We ask for your patience during this virtual meeting. Multiple staff members are behind the scenes to make sure that the meeting runs smoothly, and all applicants and citizens are able to communicate with the Commission at the appropriate times. During the meeting, you will see live images or still images of DDRC members and staff. However, images of the applicant and public will not be visible. The public will also be able to participate via through methods. When participating, please provide your name for documentation purposes. So you can participate by watching, emailing, phoning in, by logging into a web session. And if you're watching, you can stream the meetings through city TV, which may be accessed at www.youtube.com backslash user backslash Columbia SC government. If you're emailing, you may submit first and statements via email to CRC board meeting at Columbia SC.gov, leading up to and or during the meeting, as this account will be monitored during the meeting. Emails and letters will be read into the record. If you're phoning in, you can participate by phoning<PHONE_NUMBER>. When prompted, please enter the meeting code 7952. So if you're phoning in, you'll receive three options on how you can participate. Star one will allow you to listen. Star two will allow you to record a voicemail message that will be read into the record. And start three will allow participants to be placed in a queue so that they may speak live and prompted. If you're speaking live, please make sure your computer audio is muted so we don't get feedback. And then you can stream the other web at public input.com backslash coc ERC dash may 2021. I will read the role. Mr Baker. Mr Baker I know you're here but I don't think you're muted. Mr. Bram. I think you're muted Mr Bram. But I know you're here. Mr. Dinkins. President. Thank you. Miss Fuller will to hear. Miss Jaco here. Miss Johnson here. Mr Salibi. Mr Salibi. I think you're muted. You know, it's showing for Salibi and broom it doesn't show them muted and I see them talking but we don't hear them. Just a minute ago. During your phone trust our six as well. Not your computer. I've marked your present Mr Salibi will keep working on that Mr savory. Here. And Mr Wolf. Well we have corn. Whether we heard you or not. All right. Thank you. In order to avoid ex parte communications, DDRC members are under strict instructions not to discuss cases under consideration with the public or with each other outside of the public form. The meeting typically starts with staff calling the case, giving a summary of the project and then calling on the applicant to present if they wish. Decisions are typically made in one evening. The meeting is scheduled within 30 days to a court of competent jurisdiction of will be administered individually as we hear either from applicants or from live speakers. Applicants with requests before the DDRC are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time should include but is not limited to an overview of the project case history and any pertinent meetings held regarding the request. This also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicant, such as attorneys, engineers and architects. This time limit does not include any questions asked by the DDRC or staff regarding a request. Members of the general public are given the opportunity to address their concerns and intervals of two minutes. Applicants may have five minutes to respond. The DDRC has a time timer and will make presenters aware of when their time has expired. Are there any changes to the agenda. We've had one change which was under the regular agenda. Historic portion item number two nine 15 pine street which is a request for design approval for new construction in the old chanded lower Waverly protection area, but that has been the only change. This is the consent agenda to approve non controversial or routine matters by a single motion and vote. If a member of the DDRC or the general public wants to discuss an item on the consent agenda that item is removed from the agenda and then considered during the meeting. The DDRC then approves the remaining consent agenda items will staff please read the agenda. Certainly. The next item is 1227 Maple Street. This is a request for preliminary certification for the Baylor bill and for design approval for exterior changes. In the notice heights upon architectural conservation district. The next is 1417 Maple Street, a request for design approval for an addition in Miller's Heights on architectural conservation district. The DDRC is 1525 full street a request for preliminary certification of the Baylor bill and design approval for exterior changes to an individual landmark. And that is it. Aside from the minutes. Great. Is there anyone from DDRC that like an item removed from the consent agenda. Not hearing any. If there's anyone from the public that would like an item to be removed from the consent agenda. Please communicate by sending an email to COC board meeting at Columbia SC dot gov. Or communicate via phone by pressing star two to leave a voicemail or star star three to speak in person. We'll pause to check if there is any communication. Do not have any emails regarding the consent agenda. Okay. I'm not gathering nothing on the phone. And at this time, I do not have any callers on the phone or any voicemails. Okay, great. Do I have a motion in a second to accept the consent agenda and also the minutes. Okay. Okay. Send order. Excuse me. I move to adopt the consent agenda as outlined as well as the April. Okay. Mr. Bram. Mr. Bram. There you are. Okay.  That was a yes. Is that correct? All right. Mr. Yes. Miss Fuller-Wilt. Yes. Thank you. Miss Jacob. Yes. Mr. Johnson. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Savry. Yes. And Mr. Baker. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Baker. The motion passes. Can you hear me? Okay. Oh yeah, that's good. We can hear you now, Bob. I don't know what happened. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bram. All right. We can now move on to the regular agenda. All right. This is a 1209 Princeton street. Request for a certificate of design approval for an addition and exterior changes. Within the Melrose Heights Oak Lawn architectural conservation district. The applicant is requesting to build a brick addition off the back of the house and to paint the entirety of the brick expansion on the right side of the house. Staff has found that the request for the addition as depicted in the submitted drawings is not in keeping with several of the guidelines. While the requested addition will be located off the back of the house, the only visible side would have no openings, creating a 19 foot solid wall brick expansion on the right side of the house. As this does not meet the guidelines for relevant openings or guidelines related to materials, we will now move on to the historic portion of the house. There are at least two windows within this elevation of the addition with size, dimensions, placement and style to match the historic windows on the house with final approval of the window details deferred to staff. Likewise, in an effort to maintain integrity of the historic portion of the house per section four of the guidelines, staff also recommends setting the addition in at least five inches from the back corner of the house. We will now move on to the final review of the application. The applicant has submitted a letter to the house and we'll be back with the next two days as we move on to the final review of the application. So you can see later change to the house. Further request to paint the brick, the applicant has submitted a letter and several pictures of the exterior. The applicant does mention a lack of tarpaper inside the walls of the house, which have caused damage on the interior with and alters the distinguishing original qualities of a building. The color of brick, as well as mortar color and bonding patterns, can be important parts of a character of a historic building. Nodes of this where brick and other masonry finishes were unpainted, they should generally remain so. Preserving the original brick color of the house maintains historic and architectural integrity of the home. Therefore, based on the evidence provided, in section seven of the guidelines, staff recommends denial of the request to paint the brick. As previously stated, staff does recommend approval of the addition with the conditions, as I stated before, which is adding two windows on the right side and having it inset by at least five inches. And I believe the applicant is here to speak more about the brick. I am here. Can y'all hear me? Yes, hi. Good afternoon. Can you please state your name? Yes, my name is Sissy Bynum. My given name is Mary Bynum and I am so sorry. I am not computer savvy. Do you swear to tell the truth in these proceedings? Yes, I do. Okay. Can y'all see me? Can y'all see me? I do not see anything. I cannot see. Okay. I'm going to try one thing and I am so sorry. I'm not computer savvy and it's, I had y'all on a while ago and I could see y'all and I couldn't figure out how for y'all to see me. So let me try this. Let's see. Let's see. Okay. You don't see me? Yes, we do. I don't see y'all now, but anyway. That's how it's going today. Okay. Yeah. And can I ask one question? Is Hugh McLaren on this call? I saw Hugh McLaren come in. I'm here. Oh, great. There you are. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Would you like for me to speak now? You're going to have to kind of guide me through this. Yeah, staff. