Centene project always looked for enhancement to that street scape for spill out, for retail, et cetera. So I'm setting the stage that we're gonna show you some more of that in the future. So what has changed and what hasn't changed? On the left is the plan where we were in January, and on the right is the plan, what we just submitted, You can see that the garage, the three-lane access point, the treatment along Lyle, the stepping around the corner of the Crescent, the general scope and size are really unchanged in terms of where the garage sits. This is specifically 2A. You can see that we finalized the consolidation of that loading, as we said. What we haven't shown, obviously, which we're showing in big green field here right now, is what happens on 2C. But that would be, if you did hint at it in January, that would be a spot instead of a future submission point. We drew these and we shared this with you in both December and January. And again, I think the simple point here is to make sure we have a big dashed box that sat next to that and sort of showed up as that mouse design. And then here we have an unknown, which was the auditorium when we had, again, a garage which had some brick panels that faced north on Forsyth, stepped down with the Redbird Residential facing Lyle. On the south face, facing the Crown Ballet, we had scored precasts and a little bit of brick. And so we took a look at all of this and reminding you again that we even went so far as to throw 3D drawings that showed nothing where the auditorium was. We said, we need to think about this. And one of the charges was to come back with the design and talk about a lot of the things that Bob mentioned, the gateway aspect of this site, the iconic nature of this civic building, to come back to this board when we're ready. So where are we now? Coming with that concept. And this is one of the, this is actually a sketch that turned into, I think it turned into this waterfall rendering that really represents some of the initial thinking of this iconic presence. One of the things that we really were intrigued about was the kind of figural nature of these buildings. They tend to be very solid. If you think about great performance spaces or great auditoriums, they're very rarely transparent. So one of our goals was to turn that concept inside out and to wrap what is this beautiful object with public space. And that reflects our attitude towards streetscape, reflects how we feel about the neighborhood and needing that activity. So it does turn that relationship somewhat inside out. which I think is really intriguing here. So what you're seeing is the beginning sketches of this form of the auditorium shell wrapped with public space, with concourses, with the lounges, the ability to get into it. This is looking from what was the old famous bar building. This is a view that would be difficult to see because of where you stand, but sort of an elevation along the entire street. And again, this red line indicates where we would have the delineation by zoning between 2A and 2B. Everything sort of to the right of this is the garage structure and everything to the left is 2B. What we were interested about as we started to explore this again was, well, how much of that very transparent public realm that is turning this building sort of inside out and having something feeling very accessible could we pull to the west? So what are the programs, what are the things that we can do to take space from the hall itself? There's two reasons we did this. One is the streetscape and the activity, and the second one is the creation of what we call the Great Hall. How did we do that? So we pulled the main entrance and the lobby and some of those functions, essentially the foyer, right, before you get into the pre-function space, into the garage and stuff. the box office where one people take it to these events that we've talked about, the non-sentient events, holds for others. So it highlights around the entrance. And then moving, where we move one core backwards, which I'm gonna use multiple hands here. So where this core, we push back, so that the streetscape would finish this kind of step. This was actually moved a little bit forward. This entry is now activated here. So again, the plan, since it's subtle changes to the elevation we're going to talk about in the second part of the hearing, but the intent was to design the city center as a whole. Yeah? Some of my friends. I glued them down. Can everybody hear me if I speak loud enough? Is that okay? All right, I'll just try and speak out then when I'm on the show. So I'm going to walk you around some images that we generated for this concept as we started to think about really taking this and putting ourselves in Clayton and starting to look at the project. So this is standing at the corner of, again, sort of like the famous bar building looking back. And what I would illustrate here is the intent to really step the building down to get to a much more human scale here as opposed to something much taller. And the goal to really, even with the camping and some of these edges, to pull all of this environment to maximize how much of the street furniture we have. So if you think about what the number of events and the frequency that Satine is talking about using this, there's kind of a beauty in having all of this active because it's really going to see a lot of visibility and a lot of energy from day one. And it is day one. On opening day, they are the tenant. They're going to be in that space and using it, which is pretty exciting. This glassy, highly transparent set of sort of ribbons that wrap around the structure. It extends all the way around. I'll talk a little bit about the green buffer here in a moment. And what we do is actually a third ribbon shows up which is this stone base which then we carve out with more glass for that extra entry. So this becomes really three or four ribbons here. Again, this is an evening shot. You see us doing a lot of day and evening tests because the quality of this at night versus day, it's going to be substantially different where you really see this beautiful sort of . As we come around to Carondelet, again, this is the line between 2B and 2A. And so we pulled the glass around and up covering about a third of that garage structure. We pulled the brick and some of the windows around. That then frames over what is that new loading entry. And then we've introduced some similar language, although this is the fire-rated version. So on the north side, we have the opportunity for glass and texture and a few other things because I don't have any building that's going to be stuck on there, but it's open to the foreside. Here, this is the minimum wall area. It's really the fire-rated assembly separation between the future 2C and 2A in the garage. So we've treated it here. We've brought around a stored precast. through this area that represents that raided wall with the intent of matching color, scoring pattern, giving it some articulation. So this is significantly, this is quite a difference here pulling all this over from the plain pre-capped wall we have at the NJ market. I want to bring you inside a little bit to talk about again what happened. So when we did this inside out move, we created a new space. So this big volume is the auditorium itself. The entries are sort of around the sides, and when we separated the two, and again, the foyer, I'm gonna point over here on the wall, imagine you're in this area. That's the foyer that's in the garage. You come in and this would be your pre-functional. So this is set as a training media setting, but this great hall space is essentially the big pre-function area that services the hall. So this is part of the reason for the integration of all of this. You come into the foyer which is in the garage, you move into the pre-function, so in the foyer you check your code, your ticket, do what you need to do there, decompress and then you move into this space. And from here, you'd expect the likes of what we find your way into. The hall itself, these buildings are absolutely driven from the inside out. We start thinking about these seats and then we program that outward. And it's very, very tuned in terms of its performance because as Bob and Mr. Wright both said, this has got to accommodate a variety of really intense sensing functions from centralized broadcasting to major presentations to all staff meetings. but it can accommodate a wide variety of other functions as well. So really interesting, it's kind of a beautiful machine to get to work. And a lot of what you see in the interior concept is tied into getting that flexibility. So you can see some cues in the angles and folds which are really engineered ideas from acoustics that influence the exterior design. And this is kind of the idea of, you know, after a major Zantina event, if they had some sort of follow-up musical function, you know, that would be at the close. This is the view from stage, and it just kind of gives you a sense of the scale of the room with these thousand seats that were accommodated. So I'm gonna just walk you through the plan here. So obviously there's the room, which is where we would seat. All of this is the big back house. So this is that flip, and this is kind of important so you understand the sequence of how you move through this building. Typically, if you think about opera theater or Powell, everybody comes in from this way, right? come in the kind of upper orchestra side, and they find their way. We've now flipped this, so for those of you who are interested in architectural history, this is actually an idea that came from the scallop in Le Mans, which is one of the few buildings that actually flips it like this. So that creates the Great Hall. This is the place to gather, to meet, to find your way before you move into the hall. So this is the big concourse that moves around all floors. And it's kind of interesting in that the grave, once again, helps us. We have a story difference between here and here. So this just folds all the way