Planning and Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

Madam Chair, we can start whenever you'd like.

Great, thank you. If people want to take their seats, we'll go ahead and get started. I want to make sure our town staff is ready. Are everybody ready? Scarlett? Manager? Okay. All right. Madam Clerk, please call to order the planning and zoning board meeting.

Yes, Chair. Chair LeCour? Here. Board Member Aparicio?

Here.

And Board Member Pinto?

Here.

Chair, you have a quorum.

Thank you. Okay. We have our town commission liaison here. Please come on up and congrats on your re-election.

Thank you Madam Chair and thank you members of the board. This will be I believe the last meeting of this particular board assuming that the commission appoints a new board. So I wanted once again to thank you all for your service and I am.

My apologies. This will not be their last meeting. They're serving into April I believe.

They are? Okay. That is great.

Then we get one to get paid.

Keep adding one every time.

That's it. We're going to get paid.

If you like, I can go ahead and I'm going to look over the section of the code so I can read it out loud.

Okay. Well, then that's welcome news.

We need a check then.

That's welcome news. I'm glad I'll get to see you one more time. You may, however, have a new liaison by the end of April. So in that case, I should still thank you. It was a busy meeting on March 10th at the final regular commission meeting, and I just wanted to update you on some votes that we took that night. One ordinance that is relevant to your work is that we, this is part of a suite of measures that we passed that night. We made it possible for the commission to adjust permit fees by resolution. so that in the future, if we change the permit fee schedule, it doesn't require two readings of ordinances. It can be done in one sitting by the commission in a resolution, and it doesn't need to come before the Planning and Zoning Board. Related to that ordinance change, we passed a resolution that did, in fact, change the permit fees and lowered them quite considerably, I think, for single-family projects. We also created a grant program that reimburses condo buildings for permit fees related to recertification work specifically. So that whole suite of changes was passed in three different votes on March 10th. We approved the ordinance on paint colors at second reading, so that has passed, and thank you for that. I want to report, too, however, that the ordinance about the heights of single-family homes, and I know a lot of work went into that, we did not move forward with that ordinance. I'm happy if you have questions to explain my rationale for not moving it forward, but I can't speak for the whole Commission.

Explain my own.

Yeah, I just think that there's a lot of legal uncertainty right now around SB 180. For me, it just seemed Not the right moment to open up a new.

The live local?

No, SB 180 is another state bill that preempts our ability to change zoning. And there are open legal questions about the constitutionality and the legality of the way that it preempts local zoning. regulations like this one. And I personally felt, and again, I can't speak for my fellow commissioners, that this would have opened up another front, say, in the sort of legal debate. We have some pending cases that in fact speak to the constitutionality question. And I, for one, would like to see how those get resolved before we legislate any further. So that was my thinking. And again, I encourage you to talk to the other commissioners if you would like to know what they thought. I also thought, I was less sure about this, but that the single story understory house is something we haven't really seen in the town. And I felt willing to allow a little bit of experimentation on that before we legislate to see what they would look like. And I realized that's somewhat risky, but combined with the other consideration, that was what was on my mind. So that ordinance did not proceed. We passed on first reading the design guidelines. Those come back to the new commission in April. And we also passed a ordinance that I sponsored that gives the Planning and Zoning Board that requires the town manager to bring to the planning and zoning board any municipal construction that has a significant design component. That was the phrase we ended up with. And the idea was to include things like the memorial and the speed humps.

Thank you.

And, you know, and maybe some signage if the signage is special or has a design component. That is open to interpretation, but I think it's much better than the... the situation we had in the current code. So I hope that will pass soon on second reading.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, we have that on our agenda tonight.

Madam Chair, may I read the section of the code regarding your term of office?

You may.

So that will be section 90-15, section 4, board member terms. On the last sentence of the paragraph, the term of any board member or alternate filling a vacancy created on the board as provided in paragraph 5 shall begin at the time of the appointment and end at the last Thursday in April or whenever a replacement is appointed. So if you don't have a replacement by April, then yes, you will be serving during one more meeting.

Okay, great. Thank you. So we'll see you all in April. Okay, any other questions for our town liaison?

Okay. No, I have a little bit of a, in terms of what is significant, in terms of design, you know, that's always a word that I really avoid using, because I don't really know what's, significant means a lot of different things to different people. To me, a trash can is significant, but then some other people, It doesn't mean that's the kind of word you use when you don't want to commit. So, yeah, I find that problematic.

Yeah, I don't think – you know, I, for one, wasn't trying to be noncommittal. I just found the wording difficult. I know the town attorney and I talked about it, and she had a similar concern to yours. So you're in good company there. How to demarcate, you know, something very mundane from something – more significant and permanent. That's the issue.

So I welcome your advice on it. My view of it is actually very simple because it's, you know, they bring signage in front of us for, you know, comments on signage to this town on Harding Avenue, which is one of the less sort of significant portions of, you know, that had consequences on what the town feels like.

And you mean private signage? So I think that...

I mean, to me, the word is, should be anything that gets designed in this town should come in front of us. I mean, anything that gets manufactured, implemented, designed from, because it's what we do. I mean, there's not that many things that get implemented or built in the town, but if there was a selection that's going to happen to the hardware of this town, the benches that go in this town. That's what sort of gives a soul to a town. The light post, the benches, that's what some towns are known for. So I think that those are elements that should come in front of a board because they can make a really wrong decision when it comes to those things. And we're here for it. I mean, that's what we're here for. That's my view.

And my thinking in sponsoring the ordinance, we don't have a municipal architect the way some cities might who makes those decisions.

I mean, we're here to help. We're just here to serve.

Exactly. So no, I think we don't disagree. It's a question of finding the right wording. Yeah.

We've got it on our agenda, item 6B. So we'll dig into that.

And if the chair would like to call me back for any conversation there, I'm happy to.

Great. Thank you so much. OK, let's move on to approval of minutes. We have both our January and February meeting minutes. Comments, questions, motion to approve?

Motion to approve. I second.

For both?

Yes, for both.

Okay. Motion to approve both the January and February meeting minutes, seconded by Carlos. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item passes. Okay. Any comments on the order of the agenda, either from the board or from our staff? Okay. Hearing none, we'll move forward as agreed. with the current agenda. Let's go ahead and start our applications. Madam Attorney, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Tonight's meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board is an in-person meeting as set forth in the Town Code. Applications in Section 5 of this meeting's agenda are quasi-judicial in nature. For each application, following presentation by staff and the applicant, the board may take public comment, then close public comment, allow for rebuttal by the applicant, and then deliberate on a resolution. The quasi-judicial procedures require this board to consider the evidence presented to it and base its decision on applicable law and primarily the evidence presented, whether by staff, applicant, or the public. The applicable law includes standards for the issuance of design review approval pursuant to Section 90-19 of the Town Code, the design standards set forth under Section 90, Article 5 of the Town Code, and the signed code pursuant to Section 90-68, Article 6, and related sections under Chapter 90, Articles 7 and 8 of the Town Code as applicable. The evidence considered must be substantial competent evidence, meaning testimony or other evidence based on personal observation or relevant expert testimony that reasonable minds may accept as adequate to support a conclusion. The board's conclusions are not to be the result of a popularity contest and may not be solely based on non-expert opinions. Anyone seeking to speak on an item should be given an opportunity to speak. Anyone seeking to testify on any item in Section 5 of this agenda should be sworn before testifying and may be subject to cross-examination. Anyone testifying without being sworn or subject to cross-examination may do so, but such testimony may be considered in that context and given its due weight. The public may not cross-examine witnesses, but may request this board to ask questions of staff or the applicant. Anyone who seeks to testify on any item in Section 5 of this agenda should now rise and be sworn by the clerk.

So if you plan to make any comments tonight, if you'd rise, please, or if you're not sure, go ahead and rise and be sworn in. Nobody else over here presenting tonight, speaking tonight? Go ahead and stand up. Thank you.

Please rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear and affirm to say the truth and only with the truth? You may be seated.

Clerk, please confirm compliance with the advertising and notice requirements.

Confirm.

Members of the board, have any of you had any ex parte communications about any of the applications now before you?

No.

No. Yes. Oh, sorry, yes, yes. Which application? 9048 Emerson.

And whom did you speak to?

The owner of the property, Albers Canasi.

Do you believe you can still be fair and impartial in considering the application?

Yes, I can.

Thank you, Madam Chair, okay.

And I also spoke to 917 Garland Avenue.

Okay, do you believe you can still be fair and impartial in considering that application?

Absolutely.

Any others?

No, that's it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Let's move on with 9531 Harding Avenue sign permit.

Madam Planner.

Good evening. Our first application tonight is for a wall sign located at 9531 Harding Avenue. And staff does recommend approval. It does meet the code requirements of size and location. And with that, we would like to recommend two conditions of approval. basically our standard conditions that the illumination will be white and that a separate electrical permit would be required for this sign. Just to note that this sign is a little unique in that the frontage is less than 25 feet, but the code allows for a provision that would allow for a 17.7 square foot sign, which is what is proposed. Thank you.

Is the applicant here, and do they wish to speak? OK. Anybody from the public? Sorry, are you the applicant? Do you want to speak, or are you here for questions if there are any? OK. Anyone from the public wish to speak on this matter? Seeing none, we'll close the public comment and open it to the board. Comments, questions, or motion?

No, I mean, this is one case that I guess we're not looking at the awning. So basically, it's just a sign, and the awning is just not part of what we need to comment on. Correct. Correct.

OK. OK. May I have a motion to approve with staff conditions?

Motion to approve with staff conditions. I second.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes, Chair. Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Pinto?

Yes.

Chair LaCour? Yes. Motion carries.

Okay, thank you. Moving on to 8842 Froud Avenue, new single-family home.

Sorry about that, okay. Staff finds this application meets our zoning code requirements and is requesting that the Planning and Zoning Board determine if it is consistent with the design guidelines. Staff finds that the plan is consistent and recommends approval with the condition that a drainage and grading plan would be reviewed at the time of building permit. This is a request for site plan approval for a 5,006 square foot, two story, single family home. located at 8842 Froud. The subject property is an interior lot and is approximately 8,440 square feet in size. And the front facade features exterior design elements include white and gray porcelain tile, Canadian pine, and aluminum finishes. The rear of the home has similar materials and finishes as the front, and the proposed lot coverage is less than 40 at 36%, and the FAR is below maximum allowed at 0.59. Setback calculations were provided for the additional second floor, and the preliminary landscape plan has been submitted, and full landscape and civil plans will be provided at the time of building permit. Staff does find this application is consistent with our code and recommends approval.

One question for you. In the zoning table, the additional second floor setback on the north side requires 14 feet, but the proposal is for a nine foot setback. Could you help us understand that, please?

I believe that that might be a typo. I don't think that that's correct, but let me get the plans.

Okay, why don't we have the applicant, and if you could verify that and come back, that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Is the applicant here, and do they wish to speak? Hi, come on up and just state your name and address for the record.

Hi, my name is Miriam Faginson. We live at 8842 Froud Avenue, and this is my husband, Alex Filler.

All right, my name is Alex Filler. I'm the husband. Welcome.