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. The condition of the brick and what you've seen with the, the stairway, street. So, I apologize for your issues. Okay. Well, in the letter that I submitted to you all, I submitted. Many pictures and mostly. Well, my concern is Ofold. The aesthetic outside of the house. And, and I will be honest in saying that when I purchased this house, nor did either of the realtors. So I did not realize what would have to be submitted and approved. So that being said, I purchased this home. It has been a rental for many, many years, many years. I think in excess of probably 20 and the neighbors were thrilled that I was purchasing it to just do some really major improvements. So anyway, in conjunction with the outside of what I discovered after I did a lot of clearing of the yard front and back, I realized a lot of tuck pointing that had happened through the years. You know, I knew there was different brick on the front versus the brick that is on the left side of the house if you're facing the house, because there was an addition done at some point years ago to this home. So I knew that there was a variation in those two brick. I did not realize because it had Ivy growing up all over the house, I did not realize that there was also different brick on the front of the house. The neighbors informed me that years ago, a tree fell on that corner, the front left corner of the house, taking off the front left corner and part of the chimney. And you can visibly see it's a different mortar. I think if you look at those pictures, you can see that you can definitely tell where the mortar joint separates the old and the new and the repair. And so that became quite visible when I removed the Ivy from the home, from the wall, from the brick. And then all of the tuck pointing with just all of the overgrowth of the house itself. And so, you know, I would, and then also going into the interior of the home, we realized that there was no tour paper between the wall, the framing and the brick. And so we had major rot and mildew in the kitchen area where the sink was. And some of that, I realized, and we don't know, but it could be called from just the old plumbing and just a leak in the sink, et cetera. But we have a feeling that some of it, because it extended past the sink, was due to just water coming in at some place in the brick or the mortar. The mortar has proved to be very, just very crisp and brittle and just comes out even if you just use a hose, a regular hose. You know, I would love to make this home a 3-3 right now. It's a 3-2, but the way that it was allowed at some point to be added on to, you have to walk through a bedroom, through a bathroom to get to the back bedroom. So, and there's no entry into that back bedroom. And so I could keep it, I could make it a 2-2, and which is the only functional way for the house to really function. And the neighbors have said that they're afraid if I keep it as a 2-2, that it would put it in a price range. If I, and honestly, if I decide not to move in there, you know, and put it on the market, that it would put it at a price range that would allow a parent of students at Carolina to buy it, you know, again, and for students to live there as you know, has happened in the past. And that little street just does not want that again. But I'm afraid if I'm not allowed to somehow remedy the problem of the brick and the mortar joints that, you know, I'm gonna have to keep it as a 2-2, I would love to add this room on the back that would then make it a 3-3 that would then lend itself more to a family and be in a price range that probably a family would look at this home. Which is what the neighbors are all in favor of. So, you know, but at either place, it would require, you know, a painting of the brick or some remedy to try to figure out the terrible tuck pointing that has been done all over this house through the years. So that is what I'm up against. And I realize, you know, I appreciate Old Brick. I really do. I live not far from this home. I have a great appreciation for the older part of Columbia. But I also know aesthetically that sometimes there's, you know, there's nothing that you can do except, you know, try to remedy things with either paint. And Hugh is on here to talk about he worked for a brick company for many, many years. And Hugh, you can speak to this. And then you can tell them what we've also talked about. So I'm going to be quiet now and let you talk. Hey, Mr. McMillan, you just take your name and do you swear to tell the truth in these proceedings? Hugh McLaren and I swear to tell the truth. Thank you. Thank you. So the history here, I spent 23 years with a local brick company called Rich Tech's Brick, right on the banks of the Broad River. So really familiar with, you know, I've matched up these brick over the last two decades and kind of understand what you can and what you can't do. So the audience understands what we're looking at. I want to explain a few things on the house. If you look at the front porch and the steps right there, if you look at the presidential drag, their mouths are on the front porch, right. To the left of that porch, that is all new brick from the, I guess, 80s or 90s, whatever the house was. If you flip back through the deck to the left-hand side of the house where the hot water heater was, yep, where the hot, you see the hot water heater, there's right there, from there all the way back, the whole rear of the house and all the way to the, I'm not sure which room it is. I'd say probably 30% of the brick are brand new, meaning anywhere from 70s to 90s, they were added on. Of course, you've got a varying mortar joint. So if you look where the hot water heater is, there's a better shot in the slide deck. It'll show a gray colored mortar versus a white colored mortar. Then where the chimney was torn down and repaired, you'll see the big white mortar joints compared to the gray mortar, brown mortar joints on the rest of the house. So I guess, and if you'll see, look that left photo right there, you can see where the number was two then and it's a brown mortar joint versus a white mortar joint. So it's just not something that is gonna be aesthetically pleasing to the community. I don't know the answer unless you tore off all the brick and replaced it or if you covered it with a specialty coating like paint or a German smear or some kind of aesthetically pleasing, but right now that is not keeping with the historic significance of the community, considering it's 40% of it's new brick. So I hope you guys would reconsider. Again, I'm a brick guy. I don't believe in painting brick, it's against my nature, but in this case, it seems to be a lost cause. Thank you. Okay. DDRC, any commissioners have any comments or questions? Did I understand, Mr. McLaurin, that you're saying that the brick is from the 1980s and 1990s? Sir, Tom, I can't tell you exactly when those brick were, the new addition, the 40% of the brick were added on. I don't know whether that would be on the property card that someone could research, but anywhere from the original house was built when in the 1930s, Tom? This one looks like to me, I have no idea. And then the rest of the brick looks like it was 70s, 80s. Can't really be sure. I may be staffed to speak to that cause that confuses me. Where's the original portion? I was trying to figure that out too, where the original brick is. I mean, 80s and 90s is essentially current. So I'm a little confused about that statement. Sure, the presenter can bring up the slide deck showing a close-up of the hot water heater. There was a good picture in there somewhere. Sorry to see you on a wild goose stage, but this kind of explains it and supports what I'm saying. There, right there. So that, if you look at the line, if you'll drag your cursor right above the, right there, that's new brick to your right, to your left, you'll, excuse me, that's old brick to your right, 1930s. And then to your, and it's got a range of color, browns, chocolates, cherry, and then it has almost a Portland cement, brown type mortar joint in keeping with that 1930s look to the left of the hot water heater. And all the way around the exterior of the building, you'll find a cool white creamy colored mortar joint with a solid red brick with little range in it. And again, when we was taking pictures around it the other day and noticed that, you know, this is a good 30, 40% of the brick on this historic house is not historic. Lucinda, if you go to the aerial view of the house first slide, I'm sorry you have to be around so much. You can see that really long addition off the back. That's all a newer addition. And it was done in brick, that's what you're seeing. I can only speak to what I've seen. I see, I do see differences in the mortar joints that you can see where repairs have been made, but the brick appears consistent at least from the street on the rest of the house. I can't, I can't. So you're saying like on the front, Rachel and from the sides to the water heater line is we think original brick? Well, you can see here in this image, you can see on that corner, can you see that line? Yes. On the front of the house. I think that's where Ms. Bynum was talking about there was a repair. So some of that brick, yeah, of course could have been replaced when that damage was done. I don't know if you have an up close of that section or just... Roughly, when would... Does anybody know when that repair work was done, roughly? Or is it just assumptions or what? The neighbors. Repair work, it was done. I mean, the brick matches pretty well, pretty good. Yeah, the brick appears to be consistent. There are, you know, you do see that the slightly thicker, slightly brighter colored mortar. So what advantage do you get from painting it? Just not, I'm not following that, I mean, that whole concept. Well, there are more pictures that I submitted that, and I am so sorry because I can't see what y'all are seeing and I don't know why. But there are more pictures in my original email to Rachel that just show tuck pointing that was done just sporadically around the house, except for that front, that's the majority of repair work. And then what Hugh talked about with the addition, then there's just more tuck pointing that has taken place. And I don't know if y'all can pull those pictures up. And some of that quite frankly is tuck pointing on the front of the house, over by the, I'm hoping y'all can hear me, over by the porch. Well, we can hear you, yes. Okay, and on the side of the porch, and with the columns, there was some tuck pointing that took place there. It's just been not well done through the years. And so I was just hopeful that by painting the brick, that I would be able to remedy some of that, that it would just be more aesthetically pleasing. Sanford, I think to answer your question, maybe the answer to your question is essentially, as the applicant has just said, it's essentially an aesthetic matter. The tuck point, there is some bad tuck pointing on this, but the tuck point is painstaking work and it's hard to match the mortar. There are some, once you start painting brick, you gotta continue painting it forever. That's right, I mean, I'm just feeling sorry. It's not our concern. That's really, that's the homeowner's concern. I mean, I would have some concerns when you talk about not having tar paper. I'd have some concerns if it were my home about not having proper vapor barriers and having dew point issues and having blistering of the paint in the future. But the answer to your question, Sanford, is really that it's an aesthetic issue. It makes the exterior uniform. I was trying to understand if this is an exception to what is normally a proper guideline in the sense that if it's true or not, that there's so much replacement brick on this that's essentially contemporary. I mean, the statement that it was 80s or 90s was surprising to me. I didn't feel that way. I went by there. I went by there. I did not feel like it was 40% an 80s home. There was some work done. I was using foundation structural repairs that were done. And I think they had to replace the brick, but I don't, the majority of it to me, it looks 1930. It did to me when I drove by. And I just drove by. And that's just my opinion from the street. Right, because I think Tom, the point you're making, I was wondering too, I mean, it seems like you've got to do some level repair with the brick no matter what you do to the brick. I mean, correct. Okay. Obviously. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of remedial work to be done. Tom, Hema-Clarn again. I just wanted to point out on that porch where they were doing some coping repairs on brick. The entire porch to grade is new brick as well that were used in the addition in the rear of the home. Also, does the committee have any other ideas for creating an aesthetically pleasing, not a patchy brick work job all the way around this house? Because I am, you know, if y'all have given me permission to do this addition, then that is going to be different brick as well. And I mean, of course, I would try to match it as best I could, but I mean, we all know I can't match 1930s brick. So I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to make the best decisions here for the neighborhood for making this a home that would become a single-family dwelling versus a rental again. Well, Ms. Bynum, what were the conversations with you and staff about some of the comments about the additional windows and the distance in the back corner? I mean, do you have any comments on that? On the windows? No, I don't, you know, the draftsmen didn't originally put windows on that side for two reasons.  The clad to match the old windows, that is going to be quite expensive for windows. And then also it's somewhat of a shared driveway at the very beginning. And so, you know, the homes are close together. So knowing that this addition is going to be the master bedroom, we just thought for privacy, it would be nice not to have windows there but put the windows on the back of the house looking into the backyard. So, you know, but I'm willing to comply with that. You know, if that's a requirement because I do understand.  But I'm willing to comply with the windows if that absolutely has to be a stimulate, you know, part of the agreement that, or part of y'all's approval. I have a question back to the brick.  Are you planning to, in your plans, are you planning to reuse that brick? No, he did not call for tearing out the brick on the back. He called for tearing out the brick on the side. It does like an L in the back of the house. And so he's calling for tearing out the side brick. There's a little bit of the old brick that is on the back of the house. It's probably about 10 feet of brick. It's what is now a laundry room.  But then from there over what's on the L side is this brick that Hugh's talking about. This probably somewhere from the 1970s to the 1980s.  And so, you know, so that's where the brick is. I have another concern is the picture I'm looking at where the corner is damaged by fallen trees. That's where the newest work occurred. Have you made any attempt to wash an area to see how it looks to see if there's any variation or clean to brick or mortar? Well, yes, I have. Before I knew that I could not pressure wash, I did not pressure wash with any chemicals. I took my own pressure washer over there because I've done a lot of this work and a lot of this work with a cousin so far. And so I did take the pressure washer over there to see if all of the spindle root parts of the vines that were growing up all over the house, if all that would come off of those bricks or how easily it would come off of those bricks. And so, yes, I have pressure wash the entire front and then the side. I will tell you, I was super careful because right away, I realized if there was any pressure washing that hit the mortar, very direct, that mortar popped out and literally, I mean, it was like I needed a chest shield on. So I really stayed entirely on the brick. I had no damage on the brick, but the mortar was just really, to me, very compromised. And that's probably what mortar does over the period of, you know, 90 years. But anyway, it was, and I will say this, I have lived in two brick houses and I bought the current house I live in on Abilia Road. It is a painted brick house. And though I've had my trim repainted, my brick is, for me personally and for other friends that have brick painted houses, that is, I believe, a really big misnomer that it has to be painted when you paint the trim of your house because it is, mine is in pristine condition after 13 years. And there is not a single chip off a brick or anything. And now Sherwin-Williams makes this amazing product that adheres your paint to the brick. And so it's not at all like keeping up with the trim on your house. Thank you. But you know, I think our concern is maintenance. Our concern is the historic integrity. Right, and I understand that and I've made the argument that within a two block radius of this home, that there are 26 painted houses. Right, right. And so it's not like I'm really asking to do something that is not prevalent already in the neighborhood. And I understand that probably when those people painted their homes, that they painted them before the historic preservation commission was in place. So I do understand that and, you know. I'm trying to establish whether or not there is grounds for making an exception. That's what I'm trying to establish. Right, right. It's very narrow and what I'm trying to get at it. So what I'm asking, and it's a question for you as the applicant, it's also a question for staff. I mean, I can see what looks like, and you spoke about the repairs from the front facade on the left side. You can see that it's obvious something was done, whether it was just repointing or whether it was brick infill. We talked about the brick at the porch, at the bottom of the porch. Of course you have an addition and there's what appears to be either repointing or patch at the fireplace. I guess what I'm asking is, and it's really a question for other commissioners, a question for staff. We've had applications before of where, I mean, there's a lot of people want to paint brick houses. You can go to HGTV and it's one of the things that they do, but we've had applications before where we haven't allowed that to happen, where it's primarily it's issues where a brick has to be repointed and there are some problems with that. I'm just wondering if this is because of the history of repair and replacement of masonry and the addition on the back, if this falls in the category of an exception, that's really all I'm getting at. No, and I appreciate that. I was wondering too, like, what percent of this is still original brick versus non-original? My question is that narrow. It's really that narrow. Yeah. Are you wanting staff assessment on that? I'm sorry. Sure. The admission are wet. I mean, you've been out to the house and based on my observations and the pictures that have been submitted from around the house, the brick itself on the historic core of the house appears original. Yes, there have been repairs. Yes, there have been more noticeable repairs and you all have seen even last month a request to paint brick with some very unattractive repairs that were made, but those were mortar issues rather than the brick itself. So from staff assessment, the historic portion of the house, which is more or less everything except for that long addition you see off the back left side, I guess, appears to be historic. And yes, yeah, as they mentioned, there are repairs at the porch and the other side of the house where a tree fell. Personally, just speaking from the times I visited the property, I didn't notice them from the street. You can obviously see it in the pictures, I just see that. But if it's an aesthetic issue, that's kind of an opinion. I've had several homeowners who love brick houses and would never dream of painting them. And then of course we see requests come through occasionally to paint them. So it's the color of the brick as per the guidelines is part of the original architecture of the house. So that's staff's assessment. Thank you, Rachel. I mean, I'll just say it in my opinion, I mean, I really think that you've done a good job in assessing it, but I would agree with Rachel in driving by that the visual portion is very historical and I don't really see a whole lot of visual issues with the tough morning, it wasn't great, but tough morning is hard. And I'm gonna say I'd have to lean to other commissioners to point this somewhere in section seven that would say this could be an exception or outside of the guidelines. Yeah, from the initial assessment and pictures and everything I looked at appeared that the original is what you see pretty much from the road when you talk to it. Well, for my two cents, I may come down differently than everyone else. Taking into consideration that that back left portion is obviously not original brick and assuming that we vote in favor of the addition, which is going to create another portion of the house that wouldn't be original brick, I'm inclined to allow the applicant to paint it because under section seven, number six exterior is siding. It says that generally, so it says where brick and mason finishes are unpainted, they should generally remain so. To me, that's not an absolute that allows some room for exceptions. And I just said in her testimony, the pictures, the addition of the new brick that we think may be 1980s or so, I'm inclined to allow her to paint it. I think that that generally gives us the opportunity if we provide sufficient reasons why to allow her to paint it without creating some precedent that would get out of control, but that's just my two cents on the matter. Is that not generally speaking to the new addition? It says masonry. So that's not even talking in my opinion about the new addition. It's just talking about the painting of the brick in general, the new addition was discussed under another section, subsection of the guidelines. I'm looking particularly at the principles of masonry. Does it make it narrowing? It doesn't narrow it down to new construction. It just talks about the painting in general. And it also says that we're talking about painting historic brick, therefore it could not possibly include new additions in that section. I would, I mean, I'm sort of of two minds. I'm somewhat open-minded on this one, but I think to your point, Ashley, if the commission were to allow this house to be painted, I think it would be very important that the motion is made, which is not a motion I'm going to make, but that the motion is made to make it clear that there's enough mitigating circumstance to this that it doesn't become a precedent. And it may have to do not necessarily with the fact that, because the addition could be done, for instance, and clabbered, it doesn't have to be brick. So I would say that the motion would have to take into account significant areas of patching with new brick, for one thing. I don't think that because the tuck pointing is poorly done, for instance, that that would be in my mind enough of making up of an exception because that happens all the time. So in my mind, it would have to be because there's been so much patching with new brick that it's a different situation. Any other comments from commissioners? You can hear me. Who is that? Coming through. Andrew Salivi, I'm sorry. Oh, just very low. I'm going to use the microphone on my phone because there seems to be a problem with my computer. Or is it resolved now? I can hear you. Pardon me. Let me turn my volume down so I'm not echoing. All right. So to echo Ashley's comments, you know, I do think the language allows us to find an exception. I don't think there's any differing opinion on that. The language that drew my attention