around and it'll touch down in front of the lab. That's how you get into these different points without having to take the stairs. You can see that the grand stairs are really all about bringing you from front of the lab up to the great hall. So this is all the stuff that is the foyer, the box office, which is obviously gonna have a lot of activity and has a need and a desire to be on the street. A foyer for people to come in and check codes, code area and potential concessions or things like that that you need. So we've organized all of that as a large block that then found its way eastward. And that was really to make this very, very elegant and simple experience with the ability to have this big room. So this room we think can be a lot more than just three bedrooms. So this explains why we pulled it towards into the garage. The garage, as Susan mentioned, is three bay. This is merely to illustrate that it ties directly into stage level, back of house, which was really inconvenient. I took a little bit of magic to get that to work, but what's great about it is that it's fully enclosed as we've been talking about with SD1. The trucks are fully in. You can see we've tested the large truck as well as the midsize. So garage doors can go down. This can be out of sight and out of way as we plan, but it's an integral piece of how this building functions. We've spent a lot of time, we don't need to necessarily present this to you, but I think it's worthwhile to just walk through the plan and to understand. Really, all I'm gonna say to focus on is the yellow. An intriguing challenge of this was how do you give Clayton, a building that really wants no back, right? What you would have asked for in your plan is an active streets gate that wraps the whole building. You would have a building here that inherently wants a back. It wants a side to it that really is secondary. So by turning it inside out, by moving stuff into the garage, by creating the great hall, the yellow, as you'll see, this is the lowest level. It's open here and sort of services some of that. This is the lower lobby. That's an entry point right there. As we move up the ramp, imagine you're kind of going up. You can see the ramp sequence here. This is the big concourse which wraps. It bows out so that people have room to spill out of these main entries at an orchestra level. And it wraps around. And it finishes actually up at a balcony level. So if you remember in the reverends, there were sort of multiple reverends. Each one indicates a public realm. So at the balcony level, which would get you into the only seats we keep it due to that beautiful ramp I was telling about with these upper ends of the balcony. That's what this is servicing. So this is actually kind of folding up where the others fold down. And this just gives us really a beautiful wrap around this pretty intense room. So that's just it in a play. I'm going to get into some technical stuff. This is the current kind of overall roof plan of the district. I've shown some lines here to illustrate A, B, and C. One of the interesting things that we've looked at as we've planned this is we've gone through what is essentially a 100% green roof design before the auditorium. So as it steps down, it's going to become more and more visible, the roof scape, to people who are in adjacent buildings. And so the idea that we plant it, that the entirety of the roof is covered in green scape, and we're even looking at adding some patterns at the sedums, is a really important point to make, that this is sort of your fifth building space to look at. The technical drawing, only to say that we do them and the stormwater works and gives questions. There's some very smart stuff in here so we can answer these for you but it has been incorporated into the overall stormwater climate. I mentioned early on I set you up with a sidewalk experience and I'm going to come back and tell you what we've done. So the orange is your city standard. And the reason it's city standard here in 12 foot two is we've accommodated the drop off zone on the foreside. Obviously, we have a major front door here, but we want to be sure that within traffic, traffic can flow, people can come up. Everywhere else, and I'll walk you through some dimensions, we've gone to city standard plus. So on Lyle, we've got an additional two feet beyond the 12 foot two minimum. Along Forsyth, we've extended the seven foot additional sidewalk that we showed over in SD1 so that that edge is consistent. That's the other reason for it this time. You can kind of imagine how that works out. And what we've done is we've done everything we can to push the building northwards and westwards, and that's even the way that the building can leave us so that we get as much space around on the ground left as possible. So that varies from really a couple of feet here, sort of zero actually right there goes to two, upwards of 10 feet of additional space as we wrap that sidewalk. So 22 feet from curb to face the building. What did we do with that? Well, we didn't pave it like we did on SD-1. We actually grabbed a green buffer around that that gets punctured in one location for that entry point. And so that is basically a 2 to 10 foot, really it's mostly 10 as you can see, it's really kind of through here, additional green zone that we wrapped to give some buffer and really remove a lot of ground blood. So some streetscape I'm going to walk you through. I'm going to go all the way around the building. Here is that ticketing area, you can see it slithers in the garage. There's a canopy and a drop-off in the city standard here. This is on the four sides. So an appropriate kind of scale and density, a quick section through that so you have a sense. Here's the lay-by lane, then we've got our 12 feet minimum per city. And then from the red line out is your restrikes, four sides, as soon as it's going to be done on the streets. And a large canopy to have people under cover as they drop off. I'm going to walk you down here to sort of the prow area, and you can see here how we cantilevered the step from the glass. And we've done that to introduce this landscape zone and a little bit of articulation to the building as we wrap around. Then the streetscape by putting in the driveway. So this is sort of being painted. that the entire district feels the same in terms of its paper language. So the mix of exterior pallets of papers and patterns would be the same where we're not bound by city-wide standards. And then what we want to make is we agree with your comments on staff comments right away. And we would continue with the approved landscape tree planting that the city recommends. And the diversity thereof. So, you know, we have the same tree on every street that was a common tree on every street. So from the materials perspective, as we go through what you would need to know for people walking through some side ideas, where this building will differ is that it will have a highly transparent facade. There's a lot of sandal here and chrome, which is not necessarily helping to face you. It's an all-iron system, so there's going to be a lot of transparency to it. And this is to really celebrate that public realm as it wraps around the object. This is a precedent photo that just gives a sense of that transparency. The palette on 2B is relatively simple. There's a terracotta masonry shell, which is a range of, we're looking at about three tons. The base, it does peak out as we go through gray a couple of feet. It would have the same grain base as SD1 and it would have some texture precast as it varied in a couple of feet there. And then we're gonna talk about the gray blend that really finishes this palette. So very simple and what I would only propose is an in-kind palette. We were focused on this being The neighborhood is a rhetoric and masonry element. So where the garage potentially wants to be able to acquire and introduce variation, we thought it was very appropriate that the major signature object be part of that neighborhood. It really spans between . Here's some elevations. Very interesting building to draw as it doesn't have a lot of straight lines, so you can see some of the organic curds coming out through the canopy. The canopy sort of folds out of buildings and these shadow lines. Here's the terracotta glass, and the base we've been working very hard to keep low as possible. Again, remember we've got the entire story of elevations as you walk around this building. So to that point, here's where the building actually then stone and precast layers up and then pull up a new glass layer here. So it's again the same single pallet of terracotta precast and granite at the base and primarily glass and so on. So I'm going to close this particular presentation with just a look at the overall, and the intent really is understanding this as a complex. One iconic building happens to be two different functions because of the way we attempted to pull it and stretch it throughout the district. and then reintroduced what is now these gray brick panels. They're similar kind of materials, certainly architecturally different, but we were interested in maintaining a breakdown of scale, a breakdown of rhythm, introducing windows. You'll notice this isn't your standard kind of louvers and this is a building. It's a solid building facade of glass and brick that happens to be . And then again on the south, pulling that language really to the loading dock line and then taking the same sort of panelization onto the two hour firewall here that we're going to set up our future . We did say that we didn't change the residential quality on Lyle. We haven't. So this elevation, so this is on Lyle. You can see it steps down. This would remain the red brick and tones that were presented for SD1. And then this is an elevation we will only see for a time until the auditorium is built, which is the brick that would face until the Great Halls. So, again, I hope that I have covered everything. That kind of wraps up 2B in art design. I'll turn the tables down so you can see them as well.

