##VIDEO ID:HeCZJl5G4Qw## it's like go sit down [Music] [Music] fine okay okay uh we are going to call this meeting of the Princeton historic preservation commission to order pursuant to section 13 of the open Public's meeting public meetings act adequate notice of the time place of of this meeting was given by posting prominently on the official bulletin board of the municipal complex at 400 Witherspoon Street a schedule of the regular meetings of the Princeton historic preservation commission for the year 2025 which posting is to be maintained throughout the year and by transmitting a copy of such schedule to the Princeton packet town topics the Trenton Times and Comcast cable of New Jersey and by filing a copy thereof with the clerk of Princeton New Jersey and Miss Kim can you call the role yes Miss Howard here Mr shatkin here Mr Shore here Mr endersby here miss fredman here miss capoli here miss saterfield okay thank you and then I'm going to arrange the order of the agenda a little bit so that uh we can call for a nomination for the chairperson so that person can take over for me do we have a nomination for the chairperson yes um I'd like to nominate Julie capoli as chair we have a second second second and do you want to call the role Miss Howard yes Mr shatkin yes Mr Shore yes yes M Freedman yes Mr endersby yes Cong graduate thank you uh do we have a nomination for vice chair I'd like to nominate David Shore for vice chair I second do you want a roll call Vote Yes Miss Miss fredman yes how Miss Howard yes that was Mr shatkin yes Mr Shore um Mr Enders just all right yes um we're I think we uh is that everyone okay all right congratulations David all right I think other than that our um we have one uh resolution for the recording secretary and another for the subcommittees would someone like to move that so moved okay thank you a second okay Roger thank you all in favor please say I I opposed motion carried thank you thank you so much for coming tonight and I apologize for the late start um we are going to be listening to the application of hiler properties M LLC uh preliminary and final major site plan with variances um this application will be going to the planning board uh like the third week in January so we are advisory to the planning board um and I will uh let Elizabeth read off the property addresses Madam chair just to confirm do you want to um do the subcommittees at a later time yes please okay thank you so this application is from the hiler Properties LLC they filed an application for preliminary final major site plan application and historic pres preservation plan review de develop on 13 Lots located on the west side of withis spoon Street between Green Street and liel there are 11 of these lots that front onto Withers Spin Street one onto Corey and one onto mlan these properties span over three lots although the lots are not contiguous they are clustered creating three distinct sites and one Standalone site these have been identified in the applicant subdivision as four separate sites and have been developed in that manner um for this report so for the for the purposes of this report and for consistency with the application these sites will be referenced as sites 1 through 4 um so for the record the the property uh locations are 114 116 118 Witherspoon Street block 17.02 lot 54 120 with a spoon street block 17.02 lot 53 136 138 140 and 142 with the spoon street block 17.03.2012 Lot 8 7.01 144 and 146 weather sping street block 7 1.03 lot 86 148 and 150 with the spoon street block 17.03.2012 7 and 28 3 mlan street block 15.01 lot 82 204 and 206 Witherspoon street block 15.01 and Lot 24 so at this time I'm going to um pass the presentation over to the applicant um at this point we felt it was better because he's got his bells and whistles presentation that way the public and the um commission can get a better sense of the properties because it can be complicated but this way you'll become familiar with where the sites are within the neighborhood and then we can proceed with the HPC comments thank you thank you m ch members of the commission good evening Happy New Year my name is Kevin Moore with the firm of Stevens and Lee and I represent the a this evening oh thank you fill your Properties LLC thank you so much I think we'll have to swear you in I'm just the attorney so I don't yeah but get sworn in would do you want to just swear your Witnesses all in at once so that we don't have to stop your testimony and can have the flow consistent why don't you stand up and also you Felix you may be testified so that just raise your right hand uh do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes thank you oh and one more question uh was the noticing uh sufficient on this application yes because this application um requires demolition uh notice is required under the uh ordinances governing the historic preservation commission and notice was properly published in the newspapers as well as given to Property Owners on the certified list obtained from the tax assessor thank you all right sorry go ahead no that's fine uh with that uh Mr J robbert Hillier uh will be giving our presentation and I would like to hand it over to uh Bob thank you oops thank you um thank you everybody for coming and it's a pleasure to be here um at my age it's a pleasure to be any place though many of you know this know this firm my firm as a a modernist architectural firm we've actually done a lot of historic preservation work which I'll just tell you what it is briefly um we redid the interior of the Supreme Court building it took about 5 years of working with the justices uh we completely restored the Thomas Jefferson um Virginia state capital um including uh ripping aart the the mountain that it was built upon and building an entire Museum and Convention Center or Conference Center underneath the um um and then the after it was done uh the Lincoln movie was uh filmed in that building um we've um more locally worked on