was, let me just back up here real quick. I guess along the lines and without looking at the actual language because I can't find the screen, maintaining the historic nature of the dwelling. And there does seem to be so much patchwork that I didn't have the opportunity to drive by and see it in person. So I can't speak to what it looks like from the street. But looking at the pictures, that front left corner of the home where the applicant claims the repair work was done due to a tree falling on it. I mean, I have a hard time saying that the historical nature of the home has been or has even maintained at this point just because of the clear distinction in masonry that's used there. So I guess my point is I don't think allowing her to paint would take away any more from the historic nature of the masonry more so than it's already done by the repair work. I would have to respectfully somewhat disagree with that. I mean, I think that the historical nature of the house is generally intact from the street and especially the brickwork. And I just, I'm not sure what it gains. I know what it takes away from the historic nature in the district. I will say this, I didn't include this in the evaluation. This house and the one next door are very similar. If you look at the sandborns, they had a very original, their original footprint was very similar and you look at the details, you have that kind of off to the side porch. And the house next door has been altered to where you wouldn't really notice it at first that they were probably very similar where this one has a really high level of historic integrity. Yes, that back addition is, you know, a little new, a little contemporary, but from the street, when you're looking at it, it does maintain a high level of historic integrity. Wow, I would agree. I have a question. Not that I've been able to find my screen. Looking back at the language of section seven paragraph six, the last sentence under some circumstances, yada, yada, painting brick may be appropriate as a protective measure. I'm assuming that refers to protecting the brick and not necessarily the dwelling as a whole, is that right? And if so, could you please give some examples of what an appropriate protective measure would be? So there, I'm not aware of any in the city that has happened, but there have been cases where in the past brick buildings have been sandblasted, which makes it very, very porous, in which case, basically your only option is to paint it, to protect the house. And yes, that does protect the interior because it keeps the water from coming into the building as well. So yeah, if the brick is compromised in a way where it's causing damage, I mean, yes, the brick can crumble, but it can't allow moisture to get into the house itself. In that case, yes, you may need to paint it to prevent further deterioration. So then a follow-up, is there any credence to what Ms. Bonham is saying about the water damage to the interior of the house because of the lack of the tarpaper that may be painting is necessary in this case to create that water seal that you were just referring to? I can't speak to that personally because I don't know how the house was built. I do know houses were typically built with a cavity, which in some cases should wick the water, mitigate the water that way. Not all old houses are going to have tarpaper. I imagine there are a few that were built exactly like this one, but I have not seen damage on the interior. And I have not, I don't have any evidence of it. So I can't really speak to what may have caused that. I think she mentioned it could have been plumbing even. It could be roof leaks. So I cannot say in this case whether or not that is what is actually causing an issue. And can I ask you to speak to this because I wanna be in this process. I really wanna have the utmost integrity. So I don't wanna to hide anything that I know may be true about brick and painting it. So Q, would you tell them what you told me about painting brick that maybe it's not always the best thing? So, again, I'm not a big proponent of painting brick at all. But for this point, the aesthetic value of covering up two dozen mortar patches where they were took pointed with white mortar into a wall plane of brown mortar. Basically it's what the 1930s edition was. It's just, it's such a hodgepodge. You'll have now after this edition, a third brick range in the wall on three different elevations of the home that it's, I don't see any other way around it, Sissy or committee. Well, since then we were trying to justify covering up the historic portion to match the newer. Or to maybe not do more effort to repair was there, or I guess that's what I'm trying to understand as well. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like why I don't feel like I'm focused as much on maintaining the original historic character. And that's where my focus really wants to be. Right. And I would say that I totally respect that and I totally understand that. And in the same time, I want to do this house as a very aesthetically pleasing home to the neighborhood. I understood. I mean, our focus of this committee, of course, is the preservation and not so much aesthetically. Yes. And I think, you know, we may just have to plow forward and see who makes a motion and how the chips fall.  Is there any other comments or if not, do you want me to move to public comment, staff, Amy? Is that appropriate? Or if the commissioners are discussing. Yeah, right. And I definitely want to make sure that is anybody else, any other commissioners have any other comments? Hey, this is Taylor Wolf, Amy. I wasn't I got the time to mix up earlier. So I've been listening in for the past 20 minutes, 30 minutes since since the start. Do I do I need to swear in or anything before making a comment on this? No, I don't. I don't think you do it, Mr. Well, I would like to just say that I certainly agree with with Andrew's comments earlier, just I think one picture that really paints the idea of the different shades of brick is is on page five, where you can see just just a different shade of the two bricks there. I mean, in addition to the to the third brick is on the back of the house or the third brick that will be on the back of the house. Matching bricks is is just about an impossible thing to do from times that I've been involved with it. I think just understanding, trying to maintain the historical nature of the property. And that's our goal here. I think that's going to be a tougher feat to accomplish than maybe we're giving credit for. And so I would like to ask the commissioners to keep that in mind when if there is a motion made in favor to paint the house, that's that's certainly the way that I would lean towards. Well, I think the only comment I would add to that is and Taylor, I'm not sure exactly when you came in. But depending on what is used on the addition, it could be done in a way where it's not another conflicting brick. So I think there are ways also to address that. But thank you. Yeah. Any any other commissioners? Any other comments? Yes, sorry. I don't mean to hold us up. I guess a question I have for other commissioners who might be feeling a little differently on this, that I guess that maybe we can still preserve the historical character might ask what looking at it, I don't really see one clearly defined character. I mean, I guess maybe you could look to the the front right part of the house, I guess just the left of the front porch and say that's from the 1930s. And so that's the historical character. But but preserving it for the whole home, I mean, I think that ship has sailed just looking at all the patchwork, looking at the repair work. So so the question maybe the other commissioners who feel differently is what is the historical character we're trying to preserve here? I mean, to me, it's the original brick and mortar. And I mean, I think they again, the repair work that's been done has been done. It's not terrible and it's difficult. But I don't see any reason in covering up what's there that is still maintain the historic significance of the house. It's just my opinion. I don't see a whole lot of patchwork. I mean, personally, I see one area and I don't feel the need to paint the whole house to visually and aesthetically please one person or another or myself. And again, thank you for your efforts, too. And we appreciate the work you've done on this house. Well, thank you for the work that you all do. I do appreciate it. And I do hope that that in the end that I can that it can be a three three for a family and we will just I will just wait. I'm assuming you will take a vote today. Is that correct? Well, we're going to take public comment here in a minute. And then we'll move forward into seeing if a commissioner will make a motion. OK, and is that something that I stay? Is that something you'll do in private? No, ma'am, this is all it's all public form to you. OK, OK, stay on. Any other comments from commissioners? OK, I'm going to move on then to see if we have any public comments. We encourage those that would like to communicate via email to begin sending in letters and emails to COC board meeting at columbiasc.gov or on the web at publicinput.com slash COC DDRC hyphen may twenty twenty one. And for those wanting to leave a voicemail or speak live, call eight five five nine two five two eight zero one. When prompted, please enter the meeting code seven nine five two, then press star two to begin leaving a voicemail. Or if you'd like to speak in person, press star three. And please make sure your computer audio is off to avoid feedback. Any any comments received style? Yes, we have a few emails that have come in. The first one is from Josh Shelton, the president of Historic Melrose Neighborhood Association. I am writing in regards to 1209 Princeton Street, our neighborhood association agrees with the addition extension to the property as long as it meets the preservation staff recommendation of adding two windows that are appropriate and fit within our guidelines. However, we do not agree with exterior changes, such as painting bricks, which violates or goes against the railroads, heights, Oklahoma, architectural conservation districts design guidelines. Guidelines for addition section six paragraph a reads in part. While these additions are permitted, they should serve to reinforce and not attract from the existing architectural form and design of the building. The size and scale of the new addition should be in proportion to the historic portion of the building and could and clearly subordinate to it. Guidelines for painting bricks section seven paragraph a six a reads in part painting historic masonry is another concern. The color of masonry, particularly brick, is often an important part of the character of a building. In addition to color, the bonding pattern, treatment of more joints and texture are significant parts of brick buildings where brick and other masonry finishes were unpainted. They should generally remain so. We welcome the revitalization of this property as long as it is in keeping with the architectural conservation districts guidelines. We support