 Okay, welcome to the Monday, October 21st, 2019 meeting of the My Peer to Your Design Review Committee. I'll let staff and members introduce themselves. Meredith Crandall, staff. Stephen Everett. Eric Gilbertson. Seth Mitchell. And unless anybody has anything else ahead of time, do I hear an approval of the agenda? I want to add one thing, a quick report on where the designer thinks are. Okay. Put that in business. You can do that on the bottom of the business. So with that change, with that notation, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. So all in favor of the agenda. We'll go straight forward to the first application 89 Main Street for native real estate applicant Marigold Adornment. That you've come forward to have a seat at the table. And I'm just going to ask that whoever's talking, try and make sure that microphone is pointed pretty much right at them. Just because it's that one is very sensitive. These are more like he's a broader. Sure. Is this. Yeah, that should be good. And describe your application for the sign. Sure. We have been in business there for two years and we have signs on the front at the corner of the building where the signs are on the top of city center. But our entrance, unlike all the other businesses, is actually on the side of East H Street. And for two years, we've realized that customers will park in front of that entrance and then walk around to Main Street and not know where to go. So we were trying to have something that lets them know that that's our doorway. So we decided on a vertical sign, as you see in the picture there, and I made a cardboard mock up to hold up in the picture to let them know where our side entrance is. And there's existing light boxes from when Village Pizza had their sign and awning sign. And that those existing light boxes are what would be used to eliminate the vertical sign is described there. Now on this, does it say tattoo on both sides or to table one and piercing on the other? It says tattoo on one and piercing on the other. It was a way for us to keep the sign smaller without trying to put both words on both sides. Font and design is the same as the existing sign that we have on the front in the row of placard signs. The face of the brick and the sign band in the same plane or is it different? In other words, are your arms going to be different sizes to the relationship of the planes? You mean is the bottom bracket going to need a different offset than the top bracket? They appear to be the same to me. Okay. How tall are the letters in the sign? I believe that they're in the measurements from the sign design. He worked out the actual design in order to keep it under the measurements. I think that we have the total height. We don't have the height of the individual letters, but we've got, you know, sign height total of 56.5 for total and two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight in piercing. So that's roughly five inches, right? 56 divided by eight. 456. That's tattoo. Yep. The other one's piercing. It's just eight. The piercing would be on the side facing up east State Street. Correct. And tattoo facing the intersection of State and Main. Correct. Okay. So that too is one, two, three, four, five, six. But the total sign is 56.5. So the whole thing is probably less. So that's less than that's like nine inches. Six times nine is 54. Do you know what the distance is? Distances from the edge of the doorway there out to the edge of the building at the sidewalk. I do not know the distance from the doorway to the corner of the individual letter height is also there's the, our name at the bottom, Mayor, Mayor Goldendorffman, and then also the border. So the, the overall height of the sign is actually Yeah, it's it's considerably almost a full letters height, probably taller than the letters. Yeah. And do you know how tall the sign ban is here? Top to bottom. The sign ban, I believe was approximately three feet. That's what our other existing sign and all the signs that are on the front of city center buildings that there's like a row of matching sized for artisans hand to labrio. Research and reveal on the third above three feet. Even on overhanging signs, the attempt is to keep signs within the sign bands. I'm just trying to figure out the other thing is, is that the rule of thumb scientifically established is that for every 10 feet of distance to read the sign, ideal letter size is one inch. So if you had a, if your letters were six inches high, ideal reading distance would be 60 feet. A seven inch high letter ideal distance reading is 70 feet. If you had, if you could make your letters, if you could make the letter six inches high and put marigold on either side, the attempt is obviously to try to keep the sign within the, within or pretty close to the sign band itself. So it's not hanging down below into the glass block, block in the glass block, block in the brick. One of the, one of the criteria and the sign design guidelines is that that doesn't obscure any architectural details of the building. And for this building, the glass block brick, I mean, that's all part of what's considered architectural details. So if this sign could be held at least to, from the bottom of this trim piece around the sign band, from the bottom of that to the top of the trim piece, you could probably get away with, you know, six, six to seven inch letters and, and still be within the criteria for non-blacking architectural details. So piercing would have to be smaller or whichever one is pointing. Piercing would have to be smaller, but again, the distance from there back to the parking garage is much shorter. So you could squeeze that in, I don't know, yeah, there are four or five inch letter, or four inch letters