iscussion, I will ask for a staff recommendation. Carla Rosenberg, planning department, staff would recommend approval of the application. Wonderful, thank you. I would entertain a motion. Commissioner Coolsby, I will re-serve. The Durham Historic Preservation Commission finds that in the case COA<PHONE_NUMBER> Ahmed Road modifications to accessory structures, the applicant is proposing to raise and restore three accessory structures on a landmark property. Salvage materials from previously demolished structures on site will be used to replace rotten boards throughout the structures and to reconstruct and repair doors that are deteriorated or missing. Doors will be designed to match the still extant shed door. Two additions will be removed from the sides of the largest tobacco barn, leaving only the central portion constructed of logs. Each structure will be raised onto a concrete pad or concrete masonry unit pierced based with natural stone to protect from water intrusion. Two trees will be removed immediately adjacent to the smaller tobacco barn and one adjacent to the tractor shed without placement. Therefore, the conclusion of the law is that the proposed additions and alterations are consistent with the historic character and qualities of the historic district and are consistent with the historic property's local review criteria, specifically those listed in the staff report and the Durham Historic Preservation Commission approves the certificate of appropriateness for case COA<PHONE_NUMBER> Ahmed Road 6404 Ahmed Road modifications to accessory structures with the following conditions. One, the improvements shall be substantially consistent with the plans and testimony presented to the commission at this commission hearing and attached to this COA. Two, the improvements may require additional approvals from other city or county departments or state or local agencies. The applicant is responsible for obtaining all required approvals related to building construction, site work, and work in the right-of-way. And three, a compliance inspection shall be performed immediately upon completion of the work approved herein. Duncan, thank you Vice Chair Gulsby. Second came from me and I'll ask Ms. Holmes for a roll call vote. Chair Bouchard. Approved. Vice Chair Gulsby. Approved. Commissioner Calhoun. Approved. Commissioner Johnson. Approved. Commissioner Chambers. Approved. Commissioner Horton. Approved. Motion passes six to zero. Ms. Bidman, thanks for your appearance before us today. Good luck on this project and I hope you do get another 100 years out of these structures. It's a remarkable project. Thanks to all of you. Next case on our agenda is COA 220037. It's 36. I skip one. 220036, 2210 Woodrow Street Edition and Modifications. And it looks like Carl is bringing our applicant into the room. Hello, Merrigan, how are you? I'm great. You're doing very well, Faggs. Thank you for your patience. Oh, no problem. Lots to do today. We're gonna go ahead and get you sworn in. Clerk Holmes. Do you swear or find that the testimony you're about to give in the public hearing proceedings for today's case, the truth, by your own knowledge or by information and belief? I do. And Mr. Merrigan, do you consent to having this hearing proceed today on this remote electronic platform? I do. Wonderful, thank you. Carla, staff report, please. All right, Carla Rosenberg cleaning department. This is KCOA 220036, 2210 Woodrow Street Edition and Modifications. The applicant is Tom Merrigan. The owner is Christopher Scott Weintraub and Deborah Jean Lugo, located on the north side of Woodrow Street between Virginia Avenue and Oakland Avenue. Zone residential suburban eight. And this is a contributing structure to the Watts-Hillendale Historic District. So the applicant's proposing to remove a previous upper stories or attic edition as it's described, replaced with a new second story addition in a dormer form. And that would entail enlarging the roof structure itself and then also the footprint then of what was the original portion of the structure, staying within the boundaries of the current footprint but expanding the original footprint of the structure. So I would like to introduce the staff report into the record. There are a couple other things about like adding a screen porch as well. I'd like to introduce this staff report into the record and invite Mr. Merrigan to present his case. And Mr. Merrigan, if you'd like me to skip to any particular page in the staff report, just call out the number, the page number and I'll happily do that for you. Okay, great. Thank you so much. And yeah, I guess this property is one that has been altered a lot over its history and is a difficult one for us that we've been before the commission and had a lot of success on a lot of projects over the years. And I think this one is a little bit of a head scratcher. This is a good slide to show. This one or the next one. It's originally was shown on the sandborn maps sometime after the 1937 maps as a single story structure and was later modified both to the top of the original house as well as to the rear of the house. Making sense of kind of these previous modifications in the context of sort of the homeowner's interest in kind of making the spaces more up to date, expanding a little bit of the square footage in the context of homes that are generally modest in size in this Watts Hill and Dale district is a careful balance. And so there's a lot of nuances and things. I think one of the other factors on this as well is that the house is a fairly muted sort of muted character looking at it and kind of trying to describe it stylistically has been, it's kind of a vernacular and doesn't have a very strong craftsman or classical or federalist or any of those kinds of kind of traits to it. And so I guess trying to navigate what we're doing in that context has also been a little bit of a trickier thing. There is a front sort of porch element that doesn't appear on the sandborn maps. And so, and it actually has probably the strongest kind of stylistic sort of attributes in the sense that it does have a little bit of a craftsman. Okay, yeah, so here's the sandborn map showing its I think it's 1950 sandborn map single story.  That side porch on the right hand side of it is now part of the house. And almost all of its materiality matches like the windows, other things match the rest of the historic portions of the house. So we think that happened very soon after it was built or documented. The upper floor and rear portions of the house are the sort of main big things that happened though. And I was just talking about the front porch has a little bit more of a little more character to it that gives us something to draw on and maybe borrow from a little bit. You can see there's some sort of paneled columns on it. The house was wood-sided, but is now aluminum-sided. There's a tiny bit of area that we opened up to sort of see what condition it's in because we often find that it's in not bad shape. In this case, unfortunately, I think there's a photo somewhere in this that shows it's very badly deteriorated at least in one area. And so I think our proposal is to take whatever portions of that. There's the porch. Whatever portions of the siding are in good shape and put it on the front of the house and then use cementitious, solid cementitious siding on the rest. The main work that we're proposing doing is confusing. If we could go up to the three-dimensional models, the 3D model views, the very top ones of those, these I think explain the two-dimensional drawings do this as well, but these help a lot explain. If we go up one more slide, please, I think we'll see. So the existing house was added to on the back with a cross gable element. And then it was also added on to above with what is sort of a Russian doll kind of putting of a second floor that has its own gable roof that's actually at a lower slope, lower steepness than the other portions of the extant roof. And it kind of makes for a messy palette to start with. So we're starting with this and that upper floor level is there today. And obviously the owners aren't interested in trying to reinstate its original form. They wanna make use of that upper floor and even expand it. And so trying to navigate around what we think is kind of a terrible thing that happened to the house in a way that makes use of some of the things that it brought to the house of value, which are added floor areas and still keeps the house feeling like it belongs in the district and feeling like it's true to at least the intent of the original structure is sort of what our main goals have been through this process. If we go to the next slide, we can kind of see the proposed changes. The proposed changes keep that second floor addition, the outside walls of that second floor addition are maintained as well as all the windows on the front of the house. And I think that's a little bit, as I read through the staff report, it was a little confusing that we were rebuilding something, the walls of that piece on the front. And that's actually not what we're proposing. We're proposing keeping those walls and just modifying the roof over those walls on the upper level to become a dormer in what is once again, a consistent gable from end to end, sort of as you look at the massing of the house. So it makes that upper level less dominating and more subordinate. And so we were trying to maximize that relationship as we started thinking about how to expand and get a little more square footage in the house. The next couple slides might show better kind of, so there's the way it looks today. And you can vaguely make out that that upper gable slope is not the same as it is below. And so you get kind of this, like I said, like a Russian doll nesting kind of thing going on. And then the next slide shows kind of the proposed, which allows the gable to be maintained across the top and lets the house read more like it has dormers and it's one and a half stories and not really two stories. As we go, keep going through the... Oh, I'm sorry. In this one you can also see, sorry, back one, you can also see we are also proposing a little floor area in the front that has just a little pergola over it that is something that homeowners, the existing porch is not very useful. It keeps the weather off of you as you're entering the house but otherwise isn't very, not a very useful thing. And other houses in the neighborhood do have some kind of a porch or other place to sort of land and spend time. And so the criteria on that is not really in our favor but it seems in keeping with the house and helps give character to the house while also giving them something they are interested in having which is sort of a place to sit on the front. As we go through the next slides, you can kind of see other views of the before and the after. So not only the sort of changes to the extent roof would also encompass some of the rear portions of the rear addition so that those things, while they're not on the principle, character defining elevation, they are additions and kind of aren't necessarily things that gel with the house. And so this would kind of help it all be one thing with more hierarchy to it. This also shows the rear screen porch and the sort of detailing of the porch columns matches what is it extant on the front of the house for that small front porch. There is in the current documents, a proposal to remove, if you go back one slide, remove the little accessory structure that's sort of a garage structure that I guess officially, Carly can probably enumerate on this a little more, but that's not actually part of this proposal because I think that's handled under or more administrative. It's a separate, it will be a separate COA. And so that's just for clarity, not part of the actual proposal on this COA. I think that's kind of it. That's sort of the story of what we're trying to do. The ridge height of one last thing is the ridge height of the house is also not changing. It will match the height of the extant ridge line. And so while that's not part of the original house, we are trying to be mindful of not expanding further the sort of certain parts of the extents of the house, we're trying to keep the house's overall presence similar to what it is today. Mr. American, thank you for that presentation. Gonna open the floor now to questions from the commissioner. This commissioner goes be the wood siding that is underneath. What is the profile of that? It's hard to