Good evening and and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. I'm gonna read from my phone. Sorry about that. Mm-hmm So as I mentioned, I'm Miriam and this is Alex. We are the parents of two young children Gabriel who's turning six tomorrow actually is his birthday and our daughter Isabel We also have a small Yorkie who like our kids have been part of every step of our journey so not long ago our lives looked very different and We were living in the Pacific Palisades in California, in a home and a community that we truly loved. But we lost everything in the Palisades fire a little over a year ago. Our home, our belongings, and mostly the community that meant so much to us. It was a devastating experience, especially with two young children who didn't fully understand why everything familiar had disappeared suddenly. When we began searching for a place to rebuild our lives, we weren't just looking for a house. We were looking for a place and for a sense of home again, a place where our children could feel safe, grow up surrounded by neighbors who care, and where we could begin to rebuild what we lost. and we we found that here in surfside from the moment we arrived this community welcomed us with warmth and kindness surfside reminded us of all that we loved about the palisades but in many ways this place is even more special there is a unique sense of connection here a feeling that is a place where families can truly belong the home we are proposing to build is not just a construction project for us it represents a fresh start for our family It's a chance for our children to grow up with stability again, to create new memories, and to put down roots in a community that has already given us so much. We also want to emphasize that we have approached this project very thoughtfully. In the Palisades, we personally renovated our beloved home, which gave us hands-on experience and a strong appreciation for thoughtful design. My husband also has experience building homes, and we're both very involved in every step of this process. we intentionally designed our home to reflect the character of the Surfside neighborhood, drawing inspiration from the blend of mid-century modern bungalows and the more contemporary homes you see today. The Palisades also had a similar mix of architectural styles, and when we renovated our home, we took the same approach there, respecting the past while embracing the present. What was taken from us in the fires cannot be replaced, but being here in Surfside and having the opportunity to build a home gives us hope and allows us to move forward. And if you have any more specific questions about design, my husband's here to answer those questions as well. And thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Welcome to Surfside. So sorry for the loss of your home and that tragedy.

Thank you.

And looking forward to reviewing your home together. So we did hear, we saw this home last month, I believe. You came before us, no?

No, not this one.

8842 Froud, no? This is your first time here? Oh, I thought we had seen this before. Okay. Okay.

Oh, first time.

Okay. Maybe you can give us sort of your architectural vision and overview. I mean, we've read the packet. I'm sure there's questions, but give us your thoughts.

Yeah, I'd like to. I also prepared a statement, if I can read, please. So we're proposing a new two-story single-family residence to replace an existing structure. The project fully complies with all the town and surfside zoning requirements, setbacks, heights, and lot coverage. From the design perspective, the front facade has been carefully designed to create a clean, modern, coastal appearance with a balanced proportions and combination of materials that add depth without increasing visual mass. A key feature of our design is a subtle front fountain wall, which we are proposing. We believe this will enhance the entry experience and streetscape in a tasteful and understated way. Maybe it's a little bit of a creative approach, but we really like that idea for design of our house from the facade and front of the street. We're also really, part of our design, are incorporating high-quality exterior tile, which I can share examples of. This tile cladding is durable for a coastal environment, and it's selected in a neutral tone to complement the neighborhood. The second floor design takes cues from nearby homes, which we were inspired, and as we got to the neighborhood, we took a careful study of what's been built and what's existing. So we took that from inspiration from those type of homes. And we feel that the design we're proposing is a project that fits naturally within the existing context and maintains neighborhood compatibility. overall the design respects adjacent properties creates no adverse impacts and no variances we are focused on creating landscaping and making sure we can provide privacy for ourselves and also for our neighbors through landscape and keeping as many tall trees that we have on the property that's part of our intent we really want to be thoughtful and respectful of that and so we're here to answer any questions and love to hear your feedback

Thank you. And are you an architect? No. Do you also have an architect on the project?

Yeah, we have a designer, but they're not available.

Okay, gotcha. No problem. Okay, thank you. We're going to open it up to the public and then to the board, and I'm sure we may have some additional questions for you, so stay close. Okay. Anyone from the public wish to speak? Okay, seeing none. Board members, your thoughts and comments, please. Moses, do you want to go first? You want Carlos to go first? Okay.

Okay. You know, I think that I have a lot to say about this house, but the overall thought about the property, the way you've gone about this is, and why I find it so problematic, is that it I don't know what the house is about. To me, it's a little bit of pastiche of certain things that you like that somehow have been sort of put together into some kind of looks like a house. But I'm not quite sure what this object is. For example, when you look at the ground floor, you have this wall, this water feature that's in the front of the house. And then the house juts up right above it, and that becomes such an insanely massive gesture for such a modest street. To me, I don't know any We have an insanely modest streetscape. The houses are very modest. That's the truth of this town. So any gesture of that nature, it seems so alien to anything about Surfside, unless you're on a lot on the water, on a lot with this water feature set back many, many, many feet off the street. But when it comes to something of our sort of the heart of Surfside, it seems so out of place. And it's a gesture that it's just not domestic enough to me for the landscape. It's also when it comes to the second, You know, there's something, I have a lot to say about this house, but it looks like it's prefabricated. It looks like it's a prefab. I don't know what this house is made of, but I don't know if it's the way that it's drawn or it's sort of, It looks like it came out of a kit. I don't know what the material is, but when I see the lines on the stucco, I don't know what those lines are. When you look at the whole house, it's sort of broken down into these lines that I don't really know what the material is. I don't know really what this house is made of.

It's tile. If you want to see samples, I can bring it out.

Yeah, well, I mean, we need to see, I don't even have the slightest idea what this house is made of, but, yeah.

So this tile would be cladding the exterior? Correct.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's something that I... And this is a... Is that the part of the wood?

Yeah. This is a teak-colored composite wood? Yeah. Okay.

So, I mean, it has a feeling that, especially when you clad an object of this size with these man-made materials, it feels like you just, it's an oversized Tesla house. I mean, it feels like it has a prefabricated feeling to it that is very disconcerting to me. It's also I find the way that the house is being articulated, there's so much going on. I mean, you have a higher portion on the second floor on the right hand side, then you go down and then you have these fins on the other side and then you have an angled. It looks like you went around and saw things you liked and somehow made it to look like it's a house, but it's not. not cohesive and i mean i'm completely against anything that is cladded in anything like this because it's uh you know this is an artificial material that the an object of the size is going to be clad on and you know we're we're very much against man-made materials in surfside that's something that it doesn't it it it doesn't really fit into the sensibility of this town and um I mean, I wish that there was a zeitgeist, there was a sort of a feeling, because you're so passionate, you're so nice people, and we'd love to have you here, but I just don't find that the house is a home. A grouping of cliches that you've liked and you put them together. Oh, we like this wood. But it just doesn't have the cohesive of architecture. It's not really cohesive. And if you think about this house sitting, you know, this is around the corner from my house. If you think about this thing sitting on this block, it was just such a... out of place object, it really, really would, you present it with a passion that it fits, but it really doesn't, especially clad in all these materials. It's just, it would not fit, it would certainly not fit. But we've approved things that fit in a very different way. We don't approve things that, we don't want anything to be mimetic or to be similar to other houses. We've approved modern houses, we've approved all kinds of houses. But there has to be, you know, and the reason why we want houses, the second floor is to be set back from the street, is to try to connect on the ground floor the house to its neighbors. So the whole ground floor of the house connects to the streetscape. So there's a lower scale onto the first floor. So the scale of the second floor is pushed back from the street. So there's a... A softer blow on to the way the house fits and we've worked very carefully to try to make this humongous houses fit in a very, very, very tight and very small sort of context. I think that another thing that I have a problem with is the fact that you've created that wall fixture when I was looking, which is a huge gesture onto the streetscape. But it's also like, that's like a storage room you have behind there. It's sort of a place where you put bikes and stuff in the side of the house. I find it also very disconcerting that you have the ability to open your house to the street and to do a friendlier gesture onto the street. And you've chosen to do one third of the house is to negate sort of the street with that feature. Because I think it will be an opportunity to have more glazing and more windows and a sort of lighter sort of front to the house than a glass, than a wall. Who benefits from a wall of water onto the street? I mean, it's not a domestic. It's not a domestic. It could be used in a much larger house, in a much larger piece of land. But in a context of the modesty of fraud, to me, it's wrong. It's wrong.

I think we get the gist of your initial comments. Moses, did you have? Okay. So I'm not crazy. I think this was submitted for last month's, but it was deferred. So I had reviewed it. I was like, I know I've looked at this before.

We looked at it.

We looked at it, but we didn't hear it.

It was in this, but we didn't look at it here.

Yeah. We didn't discuss it. So I do share some of Carlos's initial response just to the look and feel of the mass and the scale and the compatibility with the fabric of Surfside. I have no problem with sort of modern architecture and, you know, that sort of concept, but I think... This does read, first of all, I think we don't see a real contextual, you know, this is what it looks like next to the real homes that it'll sit next to. We have sort of these gray boxes that are, I think, supposed to represent but don't really show us at scale what those neighbors look like. So I think it would be helpful as a design exercise to really look at what this home looks like with looking next to your neighbors. So I think what Carlos is getting at in terms of it not being domestic enough is I think that the combination of the volume and the scale and the materials feel a little cold. So it doesn't feel like a welcoming home sitting on the street. I also, you know, I'm wary of cladding the whole house in something like this. I think it's, you know, white stucco works just fine, or stucco works just fine, and you're going to, you know, it's cheaper too. There are real woods that will stand up to the weather out here that, you know, look like real wood. I think some of the proportions are... you might want to revisit. So for example, if you can pull up the rear elevation

Should I touch this?

Yeah, go ahead. You can you can scroll down. I think it's just one down. Yeah. So the proportions of that upper room, they're sort of the balcony feels a little awkward to me. I measured it and I think it was like 11 and a half feet wide by 12 feet high, I think. And I just I don't that height with that width seems awkward. And I'm not sure you need the 12-foot ceiling on the second floor. And so that would be something I'd want you to take another look at. I think you did provide a nighttime rendering. Yeah. So another thing that we've worked hard to try to move people away from are the strip lighting. So the strips of lights along the facades are in the eaves. and really having a very warm, subtle, nighttime lighting scheme. It's more like up lighting, landscaping, maybe a few sconces at the entryway, but not a lot of applique lighting on the facades. And I think you had some bollard lights in there somewhere, like in the driveway maybe as well. And then the tree plan, thank you. I think you stated that preserving and managing the landscape is a priority, and thank you for that. That's also a priority for me. I think you proposed removing trees 6, 9, and 10. And especially tree number six I circled is maybe we could save that or maybe we could save all of those. I don't know if you have the tree plan in this packet. I think it was in last month's package. Was that it? No.

We would like to keep as many trees as possible and some of them are unfortunately are in the way of the pool over proposing but if we are definitely can replant and add more that's not an issue at all we want to be very respectful in that regard.

Yeah, take a look at 6, 9, and 10. I think 6 was a mango. And that's a real special tree here. So if there's any way you could incorporate that into your deck or otherwise, sometimes I've seen some cool cutouts of the deck around an existing tree that creates some nice shade and vegetation. So those were my comments. I also want to make sure we loop back around to you on the upper story setbacks.

Right. It does meet the requirement. If you recall, the upper story setback is only required for 60% of that second story. So I apologize. I could have put it better in the table, be a little more clear on that. Yeah, OK. I'm sorry. OK. Yeah, but it meets it.

OK. So I think that sounds like that's our comments.

