Planning and Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

I can't see the attorney. There she is.

I can kind of see her. Okay. I think we have everybody we need. Welcome everybody to Planning and Zoning. Let's go ahead and call the meeting to order. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Yes, Chair. Chair LaCour?

Here.

Board Member Aparicio?

Here.

Board Member Chavez?

Here.

Board Member Salares? Here. Board Member Pinto?

Here.

Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you. I don't think I see, oh, yes, I do see our town liaison. Come on up. Come on down.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's always nice to visit this committee. I have very little new to report, but I do want to let you know that I was unable to attend the last commission meeting owing to an urgent personal matter. But the commission did, in my absence and Commissioner Cotto's absence, approve a ballot question on the topic that you discussed last month. So there is a question that heightens the procedural requirements for changes to the FAR specifically. I think the ballot question took a more definite shape after our discussion. So I do wanna report that to the board. Otherwise, I believe no new news from our side.

Okay, thank you. Questions for our liaison? Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you. Moving on to approval of last month's minutes. Questions, comments, or motion for approval?

Motion for approval.

Do I have a second?

Motion, second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Moving to agenda and order of business. Any comments to the way the agenda is currently laid out? Okay, hearing none, we'll move right into applications. Madam Attorney, please read your statement. Thank you, Madam Chair. I remembered, for the first time in two years.

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 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 sign code pursuant to Section 90-68, Article 6, and related sections under Chapter 90, Article 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 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 addenda should now rise and be sworn by the clerk.

Please rise and raise your right hand. Do you sign a firm to the truth only by the truth?

You may be seated. Clerk, please confirm compliance with the advertising and notice requirements.

Property 8935 Hawthorne Avenue did not meet notice requirement.

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

Yes. No.

Yes.

Let's start at the end. Thank you. Moses, did you say yes? No, I said no. Okay, Carlos?

I say yes, both of them.

Who did you speak to?

Both of the architects.

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

Hell yeah.

Thank you.

I spoke to the architect and the owners of 625 94th, and yes, I feel I can be impartial.

Fair and impartial, thank you.

Yeah, I spoke with the Byron applicant briefly. I can also be fair.

Thank you.

Thank you. No. Nicole?

No, I didn't. I'm sorry. Thank you. Ms. Solaris.

Madam Chair, thank you. Okay. So what does that mean for item 5B? Will that be heard tonight or no?

It will not be heard tonight, Madam Chair. Okay.

So anyone in the audience here for item 5B, please know we'll not be able to hear that tonight. Okay, let's begin with item 5A, 9057 Byron Avenue. Madam Planner.

Yes, tonight our first item is 9057 Byron Avenue. Staff does find this application meets the zoning code requirements and the Planning and Zoning Board should determine whether the proposed plan is consistent with and in conformance with the design guidelines per the town code. If the board finds the plan is consistent, staff has one recommendation for a condition that a minor typo on sheet SP3 zoning table is updated to correctly reflect site plan setbacks. The application is a request to construct a new two-story single-family home on 5,625 square foot lot. The subject property is located 9057 Byron Avenue in the H30B zoning district. The property is an interior lot. The proposed residence draws direct inspiration from a palace tarouk located in Melbourne, Australia. The design of the palace tarouk is rooted in style modern, which undertones of art deco and classic European symmetry. To illustrate this, the exterior design elements include white smooth stucco moldings and vertical wall accents, balanced window placements, and Juliet balconies. with black canvas awnings and projecting balconies with ornamental metal railing. The rear of the home features similar material finishes as the front and sides, and the owner of the property has a deep appreciation for the elegance and timelessness of this palace and has requested that the new home reflect its architectural character and detailing. The proposed lot coverage for this home is 1,980 and that's only 35% coverage, where 40 would be allowed. And the overall FAR is .57. The setback calculations for the additional second floor setback have been provided and comply with the minimum requirements. Just again, the zoning table on SP3 has a minor typo with regard to setback and should be corrected before they apply for the building permit.

Thank you. Question for you before we have the applicant speak. Can you confirm that this application includes all items from our checklist? I don't see a survey and I don't see materials list.

That may be an error on my loading into the docket. They did provide a survey.

I also don't see adjacent homes. So there's a lot of pieces missing in our packet for this. My apologies on that. Can you confirm whether that's something that was submitted by the applicant and just didn't get in our packet? Yes. You're confirming that?

Yes. Can you? You will confirm that.

OK. In the meantime, does the applicant wish to speak? If you would just state your name and address for the record, please. I don't think your mic is on. There's a button at the base.

I think it's on now.

There we go. Now it's on.

Okay. Good evening. My name is Jose Merlo. I'm the architect for this particular project. My address is 13273 Southwest 146th Street, Miami, Florida 33186. I quickly want to look at something because I believe that in our application. Like for example, this particular SP1 shows our particular house and then the neighboring houses and then on the bottom it shows the two houses on the right and on the left. It shows our house that is two stories and then one story on either side. Thank you. You're welcome. And the survey, I'm not sure if it's part of this presentation, but I know that we did submit the survey separately.

Okay. And materials?

The materials, I have here on my pen drive the material samples of all the materials.

OK, well, I'll let the board decide how they want to handle that. But if you'd like to give a presentation, or are you just available? OK, go ahead.

I sort of have a presentation. I think Scarlett did an excellent job because a lot of the stuff that I was gonna say, basically, she mentioned, but I do wanna say that we came here once before with basically a totally different house, and we heard your comments. You were not here, and I believe you were not here.

Nicole was not here.

Right, exactly. And I think the comments that were made were very valid. And I requested to see if I could speak to Carlos. And at the time, it was also James McKenzie. And they both agreed to meet with us. And so we met separately. And the owner of the house came with us. And basically, we talked about the deficiencies that we had on the other house and how it could be improved. One of the things that the owner mentioned to both Carlos and James was basically what he was looking for, for his own house. He used the presentation or the Polaris tour rack. It's a hotel in Australia that he has visited quite often. He loves the feeling, the looks, and all of that. So that was kind of like his inspiration to design this house. And I think that we were, in my opinion, we were able to do it in such a way that it became not a palace or not a hotel, but a residence. And complying with all of the zoning requirements and so on and so forth. And... You know, like, you know, we kind of like, you know, it shows, you know, the type of style that it is. Again, using the palace as an inspiration, the materials, the colors, and, you know, the trim work, the style, and we kind of like did a mini version of that. The owner... Again, he really likes it. I hope that you will see it and may or may not agree with me and let me know what you have. I don't know if I can increase the size of them.

We also have those in our packets. Okay.

All right. Again, the project was redesigned. Interior and exterior, we comply with all of the setbacks, height restrictions, lot coverage, landscaping. We comply with all that is required from the city.

Okay.

So if you have any particular questions that you want me to answer, I'll be glad to do so.

Thank you. OK. Is there any member of the public that wishes to speak on this application? Seeing none, I will close the public.

We should only hear about the materials. We don't have a .

Yeah, we will. Yeah. So do you want to plug your thumb drive in and show us the materials? Because it's not part of the packet currently.

I was able to confirm that we did get the survey. It was in a submittal that they prepared, they submitted last April. We got overall through the many iterations of this home, we've gotten 13 submittal packages. So I just missed it. I sincerely apologize, but it was early on we did get that information from them.

We don't have materials though so you know how we feel about that. So I think we you know if we don't have all the checklist items in the packet we probably need to move them on to the next agenda going forward. And this board may decide to do that anyway but.

I'm looking at this right now here, and I have, like you see on the left, I have colors of the stucco. We have some canvas doors.

Can you help us understand where on the facade the black stucco is?

Well, that's not the house. See, that's the thing. That's not the house.

That's a different house. This is the, and I have to apologize because the materials have not changed, but yes, this is the render of the other house that we had previously.

Okay.

Was a black thing? Was it black?

Black stucco.

Black stucco? Yeah, we decided not, based on our conversations and all that, that we're not using the black stucco. We were going to put a banding on top that was black, but we decided not to use that black. So it's really the house has a white stucco.

What are the, are these awnings or bands on the new house?

They go above the windows, and they're awnings.

Why are we looking at the wrong house? This is not the house.

Again, I apologize.

Yes. Can you just put up the right house?

Sure. Let me go back.

We're gonna have to toggle, I think, between the two.

I don't know where it is right here, but let me check. In the render? Okay, let me check something. They're not here. Okay, so this here is the.

Can you expand it, please? Hit the box in the top right.

Wait a minute.

No, no, the one.

Yeah.

Yes. As you can see, the stucco is pretty much white. So there's no black stucco. The awnings that I showed you there basically are on top of the main front door and above the windows.

So it said black canvas awnings. Are these intended to be black or will they be this color?

I think that the rendering, for some reason, the color didn't come out right, but it's supposed to be black.

And the window frames are what color?

They're bronze. Let me also check. Actually, the frames are black. You can see here that it says black sliding doors. So the frames would match the awnings black.