tell because it's not in good shape. If you're able to scroll down to one of the last photographs, I believe it's shown, yeah, on 48. Yeah, it may be a German, the slide on the left or the photo on the left of this slide gives it kind of the, there's something going on at the top that makes me think it's German or it just has a funky kind of tongue and groove situation. It may be like a German profile. I don't know, the proposal currently is to have fiber cement, cementitious, like a hardy or other kind of siding where we need to replace it. And I don't know of any manufacturers who make kind of that German profile. I guess getting it out of wood is also a possibility. It's not one that we've explored yet and we would need to kind of understand the costs and other things, I guess, about that. We've come across a company, True Exterior, TR exterior that is a thicker cementitious material that does allow for the profiles. We've been able to use it actually for more shiplap conditions. We haven't used it in a Dutch profile yet. But that'd be one group to look at if needing to match the shape. Yeah, thank you. That's actually great because there used to be, hardy used to have the, I think it was the Artisan series. And those were nice thicker, like the old sort of shiplap used to be. But yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, we would need to fine tune what that is. I guess at some point, this picture kind of shows that. And so I'm not sure exactly, we have said cementitious, but we haven't been specific yet about that. And I don't know if that's sort of administrative thing or if that's something more like we would have to come back or something to kind of say, this is the actual product we're talking about. Sure, sure. My other question for you is, you did allude to that the guidelines are not very supportive to the trellis that you're showing out front, this front porch addition. Are there any parts of the guideline that you feel do support this addition? I kind of agree with you right now, but I'm hoping that if there's something that you can point us to. Yeah, so yeah, thank you. That's helpful. In looking over the criteria, things like pergolas or almost like garden structures seem not specifically addressed. And so the portions of this front area that are probably hardest to argue and favor for relate to the floor. It seems like continuing the floor that is next to the extant, which is maybe not original, part of the porch seems a little tough. One idea is I think our current thing, our current proposal shows sort of continuation of like a concrete slab on a masonry, a stem wall construction. I think proposing that it may be a lighter construction like something that is either wood or is just sort of a sand set, almost like a patio or something that isn't quite so permanent treats it lighter and makes it feel like it is more like a independent structure or something that is yeah, just not competing with this original or not original, but this extant porch element. I think one of the things that's interesting is that all of the criteria about porches and stoops and things like that seem related to, I guess, contributing sort of original elements. And I don't know, I think they just say that it's not okay to expand them or build new ones where there's no evidence historically, but if you have one that doesn't have any evidence of being there historically either, but is existing, I guess I feel like that's a little ambiguous and I just may need to read the criteria on that. So I think those are kind of the, I think that the owners would be happy if there was something here. And so I think we're flexible on if the floor system of it was instead of matching the height and being similar to what's next to it that's existing, if that wanted to be something that felt more like it was just from the gardens, garden stones or something like that, I think that would help, yeah. Yeah. And it being to one side as soon, that's more living space there during the common day we need more shade. That's right, yeah, there are some really nice, I think some really nice willow oaks on the western, the sort of left as you face the front side. And the window that's furthest west on the front facade is in a bedroom. Sort of office or bedroom space. The main living room is to the right-hand side of the front door. And so having that kind of circulation happening on the centered door maintained and everything, but then having kind of an outdoor version of that living room that's in a similar placement relative to that door made a lot of sense. So yeah, I think that's the reasoning for that. And I think it also helps because the, that bump that's on the east end that was sort of once a, we think a porch, but is now fully enclosed and it has a lot of matching materials helps a little bit because that pergola that we're proposing is sort of bounded on the front facade rather than extending to one of its ends. So that seemed like the right thing to do there. All right, I don't have any other questions. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair Goolsbee. Any other commissioners with questions for our applicant? If not, I will close the public hearing. Stand by Mr. Merrigan, we might have some questions for you at which point I would reopen the public hearing. But I would invite discussion amongst the commission. And I'll go ahead and get started as it's getting a little bit late in our day here. I think where I am struggling is in connection with the various criteria identified in the staff report involving the roof form. And whether or not these changes are distinguishable from the original structure. Now, this is one of those quintessentially difficult cases as our applicant I think has already acknowledged. You have a structure that's already been heavily modified. And now it's coming to us with the owners clearly wanting to expand their space, making a more livable property, but we're bound by our criteria. And so I am struggling right now with whether or not this addition essentially makes us a different structure than the historic structure that makes it a contributing structure in this neighborhood. And so I don't know if anyone else would like to address that or any other aspect of the application, but those are my preliminary thoughts. I don't struggle with the roof change because it looks like it was already modified from the original structure. And it just looks like they just kind of remodified it to make it look like dormers. So I don't think, I think that the guidelines from what I understand the intent is to focus on changes to the original structure. And if the additional second floor was not original, that's what I understand it wasn't original, right? April, just to clarify, the change that took place was that sort of hat addition, that roof, that attic addition, that's the change that took place to the roof. The roof is otherwise original apart from that and the rear gave it the addition. So it wasn't changed. Hey, Commissioner Wolfe's question real quick is, was there a shed dormer on it to begin with? It doesn't appear that there was. The Sandborn map only shows a one-story structure. I mean, this was a modest one-story structure of about what, a thousand or fewer square feet before that side porch got enclosed. And obviously, you know, there's value and there's importance with those modest structures. Obviously over time, it got modified to accommodate more modern living. And the fact that folks need more space than that.  Well, what I'm seeing in front of me is, you know, no longer that modest one-story structure. And I don't think that modest one-story structure is distinguishable from the structure it's going to become if we approve this. And that might be okay. I mean, I'm not ignorant of the fact that, you know, the alternative for some of these properties could be, all right, if we can't make them livable, then we'll just submit our demolition application, even if we have to wait a year. And so I'm cognizant of that risk as well. But I'm struggling to figure out, especially when you've got now a roof form that's making what was a one-story structure, a two-story structure indistinguishable from what the property was at the time it was first erected, I am struggling with that. I think it's distinguishable. And that could just be, when I look at it and I think about that neighborhood and the way that that neighborhood has evolved over time, this looks like exactly what you were saying. And I think it's distinguishable because of the shutters and because of the windows. So is the form distinguishable? Yeah. Can you tell where the previous house began and? I think I can get close enough to distinguishing that. And I am more than happy to be a minority of one on this issue. I was just curious if anyone else shared that concern, but Vice Chair Gulsby, you introduced a concern about the extension of the pergola. Did the answers to your questions satisfy you or do you still have those concerns? I still have them. I don't think the criteria supported it. I was hoping to find something amenable to it or something that the applicant had or could point to. But I think it's the canopy. I kind of see this as canopy and haunted structures. And even with the suggestion of it being something of wood, yeah, I'm struggling to find something that supports it in the guidelines. And I can put my hat on. Some of the guidelines talk about historic porches, but I think there are, there's at least one part of the guideline that says it just refers to just porches or just stoops and porches. So I struggled with that as well, just because if the existing porch isn't historic, is that make this... So what it's saying is locate new decks, extreme porches on non-character defining elevations. Yeah, that's where we're having an issue with it. Yeah, and it says in I, porches, stoops and balconies, number three, it is not appropriate to enclose, screen, extend, add or remove porches, stoops and balconies on character defining elevations unless reconstructing documented pictures, right? Yeah, and we went through the same thing on a previous application today and decided that it was not appropriate to extend the balcony. Yeah. Yeah, and this one I struggled with because, well, it's lighter and it's not as heavy, you know, but it's still, I don't think it meets the guidelines. Front facing for character defining elevation on the front of the house. Yeah. That's a really, really nice character defining elevation on the front. And I would not, I'm opposed to that going on the front. And, you know, what you're gonna build on the back if you wanna sit outside, you're building a screen then put what you're on the back. So sit outside there, but you don't need this on the front. Yeah. And to the extent I still harbor concerns about the roof form, again, it's the character, you know, defining elevation here. I think keeping the pergola and that little stoop, the way it is, I think is more in harmony with the original structure. And I think would make it easier for me to support the application if that, you know, first floor elevation is a little bit more true to the original construction than what's proposed here. Yeah, I understand that. And I think that's a very fair shake. And I think that that compromise doesn't seem insurmountable for us. Other than the porch, extension and addition, I'm in favor of approving the application just to build it out there. It's getting late and I have to leave it wine. So it's one of the- Yeah, I think it's more than appropriate, Commissioner Johnson and for others to let us know where you stand by way of straw poll vote. And let's try to bring any remaining concerns to a head here so that they can be discussed. It sounds like our applicant is okay with us imposing a requirement that the existing porch remain as is without extending it and creating that pergola. Are there other concerns about the application beyond what we've talked about that we would like to address with the applicant? Just real quick, and I know I've asked this before, I do want to confirm one more time because I'm reading, going back to the national district language and it was described as a one half story gabled house with a shed dormer. So that is or is not an exact, the original house did or did not have shed dormer on it. So that was one inconsistency. Unfortunately, they write these national registered nominations sometimes with what's extant and not what was original. So it's kind of hard. It