I think there's one more thing that I just, when you think about, I'm trying to give you pointers of how to move the house forward. I'm not trying to, because I'm not even necessarily asking you to, what I'm asking is to make the house better. It's going to make the house better. Trust me, it's going to make it better. But I think that the second, the humongous terrace on the second floor facing the street, It's also a problem to me, because I think that just the scale of a terrace of that size in a community like Surfside is a very odd gesture to a side street. It's basically like a humongous Space that faces the street so I would ask you to perhaps which is something that we've looked at here before and we're very very successful is that perhaps in the second story maybe create a buffer where there's a garden this planting so there's a second element of green on to the second floor so You can cascade green onto the first floor from the second floor and set back that terrace. So you don't have a dumpy, you're never going to sit there. Who the hell is going to sit there? I mean, you're not going to sit there to see people walking their dog. It's just not going to happen. But I think that you will benefit immensely from creating a green buffer between on the second story. So when you sit up there, you have green between, you don't really need to get up to the railing to look down. You'll have a garden there, a luscious garden that will make that terrace a lot more enjoyable from the second floors because you just won't have a bare terrace with a glass railing at the end. I think that that would, you know, if I'm managing a garden on that second floor, you start softening the blow and then I think that what you need to move forward, and I will be happy to help you if you want me to, is clean up the volumes and try to simplify all the massing. With the boxes, just start clean. Before you make all these arrangements and changes, start with the basic massing of the house and work on the massing. Before you start tagging on all these different elements that mean nothing, like the fins and these things that don't really do anything. Before you make one of those changes, make sure the house is perfect. And I think that you can still work the same plan, you can still work all the same things, but the house will be infinitely better. I can help. I mean, I will, if you want me to, we can talk about this further.

And I would also recommend, we're on our agenda tonight, our design guidelines, which we've been working on for a year plus. I would highly encourage you to take a look at those. I think that a lot of the things we've been repeating at meetings are captured there, so that would be also a good guideline. Okay, so I think we're ready for a motion. I think I don't hear a consensus for approval, but we can either deny or defer.

I mean, I think that you have a lot of work ahead of you, but I think that. I mean, I'll be okay with deferring for the next 1. you have to work your 2 sheets off to bring it back to us, but. You know, I think that that's, I mean, we'll be here. So apparently, so we'll be here. So yeah, we're more than half. I mean, I think that since we talked about this, we'll be more, you know, it's basically have a little bit on there. You have three weeks to do this, but I think you can do it.

Okay. Um, so I hear, are you motioning moving to defer to date certain next meeting motion to defer for the next meeting? Okay. Do I have a second?

I second.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes, Chair. Board Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Pinto, I apologize.

Yes.

Chair LaCour? Yes. Motion carries. Okay.

Thank you, guys, and we'll see you soon. Okay.

Thank you for the feedback. Our pleasure.

All right. Moving on to 9048 Emerson Avenue.

Yes, this application does meet our zoning requirements. And again, for your consideration to be consistent with the design guidelines, the staff does recommend approval with the condition that the drainage and grading plan will be reviewed at time of building permit. The applicant is requesting site plan approval for an addition to an existing single-family home property located at 9048 Emerson, which was built in 1945. The applicant proposes adding 754 square feet to what is currently a single-family one-story home that consists of 1,499 square feet. The home will remain a one-story, and the property is 5,625 square feet in total size. The addition will be in the front and the rear of the home. The proposed addition in the front will remain approximately 20 feet setback, and the rear will also be 20 feet setback from the property line. The home addition is to accommodate a new office and to add one and a half bathrooms to the existing three-bedroom, three-bath home. The applicant design elements include travertine and stone for the wall facade, a new driveway, concrete tile stairs, steel framing, and wooden louvers. The resulting FAR will be 0.40, and the lot coverage will remain less than 50%, which is allowed for a one-story home. The board may consider if the addition is in conformance with the design guidelines as it relates to 360 degree architecture and considering the combination of roof lines versus the lines from the front versus the back of the home. Further, the board may wish to consider if the design style is introducing a different architecture theme and whether or not two different styles are proposed to be meshed together and if this is appropriate. The pursuant to the zoning code requirements and procedures, the site plan review for an HB30, the applicant does show good cause for compliance with the regulations and development standards, and staff finds that this application for a remodel does meet the zoning code. We recommend approval with consideration for further design modifications if that is the board so desires.

And have we reviewed this prior as well? No. We have not. Because I've seen the plans before. So was this also pulled from an agenda?

No, never.

Okay. Okay. You're the applicant. Good evening. Hi.

Albert Eskenazi, 8826 Froud Avenue. So it's a one-story home that has a very surfside look. old story, Spanish roof, few steps. So what we try to do is just keep the Surfside look and make it modern. So we're going to call this a modern beach house. And how we achieve that is basically the front of the house about 16 feet from the garage on the right side where you have the this part this is right now a garage we're not adding anything in the front structurally we're basically converting this we're raising the roof to 12 feet and we are extending an overhang all the way to the left side, and we're creating here in front of this bedroom a small courtyard. Basically the front of the house remains, we're erasing a little bit, the middle of the house remains intact, we're not touching it, and the addition basically starts in the back. We're gonna show, this is basically the house the way it is. This is the garage, this is the entry and this is the bedroom and basically from here we're making a little courtyard. So in this plan you see basically right here the purple shows the existing house and the addition basically is in the rear. We're adding a kitchen, a family room and a master area right here. The house is a bit under 2,400 square feet, which complies, the setbacks are five each on each side, existing and proposed, 20 feet on the front, existing, we're not adding nothing on the front, and in the back, we're bringing 20 feet all along. There's a little terrace here. And let's continue. So basically, when you compare this house with the neighbors, it's really not aggressive. It's pretty much conforming with the proportions of the right side and the left side. So it's very compelling. And we're saving the elements of the existing house, which is the Spanish roof. And we're just bringing some very warm materials

in the front and in the back.

Here is a stone which you have on the table, the thick one. It's a tri-routine stone. And on the floor, the rest is stucco and then let's look at the rendering because it's gonna show much better right here. So here we have the front door, which is wood maharani. The windows are bronze. You have the .

Sorry, you said mahogany. I think in the details it's called out as a vertical grain walnut door with satin finish.

Yeah, well, we can stain it.

Okay.

It could be walnut, but it could be stained. We like it a dark finish. Then you have on the patio, we have on the left side, we have a small wood louvers to match the color of the front door. and basically it's gonna be water stack on the floor. We changed, we had Kirk Wang is the architect, he's on vacation, that's why I'm presenting this. Originally he proposed this tile. But we want to keep more of a beach feeling and we're gonna propose this coral stone. So continuing, we have, we spoke about that. the you can see the visual from the street basically it's a very consistent all throughout and um again the volume this is the this is the new volume and this is inside the report the existing volume so you can pretty much feel what's happening with 3d dimensions Landscaping, we're proposing a lot of landscape. We're buffering with neighbors and we're keeping a lot of royal palms in the front. And the entrance is very fascinating because it has a very inviting walkway. It's like when you're gonna be walking your dog, you wanna come in. You have a central walkway that leads you to the front door and then we put sideways the driveways.

Can you identify, are those all new trees, or are those existing? Are you removing new trees?

No, no. These two are royal palms existing. You can see them on the site, and we're proposing everything else, basically, because there's not much going on in there.

I see three palm trees in the renderings. Is that, am I missing, are those, is the rendering just not accurate?

Yeah, it's not, I don't think Kirk was that accurate in there.

The rendering is not accurate.

A little off. One of the palms is off there.

You have three palm trees. There's three.

One, two.

Three. On the bottom.

There's one more. Sorry. It matches the perspective. I'm not wearing my glasses. I didn't see that one. Sorry, you want to keep asking something about the landscape?

No, go ahead. I'm letting you complete your...

So this is the existing part of it. We have a circular driveway, which we don't like anymore. It's just doesn't make it any modern anymore. That's what the feeling wants us to be. This is an existing survey. Floor plan. Again, center area, big center area. This is kitchen, bedroom. Basically, it's a very simple home. It's not a big home, and it's not an overwhelming home. These are basically the roof lines. We're keeping the roof lines of the existing home. And in the back, we're putting a flat surface here. And the reason why is because we wanna, by doing that, we wanna gain a little more height to get a little more light into this back area, the family area and the bedrooms. I'll show you the rear elevation. Basically. okay this is the elevation where you have the flat area all the way in the front you have this tile that's all the way in the front we're looking from the back so you have here from the kitchen this is from the living room and this is two nice tall windows from the master bedroom and this is a little covered terrace And voila, here we are. This is the final product. I think it's beautiful, it's charming, it's elegant, and you guys are welcome to come.

Thank you. Sure.

You should show the night view, because actually it's very nice. Excuse me? Do you have the night view of the houses? Because we have it here. Yeah. There we go. I think that's a more evocative image of what the house looks like.

I drove by Mr. Padilla's home, and I like his upper lighting from the landscape, so that's why I spoke about it, if I can copy his landscape lighting. He said he's going to charge me a royalty for that, so...

Okay, great. Thank you very much. We may have some additional questions for you, but we'll open it up to comments from the public, if there are any. Seeing none, we'll close public comment, and I'll open it to the board. Moses or Carlos, comments?

Not much for me. I like it.

He likes it.

The back's a little weird. The back, the rear of the house is a little disjointed from the front in terms of just design, but I mean... We're keeping the same elements, actually, on the walls.

The stone in the front is being repeated in the back.

You're referring because of the flat roof in the back? Yeah.

That's just the one thing that makes it a little off for me, but I really like the front. Thank you.

I think that in the back, I think the detail of the overhang on the flat part of it should be studied a little bit more. The eave, I think it's a little bit on the chunky side. It's thick. It's a little bit too thick. That's why he's reacting, I think, that way, because it's a bit top heavy. I think it just needs to be, the thickness needs to be adjusted, I think.

I don't see a problem with it.

Yeah, but I think that house hits. It's so carefully sort of, it adds to Surfside so beautifully. And it makes it almost like a new interpretation of Surfside. It's like Surfside with a new sort of point of view. And I think it's a marriage of modern sensibility with what we all love about Surfside. So I think it's, to me, the house addition is very successful. I mean, all I have to say.

I had a similar reaction to Moses, where I felt like the front of the home and the rear of the home were two different homes. I think if you pull up sheet A331, if you go down, it didn't read to be the same home to me, just the two styles.

The rear is slightly higher. That's why it looks a little bit more overwhelming. But basically all the elements, the glazing, the steps, the louver here, we have also the same louvers that we have here. And the stone repeats everywhere here in this column and here.

What I was suggesting... Is that because if you have the thickness that you have in the front above below on the eve right below the tiles, right? What I was suggesting is that you copy that thickness onto the back and then set back. The other portion of the roof, so. That line carries on the back of it. Even if you have a flat roof, you have the same. I think where you're reacting to that top heavy chunk, to me, it's the part that I don't like. I don't like that top heavy sort of eave there that doesn't match.

Well, and I feel like the two roof types are a little disjointed. Like why wouldn't you do, why wouldn't you carry the same roof all the way to the back?

Because if I raise this height and I put a hip roof, remember the height here is different. It's higher. It's taller than the front. And it's pretty much going to be, we have, now we have, talking about guidelines, right? I remember I was here when you guys didn't want one story homes to be higher than a certain amount of feet. So I'm afraid if I put, because of the distance that I have from here to here, 40 feet, if I go in three and 12 or four and 12, I'm gonna be probably above that. And to make a two and 12, you cannot put tile. So might as well just put a flat roof. Now this is not visible from anywhere. That's one thing. I mean, I've seen many projects approved where, okay, the rear is just ours. You don't even see it from the side because you have to walk 40 feet all the way to find this.

It's a fair point. I think part of what I'm thinking is for you, for future resale, having a cohesive house design is going to help you. But you're right. The public's not going to see this.

We're moving there, so we're not selling it.