readable from 40 feet. Right. Do you think that because it's offset from the building itself that it, but it still blocks the architectural detail as opposed to laying against it and how would that contrast with what was existing there previously like a large awning that blocked that whole area above the windows or the way awnings are throughout Main Street? I don't really remember. We don't have a picture of the way that was. We, we didn't, I don't remember. It didn't come before this group when I was on the, on the, the ward. I think, I think the village piece that was maybe an original. Depends on where the awning, I don't remember the awning either. I don't remember where it was located or what it, what it blocked when it was open or closed. But again, it should have been, I mean, if there was an awning there, it should have been located. So it didn't block the glass block or the sign band in any way. Okay. You can see the hardware right below the glass block along that hardware still attached to the building where all the awning. If it was, if the awning was located below the glass block, that might have been able to be approved depending on color, design, compatibility. I think, you know, given the, the site distances here, I don't know how many feet it is up to Main Street, because that's when you know, people are going to be looking at it. You can see, I would reverse the tattoo of the piercing, but actually the tattoos on the other side facing state and main. Okay. So that has the least amount of letters. So you have six letters there. But I don't, I don't really have a problem with it hanging down like that. It's the only, it's interesting, it's the only sign like that on that whole facade of the building. And that's because we're the only ones with an entrance. Yeah. And we've actually tried to even get our address changed, but because of E911 and different regulations of being in building with multiple units, we're still have to list our address as 89 Main Street. So often we end up having to tell people we're across from 11 East State Street, which is the place that's across from there. So it's been sort of difficult to have some sort of marker at our doorway there. I see the need for a sign that's pretty visible from that, from that, for that location. The windows of the business are tinted. So even when people are walking by or driving by, they can't tell that we are an open business. Because from standing outside, it looks like there's no lights on. So to be able to have your lights on when there's over your sign. Yeah, major. Yeah. People are driving by trying to find us. There isn't a marker to show where we are or where they can park or where the entrance is. And because of an increase in security for the city center building, they've been changing the lock schedules for the front doors. So when people, our hours don't match that necessarily. And so when people will go to the front door 89 Main Street and will often call and say your door's locked. And so we have to try to direct them around and sure enough, they've parked actually where our site entrance is and walked around to the lock door. Does your address when it says 89 Main and city center? East state entrance? We tell people that, absolutely. But when they do like a Google map search, it's the official registered address that's listed with 911 and such. And so an east state, you know, subtext or whatever, wouldn't be able to be. Just a reminder that because you just have a quorum, all three of you have to agree for an official recommendation. Also, rather than again, when I'm trying to keep the sign up above the glass block, because when you're looking down the street and see the sign that's black and I know it seems miniscule, but it blocks. I mean, it is a design part of the building. And again, according to the criteria, anything put up to that, there's not supposed to block that if an awning was below the glass block and just covering the brick. That's not as much of an issue is would it be possible to both shrink the size of the sign and have it come maybe slightly above and below. So if this is three feet and you've got trim, that's probably six inches on either side. So instead of going 56 inches, reduce the size of the sign, maybe to 42, 46 inches. And then we're on the bottom. The Marigold was so small, you're not going to read that until you get right up to it. Right. Had you thought of doing tattoo, Marigold adornment. We had thought about reading on the sides and that allows you to shrink the sign a little more. Right. For us, much like a barber pole is like an eye catcher for a barber shop. And it's not so much the name of the barber shop that is the eye catcher for the location. This simple vertical word tattoo is very sort of traditional in the industry and has been for, you know, 60 70 years. And so what we did is applied our more modern font to that to try to keep it with our sort of modern aesthetic. But that was the association with it, not necessarily the name of our business, but what the service that we provide and what people would be looking for to find our entrance. If you even with that with the Marigold on the bottom written here, if you put this in small letters Marigold on the just on the side, just again center it, but headed on the side Marigold adornment. Again, I've been trying to figure out a way you can shrink the sign and still have it readable. But the bracketing would have to be different than two, wouldn't it? Well, the bracketing is only going to be in the sign band anyway. You can't bracket it through the glass block or the or you shouldn't be in the break. So the bracketing would be within the sign band anyway. So instead of having the way they have it right now with the