 Welcome to the Monday, June the 5th, 2023 meeting of the Montpelier design and review committee. Will the committee members and staff introduce themselves? Maritith Crandall, staff. Steve Everett, member. Martha Smursky, member. Is Liz here? No. Liz will be absent today and right now we actually don't have anybody remotely except for Orca Media that's streaming and the minute recording secretary so we still do need to speak into the microphones including applicants when they come up to the table so that the recording and the live streaming can work but everybody is here in person tonight. Speaking of remotely we still have to let you go through the remote meeting procedures. I know. Sorry. No it's okay they're all queued up so this is for people who are on watching via Orca. Okay so for those of you viewing tonight's design review committee meeting via Orca Media you can participate in tonight's design tonight's meeting via the zoom platform you can do that either by using this link here you can type this white right into your web browser and that will give you both video and telephone access options or you can call in using this phone number and plugging in this meeting ID when prompted and you will be able to speak to us and hear everything that's going on over your phone. If you're trying to access the meeting and you're having problems please email me at mcrandall at montpelier-vt.org I will be monitoring my email throughout the meeting. If you do log in via zoom please know turning on your video is optional and we ask that you please remain muted when you're not speaking this will help reduce background noise. If you do dial in to zoom over the phone star six will mute and unmute you. Um all right I'm going to skip over these other things because we don't actually have anybody on remotely right now. If I do find out that the public is unable to access the meeting then it will need to be continued to a time place uncertain. I'll hand the meeting back over to the chair. At this point do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? All second. All in favor of the agenda speak your names. Martha and Steve the agenda is approved. Unless anybody has anything else to add at this point we can go to the first application for 73 Main Street Heaney Family Main Street LLC replacement of a rooftop skylight. Go ahead and come up to the table and describe your application. And you can adjust the microphone as you see fit so that it works for you. Okay is that work? Yeah he'll be able to tell. All right so the application is to replace the skylight in the atrium at 73 Main Street right there um and it's uh it's an old steel frame skylight my dad had it refurbished in the early 80s and it's it's done its job um and it leaks we've ended up putting plastic over it for the last couple winters and it's just it's just the scope and the scale of this project is large enough that I've put it off as long as I can but it's um so it's a cowl skylight that they would fabricate for us and it'd be the change in the design from what's there is what's there now is a hip roof and we're proposing a straight gable roof that would give us right now there's a vent in the center of the hip roof which whenever anything goes wrong with the fan unit or anything in it it's really difficult for maintenance um with the gable roof it would let us put a fan in the end and just much safer and easier to deal with issues when something goes wrong with the fan so and it seems more practical so that's really the application the new unit will also be it'll be a lighter structure um and uh will be a much more energy efficient structure than what's there I'm looking for this thing and I can't see it no where where is it it well it's up in the middle it's over that internal atrium yeah okay now yeah it's uh I've got old photos Eric it's uh steel this was when it was rehabbed in the 80s greenhouse yeah it's like a greenhouse steel frame it's got the old glass I think it's got the wire in it the new one I'll actually be I'm shooting for something that's more translucent and not clear glass having it clear really overheats that space um badly you're still gonna have light coming in oh yes absolutely yeah feel that light coming down it's really nice it is nice so the new one's a steel frame also or I think it's an aluminum frame frame yeah that's why it should be lighter we've had black rivers worked on the design with um structures unlimited so it's a straight gable roof there's no hip on the end correct is there a picture of what it would look like with the okay but that's new with the vent on the end yes representation of what it will look like oh that's what they're building right or is that what it's going to look like is that what the new one's going to look like um no that's a no that was part of the rehab of the old one okay now the new one's in the hopefully the plans you have so yeah yeah I didn't give us the plans those went to the building permit file I didn't see those um oh okay so she gave us the photos so that was the original I got it so this was the original this was the rehab in the 80s okay so the the ridge the ridge height the ridge height is about the same as it is now it is it's just a straight gable instead of a hip right and actually because it won't have the fan on the top it'll actually be a little shorter but I mean the skylights the same height but the fan unit goes above it yeah and the current one and that's the ventilator is going is that a double or triple thickness cowwall two and three quarters inches is the spec they make it in like a honeycomb design and it comes you can get it like two three four I mean different now this is yeah I'll ask because I wasn't aware there were options this is what they expect so I said okay does anybody have any questions about this guy like a new one those are all pictures of the old and then what's there existing so that old one is what was described for the national register listing probably right yeah this is just a straight gable roof instead of a hip okay if nobody has any other questions I can go through the criteria there's a criteria sheet I'll just read down through it this is in the building permit right glad