didn't give me any guidance as to what was original on that house. Unfortunately. Thank you. Carl, if I were to modify the existing final bullet in our possible motion to simply say the existing front porch shall remain and not be extended, would that effectuate the change we've been talking about? What you've been discussing, yes, I think so. Well, to move things along, I will ask for a stat. Well, I shouldn't do that. Let me make sure that there's no further discussion amongst the commissioners. Okay. Seeing and hearing nothing further, I will ask for a staff recommendation. Carla Rosmer planning department staff would not recommend approval of the application just because it's not reversible, what they're doing, what this proposal is. I would actually do the opposite of what you guys have been talking about by allowing the purgula because it is reversible but changing that roof structure and the footprint of the original house. There's no going back. The other changes were made maintaining what was original of the house. You can still see it. So that is why I am getting an unfavorable recommendation. Thank you, Carla. Is there anybody who would like to make a motion? I can do it, hold on a minute. We didn't change any wording, David. We just left out the porch point. I think we changed or suggested a change to the last bullet that would essentially say that the existing porch shall remain and not be extended. This team front porch. Okay. The Durham Historic Preservation Commission finds that in the case COA 220036, 2210 Wood Grove Street addition and modifications, the applicant is proposing additions and modifications to a contributing structure. Edit normal will be removed and the home's original roof structure rebuilt, preserving front roof slope and elevating the peak height while expanding the home's footprint. Shared dorm for additions will also be added to the front and rear of the roof constructed roof form. Aluminum siding and trim will be removed from all elevations revealing original wood surface. Will be restored to the extent possible. All salvageable wood siding will be consolidated on the street facing elevation and smooth finish scimiticious fiberboard siding of matching dimensions, profile and reveal will be used on the other elevations. New windows will consist of wood double hung encasement windows matching the size of the existing upper story windows. A screen porch will be added to the rear constructed with wood columns that match the front porch columns. The existing front porch shall remain and not be extended. Okay, therefore the conclusion of law is that the proposed addition and alterations are consistent with the historic character and quality of the historic district and are consistent with the historic properties, local review criteria, specifically those listed in the staff report. And the Durham Historic Preservation Commission approves the certificate of appropriateness for case COA 220036, 2210 Woodbridge additions and modifications with the following conditions. The improvements shall be substantially consistent with the plans and testimony presented to the commission at this commission hearing and attached to the COA. The improvements may require additional approvals from other city accounting departments or state or local agencies. The applicant is responsible for obtaining all required approvals related relating to building construction site work and work in the right of way. And a compliance inspection shall be performed immediately upon completion of the work approved herein. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson, do we have a second? Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Chambers. We might have a roll call vote from Ms. Holmes. Yes. Chair Bouchard. Not approved. Vice Chair Gulsby. No. Commissioner Calhoun. No. Commissioner Johnson. Approved. Commissioner Chambers. Commissioner Horton. Approved. Oh, it looks like a tie, three to three. I think we might need to get Mr. O'Toole to let us know what that means. Well, what, I'll tell you in one minute I need to look at the rule, but I'm pretty sure Naughty vote is required. So I think four affirmative votes would be required. Let me just check the rules one second. And yeah, the item fails because that's not a majority vote. Mr. Merrigan, thank you for presenting the case. I'm sorry that he was not able to garner a majority approval from the board today, but we hope that perhaps some changes might be made so that the property can be improved, but in compliance with our criteria. Okay, thank you. Do we have five commissioner members who are able to continue beyond the one o'clock drop dead date that we heard from Commissioner Johnson? Yes. I can too. I can stay as well. Yes. Alva? Yeah. So we have quorum with five. So we're gonna hear our final case. Thank you, April. Bye. Final case on our agenda today is COA 2200-037-1610 Fayetteville Street demolition. Carl, if you could bring in our proponents and our opponents. Okay, we have a number of folks who have been added to the meeting. I'm gonna just go around and number one, make sure I'm pronouncing your names correctly, but also ask you if you are speaking or intend to speak for or against the application, starting with you, Ms. Hester. Ms. Hester, I can't- I cannot hear you. You're not on mute, but we can't hear you. There is an option of calling in by phone if you aren't able to get your computer to work. I will move on to others while we wait for Ms. Hester. Ms. Huggins. In opposition. Okay. Mr. Morellis. Oh, I'm sorry. It's actually David Gaster. I'm the second one on the list. I'm actually working in our offices. She's sitting without me, but I'm sorry. I will change your name to David. Could you say your name again? Gaster, G-A-S-T-E-R.  Correct. Wonderful. Thank you. I believe we have Ms. Malloy. Ms. Malloy, can you turn your camera on and unmute? Okay. Can you hear me now? Can hear you, but cannot see you. Okay. I'm not sure what to do, but I mainly want you to hear me. I am opposed. Okay. And Ms. Hester, were you able to get your audio to work? No. Okay. I can- This is Carl with the Planning Department. I can share the call-in number in just a moment. It may also be changing the audio settings on Zoom, but I'll share the call-in number in just a moment. I just forwarded it to you via email. Okay. Great. Thank you. So it'll- I think it's what you're looking for, I hope. Yes. I'm going to put it in the chat. So- Great. We'll probably request- I'll put this as the number, and then it'll probably request the meeting ID, which I will share in a moment as well. Are you able to see that, Ms. Hester? It looks like it. Okay. I see a call-in number. I'm going to promote them. So I see there's a phone number here. I believe that should be- Okay. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Yes, we can. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Hester, are you planning to speak for or against this application? Again. Okay. So I'm going to go around, starting with the applicant, and then covering everybody else. Actually, I'm not going to do it. Madam Clerk is going to do it, because you swear everybody in one at a time. All right. Do you swear or affirm at the testimony you were about to give in the public hearing proceedings? For today's case, the truth by your own knowledge or by information and beliefs? Mr. Gasser? I do. Ms. Hester? Still can't hear you. I think there's a delay. Okay. Am I back in? You are. Okay. All right. Go up. Yes. Anita. I'm on another. Yes. Okay. I read it again. Do you swear or affirm at the testimony you were about to give in the public hearing proceedings? For today's case, the truth by your own knowledge or by information and beliefs? Ms. Huggins? I do. Yes. Ms. Malloy? Ms. Malloy, I can't hear you. You're on mute. Could you repeat the question? I was interrupted with a phone call here. Yes. Do you swear or affirm at the testimony you were about to give in the public hearing proceedings? For today's case, the truth by your own knowledge or by information and beliefs? Yes. And Ms. Hester? I think you said yes, I do, but we could not hear you. It keeps muting me. I don't know why and I keep having to do star six over and over. So I'm not sure what's happening. And do you accept the oath? Yes, I do. Yes. Thank you. Gonna go around now and ask if everybody can sense to this hearing proceeding on this remote electronic platform starting with Mr. Gaster. Yes, I do. Ms. Huggins? Yes, I do. Ms. Malloy? Yes. And Ms. Hester? Yes. Wonderful. Thank you all very much. Carla Staffelport, please. Right, Carla Rosemary Planning Department. This is KCOA 22-00037-1610 Fayetteville Street demolition. The applicant is David Gaster, the owner is Vista Properties and Homes Incorporated. It's located on the west side of Fayetteville Street between Moline Avenue and Dunstan Street, zoned Residential Urban 5, and it's contributing structure to the Fayetteville Street Historic District. The applicant is proposing to demolish the primary structure. I'd like to introduce the staff report into the record and invite Mr. Gaster to present his case. Okay. So I purchased the property July of last year. But before I bought it, the owner did tell me the house had burned. So once I looked at the house, I was pretty sure it was unsalvageable, but I didn't just say that for myself. I did hire a private engineer. We went into the house, it was crumbling. There was a fire, I don't know how many years ago. I think when I bought it, he said it could have been five years ago. So there was a hole open in the back of the house for that long. So it was taken on rain, brought it all the way down to the crawl space. So everything in the house is completely rotten. I did walk with an engineer, I think a couple of report may be in here, but basically it's not a referable home. I have redone many homes in Durham. And this one would probably cost several hundred thousand dollars to build new and maybe a little more, but I think it would cost way more than that, just to try to salvage what's there. My engineer said everything would have to be replaced including the foundation. Thank you, Mr. Gaster. Do you have anything else? I mean, that's it. I've got a report and I mean, so I mean, I know the worst case I would have to wait a year, but I'm hoping that's not the case. I think our commissioners might have some questions aimed at that very issue. And so before we hear from the opponents, I will go ahead and give the commissioners a chance to ask you questions in connection with your presentation. Mr. Gaster, you bought the house one year and a month ago. The question is, it was in just about the same condition when you purchased it, right? Oh, yep, that's correct. Other than me patching the hole in the back, yeah. Other than you patching a hole in the back? Where the fire damage was, I did cover it up just to keep it from rotting any further because there was a lot of people coming into the home that keep kicking the door's end.  Okay, I'm having trouble hearing you, it's just not clear. I don't know why. Yeah, Mr. Gaster, you could maybe get a little closer to your microphone and elevate your voice just a little bit more, I think that might help. Okay, yes, yes, the home is in the same condition other than patching the roof where the fire damage was. So over the year you did, only thing you did was patch a roof, right? And getting the debris, the crumbling debris out of the house. Okay. The other thing is I'm very curious because you don't have a picture of the front of the house right now. Is there any way to get a picture? I've looked at the house from the outside and I think the commission should see a picture of this house as it is right now on the front, the front of the house. I was just thinking that we don't have a picture of the front and I'm willing to pull it up on Google Street View. If you can, I would appreciate that and also a picture of how it was prior to someone removing the vinyl siding. Are you able to see my screen right now? We're not. Just the staff report, okay. It's still the staff report. Okay, I will need to change that but I'm gonna MN Street View right now, dropping my little man in front. Yeah, I'm gonna stock share and reshare. Is this what we're looking at? Is this a 16 time? I think that might be across the street. On the side of the street. There we go. There we go, okay. Yes, that's now. Okay, so right now that house that had vinyl siding on it, right? Yes, ma'am. And now someone took the vinyl siding off and started to. Yes, on the exterior. Yes, I did remove it. I was in attempts to repair the house and further damage, but for example, the windows on the entire left side are missing. So I was trying to get it repaired to a point where I could put something in those holes. But upon, once you open something up, you realize how bad it is and that's when the engineer, I got him involved. And I said, look, now you can see everything behind the siding. You can see everything inside. I've got all the debris out of the way. So we had to go in and put plywood down just to be able to walk across the floors because the joists were completely right. So we weren't able to get to the second floor to do any more inspections. He wouldn't go up there, but basically, yes, I did remove the siding in attempts to find out how much damage there was.  