bracketing on the top of the bottom and stuff. So again, you could make the sign so that it's, you know, up above the trim slightly and maybe down to the bottom of the trim and still have it certainly readable from, you know, down on the corner. What are the regulations of how far a sign can project? Because I really see a need for pretty large and stands out in this location. I certainly didn't feel that way about rebel, rebel. Because this is a place where people are going to, if they come to the front door, I think that's going to be a problem with forever. But you just open the lesson, you know, it's something that they're going to, if they walked down the street, you want to be able to see it all the way from main street. Yeah. So sign and the support structure shall not project more than three feet from the wall of the building. And you've got right now, you had the bracket, it comes out 18 inches. So the doors, the sign itself would start at three inches from the building. If the sign went this 15 inches. No, actually, I think that's the here two inches and then 14 inches to deal with the bracket. Because they had a bracket, whole bracket is 18. So it's two inches, two inches on the side, and then the side itself is 14. Yeah, that's what this says. Wide. And this was definitely a bracket. The sign that was twice as wide. And meet the projection requirement. But I have to redesign the episode. Yeah, but you could. Yeah, for us, the hope would was to maximize the size of the letters. And so having something that is shorter, but wider in order to fit more letters on there, would just make each letter considerably smaller. And in the long run, any indicator that we have on the side will hopefully be helpful. But you know, to not have to try to alter signs in the future and such we're trying to maximize the size of the individual letters, which is partially also why we had tattoo facing the direction of primary visual contact. Just because those letters would then be slightly bigger. How important are these these off these bracket arms to the overall side aesthetic? The those bracket arms themselves aren't, you know, they're they're chosen to fit with the aesthetic. This that doesn't necessarily match with the with the bracket arms. So the there's other options available. These are the ones that John and sign design and suggested. So something that I'm thinking of is if you have a bracket further off the sign band, and then maybe do something that does that. My only question with that is that I believe that the bracket provides some stability for the material because it's not like a thick woodcarp sign. Some sort of spine that went down. Right. And then even over because of wind, I believe it's an aluminum based material on it. I believe if the bracket doesn't go completely across the bottom and the top that it would flex or bend. What about just making the bracket extensions longer? So the sign itself sits up from the building. Then it wouldn't really obscure the architectural features. That would be very easy to to adjust. And then also the the goosenecks on the lighting are available in every size and adjustable. So it would be able to compensate. But the bottom bracket would, as you'd have it designed, would go into the brick above the door. Correct. So the other thing you could do for a bracket could be to have a bracket that mounts on the side of the sign like this. Bracket. Actually, the bracket can go the whole length of the sign. And then the standards that mount to the wall could come out like this. So that so that these mounts are within the sign band. And then the other thing is if you wanted to, I would try to keep the bottom of the sign no lower than the bottom of the trim here. It's not going to work at least. What do you think about that? You know it did. So it bumps out further, bumps out further than the brackets, the actual mounting brackets go in the sign band. And then it fits. Floating. And the other thing you could raise the you could raise the sign up so that the as you raise it, the only thing that the top is blocking is just this sort of monochrome area and not the detail of the design as well. Would there be an issue then with the sign being raised up higher, the goosenecks will extend up higher than that sign band for the lighting whereas the way it is now. Well, what you can do is does this, does this conduit extend out over beyond where the sign is? There's there's two light boxes there. One evenly spaced on either side of the does the conduit go past? Is the conduit continue past that that second light? But it stops that stop. Yeah, I think you could find you could find lights that they might not be the goosenecks but that would illuminate it. If you have if you if you raised it, moved it out so that it's not then it doesn't interfere with the architectural features either at the top of the bottom. It means you could look behind it and see it continuously. I would be fine with that. Well, in getting it getting it looked it up a little bit. We'll also I think having it more evenly spaced over the the sign band might also make it look a little because right now when you look at it, the it looks a little funky because it seems there's like the air at the bottom because you're not even close enough to read the merry gold. And the other thing is where this shows where the artistic rendering shows this located you have if you only have these two boxes you're only going to be able to eliminate the backside of the sign facing up East State Street. You'll have to move the sign back this way. I would move the sign back this way and then have a light fixture here that washes the sign rather than a goose neck. Or if you use a goose neck, it should be said so that it