So I think a very iconic design. I think we are all tremendously excited about this work. And I think that to answer your question about the lobby, I think what we're showing is that the Great Hall would be one of the great spaces in Clayton. for every kind of event. And to make it big enough and grand enough, we really needed to push the concessions and the lobby and the garage. It just kind of works perfectly as one really dynamic event. So that's our pitch.

I have a comment about that. I'm pleasantly surprised how it lays out because before we saw it, It seemed like there wasn't enough space from the east side of 2A down to the intersection. So I really commend you for a very creative approach, and it is sort of turning it inside out. But it does seem to work functionally as far as the interior function goes. And I think it helps improve the exterior, which I was afraid wasn't going to have much setback or much light escaping either. When you look at the glass ribbons going around, did I see somewhere in there that there was a bar up somewhere where they would be congregating people

inside? On the balcony level on the prowl, which is essentially the corner of the congolette, there's provisions for some breakout space. If you think about, we're thinking about it as such. I mean, we have to finalize it, but the idea is that there's space there that people in the mezzanine level They don't have to go all the way back to the Great Hall at a break in a presentation. You can stay there. And again, I think that's in common with the idea that the entire meeting is a front. And if the whole thing's a front, you want people and activity and life on the set. It's also probably going to be the best view in the house. I think it's a good moment, so I'll

put something great there. I think the other thing is the terracotta material coming down through the building and being transparent in this class will improve the structure. It's going to be incredibly dynamic. So it's an extremely well thought out plan, and it's a plan we would have committed to. We have thousands of employees that are already waiting to get into the building. So we're obviously prioritizing the project.

Okay, of course right now we're only looking at the plan portion of it, not the ARP portion. So comments, questions? It's very complete.

It's going to be gorgeous Wednesday.

I agree. There's a few points that the staff brought up that haven't been addressed to my satisfaction. Are those going to be in the garage? Are they going to be somewhere around the lobby? We think they'll be out and about. Would that need to be indicated? I guess we could

indicate it, but our point is that we're in complete agreement with 100% of Susan's comments. All of those issues we intend to address. So

the other one that jumped out at you was the Under 12, the location and screening of the projects and conditioning and some other sort of equipment. Moving on. That's on the southwest.

We just haven't indicated much of it.

Can it be moved? I mean, can it not be out there?

A lot of, so a lot of that comes in the name. And Amber is really very particular about having this stuff open around us. And we continue to try and get them to change that.

Yeah, it's

equipment that's out there. Yeah, it's a mix. So we could look at the air conditioning. The things that could be moved. Yeah, I think we would have to take a closer look.

There was an email about the AMRA above the transformers. Is there a noise

issue? No, yeah, there's two. That's in sub-district two. Okay. I have a internal functional question. Is that a full fly over the stage? Yes, it is. So what's that mean?

It means that we basically can accommodate almost any kind of performance, from Chris being the one who tends to go over the job. That's the way that Chris Rivers does it. Please. First of all,

So the intention is for the public to be using this

as

well?

Absolutely.

Going along with the fly, is there a scenery shop or a scenery storage?

Yeah, if you look at right behind the stage between the stage and the dock area, there's a major staging area in the plane. You know your plan. I can sit back and I'll try to share it with you.

I think it's really worth chatting with Chris about this. Is that okay? Yeah,

of course this is really only the site plan portion, but I think the functionality of the whole project should be...

Would you speak

up

just a little

bit?

Speak up louder? Very good. So this was an interesting charge because first and foremost, this is a corporate auditorium, has to have the functionality for major corporate events in terms of training, lectures, broadcasting. We're going to have a place for cameras. and outside feed for satellite feed, things like that to broadcast all around the world. But the opportunity was to create a world-class performance space. And so the stage is set up with the proscenium to the stage viewed from the audience chamber into the stage area is of a size that can accommodate most operas run into stage in operas, 28V, 1245, V1. It has a full set of rigging and so you can fly all sorts of scenery or lights behind in the stage area. In the front, if you look at the blue area, so if you look at this area right here, this is a very specialized element. It is a stage lift that will go down, either go up and extend the size of the stage go down to the stage level or the seat level and have seats, or go below the seat level and allow an orchestra to go underneath the stage. So this is a very important element. The acoustics of the space are designed with variable acoustics so that You know, when it's being used as an auditorium, the primary medium is voice. So you have a certain way, you don't want a lot of reverberation, just want it nice and clear. But when you have an orchestra or an opera or musical theater, you want to change the characteristics of the room so that you create a reverberation that enhances the sound. We have one of the best acoustical engineers in the world that's come and worked with us on this, and we have one of the theater planners in the world that has come and worked on this. These are not like just ordinary guys. You guys would do like Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, it isn't that nature. So there is no... specific work area. It's not designed for a resident theater or a resident company. It has a number of dressing rooms, either for star dressing rooms, cast dressing rooms, orchestra dressing rooms, things of that sort. And it's got very, very good, as Eli said, accessibility to the loading dock so you can bring things in and out very quickly. The kind of things you can do, you can do pretty much anything you want to do with this thing. Probably initially all of the functionality will be provided for, it may not be constructed on day one so we're gonna have the ability to have an orchestra shell We may not build the orchestra shell until we see what the demand for that might be, but it will be able to accommodate that. I hope that's been helpful. Thank you.

Other comments or questions? Well, let's see if the audience has any comments or questions. And this is on the planned review for 2B, the civic auditorium. Please come up and identify yourself. It doesn't matter. We'll take over.

I just want to be clear on something. Please give us your name. Sorry, this is Amanda from 150 from Lesley. I just wanted to be clear on this hearing versus the hearings yet to come. Our chief concern at this point, from the class's point of view, the committee, the three of us have been following it, wall facing south, that's parking garage number, smaller parking garage, and the wall facing west, the back of the auditorium would be visible from looking east from Toronto, that's the small part, it's a smaller area. And the way things are proceeding, the out, the as to when the residential part will be built, which builds a space between us and those two walls, leaves us very concerned about those two walls. And that's a surface thing, it's not what's going on inside. But we don't want that whole issue to be . lost over or ignored by this floor. So is that tonight or is that a

future? Well, that is part of 2A, that south facade.

