 The first 2021 meeting of the Montpelier designer review committee. I will let members and staff introduce themselves by speaking their names. Martha Smirsky, member. Eric Gilbertson, member. Liz Pritchard, member. Hannah Smith, member. And Steve Everett, member. And Meredith Crandall, staff. Tammy Furry, recording secretary. Thank you. And Meredith, would you like to review the staff remote meeting procedures? Yes. Let me just share my screen. Oh, and here's Ben. Awesome. Ben's connecting. So I'll start on the remote meeting procedures and then he can say hi after we do that. Okay. Thank you. All right. All right. So this is going to be largely for anybody watching from home over Orca. But also I don't know as Mike has been on for an application since we went to remote meeting. Okay. So for those of you viewing this meeting via Orca media, you can participate in the design review committee meeting via the Zoom platform. You can access it through this link here. You can also call in using this phone number. For both of those, the meeting ID is right here. If you have problems accessing the meeting, then you can email me and I will try and help you get in. And in a little bit I will zoom down to a link to tonight's meeting materials, but it's on our agenda and meeting materials page on the city website. If you're having issues accessing this video features while you're in Zoom, you can also use the chat function. Please limit any chats to technical issues. If it does veer off, I'll be bringing it into the if it goes into substance, I'll bring it back in, but try and keep chat to technical issues. So this meeting is being recorded. Turning your video on is optional. All public testimony will be taken verbally. And please keep your microphone on mute when you are not speaking to reduce background noise. For those if anybody sends in via phone, star six will allow you to mute or unmute in a way that we can actually see it in Zoom. 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You can look for the design review committee link and then go to the current and upcoming events file and download in the files column for tonight's meeting. Please note that all votes taken during this meeting that are not unanimous will be done by roll call vote. And now hand the meeting back over to chair. Thank you. Does anyone from the committee have any comments at this point? If not, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? I'll move to approve the agenda. This is Martha. Second, Eric. All in favor of the agenda, please speak your names. And Steve. So we'll go to the first application for 453 Stonecutters Way, owner Steve Rolini and applicant Mike Russ for sign here. Go ahead, Mike, describe your application. Well, it's for a couple of signs. Two are wall mounted on one end of the building. And the other one is a freestanding sign with two wooden posts. And then there are also the three numbers that are wall mounted on this about in the center of the building. I didn't show the whole building on the picture, but it's about in the center of the building. So it's a total of three signs and three numbers. Let me know if you want me to pull up the application. That would be nice. Mike, which of the three buildings is this? No, it's one building is 453 Stonecutters Way. Yes. Two signs are going on one end of the building. And on the other end, there's another entrance. The Edward Jones sign is going on one end of the building. And on the very far end, the two signs are being mounted on the wall. I guess my question was actually, there are three buildings that are very much alike along Stonecutters Way. Which one of them is this one? This is, if you're coming from, sorry, Ducis, obviously One Way Street, it's the first one on the right. Okay, thank you. It's the one with the rusty roof. It's an old railroad building. I think it's the last building left of the railroad yards in Montpelier. Thank you. Let me know if there's a particular slide that anybody wants to look at. I can adjust as needed. I'm more interested in the chiropractic signs. I feel like I understand the Edward Jones. Those two signs are... Okay, thank you. The letters will be quarter inch black plastic with a brushed aluminum face that are mounted directly to the wood. And the wood is mounted to the building with just four They're standoffs. So it's only four screws that are mounted to the building. The sign actually isn't going to be on the building. If you can see the view of it, you'll see that it's off of the building slightly. So it's only four screws for each one. A total of eight screws that will hold the two signs onto the building. That's it. And are there any signs there now, Mike? No. Okay. Where are the numbers going? In the center of the building, I should have taken a picture from farther back, but it's a very long building. So the chiropractic signs are on the left of the 453. And the Edward Jones is on the far right. You can't see either one because the building is that long. If anybody needs me to, I can probably pull up a Google Maps street view if that would be helpful. But I don't know if that would really do much right now. Are there currently numbers on the ends of the building? We put some white vinyl numbers just on the glass. So people know it's 453. That's it. No, there are no numbers on the building. There wasn't any numbers on the building. See, the reason they wanted to do that 453, because it's very similar to the next building down, they have very large numbers on their building. I don't even know what building it is. If you continue down Stonecutter's way, it's going to be very similar to that next building. It's the one that has the metal siding, I think. Maple capital management is in there. I'm not quite sure who's in there. I didn't take a picture of her or anything, but I mean, they saw that and they wanted something similar. So that's what we came up with. Give me one second. Let me change what I'm