appropriate changes with changes allowed within our guidelines as noted by two properties within our neighborhood that came before this board in the consent agenda today, 1227 and 1417 Maple Street. We are full supporters of these purposeful changes that preserve the neighborhood's character. It is essential to protect the unique character of our neighborhood, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And then he also had a brief follow up statements that noted that the information on the Melrose Heights, Oakland Architectural Conservation District's design guidelines are available online through the neighborhood's website, as well as the City of Columbia's website. And their neighborhood website shows on the first page and a Google search. And he also notes that they have installed signage on road signs around the neighborhood. He states that any buyer should be able to find this information while doing a search on their property for a potential purchase. The next email we have is from Alex Sojourner. I am an architect and neighbor of 1209 Princeton Street. I'm writing to voice my support for the addition and exterior changes to the residence, that the home has been riddled with a variety of four additions and structural fractures resulting in mismatched brick and poorly pointed up masonry fissures. Painting the exterior would serve as an improvement to what is currently a mixture of poorly matched brick that does not reflect the historic aspect of the home. Adding paint would be in keeping with other houses in the district and greatly improve the aesthetic of the home that has been sadly unkept for many years. Thank you for your consideration, Alex Sojourner. And then we have one final email and it is unsigned. So I'm unsure of who it is from. I believe it's a resident in the in the neighborhood and they say, please allow the home to be renovated. We need more home ownership in Columbia, South Carolina. I think we, the city, have to be more open-minded when discussing these decisions. Please allow this homeowner to renovate her home. We need this for future homeowners to renovate their homes. Please allow. And that is all we have received in emails. Any voicemails? And in terms of. Sorry, was that. Right, in terms of phone calls. I do not have any calls or voicemails. Any comments from the correspondence that was received? Just didn't the spina have anything to say? No, I would just say in speaking to my neighbors and people that have just walked by as I've been working on the house and cleaning up the yard and, you know, just the yard alone has been thousands, thousands of dollars. And I look at the end of our street on Princeton at a house that is so disheveled, the yard is growing up with weeds and it looks totally unoccupied. And I think. Gosh, it's really a shame that someone is trying to come in and really clean up a house and a yard for the neighborhood and for the immediate neighbors. But yet other houses are allowed to be totally unkept. And I know that's probably not even anything that you all speak to. But if somebody really needs to take note of this other house on Princeton, it's really a crying shame when you speak of historic integrity. And but anyway, I would just say that, you know, I didn't drum up support from all the neighbors. I didn't have them right in. I didn't have them call in. But in speaking with them, you know, I just told them of my wishes to make the house a little bit larger so that it would attract a family. And, you know, that ultimately I knew that it was the call of the commission and they were very much in support of, you know, Sissy, I think, you know, in light of everything, painting this house would be such an added bonus. So, you know, that is that is, you know, what I want to interject as far as speaking to the immediate neighbors and even down the street, you know, that is what has been shared with me. And nobody has had any any issues at all with the painting of the brick. And, you know, it's it's a house out of the Sears and Robot catalog.   This house doesn't have any real curb appeal, except maybe the old brick and maybe the the craftsman style. But, you know, I think it's I think I don't see that painting the brick would really deter from the home itself. Any other comments, missioners? I'd like to make just one final comment. And again, I am not going to make the motion, but I would ask that. And I don't know who's going to make the motion. But to my mind, the if if there is grounds merit, for an exception, I would not say that it's because there's going to be an addition that's going to be brick that will be hard to match what's existing because, as you said, Chloe, the addition doesn't have to be brick. So, you know, that's I don't think that would be the exception by which I would vote to allow the house to be painted. There would have to be another exception and it might have to do with the extensive patching or something else. But I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you, Tom. Would you prepare to make a motion to that effect if we get to that point? All right, if there's no more comments and we can someone can attempt a motion. All right, I will. Taking into consideration the seventh of the Melrose Heights, Oklahoma, architectural conservation district guidelines, the correspondence is received from the public. The fact that there has been significant patching with new brick. The material submitted by the applicant. The testimony offered. And the fact that an existing portion of the home already includes a newer brick. I moved to grant the applicant's request to paint the brick exterior of her home. This motion was not based upon the tough point and we discussed earlier. Now, I think staff helped me or the motion. There's several things on there with the addition and everything. Are we tackling it individually or? I was going at well, y'all want to do it. I was going to make two separate motions, one to address the exterior paint in a separate motion to address the addition itself. So that was the first item. If that were all. Yeah, no, no, that. I'll second that motion. Mr. Brown. Sure. I don't know if that came through. I will second that motion. OK. Moving to a vote, Mr. Brown, I don't know if you heard Amy call you. Yes, Mr. Dinkins. No. Miss Fuller-Wilt, no. Miss Jacob, no. Miss Johnson, yes. Mr. Salivi, yes. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Salivi. Mr. Savry, yes. Mr. Baker, no. Mr. Wolf, yes. The motion passes five four. OK, so now we need a motion in regards to the. Addition, I'll go ahead and do that. So I'll move to recommend a certificate of design approval for an addition at 1209 Princeton Street, which is partially in keeping with sections five and six of the members' heights of law and architectural conservation district with the following conditions, that a minimum of two windows be added to the right elevation with size, dimensions, placement and style to match the historic windows on the house windows should be wood or aluminum clad exterior moves to be visually compatible with historic windows with the final design approval deferred to staff. The addition to be set in at least five inches from the back corner of the house so that the addition is clearly evident as a ladder change to the house and all other details are deferred to staff. And I'd like to add into that if any bricks are removed for the addition, I would request that they be try to be used elsewhere on the structure. Do we have a second? Second. Mr. Bram. Yes. Mr. Dinkins. Yes. Thank you. Miss Fuller-Welt. Yes. Miss Jacob. Yes. Miss Johnson. Yes. Mr. Salibi. Yes. Mr. Savory. Yes. Mr. Wolfe. Yes. And Mr. Baker. Yes. Thank you. The motion passes. All right. Our commissioner, I'm going to sit out this next one. Information. Information. OK. We've went to our next slide on the agenda. Can I just thank everyone? I really thank you for your service to our community and thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So the next one, this is an informational presentation for 2222 Main Street. Steve Milken, the developer is here and is going to give a presentation. I'll just run through the staff comments real quickly. It's been a little while since we've had an informational, but we don't typically write up a full evaluation, but they're just trying to get some early feedback from commissioners before they submit a final application. And we also have not traditionally allowed for public comment during the informational presentation. So this is just a request for preliminary feedback from the commissioners. This proposal is for mixed use development on the site of the former Jim Moore Cadillac site between Main Street and Central Street. The development proposes 248 residential units, a few live, work and commercial units. The development utilizes primarily structured parking with sun surface parking. The project will ultimately come before the DDRC for a certificate of design approval and we'll go to the planning commission for site plan approval. But the applicant wanted to borrow some early feedback from the commission. Staff comments are brought in based on the design guidelines for the North Main Corridor Design District. So under site planning and parking placement, the building is cited appropriately and according to the guidelines addressing the public realm with narrow setbacks and with the structure, parking and the majority of the way to behind the building map. Any surface parking areas that are adjacent to the right of way shall be set back in spring and according to the guidelines and the landscape ordinance. Under building design and height, the scale of massing are appropriate to the neighborhood. The dramatic grade change throughout the site is not illustrated in the rendering. This will undoubtedly have an impact on the design of the facade and how the building steps down along the grade change, as well as how the facade addresses the street. While style and materiality are not a focus of the North Main Corridor Guidelines, context is always considered in evaluating projects in urban design districts. The limited amount of frontage along North Main Street would respond to the commercial corridor more effectively with a simpler materials pallet that primarily breaks in more of an urban commercial facade element. The decorative elements and bungalow references might work better on the neighborhood facing side of the project. The 8.01 drawing dated February 16th, 2021 in your packets responds to the local context more effectively than the later renderings dated March 31st. Under building orientation and elevation, the buildings are parallel to the street as required. The parking garage entrance is on Sumter below residential unit. More information is needed about pedestrian entrances. Pedestrian entrance points from the street, especially on Main Street under facade element. More information is needed about proposed materials. As noted, a simpler materials pallet on the main would better respond to local context. Maximizing storefront and all commercial public uses on the first floor will be critical given how much residential frontage occurs along the street