washes the face of the sign so that all the lettering is readable. And again, if you raise the sign up, you have a better chance of doing that. There is a I don't know if you can tell, but there's a light. There's a conduit box on either side of the sign there. You can see one and then there's one evenly spaced on the other side. You're going to get a goose neck on either side. And the goose neck design was to not cast light other than where it would be shining down on the sign so that it wouldn't be, you know, interfering with pedestrians or drivers or anything like that. It was to focus the light just on the sign. I bet I bet they can find a way to find a different goose neck or something similar that will work on that. You know, however, the sign gets tweaked a little bit, it all still needs to fit in that six feet per side. I think if you could move it so one of these fixtures was centered on the sign and then have two goose necks come up and be very close to the sign and light. You have two junction boxes. Right, but you could center the sign on one of them. Yeah, but then it wouldn't be centered over the door. Wouldn't that look a little weird? It'd be pretty close. I mean, they're not very far off. It's hard to tell from that because they're showing this projecting out, so this one even of it showing here, it's actually on the other side of the sign, right. But it said when you slide the sign, so the sign would be centered between the two boxes. It currently is. Yeah, that right there is centered between the two. Yeah. So it sounds like we're going to pull the sign away from the building. I would pull the sign away from the building, and if you would be willing to shrink it slightly, if you could get it down to, say, 48 inches, which isn't much. And what would... And then raise it so that it's not... I would raise it and with your goosenecks coming around, washing down the sign if you rate or to raise this so that you keep the bottom of the sign somewhere along the bottom of that trim piece. Earlier it was mentioned if we were to raise it up so that it extended evenly from the top and the bottom of the trim that's there, the green trim, in the size that it is now. Is that what you were mentioning? I think Eric was talking about that too. Yeah, my... I said if you move it away from the building and you don't really have much interference with the trim because you're going to have enough view space in between so that you're going to be able to see that. It's not as important on this building maybe. It is on some. And then were you saying lift it? Because I know you circled here on... Yes. So that we lift it so it's just blocking this sort of cement up top, right? It's less of... Less architectural detail? It's obscuring less architectural details by moving it up. And then again, the mounting brackets would be within the sign band so that you're not drilling it to the brick or glass or anything here trying to... If you have a bracket down here, that now you're having to mount it inside on the brick or the mortar joints on the brick, I would make the brackets so that it's a solid bracket on the side attached to two standards which are attached to the building and then you can... That can hold it out at any, you know... If any signs that you need need something at the top and the bottom to stabilize it. I don't know these custom fabricated brackets. They're not. I was thinking it would be easy enough to just drop an L so that the fastening is all in the sign band. And it goes down and goes out at the bottom and at the top of your sign. So it sounds like top of sign aligns with the top of this molding, this red molding. I would try to align the bottom of the sign with the bottom of the molding. I think the... I would say center the height of the sign on the sign band. That was almost how we proposed it. The center of the sign band that the projection above and below is the same. I'm good with that. I mean, that's just... It's kind of balanced. So what's our dimension off the sign band? 12 inches? 36 inches. No, I mean for the overall... for the gap between the inside of sign to the... I just, you know, I think... Right now it's two inches. Inside of sign to building. Yeah, I think it should be at least a foot. Okay. All right. About the goosenecks. If you were proposing it, if you were to leave it at 56 inches total, if the sign band is 36, and then between the trim piece and the glass block, you've got another 10 inches, so there's 46. So if you put 10 above and 10 below, there's your 56. Yeah, your gooseneck, you can get a different one. He's going to document the lighting up those glass blocks. If the wiring got put in. Yeah. I don't know whether it did or not. So just to put all together from all of you, the idea would be to take the existing height, raise it up so that it's evenly spaced above and below that band, and then have a relief of a foot off of the building. Off the building. Yeah. And then however you need to make your bracket to accommodate. And the bracket would attach within the sign band. Yes. Yes. And that'll all be in a recommendation form. Okay. It'll also be that'll be then incorporated and you're going to copy of that with the actual administrative permit from the planning. And then do we have that drawn up again by sign design and resubmitted with your suggestions or how does that work? I think You can just do it with a recommendation sheet. Yeah. You don't need to come back here. Okay. And so as long as whatever you put up matches with that. It's too bad we can't do Nia. Yeah. We've had some internally lit LED. That's that's been cool. Mm-hmm. Like like the box with the LED inside. Yeah, it's kind of like a shadow box. Yeah. Yeah, shadow. Yeah. It's kind of tweaky