I think it's the flat roof of it, because it's in the back. I think it's the detailing of that eave that needs to- That needs to be worked, yeah. needs to be thinner so you don't have that top heavy sort of heavy that doesn't match the rest of the house i think that that should be a thinner and then you set back the other structural part of it so it's it's thinner it's just very top heavy i think if it becomes thinner you'll match more the front of the house even with a flat roof i think it'll be lighter to the eye and then the other comment i had is on the front elevation if you can pull up the daytime this one

Yeah, maybe you can scroll up to A311. Sure. No, that daytime. Yeah. So a question for my colleagues is you have some French doors onto that courtyard. Is that what those are?

These are French doors. Yes, correct.

Yeah. And I from to my eye, the, you know, sort of the mullioned French door.

No, we're not putting money. That was a mistake by Kirk. I don't like mullions and doors. It's just going to be one light.

Okay, that's better. Because I'm looking at the front door and then doors right there. It's a little awkward.

No, I think the comment, but Kirk was not in town. He couldn't create another one. But that could be taken easily. No problem.

I think the whole front needs to be modulated so the side lights of the front door and that other portion, it's all the same rhythm. Same language. Same language, yeah. Yeah, I think that's your intention. It's just drawn this way. Yeah. Like a French door doesn't make any sense. No.

And, you know, I don't know if you would want to consider landscaping in front of that, you know, patio area that's maybe a little higher for privacy. You know, I'm not saying a hedge, but maybe some more texture coming up there to give you some green screen from the street might make that a more usable space.

It looks a little bit like lettuce right now.

It's not lettuce. It could be cauliflower, but not lettuce. Cauliflower, yeah.

So those are my comments. Okay. You know, minor, relatively minor. But with that, board members, how would you like to proceed here?

I mean, I would hope that it takes into consideration the detailing of the eave, so it's thinner in the back, and I think it should be approved with that condition.

And the deletion of the grill on the door.

And of course, yeah.

Yeah, no problem.

Moses, are you comfortable with that direction? Okay. I can get on board with that. So let's get a motion to approve with the conditions to reduce the thickness of the rear elevation eave and to remove the mullions from the front elevation patio door and to consider some higher greenery on that front elevation exterior courtyard.

No problem. Thank you. Okay. Motion to approve with special conditions.

And with staff conditions as well.

And staff conditions.

Okay. Is there a second?

I second.

Okay.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes, Chair. Board Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Pinto?

Yes.

Chair LaCour? Yes. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Okay. Moving on to 8935 Hawthorne Avenue.

Yes, staff has reviewed this application and finds that it does meet our code. Again, the planning board is to consider design guidelines. And if the board finds it is consistent, staff recommends approval with a couple conditions. Again, the drainage and grading plan to be reviewed at time of building permit and that the stairs on the side of the home will be covered and the pool equipment will not be located within five feet of the property line and will be screened for sound attenuation per the code. Those are things that would be reviewed during building permit. This application is requesting to build a new two-story single-family home on a lot that is 5,635 square feet. The property is at 8935 Hawthorne Avenue, and the property is an interior lot. The exterior design element in the front facade includes stucco finish and aluminum railings. Brick lintel frames are proposed for all the windows and doors, and the front facade provides articulation on both the first and second floor, with a recessed entryway to provide some visual interest. The rear of the home features similar materials and finishes as the front and the sides. The proposed lot coverage for this home is 2,254 square feet, or right at 40%, which is allowed by code, and the FAR is right at 0.60, again within code. Again, the grading plan should be reviewed during the time of building permit. And just to note that this application has been deferred at the June 2025 meeting and again at the January 2026 planning board meeting. Welcome back.

Thank you, thank you very much. You'll actually be hearing from two Stevens today.

The role of our office- Madam Chair, my apologies. Name and address for the record, please.

Steven Fett. And then you said address also? Yes, address as well. 25 Southeast 2nd Avenue, Miami, Florida. Thank you. 3131, okay.

Yes, both of you.

Thank you. Stephen Conti, 37 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

Thank you.

So I'm here to really provide a little bit of context and also an introduction to the project. It's a collaboration. Our office is, we're really going to be moving the project forward as architect of record. And Stephen will be describing the design in a few moments. But just for, again, a little bit of context, it's true that this project was presented in a very, I think, different context, different form in the June meeting, I think Scarlett mentioned, of 2025. Yeah. And at that moment, it was very similar to the project that had been approved by the board and is now nearing permit approval, which is on Carlisle at 9017. And I think very good feedback. The project at that time was submitted as almost a sort of duplicate of the 1917 project. And so definitely in an effort of good faith by introducing Stephen to the project as well, who is an architect in New York and also a long time collaborator with the developer here. The project has evolved into something quite different, which I think you'll see momentarily. Just to provide a little bit of site context, it is an existing house on Hawthorne that will be demolished to be able to build this one. That is the proposal. In the again in the sort of I think one of the interesting things that came out of the discussion about 1917 and then the sort of Kind of reboot in a way of the Hawthorne project was the establishment of this sort of typology Where you know given the dimensions of the lot given the setbacks etc? Inevitably kind of produces a long sort of linear building linear home. Let's say and But by breaking down the mass both, let's say, on the second floor of the home and also establishing this kind of this sort of zaguan, which presents a sort of more humble entrance towards, in this case, the sort of left face of the house. Here in this project, we kind of maintain that sensibility. We maintain that sort of typological reference. And so I think that's, in some way, how the houses sort of begin to unify. And we would like to believe that that is something that, as houses are built in Surfside over time, could be something that gets looked at as a positive for the kind of interface between building and public realm. Another sort of thought, I guess, to add to the conversation is on the second floor, You know, there is an allowance to build up to 40% of that street facing facade. And once again, in this case here, the building on the second floor really pushes back. So that sort of linear one story mass, which I think was described in a kind of previous project here presented tonight, that sort of one story mass is what allows, I think, the building to be more compatible with some of its neighbors. And then I think another thing that came up in our previous experience with the board was it's not enough to just have a very sort of clean presentable front elevation, but also by pulling the mass back, if you can see sort of in this diagram here, the sort of massiveness of the house begins to recede, and I think perhaps in this way a testament to the code of the sort of pushing and pulling, which we have found in some cases to be challenging. But in a case like this where the roof is flat on the second floor, it does allow for some, I think, breakdown of the scale. So those are sort of the thoughts there. I'll pass it over to Steven Conte now, who is the principal of Studio SC. And he'll talk more about the design.

Chair and board members thank you very much for your time. So in collaborating with Stephen's office we've had a really nice experience and helping to bring this project to its current design state from the original and trying to differentiate from what was presented to something unique but still fitting the environment of Surfside. The materials we're proposing we have over here are all natural materials stone I'll go to the rendering so it might be a little more easier to understand. So the bottom steps, we're proposing this natural clay brick. stucco face, dark wood for the windows, and natural wood, and this stone wall off to the left, which the entrance is recessed off of. And thank you. And as Steven mentioned, we chose to not bring any of the second story up to the front wall of the house, even though it was permitted to code. We wanted to push everything back. so that the massing was not so monotonous and not so much of a box, so to speak. This is the view at night. We have some up lighting, planter lights, some step lighting as proposed, and some planting off of that second floor terrace in the front that is pushed back. This is a view from the side. That stone wall has an opening, so the entrance has, you know, pulls the main entrance further back, but does let some air and light through, and it breaks up kind of the massing of that wall, so it's not so solid. This is an aerial view showing a bit more of that linear nature of the house. Because of the length of the lot.

What is the round? Is that a cut through?

It's a cut open. The night view is not showing it correctly. I think it's exaggerating. There's no light there. It's just an opening for sunlight. But I think something got a little strange in the rendering. But there's no light. There shouldn't be any light there.

And you have a second feature like that elsewhere in the house on the upper story?

No, no. It's just at that main entrance. Okay.

I see in the... Well, I can ask you later.

This is the rear of the house. We tried to keep it very clean, minimal, but still keeping the language of the house cohesive and the same language while not creating a single box. We really tried to... work the massing a little bit so that there is a break up in the facade and the way we decided to mass the project. Here you can kind of see some of the pushes and pulls and elevation in this linear nature of the project.

Great. Thank you very much. And I know when we saw this in January, I think it was similar to this. Can you point out the specific changes since January? I mean, the house is very different from what was presented in June of last year. That's clear. But can you just highlight what's changed since January?

So in January, you're referring to the meeting that perhaps we had with you individually and also I think another time with- I think it came, did it not come before us in January? I don't think it did. No, that was something that I thought was- This one is the one that came in front of us.

In June of last year, but I thought it came back to us in January. Okay. Oh, you got it pulled. Okay, so this is like the third one tonight where I know I've seen these plans before, but we didn't actually hear it. Okay, that explains my confusion. Thank you. Okay. Okay, so anybody, let me open it up to the public for comments, questions. Seeing none, I'll close public comment and open it up to the board members.

It's on to me. OK. I'll be frank. I like the house that was before us better than this one. I know that the attempt was to make it look different than the other one, but let's accept this is the house, right? We have to forget that the other ones, you're presenting this house to us. And I think that when you look at, there's a modesty to this house that I like. In the attempt to change this house from the previous one, things have happened that I have issues with. And I think that you had a perspective from the side, what you see, that stone wall, this one. This one is my least favorite view of it. I don't know, maybe it's a Fred Flintstone sort of feel of this house, and it's... this sort of rock wall on the side with the steps, and then I find problematic the fact that there's no fenestration on the bathroom up there, on that huge blank wall, I think is such an unfortunate wall to not have fenestration. I mean, it's inexcusable not to have fenestration on that wall because you have so little chance to have fenestration on the outside. And I think it's slightly perverse to choose not to. I also have a problem with the... I think in one of them you don't see planters on the... I guess the planters is what act as railings on the left-hand side. I'm not quite sure what the railing is on the... Or maybe you don't need by code that you have a This perspective I'm looking at is slightly different from this one. I'm not quite sure how the whole stair, the stair to this house is such an important feature. I mean, it's really the grandest gesture onto the street is the way that the stair gets resolved. And I'm not 100% sure how those planters meet the steps and the whole resolution of this there, but I'll keep on going. That little awning on, I mean that little sort of roof with the little two columns on there, I find it very odd too. I find this, the the massing of this toothpick holding it. I'm not sure that you need them. I'm not sure why you... I mean, you just have this sort of visor, sort of overhang over the thing, but then it has these toothpicks that, considering the massiveness of everything else, to me they feel very, sort of very thin. And then when it comes to the side of the house i find you know you have this insane amount of like linear these very thin you know, windows everywhere. They all seem to be the same type of window you repeat everywhere on the side elevation. If you can go to the side elevation of the house. Yeah, I guess this one, which I find insanely problematic that even the one that you have next to the stair, that one, I just realized that that's the window to a bedroom, which I think it seems very odd that that's all the fenestration you have in a bedroom. I'm not quite sure what is this obsession with this one. I mean, maybe it's this obsession with this linear sort of stick windows everywhere, which I find it very, very, very strange. Because, I mean, they happen to very different kinds of rooms, but they're all sort of the same window. I mean, I'm trying to summarize my concerns when it comes to the house, because I think the entry with that wall, and I guess in this perspective, and I'm looking at in the night one, that is a solid wall. It doesn't show an opening. But then in the other one, it shows an opening. In the other view that you showed us, yeah, you saw a huge opening there.

The opening was added.

So you want us to consider the opening and not the street wall. Yeah. Strangely enough, I like the solid wall better than the opening, although I like openings. I just, I find...

But don't you think, I mean, I think you're maybe, are you eliminating the circular cut through and putting the square instead or you have both here?

No, this would have both.

