Historic District Commission - Regular Meeting

I will start by reading the role. Brian Daniels is not here. And I'm Polly Vanderbilt. Can the secretary please read the procedures into the record?

I'll now read into the record the following. The commission operates under NC general statues one sixty d dash nine four zero which gives local governments historic preservation authority and the Chapel Hill land use management ordinance including article three which established the local historic district and sets forth regulations governing them, and the Chapel Hill Historic District Design Principles and Standards, which sets forth standards for changes in the historic districts, and the rules of procedure adopted by the Chapel Hill Historic District Commission, as well as the significance reports from all three historic districts and photographs. I also call to your attention each of the applications and associated materials in your agenda packet. All of these items are hereby entered into the record. Thank you.

Thank you. And I will now read the public charge. Advisory board pledges Respect. Speak into the microphone? Oh, sorry.

Thank you. The advisory board pledges its respect to the public. The body asks the public to conduct themselves in a respectful, courteous manner, both with the body and with fellow members of the public. Should any member of the body or any member of the public fail to observe this charge at any time, the chair will ask the offending person to leave the meeting until that individual regains personal control. Should decorum fail to be restored, the chair will recess the meeting until a genuine commitment to this public charge is observed.

Now we have approval of the agenda.

I move to approve the agenda.

Excuse me? Approval of the agenda. Can I have

I'll second?

You've met. Okay.

I moved.

Moved by Duncan and seconded by Michael. All in favor? Aye.

Aye. And

the chair votes aye. Announcements, yes. Are there any announcements? No. Okay, thanks. I have one announcement that the next meeting April 8 will be my last meeting on the historic district commission and at that time the expectation is that you all will think about who you want to replace as the vice chair. Are there any petitions? No. No. Okay.

Can I have a motion for approval of minutes of February 11 meeting?

So moved.

Thank you, Josh.

Second.

That's moved by Josh, seconded by Nancy. And appropriate approvals from last month. That's just we do have to have a motion to approve those. Or those are the did we have Those

are just

advisory. Okay. Those, we didn't have any last month. Okay. So we have new business, but 208 Spring Lane, we have to ask the applicant to recuse himself.

And therefore, we will not have a quorum to proceed. So we need a motion to move this application to next month's meeting. I move we continue the application for 208 Spring Lane until the April meeting because of the absence of a quorum because the applicant is a member of the HDC. Thank you Nancy. We have a second.

I'll second.

Okay Nancy moved to move 208 Spring Lane to next month. Michael seconded. All in favor? What? Oh right, we need a vote. All in favor? Aye.

Aye. I

guess I can vote on this.

I guess you can.

Since this

is not a

quasi judicial this decision that you're making right now to continue is not a quasi judicial matter, you're permitted to vote on it. Thank you.

So all in favor, everybody said aye, right? And I vote aye. Okay. Now we have 500 East Rosemary Street. And do you have something you're going to present, Joneka?

Nothing much, but this application is to convert an existing screen portion to a sunroom. The applicant can move forward.

Gotcha. Okay. And then that'll show up on their screen also?

Yes they can see this.

Okay. Good. And then I advanced slides with the arrows?

Yeah. You should be able

to. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Good. Okay. Okay. Now I sign in.

Hi. I need to swear you in before you do your presentation. I'm going to read this affirmation and you just say I affirm and state your

Okay.

Okay. I affirm that the evidence I shall give to the historic district commission on the referenced application shall be the truth of nothing but the truth I so affirm.

I affirm as Brett Horton.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. Yes, my is Bret Horton. I'm the architect for a renovation of 500 East Rosemary Street. I'm going show you a few pictures. The picture in the upper left is along Rosemary Street. The original house is what we see in front of us. There's a single gable house with the gable facing Rosemary Street. An addition was added, I think, in the late 1990s. I'm not sure exactly when it was built.

But that's the gable that you're seeing behind to the right. You're seeing views of neighbors' houses. And then the picture bottom right shows the original house on the right, the stepped back addition built in the 1990s. And then there's a screen porch, which I think was probably the 1990s too. And then I'll show a few more pictures.

There's a screen porch that spans between the 1990s edition and a one and a half story garage. The upper right you're seeing the back side. There's kind of a small side yard. So you're seeing the back side of the screen porch. You're seeing the garage, the bottom left.

And then there's an open porch that faces, okay, see we're looking north, east that connects between, there's kind of a breezeway between the house and the garage. And then that's looking in the opposite direction, looking at the open porch. So we are proposing to convert the screen porch into a sunroom. It's going become conditioned square footage for the house. So we are proposing to remove the structure.

Let me go back and you can sort of see. Yeah, you can see the screen porch. It's two by four. There's two by four framing. There are porch columns which you see on that bottom right picture which we intend to leave in place. These are 1990s porch columns. There are two porch columns that make up the part of the structure of the screen porch. We propose to remove those. The thickness of the walls, we thought about leaving those two columns there but I think they almost disappear with the thickness of the new walls. So we're proposing to remove those.

And let me go back to the site plan. You can see the screen porch, which is roughly three nineteen square feet. So yes, we're closing that in into a sunroom. And then this open porch that we're looking at has a tongue and groove porch flooring on it. It's buckling.

It's not in great shape. And we would like to propose a PVC decking material that's tongue and groove. It's about the same dimension as the existing deck boards. And I think it's a nice product. I think it looks, I think it's got a little bit of a grain to prevent slipping but it's not trying hard to not trying too hard to look like wood. I think a nice product and I've been told that this has been approved in other parts of the district.

This is it, right? Oh you have a sample of it? Yeah, I'd happy to.

