the right time. Welcome to DDRC members, staff and guests. Multiple staff members are present to make sure that the meeting runs smoothly and all applicants and citizens are able to communicate with the Commission at the appropriate time. Amy, before you do that, I'll introduce we do have a new Commissioner with us here today, Charlie Ledecker. So really excited to have you. So thank you. And let's see. Mr. Brim. Mr. Greenberg. Mr. Jacob. Mr. Ledecker. Mr. Salibi. Here. And Mr. Wolf. Here. We have quorum. In order to avoid expert communications, DDRC members are under strict instructions not to discuss cases under consideration with the public or with each other outside of the public forum. The meeting typically starts with staff calling the case, giving a summary of the project and then calling on the applicant to present if they wish. Decisions are typically made in one evening. Decisions may be appealed within 30 days to accord a competent jurisdiction. Oaves will be administered individually as we hear either from applicants or from live speakers. Applicants with request before the DDRC are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time should include but is not limited to an overview of the project, case history and any pertinent meetings held regarding the request. This time also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicant, such as attorneys, engineers and architects. This time limit does not include any questions asked by the DDRC or staff regarding the request. Members of the general public are given the opportunity to address their concerns in intervals of two minutes. Applicants may have five minutes to respond. Staff has a timer and will make presenters aware of when their time has expired. Are there any changes to the agenda? There are no changes to the agenda. The DDRC uses the consent agenda to approve noncontroversial or routine matters by a single motion and vote. If a member of the DDRC or the general public wants to discuss an item on the consent agenda, that item is removed from the agenda and considered during the meeting. The DDRC then approves the remaining consent agenda items. Will staff please read the consent agenda? Our first item on the consent agenda is 1713 Ennery Avenue. This is a request for preliminary certification for the Bailey Bill in the Wales Garden Architectural Conservation District. The next is 3118 Amherst Avenue. Request for a certificate of design approval for an addition in the Oakwood Court Architectural Conservation District. Bear with us. Bear with us. The third item on the agenda is 2324 Washington Street. Request for preliminary certification for the Bailey Bill in Waverley Protection Area A. Fourth is 1717 Divine Street. Request for a preliminary certification for the Bailey Bill in the University Architectural Conservation District. And those are all of the items on the consent agenda. Are we frozen? We'll work on this technology as well. Is any commissioner need an item removed on the consent agenda? I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Hold on. We're not there yet. That's fine. Okay. Hold on. Yeah. First of all, just checking. Is any commissioner need an item taken off the consent agenda? There we go. There we go. All right. Is anyone from the public that would like to have an item removed from consent agenda? Because once we approve the consent agenda, it will not be discussed. Maybe that's where I'll reinforce that. So anybody from the public? All right. I'm excited to already know who's making the motion. I will now take a motion and a second to accept the consent agenda and also the August minutes. Again, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda, design, historic and the approval of minutes for August. Mr. Broom. Yes. Mr. Greenberg. Yes. Ms. Jacob. Yes. Mr. Lee Decker. Yes. Mr. Salibi. Yes. And Mr. Wolf. Yes. The motion passes. All right. We'll now move to the regular agenda. The first item on the regular agenda is at 1245 U.G. Street next to 405 Gervais Street. This property is currently vacant. It's in the City Center Design Development District and is a request for certificate of design approval for new construction. The proposal is for the new construction of a plus or minus 250 unit five to seven story multifamily development on the north parcel of what was formerly the client iron and steel property situated between U.G. Street to the east, Washington Street to the north, and the remaining vacant Gervais Street parcel to the south. The west edge of the property is bordered by a narrow parcel that has transmission lines and electric utilities, which is controlled by Dominion Energy. The property slopes between 25 to 30 feet down from U.G. Street to the west, and the parking garage is situated on the west side of the residential building to take advantage of the grade change. And I'm just going to read through some of the pertinent guidelines that are mostly related to the staff recommendation and then the staff comments associated with those. It's not going to be the whole evaluation. There's a lot of information here, but just the most pertinent items. So in the design guidelines for City Center 5.2 architectural style or theme says that the design of a building should be compatible with its function and with its surroundings context. These projects should be sympathetic and compatible with surrounding buildings in terms of mass, scale, height, facade rhythm, placement of doors and windows, color and use of materials. The context and the staff comments are the context of the site includes significant frontage on U.G. Street, a primary corridor through the vista. The surrounding buildings are a variety of residential, office, hotel, and the historic State Museum building. While the guidelines do not prescribe BRIC as a required material, the context of this site and of this corridor would suggest that BRIC should be the primary material and if other materials are incorporated, they should be used as secondary or accents in order to relate to the surroundings. Using BRIC will also contribute to the building sense of permanence on this major gateway corridor. Under 5.3.2 facade proportion and rhythm from the guidelines. The width and pattern of facade elements can help pedestrians negotiate a street by providing a standard measure of progress. This is true regardless of the overall width of the building. For example, a building can extend for the full length of a block and still have a facade design that divides the building into smaller pedestrian scale elements. The facade should be broken down into a series of appropriately proportioned structural bays or components typically segmented by a series of columns or masonry piers that frame window, door, and bulkhead components. In the staff comments read, while the building is somewhat divided into bays, the facade along UG lacks a regular rhythm. The Washington Street facade establishes a rhythm in terms of vertical massing. However, the horizontal shifts and materials do not align to establish a clear base middle and top either on UG or in Washington. In section 5.3.5 from the guidelines, this is wall articulation. Long blank unarticulated street walls should not be allowed. Facades instead should be divided into a series of structural bays. For example, masonry piers, which frame window and door elements. Monolithic street wall facades should be broken by vertical and horizontal articulation. For example, sculpted, carved or penetrated wall surfaces defined by recesses and reveals. Large unbroken facade surfaces should be avoided, especially at the storefront level. This can be achieved in a number of ways, such as constructing the facade with small human scale materials, providing traditional recess entries and providing consistent door and window reveals. The staff comments read, given the scale of the building, the articulation is lacking. The ground level both on UG and Washington are primarily residential windows and do not provide active frontage, architectural detailing, or residential stoops to activate the street edge. There is an emergency exit tucked into the UG street side with virtually no articulation. The main entrance to the lobby on Washington and the associated amenity uses help to activate the Washington Street facade a bit more. The balconies both recessed and projecting help to articulate the facade, although the projecting balconies unique to the UG street side appear tacked on due to the visually small support posts and could be more successfully integrated into the facade. Additionally, the projecting balconies are more exposed to noise, wind, et cetera, and locating them on UG street, the high volume, higher speed roadway may make them less user-friendly for residents. Overall, while the building's bays are expressed with both recessed and projecting balconies, there is little articulation beyond this and the building walls read as mostly flat. Under 3. or 5.4.1 setbacks, in the city center, there is no minimum setback and when the average is not established, the maximum setback is 10 feet. The guidelines read, each project should still be evaluated in context with its surroundings in order to properly decide whether a minimum or maximum setback should be used so that the overall character of the street is preserved. And in our engineering regulations, section <IP_ADDRESS>, it says sidewalks are the most fundamental element of the walking network as they provide an area for pedestrian travel separated from vehicle traffic. In addition to the city center