frontage. Upper floor window percentages should be greatly increased to better articulate the facade. And all window sections should be designed to provide a substantial recess in the facade to articulate administration and provide interest. The 8.01 rendering illustrates the consistent rhythm of recesses and projections along the street, a better proportion of administration in a simpler materials pallet that works well with the massing of the building. And stuff does not make recommendations at this time, but we'll go ahead and turn it over to Mr. Middleton and he will do his portion of the presentation. Well, thank you very much. Can everyone hear me or can anybody? Yes, yeah, we can hear you. All right, perfect. Thank you. I don't want to talk too long without people being able to hear. I am Steve Middleton. I am the president of Commonwealth properties We are a private real estate development company been in business for about 23 years, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. And I have on the call with us here tonight, Dave Kelly, who is the architect with Pool & Pool that we are using for this project and that we've used on several other projects. Our experience has been basically some retail back a long time ago, but primarily luxury residential development, both single families, townhomes, condominiums, but primarily multi-family projects. And we've developed throughout the southeast, southeastern United States. We have developed three other projects in Colombia, two of them up in northeast Colombia and one downtown in the Vista called Vista. Where we started in 1999 and finished in 2001 and still own. And we typically do about one project every couple of years. So, you know, we're not a large company, but we have been in business for quite a while. We started working on the the Jim Moore Cadillac site in November of 2020 with Ben Rex, who had it under contract and then took over the contract from him earlier this year and have been spending that time really trying to understand the site challenges there from a site design standpoint. I think as the staff mentioned, there's quite a bit of fall from the southwest corner to the northeast corner. In this case, if you're looking at the site plan, it might be a little confusing. North is the left hand side. And so the top the top left hand corner would be the lowest point on the site and the bottom, excuse me, the top top left hand corner of your screen is the lowest point in the site and the bottom right end corner of the screen is the highest part of the site. Main Street is on the bottom of the page. Sumpter is at the top. Franklin is on the left hand side and Scott is on the right hand side just to get you oriented. So we've, as I mentioned, we've been working on the site for six months or so trying to work through a development a development scheme, if you will, that works to from our standpoint, from an economics standpoint, but also tries to address what we have learned or some of the community concerns. We are developing or we would propose to develop and really all of this is at this point, conceptual and informational for y'all's purposes. I would welcome any public input that y'all want to entertain simply because it would help us understand sooner and better what people's concerns are and see if there's a way for us to address them and mitigate them.  One we would call the North Building on the left hand side and the other we would call the South Building on the right hand side. And in between is a about 350 or so unit parking deck. There's some surface parking between the parking deck and Main Street. There is an amenity area that fronts along Main Street which is designed to give the Main Street frontage of the project a more commercial feel. There is a proposed future development of about a 4,500 square foot building up on Main Street. There would be a commercial building that we would anticipate being used for something like a bodega or specialty grocery but we don't have any leads right now in terms of tenants for that space. And then there's also about a 2,500 to 3,000 square foot restaurant at the corner of Sumter in Franklin that has an outdoor seating patio. Yeah, right there where you see the cursor. So we think and the kind of the feedback we've gotten from the neighborhood representatives that we've talked to is that that would be a good addition to the neighborhood there. So we would propose to take care of all of our parking needs on site. So whatever the zoning requirement is based upon where we ended up with the total number of units and square footage for the commercial space we would have on site in the form of that parking structure as well as that limited surface parking that we have. I think the site could be zoned for substantially more density than we're putting on there. We're limiting the height of our structures to three stories because we think it's important to try to fit in, blend in architecturally and messing wise with the existing neighborhood. I would say that we have commissioned a parking study and a traffic study which should be completed sometime in the next 30 days which we would be happy to share with the staff as well as the neighborhood groups. Undoubtedly we're going to generate more traffic than what's there because what's there is not being used. So we've got some access and access point on Sumter and access point to access points on Main Street and access point on Scott. So there are several ways to kind of to get in and out of the site. Residential traffic is generally sort of scattered throughout the day. There's a little bit of a concentration in the morning with people going to work and then the evening coming home, but really the traffic is for the most part scattered throughout the day. We proposed these conceptual elevations that we worked through with Dave. We had a previous architect that had done some elevations here. They are all conceptual in nature. We welcomed the staff's input on them and we'd look forward to working with them to develop building facades that meet the design guidelines. I would say finally I guess the last part of my quick presentation is that we're not student housing developers. This would not be a student housing project. We have worked hard to try to even have Vista Commons not be a student housing project even though it is much closer to USC. We have a leasing policy there that we would also include here that would preclude people who are under the age of 22 from having co-signers on the lease with them so that if you were 21 years old or 19 years old or 18 years old and you wanted to live here, you would have to qualify from an income standpoint or yes an asset standpoint if you had a trust fund. You would have to qualify on your own. You could get a parent or a guardian to sign for you. Not to say you couldn't live with a parent or guardian but you would have to be the parent or guardian's primary residence. So I've been pretty effective with that over to Vista Commons. I think we've had some people slip through the door. We recently raised the age there from 21 to 22 to try to address that. We would welcome graduate students who we view differently in terms of our resident mix and their compatibility of lifestyle with other folks than undergraduates. But primarily we would see this as being recent graduates, young professionals, maybe some not so young professionals, maybe even some empty nesters or retirees who want to move in from the suburbs and experience a more vibrant lifestyle. So we're very excited about the site, very excited about the development, very excited about being part of the North Main community and we'd welcome any sort of feedback, comments, questions, suggestions, compliments that you might have. All right, well, thank you. I'll open it up and any commissioners have any thing they'd like to share? I'd like to make a comment on the rendering. Go back to the floor plan or the site plan. You part of that. You said the entry is from Main Street. Is that right? There are several entrances. There's an entrance, a main entrance off of Main Street right between Franklin and Scott that goes directly back to the surface parking area and then into that parking garage. So if you see a little cursor moving back that goes right in there. There's also an entrance off of Sumter which goes almost across, I think it's Jefferson, no to the right of that, yeah, right there. All right, I see that, okay. There's an entrance there that goes, basically drives under the building to get in there. And then there's another entrance on Main Street up in the bottom right-hand corner and into that little surface parking spot. Okay. There off of Scott and right there, yes, off of Main. Good, thank you. Do you have a rendering of the parking deck or is that still on the board? I do not have a rendering of the parking deck. The part that faces Main would look like a parking deck. The part, but it's well set back from Main and visually blocked by the apartment buildings and what that future building would be. And the part that is along Sumter is screened by those live work units that one, two, three, four, five live work units that you see there. Those would be probably two stories high. The parking deck there is either three or four stories high. But the bottom two stories would feel like live work commercial space. Where you could have a lawyer or a accountant or a tailor or somebody operating a shop on the bottom level and they would live above is the idea. You know, if we can't find someone to occupy the bottom space as commercial, then they could also use that as residential, but it's really set up to give us a big presence, if you will, as commercial space. Along there. I guess my next question would be, you said that it's not completed but has to look at the parking structure. I think it's important that we see that eventually. Certainly we can certainly do that. We would, I mean, we would prepare elevations for y'all of each side of the building and the parking structure. Thank you. Well, we just haven't. I didn't wanna get too far down the road before we talked to folks to find out what, you know, what sort of concerns they had. I think, you know, Lucinda, of course, ran through some of the requirements that we would also be looking at. Any other commissioners or, Tom, I know you're gonna wanna say something in your final meeting here. You know, I think that is probably not too inclined to speak to it much. The only thing I would say is, you know, generally it seems as if it's meeting the guideline, the intent of the guidelines, I would, as I always say, if I were still on when this comes to the commission, I would encourage restraint in terms of the different, you know, the variety of materials that are used, especially where you have masonry. I would encourage to look at some depth to the openings so that they're not flush, which is very, you know, very, very thin, but at least four inches per the guidelines. And I think it's important to differentiate between the approach to the street fronts versus the internal, you know, facades. But, and you've already talked about, and Steph has already talked