Historic Preservation Commission Minutes 2020 05 04

Home Browse Search

Historic Preservation Commission Meeting Minutes May 4th, 2020 Page 2of4 Haley invited comment on why the fund did not have an exact definition of "extraordinary circumstances." Dunlap replied that it had to be subjective. The Commission had to discuss "extraordinary circumstances" requests, creating a public record and showing the reasoning for granting or denying those requests. Haley responded that the non-specific language gave the Commission more power to use the fund in specific circumstances but it also made it hard when it came to money and lacking a clear-cut way to decide. She read the different definitions of "extraordinary circumstances" and added that Council also made decisions on the grant amounts and staff made recommendations. Zuccaro stated that staff felt it was important that comparable properties were used to determine the extraordinary circumstances metric. Dunlap described past comments on the use of "extraordinary circumstances." He stated that Planner Selvoski had presented previous cases and that the dollar amount was not indicative. Haley stated that it was good to remember the timely piece of asking applicants why all the sudden something had to be done. She noted that not a lot of people had requested extraordinary circumstances. Parris stated that when they redid the language, they kept it so that "extraordinary circumstances" could mean a lot of different things and not bind them to one thing. She looked for pieces that were more outside the scope of what they tend to see. She added that since there were not many examples of these circumstances in Louisville, she wondered if there were other similar programs that they could compare with. Andy Johnson with DAJ Design, 922A Main Street, stated that the language allowed a discussion case -by -case and he did not think they could coordinate a format to define extraordinary circumstances. As written, he stated that the language may fall apart where it said "compared to similar Louisville properties," because at face value buildings may look the same but they could have entirely different internal systems or materials. He noted that during the Historic Structure Assessment process there was a lot of discovery and when a contractor was digging into the logistics of the work there was even more discovery. He stated that the Commission needed to recognize that cost of construction was going up and any increases in requested amounts were relative to that, and that historic preservation was expensive. Haley stated that she agreed that Louisville properties were different but there were also some fairly predictable findings across buildings. She stated that assessments needed to be thorough and prioritize unique elements.