design guidelines section referenced above, the property is also within the OV HSV setback district and the unified development ordinance, which states, the requirement of this section reflects the predominant setback trends of the areas and urban design principles cited in the adopted area plans for each area. This section applies to the setbacks on UG Street only, while the setbacks allowable range is 8 to 10 feet. Quote, the DDRC is empowered to require an adjustment of half the maximum requirement based upon analysis of the immediate surroundings and architectural merit. The zoning administrator is deferring the specific setback recommendation to the DDRC to ensure continuity with the adopted plans and guidelines. The staff recommendation is to require a 10 foot setback from the property line. The current conditions appear to show the property line 10.5 feet from the back of the curb. So the recommended setback would provide a configuration that includes a 7.5 foot furnishing zone between the curb and the sidewalk and an 8 foot sidewalk, which is the pedestrian through zone on this diagram and a 5 foot frontage zone against the building for a total of 20.5 feet between the back of curb and the building to accommodate the projecting balconies on the facade. Currently, the proposal shows a 7 or 8 foot building setback on UG with a 1.5 foot grass strip between the sidewalk and the curb, a 6 foot sidewalk, and a planted strip between the sidewalk and the building. This does not meet the specific requirements or the intent of the applicable ordinances and guidelines. Under 5.4.2 in the guidelines, street orientation, as a general rule, buildings should be oriented so as to engage and maintain pedestrian interest. Storefront should be designed to orient to the major street frontage. While side or rear entries may be desirable, the predominant major building entry should be oriented toward the major street. Buildings on corners should include storefront design features for at least 50 percent of the wall area on the side street elevation. The staff comments read, while the Washington street side takes advantage of the lobby and other community functions by providing some storefront along the street, it would be more effective to provide this on the eastern end of the Washington street elevation to help activate the corner of Washington and UG, the most visible in public corner of the development parcel. Additionally, the UG street side provides only residential units and oddly, first floor balconies along the sidewalk on this very busy thoroughfare. The other main pedestrian entrance to the building is on the west side, inset from the remainder of the building and the parking garage and accessed from a sidewalk from Washington street. This is functionally the back of the building and it is primarily as it is primarily parking garage frontage as well as property line that faces the Dominion utility cabinets. Under 5.7, the storefront, it says under entries and doorways, buildings situated at the corner of a public street should provide a prominent corner entrance to the street level shops or lobby space in a manner consistent with main entries as described above. And the staff comments read the building is situated at a prominent corner corner of UG and Washington along a major gateway quarter into the city. This corner of the building does provide a solid brick base and a bit of additional detailing with the gridded cementitious paneling on the upper floors. However, the ground floor does not address the public ground with an active frontage. The main entry to the building on Washington provides a canopy that is not further emphasized with any architectural features. And under 5.7.2 exterior wall walls and materials. Storefront materials should be consistent with the materials used on significant historically correct adjacent buildings. The number of different wall materials used on any one building should however be kept to a minimum ideally two or less. And the staff comments read the materials include cementitious panels, two colors of cementitious lap siding, stucco and brick veneer. This is quite a bit more than the recommended number and the application of the materials does not follow a regular pattern either in the horizontal change in materials or in the vertical rhythm. Lap siding on a building of this size is predominantly seen on more suburban apartment buildings and does not provide a contextual relationship with the Vista. The significant historically correct adjacent buildings are primarily brick and the red brown family with some utilizing an accent material on the upper floor or in select locations. Under 5.8.3 windows and the upper facade upper story windows should create a sense of scale and add articulation and visual interest to the upper facade. The staff comments read the window jam details that then provided in the packet and are typical for the various wall materials being utilized. Only the brick window jam provides the recommended minimum four inch relief that is necessary to provide the depth and shadow necessary to articulate the building facade, particularly within a large expanse of windows where little to no additional architectural features or detailing or present. Due to the relatively small amount of brick on the project, only 22 of the 148 or 7% of the windows on the G Street elevation are punched in brick with the four inch depth on Washington Street 28 of the 168 or 17% are punched in brick. Therefore, the majority of the windows provide a one half inch to one and a half inch depth, resulting in a significant lack of articulation for the majority of the facade. And finally on 5.10.1 structured parking. Where possible parking structures should be located within the block core with actively programmed building space fronting on all streets. The parking structure should be compatible in quality form materials, colors and textures with the structures being served. And parking structure roof lines which are visible from the street should be level. Ramping should occur within the structure or on the interior of the block where it is screened from the street. Staff comments read the parking garage is located on the rear of the development parcel adjacent to and connected to the residential structure. While it is not directly adjacent to a public street, it will be visible from a number of locations such as William Street to the Northwest, Washington Street and the State Museum property. The garage has no exterior finished beyond the structural concrete and is not compatible in quality form materials, colors or textures with the proposed residential building. The garage ramping is exposed on the west side. Staff finds that the proposal does not meet the city center design guidelines and recommends deferral the request until the following items are addressed. Provided 10 foot building setback from the property line and design the recommended section for the adjacent right-of-way. Simplify the materials pallet to two to three primary materials to include a larger percentage of brick and not to include lap siding. Refine the organization of the structural bays to provide a regular rhythm to the UG Street facade. Articulate the building to provide a clear base, middle and top. Utilize architectural details, recesses and projections to articulate flat building walls. Utilize a minimum of four inch window depths for the majority of the window details. Provide some street level activation for the G Street ground floor frontage particularly at the corner of UG in Washington. Revise the parking garage design so that the ramping is not visible and there is some level of architectural finishing that relates to the building design and all other details would be deferred to staff. And the floor plans are included in your packets as well. Is the applicant here to speak? Okay. So whoever is going to be speaking if you'll come up and state your name and I'll swear you in. Okay. My name is Ryan Solow and the president of development with Silver Hills. Okay. And I'm going to do you one at a time. Do you swear to tell the truth in this proceeding? I do. Thank you. Matthew Summer, Vice President of Design with Silver Hills. Okay. And do you swear to tell the truth in this proceeding? I do. I like the hand raising too. Thank you. Steve Whaley Alliance Consulting Engineers. Can you say that a little bit? Let me make sure you're speaking the microphone. Steve Whaley Alliance Consulting Engineers. Okay. The engineer is very soft, spoken. Okay. You might need to speak up when you're talking. Do you swear to tell the truth in this proceeding? I do. All right. Thank you. I will let staff you all determine how you want to time whoever's speaking first and we can get started. Whoever'd like to speak first. Yeah. I'm going to speak first and then I'll bring Matthew along with me. Hi. My name is Ryan Solow. I'm the president of development with Silver Hills. First off, I wanted to kind of begin this conversation with us saying, hey look, first off, we really appreciate the time and the level of detail and consideration that the city really puts into this particular area on the design side. We do care very much that our project aligns with the community vision for the area. For us, we kind of viewed this as kind of the initial conversation to say, hey, here we took a look at this project and we said, okay, what have we done successfully to execute our vision across our portfolio?  