about, and they'll trust hold your feet to the fire on the percentage of glazing on the store, on the bottom level per, you know, storefront imagery versus percentage of glazing above. So, you know, I would, I think, I think staff will probably continue to have a good handle on that. And I guess the only other question, I did have one question and it's, it pertains more to the site plan, which is the parking that you referred to at the Southwest corner. I'm just curious about the need for the, in and out on Main Street, because I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to extend the housing piece a little further south along Main Street and perhaps have the entry to that surface parking on whatever the, whatever the South Street is. Just as a way to continue to infill, you know, the free wall along Main Street, but I don't have a strong feeling about that. It would just be something that I would, I would encourage. And that's really, that's about all I have because it's gonna be in all of your hands next month. It's your last chance to compliment someone, Tom. The curb cut into that little parking area that you had pointed out, the second entrance off of Scott Street in the back is a nine foot wide alleyway that we were proposing to expand to 18 or 19 feet to give full access in there. So that's why we have the two ways in and out of there, I guess, is I wasn't really sure, we're not really sure the sort of response we might get from the fire marshal among other people about having the ability to get down that narrow of an alley there. So you're saying that you are, you might be proposing to expand the dimension of that? Did I understand that? Well, this, yes, this site plan, this site plan shows us expanding it onto our property, but I don't know that we, from a public work standpoint, I don't know that we've jumped through all those hoops to be able to do that yet. So in the event we can't do that, I guess what I'm saying is we would need to have that access up on Main Street, which is why it's shown like it is. Well, if you could do it, I think it would be a great improvement to the site plan and it would eliminate an additional curb cut that's so close to the street already, and maintain more facade on Main Street. I mean, otherwise to me, it seems like it's pretty much from a site plan standpoint, pushing the buttons, I agree with Bob's comment. I mean, the parking deck is set back and hopefully that proposed parcel will be filled in and then there'll be very little view of the parking deck, but until that happens, you do see a lot of the parking deck. So other than that, those comments, I, from a site plan standpoint, it seems to have merit. And again, I would encourage that the materiality, especially along Main Street and Sumpter Street, be considered as much as possible to be differentiated from the other facade treatments so that there's a difference between internal facades and street front facades. So you're really talking about keeping the street fronts, just so I understand, keeping the street fronts with a little more commercial type. Correct, yeah. Brighter, maybe more brick and often what we have asked for in the past is that a development that faces a street or faces an intersection has more, if it has brick, for instance, it has more brick along those street fronts and then maybe it sacrifices some of that and has more stuck over whatever the material is on the internal sides, just to create a differentiation between the street front and the internal facades. Can I think I understand, yeah. So I think if you look at that bottom, the bottom rendering there that has, that's kind of hard to see at this scale, but that's the restaurant space. And as you travel to the right up that street, you'd be traveling up Franklin towards Main. There's more brick there, but we could certainly bring that up to two stories or and have more storefront in that area. I understand. Yeah, that kind of thing is sort of guidelines, one-on-one kind of stuff if you can consider that. But again, I think staff will probably advocate for those sorts of considerations too, before it comes back. Okay, thank you. My pleasure. Any other comments? Any commissioners? Well, Mr. Middleton, we certainly appreciate you giving us the information and overview of this exciting project. Well, thank you for letting me take up some of your time.  So we're continuing our neighborhood outreach to try to understand what their concerns might be. So hopefully we'll be back in a month or so. That's great. Thank you. Thank you, very, very encouraging. Yeah. Well, thank you. You'll have a great evening. You too. We were just going to move on to a little bit of information about what we're doing, excuse me, during preservation month. And I think that's good for that. So like Amy said, May is National Historic Preservation Month. It was started in the 1970s by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. So to celebrate staff has planned a series of virtual events and activities throughout the month, as well as a window display in the main street window of our office building, which is up on your screen now. I will say it is incredibly difficult to get a good picture of this window. It's a lot of glare. So through downtown, I'd encourage all of you to take a walk by and see what we've got up in the window. We've got two month long activities, a photo contest and several children's crafts. The children's crafts are up on the Columbia Compass website, which you can access through the Historic Preservation page on the city's website. The photo contest is via the Columbia Compass Instagram page, which is at Kola Compass, where we're asking people to share pictures each week and tag at Kola Compass and at Bluebike SC for a chance to win a free month of Bluebike. So one of our virtual events, Jane's Talk has already passed, unfortunately, but you can watch the whole conversation on YouTube. This was an adaptation of a past event, Jane's Walk, which happens in cities across the country each year to honor urban planner and activist Jane Jacobs by getting to know the cities we live in. And as we couldn't meet in person this year and experience historic places as a group, we decided to meet with several historic district residents over Zoom and talk about why they love where they live and why historic preservation is important to them. So you can find that recorded conversation on the Historic Preservation playlist on the city of Columbia's YouTube channel. And you can see that link is up on the screen now. Another adaptation of past events are the virtual bike rides. These two self-guided bike tours are or will be available on the Columbia Compass social media pages, Facebook and Instagram, as well as the city's YouTube channel. Each tour focuses on a different topic related to Columbia's history. And there's commentary provided by staff and directions to each side. And these will continue to be available after Preservation Month. The last item is an event that we're hosting next Thursday. This is Historic Preservation Trivia. We're hosting that via Zoom and it'll start at 6 p.m. We'll be covering a variety of topics, including local history, architectural styles and terminology and general historic preservation knowledge. And you can register yourself or a team by emailing preservation at columbiasc. And we'll have prizes for the individuals or teams with the most points at the end of the night. So we hope you'll participate in Trivia and the other activities that are part of Preservation Month. But another way we celebrate Preservation Month is by choosing a winner for the Mabel Payne Award. And Rachel's gonna tell you about the award winner from this year. Right, so each year we award the Mabel Payne Award to an individual or an organization who has done great work in preservation through advocacy or through maybe a project over the years. This year we have awarded the Mabel Payne Award to the Historic Melrose Neighborhood Association. They have made great efforts over the past few years, especially in getting the word out for historic preservation, being very supportive of their historic district nomination. They added the neighborhood to the National Register back in 2016. Since then they have a really great website, very easy to find online that has all the information about the neighborhood, a little bit of history, it has links to the website for the city. So people can really easily find their way around. Personally, being the planner, oh, Mark is there, being the planner who oversees this district, most of the time when I get an email about a project going on in Melrose, it's so-and-so told me to call you or so-and-so wanted me to reach out to you before I started this. So they're really good with word of mouth as well, getting the word out and making sure that their neighborhood is protected as they have established with the guidelines and as they want to continue to do with their National Register nomination as well. And we do have Martha, I think Martha Fowler and maybe Josh is here too. Just wanted to thank them so much for the great work they've done. And if either of you wanted to say anything, you feel free to jump on camera or jump in. Yeah, this is Josh. So as Rachel mentioned, I'm the president of the Historic Melrose Neighborhood Association. We were definitely honored to get the awards from the city preservation office this, just last month. And so preservation to our neighborhood is very important. As mentioned, we recently elevated the neighborhood to a National Register District. The decision to be in an architectural conservation district and to make ourselves a National Historic District was a neighborhood decision. And it's one that we revisit regularly. We always make sure that we have a pulse check on what do the neighbors want. And it's still a very popular thing here in Melrose to preserve our old homes here. With the efforts and preservation, we are seeing a great increase in interest in our neighborhood. It's become a very desirable place to live. Whole values are well on the rise as I recently experienced. I actually just traded houses here in the neighborhood and my stipulation was I needed a bigger house but it had to be within the neighborhood boundaries. So it was a very exciting and stressful time to be in in a hot market that Melrose has become. And so I appreciate everything the city preservation office does to support us in our efforts and also what this commission does to enforce our guidelines. And as mentioned, this is a neighborhood decision that we put ourselves under and we just ask that this commission continue to support us and make consistent decisions and determinations with our guidelines in mind as it is something the neighborhood has expressed they want. Appreciate it. Thank you, Josh. I know if anybody else on the call wanted to say anything but yeah, again, I just really want to thank. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you to Josh and Marth. I don't know if Marth has spoken up but yeah, thank you for all your hard work and carrying the cause. Well, thank you. I would like to say something because I'm a frequent flyer for DDRC in both the neighborhood and historic preservation on Main Street and in the Main Street district. And I just want to thank you because y'all do some amazing things and you support me and support what I do in an incredible way. But I want to give you a little tidbit today because like deciding today to paint that house that goes a little, that was a decision we made when we picked our historic guidelines that we did not want to paint anymore red brick houses or any color brick houses and make them something different. And we have tried really hard to stick to that rule and the city has been in court with a house on Gladden Street now for I think three years because he knew what he did and he did it anyway. And his realtor has gone so much as to say, we're gonna do everything we can to break the historic guidelines and we don't care if we make the neighborhood unhappy. And that's just the wrong way to be. I also want you to know that a few, several months ago, y'all made a decision to allow vinyl in our neighborhood and that makes it very difficult when y'all decide to do that and the two main guidelines for us is you can't paint brick, you can't change the windows and you can't put up vinyl. And now we've been in a position where y'all allowed vinyl and now we have not only vinyl that's been approved but now we have plastic ferns and plastic sheets of yuck on that vinyl. And it makes it very difficult to explain to new people how we value our wooden houses and our brick houses and the character of our neighborhood. But we're very, very grateful for what you do but I want you to know that the implications when y'all do go against our guidelines, it makes it difficult for us to hold the line as a neighborhood. And I'm trying to say this as kindly as I can but the vinyl siding is a tough thing to swallow. Chloe can- Understood. No, I- I don't mean- I don't mean to sit. I really don't want to- I was gonna say, welcome for your award. No, but I mean, I think as commissioners we definitely value and always try to follow the guidelines and if we don't we try to have an explanation or circumstance for it. So, but with that, I appreciate your comments. Thank you so much. And we are so grateful we had no idea we were receiving this award and we were so honored and the whole neighborhood was thrilled and it just went on to spur interest and stuff. Josh is probably too, you know, humble to say but he had two full price contracts on his house in three hours. Yeah, that's great.  And I totally attributed to what you guys are doing every day and what Rachel and Amy and all of their team does, it's making a huge difference in our historic neighborhoods. And we are so, so grateful. I just wanted to tell you now we don't feel like we have any culpability in the plastic burns but I just wanted to put that on the record, okay? But anyway, I'm really excited for y'all and keep up the great work. Thank you so much. And I am, you know, just from a staff standpoint once again we just appreciate what great stewards they are in this neighborhood and how easy they make our jobs. So thank you to the members. And of course- Well, as you pointed out, I was gonna tell them, you know, part of your job is keeping this group and other groups accountable. So we do appreciate that. Go ahead. Thank you. Yes, thank you. And of course, closing out where we're saying goodbye to Tom tonight since he's rotating off. And- Can I make a motion, Amy? What's that, Sam first? I just wanna, and keeping with making the motion to adjourn before that, I wanna take a moment to say thank you to Tom Savery, who I believe, Tom, I get this wrong. I'm sorry, but I think moved back here in around 1996, founded the Columbia Design League in 1997 with his wife, has served on DDRC since 2015, has been the chairman since 2018, has been a past board member of the Leadership Columbia, past board member of Community Design Center of Columbia. And we just really as a lifelong Columbia citizen and design professional appreciate his dedication to the city and everything that it means to him. And I really mean that, thank you, Tom. Yeah, I agree. I think Tom really helps us set our standards high and where they need to be. And greatly appreciate that. You will definitely be missed. I'm not sure who I'm gonna keep calling on, but we definitely will miss you. Thank you.  That was impressive. And totally unnecessary, but thank you. I've enjoyed the past six years, not so much that I would like to continue on for another six, but it feels like it's been the right thing to do and hopefully I've done the right thing. The only thing you didn't mention was that it's my birthday. So I'm gonna get out of here as soon as possible. But I appreciate it very much, everybody. I didn't want to bring light, didn't want to bring attention to your 40th, so. Yeah. Happy birthday, Tom. Yeah. Thanks. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. And from staff, Tom, we just really appreciate the dedication and time and integrity that you have brought to the board and your thoughtfulness. Well, it doesn't hold a candle to the dedication you guys have. You're in the line of fire day in and day out, year in and year out. So it's the least we can do to work with you and support you and appreciate the work that you do. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, we wish you well and we wish you a happy birthday. Thanks. I'll be in the audience to heckle. You won't. Thanks. Great. Yeah, thank you. I'm not sure. I guess we'll see you all in a lot. Well, we'll see you on planning commission next or? No, you won't. Not at least not right away. Six years is for me. Fair enough, fair enough. Thanks, Tom. Amy, is that all the business? All the business. So I'm not sure. Sanford may have kind of made a motion to close, but let's go ahead. No, that should do. A second. Got them. All right. Everybody have a great evening. And Tom, enjoy the birthday soirees. All right. Thank you.


So thanks for the great introduction, Jason. Ladies and gentlemen, as a public school administrator, as an IT director, and as an educator, I have to tell you, I am terribly troubled by the current state of educational technology. Right now, in most schools, tablets are all the rage. And schools are buying them by the truckload. Now sure, these are devices that have some capabilities, but ultimately, they're a limited computing device. I mean, after all, what can a student learn from a laptop that can't run a local lamp stack? And in those schools where students are lucky enough to have a laptop or a full desktop computer, people like myself, IT directors and principals, typically lock them down. Students are prevented from tinkering with the operating system, or installing software, or coding. And if you think about it, this is completely crazy. We hand our kids the most phenomenal learning tools the past 2,000 years, and then we turn around and we handcuff them, and we tell them that they're not trusted to learn about computing. So we wonder, then, why so many of our students are turned off by computing and programming. This is a model that's based on compliance and control. It's not about student inquiry and discovery. And you know something that's completely crazy. It's totally nuts, and I think we need to do something better for our kids. In fact, what I think we need is more soup and less nuts. So let me explain that. How many of you show of hands? How many of you have heard the tale of stone soup? OK, very good. This is an old folk tale. European-American origin has multiple variations, but it typically goes something like this. A stranger, a traveler, wanders into town. And at first, he's shunned by the community. They don't help him. They don't talk with him. They don't provide him with any food. So the traveler has an idea. He sets up in the middle of town. He pulls out some wood, starts a fire, brings out a large pot, pours in some water, and out of the backpack that he has with him, he grabs this big stone and drops it into the pot. He starts stirring. Well, curiosity gets the best of the villagers. And one by one, they start coming up to him, and they're asking him, hey, man, what are you doing? What are you making? And he says to them, I'm making stone soup. It's going to be fantastic, but it's not quite finished yet, and it needs something. Could you help me? Do you have some ingredients? And one by one, each one of those villagers goes back to their home, and they grab some carrots, and some celery, and some potatoes. And suddenly, the village comes together in its entirety and creates this fantastic feast. It's a feast that nourishes the entire village. So what's the moral here? Well, obviously, collaboration, community, and trust. It can feed an entire village. And that sounds a lot like the open source model, doesn't it? Well, it's also a phenomenal model for a classroom learning community. This past year at Penn Manor High School, we gave every one of our 1,700 kids a laptop loaded with Linux and open source software exclusively. I think it's the largest Linux deployment, one-to-one learning deployment, at least in the state of Pennsylvania, maybe the East Coast, maybe there's others. Let me tell you, when we went all in with open source, my fellow IT directors and neighboring schools thought I was nuts for going that route. But the program's been tremendously successful. And I think in part because we've been able to also bring in our students in various ways. When we launched the program, we spun up a student help desk, an apprenticeship program where our budding technologists could work side by side with my team on support. And together with this apprenticeship team, this past January with my staff and with community volunteers, we came together in our school cafeteria and we practiced our own version of stone soup. Over the course of two days, we unboxed those machines, we labeled them, inventoried them, we imaged them, and got them ready for the full distribution. Now, of course, we needed some methodology to image these laptops. And we could have bought ghosts or used fog, but we did something different. One of our seniors worked with us to build a multicast imaging system. He used open source recipes like Part Clone and UDP Cast to build a tool called the Fast Linux Deployment Toolkit. And it's remarkable imaging work for a high school senior. It's up on GitHub, and you can check it out. Now, again, we could have bought fog, I'm sorry, we could have bought ghosts, could have used fog. We could have had the machines pre-imaged at the factory. But what fun is that? And what would our students have learned? With our model, we didn't just simply give them a technology meal ticket. We made them full partners in the restaurant. And with that, I have to tell you, the open source community has been phenomenal for us. For those of you that are developers that have worked on projects that we're using, I need you to know that you have been a foundation for us. You've been a stone in our soup, a rock and a foundation from which we could build a learning community that has been foreign about our students. And for that, I thank you very much.