You do, okay. I mean, I found the circle to be a little bit incongruous with like the linear shapes of the home. And so I thought maybe you were trying to get the light in from the side instead, which could be a solution.

I think that, I mean, I loved the house before. This one, not so much. I find that, again, in the attempt to try to make it different, I have a problem with the stone wall meeting. Maybe it has to do with the height of that roof over the entrance. I think that in your attempt to break the massing, you've lowered it to a point that I think it's a very strange move to me to make the entrance sort of have the lower ceiling. And I think that maybe bringing it up higher. I mean, I understand you're trying to play with the volume, but I find the entrance way, you have that freestanding wall that is insanely massive, which is the front door. And then you lower the ceiling right at that height. Yeah, at that moment, which to me, I think that by setting it back and bring it up high again, I think by setting it back where you have it and just bringing that higher is all you need to do. To me, it would look better if it's higher. I know you want to have an oculus of light, but I don't think, I mean,

It's going to be an oculus of rain for a lot of the seasons.

Yeah, we're in Florida, so it's not the pantheon. I mean, it's going to be a problematic hole. But strangely, I like, you show it without the opening. I particularly like without the opening, which is odd, because I just don't find, I find the opening doesn't work with the house. I think that corner, when you look at that corner, having that huge wall, but then you make such a massive gesture, but then you cut a huge hole in it, a bit of a contradiction.

So do you think setting the wall, the roof, just kind of setting it back a little further just to reduce the scale and appearance of it from the street. Of the stone wall? Of the stone, the canopy for the entrance as well.

I think that maybe by reducing the height of the stone wall and making the roof there just right below it. So I think it's over articulation. I think there's too much happening in that entryways between you can't make up your mind. You have the wall and you have the hole and then you took out the hole and then you put the hole in the ceiling. So I think that There was an economy of language in the last house that we saw that I loved, that I think that in attempt to try to make it certain things have been lost. And I think that resolution of the entryway is one. I have a real problem with the articulation of that sort of roof on the, I think that if that's going to be there, somewhere in between it's like really heavy and thick, but you also want it to be light. If it's going to have the little columns, it should be a very light thing, more like an iron, sort of like a very small thing. And if it's going to be this thick, I think you should do without the columns because you don't need them structurally. It's my suggestion. I have a problem with that huge wall that I think it should just get, it has to get a window. I mean, you have to reconfigure that bathroom in order to have a window there because I think it's... You know, it would look beautiful to have a window there. I agree.

I think it's just screaming.

It's screaming, put a window here. And, yeah, I mean, you have a bathroom up there. But that bathroom is set back. You can put a window there. I mean, no one is going to look in there. So it's not, you have a. It's on the other plan. You're on the wrong floor. It's on the second floor. Yeah. See, it's that wall there where they have a bathroom. So I think you can move that bathroom around to have a spectacular window there because it's completely private up there.

It can be a, I mean, even a clerestory or a half, you know, an upper window, something. I don't know.

I think it's a moment I would do, I think you would benefit from having a big piece of glass up there. I think it's just, you know, and so in trying to make sort of a path to move forward, I think that my suggestion would be to lower the stone wall, lower it a bit, raise it somewhere in between the two, but have that just right below the stone wall. So it's a lot more quiet.

And a little more setback.

A little bit more setback. Get rid of that hole, which is not a good idea. Have fenestration up there, which would look beautiful. I think that you make up your mind. I think that I would try to lean towards the lightest object up there possible, because I think You've gone through the trouble of setting back the second floor. I think that you don't want to bring it forward with a big, heavy piece, because it sort of defeats the purpose of the setting it back of. Plus, you don't really need it. I mean, you could do a much lighter. And I would seriously consider I think that you need to look at the whole stair. I think that maybe it's the height of that planter, the way the planter meets that corner with a step. I think that you need to go out to the whole thing, and it's a little bit of work. You know it does. It's not quite resolved. It's there, but it's not quite resolved. And I think that the windows on the side need I think you need to go through the project and try to give hierarchy to those windows. I mean, I know that you like the idea of these datums of thin windows all around. But you got to get past that, because in reality, only you see that and only you see that. But from inside the house, I mean, I saw that window that's big is the only window you have in a bedroom. It's just not okay. You need to work on the fenestration there and just make them bigger.

The only thing I would say there is on a side elevation, you're looking right at the neighbor. So really you're just trying to get a little light and you're trying to leave some wall space for beds. So I don't mind the thin windows that much. I think they accomplish...

I think that what I'm trying to say is that there should be a hierarchy of windows that matches what the rooms are. So if it's a bedroom, you don't want a window that is literally 16 inches wide. I mean, I think that a bedroom should require more light, even if you look at the side. I mean, the beauty of Florida is that you could be 10 feet away from your neighbor, but if you have planting, you look at a beautiful wall of green, and that's beautiful. So I think that... I will work on the hierarchy of those and work on making, it would reduce the amount of, remember, we see these houses on the side. In Surfside, you see the side view, you see these houses, so we're trying to get these houses to have the lightest feel possible for for the neighborhood so we minimize the amount of you know stucco that that is exposed on noted so i think on this side in particular with the closed rooms on here they're more kind of ancillary to the living correct correct and that on that elevation or so on this elevation okay um i mean i think that sums it up um

So he covered a lot of the commentary I had, so as not to repeat ourselves. The only thing we didn't touch on is your tree disposition plan, which you're removing a lot of trees from what I recall. Probably td1 right. So I guess I'm just curious why we need to remove. At all those trees that's the wrong house.

This is this is the old the old house, but you're doing the same thing for the trees.

If landscape plan has not been updated, a lot of those obviously are because the pool is there, but agreed in 16 and 15 there, for example, 14, they could probably stay. We'll certainly do a more deeper dive into that and try to keep as many as possible.

So maybe you should look into trying to save as many as they can. Yeah. Please. Yeah.

Certainly. OK. So I think, Moses, did you have anything else to add?

Yeah, no, just a little clarification on drawing A 2.2. It's showing a second cutout. I'm not sure if that's accurate or not.

A 2.2. Yeah. So I see the original cutout opening for... That was a skylight above the bathroom, yeah. So it's physical glass instead of a cut.

Got it.

I think that what overall, so we can summarize. I think what, I mean, we're very clear about I think what needs to happen. I think that you need to go at the whole project and try to synthesize. Mm-hmm. language because there's an economy of means that the other version of the House had, which I thought it was very successful. It said a lot with very little. And I think that in an attempt to try to make this one feel different, which is totally okay, I think that you need to go over it and think about what we said and try to make it somewhere closer to the other one so it's i don't know i i i i slightly disagree i i like the direction this is moving i think no i'm saying i'm i'm saying exactly what what i meant is that i want this house i don't want the other house i'm just saying i'm not asking you to go back i'm just saying What we're trying to tell you is to try to bring it up to a more cohesive, that the other one had.

The other house had a more unified language.

We don't want to copy- We don't want the house to go back to the other one. We want this house, but- Unify the language. Exactly, a unification of language that the other one had.

Yes.

But we're sticking with this one. I'm not asking you to go back.

Correct. All right, understood. Thank you for your comments.

Okay, so I think, again, I don't think we're in a position to approve tonight, but I think I would entertain a motion to either defer or deny.

I would totally want to defer to the next meeting. I think you can definitely get it done in the timetable and get it done. I think that we're pretty clear what needs to be done. Okay.

Moses, are you on board with that? Okay, great. Can one of you make a motion and one of you second?

Motion to defer for the next meeting. Yes.

Would you want to second?

I second, yes. Okay.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes, Chair. Board Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Pinto?

Yes.

Chair LaCour?

Yes. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you very much.

See you soon.

Thank you.

Okay. And with that, we will move on to 9156, Emerson.

Yes, our next application is 9156 Emerson. The staff finds that this application does meet our zoning code and is presenting to you for consideration with conformance with our design guidelines. We do recommend one condition, again, that the drainage and grading plan are reviewed at the time of building permit. And this application is to construct a new two-story single-family home on a lot that is 5,620 square feet. The subject property is located at 9156 Emerson Avenue. The property is an interior lot. The exterior design elements on the front facade include smooth stucco finish and aluminum railings. Brick lintel frames are proposed for all the windows and composite cladding. siding for outdoor wall panel. The front facade provides articulation on both the first and second stories, and the rear of the home features similar materials as the front. The proposed lot coverage for this home is 2,143 square feet, or slightly under 40%, and the FAR is 0.55. Again, we're recommending approval with the condition that a grading plan be provided at time of building permit. Thank you.

Thank you Hi, please state your name and address for the record.

Yes. My name is Fred Cardoso architect. My address is 58 30 Southwest 73rd Street, South Miami great Welcome Well, basically we've worked around a couple of years rounds with Scarlett and another reviewer, and we tried to bring the house as close as possible to what the code allows us. We realized that it's a pity that we don't have a house like the one we just saw here. It's certainly very surfside, and it would be like a nice beach house. Unfortunately, I mean, this lot, needs to be, the owners have to make it have the maximum of area that they can get. Following the code, it's a little challenging because obviously the reduction of the second floor and the setbacks and so on, which seemed to me a lot of sense. So we worked through that on a couple of rounds. And I think we finally got to a a plan that makes sense where the second floor sets back on the sides and the side walls are kind to the neighbors. We definitely know that the front of the house being the fact that it has to be raised almost seven feet above the sidewalk and so on, it's always a challenge to work with that staircase at the front and not make it look like you know, like a commercial building. I think we were able to mitigate that by putting the stairways sideways and still keep a nice little entry porch. Certainly the house is contemporary, all flat roofs, and we're trying to keep a simple architecture, very subtle, I believe that the result, and I heard the comment on another one of the houses, the result of that set back on the front as a terrace does become a little... We're going to pull up your house.

Yeah, perfect.

Okay, sorry.

So as you can see, probably on the plan is not very clear the size of that planter on the second floor, which obviously is definitely the intent. So to kind of mitigate the effect of the large terrace on the second floor, we still have come back and forth trying to see if that terrace should be smaller and not occupy the whole front of the house and see if that would be lighter on the effect on the street. Although the recess of the entrance and trying to cover that staircase was something that we definitely thought would benefit. And the large void on the second floor and the creation of a shadow would help enhance that entrance. The garage is real simple. Well, in reality, it's not even a garage. It's just a storage. We have a garage door, and we try to use it as an element to tie it to the street. But really, the front is obviously quite constrained. There's a lot. I think it's only 60 feet, and we are almost 40 with the house. The materials, we're trying to keep it real simple with light texture stucco and just using the wood element on that entryway to reinforce the recess and the shadow and give a little bit more interest to that porch, which is limited by the staircase. And then tying it to a little bit of that same material up on the second floor. And then just using two colors of stucco.

Can you clarify the front elevation, the wood is a composite?

Well, yeah, we're considering a composite. We consider two different materials. One, a composite, which is the one that finally showed here. and another one that is aluminum, and it is not imitating anything but aluminum because of durability and maintenance and so on. So I hear that there's always a, it's difficult.

And do you have any samples of what you're proposing? Yeah. Great. Oh, I can't see down there.

Madam Chair, if the applicant can please speak into the microphone.

Yeah, I'm going to speak for a minute. So those are two paint colors of stucco, and this is the composite wood cladding system.

Perfect.

Do you need to see this? Ooh, that's heavy. Okay.

I see it from here.

your elevation if you could should I just move through that's the night view in the front also with some up lighting avoiding the typical coach lights in the garage and just do the up lighting and some landscaping lighting I do see what you say you're trying to eliminate the white light washing the wall we can change that The rear is, I guess, quite harmonizing with the front. It's about the same thing. It's the same planter on the second floor. The bedroom's opening to a terrace, which obviously will have more use. And then downstairs, also a large terrace and a small pool. Real simple lines. Plain stone pool. and just the accents with the wood.