And this is the proposed frame here?

Yes, correct.

Okay. So white stucco, black canvas awnings, black window frames. Are there any other materials that will be on the home?

We have the railings. And again, the railings are black. We have the door.

Did we decide that the door was going to be black also, wood black?

Yeah, it's wood black. What is this here? These are the outside lighting. Again, on this particular ending, you see by the steps and on the side, let me go back to the... Well, I think we should go to, because I'm talking about the lighting right now. Come back, come back here. I want to go to this view or the rear view, the nighttime. The other one in the back. Yeah, but it doesn't, it's not showing the lighting.

So is that the house that's also different from what we have?

Excuse me?

I think that's the one we have.

I know, I'm looking at the front, okay. Yeah.

This is the back of the house. Okay.

It's the back of the house.

Yeah. Yeah, it is different than what we've got.

Yeah, the steps are different. Everything is different.

Yeah, I think my inclination is that we need this to come back in a cohesive package. It's a little hard to understand what exactly is being proposed. It sounds like we've done a lot of iterating, which is, and we've gotten to something that we like, but I don't know what the rest of the board feels, but it's a little bit of a mishmash for me.

I think that we should, as an exercise, because they've put a lot of time and effort into trying to move this forward, I think that we should look at the house because, you know, the latest proposal of the house and make comments on how we feel about the direction they're heading. And I think that they need to go back to make it a cohesive presentation. But I think it's worth it if you guys don't mind to, because I think that, If there's changes that we feel very strongly about it, I think that they should go back and work on them before they come back. Because I do have a whole list of things that I would like to tell you that I have problems with now.

Okay, before we do that, does that work for the board?

It's my opinion on it.

Okay, I'm looking at this side of the dais. Okay, so why don't we, Moses, do you have comments on the house that you'd like to share?

No additional comments at this point.

Okay, great. Carlos?

Yeah, I have a lot of comments. I think that, let's start with the front of the house, okay? I think that, I understand, because we met about this house before, and I think that you're using the present of this project, this building that you like, and you're superimposing certain scale of the building to this house, and it doesn't quite, it's not the same scale. So I think that I have a bit of a problem with the scale of the doors and the space between the doors, the rhythm of the doors and the facade. I think the whole thing is a little bit dwarfed. It's a little bit like it's a small world in Disney World. I think the scale of the house, the scale of the proportion of the things is a little bit dwarfed.

What do you mean by that? Can you be more specific?

I think that... When you look at the top elevation, I think the proportion of the windows on the top is a better proportion than the ones on the bottom. I think that the ones on the bottom are a little bit skinny and tall. And another problem I have, the way that the whole house sits on its base is a real problem. I think you haven't solved the way that the house sits on the base. I don't know what those projecting blocks are. First of all, I'm a complete no to the black and white combination of this house. I think it just doesn't fit in this neighborhood, the whole idea that this house is going to be white with black accents. I think it looks like a funerary parlor. But the boxes that you have in the back, I'm not sure what those are. And I think that the house will benefit from some kind of base around it. So the balconies land on a base and don't project. Because I think that they're not tall enough and they're not deep enough to really make that huge gesture of a balcony. Plus the windows need to open out. So I'm not sure how you're going to operate those windows because they can't open in. Because that's the only means of egress you have into those bedrooms. So you need to get out of the second way of getting out of the bedroom. You can't have those windows opening in. They need to open out. So you cannot have a railing that way. So that's a real problem. So that doesn't work.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah, that doesn't work at all.

I have to check. I'm not sure if they were supposed to be sliding. If it's sliding, it's fine.

Well, if they're sliding, it's a no for me. So I'm not going to have a house full of sliding doors facing the street. So that would be a no for me. But I'm giving you pointers.

Oh, yeah, I just want to understand. If you're saying that we should not use sliding because it's a no for you, then we should have doors that swing out so the balcony should be wide enough so that it can open outward. Is that what you're saying?

I'm reviewing what you're presenting. And I have many problems with it, but I'm trying to give you a direction to try to correct it.

Correct.

I think that the problem is that you haven't drawn because you actually want them to be, you know, French doors. But they can't be French doors because they need to open out. So you cannot have a railing. So that's a problem. That's a problem you need to solve. Solving it with a sliding door is not cutting it for me.

Okay, but what I'm saying is if we change from a sliding door to a, you know, a door that will swing out, a French door that will swing out, and we have the depth of the balcony would be enough so that when you open the door, it will swing all the way and so on and so forth. Would that be a problem or would it be okay?

You know, that's...

So you'd recess it a little bit to allow for more of a balcony.

There would be to recess quite a lot because you need to have, right now you have balconies that show almost flush with the facade, so let's assume that each one of these doors is like two and a half feet, so you have to go back two and a half feet, even more than two and a half feet back into the room, so I'm not sure how that's gonna work. You know what I mean, it's not gonna work.

But what if we make the balcony from the face of the wall, a cereal wall, out three feet? then it would work.

I don't think you're in the setback. I don't think you can project those balconies out three feet forward. I think because of your setback, you can't project them forward. So I'm not giving you solutions. I'm pointing things that are not working right now. So when you go back, you need to go back.

No, I understand. So that's why I'm writing them down to make them work. Let me go back to one thing. You were talking about the proportions of the windows down the bottom are too high that the one on slop seems to be more reasonable. In order to fix that, again, you're just mentioning something, and so I'm trying to understand.

Let me interrupt. Let me go through the list of things before I forget, because it's a whole list of things, and maybe other people have other things to say. But I think that the whole base of it is a problem, and then there's another problem, which is that you're not showing a railing on that stair. You need a railing on that stair. Putting a railing on that stair is going to be almost an impossibility, because I'm not sure that any railing in the world would work with that stair. So that's a real problem, because you need to solve how to put a railing on those steps. So you have this elevation with this tongue of steps coming out in which you need to do like going into a cruise ship sort of situation, which is classically never works. There's never a right solution to put two railings against steps going up. It's always ugly. So that's something you need to end because you're not showing the railing. And the railing is a big architectural element of the facade. And you're not showing it. And I think you're not showing it because there's no way of showing it. There's no way of solving it.

Let me ask you. I need to look into that. You're right. One of the things that occurred to me, again, railing will be, like you said, it's kind of difficult to put it there. I'm not sure if it's two foot six or what it is that you can avoid by putting a railing if you're so a distance from the step down to the earth, the ground, or whatever it is. So on the sides where we have those bushes, if the landscaping was raised so that we would accomplish not having to have railing, would that be something

You know, maybe you can put a base to the building so it wraps around towards the front. So basically you have, you go up and then you land and then you go up again. So you miss out having the railing. You have three and three.

May I interject for a moment? My preference, so we're not redesigning the house on the fly from the dais, would be that you give the high points. Okay. And then maybe you would agree to meet with the architect again in the interim. Okay.

Yeah, I'm going to keep on going. The side, can you show? I have a problem with the floor plan on the house. You basically have these long, skinny bedrooms on either side. And you have complete blank walls to the side, given to the neighbor. Those are immensely long, empty walls that we just can't accept. I mean, we're usually very much against having, because those walls actually are to the street. Those walls are, both of them are seen from the street. You can see them more on the other view that you have.

Okay, keep going. Oh, I'll keep going.

Yeah, and we're just going to hit the high points here.

Yeah. I know that you like the awnings. I have a real problem with the awnings. I think that the house doesn't need the awnings, plus they don't serve any purpose, and they just look tacked on. They don't look cohesive to the house. There's also, in the plan, there's a bit odd moment to me, which is the powder room in the rear that just is boxed into the, but that's something for you to look at. I mean, I usually don't get very involved with the floor plans, but I know you have it there because you want it to serve for the pool, too. You want to use it when you're in the pool, but in terms of logistics of it, it's a bit of a problem. The plan here doesn't, this doesn't correspond to the plan we have, so I don't know which one to respond to. As an overall massing of the back, I don't necessarily have a problem with it. I think the problem is the terrace and the way you go down. Right now, you have that railing on the left-hand side, and you have another railing there. That's a bit odd. Those two railings next to each other become an eyesore. I think that you need to find a way of maybe extending that platform for the bathroom further so you go up to both at the same time so you don't have that those weird, that insanely weird moment there. But then again, that doesn't match this plan, so I don't know which one. But that's something you need to work on. The way the house, the steps and the terrace and the connection into the bathroom, you need to work into all that next time you come here because it's not resolved. I mean, these are my...

Thank you very much. So let's get through the rest of the comments and then we'll decide.

Thank you.

Comments from this side of the board, Nicole? Okay, Adrian.

I was just wondering, I didn't see it, maybe it's here, but where's the AC unit, the exterior AC unit? Mechanical equipment.

Where are you going to fit it?

They're up, do we put them on the second floor, on the roof, or on the second floor?

On the roof.

