August 5, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening and welcome to the Plain Commission ARB for August 5th. If you have any electronic gadgets, please silence them now. We'll start with the roll call.

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Helen DeFay?

Bridget McAndrew?

Bob Zinlow?

Kimmy Waldman?

Jim Arsenault? Here. David Gipson? Here.

Jim Arsenault? Here. David Gibson? Here.

Okay, we have minutes from the previous meeting on July 15. Are there any changes? Hearing none, do we have a motion?

I move to approve as submitted.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay, we'll move on to new business. The first item is 18 Brentmore Park. Is the applicant here? Okay, thank you. Ryan.

Property is at the northeast corner of Brentmore Park and Wydown. Zoned R1 is developed with a single family home. The applicant is seeking approval to reconstruct a six foot wood fence along the west property line in the front yard setback. Brentmore Park forks shortly north of Widown Boulevard and wraps the west and north sides of the subject property. The front of the house faces north towards a portion of Brentmore Park, while the rear faces Widown. The existing fence along Widown Boulevard was approved to be replaced in 2021 and completed in 2023, is constructed of wood and measures six feet tall with two feet of lattice. The section of fence proposed to be replaced will match the Widown Boulevard fence. Additionally, it is shielded by existing landscaping and a stone wall that parallels the street. Front yard fencing is not common in Brentmore, but is common along Wydown and often screens rear yards. The lot across from the subject property in Brentmore Park from the fence is wooded and would have little visibility from the proposed fence. Staff are of the opinion that replacement of the existing fence will have a minimal visual impact and recommend approval is submitted.

Okay, thank you. The applicant could come up and give us your name, address and add anything else. Probably no questions, but I'll make a comment. It's a beautiful site, great landscaping. We approved the fence along Wydown a year ago, I think.

Yes.

Longer than that.

We were waiting for materials. Oh. There was a lot of supply chain problems. We filled out for the materials we wanted. It took a little longer than we expected.

Well, it looks very good. And I think it'll be much more consistent than what you have right now. So I'm in favor of it. Helen?

I think it'll look great. No questions.

Bob?

Amy?

No issues. It'll look great.

I pass it regularly. I think it looks great. And I think where it's going and everything and the plan and everything, I wholeheartedly agree with.

Okay. We do have a motion of rather a staff recommendation to approve as submitted.

I will make a motion to approve as submitted second.

All in favor.

Aye. Aye.

Thank you. OK, our next item is 7451 Bland. Is the applicant here? OK, we'll be with you soon. Hey, Ryan?

To clarify, are we starting with the CUP?

I'm sorry?

Are we starting with the conditional use permit? Yes. The subject property is located on the west side of the intersection of Bland Drive and Northmore Drive. It is zoned R2 and is developed with a single-family home. The site was formerly two parcels that were consolidated in February. On February 2nd, the Board of Adjustment approved a variance to allow the construction of a 1,200-square-foot accessory dwelling unit, or ADU. on the subject property. ADUs are permitted in the R2 district and is intended to be used for family or caretakers. The ADU would be in addition to the existing structure and will utilize existing onsite trash cans and parking. Staff are of the opinion that the proposal meets the requirements contained in the regulations governing ADUs. Provided the structure is used in accordance with the requirements for ADUs, staff believes it will adequately blend with the neighboring properties and will therefore have a minimal visual impact on the neighborhood. Staff recommend that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the ADU to the Board of Aldermen with the following conditions. One, that all conditions of Section 405.330, that being the section that governs ADUs, shall be adhered to, and that the applicant shall record a deed restriction pursuant to Item 3 in the staff report under criteria review with the St. Louis County Recorder of Deeds Office and submit proof of filing of the required deed restriction to the City prior to issuance of a building permit. And this particular criteria states the accessory dwelling units may not be rented, sold, transferred, or assigned separately from the principal residence.

Before we go on, Ryan, I have a question on item six where it says the proposed ADU is located within an addition to the primary structure and is not considered an accessory structure. Did I misread that?

That's correct. It is considered a residential addition.

Okay. Thank you. Okay, the applicant, if you come up, identify yourself, name and address, and add anything. Okay. Well, what we're doing right now is just the conditional use permit. And are you in agreement with the two staff recommendations? Yes, under Chapter 405. Yep.

And then the other is that I didn't hear all of the verbiage on the second one, but it sounds like just that we're agreeing that it won't be rented, sold, et cetera, as a separate unit.

Correct. Okay. And there'll be a, you will have to record a deed restriction, et cetera, et cetera. If you'd like to have this.

That'd be

great. You can have it.

Okay. Thanks.

And further, we will provide you after Board of Aldermen, if they approve the CUP, we provide you a copy of the deed restriction that you had.

Yeah, conceptually, I don't have an issue with that. Okay. Helen?

No, I have no questions about having an ADU.

Bob? No problems with it. Amy?

No issues.

Jim? No issues with the CUP. Richard?

No issues, no comments.

Okay. We have a staff recommendation to recommend it to the Board of Aldermen.

I make a motion to recommend approval of the conditional use permit to the Board of aldermen with the conditions noted under the staff recommendation. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. We'll go on to The second one, that would be site plan review.

The ADU would be a residential addition on the north side of the existing home. The surrounding properties contain single-family homes that range in height from 1.5 to 2.5 stories. The proposed ADU is one story and will reside on a portion of the lot that was previously a separate undeveloped lot. The addition of HVC is proposed to be at the rear of the addition. Coverage would be increased from 38% to 45.3%. Stormwater runoff would increase from 0.86 cubic feet per second to 0.91 cubic feet per second in MSD 20, your 15-minute stormwater calculations. Downspouts would connect to a new drywall with a pop-up emitter. The tree chart includes three off-site trees, which may not be included for canopy coverage calculations. Existing canopy coverage is 2,989 square feet with 241 to be removed. The plan proposes adding 1,500 square feet of canopy coverage for a total of 4,248 square feet. This is 2,967 square feet below the site requirement. The applicant must either revise the plan to meet the canopy coverage requirements or contribute to the city forestry fund. The contribution must be compensatory with the requirements of section 4054110C2 equivalent to $1,780. The plan exceeds the native species requirement with 100% native proposed. Water and gas would connect from the existing structure and new electric would connect via the rear of the property. Staff are of the opinion that with modifications to the landscape plan, the project would meet the criteria for site plan review. Staff recommend approval with the following conditions. One, that the applicant shall file a deed restriction noting the location and maintenance requirements of the drywall system with the St. Louis County Recorder of Deeds and submit proof of the recording prior to approval of a building permit. And that the applicant shall revise the landscape plan to either meet the canopy coverage requirements or make a contribution to the City Forestry Fund Compense Support to Section 405-4110C2. Okay,

thank you. Welcome back.

Thank you. It's great to be back.

Any further comments?

No. And we are fine with the change to the landscape plan to add the additional trees.

We'll ask you at the end for your approval. It looks good to me since you combined the two properties into one. The additional house looks as large, if not larger than your current house. Is that, am I reading it correct? Because the current house is two stories. Yeah. So the footprint is quite a bit different. I have no, no problem with it.

No problem.

No problem. Amy.

No problems.

Jim. No issues. Bridgette.

No problem.

Dave? Questions or comments? Okay. We do have the two staff recommendations. Did you hear them clearly from Ryan?

It sounds like the deed restriction is similar to the other one, or is it a different deed restriction?

This particular deed restriction is for noting the location and maintenance requirements of that dry well system. Oh,

okay. Yeah, that's fine. And then the landscape plan is acceptable. Right.

Okay. Well, with that, do we have a motion?

I will make a motion to approve as submitted with the recommendations noted by the staff.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Okay, we have one more to go through, and that's the architectural review.

Ryan? The ADU is proposed on the north side of the property between the primary structure and Forest Park Parkway. The ADU would be a single story and connect to the primary structure via the shared screen porch. A front entry path would connect from the front door to Bland Drive. The surrounding area comprises single family homes ranging from one and a half to two stories. The ADU you would increase the massing of the subject property compared to homes on the west side of Bland Drive, but would likely be similar to homes on the east side of the street. These homes primarily front streets perpendicular to Bland Drive, resulting in the longer side facades of the homes facing Bland. Additionally, the ADU would fill a void present on the west side of Bland Drive. Most of the facade would comprise of brick matching the primary structure. Stillness proposed on the lower section of the chimney and on the front door stair railing. A two foot six inch concrete base would be painted and screened with landscaping casement windows matching the primary structure are proposed on all facades architectural shingles matching the primary structure or proposed for the roof. A step stone path is proposed from the front entry to the street and each VC unit is proposed at the rear of the home, with a wooden closure. The proposal complies with the architectural review guidelines for new structures. The ADU prominence on the street will contribute some impact, but the use of compatible materials and limited size should reduce the visual impact. Staff recommend approval is submitted.

Anything to add?

Nope.

Okay. I think it looks very good from the architectural review, especially the chimney.

I like the

shape of

it. I think it'll be really pretty.

Good. The use of stone doesn't really match the existing home, does it?

No, but it does match the home surrounding.

Okay.

And we've also redone, we put some new stone steps in the front to replace the concrete steps that were there prior. So I think it will tie together well.

Well, otherwise, I think it looks good. Helen?

I have the same concern about the stone on the chimney and at the entry stairs there. If you need to have it at the chimney, then can you switch the entry steps to brick? The foundation too. When you look at them from the front, it appears to be two different houses. And what you want to do, I think, from what you're saying, is make it look like it all belongs there. That was the intention. You know, I would... take the stone i personally would get rid of all of the stone and do brick and put brick at the foundation wall wrap it around the sides i know it's more expensive my house doesn't have brick on the foundation wall oh that's what's shown on the elevation i don't think it does i think it's

maybe in the front it does but i don't think on the side Oh, in the front, it goes all the way down. Just not on the side, it doesn't. Okay. Yeah, the sides are concrete. I guess the front does go down.

Okay, then I would do the same, the brick on the addition. So it really, you get a long line and visually ties together. Okay. I can live with the limestone sills. I know they do work better than brick sills. And that's a very minor detail, and that sometimes changes within one design, one house. So other than that, I think it looks great.

Bob? I actually kind of like Helen's comments on getting rid of the stone. I think it would add

Yeah, I like the overall design. I think the architecture does match well. I honestly didn't really think about the stone too much. In that picture you have with some of the other homes for context, it does look like there's a lot of stone in your neighboring. I

actually

don't mind it on the chimney, but I agree with at least taking it off the steps. Yeah, I agree on that one. could do that yeah i see why you did it but overall i think it looks good

i guess this is the one problem with going at the end because other people take uh some of the thoughts that you had uh the questions that i had which you've already answered kind of here was was the design intention to appear as one cohesive unit or two distinct structures that are joined at the middle because that was my thought too when i looked at it that it um it I feel like it should probably present as kind of one cohesive whole. And I specifically, to me, what stood out, yes, is that stone and also that rounded dormer. Just kind of small design elements that I think could tie back into the original structure more to make it look like one cohesive house instead of kind of two structures that are made to look like cousins instead of twins.

Richard?

I mean, I also, I guess I agree with Kami. I appreciate everyone's comments, but I don't mind the stone. So I would think that would be kind of a design decision. From my perspective, that would be up to you. And I also just wanted to say, I don't know who your architect is, but I really appreciated... how he was able to put the new edition, you know, kind of in a live picture. That was really nice for me. So thank you for that. But overall, I think it looks great. And, you know, it's kind of, you kind of have an unusual lot. So it's interesting that you're doing this, but it certainly fills a big space. So I'm glad that, you know, that you were able to do this project. I'm glad it's working out for you.

David?

I don't have anything to add.

Okay. Any comments from the audience? Any hands up? Nope. Okay. Well, we have a staff recommendation to approve as submitted.

Okay. Do you agree to change the stone on the steps to brick and the foundation wall in the front to brick? Does it matter?

He likes the stone. I don't care. Not that big of a deal to me, to be honest.

okay well my motion will be to approve as submitted with rick replacing the stone at the steps and at the front elevation

second all in favor aye opposed

okay well thank you when

will you uh start

Well, I think we have to go back to the Board of Aldermen next week, right?

Right.

So after that, as soon as we can. We wanted to start four months ago.

Good luck.

Okay. Now we've come to old business and that's 8125 Westmoreland. Is the applicant here? No? The applicant online. Okay, we'll ask one more time. 8125 Westmoreland. If you're the applicant, raise your hand. No? Okay, we'll hold that off till the end. And we'll move on to 139 North Beamiston. And we have two items tonight. One is the site plan review and the other is the architectural review. And I know the applicant is here. So Brian, let's get started.

This project was presented at the July 1st meeting. The Planning Commission Architecture Board voted to continue the project to allow for revisions. The subject property is located on the west side of North Bemiston between Maryland and Pershing. The site is zoned R3 and is developed with a single family home. The project consists of the demolition of the existing site structures, subdivision of the lot into two lots, and construction of duplexes on each of the new lots. A minor subdivision plat that was recommended for approval to the board of all on July 1st It was recommended to approval of the Board of Aldermen on July 1st and approved by the Board of Alderman on July 23rd. The project includes the following revisions from the July 1st meeting. The building footprint has been reduced, most notably on the north side of the north duplex and south side of the south duplex. The building height has increased by one foot seven inches in conjunction with stormwater management revisions. HVAC units have been moved to the ground level and screened with wood enclosures. The driveway is now proposed to have brick pavers and include planters. Trash enclosures were increased in size and placed top pavers. Paving was removed from the rear yard on the lower level. The height of the stairwells has been reduced. The shape of the roof has been revised. Chimneys were introduced on both duplexes. Impervious coverage is now proposed to be 53.4% on each lot. The proposed stormwater runoff is now 0.49 cubic feet per second for each lot, an increase of 0.05 for lot A and 0.02 for lot B. Staff are of the opinion that the revisions meet the criteria for site plan review and recommend approval with the following condition. That the applicant shall record a deed restriction with St. Louis County recorder of deeds, noting the location and maintenance requirements of the drywall system and shall submit proof of filing prior to approval of a building permit.

Okay, thank you. Before we go any further, I'd like to thank everyone who has sent in communication, both pro and con for this project. And hopefully we'll get some more tonight and we'll go forward with it. So who's going to speak? Tyler?