the New Jersey state capital Annex uh we redid the roof and parts of the coping for it and then um our greatest pride is actually the makash house on on Nassau Street at the right across from the Bank of America building and uh parenthetically we also redid the shien building um which had 150 people come to the zoning variants to let it be a an apartment building instead of the office building that he was trying to build against the code um and so um we've been doing a lot of historical stuff we also did restore to frankco Wright house uh for the Johnson wax family um and so that that's our work our involvement in the neighborhood started with the Princeton School school for colored children on Quarry Street known as the Quarry Street School For Colored children and um um it was a it was a nursing home at the time it had plywood applied to half the windows and the ceilings had all been dropped to 8 ft and in fact it had 12T ceilings inside it as classrooms from a school built in the seven uh in the 1800s and so um we removed all of that and converted it into 34 Apartments of which um eight of them are reserved basically for uh residents or former residents of the Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood um and uh excuse me the African-American Community has been very special because it's a self-contained self-sufficient and totally segregated Community until 1948 according to Shirley saterfield in 1948 you weren't allowed to walk on NASA Street and the Princeton plan came into action and um we renamed the building the waxwood in honor of the principal um of the school Dr waxwood Who marched the students uh up to the Nassau Street uh uh school at the time at grammar school at the time and um and the building was basically turned over to a nursing home for a few years before we bought it um I bought it from uh Bob Robertshaw and that's important because later on uh I acquired a bunch of properties from Robert Shaw's daughter um and in fact I want you to not that I did not set out to redesign this whole neighborhood I just ended up owning a lot of the properties because I helped out a few I helped out two contractors and um um the building next to us was the original school for card children and we um in fact um um I called up Robert Shaw and said I'd like to buy that building because it had a parking lot right next to our office and uh he said Bob you got to talk to my daughter I called his daughter and she said I won't sell it to you I said why not and then she said unless you buy everything and so I ended up buying his property and I ended up helping two contractors who had defaulted and needed financial help and I ended up with their properties also and that's how I ended up in you know owning all these properties um that said I also have for years been walking through this neighborhood I've lived in Princeton for 75 years um and uh physically lived here and um uh I used to deliver flowers by foot from my mother's flower shop down Withers Street to the hospital um and so I I've had a lot of admiration for it um now in terms of historic preservation this was going to be a restoration which is level three if you look at the four levels that are in the Princeton master plan and also in the um the guidelines uh that are presented by the uh national uh Park Association and the national park U group um has a fourth group which is called Restorations and Restorations means a complete rebuilding of of an original structure that was there now I'd like to just ask how many you in the audience know that Williamsburg was a rest was a rebuilding and not a restoration or a preservation it was built from scratch in 1937 so it's all of 88 years old and that's a that's a a fact of life so um now we've had two Structural Engineering uh companies look at the project and we've had two contractors look at the entire project and they both said that we would save a lot of money if we just tore the whole thing down and replicated it and we don't want to do that because there is real history in those bones of the buildings especially the ones that are facing withman Street however behind them is a bunch of old beat up buildings which I'm going to show you pictures of um that have been basically ignored for their entire life and what we are going to do is uh tear down all of the big old buildings that are behind them um because they're ready to fall down and you'll see why and how and um and so we're going to uh do that and um uh and then we're going to build new buildings and completely rearrange the sites so they're better used but what's interesting about it we're going to go from a total of 37 uh apartments at this point to 74 apartments and we're not actually increasing the space of the buildings by much we're just densifying the existing buildings that we have and then adding on the back of them and so I'd like to now take you through the presentation of what we're going to do okay here we go uh these are the four sites that we're involved in are talking about tonight uh the four of them are identified on the map and on the next slide you will see on the upper on the lower uh line you will see the four properties shown in an elevation which was put together by a grad student for me um taken every three fet all the way down withman street so that it's an accurate collage of what the street looks like today up above you will see what we plan to do with it and um um or no what you'll see is a a drafted version of what it looks like today also now here's what we're going to do here are our goals provide housing at a reasonable cost for the missing middle in Princeton I can tell you right now I have Architects that work for me that make 52 54,000 a year as a salary they're just out of school and they cannot afford to live in Princeton Sue chefs can't live in can't live in Princeton when we see a fire behind the um uh behind the Cupcake House uh and 48 people come out of that fire sleeping there and we put up in