 I'll call the meeting to order and ask for a motion on the agenda to accept the agenda. I should have said first I do want to make one change and report on that Planning Commission hearing on the new design review rigs. I can do that at the end just before adjournment. Yeah. So would that amendment still good? Yes, yes. And go around and introduce yourselves. Martha Smarski. Liz Pritchett. Meredith Crandall staff. Eric Gilbertson chair for the evening. Benjamin Cheney. Hannah Smith. Okay 159 State Street. Just a reminder to pull the microphone close and tuck into it. Yana Wilder in care for Court Street Associates. Describe. Oh, okay. So we're applying to take down a structure in the back. It's an auxiliary structure that's garden shed, I think. Used to be a garden shed. And it's falling down, so we're hoping to take it. Just a reminder. I got up the other day and it's just, yeah. I mean, there's lots. No, I couldn't really get it, but I could see that it was in really bad shape. I mean, photographs. Show that. Yeah, I went and looked at it. It's done. It was a neat little garden house. It was a garden house, not a guest house. But it's pretty nice. It has windows and nice shelves and a nice place to put your equipment. No, I didn't go to be close. You got in there. Yeah. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in it. It was a beautiful little building. It makes me quite sad to see it makes perfect condition. Were you? Like part of like making snowboards in there or something? Yeah. Okay. Well, there's a poster in there. I'm going to save for you. Yes, I know the poster you're talking about. I don't need it, but thank you. Yes, that was Andrew Clack's younger brother, Paul. Nice. Do you know what is going to happen with those materials when it gets? I think that most materials are done because it's kind of in a shade of the trees and it's wet, and I don't think any of the materials are salvageable. When do you think it's going to be? Some point in the spring. It's going to wait till spring? Yeah. Because I think a lot of that tongue groove fur that's on the inside is probably salvageable parts of it. Yeah, we'll take a look. I think it's mold and it's probably not very usable. This is a little bit different than most of our applications. Do we still need to go through the criteria? I think it can be pretty much all not applicable for most of it. I mean, it doesn't really fit with the way we've got this, doesn't it? No, it doesn't. I mean, you can probably do a pretty much not applicable for all the criteria. Well, I'll read them off real quick and somebody stopped me. Preservation or reconstruction are appropriate historic style. That's not applicable. Harmony of exterior design, again, not applicable. Compatibility of proposed exterior materials, not applicable. Compatibility of the proposed landscaping with the district, not applicable. Prevention of use of incompatible designs, not applicable. Location and appearance of all utilities, not applicable. Recognition of and respect for view corridors, not applicable. I'm just going to put a note that several members of the designer view committee looked at the building and it was in terrible condition. That's great. And, I mean, Deanna and I have already talked about it. When and if they're ready to build something else there, they know it has to come back before the designer view committee. But we weren't really in the space to figure out what you want to do there yet. Trying to figure out what's needed. Yeah, exactly. We're going to have a garden, you need to build another garden. Do you spend much time in that building? Yep, it's offices now. I mean, it's been offices for a long time. But I think actually something like the use that it was used for, for like fabrication, like building snowboards, or I've had people come and ask me about building canoes, so something that's like a heated space for the kind of people as a workshop, I think is what's needed in Montpelier. I'd like to have that in my backyard. Not the way it is. All in favor of approving the demolition. Post. It's the third today, isn't it? It is. In the upstairs corner office, it faces sort of downstream beams above the beams. The ceiling that is above the beams in that office. I redid that ceiling when the ceiling let go from all those beams and it was just like a mess across the desk. You used to use to use that? That was Dixotics office, which was above my father. And they actually, those guys, there was solar guys there, their company, and they all of a sudden had exposed beams in their office. It was really nice after they were done. Okay, the next one is a 100 State Street awning proposal. Awning slash sign, really. So we do a revision to the one you guys saw not that long ago. Yes, Roger Sammel from Sammel Sign Company representing Northfield Savings Bank. You recall, you guys approved a canvas awning for the 100 State Street a couple of months ago. When the awning finally went up, Tom Levitt, the President of Northfield Savings Bank said, I hate it. So they asked us to come up with a, what he doesn't like is the fabric, the loose wrinkly looking of the banner material itself. So what we're proposing is to replace the banner