you brought it so the criteria number one exterior design and materials of new construction or alterations of existing buildings shall be consistent and compatible with the characteristics of the existing building or other properties in the district for stork structures the removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize an historic property should be avoided unless it's unavoidable character defining features finishes and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship they characterize an historic building shall be preserved deteriorated features shall be repaired rather than replaced if possible where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a character defining feature new features shall be replaced in kind any treatments that cause damage to historic materials including been unlimited to chemical or physical treatments shall not be approved this application is acceptable existing building shall be recognized as a physical record of their time place in use any new development shall be differentiated from the old but shall respect and be compatible with the massing size scale architectural features detailing an overall character of the primary stork building and nearby historic properties acceptable consider similarity or compatibility with roof shapes and immediate areas conceal rooftop equipment and features on flat roofs from eye level view from adjacent public rates of weight and from the ground level of any adjacent properties this application is acceptable and lastly windows and doors on historic structures character defining windows and door patterns placement sizes proportions and original features such as trim sash and molding shall be preserved to the extent possible when preservation is not possible such character defining windows doors must be rehabilitated or replaced in kind windows and doors that are not character defining may be replaced but such replacements must be compatible with historic building style materials and architectural features acceptable and again staff suggests that a skylight is not the same as a window and then architectural materials and features above have been dealt appropriately with the proposal yeah so i didn't know if the the committee wanted this to you that to be even be applicable you know you could say not applicable or acceptable that's okay just acceptable as fine so all in favor of the application speak your names martha and steve it is approved four to zero since you're here tim and i get you to sign the form once steve's done and then i'll be able to just put that in the file and thanks adria is out of the office for the next couple of days so you might not get your permit quite as quickly as usual um but we'll try and get it to you as soon as possible let me just sign it in the block but don't know my name okay thank you tim thank you good luck go to the next application for 100 main street city line realty for the end in nipali kitchen review new wrap around wall sign hi if you want to come up and come up and describe your application okay i don't know what to say you can just give us your name so we have it for the record and then describe the sign you want to put up okay i think we already send them what you call the so they have the whole application they have all of it they just want to hear your description of it and your name so that we have no who's been talking yes my name is tira giri i am the owner of namaste indian nipali kitchen and then we would like to put the new sign on there namaste indian nipali kitchen um on the side we want to put namaste and then on the front side is indian nipali kitchen like that and it's gonna be i think it's a wood frame maybe yeah yeah so they have copies of everything that you gave us downstairs who's doing your sign for you um next door what a sign design design john miller yeah john yeah nice and eight inch letter we finally an appropriately sized letter yes i like the personally and i know i don't make the decision i like the wraparound aspect of this so it has their full name so you can see it from but you can see it from both sides but it's not repetitive yes so i thought that was a really neat design just my little personal thing anyone have any questions fits in the sign band sits off the surface okay then we can go through the criteria for this one the size location design color texture lighting and material of all exterior signs within the design review district shall be compatible with the building and structures of the site and surrounding properties acceptable where appropriate signing shall respect the original sign placement and sign bands acceptable if a building has multiple tenets there shall be consistency in placement and size among all signs acceptable it is recommended that sign placement be centered over building entries this wraparound is acceptable sign installation shall minimize damage to character defining building materials on the building acceptable sign design color and typography shall respect historic precedents where appropriate and shall be the appropriate scale for existing and new buildings acceptable all in favor of the sign application speak your names and steve for to nothing in favor so just like with tim you can just sign there's a block here and then we'll get that permit to you as since hospital do you want us to email you when it's ready so you can just come pick it up or do you want us to mail it okay hopefully this week hopefully this week i just the person who usually issues the permits the actual physical documentation is out the next two days so hopefully we'll get both so hopefully we'll get both of these done thursday or friday thank you have a great rest of your evening and we can move forward to the next application 149 state street george estes and i probably should recuse myself um well so george i had a discussion about this as long as you explain your relationship because you don't have an a financial interest in the building yes i don't think i mean somebody else may have a point about it but i don't think you need to recuse yourself well it's a we have a business relationship between insurance and he does have my building work for me now probably 80 90 i