The siding looks dark gray. And your intention was to renovate it, right? Originally, that was just in case, yes. Because when I spoke with the city and I spoke to Carla, I realized because I hadn't built in or done anything in historic area, it was gonna be a very hard process. So just keep things moving over. Maybe I could possibly renovate this home. But like I say, upon taking things out and uncovering it, you started running into more and more problems. And then that's when I got my engineer. I said, look, am I even gonna be able to do this? I need a professional opinion. And that's when he told me my professional opinion is narrow. Well, Mr. Gaster, it's rather routine for houses that were built in 1910 to be renovated starting from scratch, going down to the studs and coming back out. As a matter of fact, what you have presented makes you a mile ahead in a renovation process. If you had to pay to take the vinyl siding off, replace some of the wood on the siding and take all of the plaster out down to the studs on the inside before you could start your renovation, then you're in bad shape. So I'm a, you know, I've just done one. I did one all the way down to the studs. I've done many, I've done many.  So I know I have done this on Fayetteville Street and therefore tearing it down is not an option. There was a house before us, I think in the last meeting or meeting before that, that was in kind of the identical situation and it was brought back. Now I disagree with the colors, the colors that they put on it, but it is a very nice house at this point. There was one, I think five houses down from me, I believe, four or five houses that burned. And I think within a few weeks was approved to be going down. Well, that house was born to the ground. That was 1500, I know the foundation burned there. So Commissioner Calhoun, I think some of this is more in the vein of commentary for us to talk about as a commission. Do you have any additional questions for the applicant? Oh, yeah. What's your estimate? Well, let me hear your estimate on the amount that it would cost to renovate this property. Okay, so the estimate to renovate that property, I would say is over 400,000, but here's the second problem because I don't know if you, I see you shaking your head, but I've done this. The problem is, and it happened on Eva Street, I renovated two on Eva Street and the same problem happened. I put all that money into it, took it completely down to the foundation, reframed it better than a new house. I mean, it was sealed insulation. I did everything the right way. The problem was when I sold it for what I had in the house, it didn't appraise. I asked why it didn't appraise, they said because we appraise this as a used house as a renovated house, not new construction. So it burned me. I had to lose money on the house. So I've been through it before and that's why I'm approaching this. Well, just for entertainment purposes, you have not presented what you would rebuild, would you rebuild a house that looked exactly like this house on that property? That would be up to you. I would submit plans that would get approved. So that would be up to your recommendations on what you would approve. Yeah, well, it would have been encouraging to have that now, but I think it would cause more to build the house and it is going to be to renovate the house. And the house next door to you is for sale. Is it not? It is for sale. And how much is that house for sale? I don't remember. I looked it up when it went on the market. I don't remember. I don't know. I mean, I don't remember. Now, I think it's approximately 600,000, but that's it. Okay. All right, I'll stop right there. Other commissioners with questions for our applicant. Mr. Chambers. Can you guys hear me? We can. All right, Mr. Gaster. Thank you for coming before us today. My question would be in regards to the finished product if you were approved to demo this property as Commissioner Calhoun said, is it going to be a single family home? Will you stay there? Will you rent it out? What are you just looking to put it back on the market? It would be a single family home. And if approved, and like I say, that would be up to what you plans you would approve. I was looking to do a product similar to something I've done in Durham with a porch across the front single family. The lot's deep enough where I could put a car court or a garage in the back, it would be a sideline. So I knew parking needs are in Durham and all of the houses that I've done, I try to incorporate that if possible. But it would be a single family house, probably same width, a little deeper and with a garage in the back, that's what I'm planning. Is that something you would hold or would you be selling it after? I would sell, it would be for sale. Mr. Chambers, any other questions? That's it. Well, I'm going to piggyback off that last question. Mr. Gaster, is it fair to characterize VISTA properties and Homes Inc. as a corporate entity that's in the business of renovating homes? Yes, we've done both, but renovating in downtown Durham is something we started out with and we migrated into new construction. We've migrated into that, but almost everything we do is in downtown. And this is an investment property for the company? Yes. And it's not intended to be your personal residence? No. What hardship, if any, would VISTA properties and Homes Inc. experience if this commission were to apply a 365 day or 180 day, some period of delay to the application for demolition? Well, the hardship would be that there's running costs. There's money coming in, money going out. The money for the property has already went out and our return on investment has already been sitting and it would sit further. So it's basically time and money that we could have put into another project. Because you say we do a certain amount of jobs a year, this is one that's on the books and it's sitting. So the hardship would be just financial basic. So just financial hardship. Are you obtaining or receiving any beneficial return on the property currently? No. Those are all my questions. Chair? Yes, Mr. O'Toole. Just based on some of the comments, I did want to make the commission aware, COAs for demolition are somewhat different from other COAs that come before the Historic Preservation Commission. And I just wanted to remind the commission members that under North Carolina law, and the specific statute is 160D-949, the commission is required to approve the COA for this demolition. But as you've correctly noted, that COA, the effective date on it can be delayed by up to 365 days. But just to be clear, the commission has to approve the COA but it can approve it with a delay of 365 days. Thank you, Mr. O'Toole. Can I just ask, because this isn't my area of expertise, there are of the other commissioners, and this can go into discussion if that's when it needs to be. But also of Mr. Gaster, have you looked into any sort of historic tax credits or would there be any available for this property? They would be so minor. I would never see a return on it. I mean, it's not enough to make a difference. I guess if that's something that's right. When you say they would be so minor, do you mean the, because it's done by a percentage of your expenditure. So if it were a 30% return, that wouldn't be sufficient for you. So maybe you could explain to me exactly how that works because I really don't know for sure exactly how the tax credits work. And that's, I would refer you to the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office as I have previously to talk with them about the tax credit program and what it offers you. Okay. And if I was going to live in the home, there might be something more beneficial. Whether you're a company that's going to sell it or you're going to have tax credits available, but you're correct that depending on whether it's a income producing property versus a non-income producing property, there are different tax credits with different rates of credit back to you that apply. Right. I did five or six houses on Andrew Avenue and this was years ago and I went down to the city and we talked about the tax credits and I looked into it again and I never even went forward with it just because I remember it wasn't a whole lot. Any other questioners for Mr. Gaster before we give the opponents an opportunity to speak? I don't have any. And Commissioner Horton, just so you're aware there will absolutely be opportunity for us to discuss as a commission once we've heard all arguments pro and con. At this time, I would invite one of the opponents to provide their remarks. I'm not sure how or in what order you would like to proceed. I will remind everyone of what we just heard from the strow tool, which is this commission is not able to carte blanche stop this demolition from happening, but we are empowered with imposing a delay of up to 365 days from the date of approval of the COA. And with that disclaimer out of the way, is there someone among the opponents to this COA who would like to speak first? I'll go first. Please proceed, Ms. Maloy. I want to point out that Fayetteville Street is a historic street. The street has existed since the turn of the century. Once the Stokes family started selling parts of their farm, African-American residents began buying it and Fayetteville Street began. The houses there deserve to be preserved. A change will begin to destroy the fabrics of our historic neighborhood. I live in the neighborhood. There are plenty of brand new buildings surrounding our neighborhoods, surrounding hay tire or Stokesdale. There should be a limit on destroying what exists in our neighborhood since so much of it has already been lost. And I am afraid to think of what will be built there and what it will be replaced with if 1610 is torn down. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Ms. Maloy. Ms. Hester or Ms. Huggins? I can go next. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Okay. All right. Of course I oppose the demolition of the home and with support having it renovated. One of my main concerns for anyone who's in the home building and construction business is due diligence. Now anybody buying property, having researched hopefully and done their due diligence prior to purchasing a property, at least that's the way I do things, my husband and I, is that you research all the restrictions and limitations. And in this case, there's a historic district with limitations on various aspects of rehabbing and improving properties. It's in a historic district. And also due diligence in terms of cost, which anybody buying something and contemplating doing something with the property, which surely with many years in the business have done their engineering and their cost estimates and all of the due diligence before purchasing said property to determine its profitability return on investment or whatever the investor's requirements are. So this sounds like a little backwards explanation to me in terms of the process that the applicant has presented. I mean, I would never buy something without knowing how much it's gonna cost and what restrictions, easement, covenants, whatever are attached to the property to determine if it's worth my while to embark on that journey. So that's why I say I questioned the logic of what the applicant has presented. Secondly, if the applicant could possibly sell the property to someone who is willing to renovate it. I don't know that that discussion has ever been broached with the applicant, but certainly that's an avenue if it's a money-losing proposition. And in particular, as Kathy mentioned, with the history of Fayible Street, the destruction that we have already endured with urban renewal, and now the dismantling potentially of the neighborhood, I think in the interest of historic preservation that a sale of the property would perhaps solve all these problems and also stop the owner's losses that he claims he's experiencing. And that's those are my statements. And then I have a question for the commission. I know by law you're saying that you can't deny the demolition and you can give a max of 365 days. However, are there any enforceable standards on what can be built, rebuilt under our historic guidelines? Yeah. You're on mute. I'm sorry, I was on mute. Good question, Ms. Hester. I'll just very quickly respond to it before giving Ms. Huggins a chance to speak. Yes, any application to build new in this historic neighborhood is going to require whoever might be applying at that time, whether it's Mr. Gaster or somebody else, come before this commission and comply with our criteria for new construction in the district. So we of course have limitations on what we can do when that application comes before us, but we do have the opportunity to review it and make sure it complies with our requirements for non-contributing structures in a historic neighborhood. And with that- Okay, so another, if I can just clarify. So in other words, if someone wanted to come and put an ultra-modern container-type construction that we see all around town, what would be the position of the commission on such an application? Yeah, we can't forecast what we would do without actually having a proposal in front of us. I can say that our criteria requires that new construction be compatible with the character of the district. And we take those standards very seriously. And that's not our interest. We do modern houses throughout town. We do a lot of modern houses, but that's not our intention. Our intention is to match what's around us. We come in- Well, without any assurances and statements and no rendering or plan, that's a conjecture at this point, Mr. Gaster. I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment. The reality of the situation is we have to consider the merits of this application, irrespective of what might be proposed in the future. And so it doesn't really have any bearing on our decision-making. Today, our decision-making is really eyed towards whether or not we as the commission believe there is justification for withholding or not withholding for imposing upon the applicant a period of delay between when the COA is approved, which we must do by statute, and when this building can actually be demolished. And that's what our focus is on today. Ms. Huggins, your chance to speak. Thank you, commissioners, city staff, and Mr. Gaster. Give me just a moment here. I had sent a written comment to staff earlier this morning, so I'm just going to read that and keep it short. This comment is an objection to the demolition of 1610 Fayetteville Street. 1610 Fayetteville Street is a contributing property to the Fayetteville Street Local Historic District. While I understand that the property is in a state of disrepair and presents a safety issue for the owner and the community, there have been many properties in our city that were also once in this very same state. I toured the American tobacco properties before they were rehabilitated. I remember the state of the buildings and the neglect that was evident. But with the proper funding and a commitment to a vision that saw the value in the rehabilitation of the property, the owners rehabilitated something that our city is proud of and that celebrates the history of our community. Staff has provided a report and I now highlight some of the statements in that report. The applicant does not mention other alternatives, such as sale to a buyer willing to rehabilitate and rebuild. The applicant appears to justify the demolition based on the extraordinary expense required to rehabilitate which he states would pose a severe economic hardship. The applicant has not formally submitted plans for the site beyond demolition. He does assert that he intends to construct a new structure on the site as soon as possible. The application offers pictures and statements regarding the condition of the property. However, there don't appear to be any objective numbers or information offered to support the contention of severe economic hardship or extraordinary expense. What does that mean in the context of this property and how do we even calculate it? It appears that in the past, the owner has sold properties in Durham in the $650,000 range. Thus it makes sense for us to have a better understanding of what the owner plans to build given that the owner does not discuss the possibility of selling the property to a buyer who is willing to rehabilitate the property and the owner intends to construct a new structure on the property as soon as possible. The residents of the historic district have worked hard to establish the district and to honor the heritage of the neighborhood. Without knowing more, it's hard to support the demolition of the contributing property. Consequently, I object to the demolition of the property and I hope that the commission will consider instituting a delay. Thank you. Ms. Huggins, thank you very much for your comments. I'm gonna open the floor for questions from the commission to any one of the three speakers from whom we have just heard. Okay, seeing and hearing from none of my fellow commissioners, it is the right of the applicant to rebut any of the statements made by an opponent. And Mr. Gaster, I'll provide you with that offer on my behalf. No, I thank you all for your time. I appreciate your opinions. I do understand what you're saying but at the same time, I've got a business to run and it's not just about destroying community that I do respect communities. I know that's not what it's about today. It's about whether or not I can tear the house down now or later, so I appreciate your time. Thank you very much, Mr. Gaster. I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing. You all can stand by and listen in as the commission discusses amongst itself. And if we have further questions, we will entertain, we open the public hearing to have those questions answered. Any of my fellow commissioners want to lead us off? Matt, our chair, Chair Bouchard. This is Commissioner Gouldby. I'm struggling finding the evidence to do this, I'm not sure I say it correctly. Right now, I'm in favor of a delay based off the evidence I've heard so far because I don't think there's support that there's a hardship. I don't think there's support that there will be permanently deprived beneficial use. And I do believe that this structure, given the structures around it, the neighboring properties, their scale and appearance and form overall give it significant value to this block and the neighboring properties. Thank you, Vice Chair Gouldby. Other commissioners? I would like to agree that of all properties given the history of this structure and of this street, that all alternatives to demolition should be proposed and pursued. And if they aren't, then the maximum delay, if that's all we can do, rich by all we can. Thank you, Commissioner Horton. That leaves commissioners Chambers and Calhoun. If Mr. Gaster can provide us with what the home will potentially look like after demoed, I would like to see that before actually saying yay or nay. But at this time, I would agree with the delay for demolition. Thank you, Commissioner Chambers. Commissioner Calhoun. I wonder if there's any benefit from delaying this so that he might be laying it until the October meeting because starting the 365 right now is not a good thing. If we delay this and let him determine the benefits of selling this property to someone who is going to or coming to the conclusion that he and his firm are going to rehab this property appropriately and present some evidence of that, then we might consider that in October. Well, the delay we're talking about is the delay for the demolition, not a delay in the consideration of the application. I think we're all prepared to vote today on whether to impose a delay and if so, how long? I don't think there's a need to delay the determination of that question. And the delay does give the opportunity for the commission to work with the community and with the applicant to find an alternative to demolishing. Several alternatives have been brought up during the securing, such as selling to another party or pursuing tax credits to renovate, for instance. And arguably that's the intent of the statute to begin with, right? Is to create that time and space. We've had a number of challenging demolition cases come before us, especially during the period of COVID. Those are the ones I seem to remember the best or the most. And one way this application strikes me is easier than some of the other ones we've had to deal with. We've had to deal with 1950 structures that aren't technically contributing, but you can make an argument that maybe they are and they're contributing to the historic nature of the district, those are theoretical questions. We're not faced with today, which is great. This is a historic structure. I don't think anyone in this room, including Mr. Gaster, would deny that. And so, you know, there's language in the statute as well as in the UDO that says, if we don't find any special significance then we can't impose a delay. Well, I think we all would agree there is special significance here and that a delay is appropriate. The question then becomes one of duration. And I don't wanna take the lead on that discussion, but I will open it up to my fellow commissioners as to what period of delay they think is appropriate, 365 or something less? Well, the maximum, 365 is the maximum and that's what I would propose. Do any of the commissioners have a countervailing view? In that case, I will suspend further discussion about the case and ask staff if she has a recommendation. Carla Rosenberg, planning department staff would recommend approval of the application with a delay of 365 days. Thank you, Carla. Is there anyone who would like to make a motion? I can do some that. Vice Chair Volsby. The Durham Historic Preservation Commission finds that in the case COA<PHONE_NUMBER>0 Fayetteville Street Demolition, the applicant is proposing to demolish a contributing primary structure dating from 1926. The commission has determined the structure to possess sufficient historical value or structural integrity to preserve it. The commission has determined that the property owner has not shown a substantial, substantive evidence of facing extreme hardship. The commission has determined that the property owner has not shown substantive evidence of being permanently deprived of all beneficial use of or return from the property by virtue of delay. The site, let's see, I need to rephrase this tonight. The site will be stabilized, Ms. Perez. I think I still read this correctly because it'd be the demolition after 365. So the site will be stabilized with grass seed and straw following the demolition if new construction does not commence within 60 days. Just give me one moment here. I don't think the last part of this motion makes sense for a COA for demolition. It would be after 365 days, the site would still need to be stabilized. Is that not correct? That's correct. So if after 365 days, this board demolished, then they would need to stabilize the site afterwards if the new construction hadn't commenced within a certain time period. And Mr. Goolsbee, I wasn't talking about that bullet point that you just read, but where it says therefore, I think therefore it should be the conclusion of law is that this COA is approved with an effective date that's delayed 365 days from today. That's the same how it's starting to look for because usually there is a line item that's in certain day value. Yeah, I think the language here is not the language we typically use for demolitions but for approval of new construction or improvements. I think that paragraph should just say something to the effect that net therefore the conclusion of law is that COA number title is approved with a 365 day delay on the effective date. Yep, I think that's exactly right, Mr. O'Toole. All right, so let me make sure I got this right therefore the conclusion of law is that the demolition is approved with a delay of 365 days, would that be okay? Say that one. And Mr. Goolsbee, I would not say the demolition, just say therefore the conclusion of law is that