material with this rigid substrate material that we have used on the College Street branch and then apply to that PDC lettering, which this is an example of from one of their projects. So the white lettering and then the logo is this gold, Tom likes to call it gold, looks yellow to me. I'm just the sign guy. And so a combination of that. So all's we're looking to do, and the other thing is the landlord didn't like the fact that the banners went across the brick columns. So he's asking that we put a space between the panels so that the brick is exposed as well. So essentially the same footprint, the same size logo that's on there now, just replacing it with the rigid materials. And we will use the existing frame structure that the banner company installed to apply the panels to. The smallest radius on your CNC is a quarter inch that gets in there. I like to make that a tighter. Correct. Any questions or comments? So we would be looking at installing it in March, middle to end of March. There's a early lead time on material. Tom, they think they were going to complete the awning and leave that in place until we can take the banner off and replace it with the panels. Are you doing the rigid stuff on the hood above the door? We are, yes. Is this a lettering change? The F and the I in the field. No, it should be the same as it was. No, it's the same logo. Yeah, so when they did the rebrand from the blue logo, there was a font change at that point. That's the font change there was something that got approved the last. I just included in this application so that everything was together. It's nice. Local changes keep the sign people in business, right? Yes, it does. Yeah, to be honest, I hated that pig logo. A lot of people and stuff from love it. The awning is being interrupted by these columns on this side. Why is it not being interrupted there? We could do that. They only asked for it to be done on State Street, the landlord. Because it doesn't read in this photograph, but I bet that column is also interrupted. Correct. Right, just the angle though. Correct. Yeah, so the facade panels that go over that entranceway shed in to the side of the brick. I don't know, it seems to me for consistency. For consistency, if you're already doing it, why not expose that brick column also? We absolutely can. When you don't expose it on the front where you see it's not good enough. Right, he said that would be fine because the logo was going across there to leave that solid. Yeah, it's got a rhythm. It doesn't bother me on the side the way it is, but I see what you say. I would interrupt it and give it a choice, but it's not mine. That's a design review thing. Just, I mean, we had to hold the debate last time about whether those were architectural features or not. And I feel like we're now calling them architectural features by calling them out. By calling them out so we should treat them consistently. I would agree. I think that's a good call. And last time you asked for the larger picture of the entire building, so I think that puts it in context. Yeah, better context as well. So we're going to expose the state and street side as well, right? No, I think we leave the next time. The parking lot side. I see it. I see it. Well, we'll leave this one because it gives nice space for their logo and letter and let that one be covered. Yeah, I don't pay. I think that's a good suggestion. Okay, signs have a special set of criteria. Preservation or reconstruction of the appropriate historic style as the post-projects involves an historic district or an historic structure. I think that's not applicable for this one. Harmory of exterior design with other properties in the district, I would say that's acceptable. Compatibility of proposed exterior materials or other properties in the district, that's acceptable. Compatibility of post-landscaping, there's no lamps escaping. Prevention of the use of incompatible designs, buildings, color, scheme, that's acceptable. Location of all utilities, you're not doing any lights or anything. No, no lighting. Recognition of and respect for view corridors and significant vistas. Performance with cityscape placement and design recommendations, acceptable. Compatibility with subject property and adjacent properties, that's acceptable. Show not obscure significant architectural details, that's acceptable with the exposure. Illumination, internally lit plastic signs, not applicable. Penance and banners are prohibited, not applicable. Individual letters of fixture painted or engraved directly on the building, our structure encouraged. That's acceptable. But we're going to expose the, we're not going to change any of the pillar exposure, right? Oh, the parking lot side. The parking lot side, expose one more brick column on the parking lot side. Yeah, parking lot side would be probably, what would that be, the southern, southernmost banner? We have it on the right side. Yeah, the west side. Call them in the middle of Oning-A? Oning-A. Oning-A, yep. Kind of preferred the way it is, but seems cleaner to me. Okay, that was kind of the original intent and then when it came back, it was like, oh, I missed that the first time. And that was the landlord versus the