A question for our town planner. This is an elevated pool. I thought pools need to be in the ground level at this point.

We encourage, but we don't have a code change. I see. Okay. No.

The distribution of the house is quite simple, obviously, with that entry. right in the middle of the house, and first floor being mostly just an open area, kitchen and living area, family. I'm not sure.

If you could just speak into the microphone a little bit more. We're on air.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

I think that the terraces on the first floor, for some reason on the rendering, you cannot see the real depth. I think, luckily, they are deeper than that. They're more comfortable, even with the space for the pool. The one on the second floor, though, in the rear, it's about six, seven feet. The one in the front is that I still think that it's unfortunate that the setback kind of forced us to the terrace and I know that it's for the benefit of the of the massing of the house, I understand and You know, hopefully the the plantings would help mitigate the impact of that So with that

Do you have a tree disposition plan?

I want to say, yes, we have it. We included it in the...

I don't think I saw one.

We have landscaping.

Okay, we can come back to that. Let me open it up for public. I'm sorry, did you have anything else you wanted to add?

No. I'll open to your questions and comments.

Okay. Anybody from the public have comments or questions? Yeah, come on up.

Madam Attorney, are you? I'm able to take the vote. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? I do.

Thank you. So, you know, 9148 Froud Avenue. My understanding is that when the house that used to be there was demolished, that most, if not all, of the trees were already cut down. So that's why there might not be a plan.

That reminds me of a future discussion item. Thank you. OK. I don't think there were comments from the public beyond. Anybody else want to say something? OK. Board members?

I'll take this one. Where to begin? As an overall comment, I mean, this house has a series of things that we've discussed here as things that we would like not to see repeated in this town. And this house has several of those. One being the fact that it has a garage door leading to what I would assume is what you consider some kind of storage space. We're very adamant about the fact that those are very strange decisions. A garage should be open to a garage and not to a storage space. So the creation of space that is a garage door that doesn't lead to a garage, it's something that we've seen here in the past and we think it's not a sightly thing to have in this town. That is one thing. The other comment I have, many comments about this house, but the entire ground floor of this house has no windows. Basically, it could just be a commercial building. There's zero windows onto the outside from the ground floor of this house, which I find it just beyond odd.

What do you mean? Because I see windows on the side elevation.

No, we're talking about the front of the house.

Oh, okay. The ground floor of the house. I see what you're saying.

Okay.

The front elevation ground floor.

The ground floor of this house is what I mean. The ground floor of this house has no windows. So it has a slightly kind of commercial feel to it. I'm not quite sure what composition-wide I find. That's just so brutal, that ground floor with that planter and going into that black hole where somehow you have to find a front door into the home. And then that garage door, it's the biggest feature on the whole ground floor, and somehow it's a garage door that leads onto a five foot storage space, which is even odder. You have that stucco balcony wrapping, and then wraps on the right-hand side, and then the garage door shoved against the side of it, composition-wise. It's very, very odd. I have massive issues with the massing of the house. I have massive issues about everything about this house. But I also have, when I look at the sections, you actually, The sides of the house and you burn me in the front of the house. So you basically put in this house on some kind of mount. That is a no for me, Sarah. I don't have to explain myself. That's just a no.

I don't think that's permitted by our permitted. Yeah.

So, um, you can't just burn your house up on and throw everything out to your neighbors. That's just not. Okay. The whole idea that the pool, look at the pool in the back. It's as tall as the houses next to it. Why would anyone want to put a pool up there and then create a seven-foot space between that humongous wall and the back of this house? That's a dead zone. These houses have tiny little backyards, and by putting the pool up there, basically you're getting rid of a third of the backyard, because that's just not usable space. I mean, that really has no use whatsoever. I have a humongous problem with the fact that people will be lounging up there, one story up in the air, where the neighbors can see them up there on this platform. So the reason why, although Scarlett said that we encourage people to keep, there's a reason why we encourage these people to do it. I mean, it's not a random reason. It's like we don't want to see, no, it's the fact that these pools One story up in the backyards of these humble homes, you're imposing these pools onto the neighbors and creating a building. Because that's actually, you can habitate on the side of that pool. The massing of the second floor, I mean, I think that there's an attempt. You set back the second story of this house, but then again, the setback of the house is so heavy. The massing of the second floor is so heavy and chunky, and I've just never seen a house that has no windows onto the street. I mean, that's just like, it's just so odd. I understand that this is becoming a typology because we're creating a typology of these houses that we have to get seven bedrooms into these houses. And these become like some bunkers where bedrooms get shoved into these sort of bunker houses where they're like depositories for bedrooms. They have no soul. They're not homes. They're just basically... Soulless boxes with as many bedrooms that you can fit in. And then that destroys the feel of this town. And this is probably one of the greatest examples I see everything that I don't like into one house. And I'm trying to break it down into the reasons why. I'm not trying to randomly not like in the house. I'm trying to understand. intention of the house but it's also make comments on the what you get by building this house the fact that this house has no interaction between this home and the street the fact that you're create putting a humongous box with a pool on top of it it's a one-story building in the yard so there's many decisions that you're making that creating the burning of the house is something we just don't allow so that's just not going to be allowed but There isn't attempt to make this object fit into the neighborhood in a cohesive way, but it's also even within the object itself. I don't think that there's an attempt to make this a domestic object. I think that there's no, I mean that's literally, you're inside this house and you can't see out. It's a bunker, it's a bunker full of bedrooms. It's like almost renting bedrooms by the hour. It's a complete no to me for all the reasons that I explained. And I think a home needs to have a soul and it has to have a reason. It has to have a reason. It has to be the most beautiful thing a family does is create a home. And I just don't see how this object connects, how this building connects to our town in any meaningful way that makes this object compatible with our town.

All right. Moses?

I share a lot of the same sentiments there. My main issue was the front rate. It looks, how do I even get in? And then the back, I didn't even know there was a pool until I kept on looking at the other design specifications because the rendering doesn't show, but then it, one, even if that wasn't a pool, the fact that that level is just as high as where the roof ends for the other homes.

Not so much. Oh, or it starts really? Not so much. It's only six feet above the grade now. Those houses are, you know, at least eight feet to the bottom of the roof.

I mean, yeah, but that's a pretty significant difference, though. So, I mean...

But so is the terrace, anyway. I mean, this terrace is sitting at that same elevation, six feet above grade. And it's just the nature of what the flood situation has done with all these houses. We have to race into that elevation, so we have to live with that. So the fact that the pool is brought up to the level of the terrace is for the enjoyment of the family.

I'm seeing the railing you're showing there. You're showing a railing that says 3-6, and then you have in the back elevation, you're not showing the height of it, but you're showing the cross section of the building next door, and you're showing the height of your pool. That is not six feet. I don't know what that is, but that's not six feet. So... You have 4.8 between the berm and some height, and then you have more pool, and then you have the berm below. So we're talking about this thing is about eight feet, if not more. So in the back elevation, I'm just looking at it. I mean, I'm looking at your drawing. I'm not inventing this. I'm looking at the cross section. That is, in the space that you have behind, left over from the wall that you're creating to make this pool and the yard, the neighbors behind are going to look at- Landscaping. They're going to look like an eight-foot wall in their backyard with people walking on top of them. So the situation is just untenable, what a pool like this creates in a backyard.

Moses, did we get through all your comments?

I'm sorry.

Madam Chair, if I may, I apologize to interrupt. I would like to think that's an attorney for , but I believe that I should be doing so. Is it okay if I sort him in just in case now?

Yeah. Does anybody else want to speak just in case? George, Marianne, you guys might want to speak. If you do, here's your chance to get sworn in. All right.

Please raise your right hand. Do you swear and affirm to say the truth and only put the truth?

Yes, you do.

Thank you, Mia, by receiving. OK. All right.

So I also want to have a chance to just give you my thoughts as well. I do share some of the sentiment of my colleagues in the sense that the design itself from a massing perspective, doesn't feel compatible yet with its neighbors in the neighborhood. I agree that the massing and the materials also I can't get behind this plastic tubing on the house. I think we need to reconsider some natural materials. The lighting you mentioned, but the strip lighting in the eaves, the white light instead of a warmer color. I would like to see the lighting re-evaluated. In addition to the elevation of the pool in the rear, which I agree is disruptive to neighbors, you have mechanical equipment for the pool in the side setbacks, which we need to see hidden, not in the side setback. That's part of our code. The berming I also noted, and along with sort of that awkward storage right in the front. I'd like to see this, you know, be a little warmer welcome to the streetscape and neighbors around it. And I think that's what I'm hearing more or less from my colleagues. So with that, I think we have a decision, again, whether to deny or defer. And I will leave that to my colleagues as I am not able to make a motion.

I make a motion to deny.

Okay. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes, Chair.

Board Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Pinto?

Yes.

Chair Licor? Yes. Motion carries.

Okay. We'd love to see another shot in the future.

Thank you all very much. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. We're moving on then to 9017 Garland Avenue.

Yes, we have one more application for a home addition. Again, this is presented to you to review as far as consistency and conformance with the design guidelines. And also with this one, we would expect a drainage and grading plan be submitted at the time of building permit as well. The applicant is requesting approval for an addition to an existing single-family home located at 9017 Garland, and it was built in 1951. The applicant proposes a modest addition of 456 square feet to the home that is currently 1,791 square feet. The home will also remain a one-story structure. The property is 5,636 square feet in size, and no variances are requested. The addition will be in the front and the side of the home. The proposed addition in the front will remain approximately 20 feet, whereas the rear setback will be 24 feet from the property line. The home addition is to accommodate a new bedroom and add a bathroom to an existing three-bed, three-bath. The applicant's design elements include stucco wall facade and a new walnut front door. Based on... I'll skip that part. The resulting FAR will be 0.41, and the lot coverage will be less than the 50% that would be allowed. And pursuant to the zoning code, the applicant has shown compliance with the land use regulations, and staff does recommend approval of this home additions.

Hi, I'm Samantha Mansour, 4782 St. Kittsway. I'm an architecture designer. I'm here on behalf of the owners, Gianfilippi Iberti and Leilani Schlottfeld. And the reason that they want to do an addition in this house, they own this house since 2013. And the kids grow up and the teenager doesn't want to share the same room with the eight years old. And they want to keep having guests. So we're doing a four-bedroom. So we're adding one bathroom and one bedroom. So it's four bedrooms. The existing is three. And the idea, the concept of the house is to do as simple as we can and match the scale and the vibe of the neighborhood. So the proposal is we are adding in the front of the house. We are removing one existing tree. On this sheet here, you can see on the left the existing roof. On the back of the house, it's mostly a flat roof. Then on the middle is the addition, the new roof on the front of the house that we are elevating the ceiling. And on the right side, the hatch area is the area that you see that we're adding, the cover area that you see adding. The floor plan that we are keeping a storage on the left, So they have a bike and they're planning to purchase a golf cart. So they want a place to storage the golf cart, the motorcycle and the bikes. And they're bringing the car, the new bedroom right behind this area. We are elevating the ceiling in the new area. And here you can see how the side facades will look on the right side, the front rendering and the rear rendering of the house. And here is the night and daylight front of the house.

Okay, great, thank you. Anybody from the public wish to comment? Nobody? Board members? Moses?

I mean, no real concerns for me. I'm not the biggest fan of the roof color.

Just the white.

Yeah. But I like the door. It's unique. And I like how you're adding more windows. But I don't really see any concern from me.