Good evening, everyone. And just pull this up on the screen. Okay, good evening. My name is Tyler Stevens from core 10 architecture representing Doug Cohen here tonight. We were here, maybe a couple weeks ago or a month I can't remember, but it's been a month yeah I believe there were some people who were not here that night, maybe who are here tonight is that correct. I can't remember who was here and who was not. But I'm going to go through an abbreviated version of last time, just in case people who weren't here just kind of remind you of that. So first off, this is 139 North Beamiston, which is in that yellow square just in the first block north of Maryland. Wow. This is an existing picture of the existing house. It's kind of there in the middle, and it sits on a double lot. We went through the lot consolidation discussion last time. That was approved. That's what we just came from the Board of Aldermen for because that has been the pattern of this neighborhood for the last... However, many years, any of the double lots that were there have mostly been subdivided with a pattern of building two family duplexes because that's what the zoning kind of points to. So that's what we're talking about here is two duplexes on this double lot. The massing or context of the street plan is shown here. There's some revisions from last time I'll get to those in detail but first off just in terms of the general scale. One thing I pointed out before. is you can see a pattern here. There are a couple of new buildings. Here's one here, there's one here, across the street and over, and even this one next door. You'll notice that they have these notches in the side. That's not coincidence. We have notches in our side as well. That has to do with how the zoning is written. The zoning allows for a reduced rear yard setback if you only build on 80% of the allowable buildable area. And so as we discussed last time, these notches in the side are a good way to reduce the footprint in the allowable buildability area makes for a better side yard distance away from your neighbor and then It gets you down to that 80% so that you can elongate the building going a little bit further into the rear yard. So that's been the pattern and it works well. That's why we're proposing the same thing. Even with that elongation, you can see that in terms of the massing and the scale, we're still in the same realm as those other new buildings on the street. That is in contrast, I'll point out this house next door to the south. That's an existing house, an original. You can see the difference in the pattern, that one and then this one across the street. So the original single families were smaller. The block is pretty much filling up with these larger masses as it kind of changes through time. This diagram shows you the actual impervious area and the setbacks. I'll point out some of the changes that we made last time. There was a lot of discussion about the massing. You all indicated that you thought that the massing was out of scale with the rest of the block, and so we did a number of things To reduce that, but then also as part of that we were over on impervious we talked about the driveway system we have kind of a courtyard in between the two buildings parking court and we were proposing that as pervious pavers. Which. Because pervious pavers are not recognized by Clayton as being a pervious system, then we have switched that to impervious pavers, just traditional, which means they count in the impervious area. That means we needed to reduce the overall footprint by quite a bit. We have reduced it in the rear yard a little bit. You can see these hatches are basically where we are picking up pervious area. So the rear yard a bit, we reduced the size of the porches in the back as well. But the main thing we did was pull in the sides Part of the reduction of massing was to carve in the side elevations in various places. We had a big straight side before, and now we have various steps that match the other massing that's going on. There's a box in the back or two middle boxes with a pinch point right in the middle, and then the front. It's four segments of that which are echoed in the massing along the sides. Additional things we did in the center court was to add some landscape islands. Before, I was thinking of it as kind of a European-style parking court, which is all paved with pavers. But You don't really need all of that in order to maneuver the cars. So by putting in these green little islands, it's a little bit more of as if this was a street with driveways. That would be the pattern that you would see there where those curbs allow cars to come in and you have areas that you don't really need to drive on. And it further defines the pedestrian entry, which is right there in the middle. So you can imagine this as a green island with a sidewalk on it. essentially, but it's all at the level of that parking court. So those are the reductions that we did in setbacks and impervious area, which get us down to the net number, which was read earlier there. I don't remember exactly what that number is, but so we are underneath that even with the pervious paving or impervious pavings. It's always hard to keep those two straight. This is the resulting mass, as you can see in context with the rest of the block. This is a good example of seeing that side elevation. And Steve, I presume we're talking about site plan and architectural review all at the same time?

Well, really, we're only doing site plan review right now, but they're going to

overlap. Right. Well, we just won't deal with materials then. But this, you can see this massing on the side elevation here. That's the same on both sides. But you can see that what I was describing where you have kind of a rear mass, you got these two middle with the pinch point in the middle, and then the front mass up here. So that provides a lot of relief on the side elevation. We're further picking up some architectural details. I'll just point them out now. One of the things that we're going to talk about in architectural review is the reduction in the perceived height. We talked about real height and perceived height before. The perceived height, this front tower, we have a front stairwell right up here. And we were calling out that kind of the stair tower. We have taken an entire floor off of this. It was three stories before. Now it's only two. What that does is it makes that tower now less of a tower and more of a bay because the overall roof is taller than that. And you'll see that in a minute on the elevations. By doing that, in order to get the plan to work out, that stair was moved from the front to... I apologize for this mouse. It's not responding very well. It was moved to the back here. So we had a back stairwell always. Now that back stair is going to take you up to the top floor instead of the front stair. That's the change in plan that allows all this to happen. which moves the higher parts to the back, lower parts in the front, again, adding to that perceived reduction of height. And then also it also allows for a kind of a bay in the back that further differentiates the side elevation massing, breaking it up a little bit more. In the front, it was mentioned chimneys. We always had a little bit of a problem in this front corner because our front materials and our side materials are different. And so we had a transition there in the corner, which we were trying to do right kind of minimalistically and cleverly on the corner. But honestly, it was always going to be a little bit of challenge. What we have done is introduce these chimneys that you see right behind there, because that does a number of things for us. It further breaks down the scale of the side elevation. Chimneys are always evocative of residential structures, residential houses. I think there was a comment last time that looked too much like an office building and not enough like a house. That further helps that, but then architecturally, it allows us to wrap the front elevation materials around the corner and have something to die into. So now they can transition at the chimney, which is a much more natural transition. And you can kind of see that in this dark brick scale here down below. So overall, I think that the massing has come down quite a bit. And you'll see that when we get to the elevations and that rendering. This is sort of architectural stuff, but just context of other new structures and scale. We talked about these buildings. I won't dwell on them a long time. Other than this one, this is the building that I mentioned last time that was sort of a model that I really like, 210 North Central. It has a stair tower in front too. And as you can see, its tower stops short of the ridge line, which allows the main roof to stick up above it. And so it's not really perceived as a tower as much as a bay element. And so that's really what we're have done with the new one by reducing a floor off of that stair towers to bring it down below the ridge, much like this building does. These diagrams here we talked about last time and I'll show them again because you can see it's the pattern when you start with the traditional massing of what's allowed by zoning and then start breaking it down, splitting in half to reduce mass. There's that tower element now pulled down below the ridge And then further taking it and now introducing some slopes to it, break it down even further, which result in the end of two masses next to each other that look more like that. Rather than before this tower element was going up, it was the tallest thing, another floor up. Here's the elevation down the street. I think you can start to see some of that, even though elevations are deceiving because nobody ever sees a building in pure elevation like this. But nevertheless, it shows you the relative difference between that front tower and the main roof. being down lower, everything has been reduced in scale then. This window, which is the main window in the tower, is smaller than it was before by significant margins in both width and height because we wanted to keep the proportions. So since it got shorter, we needed to also make it narrower. Additionally, the window up on the top floor has been reduced in size. The window down on the first floor has been divided up with kind of split that. So everything is reducing the scale of these windows down more in keeping with the residential neighborhood. You also asked us to add some context to neighboring buildings. So we've done that in terms of gables and dormers and whatnot. Just want to point out that a little bit more accurate than what we showed before. This is that front elevation in terms of the skin. We talked about that before. I won't dwell on that. The overall massing again, and then now the final rendering. So this, the architectural language is still the same. We still believe that this is a really beautiful structure and have had many comments from many sources indicating that people seem to really like the design of the building and the architectural language. You all even indicated that at the last meeting that someone said the quote was, I live on this block and I would really enjoy walking past it every week and looking at it and saying, wow, what a beautiful building. However, it was too massive. That was the kind of full comment. And so what we've done is really reduce that. I'm going to show you the rendering from before. which is here, this is what we saw last time. And if I just flip back and forth between these two, you can see that reduction. See those main towers, which were the tallest element above the roof and the size of the window and how much they have come down, the scale of the window being reduced as well, elements of the mass from behind kind of being more prominent than it was before. So all in all, We heard you and we agreed with your comments and have gone back reducing the footprint, reducing the impervious, the overall scale, adding more interest to the side and reducing the perceived mass from the street. I should probably just touch on something that might be a question you're going to, I would imagine somebody is going to ask why did the building get taller than it was before. If we're talking about reducing it. And again, I go back to this difference between actual height and perceived height. Actual height is measured very specifically in the building code. And there was some concern about the lower level and how the driveway dives down in. And we talked about MSD and water because that is a lower level catch basin. That was a lot of why we were doing the pervious pavers. Going to impervious, MSD has some different rules. And one of them has to do with floodplain and collecting water below the building slab in various kinds of water storage. And so in order to meet their floodplain, plane requirements, we needed to raise the lower level floor up by 18 inches. And so that's what we've done. We raised that lower level living area up 18 inches. So now it's above the garage level, which everything kind of went up with it. That is all measured to the main roof in terms of the average roof slope. But again, the height of the tower in the front and all the front elevation elements that are against the street have been reduced by an entire floor. So hopefully that answers that question.

When you raise the lower level living area, did the garage level stay where it was? Yes. So it's only the occupied portions that went up.

That's correct. Which do some other things. I'm sorry, just to point that out because it was mentioned in the staff report by that occupied level is in the back. And when you pull that up, that also pulls the backyard up, which we had a number of kind of steps and retaining walls in the back. All of those got shorter by that amount because of the raising of the backyard. Sorry.

We saw that on comparing the drawings, but I wasn't sure where the garage level was. It stayed as it was a month ago.

That's correct.

Okay. I still have some concern about the massing for the site plan, because if you'd go back. Yes. No, go back one more. There. I know you've brought the stair towers down. but the building is still quite a bit higher than most every other building on the street. And what I was looking for, and I think we mentioned it before, was to see what it would look like when you were walking or driving going north or going south, because my perception is that the site will look overdeveloped at this point. And mainly that's because I see the two duplexes, even though they're on separate legal properties, that they look like one. So it appears to be, when you look at it, to be a multifamily building of four units. I know they're not attached, but it just reads that way. And I think people will perceive it that way. We've talked about perception versus reality. And you were talking about the height. I'm talking about the perception of what is happening now. on this site compared to the reality of it. And I see it as really being a lot of mass when you put the two together. If they had looked differently, and that's an architectural thing, I may have thought different. But right now I'm still concerned about the mass. But let's go on beyond that. I am still totally confused about where the water goes. And if you or the engineer could explain it a little better, it looks like water is going to some of the neighbors at times. There are dry wells and pop-up emitters, but they're all in the front. So I think we need a little more in-depth explanation of where all that water is going.

As I don't see the civil engineer here, I will explain it to best of my knowledge. And he talked about this last time. I think there was some confusion as to which direction the pipe flows. The catch basins, the emitters, all of that are in the front, as you indicated. There are in the backyard, there are collection points and that water is piped from the back to the front. We are not allowed to empty water onto a neighbor's site. That's just not allowed. So it does not do that any more than, well, those collection pipes are for that reason.

Could you put C3 up on the screen? I can't, but somebody can. Hey, Tyler, if you could use that as the base to talk on.

You'd have to blow it up a lot bigger than that for me to be able to see it.

Well, it's a lot bigger than what we have.

So there's a, in the back there, you see where it says 50 steel grade inlet. There's an inlet on both. Those are the rear yards. Those are down low at the lower level because those yards in the middle there are walkouts from that lower level. So there's the yard... The yard elevation as it is today, I don't have a cursor, but the north edge of the lot at the top of those terraces, yeah, all of that matches the elevation it is today across the, sorry, that's the west side and then down the north and south. So that's up where it is today. The porch on the corner matches which comes out the back of the main level up at the kitchen, that's a raised deck above the existing yard elevation. So imagine that's just like any deck you would have. You come out the back door of the kitchen, you're standing on a deck that is approximately, but judging the number of steps, it's like two and a half, maybe three feet above the ground. So that's just a normal deck with some steps going down onto the ground. Then you come around From those steps, and maybe you can point out those steps. Yeah, those are the steps going down from the deck. And if you continue towards the backyard, then you'd come around that there's a retaining wall where that dark black line is going up and down on the page here. Those other steps then go down along that retaining wall to the lower level. So the yard is two different elevations. Does that make sense?

It does. Where it says terrace and then you have the 15-inch steel grate inlet. Yes. Is that pervious or is it?

No, it's all grass. It's

all

grass. Yeah.

Oh.

Except the only part that's not grass is the stair coming down leads to a sidewalk that is then L-shaped and goes in the back door right there. So there's a little sidewalk going from the door to the stair, but the rest of that is all grass. And where it says terrace elevation 625 and 623, the series of bars, that's a series of retaining wall steps that kind of cascade from the upper yard down to the lower in large increments. The idea there is you get planting beds in these terraces. It's like a... Like a terraced garden would be each one of those steps is a couple feet going from one to the next level down.

Okay, keep going around the house.

Okay, so you are you come down those terraces you that that lower yard that has the great inlet is at the lower level living space. Then there is that grass continues in a T between the two buildings and goes towards the driveway at the same level. Then the right in between there's a little area that we've added for the trash cans that screened right in there. And that's where the pavers pick up at that point. Those are sitting on pavers. So there'd be a little gate between those two trash enclosures, which leads you into the parking court. It's all at that same level, no steps. That parking court is down at the level of the garage. And then when you go through the parking court on the other end and come between the two buildings, that's when it starts ramping up. You can see the grades there going 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. Those are going from the lower parking court up to the street and back. The front yards are not much different than they are today. You can see the grade lines on there. They really haven't changed. There's a minor little change in the middle of each front yard at the sidewalk right there just to get the sidewalk slopes to work out. The pattern of these older neighborhoods, and this lot is no exception. You've seen this before where you're at the street on the sidewalk, and right out of the sidewalk there's a little half staircase, let's say, that takes you up to the front yard. It goes up three feet approximately, two and a half, somewhere in there. Then you have the front yard at that plane, and then you have another half stair that takes you up Once you get back beyond that yard. That's the same pattern we have here. We're not really changing the front yard. So there's a little stair out at the sidewalk. You'll go up to the level of the yard and then another little stair that takes you from the yard up to the front porch. So none of the grades from that front all the way around the sides, those grades don't change at all. They're the same as they are today.

So no water will... go off the property, either north or south.