We do projects all over the up and down the eastern seaboard. We have projects in downtown Fort Myers and in Orlando near Universal and up in Daytona Beach and we're constructing one up in Uptown Charlotte. So we did is we took a look at our pallet and said, okay, what has worked for us in the past, what's executed well, took a look, spent a lot of time driving around the area and then kind of came to the conclusion of how do we integrate ourselves into the area while trying to preserve kind of the neighborhood connectivity. So that was kind of the idea behind our design. That being said, we looked at this as an initial iteration of kind of where we were going with our project. We are welcome to we welcome and appreciate the feedback that both staff and that the staff has had and we have received some feedback initially prior to this meeting from the neighborhood. So we encourage that feedback as well and we're excited to, you know, watch this process progress. I'm going to turn it over to Matthew Summer, who's our Vice President of Design. He's an architect that works for us and he can talk more about the intricacies of the design decisions that we made and kind of how we wound up where we are today. Okay, so we approached the project like we do on a lot of these. The oddity of this property is that 20, 30 foot fall on that site towards the river, which is what had pushed us to have that common area and things more towards the back of our site rather than on Hootgee because the grade change wouldn't allow an entrance, wouldn't allow a lot of those activities to occur at that intersection while residences can can occur any at any grade. So that was one of the driving factors on that. Otherwise, the materials like Ryan had noted is, you know, we took a look at what we've used on projects all over the place and we looked at some of the canal area and some of your proper, some of the buildings that have been done more recently to the south and looked at those materials and things and incorporated some of that into this, not looking directly across the street at the project, directly across from us, but taking more of the whole community materials onto this first iteration to bring before the board and hear the comments and hear your, hear the input to be given to us. Yeah, we're really here to say, hey, we know and we understand that this is a process. Right. And this is, you know, we expected frankly when we submitted our proposal to say, hey, look, we are going to have some comments that come back and to the extent that we need to address certain comments, we are going to take them back internally and have another discussion and we expect to have another conversation. Can I comment now, Amy? They thought, yeah, do you want to continue what you want to share? I think at this point, I think for us, I think it would be more important. I mean, you guys, I think everybody's had a chance to take a look at what we've, are a kind of initial stab at this design. So I think for us, it would really just be helpful to, you know, make sure we really are here to just listen and learn and kind of take that feedback and say, okay, this is where we were today. How can we, how can we take the design, you know, kind of comments that were, that are going to be provided to us today and how can we incorporate them on our next iteration and going forward. So I'm, can I ask now? All right, thank you. So the recommendations, what staff's pointed out, which I mean, well, first of all, we're all very excited about the project. I think it's great. Thank you very much. I think the staff research that they've done has been very thorough and these are all very valid points. So have your, has your team been working with staff to address these items? We have. We, we received these comments last week.  We, we, we talked about it internally. We thought that it would make sense for us to just, you know, kind of take, take, take the extra time, show, you know, I, Matthew came from, came down from Cleveland. I came down from Chicago purposely for this meeting to really show, hey, we care. And it's important to us that we And we certainly appreciate that, but there, and I want to open it up to the commissioners here a minute to ask you specific questions. My only point would be there's just a lot of items here that we would need to see addressed. Completely understand. To sit here and, you know, feel that we understand exactly what's going on with this project. And that is our process. So it is kind of working through our staff to a point, but I'm going to open up to commissioners for anything specific. Okay. Okay. All right. Commissioners. Anybody'd like to speak? Commissioner Prue? What I'd like to verify the staff recommendation is very clear. My question is, it says simplify the material to two to three primary material to include larger percentage of brick. What are we talking about? I mean, what is the percentage? Current percentage of brick is probably in the 20 to 25% type of estimate. On these facades. I can't hear you, sir. The current percentage of brick would be in the 20 to 25% of the material that we're using on the property.  This is the first area where it's very historic. If you look at UG Street, it's all brick. And what we're trying to accomplish here is to be compatibility to our environment what's there now. Practically, all the buildings on UG Street is brick. So that's my concern. Understand. We will definitely be discussing that element internally as we take a second look at these designs. At this point, what we need to do internally is take a second look at our design and say, okay, what makes sense? What can we do? How can we work with and adjust to those requirements and then make another presentation back? Right. But do you see any of these as being impossible to accommodate? There's concern, I know, with the slope, I think. Yeah, there's concerns with the slope. There's concerns. I mean, look, I think from our end, we really, you know, because some of these things, you know, on things like setback requirements and things like that, we really have to look at, like, how do the balconies, how do the balconies work with the street? And how can it's a bit of an iterative process on our end? And these are all things that we have to really sit down and focus on and explore in a little bit more in-depth internally before I can definitively say one way or the other. Commissioner Lee Decker, I heard you've got a question. Or was it Bob? Somebody, I couldn't tell. Somebody else wanted to speak. Yeah, I have some comments. To beat the dead horse, I live in the Vista and we got four comments from my neighbors that live in the Vista. Every one of them mentioned the word brick, more brick. I can turn that around and say less concrete. I think the raw concrete that you have on a lot of these surfaces is just not going to fly at all in the Vista and any way that you could integrate. Hold on, so are you speaking in the microphone? Just make sure we can hear you good. Sorry, were you guys hearing me? It's about more brick, less concrete, and that's my major concern is the amount of concrete on the surface and how you integrate the parking structure with the apartment block. I think it should be more seamless design. The staff report talks about the exterior ramping and there's a real disconnect in materials between the apartment block and the parking deck. So, that's all. Commissioner Broome, do you have a comment? I don't know if this is relevant but it's on that same track of land on Juve Street. There's a hotel being planned on this property. Am I correct? I'm not aware of anything on this. Charles Springhill, there's a hotel across the street under compression. Across Juve Street? Of Juve, and you know, same corner of McDonald's. Across the street on the museum side, facing Juve as a hotel being planned on that track of land. I mean it's a different part, well it's a different part of the parcel or a different parcel but we don't have anything that's been submitted to the city at this point. So, we're just looking at this in the current context of the site. I'm just trying to visualize how everything is going to be compatible you know, trying to achieve. I mean, theoretically, if everybody follows the design guidelines then everything that's built adjacent to each other will be compatible. Since we don't have that as current context, then this is being looked at in the context of what is existing on UG Street and on the adjacent parcels and it shouldn't be conflicting I wouldn't think if something gets built there which is also following the same guidelines for City Center. Okay. Any other commissioner with the comment? Commissioner Wolfe. I may just echo a little bit of what Bruce said in regards to staff's recommendations while they're lengthy in explanation if they're relatively, if you're able to accommodate them we'd love to see that on, you know, maybe the next iteration when you guys come back. Yeah, we're taking a look at it. We did have a pre-application meeting prior to seminal. What we decided to do is we wanted to submit to get a formal set of comments so that we had kind of the whole universe of what everybody was thinking in terms of hey, this is what we think of your design. We like it. We don't like it. Hey, we appreciate where you're coming from here but we think this particular element could be improved upon and because really for us what we find to be the most efficient avenue forward to develop what we think is a great project that everybody can be proud of is having all of the comments kind of in one pile at one time