Historic Preservation Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening. We are live and recording in the chambers. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you, Julio. Just to let you know, we do have a quorum. We have Yvette Latour, Manuel Menendez, and yourself, Julio. We do not have a chair or vice chair present for the meeting, so I believe someone will have to give a motion to make somebody chair. I think that's correct? Correct. Mr. Attorney?

Correct.

I propose Manuel be chair for this. Manuel Menendez.

Is there a second? Okay. Okay, Manny, that sounds like that might be a second.

Okay.

Okay. Two out of three. So Mr. Chair, if you'd like to call the meeting to order. Manny, you're muted.

Okay. Yes. Welcome everyone to the December 2025 Historic Preservation Board meeting.

Chairman, so you're aware, there's no one in the audience today in the public hearing. And you have, of course, Marcus and myself to assist you.

Great. We do have that agenda item, the House on 49th. We don't have anyone from that agenda item joining us today?

Nobody is present in the chambers. I did send an email and I spoke to them and let them know that the meeting was today and I gave them the meeting ID for the Zoom and then I forwarded the Zoom link to them. But I did not call them to confirm they were going to attend. Would you like to go through the rest of the beginning of the agenda and then we can get to that item or, because we still have to do the Pledge of Allegiance roll call and if anybody's here to swear in.

Okay, yeah, I mean, I guess we should go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Okay. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So next would be roll call for the board members. And Mr. Menendez has stepped away.

Yeah, sorry. No, I was just picking up some papers. No worries. I left my laptop at home, and I'm having to do the meeting off my phone. I'm sorry. I mean, I left my laptop at the office right now.

Not a problem. So for the roll call, we have Mr. Menendez, Mr. Guillen, Ms. Latour. Alessandra Alvarez from Corradino Group has also joined us in the room. We have a quorum. Mm-hmm. Marcus, our first item?

Yes, so the first item is HPB 2025-005-COA. The applicant is Christian and Mariana Parfit. The location is 5730 Southwest 49th Street. The request is for a new construction, two-story addition. Let me share my screen first. Can you see my screen?

Yeah, but it looks like a sound mix.

Yeah, it's something else. Okay, let me stop. There, can you see it now? The agenda? Yes. Okay. So the item here is that, like I said, the applicant is proposing to do a two-story addition for at 5730 Southwest 49th Street. The staff has reviewed this request and determined that it has several deficiencies with the zoning regulations of the code. is that they do not meet the building coverage for the RS4 zoning district. They don't meet the impervious coverage for the RS4 zoning district. Their FAR that they're proposing is missing information. Right now, the setbacks for the existing residents that they propose on their plan does not match the survey that was provided. They they have not provided any they're proposing a canopy carport at the front of the residents, but they did not provide enough enough specification for that carport to comply with the code. The section of code in reference is section 20, that's 3.6N of the LDC. It exceeds the maximum size for a carport. Carport's gonna be 20 by 20. This one's 22 feet eight by 20 feet. And they did not provide a height for that carport. They didn't provide how the carport will be attached to the building or any type of finishes or materials. The code was amended in 2024 when they amended the rules for the city design review board. They also amended the city's site plan regulation section 20-5.11. Part of that, one of the things they changed was they required that historic projects go to the design review board after being reviewed by this board. So the applicant would have to, after this, after, if you decide to approve this application, then it would proceed to that design review board for review. At that point, they would need to provide a grading plan and landscape plans, signed into it by a landscape architect. I don't want to go into too much depth about this project because staff is recommending that it be deferred so that they can make these changes and come back to you hopefully at the January meeting. But we are available if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you. So if we have any, in my case, you know, I look at the project, you know, in detail, you know, there are, besides the things that the zoning staff, you know, pointed, you know, I noticed several inconsistencies in the, actually in the plant, you know, in the drafting even.

which is interesting to me.