If you scroll down just a little bit, let's look at the grade. No, sorry, the other direction. You can see a grade line running there on the south side. I'm trying to see what elevation it's at. 624... looks like it's 625

maybe

or 23 it's not marked, maybe if we scroll up a little bit further keep going see if there's a. There 624 it's in the back. So that grade running on. It runs pretty much all along the property line. It's 624. It's flat all the way through there. That doesn't change. Over on the north side, you're at 625. That grade line is going perpendicular to the property, which indicates it's sloping either front or back depending on where the other grades are. But again, that's the same as it is today. So any water that's on that side yard which is all grass pervious, which is just like it is today. Actually, on the south side, it's better than it is today because on the south side there's a driveway. I guess maybe the driveway is probably about the same distance off the property line as the footprint of our building is because there are a couple trees that are kind of planted there on the side. But that area where those trees are is pervious along the property line on the south. That does not change. And the north doesn't change either. The side yard that's on the existing house today on the north side, it will be pretty much the same as it is in this drawing. So if I were to summarize what changes If you take this entire yard and lay it out as it is today, don't make any changes. The only thing we are doing is in the middle of the yard, we are pushing the elevation down in order to make the parking court and those two little backyard areas, pushing it all down. So that backyard, which is up high on the west side, on the west property line, steps down into that lower area, goes through the site, and then it ramps back up at the street. Does that make sense? It's almost like taking a plane of the yard and just kind of taking a donut in the middle and pushing it down.

That makes sense.

So any water has to go to that lower donut. It can't flow out of that.

Where does the water coming off the roof go?

That is picked up by various drain lines. I don't know that I can tell you definitively. I can tell you what it doesn't do. It doesn't come down and spout into the neighbor's yard. I know it doesn't do that because that's not allowed. It picks up... Well, it's going to go to the front to these...

Yeah, the dashed lines, those are where the pipes are. So you actually, Ryan, if you scroll back up, I just want to fill in some gaps for everybody. So if we scroll back up, keep going to the back and then go left a little bit so we can see the box. Those boxes, the dark black outlines, those are creating our tributary areas. Basically, it's saying everything that's captured within those dark boxes then keep going up. I need to see this 20-year. At your southwest corner here, that's the only tributary post-construction that actually leads directly to another property. But it's saying right here that tributary area is only going to collect in a 100-year storm 0.08 cubic feet per second would go on to the property of the south. If you go all the way to the left, Ryan, to show the existing conditions for that same tributary area as kind of what Tyler was alluding to is significantly larger. So you can see if you stay zoomed out, Ryan, we can see the difference of the two tributary areas. comparatively. So right now in the existing conditions, that tributary area that goes to the property of the South is actually creating 0.44 cubic feet per second. So it's going from a 0.44 to a 0.08 condition. So That's because what Tyler is alluding to is that the new tributaries are collecting all the water in the low points, and then through pipes they'll come out to either the pop-up emitter that's in the front yard or to a pop-up emiter through a dry well system. And then any excess, the way that they've designed this, they use the natural grade, and the front yard goes towards the street of Bemison. So any overflow that comes out of those dry wells in the front yard is going to naturally sheet flow off of the site to Bemiston and into an MS sewer the way they've designed. So it significantly reduces in the post-construction condition than the water flow that would go on to an adjacent property.

Thank you. Well put.

Okay, so Ana, the dark outline of the building represents the roof.

Right. So you can see all these dark outlined areas, they're different tributaries. And these little boxes here show the calculation based on the pervious and impervious area of each of these tributaries, how much water would be created in a storm event. So right now, this is our existing condition. You can see that there's four tributary areas where water is running off. This large area right here is going to 131 North Bemiston. So it's sheet flowing kind of in this direction right now. This larger tributary is sheet flowing Also across to one 31. So these two together, yeah, kind of flow in this direction south. Now what they've done is they've created all of these smaller tributaries. So this little sliver here in the corner will still flow naturally the way it does to the south, but it's significantly less area that's creating. So that's how you get that reduction. But then they've captured the roof of each building, which is this middle tributary area. And they're taking all the water created on the roof and they're putting it towards this dry well with an overflow of a pop-up emitter. And similarly, in the low areas where we have the area inlets here, the great inlets, one in each brewery yard and then in the driveway courtyard area, those are all connected to collect all the water from these low points and send them similarly through a system through a pop-up. and then the way the yard is graded here any sheet flow from that pop-up will just take itself down to to the street

anna i'm sorry steve can i interrupt for a second This is Bridget. Ana, just because we're on the subject with the pop-up emitters, you know, we've seen recently in other areas of Clayton, specifically in Clayton Gardens, you know, it sounds like we're sending a lot of water through to the pop-up I mean, do we know that there's a nearby sewer inlet? In other areas, the sewer inlets are pretty far away. I'm just kind of curious if anybody has any idea where the sewer inlet is. Because again, it sounds like we're capturing water and then putting it through the pop-up emitter. But then once it comes out the pop-up emitters, it's got to go somewhere. So just curious if there's any thoughts on where the inlets are for all the pop-up omitters.

Yes, a lot of that we rely on MSD still right now within our code since they're doing that. So the two pop-ups in the front yard here have dry wells connected to them, whereas this one pop-up emitter does not. So it will have more of a constant flow. The difference in this design that makes staff a little more comfortable with the design compared to other ones is these pop-up emitters are going to send the water onto the street as opposed to some of the other ones where we've seen where the pop-up emitter might be in the rear yard. And then the sheet overflow of that is going to go on to somebody's property if it doesn't work properly here. If this pop-up emiter is constantly running with water, it's going to make their front yard not look very nice because they'll have a bit of a ravine, but it will all go into the public right-of-way as opposed to directly onto somebody's property. One thing they could do is put a similar drywall underneath this pop-up emitter that would just allow for potential additional storage in the case of a larger event.

It should be pointed out that the other two have that large dry well connected to them. That's the majority of the water. So it's not like every drop of water that goes into that pop-up emitter comes out. A lot of it is captured and stored and allowed to dissipate naturally and slowly over time. That's the point of these water management systems.

I guess I did not realize there was a third pop up print is so tiny, but I see it there. Okay. Um, let's go on. Let's move on to Helen.

Okay. Can you explain the ponding storage area? Is that a retention pond under the slab or

So the way, yeah, and this again, this is an MSD kind of requirements all explained to the best of my knowledge. Essentially you pull these slabs up and create underneath them as a rock base gravel base that can get kind of deep. Basically, so gravel is a natural storage area for water. And the calculations are done based on the size of the gravel and everything and how much it can store. That slab then sits on top of that, and you have a natural aquifer, let's call it, in that gravel area below the slab.

How does the water know to go there?

In a pipe.

Where is the pipe coming from?

It's all part of the... I mean, everything... One of the things I said last time is that, because I think you mentioned that the water runoff today is really bad. Like you got a lot of water coming off the site. And one of the things I which at first sounds counterintuitive because bigger means more impervious area. But because of the rules of how this works in MSD, we have to capture all the water off the roof. So if our building filled the entire site, then not a drop would go anywhere. Everything is captured, even off the building. These inlets in the backyard, they're all ways of capturing water and not letting it sheet flow. In the old days, which is how the property is today, no water is captured on the site. It comes down off of roofs in downspouts. Those downspouts typically have a little kick out at the bottom. Maybe there's a concrete splashway and then that water just pours out into the yard. That's not how we're doing things now in terms of capturing this water.

Okay, but how does the water... Where is the pipe coming from? Where does it start? Is it if the 15 inch steel grade inlets, if they get full, you know, at what point does it go to the storage?

As soon as it goes in, I mean the storage is based on a, it's either a 50 or 100 year, you know, flood calculation. And so you're talking about a major storm event where there's a whole bunch of water. that water can't get through those pipes fast enough in terms of getting out to the pop-up emitters and the streets and all that, because it's all about speed here. So then it goes into that big area that's the aquifer, essentially. It has a place to go. If it didn't do that, it would build up... By the way we're doing this site, I said we're taking the middle and pushing it down. We're basically creating a swimming pool in the middle kind of thing. And so if we didn't have these places for the water to go, it would just start flooding. in that middle area, which is why MSD has these rules because they don't want to allow flooding in habitable areas. And so our floor sits up at, there's a certain elevation that's the benchmark of the, we'll call it the hundred year floodplain in their calculations. We have to be above that elevation, which is why we raise the floor.

So basically if the water gets to the large drain in the parking court, and things aren't moving, then it will go back.

Right. When it first gets to the large drain, it flows out to the sewer system, you know, to the storm system.

To the pipe

and

pump and then out.

Yeah. But if for some reason it was a really heavy rain, this massive rain event, and the pipe wasn't big enough to hold it, you know, it's going to drain over time. But during the storm, it's filling up too fast. Then that allows the ground to soak it up, basically, so that it doesn't flood.

Okay, so you still have the pump or possibly two pumps. And then you have the backup two generators. Correct. And you have the storage area.

The belts and suspenders kind of thing. There's a lot going on to capture water.

With the floodplain consideration of MSD, how does that impact the adjacent area with floodplain insurance?

The adjacent properties?

Yeah. I mean, behind, across the street. Well,

again- Oh, no, no. We're not creating a floodplain. The neighboring properties are not changing, so nothing about them is different, other than they're going to receive less water, as Ana just explained.

Putting a lot of water under those slabs, possibly.

That floodplain already exists. That's where it naturally is down in the ground. You just never see it because it's covered.

But you're adding more water to it. It's a backup system. And water migrates, so does it change the water table?

No. Sorry, this is like a big concrete basin. So what's stored in there, the only way it would get out of that storage basin is if it comes out of the pipe.

Oh, so it's a retention.

Yes. So it'll be under... Right. Essentially, the MSD has these sorts of... We probably don't notice how many times they have it because they're usually underneath parking or underneath buildings. But it's a big basin. It's a big concrete box. For all intents and purposes, it might be filled with gravel. It might not, depending on how they actually design it, but it's under the driveway and it's a backup. So basically allow water to be stored under the driveway in a larger event so that it allows the pump to work to over time kick the water back out through the front yard. So it won't impact your water level, ground table level at your house or anything like that.

Okay. That six-inch PVC pipe that goes in the side yards and across the front that each goes to a dry well, what is that collecting?

Any of the water along the way from the back or the roof I believe ties into that.

It's not a perforated PVC. it's called out as straight pvc

yeah so downspouts like to connect to it you have a downspout coming in it's into a pipe that pipe goes to the other pipe two pipes connect together and flow

okay is it capped at the west end or does that too if there's an overflow shoot it

no there's no water shooting to the west um all of that flows to the east from the back to the front. And yes, the pipe will have a cap on the end. It's not allowed to shoot out the backside and it's buried underground. It's not a pipe that it's... Right,

but if it's pushing water out underground, all of a sudden you

see... No, yeah. We're not creating a giant water aquifer that's going to flood into a neighboring basement, if that's your concern. We're reducing... I mean, I don't know how many times to say this. We're reducing the amount of water That is currently coming off of the property by a significant amount and picking up that water and managing it in a way that does either storing it over time or letting it flow out of the front yard into the storm inlet in the event of overflow.

Have you taken into account black ice when the water is shooting out or coming out dribbling out whatever from the three emitters

no.

That's there was a serious problem of black ice at the corner of Pershing and North Beemiston. And it got corrected. I don't know. Well,

the only thing I would say about that, I have no idea about that property and what's happening there. We're talking about major rain events here when it, when this happens, when it comes out, because otherwise it's stored in these storage systems and goes out slowly and you'll never even see the water. A major rain event happens spring summer. Sometimes in the fall, if we have a, we don't typically get major rain events in the middle of the winter. Um, so any water that's going in there is typically less the chances of it coming out of the pop-up emitter in the middle of winter. logically, in my opinion, seem very slim. That's when you would get ice.

Yeah. The three-inch one that is taking all of the backyard, that's not going to a dry well the other two go to dry wells so it'll take longer for that to get out after any kind of a rain but the three inch pop emitter that is just taking the water it's being pumped through that so black ice is a concern many residents walk um The other thing. Would

you like us to add a drywall at that third pop-up emitter?

I'm not your civil engineer. You know, I'm telling you what has been experienced on the block and you're at the crest of the hill. So it'll all go downhill on each side. If you were at the bottom of the hill, black ice would be limited to your area. Is

there black ice forming today when water comes off? That's not been a problem on this street? In front of this property, there's not an area that's always bad where ice forms or anything like that?

No, because we haven't had that problem since they resolved it at the Lower part of the north part of the first block of North Princeton, but it was the source of a number of car accidents. The let's see. Oh. The side yards, you'll need to create a swale or drains, because the 2021 IRC requires grade to fall away from a foundation not fewer than six inches within the first 10 feet, and where not possible, which side yards in Old Town are six feet, drains or swales shall be utilized. So

I promise you that it will meet the code. And our civil engineer is very aware of these codes and will do it in such a way that it does.

It is a note on another of Volz's projects. My concern is what isn't shown is usually... can get lost in the shuffle and then everybody's like i said that or the people that have agreed to something are no longer around so if it's not on the drawing i'm somewhat concerned um The grade change that you have at the southwest corner of the property. And we scroll up Ryan, please. The 625 in the upper left corner. I see why you're changing that. But that will direct the water coming across that way to the turntable and the driveway in the backyard of 131. And it will go into the garage because that site slopes to the west as it is now, the grade being parallel to the property line, the water comes down and goes behind the garage. So it doesn't become an issue of trying to walk to the car and realizing that your good shoes are squishing with the water.

If you see the line 625 on the western edge of the property line where it is today, we have to tie into the existing properties because we're not allowed to change grade on somebody else's property. So that 625 crosses the line right there on the next one over to the right. That right there.

Yeah,

that's the 625. And it's currently running parallel. Yeah, the light one is the existing. The dark one is the new. The light one is currently running parallel to the property line, meaning that 625 is held kind of parallel to that property line. We are moving that back to the north, which means that the slope from the property line to that line is shallower in our proposed than it is today, because today it's 625 happens closer to the property line. We're pushing it further back.

Yeah. Switching it changes the direction of the water and keeping it parallel. There is grass earth to absorb it.

There is grass and earth around it now to absorb it too. That whole back is grass.

There's an asphalt, piece of asphalt that goes almost to the property line.

And where do you see that?

It's not shown. You haven't shown. None of your drawings show the garage.

Oh, you're talking about a different property. You're not talking about our property, correct? You're talking about a garage on the neighboring property.

On 131.

Yeah, we don't typically show the neighboring properties. But let me go back to how grades work. That 25 running parallel to the property line, water flows perpendicular to the grade lines. So currently it's going from the north to the south. a straight 90 degree angle to the property line. We are pulling it away from the property, which makes it shallower because it takes longer to get up that height and swinging it in, which changes the flow from being straight to the property to now kind of angled to the front.