Yeah, but we need to show that and we need to encase it.

Yeah, we need to see the sight line is clear from the street if you're going to put it on the roof.

But let me ask you, so it's allowed to be put on the roof, which is what we had intended, but it has to have like a screen or something?

The code is pretty clear what's required. It needs to be set back a certain amount. Can't be able to see it from the street. It needs to be screened, right? Right.

Just one thing. I see that the pool is just, well, I really don't know where's the pool located. I don't know if it's here because I think we're missing some information. But where's the pool in terms of the height?

The elevation of the pool. Is it in the ground, or is it raised? It shows a little curve there, but it's really at a grade level.

Grade level? OK.

I'm going to make one more suggestion, that's it. I think that you need to look at the bedrooms, because I don't know if you noticed, but the side walls that have no fenestration on either side of the bedroom need to have fenestration. We need to have windows on the side of the bedroom. And I think it's very important that the massing of this house, that the windows you have in the front, whatever you decide, wrap around the side. So there's fenestration on the side. Because you're bringing in, I don't know, like a 14-foot long wall, blank wall onto both sides of the house. And that cannot be, first of all, it would make sense to have more fenestration in this house. It would benefit from it. But certainly, it's not... a good way to presenting the house onto the street. Plus we always say no to situations like that. Okay, it's a point well taken.

I would just add a couple comments. One, the front entryway as currently designed just reads like a tunnel. Like a small dark tunnel, so I think you know as you're rethinking that front facade I would I would think about how do you make that a little bit more welcoming open prominent and then the only other comment that I have it hasn't been made yet is in regards to the landscaping plan. It looks to me like you're removing all existing trees on the site and I would like you to reconsider that and try to keep as many trees as you can and supplement those with many, many more, especially along the side setbacks for privacy from your neighbors. So I'd like to see a much more robust landscaping plan that does not remove existing mature trees.

One more comment and I'm done. I think that you're sticking to the idea of this palace that you like as present, but the scale of what you present is very different from this scale. I would suggest for you in the next exercise to look at the possibility of not keeping those small little windows that you have with the little teeny balconies. I think that I would suggest to just do one bigger window and one bigger window, a real window with a setback that you can open and it really works. Because I think you're sticking to an idea that is not working, you have to let it go. Because there's no way of making this work. Because the only way they're making it work is setting it back to feet, and you can't set it back to feet. And the other problem is that you cannot have them sliding doors. So I would suggest to get rid of the four, make two, work out the front door, the whole entrance sequence, and you'll see the house will become so much better and so much easier and less forced. And then you put windows on both sides, and the whole house will look infinitely better.

So I think I would entertain a motion to defer this.

Yeah, definitely.

And we can try to defer you to the February meeting, if you'd like, if you could be ready. I think it's very important that we have the plans for the house that are synthesized. Everything works together. The material support. Renderings, materials, yeah. all checklist items, please. Okay, so I'll entertain that motion. Defer to date certain February meeting.

Motion to defer. Motion to second.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Madam Chair, I apologize. Was Mr. Pinto second the motion? Yes, correct. Thank you. Board Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Chavez?

Yes.

Board Member Solarez. Yes. Board Member Pinto. Yes. Chair LeCour. Yes. Motion carries. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. See you soon. Carlos, may I ask you a question? So we will work on all of the suggestions that you guys have made. I think that's very good. If at any point we may have a question for you, can we call you or visit you or whatever?

Absolutely. You can.

Okay.

Very good. And by the way, anybody else in the board? we can see you or if you have anything that we can work.

You are totally able to reach out to us and if we can't accommodate that, we will.

I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

Okay, we'll move on to item 5C, 625 94th Street. And if you guys wouldn't mind taking your window with you, because I'm looking at George through the window. Thank you.

If I hadn't got a haircut, that's okay.

Madam Planner. Yes, staff finds that this application meets the zoning code requirements and asks that the Planning and Zoning Board would determine whether this proposed plan is consistent with the design guidelines. Staff recommends approval with the condition that a drainage and grading plan is submitted at the time of building permit and determined to be consistent with the code. This application is a request to construct a new two-story single family home on 6,060 square foot lot. The subject property is located at 625 94th Street in the H30B zoning district. The property is a corner lot. The exterior design elements on the front facade includes stucco finish and wood siding. Bronze mullion frames are proposed for all the windows, and the front facade provides articulation on both the first and second floors with the prominent entryway and wraparound corner windows. giving visual interest to the home. The rear of the home features similar material finishes as the front and sides, and the proposed lot coverage for this home is less than 40% at 37%. The lot for the first floor with the floor area ratio is coming in at 0.6, and setback calculations for additional second floor setback have been provided, and they do comply with our requirements. And again, a grading plan was not provided, but that will be provided upon building permit.

Thank you. Would the applicant care to present? Come on up.

All right, dear member of the boards, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, too.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity of this hearing.

You can pull this up for your, there you go. Yeah, it's much better. Go ahead and state your name and address for the record.

Sure. Name is Dan Amselem and Isabelle Marcus Amselem. The address is 625 94th Street, Florida, 33154, if I'm correct. 625 94, you got it. All right, perfect. So we are French native, and we are living in California. So we made all the trip today to be with you tonight to present our home project. We are moving with our family. We have three children, two daughters, 23, 21, and a young son, 10 years old. And we are here to really present our dream home project with the support of George, which we had the tremendous chance to meet. Isabel, you want to say a word maybe about Surfside?

Yeah, absolutely. I just want to tell it.

So yeah, so when we decided to move to Florida, we visited several communities, cities, particularly in Miami. And when we first visited Surfside, we immediately, you know, thought that that was it. That was to be our home. We appreciated that it feels like a true neighborhood. You know, it reminds also like a small neighborhood in Paris, very lively, restaurant, terraces, walkable. I still don't drive, so very important to me. And also, it feels like a true community, very family-oriented. We had the chance to enjoy the community center, which is truly fantastic and a hub for families. And we also saw the appreciation of the city for the well-being of its residents. It feels safe, clean, and like San Francisco, where we come from. And no, we are very eager to settle down.

And the seawater is much warmer than in San Francisco, I can tell you.

That's a true note. So we are very happy to be here with you tonight, and we hope you will like the project. Welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you.

So George, you have the floor. Thank you.

George Kouselis, 9225 Collins Avenue. First, thank you for the opportunity to present this home to you. And thank you for some of the comments I've received from you over the way. They've been very helpful. So I'm going to just walk you through the presentation. This first image, which is the front of the house basically on bay, gives you a good idea of what we're trying to do. This is an understory home. And it's meant to be light and float and hover above the site. So you can see the carport on this side. And this portion of the house, which is the 10-foot elevation, kind of hovers over the landscape. It's actually open underneath. Things like the column here, which is more of a fin, and this one, these are set back so that this northern portion of the house projects out and floats. The staircase and the planter at the center are really meant to anchor the house to the ground, so kind of like floats out on either side, like wings. The staircase is rather gradual and subtle. And... is basically meant to work with a level site. So the site itself, which you'll see on later images, starts at 4.2 at the street, but quickly gets up to about six and seven on the existing property. And so we maintain that, but in order to get the transition and not have a slope in the front yard, we do it through a series of low walls that get you up. So this platform you see here is at about six feet, and then of course the house is at 10. the front stoop is at 9.6. A couple other features that you'll see on this elevation which keep on recurring in other images are the materials which are basically stucco, wood, and aluminum window frames. These features that you see here, these white, crisp, thin features, these wrap certain corners of the house, both in the front and the back and upstairs. You can see the same thing happening here. And they're meant to give a lightness to the detailing, sort of a slenderness to the slab edge. And they also don't enclose the facade as a frame, but are always open. on one corner and wrap around. And that corner is glass, which basically reaches to the edge.

So that corner is glass there?

Yeah, you'll see that in an upcoming thing. So this is the inside, which really doesn't interest you that much. But it gives you an idea of how the back of the house is really glazing on three sides at the living room and the dining room, which you can't see in this image. And kind of the landscape of the backyard will encircle the house. Here's a quick view of how the house was generated as a concept and some refinements along the way and I guess there you can see that image right there in the bottom right corner. I'm going to quickly cycle through some renderings here, the back of the house, back of the house from the southeast, the front of the house at night from the southwest, and then from the northwest there. Again, the southwest, the survey, which this is the math. You know how to make this full frame? This is just arithmetic, nothing interesting at this point with this. Here's the site plan. We're operating under the 60% provision here which requires a nine foot setback. So on the north side at the top of the page you have nine feet, which is almost twice what the typical five foot setback would be. And on the southern edge, we have a 10 foot swale in public space right here, and then a required 10 foot setback. So we basically have 20 feet of landscape on that edge. Here you can see this zigzag. This is that low wall. This is the one that you saw in the rendering with the house number. Then it drops down in height and works its way back And we'll see a couple of other things that we're retaining on the site in a moment. Oh, in case it comes up, the AC is right here on the second floor, and the pool equipment is here behind the wall that encloses the pool. So it's hidden from the neighbor. These are the existing trees. So there's the house that's being removed and a gazebo in the pool. All of this landscaping here, which you'll see in a photo in a few moments, that's being retained. Even though it's in public space, we're not going to touch it. There are the houses, the neighboring houses. One of interest is this one, which is a new house seen under construction in this Google Earth view. And then some of the other houses including two houses that are maybe about a decade old right across the street There's a cross-section through the property showing this house relative to its neighbors in either direction Okay, here's the existing house Most of it is hidden by a large hedge on Bay all of this landscaping you see here That's the wall that we're keeping and all this landscaping we're keeping

That's on 94th. Yeah. Okay.

