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Historic Preservation Commission <br />Meeting Minutes <br />21 December 2020 <br />Page 12 of 14 <br />Haley thanked Ms. Scriggins and stated that she thought the property would be a great addition <br />to the commercial landmarks. <br />Dunlap agreed that it was an important property to the whole block and to Old Town. He thought <br />the design was really good and noted that The Waterloo had been successful with a similar <br />design. He noted that the Commission always had issues with the Extraordinary Circumstances <br />grants, since the amounts far exceeded what City Council had approved in the past. He <br />appreciated Ms. Scriggins' comment. <br />Ritchie stated that the Commission could ask for more specific information if needed and noted <br />that the proposal would not go before Council for a number of months. <br />Klemme stated that she did not have a problem with the landmark and she thought it was critical <br />to preserve the street bank. She stated that the design worked well and that she did not have <br />any issues with the dollar amount requested. She shared her experience on a school building <br />committee in Jefferson County, where they were paying $3 million for a small amount of interior <br />work, three extra classrooms, and an office. She noted that the citizens of Louisville just <br />approved the tax again and so she felt that the citizens were backing spending this kind of <br />money. She also stated that in her two years on the Commission, this was the first commercial <br />building she had reviewed. She noted that the applicant did have the option to take it down at a <br />lower cost and ruin the entire bank. She added that she would hate to see the telephone poles <br />come down in the alley because the poles made it Old Town. <br />Johnson shared information on the 740 Front project for comparison, which he believed was the <br />first commercial project to go through the process and had been granted around $250,000. He <br />added that the budgets for Yoga Junction and the Trivium/law firm project received around <br />$140,000 each. The budget for Yoga Junction was well under half a million and the budget for <br />Trivium was also under half a million. He stated that with every new project, costs increased, <br />even before COVID and that the hard reality of building was the expense. <br />Ritchie added that 740 Front had received $240,000 total in 2014. <br />Dunlap stated that it might be reasonable to request multiple price estimates at the time of the <br />Historic Structure Assessment, though it might not be fair to ask for those estimates for this <br />project since the contractor had already put in so much work. <br />Klemme replied that she thought it might be fair going forward to ask for that, but she stated that <br />in her experience with her school, they wasted 6 months trying to figure out new bids and the <br />prices kept getting worse. <br />Parris thought that landmark made sense and the alteration maintained the sight lines from the <br />street view of the block. She noted that the budget was shocking, but there were not that many <br />commercial properties that the Commission reviewed and they were used to seeing smaller, <br />residential numbers. She thought everyone had done a good job explaining why it would cost a <br />lot more to build this project. She was comfortable approving this. <br />Haley agreed that there had not been a lot of commercial landmarks and the Commission was <br />always trying to get more commercial landmarks because they were so prominent in the <br />12 <br />