the NASA um Inn for the night you start to realize there are a lot of people sleeping on the floors in a lot of buildings and to tell you the truth some of the buildings that we bought had that condition and we found out much to our surprise two years ago that two of our tenants don't even live in the building but instead we're renting them out for $250 a week for people to sleep on the floor and share a bathroom and and share a kitchen totally unacceptable and so we went in there and basically cleaned house and got all of those so at least they're now legally occupied but physically uh as you'll see they they are a mess um so we're going to pre preserve the character and culture of the original neighborhood we're going to preserve the diversity in population provide housing that's at the scale of the neighborhood and I hope those first drawings into your mind is that's the scale of it uh we're going to provide housing for all ages uh it's going to be sustainable and a safe environment and we hope to increase the sense of community in all of this and this is important we are also going to celebrate the history of the black community within the context of the neighborhood and that's an important factor uh going going forward as uh for instance we're going to be naming buildings after prominent residents historic residents of the community um we're going to have Floyd Hall in name in honor of Jim Floyd we're going to have um um we're we're going to have excuse me uh I got it not here we I always forget her name tropman we're going to have um mild trotman's um uh Hall it's going to be called called um uh tropman Hall and the Jim and fany Floyd house is going to be called Floyd Hall and the Reeds is in name of Marvin Reed and ingred Reed who are two very prominent people in the history of this neighborhood and especially Marvin who helped me uh work out how to convert the school on uh Quarry Street into a community um building um taking care of the employees and he just said let's call it a Princeton preference rather than having to go into COA and register the units there um something I'm not supposed to say publicly but in fact that's what we did um now um um the next slide so we're going to celebrate them and the last thing want to say is we're going to celebrate Shirley saterfield who's the historian of the neighborhood and a member of this committee but is not allowed to be here tonight but anyway we're going to name the um I got you guys straight the F original first school for colored children after her and we're going to call it the saterfield and it is one of the most complete uh Renovations and Restorations you're going to see okay let's get into it this is an aerial view of of Princeton it's an amusing because in it was done in 1874 and they didn't have drones or airplanes at the time and you can see right here you can see whoops sorry got to go back here I did something wrong there uh you can see right here is Nassau Hall and here's withis Street and look at the neighborhood development at that time in uh in Princeton 1874 look at how developed it was already there because of the convenience to the university and to the center of town look at how much just country there is around the rest of the town so here's NASA Hall not quite aligned the way it really is on that uh with Withers Smith Street uh and here is the Princeton University campus at its very Beginnings uh John Street I was was amazed to see this John Street is still named John Street from SE 1874 on this drawing it was labeled as John Street okay this shows the history from 1895 to 2020 and it shows the growth in the density of the neighborhood and you can see except for when um the quar uh when the school was built right whoops sorry I'm sorry about that right here there were no big buildings in that neighborhood and in fact what we're going to do is not going to do a lot of big buildings either um yes they're going to be bigger than the current little houses but you you'll see as we're going along they're not nowh as near as big as the school this is just a taste of the neighborhood at the time and I want you to see the quality of the houses notice one thing very important to me they had shutters on them and here's the marry Moss Park which had a swimming pool at the time you can see the kids gathered around it and there's uh there she is right there the boss called Moss um um watching over her park at the time these are a couple of others houses on the on the street again uh they they had shutters and then this one's very interesting this is the original building right here at the corner of Jackson going this way and with a spoon going this way and look at the porch and this is an italianate design porch and then this is they did an addition to it and there's that italianate design porch later on this is the same building here and notice the porch has been changed architecturally from the italianate to something that's a little more Egyptian actually uh but that is the same building different building is it a different building this is this is where the bread company is yes yeah and just so everybody can identify what it is today it's Toto's Market it's no longer Toto's Market actually it's soon to be a restaurant designed by us but it's uh um it's outside of the historic district then this is a funeral home that was here that was on nasau street at the time and this is the striker building also on Withers spint Street next slide this is the wersin street school formerly school for car children and it was built in 1873 and it's somewhat of a stucko monster today and that is what it looked like with the whole school assembled out on those front steps including somewhere in there is Shirley satterfield's grandmother um and you can see how handsome that building was and today just to go back that's what it looks like today but the windows are still there and if you look at it carefully in the stucco you'll see the ghost of the arched window