And 2B.

And 2B, yes. And we will be talking about that as part of the aesthetic portion of it.

and I'm not sure whether what I want to say pertains to this part of our discussion tonight or the second part of this discussion tonight. I'd like to talk about the landscape. Is now the time to do

that? Yes, I have a plan review We do have landscaping in there, so if you could make your comments. I'm trying to keep them concise.

Okay, I'll try. You know, sitting in this entire hearing tonight, the word I think I've heard the most in relationship to all the items on the agenda has been beautiful. That's the word beautiful. that has come up the most often. And I do really commend all of you for this beautiful building, the beautiful glass, the beautiful concepts. And the way it was described was quite beautiful. It was described in such a way that it made me think of it as quite yummy because so much of the vocabulary felt like I was having a wonderful menu described to me, a food menu. And it made me want my vegetables. And it made want my salad. And so I'm asking you all to please think about the vegetables and the salad when you are considering the green space that we saw in this drawing, the biggest portion of it other than the roof area It has yet to be filled with a building. There's not a lot of vegetables in this plant. Thank you. Well, following vegetables

is not an easy thing to do. But my name is Dan Phillips. I'm the late president of South Breckwood. I'm also president of the President and President's Association. We started out with a fair number of peppers here tonight that you saw that whittled off. And they were here to support the CCBA position on green space in the 17 project. Let me just take one moment just to say who was here. I'm not sure if you can remind me who still is. We have for Maryland. And Mary Lutz from 250 Shaw Park Place. Earl Kessler and Frank Schoonjong, who are here to represent the Claytonian. Dick Goldberg from the Hamlin. Helen Lieberman from 325 North Merrimack. Mike Coyne from the Park Tower. Susan Robert Levine. from Crescent, and Tony Busamara sends his regard. Are you going to leave those names? I will. I do. I will. I will, I promise. And Tony Busamara sent his regards in support of the priest. The CCBA has been supportive of this end team project, as we obviously recognize the many benefits it will bring to our city. We're also appreciative of the city's efforts and accomplishments and your efforts on our behalf. And I would also like to echo that the building looks great in the design concept. But having said that, we believe this project could be even better if it contains some green space. Now, we know we're not discussing T.C. tonight, but as we just pointed out, that really looks like the only area left to consider for green space. And it is particularly well suited for some dovetails with the Wandawe Plaza and the fountain in front of the Ritz. I think that is something that you'll consider in the future. We'd like to hear these comments so they're in your head when you're considering them, particularly in light of the fact that if I correctly thought, you said that you were getting pushed to do this residential building. So maybe there is some to solving the screen space issue. Let me make the following bullet points. the amount of green space last proposed by the second project is less than one tenth of an acre which now only was not nearly enough i'm not even sure if that includes the sidewalks we think that in order to generate green space the residential building should be moved to sub-district three Maybe some accommodation could be made in the debate in order to accomplish this, if the auditorium can say what it is. The current plans do not show any extra public art, which I thought, but I'm not 100% sure was a clear requirement. And 2C would be not only a great spot for green space, but also a location for public art, which is, I think, missing, even though the auditorium itself is, I think a piece of art. The point I want to make at this juncture, and I want to make this really clear, our concern for the CCPA is not about one million or about one board. This is a claimant issue. The addition of green space, especially 2C, can help make this spot a destination area, as envisioned by the master plan. Because of its unique proximity to the beautifully lit fountain, the restaurants, and the beautiful auditorium. Appropriately developed, it'll help create a more vibrant downtown and support the neighboring restaurants and retail stores. It will also enhance the venue activity that's already occurring on the La Plaza, as we just enjoyed a little over a week ago. Needless to say, successful urban projects all around the world call green space because it enhances the project by simultaneously drawing people to the space which promotes business and it elevates the overall quality of life. And while I think it's great to have green space on top of the buildings, it doesn't do anything to the folks who work around the level. I would strongly suggest that we contemplate moving forward. Let's not use this property to add 40 additional luxury condos to the already 600 additional living units in the Clayton pipeline. We encourage you to secure this property for the common good, because once it's gone, it's gone. Thank you very much for listening.

Are there any others? Please come forward. Good

evening, I'm Robert. I'm Robert . Susan and I reside in Clayton at Crescent in Ward 2. We agree, can you hear me? We agree with the CCDA's position regarding the Centene project. We fully support the comments made by Dr. Phillips regarding the importance of green space. The small area between the Crescent and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel should be retained strictly as a green space. perhaps with marble statuary and benches. This would enhance the Prince Carlton Fountain and the Cornwood Plaza area generally. The architecture of the parking garages should include brick and marble or other stone facades to retain a residential rather than industrial appearance. These ideas will serve to enhance the legacy of elected officials and the enjoyment of all of our citizens and visitors. And also the legacy of I think that would enhance that legacy and the enjoyment of .

Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other public comments? Please come up.

Hi, again, Bruce Miller. If I could ask, could you put up the visual faces north from that wall? Thank you. Good, yeah. Thank you, thank you. A lot of wonderful thinking, thank you, has gone into the way this project was first proposed and how it's evolved. It's evolved to each step better and better and better thanks to you all and Bob and his team. This piece that we're looking at, if you will take a look at it, has a warehouse stone hungry facade, even though the texture, which is good, it'll eventually be covered by apartments. Key word, eventually. A tremendous, wonderful thing has gone on as to all the other facades. along foresight and how that interest in bile has been treated, the tweaking that's been done to the various aspects. But this is kind of just thrown in there because it's not really part of this development. It's a holding wall, if you will, until a department goes in. So we, in that area, and in fact, if anybody was traveling down there, down the road on the left, along the road across the town circle, is hit with a, what is it, maybe seven or eight stories, you know, maybe 80 feet high, 10 stories, of solid stone mass. And unlike what's on the left side, On the right side, on the left side you have the architectural detail of the restaurant and the activity. On the right side you have a wonderful auditorium that will be going in place. So I don't know what needs to be done or how to go about it, but I hope that we don't skim by this because everything else seemed to be falling into place so very nicely. And yet this has not gotten a lot of attention, at least not

tonight. Thank you. We will be looking at the façades also. Tonight. in our next one.

Andrew Gallicaros, 8025 Maryland Avenue. I want to continue with the theme of green space. You know, what's being requested tonight by Dan Phillips was street level green space and the amount that he was talking about is a third of an acre. And to put that in reality, that's like 120 feet by 120 feet. When we look at the total amount of land that this whole project involved, I tried to figure out the number of acreage from Hanley Road, east along Forsyth all the way to the underpass. I don't know what the total amount of acreage is, but the street level of grains that's been requested here is very, very reasonable. And what we hear across the country is at least in large communities and some of the cities, is that street level green space is a premium item, it's a precious item. So I think what's being requested tonight, or at least pointed out tonight, is approximately a third of an acre of street level, this is their street level green space. So in essence, we're supporting what Dan Phillips had presented initially. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, we've...