This is the understory plan, really. Just this area right here, this is the indoor part of the understory. It's storage, it's access, there's an elevator there to get you up through the house. Everything else is open. And we pick up about, in addition to the 35% pervious area that we're required to have, we pick up an additional 28% or so under the house in pervious area. I'm not going to spend too much time here because it's going to be easier to understand in section, but the house is split kind of like a split level. So this rectangular area that you see here is four feet above the primary L-shaped floor plan of the house, which is down at 10 feet. So you go up that staircase, part of the way up four feet, and then you have that area that is over the carport and the understory. Second floor, same thing happens. So this rectangle is higher than the primary part of the second floor, the rectangle to the northern edge. In this case, it's 30 inches higher, and you can see that's the only portion that really projects all the way out toward the neighboring property. Everything else is set, pulled way back from the street on the north and well back from the side on the north. And there are wraparound terraces and planters and key areas, which all that really shows up better in renderings as we proceed. The roof, you can see the location of the ACs there. They're not on the roof. They're on the floor below. I didn't point them out, but they're on that terrace behind their own little corral. All the drainage is internal, so there's no downspouts or rain leaders or gutters or anything on the house. The elevations in this view, they just kind of are a record of where the materials go, which I'll pass out in a bit. We don't need to dwell there. Here's the house in section. This one kind of is interesting because it's where you can see the living room gained some height because that second floor on the northern half is up above by a little bit, by 30 inches, and it shows up better here. This is a cross-section that both allows you to visualize the dimensions easier and the relationship of the southern part of the house to the northern part and the stair that goes up the middle of the house and kind of this major wall structural line and kind of important wall in the geometry of the house the aesthetics of the house internally landscape plan so everything you see down here this is all existing and a little bit is relocated here so we kind of take everything that's there and it's used on the property and then the rest of the property is kind of lushly planted one to create a nice screen around the pool and the back terrace And then also really make that 20-foot zone against 94th Street as lush as we can. A lot of the low shrubs are picked and arranged, clustered in textures and colors in a way that work with the house. At night... You can see it's basically lit up in the backyard We don't want this house to look like a resort. So as you've seen in the renderings Elsewhere on the house, you know stoops are lit stairs are lit, but there's no up lighting on trees or anything other than the backyard and The materials, and I'll pass them out in a second. We have a wood. We have board-formed concrete on low walls. And again, if you look at the elevations, the actual diagrammatic elevations, you'll see specifically where things are located. So we have a taupe stucco that is the bulk of the house, wherever it's stucco. Those frames that wrapped around everything are in a crisp white to pop them out. And then we have a wood and the wood is Kind of a warm colored gray like gray and we have that here the other thing you asked about the windows you can kind of see the the corner detail of the window So this glazing here that is at the corners is structurally glazed, which means the glass is adhered to the mullion on the outside so that when you get to a corner, the glass is basically coming together like that. So it kind of creates this very glassy, transparent feel as it wraps the corner, and that also gives meaning to that white frame that wraps around.

What type of wood is that?

Well, we got it here. It's a thermally modified wood. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's wood. You'll see it. What they do is they cook it longer than even kiln-dried wood, and it kind of changes the cell structure a bit so it's much more stable, dimensionally stable, rot stable, insect stable, and all that. But you'll see the sample. It's wood. It's not like some reconstituted product. I think these elevations kind of give you a better idea than the diagrams of what the house is like, and I wanted to call your attention to this. This is the side that faces north and the neighbor, and we've tried to make a lot of effort to introduce glazing and not only glazing like random windows wherever they happen, but in a way particularly here, which you'll see in another view, which you have those two frames coming together, not quite touching like seas, and creating a nice little composition on that elevation. The other ones you've seen several times in renderings. This just quick rendering studies that move around the house. So you can see how the geometry of the house plays out as you would move around it, the glassy corners, the floating volumes, that sort of thing. Same thing from the back. And here is just some more details kind of Here how the house is meant to float above the landscape. And over here, this is that elevation I was talking about that faces the neighbor. Finally, we're getting to the end here. Volumetrically, this may help you understand the house better than the plans would. So this is the master bedroom up in here and its terrace. And you can see this whole portion of the house is 27 and a half feet tall. This portion is 30 feet minus an inch tall. And this is all open. So there is no second story here facing north and the neighbor. And you get an idea of how everything just fits together in 3D. And finally, here you have aerial views of the house and the town. There it is right there with its neighbors, the guys across the street. There it is again right here and those are those two houses I was pointing to. This house is always under construction in these views but it's actually done as you saw in that one photo. And there it is again right there and over here. And let me just hand out the materials real quick and then that'll be our presentation.

Okay, thank you.

This is the bronze anodizing. We're somewhere between these two, but they're bronze and they're anodized, not durinar or kynar. This is the wood. This gives you an idea of the wood. It's not going to be brown. It's not going to be orange. And you can look at it. You can see that it's actually wood. Yeah, that's the real side. But that's the direction we're going in. We're looking for slightly some alternatives to that basic light color, light neutral to warm color. This is nothing other than it looks an awful lot like concrete. So you can kind of look at the samples together and see how concrete and that go together. and the aluminum. What's that?

This is nothing.

It's just, to give you an idea, everyone knows what concrete looks like, but if you want to put everything next to each other, imagine that as concrete. It has the modeling and the texture of board-formed concrete. We're not using that material on the building. The paint is the one marked in red there. generally, but like with all good paint selections, the final color should be made on the building in the light. But it's in that neighborhood, and if you flick through this, it's definitely not bluish. There's all kinds of grays in here to give you an idea, but it's in that neighborhood. And here we have the windows, and it's a bronze anodized finish. So if you put the wood with that, and you kind of get an idea. And of course, what isn't on here is the white of the frames. But there you go. You got white. And that concludes our presentation. So we'll be happy to entertain any questions or comments you have. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for the very comprehensive presentation. Would anybody from the public wish to speak on this one? Okay, then I will close the public hearing and open commentary to the board. Let's start on this side. Nicole, do you have comments, questions? Not yet, no. Not yet, okay. Adrian?

Yes, so you basically went through all the details and questions I had, but I see on A705, If you look at the part of the first floor terrace, you have some stairs going down there, and there's no railing on the front of the house. So I was just wondering.

You're talking about the stairs from the street to the house?

No, sorry. So on the top left image on A705, that one, you have some stairs going down. It's like a terrace, right?

Right, there's an upper terrace and a lower terrace.

Okay, so when you go down, there's no railing on the, which is the front of the house, I guess, like on the, if you can expand the.

Okay, so what you're looking at is right there. There is a glass railing that continues across.

Oh, there's a glass railing.

Yeah, in the rendering, you know, glass disappears. But there's a railing there. It shows up on the elevations. If you go to, well, I think it may show up on these as well, but maybe not. Problem with renderings. If you look right there, you'll see the glass railing goes across. So it's the same one. The turquoise, yeah. I don't see it.

I think it's probably easier to see. You can see it on the back.

If you look at sheet 302. But it's not in the perspective, correct?

Well, it is, but it's just so clear that it's not coming across.

I don't see it at all.

Yeah, it's there, and it shows in some of the views. Yeah, some of the angle views, you can see it.

You can see it.

Okay. I'll talk about the second floor.

Other comments? Yeah.

No, it looks nice, right? But again, you know how I feel about terraces in Surfside? Nobody uses them, but it's too hot.

Part of the thing about the terraces, they're a setback. The code creates them.

No, I know. It looks really nice, and with going down and all that, I would use it. That's a nicer one from what I've seen before. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, George.

Thank you. Okay. Moses, any comments or questions?

I mean, yeah, it's a nice, very nice home, but it just doesn't really align with what I've seen in this town typically. It just doesn't really fit my opinion, and I'm not the biggest fan of the off-side of the, I'm assuming what the living room is and the bedroom, and it looks like they're on different levels, and then there's a third floor. It just doesn't, it's not even to me. It doesn't.

The house, the room on the left in the image is an office, a home office. The room on the right is a guest bedroom, and the master bedroom is up above all that on top of the front door. And the living and dining, basically most of the house is on that 10-foot level going to the back. Towards the back?