that's there but you won't see the ghost of that porch which was really quite handsome and in the italianate style this is a prep school that was at the corner of Riverside Drive and oh what is today Riverside Drive and uh Nassau Street and it was all for boys and um and this is what it looked like and then oh and this is what it looked like next now and we believe that and the historian and grad student that we had work on this for a believes that this uh uh Witherspoon school was actually uh following in style of the prep school the boys Prep School the university gave us a grant for $5,000 to hire a graduate student to spend the summer and the poor girl it was during the uh covid period and she was the only person working in the office at the time and um she went to work and looked into to the what had been the predominant Style on Withers Spin Street and it turned out it was Italian and these are things that she found uh Italian 8 and then like Victor later Victorian colors and color and books by this one by Dow and he was selling books on country houses and books on cottages and U he was also supplying chor schams and detailing and um and that's the the way this neighborhood got started here's where we are today these are all code violations that are physically impossible to make uh and and fix uh in many ways for instance many of the ceilings are at 6 feet 6'6 uh Ines and one of the complaints about our our buildings is they're a little bit higher uh and that's because we're putting 9-ft ceilings in because we haven't done an 8ft ceiling in 10 years to tell you the truth uh because people are taller today than they were back then but look at the violations uh the number of violations that can't be fixed unless we really go to work on them and and put an investment into the properties and to pay for that investment we need the additional uh um square footage to create brunch for us this is the basement of one of the buildings look at the structural conditions they get worse and they get even worse this is what's in the basements of these buildings notice they're dirt basements and notice that they're being propped up because the beams above are too light to take the traffic of today the furniture of today um and they're just the the the floor joists are too small we're going to replace all of that inside the shell of the the original buildings now this is the corner of um I think it's 142 uh with the spoon Street um which is a handsome building which has been stucked over like everything and right here if you look carefully you can see a corner board for what was Clapper and so the Clapper is underneath that and what we're going to do is take all the stuff go off the whole street and actually get back to what these buildings were really made of and you'll see that in a moment this is from backer construction telling us you know what uh what needed to be done and at the end they say frankly you'd be better off to get rid of these structures and build new ones uh we also have a a an even more complete report from our uh Structural Engineers now the standards of the gu lines I already talked a a little bit about this the restoration is what we're doing it entails an accurate depiction of the Forum features and character of the property as it appeared in a particular period in time by means of removal of features from other periods like some of the later stuff that was added uh in its history and a reconstruction of the missing features and that's what we're going to do on all the houses facing with the spoon streak here's three of them right right here here and we have measured every single window in the whole neighborhood to make sure that we can imitate them and I want to talk to you about the windows in buildings because they are what really give the buildings the character their character and these buildings Windows have been jeopardized by four four and cheap Replacements they've also been uh um had storm windows added and Air conditioning added air conditioners hanging out the windows added and all this does is further jeopardize the architectural beauty of the neighborhood and uh it's its basic character we're going to do all change all of that by number one uh putting in air conditioning in-house air conditioning in all the buildings it'll be they will all be air conditioned they are also going to be sprinkled so they're fire protected uh this is a door drawing and we've been measuring all the doors also let me tell you that when we rebuilt um uh the Quarry Street school and turned it into the waxwood we went to a a company in New Hampshire it was the most it was the biggest contract of the entire project was $350,000 and what we did is we got thermopane windows that were designed and built exactly like the original buildings and that's what we want to do here also um and so that's why we've done these drawings of the existing buildings as as they were now I'm going to take you on a tour of the street um what you see above is what's existing you've already seen that shot and what you see down below is what we're going to do you're having a hard time I'm sure in the back of the audience seeing this but I'm just going to point out whoops sorry I keep doing that I'm going to point out to you right there is a three-story building that is behind the existing buildings right here is another three-story building that is behind a new building which was not recommended to be preserved because it it just the quote in the report it added no um no value to the historic aspect of this and so what we've done is actually recreated the original building that was there and if you come down here a little bit further there's the waxwood or there no there is the the saterfield and right behind it you can see a building and then down here at 202 204 206 you'll see here also the building behind it's three stories high we did not go to before which we're allowed to do um and we um have kept them as low as possible