since internally illuminated signs are not okay. Yeah, but it's it's a. It still hasn't been agreed. It's considered that for inside the window sort of facing out the LED where you can change the front board. And your your letters are just painted on the sign. They're a vinyl I believe. They project a little bit. No, it's There was an example of board. There was Yeah, it was submitted. There was a a hard sample of the sign itself and. I don't Yeah. Other than it's still there. It's the thickness of paper. It's a vinyl. Okay. I just was thinking that if those letters you know were a quarter inch thick that you'd get might get some nice shadow lines off here. No, it's all it's all like flat. But I don't I looked in the packet and I didn't the original application but I don't see it. There was a simple I've never seen it the black and the yellow and the sign material Maybe I just missed it. So what is the currently from here to here is 18 inches. What are you what are we suggesting go to 12 inch gap between the So it adds additional 10 inches total to get that 12 inch gap. Right. It's assuming that it's two. Yeah. It's two as represented. It's filled with nice. It's filled with neat. It's the only thing on that side of the building that sticks out. I think it's going to show up. You know I hope so. You can tell people to look for the sign on the side. Right. People literally park right there at the door. Oh, sure. Put money in the meter and then walk up to the corner because they've mapped and then tell you the door is locked. Right. I would say once a week on average at least we have somebody that walks into our studio and looks out on East stage and they park right there. Oh. Well, and it's I mean that side of the building has been blank seeming for so long since Village Pizza left. So it will be need to have something else show up there which sticks out from the building. One suggestion if you do have if you do have brackets here and here to keep them within the sign van or be there but maybe somewhere you know down here and down here if you do a bracket that sort of wraps the sign here somewhat and then these attached to that so you can get it within the sign van here and here one thing that might make it stand out even more is central black on white or the letter with the yellowish color here is just around the perimeter of it like a pinstripe which will make the sign stand out even more because you're getting additional contrast right so it would be like a frame that went all the way around it's like there's a frame all the way around it the gold will really wash out on the white yeah we it's the same yellow that we use on the sign that's on the front of the building so we've seen sort of how it doesn't contrast much but it works with the flex light that was the closest we could come to mimicking gold visually the only way you do gold contrasting would do a bright or shiny gold on a black background right and that would pop yeah but again if you want to stick with the black on white again I would from that distance readability has as much to do with contrast as it has to do with the size of the letter right which is part of why we went with the basic just white and black but also reversing it black with like a gold lettering or something was much darker than our general aesthetic is very bright and open and airy and so keeping it with our general aesthetic it would be nice to have them symmetrical but also have a line to the to the one by material that's on this within the sideband so you've got several one by six on the sideband so it would be nice to center those mounting plates for the brackets within there centered on a one by everything yes I know it's should be easy as long as we measure the distance between each one so anyway the recommendations the sign would be evenly spaced above and below the existing sideband the sign would be projected away from the building to achieve a 12 inch gap between the building and the edge of the sign the mounting brackets will be mounted only within the sideband and at your option a black and I think what he said centered on on the boards centered on the boards within the sideband on the sideband so you're not have a bracket mounting plates will be centered on sideband boards just can you show me on the picture so you have the sideband here but then also within each of these boards wherever the bracket doesn't cross over into another the brackets would be centered on the boards getting within the sideband is both an aesthetic as well as an architectural thing of putting new holes in the actual masonry of the building but then within the boards itself centered within though just more of an aesthetic having things even I understand that see what they might want to do I don't know what the structure is behind that but they might want to put like a vertical board or behind it behind so it can be fastened in a number of places and again you can see you know look at that location and see what's there how are the boards attached and what's backing it up I don't know what's behind the plywood panel or we can ask John because he mounted our other signs you know two years ago and I'm sure he'll remember what he had to drill into so again the only change is the mounting brackets are just mounted only within the sideband and centered we have the sideband boards okay anything else to add or change her okay I mean trying to you could have put up a great make sure we follow follow the regulations our aesthetic is definitely different than like those kind of graphics and stuff you know it's very just modern and clean and even just that that font took us a very long months to decide on when you want to get it right you want it because we do have a particular experience