Yeah. Okay.

Carlos?

Okay. I mean, I've seen this house quite a lot, but I think that I have one comment that has to do with design, and it has to do with the fact that basically the part on the north side, I think the, you know, let's get over the fact that this house is bigger, more boisterous than we would ever want it to be. So we have to get over the hump. I think the south side of the house, I think because of the green and the way you have handled the landscape, it's going to be mitigated quite a lot from that view. I think there's a lot of greenery and it'll be pretty, yeah, from the, what street is that?

94th. 94th.

There, stay right there. This is the part that I have more problem with the house, and I've always had a more problem with the house. It's that corner. It's the corner right above the MG or whatever that is. I think I have a problem with that box sitting on that column and how, to me, that whole side of the house is a little bit unresolved. I think that perhaps has to do that I keep on wishing that that corner of the house was as light as the southern side of the house, meaning that the glass would wrap around it so it would feel like it floats more. I know that's an office in there. I think that's your office, but there's a lack of lightness to that whole way that that white pier meets the slab and then there's a column right below. I think that it's not as well resolved in my eye as the other side of the house. I think that I will be, because that's the side that will be seen the most when you travel south on the road. This is pretty much, that corner of the house is the one that is seen the most. You see, when you look at the other sides, they seem so much lighter and I get your reading of having these volumes float, which I think that's why the house is successful. It's because these otherwise heavy pieces of architecture are rendered so they float as boxes sort of randomly stacked in these three-part type composition. I think on the north side of the house, when you look at the house, that wall is not a success. In my eyes, it's not a success.

What we could do, one thing, is the wood panel that you see in this view here, which is larger right to left than most other panels, could be reduced quite a bit. The glass could be taken away. As far over, I wouldn't take it all the way to the frame so that there's a consistency between the white frame and wood and glass.

George, can you go back to that so we know what we're talking about? The other perspective, that one. Yeah.

Yeah, so you're saying like the wood paneling, you could remove. I mean, I think part of Carlos is.

This all feels, it doesn't feel like the rest of the house to me. This corner of the house feels a little bit stacked up, things stacked up on each other. And I think that you need to make that volume over the garage is key to make it feel like it floats above the understory in my eye. Because I think you did it on the other side of the house. In this side, it looks like that box is sitting on a slab on another column.

I agree with that comment. My biggest problem when I look at the side is the window. Is that long?

Well, that's the reason why I think that window.

I think that long and window is what I think.

I mean, I would be advocating to turn and have another long window so that, try to work out that corner so it becomes lighter.

So, yeah, we could do a lot of things like that. One option, one solution could be, first of all, this wall. You know, it's his office, so that's... Yeah, so this wall here can actually go further back and maybe not read as a column, but a base to the house. So it's... connected to the house behind, what that does is make the floating off the front a bit more pronounced. And that's easy to do here because the beam itself that allows this to happen is... Do you need that piece of white frame that comes down on that?

Could you just eradicate that? Can you free out that whole corner so it becomes a free corner? Yeah. That's what you need to do.

We could turn the corner, yeah. What we'll do is we just... Turn the corner here.

Because this feels unresolved. And actually, it's the part of the house, because I think the other corner is going to be mostly covered by trees. But this corner won't be. And I think you need to make, again, that whole, actually, that volume needs to be the lightest volume in feeling with the rest of the house, because it's the one that flies over there.

So how about if we do this and maybe make it a condition that we, what you see in this elevation, basically this, instead of terminating here, wraps around to the other side and that this corner is another version of that. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Oh, you mean get rid of the wood and just make it double?

Or the wood can shift so that the wood, there's a little bit of wood there because you want the wood to echo through the house. Can you free up that corner and make a glass like the one here? No, that's the idea. That's what you need to do. So that corner would be that same kind of glass.

So the one in the south and the corner both have the same treatment, so they look like the glass, they float over the understory.

Where does the wood go then?

So the wood, basically the glass would create a glass corner, just like the one to the southwest. And there may be a little piece of wood in there, similar size. To this one, right? Yeah, to that one. Right like that, just so that the wood echoes through all the elevations, but in fact that the corner itself is glassy. It turns the corner. The white frame doesn't come down.

It's also going to provide... an incredible viewpoint for the house, because if you can stand in that corner and have glass, actually the view down that way is actually quite beautiful. You might even take a peek of the water if you look across. Yeah, we'd be happy to do that.

Just remember that this is facing west, right? So my only thought is, I think part of the reason why they chose the right side of that volume to have that corner is because you're looking right down the street to the street end there. So that's the better view, I think. And you've got the home right there on the north.

So having the opacity is... Yeah, the better view is to the southwest, but I think we can do both in this case, where we make that corner glassy to kind of create the lightness of the house.

I think his office would be a panoramic view to that corner. And we introduce... We'll make it float, and then you can have a restful wall, so you can have bookcases, so you can have...

Right, and we introduced a little bit of wood in between the two corners.

Both corners are consistent? Yeah. That's what I had to say.

I agree with that. I think it's now going to make the house cohesive.

If we could do that as a condition, if we could do that as a condition, that would be great. We're more than happy to do it.

It's what I have to say. I still lost with the railing. Were we talking about the railing in the front of the house?

No, second story. No, second story.

So how are you handling the railing in the front of the house? You don't need one because it's never 30 inches above the grade.

Is it? Really? Never. 30 inches is the... Because you have a plat...

There's a little... So there's a mini platform... Right behind the house numbers, you go up a few steps. Okay, so you don't need it. You don't need it. Okay, good, because it would look terrible.

Can we look at the rear elevation, please?

The elevation or like a rendering?

Either. Maybe rendering.

Well, there's a...

So on the right side of this is a... You have sort of a pop-up window above the plinth. Is that just part of this? That's the first floor still, correct?

Yes, that's where that... It's like a clear story window. Yeah, where the living room is taller than the rest of the floor by a few feet. Not enough to hit the 15 feet by any means, but...

Okay. Okay, well, I think... I love the landscaping in this house. I really appreciate that you've kept everything, that you've added to it. I think it looks very lush and beautiful. And I think you've added, you have a lot of detail and fenestration and thought went into this. So I'm good with the change, the condition that we've discussed. Is there anything else?

Two more things to say and I'm done. I think that as we move forward with these bigger houses, I think that you've done a good job because you've understood the fact that you know, we have to landscape the hell out of these houses. It's the only way that we're going to be able to absorb these houses in this town, is that they need to be, and I think you've done it beautifully. I think that if you understood it, I think the volumes, the articulation of volumes, like they feel like they float over landscaping. And I think you've managed to get the gist of What I've been saying is that we want the bigger houses. There's nothing we can do about it. It's how we handle these bigger houses. And I think it's the lightness of the volumes, the amount of fenestration and glass, and the amount of landscaping that makes a house work. The other thing I need to say about the house is that I'm not 100% sure. This feels a little bit drift woody to me. Yeah, that's why we're not happy with it. I don't like that wood at all. I think you need to keep on searching.

The sample we really like, the color we want to bring, is far less drift woody. I think it should be more honey colored. But it's fake. But it's fake. So we want to find the right color. Okay. But you get an idea.

I just think it should be more honey-colored and more even and very warm.

Yeah, it definitely needs to be more even. Yeah. The other thing is that that is a knot-free wood. So when you look at it at a distance, it'll look less drift woody than it does on the table there.

But yeah, we agree that- It looks kind of like formboard concrete from afar.

Yeah, we don't want it to look too rustic, too drift woody. But we do want it to be, we don't want Ipe. on the house.

No, no, got it, got it. It just has to be warmer and lighter and all that.

We have one more. Did you get all your comments out? Think about it. Adrian?

Oh, no, I'm done, I'm done.

No, I think if we're going to move forward with that condition, just be mindful of the neighbor with the landscape, because then you're going to open that part to that neighbor. So if you can put some landscape there to have more privacy, even for you guys, right?

We will update the landscape if, oops, right now we have you're really talking about what you're looking there are some silver button woods which look a lot like a olive tree in the Mediterranean which is near and dear to the applicants and so it's a kind of a close analog to those in color and texture so we'll we'll do something there to We may adjust the pruning of them, the size of them, something, but yeah, that corner, tree number three of the three gray ones you see up there.

I think that the corner needs to go, whatever you do when you free up that corner, I think it needs to, have something to do with the column down below. We know with the column that is holding that whole volume. So I think that we talked about that column and how it meets. And I keep on wanting to free up that whole corner so the column looks like it's this piece of the corners kind of levering off of that column down below. So we're talking about this column here. This corner kind of levers off of that column. Because I think there's a redundancy that we're getting finally away from, which by opening that corner, that column structurally makes more sense. See that column? And then there was two columns randomly stacked on top of each other. Once you free that, I think the whole thing is going to be there. You see it there again. And the relationship of the- That corner is going to be pivoting off of the edge of that column. That's all I have to say.