and we've done them all in muted colors and muted materials so they don't argue with what's in front I want to show you the basic principle of what we're doing here I hope youall can hear I have a house excuse oh oh thank you okay if I have a house like this facing Withers Smith Street that's the existing two-story house and now I'm going to build a three-story addition to it and the first thing I do is I I put in a carer and here's what happens um I I did this wrong these are all have porches out there excuse me they have a porch so you go up the steps and you go into the porch and you go into the first story and that we've taken a duplex and we've made the first floor a studio apartment and then we go upstairs and we make that another studio apartment how do we get there with another carridor on the back of the building and this unit down here has a door to that caror because that carer has fire escapes elevators um and uh also garbage disposal and mail pickup so all of the necessary things in life are related on that back Corridor and then here we have the three-story building and so that's what we're doing is coupling the old buildings and and densifying within them and then building the or replacing what was behind them with new three story buildings which are done in a very quiet gray or dark brown material um uh of shingles so that's that's the basic concept and that what that does is that lets us get more units on less land and um and it allows us to increase the density and by increasing the density and use making smaller Apartments it's okay because guess what the campus is 5 minutes away the YMCA is maybe 8 minutes away the art center is right in their lap and so is the library so it's right downtown and all you really need is a a nice place to be comfortable make your dinner and and and be able to sleep and we can do that especially when most of these people living in these houses today don't have cars they have bikes and they also um don't require much uh because it's all right around them we are going to have uh laundry facilities in the basements of of all of these buildings and where we have more than um a studio apartment uh the one-bedroom units start to have their own washer and dryer so that makes a much more uh decent environment for them okay now I'm going to keep going here this is uh the first section and you can see here is a store that um is a Bodo basically right here it it they send money back uh to South America uh they also have a lot of groceries Etc and they are just busting out at the seams and we also have a shoe store a soccer shoe store uh down on our property and he's doing okay but he could do much better if he had more foot traffic the council people I've talked to have said we do not want to give up any commercial space so we're working out an arrangement whereby the soccer store is going to come up here and be in this store where he gets more 4 foot traffic and the Bodo is going to be in down on our property more in the middle of the uh of the community the Latino Community which really uses it so that's uh the the way that we're actually not only keeping the commercial properties but we're improving them uh and impr improving the business for the occupants this is a site plan of that and I what's interesting here is some environmental aspects on this building here you can see solar collectors all these dark blue uh elements are solar collectors these are the air conditioning units and right here are sod roofs sod roofs do a wonderful thing which is they collect the rainwater and they hold on to half of it and the half of it that they hold on to evaporates off of the roof so we're cutting down the storm water uh volume here and um by doing that and then we are also providing uh basically uh Gathering spaces on the roof uh for the community they can take an uh air um excuse me an elevator up here and have a barbecue on this roof so we've got got an A entertainment partying area a rain collection area and a solar U solar uh set of panels and over here you can see these are the three buildings there's that Corridor I was telling you about there's the elevator I was telling you about there's a garbage shoot uh right there and this is the fire stair it's a scissor stair so it has two inlets one at either end and the stairs overlap each other and it's the most space effective way to build a fire steer and this shows you in Gray the new area that we're building and it's one big building and it also shows in uh dotted line everything that we're demolishing and you'll notice right here we're taking down three pieces of the existing buildings this piece here we believe was an addition because there's some funny business that happens with the uh with the side trim on the roof of this unit this house we're going to preserve it's a beautiful little house but we're taking the back off and we mainly have to take the back off because we have to get traffic in here to the parking lot and you see this dotted line that is a a a a big tar wrapped tar paper wrapped uh garage area one story high next slide we're now moving down the street the Presbyterian church is over on on the left side and this is a duplex um which we are dividing by putting in a new stair into this one uh we're dividing it into four units and this is the same story here there was an interesting thing that happened this building we're asking of if we can add this one window because we were ending up with a bedroom with no window uh in in the apartment layout as much as we struggled so we we're doing this and frankly it looks so much better otherwise it looked like the the house has gotten a black eye somehow the next house over the blue one you see there is the one that was stucked over and I showed you the picture of that now this building is a very handsome building it was originally blue as the best we can tell and um it had a basement apartment and it's going to also continue as a basement apartment but what we're