OK. Thank you. Carlos?

Yeah, I have just, you know, I've seen this before, and I think that what I recommend is, I was just looking at the section, the cross-section of the entryway. I'm a little bit, the only thing that hits my eye is the height of the front door. I think that I think you have a chance of making that indentation there as tall as possible. And I was looking at your cross section, and that's all new. And you're dropping a ceiling there in the cross section. And I think that you have a height of 1010. And then you're putting the header above the front door. And then you have a drop ceiling of nine feet inside.

Inside, yeah.

Yeah. I would recommend visually, I think that that should be taller. I think that the heaviness of that beam there is a bit disturbing to me. I think that you should Make it smaller, raise the ceiling inside to more than nine feet.

Just the ceiling or both? The door as well.

Everything. Yeah, because you have a ceiling here. You can raise this here, take this down to its minimum. take this down to here as much as you can, make this as taller, and then go down. I think that because the gesture you're making on the outside is pretty much is so simple, but I think the front door is the biggest, the biggest gesture is the front door. I think the front door should be as grand, as tall as possible.

I agree. I just need to check with the structural.

You can.

Okay, thank you.

You can. So I think that, to me, that's really heavy. I think you should minimize that, bring it as high as you can, and then I think it will look...

I think we'll probably have a paneling. I mean, we can grow the windows, but the 10-foot door will be more complicated. No, you can. Okay.

You can. 10-foot door?

Yeah.

10-foot doors are built all the time.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's already a tall door. You're bringing everything high, but then you're bringing the door back down again. It needs to go up about a foot.

Okay.

And then, because the rest of it is so simple. I mean, it's such a dry, the only bang you're doing is that- The door. That whole composition of the front door. So it needs to be as grand as possible, so it justifies the height that you're raising everything at. So it's a very simple comment. Because the garage door and the other one could stay where you have them, and then just make that as glassy as possible.

We wanted, I mean, I understand the garage door. It's not being a car, really big car garage. But the radius to maneuver everything on the side would be not enough. So having everything on the front, it's easier.

It reads like a garage. Yeah.

The only- It will use it as a garage, because they're going to put a golf cart and- A golf cart, yeah. They don't want to have a real garage?

No.

Okay.

Other comments?

No, no, no. I think it's also in terms of the landscaping, I think that it's a little bit bare.

Yeah.

I think that- know the house is going to be very clean very elegant and what's being built next door is also very nice so it's they'll they're going to work off each other which i think is going to be beautiful best idea to work together with the neighbors yeah and i would work on uh i think a landscape plan yeah i i i would so my comment is really about the trees and landscaping i know you have to get rid of that tree to build a house but i'd like to see you plant

another tree or two and some more shrubs and you know beef up the landscape plan a little bit uh-huh yeah we we are not planning uh to just that tree that we want to remove and we want to keep as most as we have and we are adding the bushes on the back of the house because today there is almost nothing just on the side and as much as we can cover the front of the house being parallel being uh more cohesive with the neighbor and to block that view, and then I think we'll be good.

So in the landscape plan, I guess I'm a little confused. A lot of the trees called out are existing, but are these also adding all these trees? Can you just walk us through? Yeah, I think we'll be, so here,

So this is existing, this is existing, and this is already existing as well. So I think we would do some plants here. But I think it would be interesting to wait for the neighbor and to bid this together with the neighbor.

So we are adding this as well. And what are those? Aricas?

No, they have Clusias in the front of the house, no? They were Clusias in the front of the house.

Yes, in the front of the house, yes.

They're saying to make a tall hedge in the front of the house because the house next door has a tall hedge. Just to continue the same tall.

Yeah, I don't know about that. We don't like a huge green hedge. I don't know how tall that is. I can't really tell at this level of detail. But I wouldn't be in favor of anything above a four-foot hedge in the front of your house. I think also having a little more texture versus the very manicured hedge, linear. It has to be more tropical.

It's a little bit suburban looking in the perspectives. It looks like it's just a house in the south, you know. It needs to be luscious. It needs to be, you know, it needs to be tropical. It needs to be just beefier, like a beefier sort of landscape. You still need to provide that level of detailing in the house. I think it's a little undercooked with the landscaping.

And then the only other comment I have is regarding lighting. I saw a floodlight and some lighting in the soffits on the exterior that I would like to see removed.

On the back or on the front?

Let me see where it was.

Because there is one existing in the back of the house. Oh, okay.

She has two in the soffit, but they're in the entryway.

Yeah, they...

They're in front of the front door.

I can remove the front one.

I mean, if we think that's okay in front of the... But I did see, I thought you were adding a floodlight. No, it's existing. Okay, and that needs to stay? Those are very intrusive to neighbors. So we don't tend to accept those. I mean, if it's existing, it's existing. But I look at that.

I think that the next, you know, on one layer I need to add is the understanding of landscaping and exterior lighting and uplighting the house at night. You know, it needs to be luscious. It needs to be, because it's a very plain, it's very simple, it's very dry. So I think it just, it's one step that you need to provide to the house. I think it's a landscape sort of sensibility and understanding really the lusciousness of this project.

Okay.

Because right now, just a lawn just makes it look like it's a suburban house. But I think it's just missing. I think it needs to be considered.

Other comments?

No.

Okay. What would you all like to do?

I would like to approve it. I mean, I think we should approve it with conditions of, you know, the few things that she was discussing about the lighting and the landscaping, yeah.

Okay, so I think the conditions, just to be specific, I know that our staff had a couple conditions, no? I think it was just the grading plan. Just the grading plan. Okay. Then I think the additional conditions we discussed were regarding the front elevation, height of the fenestration and front door, pulling that up.

Yes, of course.

I think making the landscaping, especially in the front, a little more lush and tropical without having a green... wall in front of the house.

I have a question. For example, those elephant ears, they look very modern and luxury. Can I make a garden with that or maybe put that in front of where the bushes exist today and bring the bushes to the front?

I don't know what elephant ears are or what they look like. So, you know, I think we're giving you the discretion to follow the concept.

I mean, you're Brazilian. You know how to do landscape. Come on. I mean, it's like, come on.

And then the final comment.

Just do the Portland marks and just do the whole thing.

The final comment is regarding lighting. If you could just take another look at the lighting of the home and try to eliminate... First of all, make sure it's a warm color. I think we say 3,000 or lower. And that it's more, as much as you can do kind of uplighting from the ground and less overhead lighting, whether it's flood or soffits.

Light up the property from up this way instead of up.

There is an existing some ground lighting Uplighting. Uplighting. And the idea is to keep those and to add as less as we can just to guide. But since there is these two scosses in the front and there is the light coming from the window, I decided to do less. And in case we need to add, so we add now.

Okay, yeah, and again, it's to your discretion, but just keeping those principles in mind. Okay. And those principles are also outlined in our design guidelines that we're going to public, that we're looking at tonight in case you want to reference. Oh, I will take it. Same with, there's a lot of landscaping reference in there too, so.

I mean, I think that, the last thing I'm going to say is that, the entry threshold is what you're really doing. It's that entry door needs to be, the whole threshold needs to be the feature of the house. I think the little sconces on the side, a little bit mingy, a little bit, I would get rid of those and I would maybe put lights on the floors, up light and very small ones on top and maybe two on either side to make that whole entryway very dramatic. I think the drama needs to happen at the entryway. Okay. And you don't need those concerts there, because they'll give you really mingy, sort of not very nice light, and you already have two up above. I will put two on the floor, lighting up the entryway. So, you know, the house falls white and quiet, and then the entryway glows at night.

Okay, so just with those few conditions, can I have a motion to approve with those conditions, please?

Motion to approve with the special conditions and staff conditions.

Okay.

I second. Okay.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Yes, Chair. Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Member Rapinto? Yes. Chair LaCour? Yeah. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you.

Congratulations.

All right. That concludes our applications for the evening, and we will move on to ordinances, beginning with 6A, the ordinance adopting design guidelines. Madam Attorney or Clerk, please read the ordinance into the record.

Yes, Chair. Item 6A. An ordinance of the Town Commission of the Town of Sursa, Florida, adopting the updated Town of Sursa Design Guidelines 2026 as a guiding document for development review, providing for purpose and intent, providing for applicability, providing for conflicts, providing for survivability, and providing for an effective date. Item 6A.

Thank you. I have very little to say about this. I think we've all are very familiar with this document, and it has, you know, gone to first reading to the town commission, and the next step is to come before you and get your recommendation for a second reading before the commission. We have been working on this for quite a while. The dates goes back to November of 2023. So when we had one, two, three, four, five, about eight different workshops on this. So what's before you tonight is very well vetted, I would say, through all of those meetings. And if you have any further comments or any adjustments you'd like to point out, thank you.

Thank you. Yep, please.

When I gave my report earlier, Gerardo Valdostegui, 9148 Froud Avenue, I neglected to mention a topic that came up at the commission meeting. A resident expressed concern about language in the design guidelines that was of the form must or expressed a strict requirement and raised the question of whether the design guidelines could use obligatory language like that that was stricter than the code. And so a question that the commission flagged for your consideration, and maybe the idea was floated of perhaps having a joint workshop or something to just review that language, possibly to replace it with shoulds or something just one level below. That was just one concern that came out of our commission meeting. And it would require a review of the whole document just with an eye toward that particular edit if indeed we wanted to change that.

OK. Thank you.

So the question is changing of must to should.

Yeah, just in locations where, and I wish I remembered a specific example.

Overall, the feeling, so. Yeah. I mean, when you want to use should, it's because they want to get away with what we don't want them to get away with. That's why you use should.

I mean, I would like our town attorney's thought on how the code and the design guidelines work together.

Exactly. So, yeah, it's a question of, I guess, whether the design guidelines are hortatory or mandatory.

Sorry, what was that word?

Hortatory. You know, are they recommendations or are they mandatory? Are they... obligatory rules.

Okay. I'll prepare an opinion for you on the other one.

Well, I mean, the design guide, it's about being binding or being, you know, one is code. Code is binding. You know, this one is recommendations.

Yeah, well, I mean, my recollection, and we'll have the town attorney opine, is that the board's role is to use the guidelines to determine if the design is compatible with, you know, with the guidelines and with the neighborhoods. So I guess in that context, we'll see what happens.

I mean, to make it very clear, a guideline, you know, code is code. A house can meet code. Guidelines, since we've come into place, is a tool that we have to fight presentations into this town that don't fit. through a completely different series of criterias that has to do with aesthetics, that has to do with sensibility, things that are very hard to regulate only by a body that is qualified to make those judgments. So it's not... That's what guidelines exist.

I mean, from my perspective, I wouldn't have a problem changing the musts for shoulds because if something should do something and it doesn't, I'm going to say I don't think it does that. So I can't get behind this as being compatible.

I'd just like to know what the intention of why someone was offended by the way must.

no assuming must didn't shoot is i don't know they're not that different i don't know really a legal one is just what is the what is the the degree of binding force of the guidelines it also does leave i guess some room for the committee if something one application was very strong in some area but then didn't follow the letter of the design guideline in another might you still have the flexibility to approve it, right? So it's really just getting at the degree of strength.

To me, the thing is that the code goes up to so far. Then guidelines kick in. Because code only describes a portion of the project. Guidelines is really the real tool that we have to enforce... you know, this town not being destroyed. It's really the tool that we have. That's why it's binding legally or not. It's not, but we need to have the authority of making those calls. That's why we're here. But, you know, I don't have an issue with changing one way or the other. I mean, I don't care. I mean, I don't think that they sound that different.