She doesn't have

a sign up sheet. I am not familiar with everyone in this room and I don't know how to spell your names, so.

Should we do this retroactively? I'm sorry? Should we do it retroactively?

No.

Before you continue, we're hearing repetitive comments. We'd like to keep those down. We certainly understand the open and green space concept, but we'd like to keep the comments going forward to the actual plan view of the auditory.

Thank you. I'm Stacy Smith. I live at 7475 Jeffery Yorg Drive. Some of you may remember that I came before the city council because I am a co-founder of the We Want to Vote PAC, which had reservations and objections to the project. I'm here in support of Dr. Phillips' plea for green space, but to avoid being repetitive, I have two points that have not been raised tonight. Number one, my interest from the very beginning has always been on the level of respect for that thereof that residents feel they are getting from the council. So I have a sense that asking for a sliver of green space feels like being tossed alone. For $78 million in tax abatement, I think we should have serious consideration of that. Secondly, I would say another major interest of mine has always been in traffic. And I know we're not here to discuss traffic, but there are multiple developments under discussion, and each one has its own traffic study that says minimal requirement. It's great logic that... that all of these in mind are not going to create potential future problems. So please, I would like to propose a repeat traffic study with all of the projects underway, looking into them with the larger area and I think the claimants deserve that. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm Stacy Smith. I live at 7475 York Drive. Some of you may remember that I came before the city council because I am a co-founder of the We Want to Vote PAC, which had reservations and objections to the project. I'm here in support of Dr. Phillips' plea for green space, but to avoid being repetitive, I have two points that have not been raised tonight. Number one, my interest from the very beginning has always been on the level of respect for that thereof that residents feel they are getting from the council. So I have a sense that asking for a sliver of green space feels like being tossed alone. For $78 million in tax abatement, I think we should have serious consideration of that. Secondly, I would say another major interest of mine has always been in traffic. And I know we're not here to discuss traffic, but there are multiple developments under discussion, and each one has its own traffic study that says minimal requirement. It's great logic that... that all of these in mind are not going to create potential future problems. So please, I would like to propose a repeat traffic study with all of the projects underway, looking into them with the larger area and I think the claimants deserve that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, I believe we had one other person who wanted to comment.

I'd like to be repetitive, is that all right? We would like it to be very short. Richard Goldberg, the 900 building that I was totally supportive of, made by Dr. Phillips. What a beautiful facility that's been proposed here. It's absolutely lovely. And not to have that spot for people to sit and enjoy the picnics and the conference and everything else. It just feels good. I'm here to be repetitive as well. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

Thank you. Could you guys please sign the side and sheet before closing this park's name spelling please?

My name is Mary Lutz. I live at 250 South Brentwood, which is Shaw Park Place. To not be repetitive, I just want to add my support to what Dean Phillips has said tonight. I would like to have everyone see that I specifically moved green tonight. And everything else that others have said about green space were points I also was going to make, but I will not repeat.

Thank you.

My name is Steven Rosenblum. I live at 7501 Westmoreland, which is about two blocks from this stand. proposed project, which I think this performing arts center is actually stunning and beautiful and a great addition. I will echo those comments on green space and remind folks that one block from this development is an area that has been on the city's master plan for over 40 years to be green space. It has now become available as the Maryland School. And I know that Clayco and Centene have been extremely generous throughout this community, charitably and philanthropically. And I think that green space within this project is certainly wonderful. I think green space tangential and right nearby would be phenomenal and would fulfill both Parks and Rec recommendation and the city's master plan. And I know that Mr. Clark was kind enough to come over and check it out and saw the proximity. We're also concerned about scale and all of that. very helpful in talking with our neighborhood i would encourage both centene and flaco to talk again about the clayton century foundation about the possibility to create even more green space for all the entire community thank you

thank you

um my name is It is an endorsement of what has been said before. I do have a couple of questions about the interior of your beautiful designed auditorium. One, how many people were in the seat? And what are you doing for wheelchair accessible or handicapped access? Is all that taken care of? And I would like to recommend, based on experience in opera theaters and concert halls around the world, that you incorporate multiple feeding stations, not one or two, and for women. and other gender-oriented people away. I'd like to recommend that bathrooms, a very practical consideration, and to your concerns, I get to see a new facility in the Midwest that actually has sufficient bathrooms.

Please sign

in.

Anne, could you please sign in? I'll sign in, okay.

We're going to take a 10-minute break right now. We will come back and pick up. Yes. That was a good segue. before we continue what we would like to do is since we're in the public hearing is to ramp up the plan portion and then move right into the architectural reviews laugh so much, and that will be relatively concise because we've heard most of it so far. And then take the two votes on the public hearing. Okay. Do you want

me to comment on any of the questions that were

asked? If they're pertinent to what we're discussing.

Yeah, I think it's pertinent to say that we will be back to present public art and signage that's separate from this, so we will address that. We think it's very important for the project, of course. And as you know, on Centeen's headquarters, we used William Gillick, who was a phenomenal candidate, and that time for, you know, wind wall. And so we do intend to upgrade our own architecture. And that's pretty much it. for this part of the

. Anything else on the plan review portion? Then let's move into the ARB one. And Susan, I think you had a few comments.

Very quickly, on page three of your staff report at the top, we mentioned that along Carondelet Plaza, the first floor elevation features another building entrance with a glass curtain wall system. The elevation there drops along the corridor. The interior building activities seen through the curtain wall is then lifted above the pedestrian level and has less of an impact on the street environment. And more of the home stone panels are exposed at the street level, which appear in comparison to the materials and activities seen through the window systems. And we feel that the area between the building and the sidewalk currently marked as a landscape area should feature a layering of plants and bushes to soften the appearance of that stone facade. We did actually address that comment in the site plan conditions. And then just our recommendation would be to approve with the following condition. And that is to revise the street elevation on sheet A501, which is to paint the facade of the SD1 garage as marked, not the crescent. Something that needs to be corrected that was referenced incorrectly. That's it. Otherwise, we recommend it.

Okay.

Any further comments on the architectural? We see the materials.

I think we were fairly concise. If you have any other questions, I'm sorry. I don't have any other things on the presentation, but if you have further questions, we'll have an answer.

Okay, and then, of course, the architectural is only for 2B, not 2A at this point. So, comments? Yeah,

my question was raised, I think, by something I've asked about an unfinished portion of 2B on the west side.

yes i don't know what that comment is about the west side of the garage is facing wild That's 2A, that's not 2B. I think that was...

Talking to the speaker. Sorry. Talking to the microphone. I just think it's a matter of clarity and understanding. When you're out there, you see that there's going to be a driveway going into the garage, and then there's the auditorium. And so it seems as though the back of the auditorium, which faces west, would have some wall.