doing is making an entrance Courtyard for it that you go down here and we're putting a another outdoor Courtyard outside the bedroom here uh that's sunken below the street and and so this lower unit will now be kind of a really special unit rather than the the slum that it is now and then upstairs we're having two apartments in here um and this is the building that the historic uh report said did was non-contributing this and the little um um the little tiny apart U restaurant that's here and what we're proposing is a larger restaurant with an outdoor dining area in that area and then a second store uh would be at this location here one of the great things about rebuilding this building is this is what the original building looked like um shirle saterfield will tell you that this was a special kind of nightclub uh and uh um and so what we've done here I don't know how many of you have ever noticed the terrible steps that are there we've had two people fall out of the stores on those steps and into the street and a total cost of 150,000 and just settlement of the damage and so and actually the stairway that is there is in the right of way and shouldn't be there at all and we are doing our buildings or most of them as ADA Compliant this is a big building it has uh 25 uh units in it and uh we have to have it be ADA Compliant and fireproof and so that's the reason that we think it's best to rebuild it now um on the same block with these buildings is um this small house on Quarry Street and we're going to and I should point out that over here you'll see a picture of all of the materials that we're using including uh the materials on on this particular house which is um which is one one of these here it's right here and it shows the materials that we're doing and you notice on the right hand side there's a public garden and that garden and it also shows a view into the back of that building and you can see it's done in a gray cedar shingle uh which gets grayer as it gets older and less conspicuous but we're uh this is the first of the community G that Shirley satterfield's been proposing and this is uh what that whole site looks like um and this is the driveway that exists now going into it and uh we're doing the best we can to make it as wide as possible there was a report from the Fire Marshall that he needs an 18t driveway which means that this glass strip grass strip here is going to have to go because we between the sidewalk and the road road we only have 16 ft uh and so he he needs that but there you can see the garden here and you come over here you see the solar collectors they're done in White on this drawing and here are your uh roofs and there are your amenity areas right there now just moving on down um this is that same uh view but it now shows the floor plans and where things are and this this area here is actually a garbage collection area because we have the restaurant uh in here and there's the indoor dining for the restaurant and then that's that out outdoor Courtyard I talked about um and next it is mar uh bary's uh building which we don't own and this shows you uh how little we're tearing down here we're basically tearing down the original building and simply replacing it with a uh with a much larger new building and this is the sder field uh this rendering I can tell you it should be improved in one way which is the little Cupa up on top is not really as tall as the original was and we this was just done as a quick rendering and we have uh uh we have every intention of getting it back to the original proportion but you can see the new stairway coming down here and this is um uh number um 188 it's a single family house it's going to be an income a lwi income residence uh it said in the report that we were keeping the glass in porch but in fact we want to go back to an open porch here uh which is the theme all up and down the street frankly and we're uh we're putting a new open porch that matches the original building here and the stairway we don't have the kids to sit on the steps so and this here you can see what it looks like today and what it's going to look like when we're done and notice in the back there was a comment that it was too bad the building went was wider than uh than our um our building but the fact of the matter is it it needs to be that wide to get the number of units in there that we need to um I have to tell you that the original building has apartments that are studio apartments of 140 square ft and people were paying $750 a month for them and they're tiny but they have a little kitchenet and a bathroom and so what we are doing because it has it's an old school it has 12T ceilings is we we' put in bathrooms with a sleeping Loft on top of the bathroom and that way we're able to get the use of a twostory space um for sleeping and yet we still have a enough space to have a a decent apartment on on the first floor those units are now running for 950 a month and we had somebody come and say can I pay 1,00 and get one and it's uh that's how desperate people are for this kind of housing in in Princeton okay and this is the addition to the back of uh the building and you can see here and instantly the um Park Service regulations also say when you're doing a building of a different period don't try to imitate the original building because that's just fakery what you want to do is build a building that is of its time and what we've done here is it's of its time but we've also done it in very quiet materials um and we put a brick wall here because there is a handicapped parking space right here and we thought that looked a little obnoxious right on the sidewalk so why don't we just put a nice white brick wall along here so that's a a design decision and this shows you of the original building building and it shows you the addition with a lot of solar collectors and also the usual um uh grass roof and um then this is the ground floor level which shows the smaller but we've increased