president. A couple of different tweets. Yeah, got a lot of fans in the pot here. All in favor of this? Thank you for your time. New permit out to you, Steve. Okay. Thank you. Minutes first, if you want, or you've got the minutes on here. And we actually have enough people. New and Hannah and Martha. We have enough, yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're just going to do a minute review first, but you can take a seat. Should I hear a motion on approving the January 21st minutes? So moved. I seconded. All in favor? I'm assuming you put me hand up. Awesome. Okay. Hi. Hi. Thanks for your time, everybody. My name is Javier Jimenez, and I'm one of the owners of Bushbiller Records on Langston Street. And yes, test. Can we do everything? Oh, okay. Great. Thank you again for everybody's time. Thank you, Meredith, for setting this up. And I'm essentially, the reason I'm here today is my partner and I are looking for some guidance on our support structure that is holding our sign. And it's a very old sign that is currently there depicted on, well, all the images that show kid now, that's what we have. This is really the best view. The superimposed sign that you see there, that's what's accepted in dimension. And it's come to my attention that the apparatus, the support structure, I think it's somewhere a little too extended, about six inches. So I think the thought was that the sign moved in. Basically, you can adjust the sign of the hardware and that could be compliant where it sits. But the support structure itself, the end pit where the chains meet, comes to me from the way I measured it, about six inches shy of the curve. And it sounds like it. Well, there's that, but it's not supposed to stick out three feet from the building to sign. Oh, the whole support structure. Oh, I thought it was just the sign has to be a thing like this. The sign and support structure only supposed to go out three feet from the building as well as be six. You can have three within six inches of the curve, because some sidewalks are really narrow and some building in some art. So you're, you know, there's there's room to move the sign in, but not the support structure. But when I was looking at it, if you go, I pulled in one of the last pages of it pretty well, but you can see how there's chains anchored into the historic brick and three different places. That's the post. And I started getting nervous about recommending that he take those out without having him come before you and trying to get some guidance on, you know, is it, do you all think it's possible to cut down that post and reattach the chains, but would even not be damaging? I'm trying to, I don't, I don't know. What kind of condition are the posts and chains in? I mean, they've been up there for a long time. They have 40 years. Yeah. And we've had various different, different, like maintenance crews from, you know, Doug and Eddie bought the building a few years back. And so there's, the building has seen lots of renovations and nobody red flagged anything about the hardware and their apparatus. There seems solid as a rock to me. Yeah. The only thing that seems to ever budge is actually this big, huge panel of the sign that's been residing there, I think maybe since the 90s or something. It moves in the wind a bit, you know. I think structurally you could probably shorten the pole and just hook the chains in the same places. Yeah, we have the chains hooked and just shortened them and attached them to the end of the post, because that was, I was hoping that that was something that you felt would be doable and acceptable. And then we can bring the whole application back to review the sign as a whole. I just didn't want to have him invest a bunch of money in that if it was something else that if he felt it needed a completely different support structure. Is that support structure grandfathered in or anything? It's, there's a couple of different ways to read the regulations about once you change the sign if you have to also change the support structure. And that's one reason, that's another reason I'm looking for your guidance as to what would be acceptable to you all. It looks to me like you could just move the sign in to where it could be on the current structure. And then cut this, the post off so it's no more than three feet long. Is it not supposed to extend? It kind of depends on, I mean it's it's going to be a pretty big job to change the post and I mean if you're going to saw it off and take this change down, I'd put new stuff up. I think it could all be done in place. I don't think it's a big deal to shorten that post and weld on a new little tab that those chains would attach to without taking anything down. As long as that's you know the chains and the posts and everything are in reasonable condition. Yeah, I mean chains are easy to replace. It's the attachment that's you know the brick that you don't want to start messing around with. And that's what I was and I didn't think if we had asked them to take it all out that there was any way to hide that there was something there on those four different places in the brick. I would just you know new chains and cut it off. I think the angles are still good