and then we can look at it internally and say okay, how can we best rework some of these elements of this project so that it makes it, you know, we're all happy with the final outcome. So I think, and we hear you and appreciate that but we probably need a little bit more definitional some things for us to give you even more feedback. Now we have done sessions with applicants in between meetings, right, Amy? I don't know if this would qualify. They've worked. Thank you. Dayquel Hayes over here. So I mean, that is an option as well. So I think what we're hearing and we're all encouraged and it sounds like there's good momentum here. We just need you and staff to probably get some of these issues resolved and or at least come back with it if there is some areas where you want to do on it. 100% agree. I think a lot of this is that what we need to do is right is because frankly, to prepare that takes many, many hours of architecture time between Matthew and our outside architects and my colleague, Seth Mendelson, who really is the guy who's really, you know, drives a lot of the design decisions that we make internally. These conversations take many, many hours and we go through what you guys see is probably seven or eight, actually probably more like 20 or 30 iterations internally. So a lot of times, you know. We definitely understand. Many members up here work in the same field. So we understand and appreciate the amount of effort to get this far. That's why I would encourage to try to let us know exactly where there's areas where you feel we need to talk about further if you've got concerns with staff recommendations. I think that's what we need to understand as a board and to help you, you know, with that. Completely understand. I think where we are is now having seen the universe of staff's comments and having seen kind of an understanding of where the board was coming from as well, you know, is a different angle to allow us to say, okay, now we kind of know where everybody's coming from. Let us take a step back. Let us hear if there's any comments that folks in the community have. We're happy to listen to those as well and go from here. And you did get a few, I think, from... Yeah, and frankly, we very much appreciate the comments and we look forward to working with everybody. Okay, I appreciate that. All right, staff, where are we at now? Any other... Where are we in our protocol? Public comments. Okay, if y'all are pleased with what's been presented, I'm going to open it up. Thank you. Thank you. Any comments from the public? And if I could just mention, just for the record, there were four emails received via email that have been distributed to the commission. We have one from Caroline Liedecker, the City Club HOA President, from Bart Wellrath, the Vista Neighborhood New Development Chair, Paul Gaffney, a Gift Street resident, and Ted Fettner, a Senate Street resident. So I just wanted to put that into the record. Okay, thank you. Any other comments? Anybody from the public would like to speak? Please come up to the microphone. Stay at your name, and I'll swear you in. Raise your hand now, that's a new protocol. Steve Henson. All right, do you swear to tell the truth in this proceeding? I do, I do. I'm Steve Henson. We live on 530 Lady Street, so we're about a block away from the development on... Make sure you're speaking in the microphone too. Can you hear me okay? That's a little better, thank you. We live on Lady Street about a block from the development, and I don't want to be redundant, but break, break, break, break, break, break. I mean, we agree with what you guys have said. We moved to the Vista from Farsacre, so we moved into the city of Columbia, from out of the city of Columbia, about 12 years ago, and we love it here, and we have several neighbors that have come today, and most of them moved from outside of the city into the city, and we all moved to the beautiful old brick warehouse district. So we feel like if the city wants to attract and keep residents, they need to maintain that architectural integrity of the neighborhood. And again, this is kind of redundant, but the State Museum, the publics, the Spring Hill Suites, the Nine, even the McDonald's is our brick. So we think development is great, but we agree with the staff comments, and what many of you guys have said that we'd love to have the development, but we needed to fit in more in the Vista, so we'd like more brick on the exterior. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other public wish to speak? Okay. All right. I think we'll move into a motion. I'm going to ask for a motion in a second, or let me open up to a motion. I'll make a motion to defer the application to the next DDRC meeting and highlighting the staff recommendations. In the agenda, I can read them all if you like, but that might take a minute. And I think just because we're deferring, there's not really a need to. I mean, the applicant is privy to those comments and consider them before their next iteration. The moment we had a pause was just the next meeting. I guess if they're able to get the drawings submitted by the deadline, that's a pretty tight, so. True. I guess I should just make it to the next meeting. Yeah, I'll change the motion to defer the application until applicant feels they're ready to proceed once they've had an opportunity to consider staff's comments. I want you to read the street address at least. Let's put that. That for the project at 1245 UG Street and 405 Treveille Street. Thank you. Do I have a second? I'll second that. All right. Mr. Broom. Yes. Mr. Greenberg. Yes. Ms. Jacob. Yes. Mr. Lee Dacher. Yes. Mr. Salibi. Yes. And Mr. Wolf. Yes. The motion passes. Thank you. All right. Next case. The next case is for 3430 Earlwood Drive. It is a request for certificate of design approval for a driveway and it is an appeal of the staff decision. The Earlwood Protection Area is a protection area rather than an architectural conservation district. Therefore, the emphasis of the guidelines is on the focus of the general appearance and character of the district, more than individual features or architectural styles. Because of this element such as fences, walls and driveways are the focus of staff oversight and that's what we'll be discussing in this case. This is a single family house built in 1948 and is a contributing structure to the Earlwood Protection Area Area A. The applicant replaced a preexisting driveway that consisted of two concrete strips with grass and gravel placed between them with a driveway that is not in compliance with the district guidelines or the city ordinance. The driveway starts at a width of 11.5 feet at the street but begins to expand quickly to a total width of 22 feet at the top of the driveway. The city ordinance and the guidelines ask for driveways to be no longer than 12 feet across in primary yards. So it's the width of the driveway exceeds that but also the location, which is that it is wider and it is also in the front of the house which is the primary yard. Staff has found no other examples in this protection area or in other protection areas of a driveway or a driveway of this width or location being accepted. Other precedent cases include 1211 Shirley Street. List of the precedents go there, yes. There's 1211 Shirley Street and 1111 17 Lincoln Street. Both of those had a similar circumstance and both of those had the request denied for the exemption here. Pertnance sections from the ordinance are from section 17-2.5 D and part one of that says that unless a showing of extraordinary and exceptional conditions pertaining to the piece of property can be shown, the amount of allowable area paved for the use of a driveway or vehicular parking area shall be limited to a width of 12 feet measured with a straight line that runs parallel to the front or secondary front lot line. And as we've said, this driveway extends to 22 feet across at the top. At the base of the driveway, the road, it is at the right distance of 11.5. And as you saw in that last image with the red line across it, that's measuring the width of 12 feet. So that area to the left of it is exceeding that. The second section two is that the designated vehicular parking area or driveway shall be placed so as to minimize its visual impact on the primary structure. The width of this parking area runs across a section of the front of the house. And this is not typical for this district and it distracts from the primary structure. The left side of the house, which is directly in line with the driveway, was constructed as a garage before the district was created and later enclosed a living space. The location of the 12 foot wide pre-existing driveway is grandfathered in because of this, but it does not support the additional 10 foot pads to the left. This does not meet the ordinance and has not been placed to minimize the visual impact of the structure. There have been other cases similar to this in Earlwood in the past few months. Offences and driveways are something that comes up in this district pretty frequently. And other cases have been settled at staff level with working directly with the property owners to remediate those issues. With all of this in hand, staff recommendation is that the driveway at 34 Earlwood Drive is not in keeping with section 17-2.5D of the city ordinance and staff recommends denial. Concrete in excess of the 12 foot maximum should be removed within 90 days. The plan for an altered driveway should be submitted to staff for approval prior to work beginning. Is