the certificate of appropriateness for case, blah, blah, blah. The last part of that paragraph is approved with a 365 day delay on the effective date. Okay, thank you. Therefore, the conclusion of law is that the case for case COA to zero zero zero three seven zero zero zero three seven 1610 Fayetteville street demolition is approved with a 365 day delay effective August 2nd, 2022. Second. That's not right. Basically you're approving the COA effective date 365 days from today. From the day that's the state, say it for me again then because I stated today's date for the record. For the record, Mr. O'Toole, I think today's date is fine because the statute reads 365 days maximum period up to 365 days from the date of approval. Today would be the date of approval. So what the statute says the maximum period of delay authorized by this section, I'm sorry, the effective date of such a certificate may be delayed for a period of up to 365 days from the date of approval. Okay, so why don't we say this? Therefore the conclusion of law is that the certificate of appropriateness for case COA<PHONE_NUMBER> Fayetteville street is approved with an effective date 365 days from today. And do I need to state the date? That would be great. Okay, okay. Therefore the conclusion of law is that the certificate of appropriateness for case COA<PHONE_NUMBER> Fayetteville street demolition is approved with an effective date 365 days from today, August 2nd, 2022. Second. Third columns, if we might have a roll call vote, please. Chair Bouchard. Approved. Vice Chair Gulsby. Approved. Commissioner Calhoun. Approved. Commissioner Chambers. Approved. Commissioner Horton. Motion passes five to zero. Thank you all very much. Your participation in this process today, your patience, not just during the hearing, but also looking up to it. I know it's been a long day, but thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. We will very quickly go to old business now that our cases have been all heard today. I've got nothing to report on newsletter. I have just been quite candidly drowning at work. That's a terrible excuse because I think we all are, but I am really drowning and barely treading water, but I will try to get in touch with Carla here in the next couple of weeks to talk about the path forward. I realize I've been delinquent in doing that. Clark Holmes. I will say that I didn't, yeah. And I checked into that second option of the major renovations and converting, reverting back to original form. Neither of the projects that I had in mind have been completed or completed as per the COA. So that's out. I think we're with Andy's idea, which we can discuss that further offline. Great. Reminds me of what Andy's idea was. That was looking at that project where they reused materials from the 50s non-contributing structure in form, like landscape forms. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Clark Holmes, minor COA report. Yes. I sent that out to you all yesterday. I don't know if anyone been able to chance to look at it. But should have been about eight cases on there. That's been approved since, I believe, 6.16 to 7.31, 20.22, I believe. Did everyone get that? I received it. I have not yet looked at it. Okay. But it has been received. Okay. Well, the next one will come in a couple of weeks for the month of August. Great. Brief housekeeping. We're in person, folks, in September. The governor has lifted the state of emergency, I think, effective this week, next week, which precludes us from conducting these hearings going forward on a remote basis. So we'll be in person. Where in person will we be, Mr. O'Toole or Carla?  Yes. You know, we will be in the committee room as we were before. Okay. So, yeah. Familiar to all of us. I also wanted to add one other thing is we're planning a retreat. We usually have one in the fall and we'd like to do one in September. And so I wanted to get to feel from you all whether you would be available, perhaps the third or fourth week of September for our annual retreat, which would also be in person. I'd love to find sort of an outdoor venue if the weather's nice, but we'll see about that. Would you want to keep it on a Tuesday morning or would you rather discuss this via email? Understanding that, you know, we can't discuss it amongst each other, you can just get back to me. Yeah. Yeah, because of all the meeting law. Meeting law, yeah. I think email might be fine. I've got to check my schedule. I'm supposed to try a case on October 10, which I hope doesn't happen. If that case settles, then I should be able to participate if it doesn't. Yeah. Carla, how are we looking for September, by the way, in terms of our docket? Three, three cases. One being the case that was moved from August. The demolition case. Sorry for July and then two others. Okay. Is it possible that list will grow or at this point will anything new that comes in the door be October? That's correct. That, be October. Well, thank you all so much for hanging in there. Does anyone have anything to add before we adjourn? Enjoy the rest of summer. It's going to be after Labor Day the next time we meet, which is just bonkers, but. Year's flying by. Thanks again, everybody. Yes, thank you all. Bye. Thanks to our new members for this. Bye.


This is Rangesh. Thank you for giving me the privilege to ask you that question. The last three years or so, I am becoming a follower of Ramana Maharishi and I do the meditations. And I see that oneness for a particular time when I do meditation, but somehow I am not able to prolong it or make it a kind of a life like you have. If I do meditation, I am able to completely come out of the indulgence thinking and all of those. And again I go back to the same indulgence things like a vengeance with a more rigor, what I am supposed to do. That's the question I have. So my position on this is very clear. We are here in our body and any attempt to escape the limitations of the body will only result in the body being even more present and even more challenging when one comes back from that little excursion into so-called freedom. So what if you were to keep your meditation being very present, very here and now, really present, really here and now aware of your actions. And whenever there is an urge to action emerging which is enunciated to then ask yourself the question, is this action, is this action that this body is undertaking now emerging from the ahankar or is it emerging from the sattva, the truth, the truth impulse, the self. You know the eternal self which is present within that impulse. Is this action coming from the truth impulse or is it coming from ahankar? And if you ask yourself that question to start with once every hour, twice every hour, five times, ten times, fifty times, sixty times an hour as a sadhana, as a practice, after a while this whole system it's in samarpan to that truth, yes or no? It will automatically happen, right? So in that samarpan to the truth with the eyes open, open eyes, present, aware, no meditation, that is your meditation, that is your meditation. Because you have come here and said you're not able to integrate these two, it's a duality in your life on a daily basis and that duality is there because this body, this body is the place to inhabit, otherwise you would be a cosmic being, you would be a spirit, you would be an atma, you're not. You are the body and the antar-atman is the impulsing center of your system called rangesh. So you can take an identity as a rangesh, that's your name. This thing here has been given a name called rangesh, when it came out of the mother's body, the astrologer said the name has to start with r, and this is the date of birth, the chart was made, so rangesh, so that is the name given to this thing, so you can keep that as an identity. And that rangesh is making these decisions to action based on the truth that is emerging and even if you make a mistake, even if you, for example, don't know the difference between the ahankar and the antar-atman, between the ego and the antar-guru, the truth within, even if you're not able to discern which is which, it doesn't matter because you are already taking conscious action. You're not saying I am not this, so whatever this does is okay.  And then I said, why are you sitting here? Why are you torturing yourself? And then she said, yeah but I didn't come here, my body came here and that is the problem that at one point the person in their conceptual imagines that they are separate from this body and the duality is there, nice and brightly staring into your face, shining into your face. So why go into that when you can go this route and then as you bend, as you're more and more in samarpan, the actions emerge from the truth and so your consciousness will expand. It has to, even if you don't want it to expand, it will. It will just start expanding, you start to be more coherent in your movements, you'll be more aware of your body, you'll be more aware of the emotions, you'll be able to experience them deeper but not losing, not being the victim, you'll be the master of it but also able to experience it better. Your thinking will become more clear for sure. This is what living is about, it's about being here and with this system navigating this thing called living from moment to moment to moment. So of course one can choose that route but then one goes into enlightenment because you go further and further away from the body because you can't stand this world around you. You can't stand the world around you. Isn't that what happens when you go into deep meditation and everything? Then you come back and then it's oh now I have to go to work, I have to talk to people, I have to do this, I have to do that and you're just miserable as a result. You want to sit in a cave and do it, that's different. Yeah, I have a lady question there and when I'm at office in the meetings there are situations which triggers what is expected of to me to be delivered. There are a few things which is not controllable. So people still want the results to happen. So most of the time they raise questions about my ability and I get this stress sometimes. So this sadhana helps me outside but after the meetings I still go through those problems. It's going to only get worse, I'm sorry to say, only worse.  Let me go into samarpanam and let me move with the truth of my being. The more you do that with your eyes open in this world, in the marketplace, in the job, at that meeting you will see in one day the difference because you're present. The more absent you are the more mistakes you make. You're not sitting in a cave so why are you doing the practice of the cave? If you're ready to sit in the cave that's different then you sit in the cave then you can go into cosmic experience but if you're in this world and you're meditating the half of the day and miserable the other half then I think we have problem of the highest form of duality that exists and that's not what we want. The non-dual is a holistic state. It's not just a conceptual state. It's a holistic state where the materiality is in total surrender to itself. It's in surrender to itself. Same with the emotional, same with the conceptual, same with the transformative. Instead of sitting in the cave going into samadhi states but realizing that you have to buy food for the evening so going to work and then being incapable of being there because the cave state and the samadhi state is what has determined your system where you feel free from the challenges of society and then have created the biggest duality possible and are generally miserable because of that. Why not accept this body as the place to be in? And so the meditation in every moment is to discern between the truth and the ahankara. It does not require a high level of conceptual ability to start to discern this and to feel.  One more question. In a day how much time you meditate for us to understand? I can say anything. I can tell you I meditate for 11 hours. What are you going to do? You're going to meditate for 11 hours? No. I can tell you I don't meditate at all. What are you going to do? Not meditate at all? No. So let's not focus on me. Let's focus on you. Look at yourself. What are you capable of? And tune into your antaratman. Start to feel it. Start to practice and it will bring a degree of coherence into your life where these two extremes will start to become one. Life is living, is working, is being, is in samarpan, is in surrender, is an instrument of the truth here and now. Thank you.