Okay. I think we're ready to make a motion. I think the motion is for approval with staff conditions and the condition on the east elevation. How can we clarify? It's northeast.

Northwest. Northwest. Northwest. Northwest.

Northwest. Thank you. So that's the motion. Would somebody like to make it? Second. Well, I can't make the motion. I'll make the motion. Okay, moved by Nicole. Can I have a second?

I second.

I'll give it to Adrian.

Adrian.

For the second, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Yes, Chair. Board Member Aparicio?

Yes.

Board Member Chavez? Yes. Board Member Solarez? Yes. Board Member Pinto?

Yes.

Chair LaCour, yes. Motion carries.

Okay, congratulations. Thank you very much. Looking forward to seeing this come. Beautiful home. All righty.

You see where the haircut gets you?

All right, I think that brings us to ordinances. Would somebody like to read this ordinance? Thank you very much, yes. Nice to meet you guys and welcome to town.

Welcome.

All right, ordinance.

Item 6A, an ordinance of the Town Commission of the Town of Sarasota, Florida, amending ordinance number 2024-1785, which amends sections 90-45, setbacks, and 90-46, not standards, in the H-30A and H-30B districts, approving for survivability, approving for inclusion in the code, providing for conflicts, and providing for an effective date, item 6A. Okay, thank you.

Scarlett, you're presenting this one? Yes. OK.

Yes. If you recall, at the December meeting, the board requested an opportunity to have some graphics that demonstrate what the changes to the code would be. We were trying to land between 17 feet for the maximum height of a single story versus 22 feet. This did go to the last commission meeting and they deferred it back to the board per your request to have further discussion and review and to review the graphic which I prepared for you for this meeting. So on the left side of the graphic, you have... Do you want to pull that graphic up? I do not have it on the presentation. On the left side of the graphic, it is showing you a 22-foot total height of the building. And on the far right, I think it was also requested that you show it in perspective of a home that is not raised on a fill of five feet.

Okay, can you walk, can you frame the issue again for us just to remind us exactly what we're, there's four structures here. Yes.

Yes, to show the overall height of 22 feet versus the 17 feet.

For the single story structure? Correct. Okay, so we've got two story structures in the middle. What are we looking at for those?

That was just to kind of show a context on a typical street.

Okay, so these homes are 22 feet high? Yes. Sorry, 27 feet high. So not at our maximum, in the middle.

Yes.

Are all of these homes, okay, so everything except the home on the right is raised to our required 10-foot finished floor? Correct.

The one on the left is not raised? It looks raised.

Everything except the fourth house.

Except the last one.

Mr. Aparicio, can you please pick up your microphone, please? I'm so sorry.

Thank you. Yes, I guess everything is raised except the one on the right.

The right, number four, mm-hmm. Okay, so help us, walk us through this. We have the home on the left, number one, and the home on the far right, number four, are the two homes that we're considering different heights for? Or do we have a home, I'm not following, so I need your help sort of walking through. Right.

We just wanted to show you just a graphic of what this would look like on a typical street. Really, the question is, where we landed last time is, do we allow the maximum to go to 22 feet, or do we stay at 17 feet?

Okay, but both of these are at 17 feet.

The one on the left is 22 feet in height. Okay.

The highest point. Because you're adding the five or? Yes. You're adding the five.

And that's how the code, that's how we measure, yes. And then the one on the far right is at 18.6 if we're looking at the, we're looking at the grade to roof height. Yes.

So if we're establishing the five as a standard, that you say that the houses on one story once they're raised, they're going to end up being 22 feet.

Yes.

That's what she's trying to show us, that they're going to be 22 feet. One story. Which is almost like a two-story house. Right?

Yes. I guess I'm just, I'm confused why this is at a five-foot finished floor elevation.

To get to the 10 feet because of the crown of the road.

Oh, so it would be 10.

Right, so it's 10 FFE, right?

Yeah.

Yes. I think what we're noting is that there's five feet, and that's additional five feet, and that's the finished bore elevation. But that would be at an actual 10 feet above.

Crown Road?

NGVD. Okay.

Let me see here.

So what this is trying to show is that if it goes up to where the house needs to be, we're going to end up with a house that's going to be 22 feet high. Yeah. So that's what we were questioning. It's that these houses are going to be almost like a two-story house.

Yeah, I think I'm confused by the reference points. Because typically, for example, we measure the height of a home to the beam, right? Not to the top of the roof. Correct. So on the left one, you're saying that's five feet plus 17 feet to the beam gets us to the 22 feet. And then the roof can extend another, I think, two feet, two inches above that for the parapet, which I think that's a little off scale, right? Okay. Yeah. So I think this first home would only be allowed a slope of the roof if I'm, tell me if I'm doing that correctly. But I think you go to the roof and then you get like a 10% on the roof on top of that. Or I guess if you're below the 30 feet you can do whatever you want. You could have a really pointy roof. Right.

But doesn't it have to do with the fact that we're trying to max The one-story homes were discussed 17 versus a 22, and we were trying to figure out if...

But 17 considers all the way to the top. It's not the beam here in this one, right? No.

No, it doesn't. Yeah.

Imagine having a 17 inside ceiling. Well, it's 17 plus the five plus two for the parapet.

Well, it's unclear about that. I think we need to but the 22 is the five feet to the top, to the finished floor elevation. Five, yes. Plus the 17 to the bottom of the beam, or to the bottom of the roof.

I think this is considering all the way here. Because just think about 17 feet from the five to the ceiling or to the beam, right? It's too much. So I think you're considering all the way to the top of the roof.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay, but that's not how our code runs, does it? I thought, I think we need some reference points here. Like here's NGVD, you know, like we have NGVD, we have finished floor, it has to be at 10. You know, we can't go higher than 30 to the beam, and then 33 is the max with a parapet. What are we showing here? These are all, the first three homes are, add five feet to get up, which I think a lot of new homes are adding more than that, but I'm just, I'm just, I'm not sure this helps me understand the issue.

So normally the height is 30 feet, right? And then it starts, but that's from the crown of the road or is it NGV?

Crown of the road.

Okay, so here we're considering the five as the crown of the road, no?

Yes. No, the crown of, this is five feet above the crown of the road.

Yeah, we need the.

Right, or is this?

No, yes, the crown of the road in this scenario is five feet, and then we go additional five feet to get to the 10 foot.

Additional five feet, okay.

So the 5 feet FFE is 10 feet above NAGVD, or NAG, what do you call it?

And from there you have 20 feet. In GVD.

Up, right?

i thought we were saying 17. no i mean yeah the max is 30 so it's 20 right for two floors is let's say 10 each right you're talking about a two-story house or one yeah two story any house and normally well yeah any house and in fact you can tell me what's the normal height of less ceiling So here the houses, when there are two floors, they're really high, right? So they're, they're taking advantage of the whole height. So they go 10 feet and 10 feet, right? Height. So what I'm saying is that here in this house, in the one number one, this is 17 feet for just one story house. So what's the height from the floor, from the 10 feet to the ceiling of the first floor?

It's the 17 minus the structure, so whatever that is. Two feet, so it's 15 feet clear. Which I think is enough, right? This is an insanely high ceiling, yes. But at some point we're discussing... EXACTLY. TECHNICALLY YOU COULD HAVE A TECHNICALLY YOU COULD HAVE A SINGLE-STORY HOUSE THAT HAS 30 SINGLE-STORY HOUSE THAT HAS 30 FEET. FEET. BECAUSE WE WERE PROPOSING 17 BECAUSE WE WERE PROPOSING 17 IF I RECALL. IF I RECALL. WE HAD THAT DISCUSSION. WE HAD THAT DISCUSSION. DIDN'T WE SAY 17? DIDN'T WE SAY 17? WE DID. WE DID.

WE WERE SAYING 22 AND THIS WE WERE SAYING 22 AND THIS EXERCISE WAS SUPPOSED TO HELP US EXERCISE WAS SUPPOSED TO HELP US COMPARE THOSE TWO OPTIONS. You know, I think that 22 really comes into play more with the understory, right? Like, George, do you want to help us out here? Sorry, I didn't see you there.

George Kouselis, 9225 Collins Avenue. First of all, there's a totally separate provision in the code that a story can't be higher than 15 feet. And where that comes into play is if some...

That I didn't know.