if they're and if they're using the same fast things on the building. She's like so bad. Yeah, I mean as far as supporting that sort of projection I think those yeah you can shorten the those hypotenuse is no problem and I mean I would want to look at the the plates on the building but my guess is it's fine to shorten that thing. Been there what 37 years? Is it possible to just give it a waiver the way it is? I think that sort of gets to your grandfather and you didn't question. I would rather do that than have them to make them move anything on the brick. Well right and that's the that's the whole idea of cutting it down. Like if you're if you don't want them to move stuff on the brick if he can get it cut down then I would approve that and if for some reason somebody couldn't cut it it may get shorter. You know if you don't want to move it on the brick then I'm not going to make it move it on the brick. I can't see what point you'd have to understand. Actually it would be a because it's a better angle it would be a stronger support than it is now. Yeah so you you could shorten that up without messing with the brick at all. Awesome. And unless the somehow the fasteners in the brick are shot and they need to be replaced but they're putting the same spot. I mean they could be put back in the same hole with some sort of epoxy and they would yeah be fine would be my guess. Does this sign I don't know are we talking about the sign also or are we not done with this structure? I mean he'll he'll be I guess it's up to you if you want some preliminary feedback and then this is official or if you just want to wait till you come in with your official application. I think I would wait till that but I would my one question would be for the table I suppose is I feel out of my depth with professionals in the sense that I don't like I know a welder but I don't know if he has the skill set or capacity to or even like jobs on ladders or does that do I need like like an electrical company that has a chair or you know I don't know exactly how to get to the top point of where the highest chain link hits to do I don't have a ladder at all. Yeah people have ladders that tall that shouldn't be sure an issue. I guess I just was wondering like but like for welding and for cutting pipe and in hearing and joinery I was I guess I would wonder if any anybody knows anybody. I know a lot about it. I guess yeah like do I how do I how would I go about such a thing maybe. As far as shortening the pipe is pretty easy to do with just grinder and a cut off reel. I'm familiar with cutting pipe but the end of that part. Yeah and then you would just take a piece of angle with some holes in it appropriately sized for your cable and then just weld that to that piece of pipe assuming it's still fine which my guess is it would be and I would probably do that off a piece a cuba staging or something like that that just kind of made people walk around and you know kind of take that. The back of a separator in the back of a pickup trucking bridge. That's what I told my partner. Yeah but it's going to pick up the ladder. You know I think you would want to use the cuba staging just to which is easy to get. Yeah and you'd be blocking the sidewalk so we would need to just run that by Department of Public Works probably because you'd be blocking the public access to there. That really does stick out a lot but I don't really have any problem with that. Yeah it's just been there for 37 years. We're not talking about the sign but I like your new sign. Is it smaller because of regulations? Yeah once there if they wanted to keep the old dimensions the only option was to like paint over it but it's dimensional. Yeah it's dimensional. And so there just there wasn't a way to do that and get the new logo designed. So this is as big as they can make it based on our rules. For projecting signs. Yeah the designers said it was 60 percent. Smaller. Yeah it's a great deal smaller but I think with the like if you look on the third page the picture like I think the yellow is going to stand out a lot more especially in the shade against the brick building. That's always in the shade. Yeah yeah. And it probably will help it proportionately if you bring it closer to the building like right now it feels kind of small and wimpy on that big projection out there. Yeah but I think brought in and that bright from the sidewalk. Yeah and I would consider you know talking to where where your contractor is. See if it's just easier to replace the whole. Yeah replace the pole and the chains. Yeah I mean like it's been there over almost 40 years. Yeah I don't know what the housing was like in 73 or the now but I feel like I know there's another sign in the basement. It's not that one. Yeah it's like yellow and black actually with a lot of like metal and wood together it's very heavy. So I'm thinking if it was if this that address was holding that sign this support structure is totally overkill for our blade sign we're getting we're getting fabricated out of foam. It'll hold tons of what we're doing but yeah I mean I thought it would sit if it was just it moved centered in it would feel right in the center of the sidewalk and hug the building