call it 90 at least but this application is for building yes building he owns yeah okay i don't have any problem with it so it is george estes um i have a building down here at 149 state street um here and trying to follow through with all you need to do before the compliance of the building i'm not sure what you're doing that is within our purview i'm seeing bathrooms stairways bedrooms so for this as described on the on agenda it's just the railing got it so the railing aspect of it um the insurance required that the railing for the upper portico sort of falcony area needed to be both lower and have the spacing in it reduced um because there are people in there and part of it is going to be converted to a residential use um and they needed that done asap so um if you look at the far away pictures you can i think there's some in there you can see might even just be on the front what was there originally and it's also in it's actually in the picture that that steve brought the railing is in the actually same painting painted photograph um and george has had to add some new stuff sort of behind the historic railing so he hasn't removed the historic railing he's added new sort of trellising behind it and then the two bars on top uh to to get that height without having a weird sort of trellis thing higher than that historic george are those railing bars already there the upper bars were not okay so this is just a right a showing of what it would look like right on the lower section of the building it has another picture shows where the railing that i actually copied was and that's where i got the idea how to go so coat requirements are that the top be 42 inches high and that there'd be no space wider than taller or wider than four inches so if you look at the one picture from the inside you can still see that historic railing on the outside of there through the gaps he didn't remove any of that yes rather than put another lattice on the inside had you thought of just putting another rail at the bottom to reduce that space well the space between the lattice on there now is six by six and the space under the rail was six inches also so i had to take the lattice work and have it hang down below the railing so there wouldn't be the space at the deck instead of it being six inches off the ground now it's only two and a half and i came up to the top of the railing just so to kind as keep the old but i'd want it to be in compliance with the four inch off the deck too yeah because all of those x's it was six inches on the original so you had a six inch space every place you had a triangle so he had to put a new lattice that sort of filled in those gaps otherwise he would have had to run strapping all the way down or something well the the lattice meets the four inch requirement doesn't i mean the new one is the old lattice wider yeah than four inches yeah it's six inch six inch by 16 squares oh okay and that's that's why this one became more complicated so as i talked to michelle she said that what the requirements are the four inches so the gap between the railings from here to that is three and a half then three and a half and then it comes to 42 and a quarter inches to the top of the rail i also was a little confused when i read this what are you doing to the building inside what what changes are you making excuse me say thank you method what changes are you anticipating inside the changes basically um the office spaces that are in here now um there's some spaces that because of the way it's been working that i haven't been able to fill the occupancies of the office space so i'm trying to turn it in to a b and b basically where some of the building it still has its commercial office space and then it's now going to be able to have a overnight like monday to thursday i'm trying to get the legislatures or someone like that that would take the rooms um basically the only thing uh it has a pre-existing porcelain tub and old fixtures that are in there the only thing i'm doing is taking that tub out and putting a new fiberglass unit putting in a new vanity in a new uh toilet in the bathroom anticipating a short-term roundtiles rather than a long-term lease right for for like 600 square feet of the building the rest of it will still say commercial that's going before the board i'm just curious yeah just didn't understand it yeah okay i'm guessing this work on these railings is is done at this point yes because it's a collective application right and i i i didn't even think about it until after and then michelle came to the building she said okay george this is what you need to do in compliance and then i had a letter from my insurance company and they said george you need to do this or you know we can't cover the building and there was a couple other things that they i had to do for the insurance company so immediately i did it not realizing about i knew about the size and the dimensions of what i could use to make it compatible to people to be out there but not realizing i had to come between zoning board to tell me i automatically just did it because i want to make sure the tenants in the building if somebody went out here the insurance company wasn't going to decline me because this space is currently accessible to the office what is the lattice in the corner there because on the corner of the building is where the electrical entrance comes into the building and talking with michelle that there's going to be a point where you can't have somebody on that porch that can actually reach out and grab a hole of electrical wire so on that side where the electrical entrance comes into the building she suggested i put a little wing or something to keep people from actually being able to reach around the corner and grab the electrical are you going to do that same thing on the other side are you the side to the right of it you can't reach the power line because of the pole the round no i meant if looking at the building you've done this on the left are you going to do it on the right as well i didn't plan on it no because there's no electrical service there that i had to accommodate to would you be willing to if they asked you to just to have it symmetrical to make it