Yeah. So where that comes into play is that if somebody had like a two-story living room, from a floor area point of view, it would count twice. The air at the second floor plus the actual floor you're standing on. Up to 15 feet. You can't fit two stories in 15 feet. So... It really for any home that would have like a bubble inside it you would get docked twice So nobody could build a one-story house that goes up 30 feet Unless they wanted to build the first floor up it, you know much higher, right? So you got to keep that in mind hold that in your head so NGVD can range anywhere, sorry, street grade can range anywhere from let's say four, sometimes a smidge under to almost seven in the high sixes. The house that we just presented, 4.22. So when you go up to 10, your delta from crown of road to finish floor can anywhere be almost as high as much as seven feet. Not quite, but somewhere in there. So you take the 22 feet, you subtract seven, and you end up with 15, which is one story. So basically, that 22 feet works because everything in the code is in sync. Now, doesn't mean you can't make it lower, but that's where that weird, seemingly arbitrary number of 22 feet comes from. It's basically seven as being probably the maximum you would ever be above the crown of a road to get to 10 feet. There are some lots that are down at like 3.2, 3.3. I've never seen one that's actually at three, so you're never gonna quite reach seven. But in our case, we were at 5.8 above Crown of Road to get to the front door or to the finish floor. So that's where the 22 feet comes in. So this does make, this is very rational. Whether it's too much.

But in that case, you're setting the 22 feet for the extreme case of somebody whose Crown of Road is at three feet, right?

Right.

So why are we linking? I mean, I know all of our height measurements are from Crown of Road. I guess I'm just trying to think, like, would it not make sense to make this designation from the finished floor elevation, which is the same no matter what your crown of road is?

You could do that, but think about it, that you're 30 feet. Basically, the person with a low crown of road gets kind of penalized because they're starting lower. So if you're a fortunate person that has a six-foot street in front of them, they can have... Not really, because everybody has to be up at 10 feet. Yeah, but you see, you measure from, say, if I'm at six feet, that means I can put the top of my roof at 36 feet. If I'm at four feet, I can only put it at 34 feet, yet we're both starting from the same 10 feet. So you already do that where you penalize the people on lower streets, but, you know, that's already cooked into the code generally.

Gotcha. And... So these diagrams don't quite reflect what you're saying, George.

I haven't seen any diagrams.

Yeah.

I'm trying to understand the house in the middle. So it has a 27-foot from grade roof, so it's three feet shorter than it could be, but it looks like a two-story house. Yeah, they both are. The house on the left, well, usually we measure on sloped roofs, we measure to the tie beam.

Right. That's what was, I was confused about that.

And so if you notice also, if you look at the package that we presented, the house next door, because it had a sloped roof, was actually taller than our house by about four feet, but it's getting measured to the tie beam. It's totally legit, but it has a peaked roof on top that adds to the height. That doesn't count. And I think that happened when you were chair last, which the idea was... Move away from flat roofs. Yeah, because otherwise people that were building sloped roof houses were chumps for getting penalized by four feet. Right. Right out of the gate.

Right. Yeah, so I don't know. I'm having trouble conceptualizing still. I mean, the math, I understand what you're saying. That would be the most permissive way to do it. And if we're limited to the 15 feet, per story, then it is what it is. I think it's just the question becomes if someone wants to build an understory home with an eight-foot platform or something that's at 14 feet above 14-foot finished floor elevation and add a 15-foot story house, then they're going to have a 30-foot high, 29-foot high single-story home.

if they started higher than normal.

Yeah, which you can. So it also begs the question, is there a max height for the understory?

I don't think this has anything to do with understory. It's max height for a deliberately one-story home.

Right, but a one-story home could be an understory home.

Yeah, it can be. So yeah, the problem with this, and this shows you why it's getting really a lot of movement.

We had one. Remember, we had one. Part of us was presenting one.

That was an understory with a sink. A lot of moving parts. So what happens here? That hypothetical 30-foot-tall one-story home because the guy starts higher, right? Right. I really want to be high and dry. Fine. And we say, well, we already accept 30-foot-tall houses. What's the harm? Well, the harm is that it's not subject to second-floor limitations. So it can go up 30-foot everywhere. Yep. That's the problem.

Right. So you convinced me on the 22 feet for regular single stories. I think I could get on board with that. But we have to find a way not to have a castle in the sky on top of an understory.

What if you basically did the 22 feet, adding 15 or 17 feet, whatever, to the Street grade that whole calculation and the 15-foot holds but you say in no event shall it ever be higher than 22 feet above grade. I mean nobody can ever do a 30-foot tall one-story home just add that extra clause in there.

That's what we that's what we're Advocating for we want to make sure that didn't do a single store 30-foot home

So people would be okay with a single story home that has a, you know, it comes up five feet to the threshold and it's a 17 story high, 17 foot high single story. Correct. Which basically means it's 15 feet of habitable space and two feet of mechanical structure, whatever.

That's how I understand it.

It would look bizarre to me, but I mean, I guess we have design guidelines for that.

You know, we're about to encounter new typologies of houses. As the understory has become more prevalent, I mean, we're going to see many, many different interpretations of code that we might not even come up with. We have to do something standardized so that one-story houses don't top a number, and that's it. Because the rest of them, we need to go one by one to really... As far as the understories, I don't know. I mean, I think that we talked about it last time that the understories, to me, they shouldn't be, you know, they shouldn't remain at seven feet, seven, six feet. I mean, you don't want also an understory that is... Too short or too high. It's too short or too high because it's like a weird house on stilts.

Well, and the other thing that's a little confusing about this graphic is that the 22 feet does not include the slope of the roof. So technically, a 22-foot... single-story home is 22 feet to the beam, and then it can slope upwards. So you could have a 30, I mean, it's not going to be an eight-foot slope, but you could get pretty close to the max height with a single-story home that has a sloped, a severely sloped roof.

You're saying that the 22... 22 goes to the... You can have a cap on it. You can have a hip roof.

You can have a... Yeah, it's not to the top of the roof. That's not how we measure height, right? So I think, correct, yeah. So the measurement here, the scale is not quite accurate.

Well, that's a big problem. Yeah, I know. Because everyone crowns these things with like four feet of Burger King roof on them.

So I don't think we're quite there, guys. Like we could try to say we think it's 22 feet with no higher than 22 feet, but we still need to some, we need a little bit more. more detailed diagram, and if you could get it to us a week in advance so that we can review it, understand it, and I think we need it with, you know, crown of road, FFE, height max, you know, beam, We need a lot more detail and clarification, because this is really important. Okay, absolutely.

Can I ask George a question? George, can you come up? The house that is next to the one you just presented, that one is 30 feet to the eave of the house, and then the... Everything else is... That house is humongous. Well... So it's got the hat on top of it and that doesn't count?

The hat doesn't count. There is a limitation in the code on the slope of the hat.

Yes.

So the hats can't get too tall.

Yeah.

But it's pretty tall. I mean, you see that hat.

Yeah. So it's something to be considered because it's... Well, the problem was in before 2018 or somewhere thereabouts, the hat used to count and no one was doing a house.

Everyone was just doing the flat roof up to the max volume, which we didn't want either. So we tried to give some to get more slope.

And about the 30 plus the hat is...

Well, remember, a flat room can be at 30 plus three for a parapet. So everything is really 33.

That's what I'm saying. That 30 doesn't exist. It's 30 plus.

No, it's really 33.

So we're discussing a number that doesn't even exist because we're allowing houses that are 33 feet.

Well, one thing I would recommend if you have the chance later in the spring, hopefully, is.

This one is 33. This one. This one that I pointed at. That's 33.

The code for.

That's a three-story house.

The code for projections is kind of not quite there yet. Projections being things that you're allowed to do above the 30 feet. It includes architectural features of interest. You're allowed to do that for 1% and up to three feet. That captures parapets. Parapets are far bigger than 1% of the floor plate of the roof. They're about 6% when you add up the thickness of a wall and chase it around the perimeter. Yet they don't need to be three feet either because that turns that box that you're looking at from 30 feet, maybe 31 feet, 31 feet foot six to 33 feet, which makes it even worse. So that's a part of the code you should look at when you have the chance.

Yeah. Okay. So what do people need to, what do people want to do here?

Madam Chair?

Yes. Yeah, come on up.

This is really to help me with something on this same ordinance. I thought there were two kind of house types that were not adequately considered in the code. One is the one-story understory, which you've been dealing with. I'm also curious what you think about the two-story legacy homes that have an FAR under 0.5. Because the way the table is written right now, if I understand it correctly, A two-story house of any size has a 7.5-foot side setback. I don't see an option for a two-story under .5 FAR that keeps the five-foot side setbacks. And I just want to make sure that the existing legacy two-story homes, many of which are under .5, I just looked up a house on my avenue that I was thinking of as a reference point, are all suddenly no longer, or they're grandfathered in, but they're non-conforming. And so... Shouldn't the table have a category for a two-story with a max FAR of 0.5, max lot coverage of 40%, and five-foot side setbacks?

And you don't think that, isn't that the one story? Are you clarifying that it should be up to 0.5 FAR? No, I just think- Would it be subject to-

Right. What triggers the increased side setback is the greater FAR above 0.5 going to 0.54.

Right.

But I'm concerned that the way it's written right now, any two-story home is just automatically subject to the 7.5-foot side setback. And that would render legacy two-story homes nonconforming.

Isn't it new construction only?