that's different than what people would imagine and so it has to go with that you want the artistry outside to reflect that that's inside right yeah okay I'll read through the criteria design review standards a preservation a reconstruction of the appropriate historic style with the proposed projects in the historic district or involves an historic structure in the district so I'll call it acceptable I wonder the building must just not get 50 years in 1988 or 80 something 80s 40 not quite 50 harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district acceptable compatibility of proposed exterior materials acceptable compatibility of proposed landscaping on proposed in this application prevention of the use of incompatible designs buildings color schemes or exterior materials acceptable location and appearance of all utilities acceptable with a gooseneck so the gooseneck is going to be black to match the sign correct okay I didn't was that on the proposal for black goosenecks I think so we requested black from John's make a clarification the gooseneck lighting is black I think maybe you told me number G recognition of and respect for view quarters and significant vistas including gateway views of the city and state house acceptable conformance with city skate placement and design recommendations acceptable compatibility with subject property and adjacent properties acceptable close enough consistency and uniformity multiple signs CB2 and OP not applicable illumination it's acceptable with the gooseneck lighting pimmits and banners not applicable in individual letters painted or engraved directly on the building or structure encouraged in this location the projecting sign is not acceptable all in favor with the other recommendations raise your hand if you could sign that one just above my name on the left there thank you thank you I appreciate it and then does that get maybe too much? yeah and I mean you're close enough that if you want I can just have Audrey send you a mail and you can pick it up or we can email okay thank you so much thank you thank you for your patience this helps I hope so too thank you ten minutes do we have enough? just a minute nope we don't have enough so we can't do minutes anyway that's something else you wanted to bring up yeah just quick report the as you could probably do better than I can but Planning Commission has reviewed and made some changes in our recommendations and the only one that really was we had much discussion about was was the one that asked that the either the applicant or the Development Review Board can request testimony from the Historic Preservation Commission okay or designer historic preservation commission as to whether or not something is a historic building that was they crossed out that part of it and I I really want the Historic Preservation Commission to be able to be specifically authorized to provide testimony otherwise we'd have to go in as individuals what was the other thing we talked about this is to close a loophole essentially you're trying to close a loophole yeah so there's some way for the historic significance of buildings to be determined it primarily deals with the demolition I'm still working on the demolition part I had a discussion with it the other day it's it's probably like a way to try and catch buildings that have historical significance for Montpelier but might not be officially listed on the National or State Registers yet or maybe they've been nominated but they haven't actually made the list yet I think that's one of the big you know loopholes somebody might then decide to try and demolish something just because it hasn't officially made the list even though Montpelier has it's the largest district in the state it's sort of unmanageable that way and we can't do any add to it we have to do districts but I would be willing to bet that only about half the eligible buildings in the city are actually listed on the register so that's just a way that the historic preservation commission can provide expert testimony on that that was most of the changes are I wouldn't even call them procedure but they had some good clarifications putting some things in kind of a more standard format and referencing other sections rather than putting them in there it's awful to read so but the planning commission is going to have its first public hearing next Monday so the 28th on the design review regulations to start getting some public comment it is not the official noticed for hearing for adoption it's just the first public hearing to try and elicit public input on it before then maybe making some further changes based on public input but more notice and adoption which was to me anyway confusing and kind of hard to read and I want to put Cuff Street back in it again so they are making some minor changes to the design review district it's the plan but that's going to be up for public discussion on Monday as well so we'll see how that goes this is supposed to be more clean up to make sure that if part of a zoning district neighborhood is in the design review district for equity purposes to make sure the whole neighborhood is in that design review district are they taking out some small pieces that I couldn't figure out how significant that was some of them are tiny little bits so but that happens on Monday night and anybody that wants to attend I'm going to be there just to hear what I can circulate the I have to finish cleaning up the draft design review regulations for that but I'll circulate that along with proposed map changes to design review hopefully tomorrow if you want to go to another meeting yeah I think I'm going to be on six weeks in a row oh wow any other business no we're doing here a motion to adjourn so moved