It's attached. No, it's the same wall. The garage wall. so there's no one

facing south the garage wall faces south

this wall faces south West would face the aisle. Go ahead and ask, because I know you know what you're

getting at. I'm not concerned about the left. Maybe you're saying that the south wall of our current garage just continues along...

You're saying the east side, the base of the east side where the auditorium meets it? That would be the east wall. Mm-hmm.

Where the auditorium meets the garage, the auditorium, it looks as though the auditorium has the wall that faces west.

Show us how you plan and you can highlight that they share the same walls. Yes. Is there,

excuse me, is

there a

wall? Please go back to the frame

of mind. Is there some wall here? This isn't the right one, right? Is there some wall there?

She's asking if the southern wall

of S2B aligns with the

southern wall of 2A. Could you speak up a little bit? So this is this wall.

It's all the

same.

OK. It's because it's usually number five. It's on the ground. OK. Your question got answered, right? Yes. OK. Please.

My other question has to do with the south wall of the garage. How long do we think, I know it has to be higher rated so that we can't do what you're doing on the north side, how long do we expect that to be? We're talking about 2A now? 2A, I'm sorry, I did skip to 2A, I'll come back later. We're still on 2B.

Any further comments on architectural review? Any further comments from the ARB? No, okay. Any further comments from audience on architectural review? No. I think we've covered it all then. Then MD will close the public hearing at this point and if there are any further comments from the members.

I just like to be assured that to the extent that the utilities that are on the south side of the auditorium are minimized, I understand that any transformers might have to stay there, but anything that can be taken away is taken away. That would be my comment.

I have one

question regarding plant review. One, two, three. I'll echo everyone's statements and very positive comment I shared on all of them. But I really like the idea of foresight being activated, but I also really like the idea that an amazing, world-class facility that we're having here. So is there any way that can be bridged, where there's a gap there, where when there's not something going on, the pedestrian experience won't be so, I guess, it won't be as big of a gap with the pedestrian

experience? We talked about retail.

What are the people

of our kind of idea of the packaging? I don't know.

Maybe that, but just things

along the foresight. We originally had a big, yeah, when we talked about shell and retail. This image here. On 2A or on the auditorium itself? 2B. No, we're at 2B. We're at 2B, but to answer, just to make a comment about that, You know, we do fully intend to build the entire project out, and we are in the planning stages of building the entire project, including track three will proceed. We just have our hands full right now. But there's definitely a need for track three to be developed, and I really think we are thinking about a billion dollar basically investment over the whole entire campus, all being connected from MetroLink all the way to Cafe Napoli. If you can think of the project developed over the next number of years, I think that is going to create enormous energy along the course of time. So that's my answer to that question. And we're trying to accommodate as many uses as we can and still meet some teams that really, you know, giant need. That's it.

Helpful. Yeah, it does help.

It does give some context to the fact that this, the plan is to go on. There is, if there's an event going on in here at night, that's wonderful, but during the day, if something isn't going on, then Tina tends to have it. enormous number of training events, so they're going to have employees coming from their other campuses and locations in other places in the country. And they're also going to broadcast from this facility all over their global presence. So there will be activities building all the time. They're making a giant investment because of the need.

Will, I had a similar concern about it being not very active until you get to where the retail is. But when I began to see the transparency of the building and the glass as it was described to us, if there is daytime activity as well as nighttime, it should be visible from the street. Now, daytime may not have the public going in and out, but I would hope that there would still be a lot of activity in there.

We

think so. And the other comment about that, Will, that I think is real important is the comment that Eli made that people will come around these glass corridors to get into the facility. So it will be an active walkway inside the glass. People won't just come in the garage and go straight into the theater. They'll come around this walkway, as described, and various ramps and locations into the facility. So people will be forced to go around the glass perimeter.

So just in context from the parking to the corner, parking drive to the corner, approximately how many feet would that be?

From where? From

the entrance of the parking. Goliath,

or to the front of the

auditorium? To Jackson Prandelet, whatever.

Jackson Prandelet.

It's almost 260 to 300 feet. That's right. It's almost the length of a football garage to the other side.

Yeah,

probably 240, 250. There's no grand scale. Why don't you just use my phone? It's over

200 feet.

to then satisfy your comments.

Yeah, I love that the Performing Arts Center is in the middle of the complex. And I do like to see people

from the pedestrian experience. And I realize that this performing area

requires a lot of back and box office entryway, but it would have been

It's interesting to be able to ask something as an equal to that person walking down the street before trying to . And I just, I do

miss that point. But you hit on a good point that there will be programs from 10 to, well, the first three things we said, and I appreciate that. The first thing we said was this. And then that's how we're figuring out

Thank

you. Okay, I think we're finished with the comments and the presentation on both the plan review and the architectural review. And Bob or Eli, I think one or both of you have said you agree with all the staff recommendations. I don't think we've modified those. I don't believe so. so we uh on the plan review we um Okay, we're going to talk about the site plan approval and that we will recommend to the board of all. So if we have a recommendation.

I'd like to recommend site plan approval with the addition, with all of the staff recommendations in the one edition of moving whatever utilities on the south side of the court, Mr. Chairman I just want to make sure we understand that what's going to the Board of Aldermen is a

special development sub-district plan

It includes a lot of the site plan elements and even some of the architectural, but formally by ordinance, the special development sub-district plan is what the board's all about. All I heard was site plan, so I just want to make sure that's on the record. Yes, thank you. The

sub-district one. Yes, right, thank you.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Now let's consider the architectural plan and there we have a recommendation to improve it with one staff recommendation. we've talked about to revise the street elevation on A501 to depict the facade of the SD1 garage as marked, not the crescent. So it's a minor change.

So this is a motion to approve the architectural review for 2B. 2B. With staff recommendation. Correct. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Very good. Now we are able to go back to new business.

and again i'll be very brief um just by way of background on december 19 2016 the architectural review board approved a plan for sub-district 2a the applicant has since made changes to the facade treatment as a result of further planning for the future auditorium located in sub-district Additionally, the space along Forsyth Boulevard previously reserved for a future retail tenant is now proposed as a lobby area and main entrance for the auditorium located in Subdistrict 2B. In terms of that change, staff is of the opinion that the building design of Subdistrict 2A the requirement that parking structures abutting the street should have ground-level retail and commercial services pre-established when spacing the sidewalk. As previously mentioned, the ground floor elevations feature glass storefront architecture with the brick-based columns establishing storefront sections The main lobby entrance for the sub-district 2B auditorium is located at the east end of the building with elevator lobbies at both the northeast and northwest corners. While the east end of building is no longer reserved for a future retail tenant, as presented in the previously approved submission, staff is of the opinion that the auditorium lobby will provide the impact desired or intended by the retail requirement. We have no comments or conditions related to the changes in facade. I know they haven't gone over them in detail yet, but we don't have any comments about that other than to recommend to this board to approve us of it.