And then the idea also, I mean, and I know that the future discussion items tracker is an agenda item for tonight. It's quite possible that in the review of discussion whatever items musts and shoulds, we decide that something should become a must and then it become code, right? So the question is, is there anything in the design guidelines that should get promoted, so to speak, to code? So these were issues that were flagged at first. Right.

Those are good questions. Thank you. George, did you want to? You played a big role in this.

Oh, you're being quiet today. Were you falling asleep?

George Kouselis, 9225 Collins Avenue. I try not to – you guys are doing a great job with the houses. I don't need to pile on or take up time there. But anyway, just to quickly speak to that, and then I'll get to a couple other things. So usually in anything, shall is the most – Strongest word in shall.

Now you've got a third word in.

Yeah, no, shall is the one. When you see you shall do this, because here's an interesting thing.

Sounds like the Bible.

Yeah. Shall is in the third person is mandatory and will is an intent and it flips in the first person. Shall is mandatory and will is intense. So. The two sentences I'm about to give you are very different. I shall drown. No one will save me means because shall is intent in the first person. I'm probably going to go out into the ocean, and I'll drown because no one's going to bother. I will drown. No one shall save me is I want to drown, and you guys better not involve yourselves. So shall is an incredibly important word, and you want to root it out of the guidelines. I think the guidelines... So the ordinance belongs to Scarlett, right? She uses that to tell you if something's good or not. The guidelines belong to you guys. That's what you really use.

That's our job.

By the time it's in front of you, if it hasn't met the ordinance...

It shouldn't be in front of us, right.

So the guidelines is everything, but it is a guideline. It's a recommendation. It's really filling in those gaps where... You saw a number of instances today. There's things that bothered you about certain houses or certain features in certain houses that no code could ever capture. The code would be this thick. And the language would be way too tough. But you can see it. When you see it, you know it, and that's what the guidelines have to do. And I think this thing that you have in front of you, you know, it's gone through a number of months, and I think it's really gotten there.

Years.

You know, it's very close to there. And I think maybe just one last pass to make sure that any stray bits aren't in there or – You know removed but we're just talking about the last very last pass. It's a good good set of guidelines One other thing that I brought up before the Commission and is if there's some way And the attorney could probably help you on this how to get something in there that says there should be a review of the guidelines every five years not necessarily a rewrite of them but a review of them because The one you have now is almost 20 years old, and it is way out of date. And it's gotten there because no one has really touched it for all that time. Things can happen in five years, and I think you want to be able to revisit it and say, let's do this. Because unlike the code, which changes frequently in one year through an ordinance, the guidelines just sit there on a shelf.

Yeah, that's a great point.

So anyway, those are my comments.

Thank you.

I think that something that we see here when people present their houses is that they think that they've won the battle because they meet code. You know, they think that because the code is a bit on the complicated side and don't meet the code, I think that they think that they've won the battle of the code. So I think that there is a sense of entitlement that some people have when they show up here that they think like, well, it meets code. And the guidelines is what comes, kicks into, is our tool that we have to make understand. And I think that's a board We're such an incredibly good board because we are very systematic and very explanatory about the reasons why. I think that I'm very proud of the work we're doing here because we're not just dismissing people based on whim or we're actually very exact about the reasons why certain things should be done. And I've never seen a board that does that. So I think that the guidelines is what we have because we Every time I try to go back to the guidelines and say things like, for example, that pool, like you said, she said, we recommend people to keep the pools. But in reality, they can build it, but they should not build it because of the reasons that the guidelines say, all the reasons that we're tools to try to encourage people to do it. But it's also, we're trying to set precedent for people when they come into here and say, you know we can't build the pool up there not because they they shouldn't want to build the pool you know up there it just doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any sense for the neighborhood doesn't make for the neighbors and at some point common sense kicks in you know it's not like not even the guidelines really explain everything it's just at some point it's just like it just doesn't make any sense so i think that the guidelines are the it's really everything we talk about is guidelines you know because once it's presented to us like i thought that We were not going to see another pool built up, you know, eight feet up in the air again. But she doesn't have the tool to dismiss it. But I think it's, I thought you had the tool to dismiss it or to tell people not to, but some people think, well, I meet code, I can do it, then I just want to do it this way. So that's why they do it, and that's why they come here and show up with these things. So there's so much you can say, because she doesn't have the tool to dismiss them to say that it's not going to be approved. They have to wait until they come to us. And what I was going to say is that About the 50 houses that I've looked at and sat with these people and looked at and helped them immensely to all the people here, we offer this help. I mean, I've helped people, I still help people with these houses and we try to, I think it's something that we offer and these people should take advantage of. I mean, they really think that they get a great, you know, great help from us to try to guide them into the right path. So, you know, I think that one of the first houses that is my neighbor that came here, you know, we want to create a path for these people to move forward. We have to give them a window. We don't want to block them and stop them from moving forward. We want to say, this is the way you should move forward. And I think that we're I mean, I'm very proud of the fact that we make that huge attempt to try to design a path forward for them, except the last one.

Moses, do you have thoughts on the design guidelines?

No, I'm just really proud of all the work we did. I mean, I know I just joined here in a short time, but I know you guys put a lot of time into it. But just more of a technical question that I have, if we make, That edit, does it have to be re-presented twice again, or?

No, I mean, that would be a pretty simple find and replace. I wouldn't be in favor of it if it were to restart the.

That's just my only concern, just in case it triggers any type of restart of the whole process.

And maybe our town attorney, when she's ready, can weigh in on that. I have just a few thoughts to think through with you all. The design don'ts. What do we think about the design don'ts? I'm really on the fence about whether to include them or not. And I want people's opinions. I mean, at a minimum, I don't think we would say frowned upon. I would remove that language. I mean, looking through what you included, I think there's a lot of good things there to caution people about. So I just wanted the group's thoughts on do we want to come out of the gate expressly saying what we don't like in addition to what we like? Is that helpful to an architect? I mean, I think it may be. Um, so I'm just, I'm throwing it out there one more time. And George, if you have a thought come up.

Uh,

Yeah, George Kouselis. I think that they're very helpful. You want to be careful. So if you show a picture, be very specific that it's this thing in the picture.

So we've got bullet points for each picture.

Yeah.

And I want to make sure that we've accurately captured. And, Scarlett, it may be worth spending 10 minutes just walking through these with you to make sure we agree. Because I think that's really – That's sort of the last. I want to make sure we're doing that right. So maybe we can do that. And we can all just look at them real quickly. While she's coming up, I have just a couple of nits. I think there's a few images in this document that are very low resolution that I'd like to see, like the glossary title page, page 32, the nighttime image. that are very pixelated. So I'm wondering if we can get better images for those and just do an audit of the quality of the images, because I think they're very important. On page 16, we refer to a seven-foot max for the understory. I think that's a min. Let's look at that.

I didn't catch the page number, sorry. 16. Okay.

Let me see if that's of the PDF or the actual page. No, I think it's page 16 of the document. So it's page 23 of the PDF. In understory designs under the second bullet, it says maximum clear height of any non-habitable understory space measured from finish grade to the underside of the elevated structure above shall not exceed seven feet. Is that right? I think we meant that as a minimum.

It should be a minimum because if you were to park right there That's it's actually seven feet to the underside of any pipes that may be hanging right anything, right?

I think that's I think that's a minimum not a maximum and then Excuse me

But not all understories are meant to be occupied, right? So, like, if you look at the house that I presented a month ago, there's one that is at 10 feet, so it's just a handful of feet above grade. Where it's over the car, it's up, you know, 7 foot plus.

Right, but we're not putting a max. We're saying this is saying maximum of 7 feet. I think at one point this group discussed a minimum such that It read as an understory and wasn't like a crawl space, like a four foot understory.

Right. But like the house where the whatever, the south side was had a floor at 10 feet. And you might have had grade at six feet at that point. Right. By the time you're up off the street and you're not really sloping like the house you saw half an hour ago, but, you know, enough to drain water. you could be up at six feet. So you're probably four or five feet above the ground that's right under the house at that point. And if you make seven feet the minimum, you're lifting all the houses way up too high. You may not want to do that.

Yeah, okay. So I think we might, in efforts of keeping this moving forward, we might just want to I mean, it says because we're limiting parking areas, open or partially enclosed ground level space. I mean, there's a whole list of things that are limited, accessory or storage areas. So I think that limitation would preclude the house we just approved that you designed. So I'm not sure we do want to do that bullet point. So we have the bullet point above it, which I think is interesting. It says non-habitable understory areas, as defined pursuant to the code, shall be designed to maintain human scale, reduce visual impact of elevated construction, and reinforce a pedestrian-oriented relationship between single-family residences and the public right-of-way. I think that's probably sufficient to cover the concept without specifying the height.

I think so.

So let's remove that. And then in the index of approved homes.

One question I have. Do we have permission by these people to use our homes for these design guidelines? Do we need to acquire permission?

Well, technically it's public record.

It's public record. No, I'm just double checking that it's public record. So you can't print.

Yeah, when they submit an application to the town, it's a public record.

So, no, I'm saying accessing the information is public record, but printing it as a document.

It becomes public when you submit it to the town.

So it's okay. Just making sure.

The appendix of approved homes for reference, we have one of Stephen Betts' homes on the front, and then we have it again, I mean, I guess we have it daytime, nighttime as the first home, and then we have another one of his homes. Let's mix them up a little bit more. I don't want people to think I have to go hire this architect to build this home in Surfside. Let's spread them out, I guess.

Okay, there are not many that we can add to this.

Did we get one tonight?

Yeah, we did.

Okay, we got one tonight. You know, and this will grow.

Yeah.

So maybe just split up those two with the one we approved tonight, and we'll keep adding.

If you recall, I don't know, a few issues ago, I had more homes in there, but you wanted me to take them. I know.

The house we just approved is next door to this one. So that's what they were saying about that. It's here.

Yeah, I mean, and I think we don't have, actually, yeah, this is an addition, this one at the end, right? Yeah, the garland? Yeah, and that says addition? Do we not specify new home versus, no, we don't. Interesting. No, I think we mixed those together. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. Okay, so I think those were all my comments.

More of a visual glossary than really about.

Yeah, and you're going to remove the draft from the front page? Yes. Okay, great. Okay, let's go over, unless there's any other specific comments, I'd like to review the don'ts with the group. Absolutely. And Madam Attorney, were you able to come to reach an opinion on the code versus design guidelines yet, or do you need a few more?

Guidelines are typically subordinate to the code. The code is what governs. I can give you a legal opinion. I do have other concerns as to what's in the guidelines given the current legal landscape. Do you want to share those? I would prefer to put that into an opinion for you, or I'd be happy to have a phone call with you afterwards or talk to you after the meeting about that.

Okay. Okay, let's go for the don'ts. So I think just title-wise, how can we phrase this in a slightly gentler way besides design don'ts frowned upon? Things to avoid? Elements to avoid? Things to avoid? Something like that?

Things we think are hideous?

Right. Let me rephrase what Carlos says, as I usually do. Is that too harsh? Things to avoid. Let's maybe stick with that. Okay. So, Scarlett, maybe we can pull it up on the screen and we can walk through those few pages.

It's so cold in here. Can you help me which page I should be going?

Yeah, it's 48 of the PDF. OK, got it. OK, so we'll change the title. Page 49 is the first. So Carlos and Moses, I'd really like your thoughts on these. So the first one, double height window at front facade, agree. Two-story vertical plane, prominent, agree. Bulk of structure out of context, agree. Gate not 50% opaque, agree. Any wall sconces are the other thing I would say there.

No. The wall sconces you see in the image?