look yeah to look at uniform of course yeah that's what i was thinking and i'm fine just leaving the the one section with the protection and then that way you maintain a similar view from the point when you're looking at it from the state house going going in that direction it's just you know it's it's a minimal amount of lattice that's put up there for protection anybody have any questions or suggestions or one thing you would have the option to do in it your call if you wanted to have the appearance of what it used to be plus the top two rails if you if it was if the interior lattice it made it more crowded or digging into the appearance you wanted you could spray paint the interior lattice black so that when you're looking at it from the street you wouldn't see the black the only thing you would see would be the white and again that's that's up to you and again that's an option don't have to but if you if you like the way that looked better i mean you could do a trial panel and see and again that's just your option okay because the biggest flaw that i was trying to figure out how to deal with it if i change the lattice work i can put slats in between the individual ones and then everything would become two by two but still under the bottom rail i have to come up with some solution to be able to occupy so nobody can get under or be able to um so i was trying to figure out it would be the easiest and because of the old fashion rails where they stop there's that space so i just let their lattice work run me down the low so i would have to i mean the integrity of the building i don't want to disturb because i love the old building but i mean i was just trying to make it so i was in compliance basically you know me i think your solution works and again the only reason to paint it would be appearance if you like the way it looked better and again that's an option right you can do it or don't have to do it and that would you think that would still work you wouldn't see the black even where it's below the white you think it would still fade away it fade it'll fade away yeah because it'll just make the white stand out more it would make the original white stand out more and then the two top two top obviously the horizontal rails she would leave the same anybody else have any other comments questions suggestions you know it's a shame they didn't know about you know 2023 codes back in 1893 of course the average height then was about five five so you know a 30 inch railing when you're five five is different from a 42 when you're six four and then again what would happen was you would see the original and the black one would sort of fade away i mean if you look at if you look at the picture there i mean the you look at the spaces between the the lattice and it's it's darker okay i'll read down through the criteria exterior design and materials of new construction or alterations of existing building shall be consistent and compatible with the characteristics of the existing building or other properties in the district the removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize an historic property shall be avoided character defining features finishes and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship they characterize an historic building shall be preserved deteriorated character defining features shall be repaired rather than replaced where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a character defining feature new features shall be replaced in kind any treatments that cause damage to historic materials including but not limited to chemical or physical treatments such as sandblasting shall not be approved this application is acceptable existing building shall be recognized as a physical record of their time place and use any new development shall be differentiated from the old but shall respect and be compatible with the massing size scale architectural features detailing an overall character of the primary historic building and nearby historic properties acceptable alterations to buildings called for by public safety accessibility and fire codes shall be designed to maintain the character of the construction materials and features to the maximum extent feasible acceptable and architectural features including but not limited to cornices windows shutters fan lights and tablature trim and other forms of molding or character defining detailing prevailing on the existing building shall be considered in the alteration of a building acceptable and lastly porches and stairs on historic structures the location of porches ramps and stairs shall be placed in a manner that does not impact or undermine the original and significant ornamentation or detailing of the existing building stairs ramps and porches shall employ suitable detailing to connect and be compatible with historic and important design features of the existing buildings and new construction stairs and ramps shall be designed in a matter with details and materials that provide the most sensitive and compatible structure that fits the building design and layout acceptable all in favor of the application and i'll make a notation here that an applicant has the option to paint inside lattice a black color if it improves the visibility of the original lattice work the original I'll call it exterior lattice all in favor speak your names Eric Ben Martha I'm a yes and Steve vote is four to zero in favor and I can get you to come up and you can sign this one below my name okay I'll hold on to the form and report to DRB at seven that's going to be a just a minor item for the sure I got a couple extras they just throw them in your file if you need you want another one I got some extras by the way steel threads appeared today thank you good luck everybody had a chance to look at the minutes from the May 15th meeting yeah and I'm going to make a motion to approve them I'll second all in favor speak your names Martha I'm gonna stay now yes Ben and Steve minutes are approved for May the 15th does anybody have anything else to add if not do I hear a motion to adjourn yep yep do I second yep all in favor of adjourn and speak your names Martha and Steve meeting is adjourned thank you for coming