Yes.

Do you have any of the facade areas, both north and south?

In the effort of you seeing most of it, I'll be very concise. I wanted to just make a few quick clarifications in case anyone, particularly in the audience, had known this. This was simply a summary to say what have we done in 2A. As much as Susan has covered, this is to illustrate we've extended the auditorium to activate the street with a program in the garage. Parking count is unchanged when we're booking an attic parking. We've agreed to step down a while. That remains consistent. Really our main points are for and for. which are the facade design is evolved, which is in an attempt to make it more compatible with the auditorium. And the materials and palette are in kind with masonry and the sort of smaller scale breakdown that we have in our little well design. We generated this drawing to illustrate if we had taken where we were, the dash line was in December for Board of Aldermen and January for the, I'm sorry, December for this board and January for Alderman. We had a language at the time of these gray brick panels, essentially about five panels with vertical glass slots, and in an effort to have the language, there is some translation there, obviously every texture is different, but there wasn't a an intent about the breakdown of the facade that we shared with you in December, and we wanted to hold true to that as we proposed a new design. As we've noted in the hours before this, we are looking at basically these series of textured brick wall panels with glass inserts, the storefront extending, so our material being similar kind of glass we would add a frit pattern to the garage section so that we're not seeing the cars. But it would be translucent, so light would come through as we showed in the renderings. We're proposing this continuation of what we shared in both December and January with the gray. However, we're proposing a blend now, and we'd come with a single tone of gray. We're proposing a blend, and you can see it on the panel in front of you, to give further texture to these panels. It's a subtle mix of these two colors. Gray is a single tone at the base and then our granite at the very bottom of the building being consistent. Again, as Bob has mentioned on Lyle, the red brick tones that anchor at the end of SD1, and I think it's really important that we kept this, that Lyle have that boulevard feel that Bob mentioned, that is framed by similar height massing, that both step down, that both have similar fenestration patterns and breadth. So really that's the bookend, and then we transition to this more contemporary design as we come into the auditorium space. So just some sort of further back view, and you can see the glass and the articulated textured brick here as we look at the street scale.

Where does it actually come from?

We're looking at basically how to texturize and change the brick along these diagonals so that it has this sort of dimension to it. The exact engineering details are being worked out with a pre-caster right now. Obviously, we want to make sure we can hang it. But yeah, the idea is to have these textures and changing tones so that it has, again, these angles are queuing up with the auditory so that the sculptural kind of chiseled look is consistent throughout. We spent quite a bit of time back here. Again, here we are proposing the brick wrapping about a third of the garage and then scored precast with a darker tone that would match essentially the tone of the brick and that texture precast at these lower levels. And then our green face again. And then a blend of fritted glass where we're in front of cars and clear as the glass comes over. So this is the kind of overall composition. So the overall palette for 2A, the red tones represent Lyle, the facade on Lyle that's consistent with SD1. The gray blend represents the Forsyth elevation and the portion, about the one-third portion of the Karanda left elevation and the blending precasts. We'll have some soft metals that will obviously act as strips throughout.

The comments you made on the Forsyth elevation with the dimensional characteristic and how it relates to the geometry of the auditorium itself, couldn't those comments be applied to the south side, the

Karanda-Let side also? That's a great question. I think everything we're doing on the Karanda- Let side is anticipating the kind of the right kind of development that really goes up against that firewall. It's hard to hear you. It's hard hear me? Sorry. The firewall in its treatment, I think, is much easier to do with texture and color than it is with dimension because you imagine that if we build a gap and then we build a building right up next to it, how do you do the expansion joints and multiple dimensions and textures? They become very, very difficult. So I think color and texture are possible, but dimension where you then need to build an adjoining wall becomes particularly challenging.

I would agree with your comments if we knew that the residential were going to go up within 18 months of completion of this building or sometime soon, but we don't know if that's going to

happen. Well, I mean, half the times we had tonight were about green space. We know what we're talking about. If Bob just woke up tomorrow and said, doggone it, I don't want to put that really nice condo building there, then that question would apply, right, in terms of the texture of the wall?

I think that's why we're addressing it the way we are with an architectural solution as opposed to what was permitted, which was just a blank wall. So we are making a pretty substantial investment to accommodate that it could be a little bit longer than that.

But you were suggesting dementia, you can't have dementia in there. No,

I don't think that's possible. It's a five to two hour fire rated law. They do anticipate a residential building to be some of the most valuable real estate in Clayton.

From the perspective of the gap, think about a big gap that would be around any texture. It's kind of like a big chimney. We really don't want to build that between two buildings. You really want them tight, expansion joints controlled. Not trying to defer, I think it's a valid comment, but in anticipation of future development, dealing with color and texture is a much better solution for the long-term climate. In the interim, is there any potential for some sort of a vertical in the

future?

You know, our climate may

not be conducive to that. I've never answered that question. You know, the problem with that is that it takes a long time to get them to grow. And St. Louis does not have a great example of a living wall that's really worked out well. And when they don't work out well, they look worse than in Paris. The planet, you know, they have these fabulous green walls and the architects show them all the time. They just don't work in St. Louis. It just gets too high and too cold.

So you could always have vines from the top of the building hanging down.

I think what we can do, and we've had meetings with some of the neighbors, and I do think that we can articulate these two trees along the face of the building and did some green against the building because I think their comments are that it's a little bare back there. So that's something that we would have.

One comment also that the staff discussed but did not include was the possibility of bringing some of the red of the terracotta panels or the red brick around to that side so that it would resemble more of the red brick architecture that you find along the front of that as opposed to the modern elements on Forsyth.

so we can have both ways about that. But I guess I would just, and I'll let Eli comment on this, but I think what we're trying to do is differentiate from this very powerful, iconic, pure art product, sculpture, which in itself is a piece of art with a more subtle approach to the stone materials that are on the two main buildings. And we did look at that, and quite frankly, it took away from the type of terracotta structure. So we actually are going to contrast purposes. Different people have different opinions. I happen to feel very strongly that the palette that's been chosen is the right

answer. I would agree with those comments because I saw that the south facade to May be as sensitive as possible compared to the 2B auditorium at Epstein. Other comments, questions?

I have a couple. The transformer that you're moving, And I talked about this a little bit already, but you know, you have public record. Why can't that, that can't go into the parking garage because?

From all of the discussions we've had with the Amherst Utility Group, they have very strict requirements to access their equipment. And so we always try and get them to put things in different places. But their ability to have one of their service vehicles come up within drive and literally burn, get up our ace of equipment, drives it. It has to be open to the sky and exposed. And they're unwavering in their fortitude on those requirements. And there was a

question that we received about the noise levels from a transformer. I know it makes some common. And will there

be any screening of it in its current location?