sharing. And there's what's just on Stonecutter's way. There you go. Those actually might be a little larger than what we're putting on the side of the building. They might be. It's just, and just so you know, it does, I think technically it is that those numbers will be a third wall sign. You have the ability to do that. And I think Audra flagged it a little differently. If they were, if the total area was two square feet, then it wouldn't be a sign for two square feet or less. But with the size it is, it will be a third wall sign. Yeah, I think the numbers, the 453 is actually 16 square feet. Mike, is there an entrance to this building at the center of the length? No, only on both ends. There is no entrance in the middle. Yeah, there's only on that left side and right side. There's nothing in the middle. I don't think this BFS sign is actually here anymore. No, that sign's not there. No, it is old. Yeah, there's no entrance on this side at all. I'm going to try to figure out what the 453 in the middle of the building is going to do. Nobody's going to see it. They'll be looking at the ends. I would rather see the numbers on the ends for people can see it. I mean, like sets of numbers? Yeah, they could be smaller if they're on the ends. I agree with Eric. Being in the middle of the building, you're not going to see it until you've passed the entrance. But if you put it on either end, it might give a people a clue that obviously you can enter from either end to the 453. I think that'd be alright, but with them, I'm sure. And you'd only, I guess, have to put it on one end because that's the only way you can drive up to it anyway. Is the parking lot before you get to the building, correct? The parking lot is actually when you go past the building. You have to drive past the building to enter their parking lot. There's some parking spaces on the left, but their parking lot is after the building, not before it. When you go into the building, is there a center hallway that goes the length of the building? No. No, you cannot access Edward Jones from that far end. You have to walk all the way down the sidewalk and walk into his entrance. There is no, no, you cannot. They're separated. At least that's what I was told. Okay. As you're driving down Stonecutter's Way and you're looking at the end of the building that you first approach, it looks like there's some shrubbery there. Would that obscure a sign on the side of the building there? I'm not sure. Give me a second and I'll share that again. If you're looking at the picture on page five of six of the application, you're, you see the Edward Jones sign and to the left of it, there's some shrubbery to the left of the entry. I would think that the number should be put at least over the doorway, maybe larger up top so they'd be visible, in my opinion, but I would think, I would think to the right would be very visible, right in here. How tall are the letters of the address? The ones that I put on the side of the building were 20 inches. I think you really don't need anything that big. The only reason they were that big is because they tried to match the building that was after it. That's all. It might make more sense and we could use it as an option to put 12-inch letters over each entry on the ends of the building because a 12-inch letter, according to sign designs, a 12-inch letter can be read from 120 feet and I would think it would be, that would be plenty large as you're approaching to see the number over the entryway, certainly on the west side because that shrubbery is tall enough. And if you put it any lower, unless you put it to the right of the doorway, the shrubbery is going to hide it, if not now, soon. One more thing, Mike, were you anticipating that these letters would be black? Yes, the framing around the doors, we just thought it would look better like that. It's certainly compatible with the other colors. The address of the east end of the building is also the same? Both are the same. You mean 453. It's for the entire building, yes. That's actually kind of odd given there are two unconnected entrances. I'd be curious to know what 12-inch letters would look like on that building in proportion to the size of the building. Just as a comparison, the letters aren't any larger than that for Sarduchies and you can read that clearly from the entrance at the Shaw supermarket 200 feet away. That would be a good comparison. So I think a 12-inch letter, again, readable from 120 feet black against the gray of the building, I think would be readable pretty easily. Readable as you're driving down stone cutters away from the west side. I totally understand that, but if you look at the next building down, they wanted it to look similar to that because it's on the same street. And those letters are probably, I could go measure them, but I think they're probably 28 to 30 inches in height. So just a reminder, ultimately, we've got a, I think it was worked out to be, was it 43 square feet? I think is the max wall signage allowed on the building. So that's just our outer limit. If we're talking about numbers on both ends, that's going to restrict the size of the letters that can be allowed or numbers. How many square feet are there now without the letters? Two signs. I would need to read the application has it in height and width and inches. So everything together, new signage is 32 square feet total. I don't have, what did you say the square footage, Mike, was of the numbers right now? Six square feet on the numbers. Okay. Yeah. So right now we're at 26 square feet without the numbers. So there's room to play with. The two wall signs are about 32 by 72. Right. That's 32 square feet and six, that's a 38 square feet total. Okay. I had Audrey double check this calculation. So wait a minute, we've got 32 inches by 72 inches. Times six feet, six, 12, 72. So 32 inches times six feet times two is 32 square feet. Oh, so you didn't write, you didn't include the numbers in here as your, for your total sign area calculation. That was added after, but it is, but it is six square feet. So it's still 38 square feet total. My real problem with the numbers on the side of the building there's just no point to it. I mean, it's nobody's going to see him. It's not near any of the entrances. And it's just sort of clutter on the side of the building. How many square feet? Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. How many square, how many square feet were in the, the letters, 20 inches by six square feet, 48, 20 by 48, those were six square feet. If we put them on two ends of the building, we'd have to, what did you say was 40 square feet? 43 is your max. So you'd have to reduce the size by a little bit. About a 16 inch letter on the side on both ends. 16 inches is readable from 160 feet. That's quite a distance from the building even driving. I think that would be fine. Reduce the width a little bit too. I don't know what it would be, but even if you were to use them, let's see. Yeah, that'd be 5.3 square feet. So what we could do, what we could do is be to give you the option of using anything between 12 and 16 inch high letters. And then what you could do would be to make a mock-up and stick it up there, you know, a paper mock-up or whatever you like, and then come back to as if you were driving down and you can look to see which one looks most appropriate for the size and scale. Okay, that sounds fair. How does that sound, Eric? That's fine with me. Martha's idea too of having it to the right of the door rather than above the door. Okay. You know. Mike, does that sound possible to put it to the right of the door? Well, definitely. We can give you the option of trying the letter sizes and putting it to the right of the door at a height that's most readable as you're driving down. Does that sound like that might work? I think so. That should work. It's good with me. I mean, that letter, that building can stand pretty good size letters. So whatever works. Again, whatever, like Eric said, whatever works, which is most, what is the most readable as you're driving down to recognize the number of the building? My guess is most of the people that go to that building know where they're going to begin with. Yes. Probably. The other thing is, is that your signs might be more aligned, the Edward John sign might be more aligned with the number on the side of the building. As you're driving down stone cutters, you're going to see the Edward John sign and the letter sign with the number, the number sign will be to the right of the door, maybe slightly higher than the ground sign. I think in any case, it's going to be confusing to people to have the same address on both ends of the building because they're entirely different uses. I can see why they do that, but I still think it's going to be hard not to be confusing, particularly with the parking for Lynch down at the far end. They might have to put a sign inside the door that says, Clance of Edward Jones used the other end of the building. Good luck trying to change the 911 addresses. Audra's job, not mine. So is everybody okay with the application, with the existing wall signs and then having two number signs between 12 and 16 inches, again at the option of the applicant to the right side of the entry doors on both ends? I would like to discuss the placement of the sign a little bit more. Okay, go ahead. It just looks as if it could be more centered on that blocked out window versus it seems like it's kind of half on half off. Would you like it closer to the window than the edge of the building? I think if like the center of the sign was the center of the blocked out window. That would feel better to me. For any indication on the gable end, what the businesses are inside, is on the glass and stuff. Just, there's just a sticker on the glass, that's it, small decal on the glass right now. Other than that, no, there's nothing on the ends of the buildings. So Mike, as long as anything that goes on the end of the building, as long as it's unlit and is the name, address, and is two feet square or smaller than it's exempt from the sign permits. So they could add something small, much smaller, but that has these names listed on the end that's in keeping with the same kind of design and not need to get a permit for that. That's what they both did. They put a little vinyl letters on the window and I don't even think they're 16 inches or 20, they're very small. You have to walk up to the glass to see them. You can't, you know, that's on the doors when you enter both ends. That's what they have. Great. Well, and that's in the window, again, that's a separate exemption. Stuff inside the window is exempt from permits as well, but you could even have something outside as long as it was small, but so there's a couple of options. Does anyone on the committee have any other comments, questions, or suggestions? No. Okay. So again, the recommendation is that the wall signs be centered under the blocked out window and then the option, the applicant has the option of signs between 12 and 16 inches on either end of the building to the right of the doorways. Again, the same colors and font. Does anyone want to add anything else? If not, I can read through the criteria. We have a couple criteria sheets that apply to the application. One is exterior design and materials of new construction or alterations. Additions to existing buildings shall respect and be compatible with the size, scale, materials detailing and overall character of the primary building and its environs. Additions shall not obscure or undermine the essential form and character of the original building and should reflect the additions period and style is appropriate, acceptable. There's a comment about architectural features, architectural features, including but not limited to cornices, windows, shutters, fan lights, and tablet or trim and other forms of molding on character defining