the applicant here to speak? Yes. Come on up, state your name, swear you in. I'm a short one, so I have to pull it down. Good afternoon. My name is Shirley Mills, and I am not the applicant, but I am here to speak on behalf of Mr. Keith Norval, the applicant in this case. He's present with us today. And do you swear to tell the truth in this proceeding? I do. Thank you. Thank you. Again, good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. We appreciate the opportunity to come before you to talk about this driveway at 3430 Earlwood. And as you've seen from the staff recommendations and comments, the driveway was installed earlier this year around May, and it is not in compliance with the district's guidelines or the city ordinance. And we are here to respectfully request an exception to the ordinance in this case. Before I continue, can you hear me? This, it sounds really weird. Am I too close? Oh, is it? Oh, okay. I told I have a big mouth, but I didn't know it was that big. But before I continue, please, let me assure you that Mr. Norval has the utmost respect for this city and for its ordinances and its rules and its regulations. This violation was not in any way intentional. It was an honest mistake that happened during an extremely difficult time in Mr. Norval's life. A time when he was completely distracted as the primary caregiver of his spouse of 60 years, haven't heard that in a long time, and his spouse was terminally ill at the time and sadly passed away shortly after Mr. Norval was made aware of this violation by staff. And then to make matters worse, Mr. Norval's contractor who worked on this house for him and received all of the necessary permits from the city, also passed away. He had handled the permitting requirements for Mr. Norval for many years and is no longer here to tell us what happened in this case. So Mr. Norval was honestly not aware that the driveways in Earlwood were restricted under a city ordinance. And when he was mortified to learn that he actually violated that ordinance, but I want to be real clear and he made sure to tell me to say this, he wants to acknowledge that ignorance or grief, he doesn't consider that an excuse for violating an ordinance. So we're not here to try to make excuses, but rather to just offer matters of fact in this case. So in order for you to understand, since I have 10 minutes, I won't take 10 minutes, just allow me to briefly tell you a little bit about the applicant. Mr. Norval is a well-respected real estate professional who has spent his entire life buying and selling and investing and improving properties in and around the city of Columbia. Now he didn't give me permission to say this part, but he will turn 80 years old on his next birthday. So he has literally spent the past 60 years working side by side with his spouse who was also his business partner in that real estate business. Also I want to be clear that Mr. Norval is not a slum landlord, quite to the contrary. He is known to be very, very particular about his properties. His philosophy is to never put a property on the market for sale or for rent that he would not himself live in. And believe you me, he is known to be that perfectionist. I just call him Horty-Torty, but others say something a little different. So over the years, he and his spouse have literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of their own labor on well over 100 properties in the Columbia communities. And he's really, really proud of each and every one of them. But in recent years, probably because of their advancing age and health-related issues, Mr. Norval and his spouse decided to start divesting in many of their rental properties. And so their plan is to renovate and improve all of the rental properties and then hopefully sell them to young professionals who want to live in the city and take pride in their homes. And so I say all that so you will know that this property at 3430 Earlwood is just a perfect example of what Mr. Norval hopes to do with all of his properties. He invested over $73,000 in renovating this house. And it is a small house. It's only like 1,227 square feet. And he invested that amount of money in it because he wanted it to be very nice. He added over 200 feet of heated space. Staff pointed out that the area there to the left was a garage originally. He decided to turn that into living space. He turned it into a beautiful master bath and dressing room to go along with the primary bedroom. He painted the entire exterior and the interior of the house. He had a new roof put on. He added a beautiful, I already said a beautiful bathroom, but he totally renovated the existing bathroom and then he put in a new kitchen with granite countertops and marble backsplash. He added all new top of the line appliances that I can't operate because it's Bluetooth accessible. He added new cabinets, new flooring. He installed a new exterior back door with the built-in blinds and added stainless steel chimney cap and retiled the fireplace hearth. He repaired the hardwood floors and refinished them throughout the house. Any floors that he could save and repurpose in another part of the house, he did it. When you walk in the door, it looks like the floors are all original floors because he's that particular. And of course, he put in new receptacles and switch covers and he installed a new water heater. And so after all of that investing in that house, Mr. Norville knew that the yard and the driveway needed a lot of work in order to appeal to the type of buyers that he wanted to attract. And that driveway, I don't think we saw any pictures of it. The one that staff described was eroded and cracked and it just in terrible shape. I think there's a photograph of it somewhere that you can show. In the evaluation, there's a part in the evaluation. Okay. It was in the evaluation. Okay. So now, as you know, the city prohibits parking on the grass. There's no curb or sidewalk on the Earlwood Drive. And so parking on the street is especially hazardous. I'd like to point out that the cars that you saw parked on the street in those photos do not belong to residents. They belong to service providers who were there doing work on some of the houses. And two of those cars belong to people who were doing work on Mr. Norville's property at 3430. The residents know better than to park their cars on the street because it's a through street, it's hilly, and you know, you do it at your own peril. So Mr. Norville pointed out to me because I wanted to understand why he put so much money into this house. He said, young professionals who buy a house this size are not looking for a fixer-upper. I mean, they want and expect perfection. And they expect to be able to safely park their cars and to have a guest over who can park their car. So, Madam Chair and commissioners, we respectfully submit that this driveway does not compromise the general character or appearance of this neighborhood or district, quite to the contrary. And I've got some other pictures that I can show you. That wasn't an alarm to tell me I'm out of time. I'm out of time? This has been 10 minutes? Get out of here. Well, may I just wrap up, Madam Chair, and say that if you and the commissioners have any discretion in your decision to do what makes sense, both financially and practically, we request that you please grant an exception here. May I show you the pictures that I did bring? Are these the ones that were in the packet? Our staff? Are you okay with that? You tell me. Is it the same? They are different pictures, but it's of the street and of the property. Okay. I brought these because I myself went over there and parked my car in the driveway, Mr. Norval parked his car on the left side. And there was no way another car could have parked behind my car. It's been said or believed that these cars, that at least two cars can get into that driveway, parked right one behind the other. First of all, young professionals don't want that. And secondly, it's impossible. The first picture that you see, it's two sets of pictures, so they're kind of duplicates. But the one that you see with the two cars parked in the driveway, show you that one. Yeah, it shows you that, I mean, there is not any way another car can get behind that BMW. And it's not a big car. That's my little coupe. So, well, thank you for the information. I'm only going to keep moving as I know that the time is up. Yes, ma'am. On the presentation. Appreciate the background and the comments on investment. I think we all definitely appreciate that. I just want to point out, we have precedent in this neighborhood where this has happened. People have made mistakes and they've been rectified. In fact, I've had several examples. So, it does happen where people don't realize what they did is out of compliance. Yes, ma'am. But we've actually had a very good track where the homeowner is fixing it as well. But with that, I'm going to open it up to commissioners if anybody has a question or a comment of the applicant. Lisa, I'd like you to mention... Make sure you're speaking in your microphone, too, please. Thank you. You'd mentioned that there was some permitting before this work was completed. Was it specific to the driveway, the permit? Sorry, say that again. You had mentioned earlier that before the driveway was installed that the applicant went through the permitting process with the city. Is that correct? Yes. The applicant worked with his contractor to go through the permitting process with the city. And I'm so glad you asked that