The angle to the property to the south 131 puts it on the driveway in front of the garage and being that the garage is lower than the driveway, water will go in the garage.

I can't correct the drainage problems of neighboring properties. If the garage is below the driveway and water goes into the garage, that's a bad thing. I can't fix that.

No, you shouldn't. You shouldn't be doing that. And what

I am doing to fix it is reducing the amount of water significantly. Go back to the tributary areas that we were talking about before, what Ana mentioned. We're going from an overflow of, what did you say, 0.4? 0.44 currently today and reducing that down to 0.06. That's pulling a significant amount of water off of that kind of contributing to this garage driveway problem that you're talking about. So I can't correct the garage over there, but I can reduce the amount of water going to it by a significant amount, which is what we're doing.

Okay. The angle will put it on the wrong area of the turntable and the driveway. Okay. Okay, I'm cycling a lighting note and a point 002. It says over 75 watt must be shielded. Clayton doesn't let you go over 75 watt. So that could be a remnant of a previous notation. So other than that, no concerns.

Bob? I think Helen was an attorney doing a cross-examination in her previous life, I'm sure. I think she brought up a lot of legitimate concerns. At the same time, I thought you gave a lot of reasonable responses. And I think, Anna, you helped explain it to me as well. And the... The questions were good questions. And I think they really drilled down, but it proved to me that I think the developer and you and the engineer have thought these things through pretty far. And that's all I got to say for the water, except for in the conclusion, the city says the basement may experience ponding without mechanical improvements. What's going on there?

without mechanical improvements being a sump pump kind of thing.

Okay. All right. With regard to the project, I liked it last time. I like it even more this time. I think the scaling down works well. uh, before I came here, I went up and down the street a couple of times. And the truth of the matter is there are some single family homes that are just massive facades. I don't know if they're multifamily or single family. And the only way I can tell is looking at the addresses. Does it have one address or two addresses? And, um, And it's lovely. We call it old town, but the trend is definitely there. New construction, new construction, new construction is going on on the street and the adjoining streets. With regard to these buildings, they are so much more approachable from a human perspective than some of these single family buildings. brick homes just a few doors down on the street. You have setbacks all over the place. It's, it's, it's fun to look at. It's enjoyable to look at. Uh, I would like to live in this house more than these single family houses that are just a few doors down that are brand new and they're just massive. And I'm really looking hard and they go back pretty deep, these single family homes. And I'm asking, are these single family or these multifamily homes? Uh, I really, you know, on this board, I really look for how do you create community? How do you make a human scale? And in many ways, these homes do it better than the traditional brick homes. Then you get to the next question. Does this look like an apartment complex? as opposed to two duplexes, it doesn't come across as an apartment complex to me. I think there's enough break between the two and they have just such interesting lines and

depth

points. I just like that so much. What else? Does it fit in with the neighborhood? Well, the neighborhood is changing a lot. And just because it isn't brick doesn't mean it doesn't complement the neighborhood. I would suggest that this could very well do that. I guess you can always change it a little bit more, but I mean, this is private property and our job. Are you building a project that makes sense for the neighborhood that complies with the laws, the ordinances? And I just think you've come a long way towards that. That's all I have to say.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We have worked hard to do so. So we're not just making these things up.

Amy?

So back to the site plan, just real quick. The ponding in the basement, can you just explain that to me, like why that is going to be told to prospective buyers or why that is a need to be told to our prospective buyers?

Because there's a pump, essentially. I think that's probably a real estate regulation, right, Doug? Yes. Right. But when you have a, so if your house, uh, if your house sits up on a hill and any water coming out of your, um, sewer pipes, you know, flows downhill, right. And goes into the sewer system and disappears. Um, then that's one thing. Um, many times this is not unusual. This is not like this is the first time this has ever been done. Um, many the ground um and that happens to be the case in this part of clayton we don't run into that a whole lot in st louis towards the city more so because the sewers are so deep but it's not the case here so since water has to flow downhill we need to pump it up to the sewer level of the sewer system and according to regulations of real estate, you need to disclose that to the buyers. Again, that's not something, if that was a major concern, then Doug would have said, we absolutely can't design it that way because I'll never be able to sell these, right? Nobody will, but it's not. That's a disclosure statement that happens on any other properties and Doug has had that before and is not concerned about that in terms of his buyers.

So how is that communicated to like a potential buyer that that might be an issue?

Yeah, I'm thinking he's going to say there's a disclosure statement just like any other real estate.

My name is Doug Cohen. I am with Douglas Bemiston LLC, I think. And so I think what you're talking about is the ejector pit So is that what this is? The pumps that take the sewers.

I'm just like, as a buyer, if I'm like

buying this house. I would say that probably 15% of the homes that we build are such that the existing sewers don't work. So we have to pump up to make it work. That's the bottom line. So whenever the basement plumbing is used, you hear a little hum and then it pumps it up and then we go to gravity.

But is that what ponding is? Or is that when it overflows and then is in your basement?

I don't know what you mean by ponding in this

scenario.

Those are two different, you're talking about sewer systems versus storm system. I was thinking like as a

result in ponding into the garage and basement, as a pump filler may result in ponding

Yeah, I'm not quite following your question.

Yeah, it's on the sump pump language on the civil. It's the same. So one thing that they did add is that larger detention. So that's connected to the same thing we were talking about earlier. So the great... in the middle of the driveway is connected to a sump pump. So just like what they were saying with the sewer, same thing. They have to disclose that to a buyer that if that sump pump were to fail, that could result in ponding. But as Doug mentioned, their backup right now is the storage basin plus the gas generator. Right.

So when you say ponding, what does that mean?

It just means that if the generator, everything fails and that pump stops working and the basin fills up with water, then the next thing to happen is that the driveway would get ponded. So ponding in the driveway would fill up, which means it could go under the garage door into the garage. Now they do have all of their livable areas raised up even more. So then it would also have to fill up the entire driveway and everybody's garage before then it would fill up. into the livable area probably fill those two recessed areas in the

back too okay so it's not likely

that you still have to tell them

oh

it'd

be a hurricane

right so then just if i am like the second person to buy that unit that will still be disclosed to me it

runs with the time okay

cool that

was my

question thank you

jim i have nothing to add for site plan richard

Um, yeah, I, I just have a, I appreciate that the, um, building footprint was reduced. Um, and again, these comments are just for site plan review. Um, I, you know, I appreciate that you guys work to get under that 55% requirement. Um, I also, I, I have a couple of questions just, um, maybe Doug, if you could come back up to the microphone. Um, I'm just curious, do you have a, like a construction cost estimate so far? I have

one in my head, but you know, we're, we're waiting on the construction plans to get hard, hard bids. But I mean, I have numbers from, you know, 35 years of experience is how I have to do things. The hard, true, hard numbers can't come until the construction drawings are done.

Well, do you have like an approximate number then, the one from your years of experience?

I do. I'm not sure why that's relevant, but...

I can tell you. I mean, I can tell you why it's relevant. So recently we had... I also walk the street a lot. I live nearby. I'm just a little concerned. So, I mean, I was walking the street just last week and there were cars parked up and down the street. There's obviously lots going on in that neighborhood, whether it's people, obviously other people doing work on their homes. So I guess this is a really big project. So we recently had a project, I think I'm sure you're familiar with it, the Gay Avenue Townhomes. That was a much bigger project for the neighborhood than anybody anticipated. So I guess once you trigger that $2.5 million construction cost, you are required to have a parking plan submitted with the city. So I don't want this to turn into something where you, because I had a home built on the street from me and he was a great builder, but there were days that there were six or seven cars, trucks, parked along our street. And, you know, this project is twice as big as a single family home. I mean, you know, in theory, because it's two separate lots. So I'm just curious if you have, so I, you know, I'm just my, you know, one of, I'm the, as you know, I mean, Aldermanic representative on the, on the plan commission on the architectural review board. So I'm, just curious what your thoughts are on how we can mitigate the impact on the surrounding neighborhood, just related to construction.

Oh, glad to answer that. I'm still kind of confused on what that has to do with my costs.

So once you get to a certain cost, you have to submit a parking. You basically have to have a plan. Oh, the parking

plan is- Yeah, I mean, you will have to have- I get it. I didn't understand they were related. Yeah, I'm sorry if I

wasn't being clear. So the electricians

and plumbers

will have to park offsite. And maybe that's something that perhaps will still need to be done because I think people are entitled to park in front of their homes. You know, at least so I just don't want this to become construction is hard. I get it. It's for sure. I'm doing a project

down the street, you know, at the 151 Bemiston, which is a large renovation for Mr. Rossman here. And I think that this site is big enough and flat enough. I don't see any problem where I couldn't, you know, on my construction gate have a portion of that rocked in for any of the guys that are, you know, that I should be able to fit five or six cars inside the gate during construction with a rocked in area. I think it's big enough to handle that.

Okay. Well, I just hope that's the case. I just, you know, I don't want this to turn into something that, you know, construction again, as I said, it's hard. So I guess I just want you to keep in mind that if those construction costs go north of two and a half million dollars that I hope, you know, just want you to be aware that that will definitely

trigger. So when the numbers go over two and a half a million, there's a parking plan that is to be provided by me. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure staff will be able to provide you with more input, but I just, you know, again, the goal is to make.

Per lot, I assume.

Yeah. It's

based on

your building permit is when we gotcha.

Yeah. I don't see any problem with that. Now that I'm aware of that rule, we'll implement that in the design.

Okay. Well, yeah, it'll be a requirement. And then also, I guess I'm also curious, do you have any sort of timeline on how long you anticipate this project taking? Because I think normally you build single family homes. Is that correct?

Not necessarily. I've done three buildings on Brighton Way across from Shaw Park. I did the building on Cromwell on Clayton Road. Okay. I would imagine that we're looking at a year and a half. I'm assuming that's what I'm telling some potential suitors from once we dig a hole.

Okay. Okay. I guess, you know, like I said, we've had tremendous difficulty with the development on Gay Avenue. And I just, I don't want this to turn into something. So what was

the difficulty so I can be aware to not have those same difficulties? Well, I

think the big thing was... I think the big thing was that it took, I think, four years for the project to be built. And also they parked illegally constantly and just made it a nightmare for the surrounding neighbors. So that's, you know, again, we're just trying to learn always from our mistakes. Well, I will

say as a developer that doesn't want to risk my family's and my children's education. you're not going to build everything and wait for the phone to ring. I mean, there's risk that you have to mitigate to some extent, you know? So yeah, I'm going to go. I have people interested already. I think that as we get further along in this process, I can literally probably sign contracts, but no one, I can't do that until I'm through this process. The interest is overwhelming by the way.

Well, good. That's great. Again, I'm just, like I said, when there is construction and parking problems, along with staff, myself and my co-alderman Gary Feder will be the first people to get emails and phone calls. So that's why I'm just, again, trying to look out for the surroundings.

Well, good. That's great. Again, I'm just, like I said, when there is construction and parking problems, along with staff, myself and my co-alderman Gary Fader will be the first people to get emails and phone calls. So that's why I'm just, again, trying to look out for the surroundings.

Thanks for making me aware. I can definitely keep that under control.

Great. Thank you.

David? I agree with the staff recommendation.

Oh, Ellen.

Sorry about that. Got a lot of notes here. As you walk north on Beamiston from Maryland on the west side of the street, the 139 is set 10 feet in front of the adjacent properties, 150 feet of adjacent properties. 123, 127, 129, and 131 are all set back 10 feet. So you will see this mass and Since that wasn't provided, I took the elevation, the south elevation, and laid just a block. So the advantage of eliminating the roof, it's massive in front. It jumps out. The other, going along the west side of Beamiston, The houses on the 100 block are five feet, mostly five feet if there's a variance. This is three houses, 150 feet setback, 47 feet and 139. Both buildings jump out That concerns me. You know, I realize you want to max out the site. But that disregards the neighborhood, you know, meshing with the rest of the neighborhood.

So first of all, we did not max out the site. I pulled it back. The front setback is based on your zoning code. And we did a, well, civil engineer did a site front yard setback for the street or the zoning code determined what our front yard setback could be. And we did not even use that. We set the building just a couple feet behind that. So we're not pushing it to its limits. And where it is, is based on the rules of the zoning code.

Without consideration to what Steve mentioned, the massing of it.

Well, we've considered the massing a great deal. Yes. I know that you keep looking at it in terms of the mass of the house to the south, which I'm not going to argue that it's a lot larger than the house to the South. If you were just to take this building and that building and hold them up all by themselves, there's a big difference. But that house is not representative of the massing of the street.

interestingly 33.3 percent of the street 100 block both sides 24 houses are story and a half or even there's one that is one story so 33 of the street is one and a half story homes

which means that 67 percent of the street is not

Right. 50% is two-story, and 16.7% is two-and-a-half-story. Yours, it reads four stories at the rear. More than 50% of the rear appears to be four stories. And the parking court again shows four stories.

Four stories is not a fair comparison because as I said before, that lower level is pushed down into the ground. It's in a hole. So height is always based on grade. You can dig a hole 50 feet down in the ground and expose your building. That does not mean that the building is 50 feet taller than it was because, again, anything down below grade is not perceived as higher building.

As you walk by on the sidewalk, you see buildings at an angle. And with all of the brick paving, which will look, the brick paving will look good. But you see four stories.

That's not true. What you see as you walk down the street are the north and south elevations. They're not four stories. The only place you would see that is when you're down in the parking court. These buildings are fairly close together. It's the width of the driveway. And that driveway is sloping down. I guess if you're standing at just the right spot and looking just the right angle down in there, past the front mass and around the side, you might see a sliver of building that is four stories tall. But that's not the perception of the building from the street. That's just not the way it's going to look.

It isn't if you stand directly in front. No. But you rarely see a building head on. You see it at an

angle. Right. The more angle, the less you see of that parking court. The only time you're going to be able to see it is when you're directly in front because it's such a narrow sliver.

According to the civil drawings, it's 15 feet 8 plus inches.

That's right.

And walking along, you can see into people's backyards with a shared driveway. So I'm just concerned that it's too far forward and it's not even staggered. so that the north one is five feet in front of 141 and the south one is 5 feet in front of 131 they're both pulled out and you read them as steve mentioned as one complex oh That's my comment.

Let me jump in. That goes back to my walking both north and south on the west side of North Bemiston, both with the original plan over a month ago, and this plan. about three days ago. And what I noticed is my perception the first time was that the buildings appear because they're at the high point of the road coming up. They appeared much bigger and far forward. However, I know where you've got it. They're slightly behind the front building setback line. But originally, because of the extra height of the tower, it seemed to loom over everything. But as I went back a few days ago, I noticed that the tower was lower. But behind it, the building goes up much higher.