The two pieces of equipment that are on the south that we're going to continue to look at will have a screen, but the one that's off the alley is not screened at this time. There's one piece that's screened, which is the larger piece of equipment, which is allowed to be in the garage. The larger piece, the small transformer that's outside currently is not.

Can it be screened?

Well, it's

just

because this is right outside someone's bedroom window, I believe. My other concern with the location is that it won't impede the walkway

between the Crescent and the 2C. There's plenty of space in there. Then my other concern is the lack of retail into taking it out. And I was wondering if there was anywhere, either on Lyle or a little bit that's still facing Forsyth, where you could put a small amount of coffee shop-sized amount of retail just to keep the activism, activation, pedestrian activation flowing on that side of Lyle? I would also think a long while wouldn't be

a bad location

either.

Well, I think it's a question for people like, if it's possible to make that detail ready. It wouldn't be very deep, because we have an aisle there. Does it meet the grade right there? So we could do that.

And where is it? It would be small. It would point to where it could be. I think

that's the way out. So there's some space in this corner, but this is a dry vial here. Yeah. I can say that they can be studied and we will have to study that. I think that would just help with having that. Yeah. This other drawing that's here answers the question of where this piece of equipment is, and then there's what they're bringing from the sidewalk. So that, like, six feet? Well, yeah, I mean, if you look, it's more like a 14, yeah, 14 feet gap. There's one here, right? Between here and here. Okay. It's 14 feet.

And you can look to see if there's any more. Because I don't think it needs to be a large retail. But something. And I actually think in some ways the shallower retailer

could activate while they're right there.

Especially once that walkway is up there.

Will Scott. Can we go further? Okay. Any further comments from the audience? Oh, we have one up here. So I didn't see where the bike parking was in this particular one.

I don't know. I think that bike parking will. We'll get to them. I think one of the things we'll come into is coming back to staff comments with showing on-street bike

parking. But I think in the garage too, there's expected to be some...

If I may, I don't recall that as one of the... It's not even needed. You know what I'm saying?

Just if, you know, a lot of people don't want to leave them. If they're waiting for work...

I mean, I think it will absolutely, if it's needed, we'll make sure that it's there.

I'd like it to be there before it's needed.

Yeah, I'm just, I guess I'm only confused because I don't think we changed that. We'll add it. Yeah, we'll add

it. We'll put it in the park. We'll put some exterior and some interior.

You have some interior in plan? I just couldn't see it yet. Well, we

have

one

on existing garage. Great. Excuse

me. Who's talking? I have no idea.

Bill Wright was talking and he said that we have an inside and outside our current facilities. We do the same thing here. Thank you.

Any further? Okay, we have a staff recommendation to approve this amendment. Oh, that's right, I'm sorry. Very quickly,

I need to come around here to point

out that- Let

me show you what I'm talking about, and then we can address the focus. The only issue with this facade, and I know you picked up on it right away, is if there's a way to warm the transition up. This is the crescent. This is going to be the terrific terracotta. And this is such a colder, almost drab tone If there were a way to find something that's a little more in this direction, warm it up, I think would add. The second point I wanted to make is Bob's comment about the trees. I think the problem with that wall will be reduced greatly because we're all talking about this against that picture, but the reality is that people who are looking at that wall are street-loving. So the trees, Bob, I think is a great idea. The bigger the better in some depths, not just a couple of small little thinking about how the trees could help.

Thank you. I think we would all agree that trees could help that wall. But you may have comments, further comments on the for sign let's have one more

comment um there's been a lot of talk today earlier and here about the surfaces on that wall that will be on the south side of garage two And I don't think, there's been a lot of inconsistencies. So I think we're talking about that law. The industrial, there's one slide that shows all the different services that might be helpful to put up. Might be helpful to put a slide that shows the different services. We're all looking at the same thing. I can go ahead and talk at the same time. The name,

should I? There it is. Oh,

there it is. I'm talking about the one that shows the different kinds of materials you might use on that wall. I want you to put up the close-up, you know, the close-ups. Show us the close-up of what you're talking about on that wall. Close-up on the materials. Okay, what are you talking about on that wall? On that picture? Can you all see the picture? Which one are

you talking about? Which one are YOU talking about? What are you talking about, sir? I

mean, what are you

planning to put on that wall? I

guess, yeah. Can you see the name? There are three walls up there.

The one wall is on the auditorium and the other wall is on the back of the garage. Tell us what you're planning to put on each of those.

It's a very fair question, okay? So what we're going to put here is this. Okay. And what these... vertical pieces are that break up the brick panels, brick-climbing panels. This material right here is this. Before, we were suggesting that these would be precast, but we talked today to you all about mimicking this brick in a precast pattern. It would be this color. We have a mortar-like joint so that it looks like brick. these panels right here, and then doing trees as discussed here.

May I make one further suggestion? Sure. Obviously you know what we're concerned about. We don't know how temporary this is. The plaza neighborhood, the Carondelet Plaza neighborhood achieves the kind of contrast you all are particularly talking about that makes a limestone and brick the whole neighborhood is a lot of limestone and bricks. And it's not a great deal different from what you've got in the colors up there, but it doesn't have the industrial gray look. So if the tones of the brick or fake brick that you use on that wall is compatible with limestone, it'll still compress with your terracotta, but not really risk looking industrial up against lifestyle.

I have to disagree. I don't think that has an industrial

look at all. That's not just my idea, but something that... This to me looks more industrial

than

this.

They all do. This does not look industrial.

That's what the majority of it is going to be, is the work. I'm

talking about... The main surface.

But the main surface is, the main surface is the ground. Which surface are you? The

other

is

a backdrop. The precast is more of a contrast. Oh, you're

talking about the in-between.

Yeah. The small part. That's all. The only precast is these. So you're talking about... And they're off in the maze.

You're talking about this sort of... I don't know what you

call it.

Precast. Interrupting this.

That's correct. And I think that's, that we want that contrast.

Okay. I understand. And I'm going to agree with the contrast. I'm only saying that in terms of the tones you choose for this and this, This is the bigger piece. This is the main one that you bear in mind. I think it has something to do with the proportion of this versus this, but that you bear in line that it echoed the limestone color. I'm not, I mean there's a pro here who knows how to do that better than I do, but I think it's closer to this than this. You know what I mean?

I'll make a comment on it. I think the colors and the textures mixed here on the south side of 2B work well. I think if we were to make it any more dominant or darker, it would make it feel like it's much closer to Quran 11. So I like the gray tones. I think they'll be more recessive. And gray tones are my... semi-limestone and the others. I think color and texture wise, it's okay. Hopefully it'll be covered up in the near future, but that may be the best we can do right now.

So one clarification, when looking at this picture, I wish I had a pointer. What is this? I think that's going to be a very

nice visual.

Is there a motion out there?

Do you want me to finish mine? To

approve the

Revised design and materials associated with the construction of a mixed-use parking commercial building for Sub-District 2A of the 17 Clayton campus to be approved as submitted.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Thank you. And thanks to

everyone in the audience.