question because not once did anybody with the city, the contractor, or the inspector who came out more than once and spoke with Mr. Norval on more than one occasion, never once was there any mention of any restrictions on driveways. Y'all, there's a lot of misinformation out there. And as I said, if he had known about this restriction, he definitely would not have invested his money and to make that driveway as nice as it could be and to do the landscaping and put flowers there. It's a significant improvement over what was there. Does what was ultimately installed and as it's pictured in what you're passing around, does that differ from what was included in the application to the city? I'm sorry, would you please repeat that? The driveway that was installed, was it accurately described in the permitting process where the dimensions in the permit? Not in our opinion, sir, because there is no curve. And when the contractor was putting in the cement, there was sort of a little retaining wall on the side that was existing. And in order to make it look right, I think he just sort of wrapped the cement around it. And we think that the driveway starts at a different point. In fact, we thought that it was a lot less than the 11.6 inches, I mean feet, I believe, that it was described as. We don't think that it was accurate. What we do know is that some of those other pictures I show you are pictures of, say, the neighbors across the street. Many of the neighbors have come over and said, wow, I can't believe that this property could look this good. And thank you for doing that. I appreciate that. I think you're addressing stuff outside the scope of my question. I think I have a question for staff. I mean, was this project approved? We do not require a permit to be applied or polled for a driveway installation. So there was not a permit for this driveway, but there is a design review process that has to be done being in a historic district. So it wouldn't be a permit for the driveway. It would be a certificate of design approval that should have been requested before installing the driveway. And that was not polled yet. Thank you. And so now the request is to retroactively grant that. Is that correct? Right, to grant an exception for that. Right. Quick question about the regulation dealing with the width of the driveway. I noticed it says it parallel to the front of the lot. So is this some kind of situation where we have a loophole where technically at the front line of the lot are the exact language. Straight line that runs parallel to the front of the lot line. I mean, I guess what's staff's explanation as to why it doesn't comply with that guideline? As to why it doesn't. It does not. So it does at the very beginning where it's an 11 and a half feet, maybe 12. It does. But it's only supposed to be that wide all the way back. Right, right. So we're in the guidelines. Does it say it needs to maintain that width all the way back? Did I? It doesn't. Being in the primary yard, it has to maintain that width. Once you get to a secondary yard or behind the house, then it can expand. I see. Okay. So the primary lot is not necessarily at the front, although that would be the line parallel with it. But the secondary would be kind of either adjacent to the house or behind the house. Right, once you get past the front wall of the facade of the building. And that's typically how we've handled allowing for wider pads there is taking the driveway all the way back and then going maybe even up to 20 feet wide next to the house and behind the primary facade. Okay. Yeah. Comment on just that, just your question. Sure, absolutely. There is no way that that driveway can be extended behind the house. You would have to remove major, major trees. We're just trying to clarify our understanding of the regulation. Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand that. We were trying to understand the regulation too, which is my point, a lot of confusion. And thank you very much. And I apologize for going over my time. Anything else for me? So staff, the one that we've had a couple where this has happened and the homeowners have rectified it. Is it the same kind of situation where they didn't get approval before DDRC, then they poured a pad, and then we had to go back and they rectified it? Yes, the ones that I've dealt with just at the staff level in the past few months have been gravel. So they have been able to come in and remove the gravel. But these are some of the older cases on Shirley Street and Lincoln Street where they have paved a wider pad and then they've had to remove it. Yeah. Okay. All right. Any other commissioners with a question or comment? Yeah, kind of the applicant's point here. In the two examples on Shirley Street and the other, you can see where the driveway is relatively flat as you approach the front facade of the house. And so that provides an opportunity for once you get back there to widen that driveway.  It's impossible. So I think we've had some cases, just to answer that to Mr. Wolf, I believe we've had some cases before where we've had similar situations on lots. But the ordinance language just requires that people stack rather than widen. So cars could pull up behind one another so you maintain that 12-foot width. Would that not be a potential hardship? In this case? I think there are very many other properties similar to this one. Do we have any examples of, because I guess Taylor, if I'm correct, it sounds like you're getting it, that might be an extraordinary and exceptional condition of the property where you can't really, you don't have the opportunity to widen it past that secondary lot line. Do staff have any prior examples of what have qualified for an extraordinary and exceptional condition of the property? I don't recall that we have had any that qualified for an exceptional condition. We've certainly had some where they didn't have the opportunity to widen, that there were limitations on the property. But those driveways, I mean, there's certainly many driveways like this one that are single driveways. Because the ordinance language is very clear that it's got to be 12 feet only if it's at the front of the property. So in those cases, people would be expected to stat cards rather than to have a parking pad. The reason there's that ordinance is parking pads are not typical for historic districts in the front edge of the property, if that helps. For Shirley Street, their property line ended right where the driveway was, so they were not able to widen that either. So they widened towards the house because that was their property, but they couldn't have had the opportunity to widen to the other side. And we still denied that. I have one more question for staff. It appears from the picture the front of the house. There may be some space between the house and the end of the driveway. Would staff have any objection to extending it towards the house? There is no. And that's what I was going to say. In the packet, in the evaluation packet, I think it's page seven. There are other examples of houses on the block that have longer driveways, and their driveways do extend to the side of the house. So I see that that is a little different, but there wouldn't be any restriction to extending the driveway a little closer to the house itself. There we go. Because if you head straight back the driveway, that's what used to be a garage. So it did historically connect all the way to the house or where the house is now. Is there any way I can address that? Your question, sir. We considered that. We have considered every option to try to fix this. When that was a garage, it was way different from the nice stucco enclosure that he's done now. It's come up as far as you can, as far as we could take it up without looking at pretty ridiculous to make the driveway go smack up into the house. I know I'm using wrong terminology, but aesthetically, that would have been terrible. And again, he's simply trying to make sure that it's going to have some curb appeal and that someone's going to want to come and make this their primary residence. And as I said, nothing but compliments from the neighbors regarding this. And we have many, many more pictures of other driveways within one block or two blocks. That are in deplorable condition that are way, way wider. So that's why we contend that this is not compromising, but rather enhancing the character of the neighborhood. And certainly of that house. Was there any public that wanted to speak on this that we know of? Or just checking out the room? We didn't get any comments. Okay. I was just curious. Any other questions of the applicant? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Unless anybody wants to discuss anything, I can open it up and see if somebody wants to put a motion out there. I would like to ask one more question of staff, just for the sake of maybe understanding what we should consider, right? I mean, I can't imagine whoever drafted these regulations originally would have included an arbitrary exception for exceptional conditions to the property. So I'm just curious as to what in staff's opinion would I guess rise to that threshold or meet that threshold of an exceptional condition for the property? It's hard for me to think of given the historic nature of the district and the driveways that are there that are currently there that and the way they are used and the way people currently, you know, stack their cars and their single lane driveways that this is really an exception.  