I see that we have four minutes left for questions, we're catching up with time in order to be able to live for the Louvre. So maybe we can take a few questions from the audience. Thank you very much. I work for the European Commission, I work for Thierry Breton and I heard the criticisms that the European Commission has not got its approach right. Now if there's anybody in the European Commission who understands digital, who understands the value of data, the importance of ecosystems, it's Thierry Breton. So I don't have a question, I have a suggestion, which is that you put together your recommendations in the area of Galvatec and address them to the Commissioner responsible. Thank you very much. It's a nice invitation. Thank you. I would like to know what you would change in the GDPR regulation to make a European leader in data sooner. I think GDPR is quite fine. However, we have a tendency to put rules and heavy rules everywhere and our company is something we are experiencing, for instance, that the regulation of medical device has changed based on issues, which were true issues and we had to make all this regulation evolve. However, it's so strict today that even French companies say, okay, let's move to US, the market is huge, the investment is huge and the FDA approval is, you know, strict but the right way. And yeah, from the data point of view, I think GDPR had made a good job. It's just the fact that health data is defined in the GDPR, but to my mind, anything at the age of artificial intelligence can be health data. Let's close the parenthesis. But for the medical device, it's something like very, very tough. And, you know, I think we should be balancing risks against benefits and it's all about the risk, but also, yeah, let's take into account the benefits. Hi. Thank you so much for a very interesting and lively debate. I liked how you debated among yourselves as well French and German visions of digital sovereignty. I think I just had a question for Farouk actually to whether you can give us a concrete example of how your company is helping local, original or national government give a, because I think for many people, data is a bit of a buzzword, you know, and it's harder to see how it can actually help improve public policy. So I would like to hear a concrete example of an achievement through your company. So I can give you one example in Germany, all cities collect citizen registry data where your citizen information is stored. It's usually just done to check addresses or something. What we can do with it is we can integrate this data and get other data sources to it like kindergarten data and then put a demographic dashboard out of it, extrapolate the population over time, the necessity you know in five years, how many zero to three year olds are going to be born, are going to live here, and then I can either build kindergartens or close down kindergartens because I'm aging. This is something that is done manually and this is something we can do automatically without any involvement of a public servant that can just consume the information. I think that's one example. The example is that I said in Germany is a disgrace. We used fax devices to send COVID cases through the layers of government and what we've done in one status to digitize this whole process from generation of the data point in the school to the minister in a mobile phone dashboard where she can directly see where hotspots are popping up and I think that's something also benefits that you can give with data. I don't know what you do guys about your passwords but eventually I found that writing them down on a small piece of paper hiding it somewhere in a cupboard is the best protection against loss of passwords and all sorts of accidents. So I'd like to start from this example to ask you whether you don't think that an important part of the digital transformation has to do with the way the digital world and the digital processes are articulated with concrete physical processes, habits, ways of doing. This is where, for example, Clément said yes, there are going to be cyber attacks on hospital systems and that will lead to casualties. But you know, we have to live with this. He didn't say so much, but that was a suggestion. But how about having a plan B, a low-tech alternative. So when the system is cyber attacked, suddenly we can go back to pen and pencil and whatever low-tech system there might be as an alternative. And I think this is also, this connects with the European thing. It's all very nice to say we want a European Google, but after all a European Google might be just as bad and fundamentally as a US or Chinese Google. But to the extent that a European Google would be more virtuous, more aligned with our values, it seems to me that it would be such that, and that's the case for the entire movement, the digital movement, to articulate this numerical and real-life interface in a European way, in a way that respects European values. And there I think that there's a lot in common between the Spaniards, the Germans, the French, the Italians and so on. We have a certain way of living every day, of thinking of government, of government interference and so on, and of privacy, and that could and should be implemented in this way of articulating the digital and the non-digital world. What do you think of that? This is very interesting and let me go to one or two examples. From the COVID-19 crisis, we had a lack of a lot of tools, masks and whatever. And again, this kind of community mobilized itself to say, okay, let's do 3D printing and use the available stuffs to produce those kind of devices. And now at the APHP, there is something like a long, let's say, trend to make some kind of securities where if something very, very bad happened, we can rely on other things. And these other things has to be common and we get back here again to the open source stuff. And maybe another thing which is more on your side than yet of the ethical point of view is the principle which is today quite popular in France and maybe spreading in Europe called principe de garantie humaine, principle of human guarantee. It's in the AI space where you want to build a device with an AI embedded and you guarantee that there will be an oversight by humans and I think it's very, very important to go into this direction and hopefully it's really spreading in all this AI ethical space which is quite fine. And of course the increased digitization is also leading to a more systemic risk to some extent. So the plan B that you're referring to should be native in anything we do from the architecture to the functional aspect of that. Absolutely right. Maybe we can take one last question. Hi, thank you very much for the debate which was very insightful. I come from an engineering and data science background and I see that in my cohort most of the brightest students go to the US to create their startups, study in tech. And so my question is from your experience, do you think that in Europe we have the culture, the ecosystem to create entrepreneurs, to retain them and... You want to go to the US already? Sorry. You want to go to the US already? No, I'm actually in the US right now but I'll come back later. Okay. I have a 10-year commitment. Send us your CV. But the question is how in Europe can we create those talents but also how can we, in a way, imitate the US in attracting the best talents from all over the world and making sure that they create value within Europe actually. Thank you very much. May I add on that? I think the reason why in the US is so vibrant is because there's a lot of money for all stages there and I think the, I can't speak for France, but in Germany the problem is seed stage where a lot of VCs precede even more serious AB like just to give you, this is the funding stages and then in the big stages we lack funding in Germany. Then it goes to the US and I think that's a big problem but HQs have, are in Europe that the funding comes from the US but we see a lot of talent actually going to the US and I think the reason is that we probably don't have enough, big enough ecosystems. Again, it's a money question that we should be solved in the next five years and then also probably don't pay the right salaries because you get the experience there, probably different salary and then of course the choice is very hard to go to Berlin, to Paris or to the Silicon Valley and I think that's something that can be solved. Again, if we abolish our thinking about national startups, right, we have to really be European in that sense and then concentrate the capital on European benches and not just German and French. Yeah, maybe I can add exactly below what you said, Farouk and maybe this is the second thing that we can draft to Céré Breton. You know in France we say quite often that we are like risk adverse and we don't take risk where US takes it. However, we have small funds that you said where US is huge and it mitigates and yeah, it's the same thing in Germany and all the countries and to mitigate the race we have to build something like at the European scale and just to give you an idea, our company we made some kind of a few millions seed round where our American counterparts raised 200 million dollars and it's not about the fact that we can't, we should be building something at the level of Europe and actually we raised this money because an American company wanted to acquire us which made them okay, this is a good company which is not rational anymore so to say, but yeah, definitely let's advocate for something like at more European level. And I will conclude by just saying that European VC industry has really improved in catching up I would say over the last five to seven years not totally of course US is still leading but it's not only about money the US ecosystem is very rich with starting from business angel networks and teams of I would say experts coaching the start-upers. This is improving in Europe I can see that happening there is a lot of mobilization and we're improving but we are not yet at that stage and the US remains I would say a must to access to market to deeper funding and time to market also because funding is also a guarantee of getting quicker time to market if you get quick to market then you expand your market share compared to competition. So we can improve we need to improve and thank you all it was a very energizing session I hope that we have time now to leave for the Louvre it's going to be great