Yeah, can you just pass it around?

Yes, all that porch flooring in the open porch will be removed and replaced with that deck material. Everything else on the porch is going to be the same. Ceiling, the headers, the columns. Okay. And we're proposing, I think I'm just going to go straight to the exterior elevations.

The exterior elevations we're seeing the 1990s edition on the right and then the screen porch and its structure are gone and now we're looking at five the east elevation we're looking at five casement windows and we've got some fixed awnings on the bottom and we've got a new one door that comes off this exterior door that comes off the sunroom to the left. I'm proposing Marvin elevate windows and doors. And Marvin elevate is a wood interior fiberglass exterior. I've used it on a number of projects and I think it's really good product. So that's what we're proposing for the windows and the doors.

And then we go to the west elevation we've got six of these windows and we've got six casement windows and six fixed windows. The roof structure that you see is going to remain as is. It is a standing seam metal roof and so we're not going to try not to touch it. We're going to go, we're just going to insulate from the underside and the room will have a new ceiling. And I think that's kind of the big picture but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Does anybody have any clarifying questions?

Just maybe one quick question. In the packet it said that this is not visible from the street. I believe that to be correct, that none of this can be seen from any angle.

I don't think there's any way. Let's look at the site plan. You can see at Rosemary up at the top, it's a relatively narrow or 11 foot interior setback. Don't know. You've probably never seen it from the street. We've got some neighbors here.

We can

comment. We live directly across the street and you cannot see the screen porch.

Okay. To

I'm sorry, they're not sworn in.

Yeah, you're not sworn in.

But we're happy to hear what you have to say in a few minutes.

Yeah okay. I don't believe I've never seen it from the street. Don't believe it's this

much. No you can't. Full disclosure the early 90s edition I wasn't involved in but the addition of the screen porch in the garage, Tice Kuehster Architects actually did that about twenty years ago. Hence I can't confirm you can't see it from the street. Okay, thank you.

And I also recently used the Wolf, the exact same silver teak on my dock at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. And it's a quality product because it's a blended color, not just a solid color like some of the cheaper ones are. I don't want get you in trouble breath but it's a little bit more expensive than the typical. In case you didn't tell your client that. The same is true with the Elevate. That's a pool treated product. It's great but it's a nice product.

Can you confirm what the roof material is on the house and the garage?

Let's go back to the images. Gosh I think it's I don't know if I

can Are they shingle roofs?

It's a shingle roof.

Yeah. I think it's an asphalt shingle roof.

Yeah and the connector is the standing seam.

Yeah, the connector that we're seeing, let's see if I can, yeah right, yeah the connector has got the standing seam metal roof.

So the connector has a metal roof and the other buildings have a shingle roof.

That's

right. Because we do like to, when we put new parts onto old buildings, like to keep the building separate and make a clear definition between the two. And I think you're achieving that in this case through the roof material and through the large amount of glazing on each side. You're making that distinction between the two existing pieces.

Are there any other questions? If you all would like to speak, ask for public comment now. So this is it.

I think he signed right there.

And he needs to be sworn in too. I need to swear you in.

Good evening. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Wait. I need to swear you in.

Oh, okay.

I affirm that the evidence I shall give to the historic district commission on the reference application shall be the truth and nothing but the truth I so affirm. And say, I affirm and state your name.

Yes, I affirm. And my name is Vincent Joseph Kopp. I live at 501 East Rosemary Street, which is directly across the street from the applicant's home. We have lived there since 1993. And so we have seen every change that has happened to that structure since it was exchanged by the university to private ownership, which was sometime in the '90s after we had lived there already.

We had been in the old house. We had been in the new house. We watched everything happen in that space. And it is my opinion, and I believe my wife, Katherine, who is a former HTC member, agree that this is a very good project with little to no impact on the current appearance of the structure, but will have a wonderful functional improvement for the homeowner. I'm happy to answer any questions, any specific questions.

I'll try to answer those. To go back to our previous comment, you cannot see the area in question either from the front of the house or from the sides of the house, in part because at least from the street because there's existing vegetation on either side. And then there's some fencing as well.

Thank you. Are there any questions for this person?

So in conclusion, we unequivocally support the applicant.

Thank you. It's time for our discussion. Okay. If there aren't any other public anybody else in the public, can think so. Okay.

Thank you.

Anybody have you've already said some things, and you've already said some things. Any other comments or discussion?

No. Okay.

It's clean.

I would say this is a very sensitive solution. And it adheres to the guidelines and our standards.

So are you gonna make a motion or are you gonna let them?

I don't have my cheat sheet.

It's short now, you know, It got way short. I

move that the application is not incongruous with the special character of the historic district according to the application of relevant provisions of Lumo and HDC's design standards based upon the facts that have been presented in the record this evening.

Say it's

for 500 East Rosemary.

For 500 East Rosemary

Street. Thank you.

I so move. Seconded.

Second. Okay, Josh moved. Duncan seconded. I guess we should have it all called. Nancy. Aye. Michael. Aye. Josh.

Aye. Duncan. Aye.

Don. Aye.

And the chair votes aye. Yes, I think it was very nice application. Appreciate the succinct presentation as well. Now we have any discussion items. I don't know if any subcommittee wants to say anything.

No, no, no report from, who's

on the,

oh there's the retreat and there was another subcommittee too. Well I can give you an update next month about preservation month. Right.

Retreat has another meeting at the March. Okay. Probably after that meeting we can.

Okay. The April meeting. Report back. Okay. Well anything, you have anything to say Kevin?

Nothing from me. Okay.

Well

I think this meeting is adjourned.