You know, but I guess I don't mean interrupt. Well, sorry to interrupt, but I guess what you're suggesting is if they're, you know, 10 feet back, there was a steep drop off which would require them to extend the driveway to fit multiple cars as opposed to a single with car with driveway long enough to accommodate multiple vehicles. That's right. I see. So in staff's view, if you do have accommodation for two cars off street and a single lane driveway, that's pretty standard. Any other comments, questions? I want to make a comment. And what gets me is we got that DDRC sign up front and it tells the public in that area, hey, this is what's going on.  And my point I'm trying to make here is nobody in the neighborhood here to speak in their favor. So he's by himself trying to get the job done. That's what bothers me. There's no public input. Thank you. Well, Amira, are we expressing what's bothering us? Because I guess where I would be frustrated, it was done without going through the right process. So right there, that's a no brainer. Plus there's precedent where we have not ever done an exception for this. So I'm going to open it up to a motion unless anybody else wants to express their feelings. Bob has and I have, but I'm going to open it up. I'm going to open it up and see. But anybody like to make a motion? Are you open to a motion over there? Yeah, I guess I can. All right. All right, go ahead. Yeah, make sure you got your microphone on. I make a motion that is not in keeping with section 17-2.5D of the city ordinance and recommends denial for 3430 Earl Wood Drive. Thank you. I have a second. Thank you. All right. Mr. Broom? Yes. Mr. Greenberg? Yes. Ms. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Lee Decker? Yes. Mr. Salibi? Yes. And Mr. Wolfe? Yes. Motion passes. All right. All right. Thank you. Next case? The next case is 2307 Pendleton Street. And it is a request for a certificate of design approval for demolition. As stated in both the neighborhood guidelines and the city ordinance, the demolition of a historic building should be an action of last resort. When a structure is demolished, the community loses a part of its history, which cannot be replaced. Accordingly, such requests are reviewed very deliberately and require detailed information. And just to reiterate with that, staff does not take it lightly when it is recommending or suggesting that it is approving a demolition of a building. And it was only done when there are extenuating circumstances as what we'll see in this case. This is a one-story wood frame shotgun house constructed in 1910. It features a front gable roof, one-story front porch, and six over six windows throughout. The house is currently vacant and owned by the City of Columbia Community Development. Community Development is currently requesting to demolish this house with the intention to rebuild a single family house on the property. They currently own the lot next door to this, so they would be able to combine both of those lots together to have an ample-sized lot for a single family house. Community Development is in the process of revitalizing this block of Pendleton Street in May of this year. The DDRC approved the design approval of several new construction houses here at 2330, 2331, 2333, and 2346 Pendleton Street as well as 2320 Senate Street to build new affordable single family houses. This is a concerted effort on the part of Community Development to revitalize this block to bring more stability to the block, more houses, and more families here. This indicates that they also have a good record with their design and that is something that has been approved in the past. They have a track record of being able to come up with designs that work well for this block and that what would be replaced here would fit that measure. In addition to that, the house does have structural difficulties and as we'll see in section two of section 17.25g6c, the building or major portion of the building is in such old or unusual uncommon design and materials that it would not be reproduced. While the shotgun design of the building could technically be reproduced, it would be difficult to build it back on this lot during the current code requirements. These modern requirements would require any new construction on the lot to be even narrower than what is currently here due to necessary setbacks. Also from the guidelines, section 17-2.5g6c, section one, a decision on a Certificate of Design Approval, Historic Districts and Landmarks application for the demolition of a building, structure or object shall be based on the following standards. Standard A, the historic or architectural significance of a building, structure or object. This house is one of the oldest remaining houses along this block of Pendleton Street and it is a contributing building to the district. Along with 2310 Pendleton Street, this house is the oldest of the 12 remaining historic houses along the block. The house appears to have undergone a few exterior alterations including the creation of a side porch but it still maintains most of its original exterior details and its overall shotgun form. While similar shotgun houses to 2307 Pendleton Street were once found along this street and throughout the city most have been lost to demolition over the past 60 years leaving this house as one of the last examples of its type in the area. Criteria B, the importance of the building, structure or object to the ambiance of a district. As a contributing property and one of the oldest remaining houses on the block, this building adds to the overall ambiance of the district. The historic houses along the 2300 block of Pendleton Street while diverse in style and details share similar ideas of setback, massing, rhythm of openings and that contribute to a cohesive feel along the street. However, due to widespread demolition in the area the historic streetscape has become fractured with wide stretches of vacant land including the land to the west of 2307 Pendleton Street. Records show that by 1940 most of the 24 lots facing Pendleton Street and the 2300 block were occupied by houses. Today only 12 historic houses remain within these 24 lots. With several vacant lots and active development the block as a whole will greatly benefit from historically sensitive infill which is what is planned. The shotgun house at 2307 Pendleton not only contributes to the ambiance of the district due to its historic value but its precedence also maintains the pattern of single family homes along the northwest side of the block. This pattern would be continued with the proposed new construction for this site. And criteria D the existing structural condition history of maintenance and use of the property whether it endangers public safety and whether the city is requiring its demolition. The building is currently in disrepair partly from common deferred maintenance issues and neglect but also from structural deficiencies. The documentation shows the house has widespread problems at the foundation and with the roof system. The housing housing development or development has put in an application and estimates for the cost of repairs totaling $169,537. These estimates include structural repairs to the foundation and roof. Changes to windows and siding and doors some changes are required per code and needed system updates interior finishing appliances counters etc. The total estimated cost related specifically to the structure of the house add up to just about $123,000. The estimated value of the house after renovations is listed at $77,466 based on comparable house values in the area. In addition to these issues the current setbacks of the house are ranging from 2.5 feet to 3 feet which is well below the modern zoning code requirements of a minimum five foot setback on each side of the house. As such bringing the house up to code which would be required given the amount of work needed would require that both side walls of the house be converted to fire walls. Certain fire resistance measures would need to be taken on these exterior walls to be in keeping with code requirements including changes to the existing historic windows. These exterior changes would in turn make the house ineligible for the Bailey Bill tax abatement program and could potentially potentially make it into a non-contributing building in the district. So essentially the amount of work that would have to be done in this house would take away much of its historic value to bring it up to code and to make it safe for today's measures. Criteria F whether there are definitive plans for the reuse of the property if the proposed demolition is carried out and what the effect of those plans are on the character of the surrounding area. Due to the fractured streetscape along this block which has caused by a demolition without redevelopment it is vital that any permitted demolition along this block be followed by plans for rebuilding. Should demolition be allowed the applicant has plans to combine this lot with a vacant lot next door and build a single family house on the new larger lot. While final detailed designs for new construction would require a separate review and approval from the DDRC the submitted renderings for new construction appear to be generally compliable with the character of the surrounding area. Criteria G whether the building or structure is able to be relocated and whether a site for relocation is available. A staff did look at relocation options for the building and one deterrent to moving the building was overhead wires. Staff