For example, the north elevation is labeled south, and the south is inverted, the proposed. I would recommend the architects. Can you go to the sheet A4? Certainly. Give me A2, A3, A4. That one. So the south, what says south elevation is really north. The one at the bottom is really south. I would recommend that the academic, when they present this program next time, you know, to put the south elevation with 16 degrees. on top of the new, you know, I mean, one in the same page so that everybody can see what is being judged, you know, at the same scale. So it's easy to understand, you know, what is being proposed as new, what is being existing, you know. That's two, you know, drafting things and all that. But it would make it easier for everybody to understand what is being proposed, you know. Right now, you have to go through the pages and try to compare one with the other. That's why I noticed the south and north thing, by trying to compare one with the other. I understand really the intent, maybe the who has said the intent. In historic preservation, you can go typically you know, to follow the same language, you know, that you, that the building that you find, you know, has and extend it. Or sometimes, you know, you can say, okay, I'm going to make a break, but the break that needs to be really significant or significant, you know, in order to, you know, to say, oh, this is new, this is new. In this case, you know, This addition that they're doing is not an addition in the back of the building. It's an addition in the main frontage of the house. It's that south elevation what they're adding to that one. It's really important. They're doubling the size of the house with a new house. The floor plan is very nice, by the way. The distribution of the spaces, everything flows really well, the floor plan. it's it seems like the language is not sufficiently you know uh drafting mistakes like the two windows on top of this uh central door you know right they are not shown like that in the second program so you know that maybe they were rushing to apply or something like that, and they didn't notice those things. Anyways, so first of all, you look at the existing house, it has a certain language, it has no east, no extension of the east. This new one has much of the east, to the front and to the sides. There's a certain, the canopy, that carport canopy, it's really all stick with the rest. of the existing house, the new house, you know, and the overall, you know, feeling that you could think that the project has, right? It's just four steel columns. And if you look at the side elevation, which is in, I think it's the next page. If you look at the next page, you know, you can tell that That carpet is almost impossible to build, or really difficult to build. That time to build an extension of the roof, of the barrette roof, below the other barrette roof, there's no thickness to the elements. When you're doing this type of quasi Mediterranean architecture, like we call it here in South Florida, The thickness of the elements, the fascia, the details, those are the things that make or break a project. It's different what you're doing in modern architecture. It's a totally different language. I think it's very important for the architect to look at those things. They added a new arcade to the back, which I think is an improvement over what was there before. but for some reason when they added and you go back to the go back to the bridge i don't know why you know he's it is new when they added arcade you know and on characteristic for the language of the house you know notice in the new york cave which is the one in the north what says north elevation in south right the doors are not centered on the earth which is strange, you know? And then there's another drafting mistake. I think it's a drafting mistake, maybe not. The finish for elevation of the addition is showing the elevations as higher than the existing house. But when you go to a plan, there is no step in between one house and the other. So I'm not sure what's happening there. Maybe, you know, the drafter, you can know that you zoom a little bit on the doors on the first floor, you're going to see that they are slightly higher. yeah yeah yeah kind of like strange things you know little details but as you know we really don't see here no details make make or break the project not really and you go to the you know a little detail this might be this might have to be with the uh and with the thing with the setback it's unclear from the side plan i mean i'm calling it side plan the thing, the drawing in sheet A3, no, no, A2, no? It will be right. It's unclear what's the character of the space around the pool. Is that salt? Are you stepping out from the rear porch into salt? Or is that a paved puddle? Which, by the way, it would affect a lot, you know, that balance between Paris and Paris that you were talking about, right? If there's a new swimming pool, right, they very nicely, you know, they center it along with the new living room. For some reason, they couldn't center it with the existing cottage doors, you know, just by like a foot, you know. So there are things like that that seem like, you know, maybe it's a little bit preliminary, you know. There is no, obviously, there is no colors. know there's no indication of the materials the things that we want to see i look at the house of the existing house uh i don't know uh the existing you know it has a very characteristic uh roofing tab by the way you know i think you know uh it says they're gonna match it you know but they don't say what what it's going to be so those are things i think you know when they you know, develop this project and come back to here and later to design the view board, which will be more detailed than us. You know, I think they should take those things into consideration.

Yeah, this is excellent analysis, Julio. And I think it is very noteworthy that the colors aren't being presented here. The color palette, which is something that's critical for us, is not being presented.

Yes.

Staff, I think it's correct that the to defer this and uh i mean some of the analysis you've made is is excellent though and stuff that i think that needs to be considered specifically around the carport uh questions i think we move to you know to like to follow the recommendation from the

on the uh soaring review no reviews yes from staff yeah you can make a stop you can make a recommendation so i have uh mr guianas making a motion and mr menendez is seconding the motion um uh all in favor aye yep yes okay so that's what we'll do we'll defer till the next meeting

Yeah, that'll be great. I mean, we'd like to see it come back with the colors.

And we'll add that note. We'll add all of Mr. Guillen's notes and also yours, Mr. Menendez, about coloring.

Yep. So the next item on the agenda, let me close out of this. The next item, I believe we were going to have a discussion on certificates of appropriateness. I believe this is something that Mr. Menendez wanted to discuss?

Yeah, I'd like to talk about this when we have the chair and vice chair present. Something to start the new year off with.

Okay, so then we can hold that for the January meeting.

Okay.

And then the last item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes for July 28th. Do you want me to share them or can you see them?

No, we have them. It was attached.

Yes, it was attached.

I move to approve them. I second.

I second.

Okay, all in favor?

Aye.

Perfect. The minutes are approved.

Thank you very much. The next historic preservation board meeting is Monday, January 26th, 2026. Do you, if you don't have anything else left, would you like to adjourn the meeting? Mr. Chair?

Yeah. I'd like to thank staff and everyone that's attended. I know everyone's extremely busy this time of the year. Thank you so much. And for all you do for the city, And I hope that everyone have a great holiday season.

Thank you very much. And they're really, really good. Yeah, really quick. I just want to thank Alessandra Alvarez. Yeah, I just want to thank Alessandra Alvarez. She helped me review this report. I know she she was silent, but she was great. Her assistance was greatly appreciated in reviewing this project.

Nice to meet everyone.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Nice to meet you.

Happy holidays, everyone. Definitely, they have to go back to the drawing board. It felt a little rushed, just trying to get. This was submitted right before Thanksgiving, anticipating for December. It's like, no, no, no. It's like, there's just things inconsistent. As Mr. Gain mentioned, there's no renderings. There's no proposed material. This is a revival. It's like, what's there now? What's existing? What they're proposing? So it's like, let's. take your time gentlemen go back to the drawing board adjust these extensive comments so it's it's it's it can be approved or approved with condition come next month and there's nothing left absent yeah the way i i respect myself we have more comments yeah i want to okay i just went to the morning for the ones

All right.

Well, it was nice meeting everyone, and happy holidays.

Take care. Thank you. Happy holidays. Have a great holiday. Take care. Bye-bye. You too. Bye.