I'm going to, sorry, I have to interrupt you. The tower is lower by an entire floor. That's much. The word much does not apply to the height of the building. It went up in terms of that ridge 18 inches. 18 inches from the street is something you hardly perceive. So I would not think it's fair to say that this is much taller than it was before. If anything, it's visually much lower than

my perception of the tower is that it is lower, but my perception of the roof line behind it above the third floor or the upper level of the upper unit is about 1 foot 7 inches higher, correct? That's correct. There is a bigger difference there between the new tower and the roof behind it. But that roof behind it, I don't remember how far back it is, whether it's 10 feet plus or minus, is still going to be visible When you're walking either north or south on the street. And that's what really makes the overall massing seem Too much So I commend you for lowering the stair tower, but I don't think it has changed the overall massing that much. And I agree if you stand and look straight on, you do see it as two buildings. But as you're walking up or down the street, you really see it as one dense property.

Can I jump in here for one second? Sure. I hear what you're saying. I think, though, the fact that we all agree the facade has been reduced pretty dramatically by a floor.

Which was from your direction last time.

And you have to go back. in the middle of the building, I'll say, to see the foot higher. And to me, I think that would be showing a less dramatic effect. It's not jumping out at you as you walk by. It's in the back. It doesn't have the drama that a story taller facade would have as I walked by. I mean, we have, for example, when we do high rises, We always have what we call step backs. You know, maybe the first three floors are right against the sidewalk, but to avoid that damming feeling, the feeling of a dam, we say the next five stories have got to be recessed back several feet so that it's more amenable to humans walking by. Here, the height is, again, it's step back. It's not in front, it's not in our faces and it's only a foot. And my impression is it's not dramatic enough to call it from my opinion amassing, that's all.

Bob, I agree with you about the one foot seven inch difference is not that major. But when I look at the plan, I think from the face of the tower to the face of the occupied unit, on the third floor looks like it's about eight or 10 feet. That's an approximation. So, and that is still in front of many of the homes on the street. And that's just my perception of

walking up and down the street. That may be very well true. I think the reason why the zoning code is written the way it is in terms of figuring averages is because for whatever reason, and this happens a lot in Clayton, houses were built historically at lots of different setbacks off the street. I don't know why. They're not the rigid line of the street that you see in other places. And so the zoning code is written that way such that if you're on a street that's got a lot of variation in terms of how houses are set forward and backward, you take the average because you're not held to that furthest back requirement. So, yes, I'm not going to argue that there's some houses that are set further back than this. That's the nature of how the street was built.

Well, this might be an issue that goes together with the site plan and the architectural. But right now we're trying to focus on the site.

I mean, you all gave me some very specific directives last time and I followed every single one of them. And so, you know, the question that I would ask you is, is it not better than it was? Is it, did I not do the things you asked me to do in such a way that it is improved over the last time? I can't, all of those things we took into consideration. We didn't pick and choose your comments and say, well, that one's important and this one's not.

Steve, can I chime in? I can say 100% and looking through the plans and a lot of what you've said, specific things that were brought up, I can see them in this plan, specifically with these stairs in the front. That has definitely dramatically been reduced. I think part of, at least when I think of all this, what I've tried to do is bring it back to specific elements within the design. And I know one complaint, and I think this may be at least some of what you're getting at, Steve, and one complaint that we received from people in the audience last time is that there's elements that could make this read as one large unit instead of two separate units. I do believe still that the way, although that front stair is definitely dramatically reduced, this asymmetrical gable that is mirrored on both buildings then creates the effect of kind of one giant building kind of from the street. versus two separate buildings with a symmetrical gable. So I think that could possibly be adding to at least some of what people are seeing. And this stair element is still what's very far in front. And whether we're talking about height or anything, I think part of what might be causing some of the rancor is it is a very contemporary element. So when you're talking about as far as the feel of the neighborhood you know lots of people are using the word feel and i understand that that's difficult and i don't envy the position that you're in as far as trying to take these comments and build a cohesive design out of it that's going to go through but i believe when you take such a strong contemporary element and then push that all the way to the front i do believe that makes it a steeper hill to climb uh as far as design review goes

And Jim, I agree with you about the perception of the way everything is designed, that it does tend to look like one massive element. But I think once we get into the contemporary design versus anything else, we'll deal with that on the architectural review. But it all goes together. But again, Tyler, I do think that you've answered what we were asking for one way or another in this revised plan. But are there any further comments from the commission? No? Let's open it up to the floor. Nancy, I know you've had your hand up for quite a while.

Nancy Georgian, 224 North Beamiston. I built one of the single family homes. Mine's not massive. But on the drywall system, the sump and the gutters feed to the pipes. They're all connected. They go to the drywall, and it pops up. Oh, I'm here. Is that better? Yes. Okay. So the drywall system, I have other issues with it, but the way it's designed, it's designed to work and the water won't go on the other properties. There are issues. I don't feel that they, I think they should be testing infiltration rates because I really don't think the drywalls are that effective. You have a rain, they fill up And then everything just goes out to pop up after that. But back to the site plan review, there have been a significant number of single family buildings, not just duplexes built on the tear vents. So I think to Tyler's comment, yes, we have a lot of duplexes and townhomes, but we also have a lot of owner-built buildings. single-family homes that are in... Sorry, I've got allergies. Sorry if my voice is a little bit cracky. But the feel of the neighborhood... I'm sorry. Also, one other thing, Tyler and Doug, I am glad to see the reduction in size because it now complies with the R3 zoning requirements. You did address a lot of those provisions, and I thought that was good. But the site plan still presents as a multifamily, and as a very modern design compared to most of the buildings in the neighborhood. There are a few others that are more contemporary, but they're single-family homes. So when you walk by one, one I particularly don't like that you've shown, but again, that's my opinion, but it's one, and it's on a different block, and there's different structures there. This is in the middle of a very traditional block And the R3 zoning was adopted in response to the condominium complexes that were being built on Central. And the neighborhood really wanted to keep the feel of the neighborhood. So the R3 zoning allows for a higher density, more height, it has smaller setbacks, and it allows townhomes, duplexes, and single-family residences so that you could have larger homes built on these smaller lots. It was an accommodation to keep the neighborhood from turning into a string of condominium complexes. I think it's worked. You know, it's been like this. The big complexes were built in the 1980s. So when you have a site plan presenting as a multifamily, which this does, I just feel that it's not in keeping with the character of the neighborhood is. I would also say that when you have the contemporary designs, and I think Jim was the one that mentioned it, the asymmetrical roofs, you've made these great adjustments compared to the original proposed design, but you still have this in-your-face large contemporary that seems to mask landscaping different designs, some things within the material, you know, the ratios of materials could probably go a long way to having a contemporary project that fits better in the neighborhood. I personally would like to see two different designs. I'm not expecting that's going to happen, but it would go a long way towards the site plan and how this mass is going to look. So anyway, thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Other comments from the audience?

Hi, I'm Rick Bliss 7515 Westmoreland. Tyler, you're walking a real tightrope on the way the foundations are going to be poured. And if the city doesn't require an as-built survey of the foundations, I think they should just to make sure that there is compliance with the very, very strict threading the needle here.

That's it.

Thank you.

For the record, we do require as-built surveys as part of the building permit. Yes.

Any other comments?

Tyler or Doug, do you have any comment?

I was going to save this for the architectural portion, but she brought it up. First off, We have to abide by MSD. Whether you guys like it or not, whether we like it or not doesn't matter. MSD has jurisdiction over all this. They dictate pop-up drains and storage capacities and all these things that we've been talking about. It's not because we love them or we think I don't even like the looks of a pop-up drain in the front yard. I would not have them if it was my choice. Landscaping is better. We don't get these choices. MSD puts them in front of us. But the other regard to raising the whole building up and as she just said, not having a tuck under garage I'm sorry, but that is bad architecture. You want me to put the garages facing the street and stick them up on top of the site so that the first floor is a giant garage door? Because that's exactly what that's going to be. I have specifically designed it this way, mirroring these two properties so that we could push the garages below grade, which is what your code loves to have and have them out of sight. They face each other on the side. This is all in an effort to make a better looking structure that is referenced in many of the rest of your code. I do not want to put garage doors on the front facing the street. And that's the only way you're going to get in there if you pull them up, if you don't have this facing because no one's going to want the first floor of the neighborhood to be garages.

Thank you. I believe we have another hand. Come on up.

Hello.

Cheryl Miller, 130B North Central Avenue. And thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. I don't have the expertise that many people have here in terms of site plans and understanding architectural drawings and understanding setbacks and drains, et cetera, et cetera. I'm speaking from a strictly personal point of view. This project is directly behind the condos I live in now. And I'm very concerned about the change in privacy for the condo units directly behind. I'm very concerned If I'm reading the plans correctly, it looks like sunken gardens. And I just want to make sure that the integrity of our garages is not going to be affected. The integrity of our property is not going to affected. And I'm also very concerned about the fact that there are such large upper deck patios in the back that when I look out my window in the morning, that's what I'll be looking at. And I agree with many people in the neighborhood that. The design is so. Modern and contemporary compared to what is within our neighborhood that it also almost reminds me of driving down lindell and seeing the gorgeous old homes and lindell and then all at once you've got this large contemporary look there which just doesn't feel like it fits into the neighborhood. So I really would like the developer to take into consideration your back neighbors and how this project will be affecting their lifestyle. The fact that all the trees in the back are supposedly going to be removed is a real concern to me that we'll be losing vegetation and especially privacy. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any other hands up? Come on up.

Mark Wohler, 141 North Bemiston. I believe this is a site plan issue. We see they moved, which is I think they were requested, the air conditioning units off the roof. Where the ones that are now positioned are along the side. Our house, our front door is on the side. These units will be approximately five to 10 feet from our front door. And we're very concerned about the noise issue and these things going on and off all day long. I know there's been some precedent here. I don't know if it was Clayton Gardens, I believe one solution could be a geothermal situation where these units they're more environmentally sound or more efficient for the user but we're very concerned about four big, air conditioning units five or ten feet from our front door thank you

Tyler could those air conditioning units be moved further West or they're they're sort of tucked into the little notch out right now

If we put them in the backyard, then the people living in this building will complain about the air conditioning units. The reality is... There's nowhere you can put them other than on the roof that gets them away from everyone. That's why we did it that way to begin with. You all said you didn't want them on the roof, so now we've moved them down. Now you say you don't want them down. I don't know how to please everyone. It's very difficult to do that. As for the previous comment about the condos, I'm going to speak about that too because primarily that's what we do as a firm is we design condominium buildings in Clayton, dozens of them. And I can tell you, I've been on the other side many times. And I wasn't, I don't know how old the building is that you live in. 40 years? Okay. Well, when it was designed and came before the Architectural Review Board, if this existed 40 years ago, I'm not sure. But let's just say it was done today. I guarantee you that the people living in the house that we're talking about, where our property is at 139 Beamiston, would have complained about that condominium building. And about how their lack of privacy was going to, you know, or their privacy was going to be interfered with. That every time a new building is built, I hear that comment every single time I come to Clayton. That's the nature of change. Change is hard. People don't like change. But anytime a new building is built, that comment's going to come up. We are required to have a very extensive landscape plan, which we've submitted. And while we are removing trees, that's true, we are planting dozens of trees. So the landscaping in there will be very robust, which is our way of mitigating that issue with regards to privacy. But that's the nature of living in an urban space.

All of us that live in Clayton, we hear our own and our neighbors air conditioners. And when we asked for the units to be taken from the rooftop to lower because we have had many complaints about the noise on the rooftops. That is something I think. Those of us living in an urban area have to get used to. I think I would leave it up to you to decide where the best place is for those units on the ground to be careful of what they will affect. Maybe, but Tyler I agree your landscape plan really does soften everything up quite well both visually and I think acoustically also. Any other questions from the audience one more.

I'm Mary Kay Wohler, 141 North Bemiston. Going back to the air conditioner units, the four of them right outside our front door and the side of our house in our living space, less than five feet. Aren't there noise ordinances either in Clayton or maybe St. Louis County or something when you have four units running off and on all the time? That's got to be some kind of noise issue. Would you know that or can we find out?

There are noise ordinances. I'm not sure what they are. I

mean, it would be St. Louis County.

County? And you find that out or we try to find it out and bring it up next time or how do we do

that? The noise level. It's so many decibels or something? Yeah, it would be a decibels. I mean, we can look that up. I would say that... The majority of new air conditioning units that we have nowadays, this, this would be five feet from the property line, which is what you have in probably over 60% of the houses in Clayton. Um, and they typically conform. We don't get a lot of complaints for this size. Most of our complaints come from the larger commercial size rooftop equipment. That's really what we get complaints for. I don't, we don't get anything for, for the residential units.

Four units together, though? I mean, four units right in a row? Yeah,

I mean, I can't make any promises about this one, but it would be...

I'm not arguing. I'm just asking.

Yeah, it would be hard to trigger the St. Louis County decibels, so we would have to go through St. Louis County to enforce that.

Can we do that? All right.

Would moving them further back help you? Like, so it's not right across from your front door if they were able to move it. The living area of our house is then

to the back

from that

area too. Yeah.

So it's just kind of having it on that facade at all.

And again, unless they go to the back and I know that's an issue too. So I don't know how it can be resolved. Shifting it towards the front a little bit. Our whole living area is, excuse me, is along that side of the house, you know, a tab and right outside of our front door too. It's, I think it's a little much to deal with. I don't know we can move on from that, but yeah.

um i have two ac units one is a heat pump and the heat pump one is taller stands probably about five feet it's bigger diameter it's the appropriate setback from the side property line my i have sliding glass doors right next to it And I don't hear that on or off the older unit is further away from the sliding glass doors of the sunroom and that. The noise of the newer units is minimal. So these will be new units. Sure. And I don't know if they're considering heat pumps, but as long as they're screened, should be

comfortable. That's what's blowing our mind. I don't know.

Screened. Yeah. Is that black

noise as well then? Or is this just visual?

It's visual. But the noise, I don't think you're going to be hearing it if you stop and listen

when you're trying to see yeah right

but i would say and doug and tyler you know what you're picking okay

no i'm wondering how many seer unit the seer rating it would be right what would the seer rating be I'm not thinking I didn't have one another comment about the drainage and the puddling and obviously that worked tirelessly to get things working so that all the neighbors are not affected directly, but I do have a question because since we're at 141 we are the first house that starts sloping down. So were there any. additional things they might have done to keep the water from going, just gravity pulling it down to our driveway and to the side of our house. So I don't know because you definitely, if you stand across the street, you see your, your home, then these, they're all straight. And then when you get to our house, it starts sloping down. So I have a, yeah. Have you noticed you, you walk it, you know? So that's, shouldn't there perhaps be additional things that would be done to mitigate that gravity you know

well

i don't know who did i'm sorry she lived on the street

what tyler was explaining with the maps on c3 that we had up there was that there is far less water coming from on the north side than there is currently. Is that correct, Tyler? And that it flows to the dry well in the front and the pop up emitters.