research shows that moving wires to accommodate the move could cost up to $10,000. This cost combined with the cost to move the house and the cost of repairs would likely make relocation cost prohibitive for the house and not to mention the structural integrity and issues that are present with the physical condition of the building. Criteria H whether the building or structure is under orders from the city to be demolished due to severe structural deficiencies and this criterion shall have added significance in comparison to the criteria mentioned in subsections one through seven. The building is not currently under orders from the city to be demolished due to severe structural deficiencies. We've taken all of this into account the structural quality of the house the code updates that would be needed and the severe toll that would be taken on the historic materials of the building to make those updates and the solid plan that is in place for revitalizing this block. With all of that in mind staff believes that this property has a historic and architectural value and it is contributing to the district but due to the extenuating circumstances related to the limitations of the lot and the resultant difficulties of bringing the house up to code section seven of the old Shandon Lower Waverly Protection Area Design Guidelines and section 17-2.5G6C of the city ordinance staff recommends approval of the request for certificate certificate of design approval for demolition at 2307 Pendleton street. Is the applicant here? Yep. Oh, hi. Come on up. State your name. My name is Delores Shabazz. I'm the program manager of community development. Okay, great. And do you sort of tell the truth of this proceeding? I do. Thank you. So we've owned this home for we I think recaptured it back through a foreclosure in 2018. And the cost to repair the home is significant. The lot is narrow. It's not a billable lot. I don't think and it was also encroaching on the lot next to it. We're working with the development corporation. They have a redevelopment plan in place right now in this area to add this lot to that development plan. So the first step is to get it approved to be demolished. We've also been maintaining the lot and keeping it clean from squatting over the past since 2018. So it is a cost burden on us. But we would would like to see an improvement in the community, especially sitting on in a home on the on the block. That is a nuisance. We want to try to rectify that. I'm going to open up if the commissioner any commissioner has a question or comment to the applicant. Yeah, commissioner Lee Decker. Yeah, make sure your microphone's on and questions on the financial the economic analysis. There's two different numbers on the staff report for the I guess it's for repair. The first one is 169,000 and there's a second one for 123,000. And they both seem to be referring to repairs. What is the difference in these two estimates? Sure. The one in the 123,000 is structural. So that's just what it would take to stabilize the structure of the building and bring it up to code. The additional costs would be more for the fixtures, appliances and other things like that that aren't structurally necessary for the building. So to get it ready for resale $169,000. That's right. And these are $2,019. No, this was updated for this year. Okay. Yeah, I want to ask about the financial capability to do the rebuild. There's a lot next door that you have to acquire. Are you in consultation with the neighbor to acquire that lot? Or is that something you have to negotiate for? The development corporation, TN Development is in contact with the owner of the lot next door and they are prepared to purchase the lot. They just need to go through the proper process. Our department's community development, we're an entitlement city so we receive HUD funds and we will fund that. We're looking to fund that project and it will allow for acquisition. That's what I was going to ask about the stability of your funding stream. Do you have approved now in a budget somewhere to do the demo and the rebuild? Or is it something you're going to have to apply for at some future date? So our department community development is the funding source. We use our home funds that we get from HUD to designate different projects every year and this is a project that has been to submit it to our office for approval. So we do have the funds to if the project is approved we go through our loan committee etc to approve the TN development corporation project. So TN corporation is one entity, community development is another entity. We just work together on revitalization areas in the City of Columbia together. So you don't have to wait for a new HUD funding cycle. You have the money right now available? We do and we also just put out a notice of funding to do affordable housing projects in the City of Columbia. That's all thanks. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Okay. Anybody? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else from the public wish to speak? Okay. If there's no follow-up questions from our commissioners I'm going to open it up to a motion. I'd like to make a motion for approval of the request for a certificate of design approval for demolition of 2307 Pendleton Street. Mr. Broom. Yes. Mr. Greenberg. Yes. Ms. Jacob. Yes. Mr. Lee Decker. Mr. Salibi. Yes. And Mr. Wolfe. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. Any other business on the agenda today? No? All right. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting. Man, even before I ask for it. All right. I guess we're adjourned. Thank you, everybody.


Come in. Look. Well. Come in. Mr. President, good to see you. Good to see you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to all of you. Artichokes, we caught a point. Excuse me. Oh, thank you very much. Surely we'll offer. Why don't we stand into a family picture? Yes. Okay, watch yours. Come here. Lindsay. Thank you. Thank you. Can you say Merry Christmas? Merry Christmas to all of you. They're going to want to see your daughter. That's all they want to see. Yes. Can we have a campaign? We can. We can. Thank you. Thank you for our gift. Here's your husband. All we heard. Mr. Curden, by the time we come back, this is really a farewell. You'll never be here entirely. No. There's a lot to move back. You shouldn't hear from you. We're not really leaving the whole company. You're not really leaving the whole company. You're not really leaving the whole company. You're not really leaving the whole company. You're not really leaving the whole company. You're not really leaving the whole company. Thank you very much. I feel good. Well, of course. I know. Everybody compliments him on your good health. I just want to say something I will.


The resettlement process here in Damakna Paul is a series of steps that we undertake for the refugees. We have information sessions in the camp. There are focus group discussions that can also use other media outlets for information such as mass media, radio bulletins and posters and a series of counselling sessions we use to inform refugees about the resettlement process. We want to give refugees as much information as possible for them to decide to make a well-informed decision about their future. After that the refugees will come forward and sign what we call a declaration of interest which is their own self-referral for resettlement consideration. We then call refugees in camp to something called a verification interview where we do a series of interviews with them about their family and about their history. And then after that we start to look at their needs. Are there any special needs on their case? Are there any specific attention? And we start to draft that up for the settlement countries. The information programme has various different aspects, one of which is a central information session. We hold this in every camp every single week and we respond to the queries of the refugees and the issues that the refugees bring to our attention. Another way that we find very effective in this case load is also to go on a mobile information campaign and this is something very unique here that we actually go into the camps and we identify those people because we know who they are through our interviews who are either pending a decision in the family about resettlement, they might have a different opinion about resettlement in the family or they might not be interested and require more information. So what we try to do is actually engage with them in their own environment, in their own huts and we sit with them and we listen to them what their concerns are and we try to give them the appropriate counselling at the household level basically. So it gets lots of reassurance and it's specific and it's targeted to the individual rather than on a mass level. I think this operation is extremely successful and we've been able to refer over 90,000 people now to different countries and over 62,000 people have departed and we still have work to do. We still have many people who want to be resettled, who want to be reunited with their relatives, with their close relatives in the settlement country. So I think a lot of our areas of concern will be trying to ensure that people have family reunification at this stage in the process. There are still many thousands who need to be resettled and we also find that nearly everybody in the camp now has a close family member in a resettlement country so it's trying to ensure that that family link continues.