detailing. Revealing on the existing building shall be considered in the any alterations and for the signs that's acceptable. Then there's some specific criteria criteria regarding the signs. One, the size, location, design, color, texture, lighting, and material of all exterior design, all exterior signs within the district shall be compatible with the building and structures of the site and surrounding properties that's acceptable. Where appropriate, signing shall respect the original sign placement and sign bands on historic structures. This location is acceptable. If the building has multiple tenants, there shall be consistency in placement and size among the signs acceptable. It is recommended the sign placement be centered over building entries or in this case to the right of the entries for readability for traffic acceptable. Sign installation shall minimize damage to character defining materials acceptable. Sign design color and typography shall respect historic precedents where appropriate and shall be the appropriate scale for existing and new buildings acceptable. Sign support structures for the ground sign shall be compatible with the building architecture and must not be overly complex or dominant in and of themselves acceptable. I hear a vote for approval of the application again with the option for the applicant to place number signs between 12 and 16 inches to the right of the entries on either end of the building and again the wall signs, the recommendation that wall signs will be centered under the locked out window. Dwight, would you like to vote? Paul in favor, speak your names. Derek. Martha. Liz. Anna. Ann. And Steve. So the application is approved. Did you have any other questions, Mike? So, Mike, Steve will have filled out those recommendation forms and he'll get those to us with his signature on them and then I will be, either Audrey or I will send you an email with a scan of that because there are both recommendations and options in there we'll need to sign off from you that you agree with those recommendations and options before we can issue a permit but with that can all be a BVA email either you can sign it and scan it back or you can just send an email that says yes, I agree. Once you see it. Yeah, I'm just going to send this information to the customer tomorrow. Oh yeah. They're okay with it all. Okay. Of course. And yeah, once they decide on exactly how they want to deal with the numbers, you can also just shoot me like an email and we can add it to the file so that we know what was actually done in the total square footage. It'll just help for future record keeping in case they want to make changes later. Okay, sounds good. Awesome. Thank you very much, Mike. Good luck with your project. Thank you. Have a good night. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you. Has everyone had a chance to look at the minutes and do I hear a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Second. I'll second. All in favor of the minutes, speak your names. Martha. Eric. Hannah. Ben. And Steve. So the minutes are approved. Does anyone else have any business or comments to make? Meredith, have you, have we talked about the grant award we got for doing the workbooks? Not lately because we haven't had a DRC meeting. I don't think I'm a bit of a blur these days. So we have been awarded a grant to develop the design review guidelines, which will be take the place of the cityscape workbooks. We don't have the actual contract for that yet. Once we do, we'll be sending out RFP to get project, get bids on that. And so we're hoping to start work on that pretty soon. Right now we're just waiting. We've got to get the actual contract language so that we know exactly what needs to go in the terms of the RFP. But we will be looking for input from you all because these guidelines are going to need to make sense to you as to how to implement the design review regulations, especially for big projects, things that haven't come up since we got these new design review regs. And I know that there are prospective applicants for some big projects in Montpellier where things are bubbling away in the background where we don't actually have any applications. But I've had people contact me to be like, hey, what can we do on such and such parcel? So we will be seeing some big stuff, I'm sure. So we want to make sure that the guidelines are in place and work for you all. Since you guys will be implementing them. So I'll keep you posted. But think about what would be really helpful for you when looking at those design review regulations. You go back through them, take a look and see what images would work for you, especially for anyone who has the practical experience of being an applicant too and having buildings that they need to know how to apply things to. That would be really, really helpful. Didn't we get $21,000? And that has to be matched by donated time and city staff time. It's like a 60-40 match. And I think we, from looking at the historic preservation, from that view of the historic preservation commission, we really want a lot of input from the design review people. It's really your book. Yep. And the other thing to keep in mind is that if you do spend time on that, please make sure to keep track of that time and shoot it to me, because your time on that might also be able to count as volunteered time that counts as part of the city match. Especially anybody who's using their professional capacity to help review and guide those in a 10 meetings. But just something to keep in mind and look at. We'll keep you posted. Thanks, Meredith. Thanks for reminding me, Eric. I'm a little off my game today. Does anyone else have anything to add? If not, do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. I hear a second. I'll second that, Liz. All in favor of adjourn, let's speak your name. Marcia. Liz. Hannah. Ben. And Steve. So the meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.