This set of slides will dive into DDoS attacks. In this lecture, we give some of the basic concepts related to denial of service attacks, and we then focus on providing real example of attacks as we see them in operational networks. Let's start with semantic and volumetric attacks. A semantic denial of service attack leverages on the characteristic of the misuse protocol or server at the target to enter the functionality of the target. It is therefore not so much about how many requests the attacker sends to the target, but mostly about the malicious content of the request. For example, wasting computational power in a database by requesting intensive queries is an example of semantic attack. Another example, it does low-lawries too, which submits partial requests to the web server, periodically sending a small part of the partial request, but never completing it. Today, it keeps a pool of connection busy for a long time, therefore depleting the number of available connection on the server. A volumetric attacks, as the name suggests, aims at generating a large volume of traffic or requests. In this case, there are several ways to temper with the functionality of the target. One can aim at exhausting resources like the number of available sessions in a server. However, targeting the infrastructure, for example the network connection of the target, is effective as well. The target needs only to generate enough traffic of some kind, such as to overload the network link, and the target is effectively taken online. Let's add two remarks. First, in most attacks, volumetric and semantic characteristics can both be used, for example in the case of a large number of malicious requests. Second, in this first set of slides, we did not mention distributed attacks, but it is clear that those categories apply to distributed attacks as well. In the following, we focus on distributed attacks. Adidas attacks can be direct, indicating that a set of malicious hosts directly generate traffic that is sent to the target. We talk instead of indirect attacks when malicious hosts use an intermediary set of hosts to generate attack traffic. These scenarios include several types of attacks. For example, the secondary set of hosts can be bots in a botnet that gets instructed by the commander control to start an attack. Another example can be legitimate, not infected hosts for which the malicious hosts are able to exploit some software or protocol characteristic for malicious use. We will see an example of this when we talk about reflection. In both cases, it is clear that to be effective, distributed attacks needs coordination. Let's look to a concrete example. In this picture, we see the layout of a distributed and highly coordinating attacks against an IRC server in our university network. On the x-axis, we have time. While on the y-axis, we have the number of unique IP addresses that were involved in the attack. The attack lasted roughly 13 minutes, and during this time, more than 376 million TCP packets against port 6667 were sent. More than 20,000 unique IP addresses, which with some approximation we can in this case associate with 20,000 unique hosts, have taken part in the attack. Not all of them were active all the time, but it is clear from the picture that the bulk of them have joined and stopped the attack at the same time with an initial peak of 70,000 distinct attacker per 10 seconds. These attacks also give us the opportunity to have a look at possible side-effects of a DDoS attack. So far, we have focused mainly on the effect of a DDoS attack on the target, namely stopping the target from delivering service. Implicitly, we assume that we will be able to serve such an attack. This might not always be the case. Let's have a look at this picture, which is another view of the same attack we just discussed, but from the point of view of the measurement point. The plot summarizes quite a lot of information. So let's look at it step by step. On the x-axis, we have again time. On the left, y-axis, we have the number of exported flow record from our measurement point for malicious traffic, the full line. The number of flow records for malicious traffic is in the range of million, roughly between 3.5 and 7 million. On the right, y-axis, we have the number of exported flow record for benign traffic, the dashed line. In this case, ranging between 50,000 and 300,000 flow records. Let's look at the time evolution of the attack and what it does to the monitoring infrastructure. Under normal operation, the monitoring point exports roughly 60,000 flows every 10 seconds. In the moment the attack starts, we see a sudden rise in the number of malicious flows. Since most of the traffic was same packets, each one of them was treated as a single flow by the monitoring point. So, most of the attack flows accounted for a single packet, which is a very inefficient situation for the flow cache of the monitoring point, which suddenly needs to handle an unexpectedly high number of entries. This has interest inside the facts on how the normal traffic is treated. The probe needs to free up space in the cache, therefore it starts exporting older entries. As a consequence, we see a higher number of benign flow records being exported. So, let's take a look at the picture that during the attack there is also more benign traffic, but this is not the case. We are dealing here with an artifact due to the fact that the probe is handling an overly high number of flows. Finally, there is an anomalous drop in the number of normal flows after the end of the attack. Again, this is an artifact, the probe at crash in this unfortunate case. The lesson learned here is that you should not assume that you are able to monitor a DDoS attack, and probably you need to put in place measure for protecting your monitoring infrastructure. In a way, the monitoring infrastructure can be made blind by a carefully crafted attack, even if it was not the primary target. We have mentioned before that some DDoS attacks can be indirect. Let's now talk about a specific class of indirect attacks, namely reflection and amplification attacks. A reflection and amplification attack involves one or several attackers, a target and a reflector, which typically is a server that is misused for the attack. A typical example is an OpenDNS resolver. There are two main ingredients in this type of attack. The first is reflection. The attacker sends crafted requests to the reflector using the service address of the target. We call those spoof requests. Reflection can already account for quite a lot of unwanted traffic reaching the target. However, the attacker can become more effective if the attacker is able to prompt the reflector to send only large replies to the target. This is the second ingredient, amplification. Amplification can be a very beneficial feature for the attacker. Not only amplification means that an higher traffic load will reach the target, it also means that for achieving the same attack load, an attacker needs to generate himself a smaller number of requests, since the reflector, which is also an amplifier, does the work for him. We define amplification factor as the ratio between the response size and the request size. From an attacker point of view, the higher the amplification factor is, the more the attacker can achieve less resources. Reflection and amplification attacks typically use servers as amplifiers and leverage protocol characteristics that generate large answers. A typical example is a DNS-based attack that use any queries, because they generally yield larger responses. The table on the right shows examples of bandwidth amplification factors here indicated as BIF, for a set of known protocols. NTP can amplify an attack up to more than 550 times. Charging, which we will look at in a while, more than 350 times. Let's have a look at an example. This plot shows the traffic to and from the University of Toronto network as seen from our provider, Surfnet, in August of 2014. Again, the target was an IRC server. The attack used in this case was a distributed NTP reflection and amplification attack, which caused a peak of 19 gigabit per second. We now know how reflection and amplification attacks work, and that they can achieve higher amplification factor by misusing regular protocols. Well, actually it is, and it has to do both with amplification factor as well as with the number of possible amplifiers on the Internet. Let's have a look at the OpenDNS Resolvers. An OpenDNS Resolver is a DNS resolver that answers queries from any source IP, not only a host from the same network. OpenDNS Resolvers are a very likely target to be used in an amplifier. The OpenDNS project tracks the number of such systems on the Internet. In June 2016, the project reported around 17 million OpenDNS Resolvers. Although there is a decreasing trend, the actual number of possible amplifiers is still extremely high. But it is not just DNS. The number of OpenNTP servers is probably around 4 million, and the number of OpenSNMP servers is around 7.9 million. And those are only protocols for which we have some indicative statistics. We have indicated that the issues in reflection and amplification attacks are the number of possible amplifiers and the amplification factor. Let's have a look at the Chargent protocol, for example. Chargent is a legacy protocol running on port 19 originally developed for network troubleshooting. A host sends a Chargent request and receives back a string of characters. According to RFC 864, such a string should have a random length between 0 and 512 characters. In practice, the traffic characteristics that we measure in the case of two attack traces we collected using one of our host as a target are telling a different story. Let's look at the packet distribution of Chargent reflected traffic. Following the RFC, the maximum packet size we should see should be in the order of 550 bytes, roughly including headers. This is not the case, and the maximum packet size is actually close to 7000 bytes. The distribution of the packet size is expected for Chargent, very close to be uniformly distributed. This means that there is a population of amplifiers on the internet that are not RFC compliant, and therefore can cause a much higher amplification factor than expected. If we look at the traffic we captured for those attacks, we can easily reach 7GB per second attack traffic. Interestingly enough, a deeper investigation has shown that hosts with such an amplification characteristics are related to family Chargent implementation in Windows system. However, the Linux Chargent implementation also allows for strings as long as 1024 bytes.