better and all that visually would look good. But then you probably see like a good foot of pipe on the outside of the record which is I could live with it I don't know if it's like formal or I don't know. I think I agree that the support structure being smaller will be sharp I think it would also be fine if we did nothing to the support structure and just move the sign in. I would bet nobody's taking a close look at that you know how rusty that pipe is. Yeah like real close. It's not been done well just it's hard to get at. Yeah are you good. Thank you. Thank you. Talk to you soon. Thanks for coming in. Excuse me. I haven't been to China so I don't know. The we've met that camera the planning commission was a week ago Monday. A week ago today. So yes yes planning commission a week ago. To talk about the new designer review reg state reviewed and they made some suggestions and changes. Public public hearing. Some people showed up to just don't like regulations which I'm surprised more didn't there are only what like five people that spoke. I think there are five people that spoke maybe a dozen that showed up if that. Some didn't say anything and they made some changes in the boundaries to they're really focused on being consistent within the neighborhoods that have been designated in the community after 30 neighborhoods. I think so. Well I mean these are all the each zoning district is divided up until the little subcategory neighborhoods to help an enlarge part to help with conditional use review when you're doing character of the neighborhood comparisons and so they really tried to they walked around and tried to survey and figure out what actually fits together as a neighborhood and so when we did the design review boundary they were trying to match it to those neighborhoods for consistency so that entire neighborhood is treated the same way. I met with them probably a month ago and we made some suggestions uh first my house was left out and I didn't I want my house in design and you know it didn't make any sense to leave it out. It's all part of the national registered district and everything and this goes outside the district a little bit so it's a it's a different boundary. I think the only major thing that came up was solar panels and the the the rags on solar panels are really written to deal with rooftop installations on flat roof buildings and if the way you're greeted you could not install solar panels on the front face of just a gable roof building and I have very mixed feelings about that but I'd like anybody suggestions because we're going to meet again Monday. Although I may not make it to that one. Mike I mean Mike felt that the planning commission you know had a few things to maybe tweak but didn't feel like that the public comments were too in general they weren't too negative so I wouldn't be surprised if the planning commission makes a couple of tweaks and then votes it forward to city council next week. That was the sort of the design issue that came up for me is do we approve solar panels on the you know the front-facing roof and the way it's written now you really can't. Yeah on any building. Well the new no the well so if it's a flat roof it's exempt from zoning altogether. Once you have a pitched roof it's limited zoning review and it's really just if it's in design review but the new the new regulations really make it really hard because it says that you shouldn't be able to see the mechanical equipment on the roof. You can't do that with solar panels on a pitched roof. You know most mechanical equipment is going to go on a flat roof that's what that language was designed for but then the question you know somebody brought up the question of well what about solar panels on my you know historic home. Everybody was like oh. That kind of came up in the context of you know are you guys going to treat energy conservation matters any different and I thought it was a good a good discussion and I have a bit of a conflict because I'm thinking about putting solar panels on my roof which which doesn't face the street but you can sure see it during the winter you can't see it during the summer. But is the mechanical equipment usually like air conditioning units? That's usually what it's talking about and so it's it's almost like whether or not there needs to be some sort of sub-claws in there about solar panels on roofs still need to go through design review but not being barred from being seen. I would hope we'd allow them. Yeah I mean if the structure can support solar panels. I mean some of them can't. Right and that goes they have to go through a building permit still. The one thing I was talking about this with the planning director Mike Miller and one of the things that he borrowed he's like well if they have a historic slate roof we might not allow it. You know are we gonna let make you know allow them to tear up a historic slate roof to install solar panels. So he doesn't feel necessarily comfortable just giving a blanket allowance and and and exempting it from design review or anything like that. But you wouldn't be exempt right you'd have to come back or you'd have to come to design review still. And I think that's but I think having