So gravity will not affect anything and pulling any water into the one property on 141 pretty much, ideally, I guess, or whatever.

I can't answer that. Pardon me? The grade? Mm-hmm. Even

with, like, the less permeability to the

house there

now? Uh-huh.

the amount of water that can go there is greatly reduced.

So it goes into these swimming pools and these other things that are there? And retaining pools, ponds? There are various places

where it goes. Pipes and different picked up. But it's not going on to property to the degree that answered all these questions.

Excuse me. That's

what our letter's been.

I

mean,

we'll

just we'll yeah, we'll let you ask all of your questions. And then that way, when he responds, they'll be able to hear you. Everybody will do that. Thank you.

Is the air conditioning on in here speaking about air conditioning? It's getting hot. First of all, if I came in here with two houses instead of two duplexes, each house would call for three units. So there's one extra unit that would be added here. These are all high efficiency, high SEER units. These are $2 million plus unit, dollar value units, hopefully. And I mean this is the state of the art equipment it's not going to be geothermal there's that's out of budget and doesn't make economic sense, these days. But as far as like Helen said that the new equipment is probably half as loud as it was from 1015 years ago, so I see I see the noise issue as a non issue. The other thing is that I've been doing this long enough to know that a lot of people have a concern. My father was in the landscaping business for many, many years with Suburbia Gardens. So I'm true to being green best as possible. But everyone has to keep in mind that especially a big condominium building that's behind us or whatever. you can imagine the trees they were taking down to build that. So everybody that lives in a house instead of a hut has had trees removed on their site to some extent. It's sad to see trees go, but we have Baxter gardens and I don't know if a lot of people aren't seeing the landscape plan that's going to be implemented, but it's state-of-the-art. It's gorgeous. It's deciduous. It's going to be, you know, well-maintained, of course, something that I could be proudly put my name on for years to come. And, um, And I'm excited for the challenge. But as far as, I'd like to ask Anna, because it's all the drainage comments here. Specifically, if the design is implemented and we build it the way it's designed, which I can assure will be done, are we doing better or worse than what's there now? And I think I'm asking you the right person, right?

I mean, I'm not a civil engineer and I did not design this, but I know how to read the civil plans. And so that's what I read earlier today was what the plans were saying.

So I don't want to put words in your mouth. Are we doing better when it's built compared to what's there now for drainage to the neighbors to the north and south?

The tributaries that you're creating, if you run the math comparing them, there will be less water from your site that's directly put towards a neighbor's property. There will be more from your site that is pushed towards the right of way.

Yes, to the street. Yes. So I just wanted to get that on record because that's important. I'm only as good as the people that I hire. I'm not a licensed engineer. I'm not licensed architect, but I do believe that I have an all-star team of engineers and designers on my team, and I totally trust their methods and their intelligence. And I totally trust the city of Clayton to examine that and edit it if need be. I mean, that's just how the process works, and I'm excited for the challenge.

Thank you. The one thing I'm going to add with regard to the HVAC units, because the question was, is there some sort of ordinance that governs HVAC units? And the answer to that is yes. The city of Clayton does have an ordinance. It's not a noise ordinance, but it's the distance. We are required to put HVAC units a certain distance away from the property line. Helen alluded to that in terms of your units. And we meet that.

If there are no other questions here in the chamber, we do have one hand raised. Mr. Hackman? Do you hear us?

Yes, good evening. Do you hear me? Yes. Great, thank you. So appreciate the time and discussion tonight. Real quickly, for purposes of this discussion, I'm at 314 North Central Avenue, but to be clear, I live two to three months of the year in Clayton and the remainder of the year I reside out of state. However, I was able to attend the July 1st meeting in person. And at that meeting, my understanding was that by allowing pervious pavers for the driveway, the total square footage of the units could be increased by 460 square feet per unit for a total increase of 1,840 square feet across the four units. That reduction might have occurred, but I couldn't tell for sure based on the presentation. So the key for me tonight is to understand if each unit has been reduced by 460 square uh across the four and i would also ask the applicant if by allowing small section of the driveway and other areas of the lot to be considered pervious if that interpretation is allowing the square footage of each unit to be increased above the intended maximum threshold and if so i believe there should be some discussion tonight around whether or not that is appropriate based on the zone zoning code intention and past precedent thank you for your time

thank you John Potter, I already have any comment on that. John Potter,

According to the zoning code we do not have an fa our ratio in this this zone, there is no maximum size of building that is allowed or not allowed, we have. have height requirements and we have setback requirements, both of which we meet. When we reduce the footprint to increase the amount of pervious area because we are good architectural designers, we can do that without reducing the size of the overall unit because the other comment you all said was that the back roof area was very large and everybody was afraid of having parties or something like that. So we when we reduced the footprint. We added area to build, you know, made that roof deck smaller basically just traded the area around so that the overall unit sizes are not appreciably different than they were before. That roof deck is a lot smaller.

Thank you. Mr Hackman anything anything further.

No, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Any further comments from the Commission? No. Okay, we're only talking about the site plan review right now. And of course, Tyler, you understand the condition about the recording of the deed restriction.

Okay,

that's pretty standard. I wanted to bring up one other area. In our staff report, we always have eight items for plan commission consideration. Of course, many of these are for either or both The site plan review and the architectural review and they do cover desirable environment creative approach to the use of land and facilities combination and coordination of architectural styles etc preservation and enhancement. of desirable site characteristics, such as natural typography, et cetera. Preservation of buildings which are architecturally or historically significant and contribute to the character of the city. use of design landscape or architectural features to create a pleasing environment, inclusion of special features and of course elimination of deteriorated structures or incompatible uses. Now we have to consider all of those. They're not all applicable directly to the site plan review or to the architectural review, but I think we have to consider many of those in this area. So I'd like to make a comment after our discussions and hearing many points of view that I do feel that the building itself is within the building envelope. that our code and requirements do allow. I have some concerns about the building itself, but that's not exactly the site plan issue. I think the site plan issues that we've gone over of the water issues and the the compatibility and pulling in the building, decreasing size a bit that affects the site. I would say we really didn't talk much about the landscape plan, but I did think it was excellently put together. It's very robust. I think it will be a terrific item. So the one major thing that I think may be outstanding is the water. And I think we can probably go on and make a decision whether to follow the staff recommendation to recommend approval with that single condition or not. And I'd sort of like to ask you, Tyler, how you feel? Have we Have we accomplished everything from your point of view?

It's kind of a catch because I think what you're asking is, do you want to continue it for two weeks or do you want to go ahead and take the vote? Is that what you're asking? Ultimately, yes. If we were to continue it for two weeks, I don't know how we would change it. We're doing what is necessary according to MSD's rules. We are greatly reducing the runoff that is there today. I don't know what furthermore we could do. I really feel like we're in a place here where some people are just not ever going to be happy with what we do. So I don't know to change it.

I just want to add one more thing. So as far as, as far as the water, you know, I think I've built a few of these houses on central and not on payments, but on central and they all had, you know, basement garages, they all had pumps and, This is the first one where we're going the extra mile and have gas generators. So if the pump fails and the gas generator feels, that means that Putin dropped a bomb on us. I can't think of a better protection other than someone down there riding a bicycle keeping the thing going. So I'm doing everything humanly possible. Someone says don't rely on mechanical devices. We have to rely on mechanical. We have electricity and then we have gas. I don't know what else can do to protect the site.

Okay,

thank you.

I'm going to recommend that we go ahead with a vote tonight. And do we have a motion to that?

I move. We adopt the staff recommendation.

Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nay. Ryan, do you have that?

That is correct. Yes.

Okay. We're halfway through it. Doug and Ryan, shall we continue? Okay. The next item is the architectural review for 139 North Bemiston.

Ryan? The following summarizes architectural changes from the previous meeting and a greater analysis may be found in the staff report. The structures were revised from 32 feet, 10 and a half inches to 34 feet, five and a half inches. The height increases in conjunction with stormwater management revisions. The roof lines, which previously featured unique geometry have been revised to mix the modern design elements with more traditional gable or salt box roofs with dormers. The design retains the horizontal brick corbel accents in the front facade and reduces the prominence of the stairwells. The reduced stairwell decreases the massing of the front facade and moves the highest point of the structure back further back on the property. The north side of the northern duplex and south side of the southern duplex also have received revisions, including increased facade setbacks in the addition of chimneys. trash enclosures with wood screening are proposed adjacent to the driveway between the duplexes the plans have been revised so that each duplex is allocated one trash enclosure measuring 38.8 square feet. The previous report from July 1st included a recommendation that the trash and closures be revised to accommodate at least one 95-gallon trash bin and recycle bin per unit, and the proposed revisions meet the request. Although this is less than what's required by the ARB guidelines, staff are of the opinion that the trash enclosures will be sufficient. Exposed aggregate is proposed for the front entry paths and driveway apron, and the remainder of the driveway has been revised to be brick pavers. HVAC units, which were previously proposed on the roofs, have been revised to be located on the ground. They would be located on the north side of the northern duplex and south side of the southern duplex, and they are proposed to be screened with a wood enclosure. project meets the height setback and coverage requirements for the r3 district the proposal is taller than some adjacent properties but is likely to appear similar in height to properties to the north the design is larger than the existing structure and incorporates more modern elements than adjacent structures while this is likely to have some visual impact there are no urban design districts or residential historic districts governing the design of the development The proposal incorporates high quality materials, both primary, secondary and accessory throughout the design and meets the requirements of the architectural review guidelines. Staff recommend approval is submitted.

Well, I appreciate what Ryan just read. I think that that makes pretty much every point that I would say. He used words, obviously I didn't jot them all down, but unique and good design, I think is a summary. I do want to point out because I heard somebody say earlier that this is not a brick structure. It is a brick structure. Um, it's all brick with the exception of some accent materials that are siding. That is also in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood. So we brought samples of the brick and the siding and the shingles and all those things that you normally want to see if you would like to see them, but it's an asphalt shingle roof that meets, again, your code. Brick as the primary material, siding as a secondary material. The windows are wood planks aluminum-clad wood windows, which are high quality, just like we always use.

They're not steel? I thought I saw steel somewhere.

We typically can't afford steel windows. It's what everybody wants, but our energy codes make them very expensive.

Oh, steel frame extrude. Oh, sorry, not the window. That's the trim. Yes. Okay.

Yeah, we have that. I talked about that detail last time. We're in an effort to make the facade look thicker, you know, more in keeping with historic buildings. We've got a detail around the window that incorporates a steel kind of sill and we're taking up the jam as well. Frames it, sets it all in. You can see that in the rendering there, both the windows and the front door as well.

Okay.

The brick has accent material in it, just as Ryan mentioned, because we're going with a horizontal banding of accent, you know, in the brick itself, which helps to visually make the building more about horizontal than mitigating some of the visual effects of the height. The brick itself, I'll also point out, is a... Zach, why don't you bring that up?

we would like to see it uh not just for us but everyone in the audience right

so this is the brick we're proposing to use right here um The color is kind of a light limestone color. Really, this color is meant to imitate stone. And you'll notice, too, that the brick is a horizontal, shallower, longer shape. And that, again, visually makes the building look shorter and more stretched out horizontally. So that's one of the reasons why we're choosing this. Plus, this particular type of brick has been popular in the past Maybe not as much today, but it's a really striking classy look and makes for a great visual effect on the facade. So we consider this an upgraded essentially look over traditional modular brick.

And on the elevations, I think we see where I think I understand where it is. The building is virtually all brick, except for the

front. On that upper level. That front gable, you can see it right there in this image pretty well, that front gable in front of the second floor and then the dormers. The dormers are not brick on the roof. That's to provide a layered effect. Again, mitigating height. All of these decisions are about mitigating mass. The two materials, if that was all brick, it would look more massive. So this helps to visually shrink that down. I was thinking about the comment. Some people have mentioned the comment that the two buildings look alike. And so therefore, it's reading as one structure. One of the things we could do, we've got a number of details in here that are different. You'll see the banding on the left, the horizontal banding is on the stair element kind of attached to the window. On the building on the right, that horizontal banding is more on the front face of the front rail on the second floor and then down around the entry. We have different shapes around the entry to call You know, different geometries there. The two windows are at different elevations. So we are even the railings are slightly different. We are trying to not just do a an exact copy of two buildings we could do that but we didn't think that that was a good idea. In terms of, there was somebody made a comment about not mirroring it, maybe doing them side by side. That won't work simply because of the plan of the garage entries. That's why they're mirrored is because the garages need to face each other. So... architecturally, a lot of these moves are there because of breaking down mass. I showed you that diagram earlier of how the mass is broken down. That is what we're doing in a lot of this because I know, again, I've been here at Clayton designing buildings in Clayton for 25 years now. And I have heard countless times from, and you know, Steve, about massing, bring the massing down, bring the mass thing down. That's always a comment. So we have learned ways to do that visually and by cutting the mask down in various ways. I cannot remember a building that we have designed in the end that people have then complained about and said, oh, that's much worse than I thought it was going to be. It's always, that looks fantastic. Now, I know that's a little bit of trust me. And so I understand why you might not take that at face value. But I'm trying to assure you that the details and the moves that are in here are about breaking down the mass and doing that. Back to the comment about making them different, one of the things I did think about, this brick comes in different colors. We could do one building in one color and the other building in a different color. I'm not opposed to that. If you all think that that would be a way to separate the two. I'm not speaking out of turn, am I, Zach? It does come in different colors, this one particular brick, yes. So I offer that up as a possible suggestion.

Okay. I've been in situations before where we kind of capitulate to comments of non-professionals, but I really want the architects to make those decisions with your all blessing. In my opinion, I would rather not see a change of shade of brick. I like the cohesiveness. And I would, I mean, again, I've been in other situations with other municipalities where we say, all right, fine, we do it. And I end up with something that I'm not happy with. So I just want to say on the record, I don't want to do that. If it's a deal breaker, I'd consider it. But in my opinion, I don't see that as, I don't want anyone to say, well, we won that argument and we got them to do different bricks, but it offended the project. I want to make sure we're all conscientious of that because to me, I think it'd be nicer to have the same color brick. So, but just wanted to open that up.

