Historic Preservation Commission Minutes 2021 10 18

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Historic Preservation Commission Meeting Minutes 18 October 2021 Page 5 of 8 Burg agreed and added that it made sense to require like materials and design in preservation. Guidelines and general information could be helpful when working with local builders but people want design choice. She noted that design choice also helped increase the diversity in housing types. Brauneis agreed and added that there was a charm to the funkiness. Moline stated that it resonated with him that the additions were not doing much for preservation. Dunlap stated that the choices were to allow a massive add -on or to get a demolition. Haley stated that that was generally not the Commission's preference, but it often ended up being that a lot less of the structure was preserved and additions could undermine preservation. Brauneis stated that it could be a cool tool when the Main Street fa9ade was preserved for how the public relates to the building. Haley stated that the setback was important. A lot of times, people will say that the house is breaking the rules anyway and not conforming with setbacks so we might as well tear it down. She thought that bringing existing homes into compliance might be a good way to address those houses and that setbacks needed to be addressed. Brauneis voiced support for allowing porches. Diehl asked if they would we want to require porch sizes count towards FAR. Burg: stated that older structures were so close to the street and it would be interesting to see more flexibility in some neighborhoods, allowing some new builds to come closer to the street. Howe supported a focus on FAR, adding that you'd hate to see a lot divided with less yard area around the house. Andy Johnson, DAJ Design at 922A Main Street, stated that he wanted to distinguish between landmarking and preservation. The process in Louisville was different than what other towns in the region do. He stated that landmarking had strict guidelines that followed national standards, whereas preservation did not. The Commission needed to have a conversation about the value of preservation versus landmarking, and he suggested that the screws of the landmarking process probably needed to be tightened. He stated that the preservation path was largely untested and it allowed the preservation of the essence of the home but it needed to be defined more if it was not subject to the national definition. He noted that "I" statements, common in discussions of design, were not the point of Code. He stated that the roof pitch was annoying from a design perspective but it was brilliant because it was a tool to articulate roofs that without a lot of design elements to meet. He ntoed that the height limit of 27' was hard to meet especially with modern elements like insulation. He noted that there were oddly wide streets in Old Town and that was a cool feature that needed to be preserved because it provided safe pathways. He noted that size was always going to be an arbitrary number and it was hard to determine what the right size would be. He thought of it as a perception problem, not a size problem. When you build two stories right up to the street, you create the perception of a big house. It was all about massing and street cadence. He noted that the City of Denver identified 5