a blanket statement that says you can't see these rooftop installations from neighboring houses I don't I don't have the language with me but there was this language in there where you're like well that's just not gonna work. Select solar street views and things like that and the uh I'm just dealing with part of my work is uh dealing with installing solar panels on a slate roof. It's really difficult and it's also you know makes maintenance impossible uh and so that it's really not practical to do it. Seems like it would be really expensive. It would be expensive wouldn't it? It would be expensive yeah I mean you'd have to take the slate roof off put on a new the easiest thing to install them on a standing same roof. Yeah. Because you can just clamp on to the seams I guess but any any suggestion for you know language I think would be useful and I just want to get people feeling get people's feeling about it is this next week we sit on talk about it. They don't come I mean solar panels come in summer gray and summer black right yeah but they don't really come in colors that would match the roof color necessarily. No I mean you're gonna get a get a series of shiny surfaces even if the color was same you really don't see the sides of the panels. I mean I looked from a preservation point of view it's reversible but would it ever be really reversed I don't know. Yeah. But if somebody all the hundred years from now all of a sudden decides to really an important house to decide you take the panels off. Yeah I think it comes before review then that's a good thing. I know I looked at them for my house and they would be right on the front until I decided I didn't want to do it. I don't use a lot of electricity anyway. I mean this is a sub issue to all those but any efforts to try to keep them as rectilinear versus like the cutouts for various vents and then they get kind of like asymmetrically patched onto a roof I think especially in a very visual spot but if they can be kind of held as a block that would be ideal. One house I looked at over in Burlington and it's had the panels all over on one side of the roof is a new house but it looked kind of funny you know just to not have it regular and balanced. I don't really understand why they didn't put panels on all over as long as they're doing it. A good example of what like Caledonia spirits they have one vent that sticks out and so there's like this one indentation that seems like that from a new building could have been avoided to just keep those things a perfect rectangle. I gather the consensus is we figure out a way to approve them in most circumstances. It's kind of a case by case I think. We can put in there it's just say it's destructive of historic materials dealing with a slight rough. Well but I also I think you're making sure that we don't have a I'll work with Mike and he can also I mean this is all being recorded he can look at this discussion and I can report to him about it too that I think that there's definitely a way to make sure that there's language in there linked to that utilities on the roof to be clear about how the solar panels on roof it's not something that's barred but it needs to go through design review and it can't be destructive of historic materials. That would save the slate of rough. It's going to make some people mad but regulations all regulations make some people mad. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. Do I hear a motion to adjourn or is any other business anybody wants to talk about. Just want to thank you for all the work you've done on the those regulations. Yeah thank you. Yeah well I've had a lot of help. Yeah and the committee too. And as Meredith is great Mike has been helpful certainly the people on the historic preservation commission of all the people put a lot of effort in it and I think they're good. I hadn't read them for a couple of months and I did before the hearing and my impression was that they made a lot of sense that they were easy enough. People complained they were too long but then they complain if they're not long enough they complain that they're too vague. Yeah I read through them too a while back and I thought good job. They're workable thank you. Well and very few applicants will actually be dealing with all of them. Yeah. They come to us with the project and will say okay these are the like seven eight things you need to worry about. Mike made a really good point that you know the staff will help you through these and decide which pieces of this really apply to your project. Because they are long they're what 13 pages. 15. 15 pages. So they're long but. Yeah. Well at least now we can say okay these sections apply to you and look there's actually things that need to tell you what you can and can't do. It's good. Yes it helps you. And the next part of the preservation commission is to do some guiding brochures and handouts and stuff like that. New streetscapes. Yeah. That's old. Those are so old. I'll be so glad when somebody goes we're done with that. Okay. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Everybody can go home get depressed and watch the news. I moved to adjourn. Second. All in favor. Oh man. Wake me up. Thanks.