Well, Doug, I respect and I agree with your point of view. I think what we see, the more subtle detailing of the wood on the north side as well as the brick horizontals on the south facade, Or the they're the east facades of the north and south buildings, I think that begins to give a little differentiation, I do think it's quite subtle because. It actually took me a while staring at the rendering to really understand what was going on, but I hear what you're saying on there um. While we're talking about materials and form and everything else, let's go around. Jim, would you like to begin so you're not always at the end?

I'm happy to start, but I can also go at the end. Okay, we'll come back. Yeah, yeah. I can be at the end. It's okay. All right, if you would like me to go, I can go. Sure, go ahead. Material-wise, once again, like I said, I think you have a very tough job here, Tyler. And I want to say that I appreciate that. And at least myself looking at these plans, by no means do I think that this is shoddy or slapped together. I think this is a very well done, very well thought out design. More of my issues come where, which is a bit of a squishier area when you talk about as far as character of the area. and of Old Town as a whole. And as it was mentioned before, Old Town is changing. So Old Town is not necessarily a static thing. But if you look at the design of these buildings, I would say while there are some more contemporary structures in Old Town or stuff that skews a little more contemporary, in my personal opinion, this is a couple standard deviations past that. This is, I would say... definitely much more contemporary even than what is there now. So I would say it represents a departure. And the staff plan, I believe the last time their specific language was the proposed design would be a departure from the character of the area and would likely have significant visual impact. Now, I think it could quibble on the visual impact as far as because I think you've taken very clear steps to reduce that visual impact. And I don't want to... I don't want to downplay those because I think that they're significant. As far as a departure from the character of the area, though, I don't know that the structures read all that differently character-wise from the play and how they did before. I know another example that you gave, you said people rarely complain about these or people don't complain as much of these things afterwards. One example that at least I'm drawn to as someone in the Ward 2 area, we have a home in Claverack Park 57 Broadview that has a lot of the same elements that you have in this design as far as this very prominent stairwell window. The dormers are very similar and a lot of the massing is the same. Um, we're 10 years past the construction of that building. Uh, and as a representative of Clavarack park, I still get complaints to this day about that building. Uh. And that's a decade. I know. I know you didn't design that building. Yes. It should go on record that you didn't design in that building, but I guess what I was saying is it shares a lot of the same characteristics of that building as far as these buildings, uh, which is something that, um, which is something at least that I noticed. So I guess my question to you would be as an architect who is handed this site, did you survey Old Town and say, I believe this is the type of structure that is best suited for this site? Or did you start looking for knowing that you wanted to go in a very strong contemporary direction and then in a backwards compatibility way, tried to see how can we make that happen? Yes, well, and I will say one thing, I guess, on top of that is, Doug, you were in the business journal saying newer money in the marketplace is leaning towards more contemporary design. The 65-year-old peer group doesn't want a house that their grandma liked 60 years ago. They like the modern, a little California, a little Arizona. That's how you were quoted in the business journal. And I read that and I say, okay, it's interesting. That may be what money wants, but is that what's best suited for the neighborhood? And is that something that's compatible with the neighborhood? Or is that trying to just extract as much as we can from what's clearly a very valuable site? That's all.

So with regard to your first question, did we survey the neighborhood? Absolutely. I thought I made that clear in my presentation, but if I didn't, I'll reiterate. I showed a number of different buildings that we looked around and found a lot of contemporary architecture in the neighborhood. To me, that meant the neighborhood is in flux, as we've said. There are older houses that are of older style. There are new buildings, houses and duplexes that are of modern style. So it's across the board. There's no architectural, historic designated area that is Old Town with rules and regulations and all that like there is in some of the other places. We do a lot of work in the city. A place like Soulard or Lafayette Square, you're only allowed to copy existing buildings. You're not allowed to even think. And I have always appreciated Clayton for the fact that you enjoy modern thought. design, the art fair is all about that presenting contemporary art and what's new and what's great. And that Clayton has been very good about that. You don't have these historic designated copy it kind of things. If you did, I wouldn't enjoy designing here. Um, so that, yes, we studied the neighborhood. I'll go back to the building over. I forgot the address now, but what, what's the loose hour address. Do you know? Um, Steve.

Oh, the on central?

Yes. I think it's 208 to 216 north central. Okay. So, I mean, I said, and this is kind of contradicting what I just said, I said that we liked that building a lot and use that as a reference. There are a lot of moves, a lot of material changes, geometries that are in that structure that we kind of had picked up on. That building has been there for quite a while, at least 20, 30 years. When it was there, yeah, it's got to be 30 years. I'm sure Steve probably knows the exact date. But the point is, we looked at the neighborhood, we've looked at existing structures, and we did not come in here trying to design something and make it fit. That's not actually the philosophy of our firm. There are some firms that are kind of star architects who have a design language and all their buildings look the same and they're like, Love it or leave it, this is what I do. Frank Gehry, there you go. I wad up pieces of paper and throw them on the ground. We don't do that. We design in terms of the context of a neighborhood. So that is absolutely where we started. With regard to Doug's quote, that came out after our design was done. Doug did not make that quote or tell us that in the beginning, buyers want modern and so therefore you better design something like that. That's not how our relationship has ever worked. So that quote was in context to the design that we had already produced, which was in context to The Neighborhood.

you bring up the buildings at 208 216 north central which yes you did reference uh and i i didn't mean to take that literally as far as did you survey the neighborhood like it's clear that you from your presentation that you went around and paid attention would you consider as far as on a continuum uh and how contemporary that structure is to how contemporary this that those are relatively equal or do you think that this pushes that contemporary envelope further.

Yes, pushes it further. The other building was, what's the year? Late 80s?

Yeah, somewhere around there.

And as an architect, I can look at that building and tell about when it was designed and built because it kind of moves in waves and stuff that happened in history. So that, in its time period... was very modern for what was there in context before it, which in context before it was at that time was probably mostly these older homes. I mean, that was sort of something new. So to that point, this is, we are in 2024. We're not designing buildings for 1904, you know, stuck at the World's Fair. We design, that's what art is. It's following the language of the day. And this is a commentary in terms of what is appropriate building details, materials, and how buildings are built today in ways that is indicative of geometries of the context, the neighborhood, but presented in a new fashion. So yeah, that's very much the intent. Does it go too far? Personally, I don't think so because every new building is going to go to the furthest of where it is in context of history. If you want me to come back with a design that makes these look like a Tudor castle, you know, that fits in another neighborhood, Clavarock Park has a lot of Spanish, kind of Spanish, what do you call it, mission style. We could do that with this. We do the whole thing in white stucco and put orange tile roof on it and change the details. That would not be of, you know, context of today or anything like that. Clive Rock Park is actually a great example because there's so many different styles and so many different languages in that neighborhood. The fact that everybody doesn't like this new building that you're talking about, and I haven't seen it, so I'm not exactly sure what it looks like, but I can't speak to that. Like I said, I didn't design that building in my... I might think it was great. I might think it's terrible. I don't know. But architectural design is not, quality architectural design is not about the style. Everybody knows that. That's what you learn on day one of architecture school. If you think that good architecture has to be a certain style, well, then you're going to be a bad architect. Style is just something that comes and goes, like wearing a tie versus not wearing

Thank you. I'm going to add one thing to that, and I know maybe things are out of order with my request here, but do you have the emails that I sent, that I forwarded to the committee from prospective buyers?

No.

From a buyer?

Speaking in favor. Are you referring to the email you sent to Hopi this morning? Yeah. That was forwarded on to the board, yes. Is this

board? OK. So in reference to the quote, when I say new money, so I think it'd be maybe a, I don't know if it's protocol that we could read that email so I can give you my definition of new energetic money. Those are the people that are inquiring about this. And so one of the biggest developers in the whole Midwest is wanting to potentially purchase this. And he sent everybody an email saying that he loves it. He wants this. And so, and I think you have it on record, right? Right. Okay. I just want to make sure that you did because that's the kind of client that I'm attracting. That's what I mean by new money. That's what

Doug, the letter you're referring to, if I remember correctly, it referred to rezoning of this property.

No, it was from Michael Steinberg, that one.

Yeah, he did. I think maybe he didn't realize that it's already zoned for duplexes. I know.

That's true. I thought it was... Maybe he worded it wrong, but we've had meetings with him presenting this and he's anxious. Just for whatever that's worth. That's what I mean by new money, if that makes sense.

I understand. I guess overall, I think some of the concern is with a speculative investment, even if you have several people who are obviously I have no doubt that there's interest. But with a speculative investment, at the end of the day, you're not there. You're leaving when it's all done. But the other people are still living in this neighborhood. So I think I view part of the job of this board is to make sure that any new development at least loosely fits into the context of the neighborhood that it's in. I Tyler, I completely agree with your points that I, you know, I don't think that overall like architecturally as a city we're served better in places like Sula where it's basically just facsimiles and that yes, there is value in pushing that. In this specific case, I'm not 100% sure if it's not pushed a bit too far.

And we respect the process here. We're not fighting against that. That's why we're here. We're all fine with it. But I think in speaking maybe for Tyler and myself, we want to be able to... Because we thought that we left the last meeting with bullet points that we thought we addressed. So if there are bullet points, we want to clear and define on a tweak here and a tweak there so that when we come back, we can finally, you know, satisfy everybody. That's my goal tonight.

I'm finished. Thank you. Oh, okay. We can come back. Kami?

I agree with a lot of what you said. I've walked the street, uh, multiple different times also drove by it, walked it slow. So I could see just kind of the, just the overall architectural style of the street, which I have to say there probably isn't a singular style to the street. There's a lot of different design options and things like that, but there is definitely like a cohesive feel to the street. You know, there might not be one distinct style where I think, I think when you look at these buildings, there's a definite distinct style to it. And I just think that it, it, doesn't fit within the street. I do believe it's good architecture. I think it is well designed. I just don't think it fits on the street with the style of the street, with where it is placed on the street. You know, it's already the tallest building perceived or not perceived. It still is. It's on the top, one of the tallest points of the street, which actually just amplifies that. I think, you know, the brick is unique. I think I get the idea of why, you know, it widens the look of it. But again, it's just another modern take on something when you already have modern architectural elements. So I just think it adds to that. I think, I know we've talked about this a lot, like the massing and the size, it does read like a complex because this will be the only two buildings on this entire street that you know, reference one another that are next to each other that look very similar, not identical, but cousins per se. And so they will read as a complex. And so I think that does also take away from the other, the homes and the duplexes on that street. So yeah, I just, I don't think the style fits on the street.

Bob? Okay. If we were talking about an old neighborhood with front porches, 100 years old, a lot of character. Maybe there's something we want to preserve of that character to give that mood. But that isn't this street. This street is in the process of change. It's got these massive brick homes coming everywhere with a couple of, I guess, condos. And they're not particularly attractive. They sure look rich. They're not warm, but they sure look rich. I can't imagine kids running out of those homes. Doesn't have a warm and fuzzy feeling for a home. This neighborhood is in a process of change. So we should get on board and make it warm and fuzzy to the extent that we can. Downtown Clayton has a style. And if somebody came to me and said, here's a beautiful building with curves and And different character, like you go in these big cities or in the Asian cities where they have spires and everything. No, no, we say we need something that is rectangle, ugly and square and glass, like all of Clayton is. Listen, old town Clayton is new town Clayton, and it's moving. And I'm not sure, and it looks rich. God only knows it looks rich. But don't tell me it looks warm and inviting. It doesn't very much, not at all. I live on White Island Terrace. All the homes have different colors, and they all have old architecture. And I just love walking by it, and everybody else does. That's character. That's warmth. That is livable. So I look at these two buildings and I say, they look more inviting than what's going up on that street right now. I would like to see the people who live in those buildings. They're probably interesting people. And they may even have kids that come out of there. But If we're living in a changing neighborhood, what can we build that is attractive and compatible? And that doesn't mean it has to look the same. Maybe in terms of size, it has some similarities to it. Maybe in terms height or width, it has some similarity to it. But make it interesting, make it attractive. That is what an architect is supposed to do. not look at a neighborhood with a rear view mirror and say, how do we make it look the same as everybody else on the block? That's the last thing a good architect wants to do. I think this architect does it. The developer does it. It's more the scale down size works better. On the issue of changing the color of the second home, One of the things about homes is you make them look unique, different. Maybe a color change would help. Just think about it. Another point I would say is for those of you who go into the city like I do a lot, there's a place called Have a Cow Coffeehouse. Wonderful, wonderful place. It's right outside of Lafayette neighborhood on the street Lafayette. You go to down Jefferson, instead of making a left into Lafayette Square, you make a right for one block. And across the street are homes that look, there are condos that look just like these, a whole series of them. And they're surrounded by a hundred year homes. And these look great in Lafayette area. Infill is so hard to do because you have to make it, make you smile as you see it next to a hundred year old home. This is easier because the homes next door is already trending to new homes. The concept of infill isn't quite the same as it is with in the city. And I would just want you to think in terms of Would you want to walk down the sidewalk and look at these homes as well as look at the newer brick homes? And you tell me which you would like to walk by. That's

it.

You're a hard act to follow, Bob. the my concerns for the architectural portion first of all sheet a point zero zero one is missing from the set i don't know if that was intentional or not but that's the context elevations um A question. The HVAC screen that was on the roof last time, is that still on the roof for another purpose? Okay. It's shown on the elevations. Obviously it didn't get removed. Is the generator, the screen around that, is that insulated for noise? Okay. There has been, I've seen a number of articles about the noise of generators, especially in urban situations. So you may want to consider that. I don't know if the county has any ordinances or Ana, do we have any ordinances?

No, we do not. We only have setback requirements.

Okay. So it would be the county if they exist. The interior and exterior fireplaces, are they wood burning or gas?

They are gas.

Okay. Wood burning would put the chimneys higher, right?

Wood burning would trigger a whole host of codes.

