Highlights of PZHRPB Meeting of 6/21

Well, sometimes it's hard to predict what will happen at any given meeting. Last night was one of those. The bulk of our conversation and deliberation was regarding a project proposed for the southwest corner of Palmway and Lake Avenue. This is a currently vacant piece of property. A couple of years ago, we approved a three story mixed use building (office on 1st floor) with 12 residential units above - with parking contained within the building. The property was subsequently sold and the new owner submitted an application about a year ago for essentially the same plan, but with an additional 6 units.

Over that period of time, the City has had three urban designers/architects reviewing the plans. They were, chronologically Frank Yang, Bill Feldkamp and Darrin Engel, our current urban designer. As the project went through the review process, each of the three had different suggestions as to the architectural treatment of the building.

The project finally made its way to our agenda of June 7th. At that time, Darrin had given a list of architecturally related items that he would like addressed and we reviewed each at the meeting. There were also some minor variances related to the rear, or southern part, of the property, which we went ahead and approved. We were about to approve the site plan and community appearance portion of the project, but some members (particularly John Paxman, Jon MacGillis and Lisa Maxwell) wanted Darrin to meet with the applicant in between that meeting and our meeting last night to work out the details.

So, we get our packets at the end of last week and Darrin indicated that they had addressed issues and he was o.k. with it. The revised plans showed what I thought to be a better building, especially in terms of proportions related to window openings and arch details.

Well, to make a long story short, most of the Board was not happy with the building, still. The major suggestion that came from those that were aesthetically challenged by the proposal was "take an eraser to the whole thing". Comments like "suburban architecture", "Best Western" and "not befitting our main street" all came out. I challenged everyone to try to be specific regarding what they don't like about it, including the public in attendance, and we received some detail (too massive, problems with windows/trim or lack thereof, relation to the street, etc.)

Now, I made the comment that if you added up the architectural hours spent on this project, including the applicant's architect and the three City architects that reviewed the plan over a time period of a year, we could all have a "nice vacation in Fiji". And, I had a hard time understanding how we could have had such scrutiny over that period in terms of architectural review and the most common comment at last night's meeting was "take an eraser to the whole thing - it's beyond tweaking."

At that point, I declared the system officially broken if this is the result. (See other posts re staffing)

Phil Spinelli made a motion, which failed 4-3 (Helen Green, Phil Spinelli and I supporting the motion) to approve the project with conditions. John Paxman then made a motion to bring back a revised plan for our second meeting in August (the 19th). This was not enthusiastically accepted by the applicant and they left without knowing what direction to go. Not sure what they will do to respond, but I have since encouraged them to look at the original approval and see what they can add, if anything.

And, of course, the PB Post reporter was there through the debate on this, so we can expect an article, I am sure.

Let me know what you think about the renderings. A "cool" feature is that you can click on the pictures and get a larger view. Try it and see!

Also important to note is that this project was presented before the CRA at its May 23rd meeting. This link will take you to the staff report. The project was very well received by the CRA. http://lwcra.net/minutes/060523lagovalere.pdf

I'll share some of the things I discussed under board member comments later.

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"