Yeah, but I would want, wouldn't we want new two-story construction possibly to be under 0.5 FAR and have the five-foot side setback?

I think you're just clarifying that where it says maximum floor area ratio, one story equals 0.50.

Right.

I think you're saying up to... An FAR of 0.50 would have the five-foot setbacks.

Right, regardless of the story.

Oh, regardless of the story. I see what you're saying.

Right, because I think there are legacy two-story homes. that are under .5, I have one in mind.

Have a five foot setback.

Yeah, that have a five foot setback and don't, and I think that's okay.

Right, why are we, why are we, yeah, I see what you're saying.

Because my sense is that with the, they would be subject to the 40% lot coverage restriction. So they're not, you know, I think the 40% lot coverage restriction and the .5 FAR together yields a kind of massing that, We don't mind. Right. And I just worry that that house type is now no longer allowed.

So I think if you could just say one story, it could just say homes at or below .50 FAR.

That's what I think, right? I just think that that house type is not being accounted for, and I wanted to make sure that.

Yeah, I didn't even think about that. Yeah. I think you're correct. I don't think anyone would object to an existing or to, I mean, let's think about a new, two-story home that's, I mean, I don't know if it's mathematically possible to build it. It would be like a, you know.

There are some legacy two-story homes that have just one room on the second story, like a bedroom up high, you know?

Right. So they're under the 0.5. They might have five feet all the way up. So that's the thing, is that they're not adhering to that second-story cutback, right? in some cases.

No, sorry, they're not, I'm talking about the setback from the property line, right, the side setback, that they would have a five-foot setback from the property line, but still.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're trying to adjust the code so that existing homes are not non-conforming.

And also so that we don't discourage the construction of that housing type. I know it's not you don't see it that often right now, but I could imagine somebody building a home with a small second story.

Well, you wouldn't be able to, I mean, you can build a small second story, but you have to come in, right? So you wouldn't see that five foot all the way up anymore. And I think the code has been changed to avoid that. So we should think through how to accommodate that.

But this is helpful, because I mean, I wasn't sure that that was something I had the sense that the code was not accounting for that. And that seems confirmed by the board. But again, I'd like you to consider the issue if you could.

OK. So existing two-story homes that are at or below 50% FAR.

Yeah. And, you know, I have an example of one in mind. I just looked it up, but it had a .37 FAR, and it's a two-story home. You know, and I would think that would be fine to build new.

Yeah, it's interesting because if that second-story massing is right up against the five-foot setback, you know, that won't be conforming even if we say, you know, five-feet interior side setbacks, right, because it'll meet that ground floor setback. but it won't meet that second. So it'll still be slightly nonconforming.

OK, yeah, but it still opens up a possibility for a certain look, a certain typology. And I think that, again, I have specifics in mind, but I'm sure you can imagine what they're looking like, where you have basically a one-story house with a bedroom on top.

Yeah. OK, so we need to evaluate this table for what that means.

Yeah. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Thoughts on that? I feel like I'm losing people.

No. We're looking for the house abbot.

Okay, so what do we, I think there's some outstanding questions on the images here to support You know, to understand better what that 22 feet looks like on a single family home, both one that is, you know, of course, sort of a regular home and one that is a understory home with some measurements, you know, on the side brought over. And I think, you know, next to 30 foot high homes because everyone's building to 30 feet. So let's not fool ourselves. And I think it would be helpful to see the difference between the 22 and the 17 on that single story home in both the on-grade and understory formats. But I think the working hypothesis is 22 feet with a maximum for total height. But we can't conjecture in our heads, we need the visual.

So 22 is, then there's what, two and a half more, three more?

Yeah, and we need to understand how the sloped roof works on that as well. How high does that actually look next to?

So being a two-story house. It's going to look like a two-story house, even if it's a single.

Yeah, and the grade needs to match the grade in our code too, please. So yeah, we just got to refine this a bit more.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I would love to make sure, looking at the town attorney, that if this comes back to PNZ, it would need to come back to the commission in time for the March meeting. And is that gonna be possible if they make... I just wanna ensure that this discussion is something that we can then take up for second reading in March.

Has it been to first reading already? Yes. Yes. So second reading, as long as you make the deadlines, there shouldn't be a reason.

That's the question. I just want to make sure that if this came back to PNZ, which I think is the direction this might be going.

February 26th.

February 26th. Can it come back for second reading at the March commission meeting?

Let me check the deadline with the town clerk right now, and I'll let you know.

Yeah, this is the same question we had on Monday.

February 13th would be the deadline for the March meeting So my office is that doesn't give us a chance to come back.

Yeah, so we might propose a stopgap measure or you know we I Mean, you know we can You know, I could ask you all to sort of advise the committee, you know I could be in touch with you to get your views on this But yeah, it's important that we wrap it up that we wrap this up.

Yeah, I agree. I I mean, the 17 feet, I mean, if we were trying to be more conservative to start out, like, what is that limit? Because it's 17 feet to the beam. So that's a 12-foot ceiling. I'm sorry. Right?

I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about the procedural point, and I don't want to interrupt the substantive, but couldn't we just put this on for second reading in March, as it is, and still ask you to comment further at the February meeting, and we'll take your comments into account, I'll relay them in March. But we still get something tonight in time for the February 13th deadline for the March meeting. And that way, I'll be here, I'll take notes, and I'll relay them to the commission in March. And that way, I think we can do both. Okay, I hope I didn't cause you to lose your thought, because I want to hear your substantive thought.

I'm just asking, because I do think we should put something forward tonight. So I'm asking, you know, George made the case for 22 feet because of the 15 plus 7, and I'm just, I'm concerned about the 22 goes to the beam.

22 plus 3 is 25 then.

Yeah, before we get into that, I can make a procedural suggestion. that you, rather than you were in the mode of asking the town planner, come back with something that tells us something, a better story, right? A story that we can understand and then vote on. Instead of doing that, direct the town or so give her specific concerns and say, can you, create that story and presume that we're the audience, but in fact, send it to the commission so that the commission is getting the thing that you would have likely approved, but it bypasses you because of the calendar. So that's the first thing I would suggest that you get the town planner to create the thing that you would like to see.

So by February 13th, this visual needs to get presented.

Right, but it's going to the commission.

Going to the commission with that visual. It's just, so I think the visual, what we've asked for, I think, is hopefully clear. Yes, Scarlett? Yes. So it's just, you know, it's hard to.

So let's, you're talking about the numbers. So I think that, you know, people like 10-foot ceilings.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that, you know, a one-foot plenum is doable and an eight-foot, or sorry, an eight-inch slab. So let's round everything up to two. So that gets you to 12 feet from floor to floor, or finished floor to top of roof, because there is no finished floor on the roof, so you're gaining a little bit there. So finished floor to top of roof is 12 feet. So that gets you to... 17. 22 feet, but you're starting at, you see that that's 22 feet NGVD, but let's use that nominal of five feet. So 17 feet instead of the 22 feet you were working with. So 17 feet from grade will yield a 12 foot floor to floor.

Right.

So that may be the right number. And just to give a little bit of flexibility, it won't be the end of the world. You go to 18, and that captures people that start too low at four feet, and nobody's really hurt by it.

So your concern originally was that sort of conflicts with the maximum story height of 15 feet.

Well, it wasn't a concern.

But that also seems crazy to me.

Yeah, well, it wasn't a concern. I was trying to demonstrate how this code was actually in sync with itself.

Right, right.

But I think instead of the 22 feet, go down to 18. That gives everybody, including the four-foot street people, a 12-foot floor-to-floor, and you're good.

Yeah, I mean, that seems more in scale with, you know, for me.

So we're back at the 17 plus a three, so it's 20.

Or 18. Well, 17, 18, you know.

So 18 is 21, so we're up at 21 again.

No, no. No?

No.

18 is the number from?

No, but they didn't say that's the additional.

That's to the beam of a slope.

To the beam of this, but then you can go on a parapet or you can put a cap on it, you can put a hat on it.

That's always the case.

Yeah, that's always the case. I just want to visualize how high these houses.

Yeah, these one-story houses. Right.

And the problem I have with all this is that we end up with one-story houses that look like two-story houses. They have the height of two-story houses. They're actually taller than the two-story legacy homes that we have here.

So that part of that is because you have to raise.

No, no, I understand. But I'm just saying we need to visualize what this looks like. It's not the math is what it looks like. It looks like the one story homes look like two stories because the two story homes look like three stories.

Yeah. So but you were you were at 22 feet when you walked in the door and now you're at 18, 17. So you're better off than you were.

Yeah, we want that number to be as low as possible within reason. You know, we don't want to tell the people that they have eight-foot ceilings.

Yeah, I mean, I think a 12-foot ceiling is generous.

No, a 12-foot.

No, it's 10-foot ceilings.

10-foot ceiling. 10-foot.

It's a two-foot planet.

Still, I mean.