Right. Okay, I mentioned before about walking north on from Maryland. And there's 150 feet of three houses, three residences, where the setback is 47 feet, this being 37 feet plus or minus. It looms large from That perspective, when you look at the looking at the elevations and using the surveyors finished floor to top of roof for 131 and the same for 141. And using the finished floor for 139 to the trust bearing point, which is almost the top of the roof. And if you add in the 1 foot 7 inches that it's been raised, 139 is 10 feet higher than 131. The top of the roof, not the main roof elevation. It is about 8 feet higher than 141. Again, looking at the elevations, finish floor and that, those numbers, the Ridge lined top of the roof of 131 is the same level as the finished third floor of 139. So it's the railing parapet around the terrace in the back will be higher than the roof line of 131 and 141. It'll be about eight feet higher than 141. When you consider the large amount of dormers, you come up with the 10 foot difference between ridge line on 131 and top of 139 and about eight feet at 141. Those two buildings loom large over the adjacent. And as I mentioned before, 33.3% of the homes in the 100 block, which is basically the context for this, are one and a half stories. 50% are two stories. 16.7 are two and a half. This it's rear elevation is four stories. And the parking courtyard is again, four stories. The Each building is large. Then you combine them, which visually they read as one project, one complex. It overwhelms the other homes on the block, the newer ones and the older ones. I'm not... bringing up and I'm not addressing and not concerned with the length of the building, which is considerably more than the older buildings. It's the massing of it that you see at the front that is, it just makes it more obvious that it doesn't fit. Yes, dimensionally, it sits on the site, but it is not in the context of the neighborhood. And maybe if it were one that was done very contemporary, and the other one was toned down and look different. But the two that the materials are the same, you know, the wood accent color It reads as one complex. And interestingly, the person interested in the unit who wrote a quick email, I presume, or a text referred to it as rezoning. Now that individual lives one block away. So he is aware of the zoning. And to him, it was rezoned.

He made a mistake in that letter.

Right, right. But that's the visual appearance that it's been rezoned for multifamily.

I don't think you can interpret his letter that way.

Even without his, that just kind of, as Steve mentioned.

All of these things that you've just mentioned, we've already discussed. I'm not gonna repeat my answers back because they're exact same questions that we had before on site plan review.

Right, I don't expect you to. My comments will be on the record and the audience can respond or not and my peers here. Is the brick stacked bond or running bond?

It's a running bond, it's not stacked.

Okay, it's hard to tell on the drawings.

Would it matter? There's no rule of whether it can be running bond or stack bond.

No, it would matter visually. The stack. Yeah, I saw that and I didn't know if that was just a sample of the style, you know, the type of brick. What color is the grout?

I honestly don't know. We haven't picked the grout color yet. Typically, we try to do a grout color that matches the brick pretty closely. But that would make it look more monolithic. So I imagine, again, for scale, we'd want something that's a little contrasting.

And you mentioned a corbel brick pattern. What does that look like?

You can see it right there in the elevations. This area in the middle here. Oh, I don't have the mouse. But where the horizontal lines are, that's the corbel brick pattern you see there on the right is again, as I said before, is the railing of the second floor and then around the entry. kind of framing that window, the front facade. On the building on the left, it is a stack bond, or I mean, sorry, it's not a stack bond. It's a stack of corbel courses that go alongside with the window itself.

And that would be the same brick?

Yes, those are shadow lines. That's what cobbling is you pull in and out

11 by 17 black and white is real hard to say. So the

requirements of the city of Clayton to submit

right and I really appreciate you submitting one set of full size greatly appreciated

think that's a requirement to

Oh, we didn't get that the last time.

I think it is, Ana. Maybe it's changed. It doesn't matter. Okay.

What does the wood look like? Is that true wood or?

No, most of the wood, when you want a warm siding look, which warm is the color, but then also the modeling where each board is a little different and doesn't look like it's just been painted. You would get that if we did a natural cedar or cypress or something like that. But typically those woods turn silver over time in the sunlight. And so there have been a number of products that have come out recently that mitigate that. Some by using real wood that has treatments to it and then others that are synthetics products. that look very much like wood. So we're proposing here, I think it says on there, a composite wood panel, which is a synthetic.

Yes, we allow composite sightings. Okay. Some of the details that I miss seeing on the plans are dimensions to know sizes of the exterior of the building like you jogged it in and out how much there's no dimension.

No, but there's a scale on the drawings. They're all drawn to scale. Fully dimensioned drawings are not part of our requirement for submission to Architectural Review Board. But you can tell what size those are just in scale of the property.

Okay.

Or the building drawings, sorry. Okay. in general the steps are in the neighborhood of two feet and that's what that notch is in the middle i think the step in the back is a little bit larger i don't have it in front of me though but relative to that size

okay and the bay overhang

yes that would be again well that that one's more governed by your zoning code bays are allowed to project up to two feet not more the

When you revise the stair tower at the front, the door barely swings in, it barely clears.

Are you interested in buying one of

these? Unless you change the floor to floor or the stair, something needs to change. Most likely. And when you do that, that will change the shape of the stair tower. As it is now, if I were running down the stair to answer the door and whoever rang the doorbell had a key, as my kids would frequently do, and opened the door... It wouldn't be good. So that concerns me. The

way the architectural review board works in the city of Clayton is we turn in exterior design elements and site plan review, all of that. I can tell you from, again, from years of experience, the floor plans are not ever locked down when we come to architectural review. Almost 100% of the time, the interior floor plan changes between what you're seeing today and what is a final building permit. And that is perfectly allowable because what you're governing is the exterior envelope.

Right. But stairs... Means

that I've presented a stair mass that I am locked to.

Okay. That sounds good. And that would, you'll be fitting in mechanical and all of that within the footprint?

Yes.

Okay. Question. The entry at the north building has an angle at that point What is the curiosity? What is the reason for that? So

that it looks different from the building on the left.

Okay. Is there a magic?

Yes. The diagram that I presented at the beginning, which has different cut lines that are drawn all from that point at the ridge, you'll notice that that line comes from that too. It's kind of a pinwheel of various cut lines that produce the angles of the entire front facade. Is that something that the average person will notice? No. There are a lot of subtleties in here. Again, that is great architecture when you have to think about it a little bit. Just passing by the street, you don't notice it. Second time you pass by, you look at it a little bit more. Maybe five years down the road after passing it, many times you look at it and you go, ah, I never noticed that before. Look, that's really clever. And then you tell the person that you're with, look, that's clever. That's how design works.

Is does that opening have the same steel frame around it that the South has

I will say yes. I don't know that we've, you know, gone to that level of detail yet.

Okay.

Okay, my main concern is that it just The style doesn't fit in the neighborhood. And the neighborhood is the one, the context is the 100 block of North Beamiston. It's not different parts of Old Town. It's the 100 block. The mass is overwhelming. I know of other sites I could recommend in Clayton. that it would be perfect, but this is not it.

In regard to the style, I'll just reiterate, there is no governing law on what style has to be built in this part or any other part of Clayton. And with regard to the massing, we meet all of the requirements of the zoning for massing, which is height, setbacks, various things like that. In addition to meeting those, in addition, based on these same comments that we had last time about it being too big and scale and all of that, we have introduced a number of elements down the side and the front and even the back that have reduced the scale down. So it can be the height and the width and all of those dimensions can be the same, yet the scale looks different because You introduce steps here and there, bays that pop out, things that recess. That's all how you break down the scale of what is otherwise a large flat wall. Again, that is what you asked me to do last time. That is what we did.

Okay. Now, it concerns me the... Terrace on the third floor, that is reduced in size, but that is more typical of a multifamily.

This is multifamily. It's a two-family.

Two-family is not the same in your codes as multifamily.

Is Bridget still on?

Yep, I'm still here, Steve.

Okay, comments on architectural.

Yeah, I mean, I just, I know all of us have been here a long time, so I don't need to reiterate. I appreciate everybody's comments. Tyler, you've, you know, I think all of your comments tonight, Doug, your comments tonight have certainly, I think, made our decision, my decision harder. I think we've certainly talked about how there's properties throughout Clayton. Some that did push the envelope that you in the end think, wow, this is what an incredible, what an incredible piece of art as you've talked about tonight. And then some where you can't believe that it was built or, you know, people kind of turn to themselves and say, why was this ever approved? I don't question your abilities as an architect. I don't question the materials. But I think we have to remember that one of the important parts of our job is to follow the ARB purpose statement, which ensures that residential design is compatible with the character inherent in the surrounding neighborhood. And I think it is important, you're right. There's not a specific character throughout Old Town, but I think there is a character along Bemis 10. So I think ultimately, I think this project, I think as Jim mentions, it just pushes the envelope too far There have been a lot of building throughout Old Town, but I don't want to get to a situation where people end up saying, oh yeah, you know the street where they built those two big duplexes that are kind of the focal point of the street now. I just think that that is unfair to the neighborhood. And I absolutely want to encourage new architecture in our neighborhoods, but just not at the expense of surrounding properties. A lot of the homes that you showed us that did push the envelope, quite frankly, were not on Bemiston. And the house that you showed that probably is the most modern or contemporary is on Central a couple of blocks away. You know, again, not to repeat You know, the fact that these look like a bigger structure because they're two nearly identical structures that face each other. The color palette is more contemporary. The design elements certainly are more contemporary and modern. I mean, new construction always stands out. Everyone knows this. But there are so many different elements of this project put together. The fact that they are two big things together, the fact that all of the design is very, very modern. There's just so many different elements just are not just not appropriate for this site um so thank you

david

again i agree with the staff recommendation i think the building's interesting it is different than what's over there right now but i agree with the statements in the report

thank you I'll sum up that I think I've heard some very good pro and con ideas here on the commission. As you've heard me say before, I'm concerned about the massing. I like very much the contemporary style of the east front facades on both buildings. I apologize for calling the brick corbeling wood on the north building earlier tonight. That was my error. And I think you've done quite a good job answering our questions and concerns from the prior meeting. But I don't feel that even with all of that and what I like, and I understand that it fits in the context available envelope that I don't feel that it's compatible with the character of Old Town and specifically of North Beemiston, the 100 block. So I have that concern, even though I like the front facade, I don't like the other three facades, even though they've been manipulated a bit. I think they're pretty dull uh where the front facade I do like it probably is yelling a little too loudly for this street uh and because of that I I'm concerned about the compatibility but um I'll stop there everything else has been said uh are there comments from the audience on architectural

Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Steve Burrows and my wife is joining us on the Zoomer. And we live across the street from this proposed structure at 142 North Beamiston. We've submitted several written documents and photographs, 30 of them of every home on Beamiston Avenue. And we've given our opinion, which is that we hope you will oppose the current design of this structure. So I'm not going to rehash everything that's been sent to you. You all have it and I appreciate you reading it. I do want to make a couple points just having sat here tonight, though. First of all, I keep going back to item six in the purpose statement of the architectural review board. It's clear as a bell and that says that you will ensure the residential design is compatible with the character of the surrounding neighborhood. It's just that simple. And this home, as beautiful as it may be from an architectural point of view and a modern point of view and construction point of view, it just doesn't fit. So it violates that premise and that purpose of the ARB. How many times does the ARB need to hear that this structure is not compatible with the character of the neighborhood? So far in two staff reports, it's been mentioned at least three times. And tonight it's been mentioned a dozen times. So I think there's reason to ask for some revisions on the design. More importantly, the approval of this design in my view and Barb's view sets a precedent for Old Town Clayton that opens a door that can never be shut and starts to erode the historical and traditional area of Clayton called Old Town Clayton. And Jeremy has done a great job of explaining all the details. And as a resident, Jeremy, we appreciate that. But your reference to modern elements in the area do not include North Bemiston or Bemiston Avenue. And I would ask you to each look at the 34 photographs that I provided and show me where the modern elements are in all those homes. And perhaps there is one or two. But this home, I think to Jim's point of view, is several standard deviations off of the surrounding homes. So just in closing, I'd just like to say thank you for the opportunity. We appreciate having our voice heard and I hope that the ARB will request that the designs be revised to be more compatible. And Robert, now you've met somebody in one of those unwarmed and fuzzy homes. We have three grandchildren and they play there often. So if you ever come by, feel free to stop by for a beer. Thank you.

Nancy Georgian, 224 North Bemiston. Actually, Steve took most of my comments, so this will be pretty quick. But I would like to say, yeah, there are. I mean, my house, you can drive by anytime, 224 North Beemiston. We built it. Our site plan approval and our architectural review were 15 minutes each, okay? We have a modern home that's built. We have people walk by and stop me and talk about how much they like it. Now, I happen to like the design. I think it's still a little too modern. I think it can be pulled back. I would hope that the architect and the builder give some good consideration to that because I like variation in the neighborhood. But I think traditional... is not English Tudor castles. I think there's many ways to accomplish it and still keep the residential single family feel of the neighborhood. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Mark Waller, 141 North Bemiston. Just want to say we agree with all the comments. This doesn't fit. And I think at your point three or eight points, it's right on point. It just doesn't fit. I think it's all been said. I like walking down our street and I think it's just fine.

Thank you. Any other comments, Rick?

Rick Bliss, again. I've been around long enough to see this committee debate many controversial applications and can think of a few residential projects that got approved over many neighbors' objections and expressed concerns. More than once, members of the Plan Commission ARB expressed regret for approving developments that did not fit in a neighborhood, even going so far as to essentially apologize for their mistakes. Don't add this project to the list of mistakes. Thank you.

Any other comments? No hands up. Correct, Ryan. Okay. Any further comments from the Commission or Bridget? We see you. No?

OK.

Well, we do have a staff recommendation to approve as submitted. We've had many comments, pro and con. Tyler or Doug, do you have any further comments before we go ahead?

Thank you can can I ask so can I ask a question sure. We have approved 2 thirds of it now we're at the architectural review. I think a lot of us can see the handwriting on the wall. And my question really is Is it fair to move to continue this part of the hearing, give them an opportunity to amend, see if something compatible can come about?

It is fair to let the design team take another look at it based on comments that we've heard tonight, unless they do not want to go ahead with that. then I think what you're suggesting, Bob, is the way we should go.

I move we continue the architectural review portion of this application to a future date.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. We will to you again. We did have one other item on our list. Did, I assume 8125 Westmoreland never showed up. Okay. We'll have to continue that. Move to postpone it to the next meeting. Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Jim, any further comments? I could make a joke, but no.

Amy?

Nothing further.

I still love my fellow board members, especially that one.

And I just want to say, I hope everybody votes tomorrow in the primary because there's some very important races to consider.

Already voted.

Okay. Okay. Thank

you, Ellen.

I already voted too, Bob.

No, I'm voting tomorrow and I have nothing else to add tonight. And I apologize for taking so long.

Okay. It's okay. That's right. Anything further?

Oh, just that I already voted. And I'm going to return to my family in Costa Rica. But I wish you all well.

Well, thank you for tuning in. We appreciate it.

Yes.

Oh, my goodness. David? Dedication. Nothing. Dedication.

Ryan,

anything?

Nothing further. Just be mindful that I got a lot of documents today related to the next meeting. I wouldn't expect the next one to be short.

Okay. Anna? Stephanie?

Nothing this evening. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. We're adjourned. See you in two weeks.