their size somewhat um and it uh in the old building and then the parking which is on the first floor underneath the units so this shows you what's there and here we're still within zoning but extending uh a lot more construction here and this is 204 206 I'm almost done uh this is a duplex it had an addition put on it that was built over the sidewalk uh on U Tyra Street and so and so we've now um removed that and we're restoring the original house um and then we are putting on the back a set of uh houses a set of Apartments here over the parking and the ENT main entrance to this unit this building is actually here and so these apartments here have access to this and here you can see the basically the carer and the addition that was filled out into the sidewalk is where that brick wall is and this shows you uh what was what was there and U and what we're doing with the addition and this is the addition over the parking and now I'm going to just take you on a tour and we're going to go down and this is up at the beginning there's there's the bedo which we're going to convert into a soccer store and these are the restored units notice we have shutters on them now the reason we got the shutters is we saw the shutter uh hinges were still there attached to the windows and now we're coming down to the uh 150 Group which shows the two duplexes which are converted into more units the new building with the restaurant in it barsky's building this is a hairdresser that we uh happen to own it used to be a pharmacy when the it was a great Pharmacy when the hospital was here and then you come down and right here as you cross the street here's the sder field and I should point out that every one of these houses has the required bikes also under shelter as part of the parking area generally and that's our whole office complex and this is 204 and 206 and that completes my presentation Madam chairman I'm sorry it's was long no thank thank you thank you for that um I want to turn it over to Elizabeth and just give her a chance to review uh especially her General comments on the project and um any other uh reports she'd like to mention I know stormw had a um a report a very favorable report and Dan der rilski had a report on landscape and then I believe um Dan Weissman had an engineering report um so if you just briefly want to touch on thank you madam chair so I wanted thank Mr hiler for his presentation it made it that much easier for me he did address a lot of the com ments that I had in my report so that way I can just kind of glaze over that um I would just say generally um just to kind of summarize because I'm sure there'll be a conversation about this with the commission and possibly comments from the public um I I believe that the applicant did a really good job as far as his research and um as he talked about he could have built the building so much higher so I think that there was a level of sensitivity that he had displayed in um his approach to the design of these buildings and his um um concern for keeping the Integrity of the Witherspoon Jackson historic district um intact and his great um restoration of What's called the Douglas Hall which he talked about the first um um African-American public school um so there's a lot of great improvements that's going to really highlight this neighborhood you know the the Douglas Hall itself is an institution that really is going to shine and especially on that location um the question I did have is I did feel that there were um that the from a historic preservation point of view that if certain buildings were perhaps brought down a little bit lower and perhaps and as Mr um hiler had said the intent of historic preservation when you add an addition is never to mimic what's there but to have it obviously be visible as an addition and not to be false history so I believe that he did that um but also you know we do look at the Rel relatability of the existing building with the addition that goes on so those were just some of the comments that I made about that but it was um you know I I am concerned about I guess the last building um I'm just remember what the address was um I just felt that that building was much smaller and in proportion to the addition there from Lidle Street I mean I think that the um the view of it from Witherspoon Street for all these improvements were were better mased and the color palletts that were selected really helped recess the buildings because they are in the back of the buildings when it's viewed from with thepoon street but the side streets um Cory Lial um you know they are more visible and you're approaching into a residential area so the approach to the design and the way you view that streetcape is a little different so that's where my concern came in when you're going around the corner more to the residential area that it became more apparent how larger not that it is isn't bad for larger but concerned about the compatibility and the transition of that structure within that neighborhood so I'm just going to leave it that and we can Circle back HPC comments all right thank you did you want to talk about any of the other reports or do you feel like that um we can do that later I think that we could do that later thank you okay all right I'd like to open it up to commission members um if they have any questions uh right now from Mr hiler and if not then I would like to go to public comment because we do have a large number of people in the audience tonight so other questions all right um sure go um go ahead David I I do appreciate the sensitivity that was shown throughout the written reports that we got and um in in drawings and the the concept of connecting and and uh utilizing the new spaces or the new buildings behind the building the existing buildings to that can can meet code and be rentable and desirable is is a concept that I I think could be used more often and I've seen it in other places it's really good to see it here and I I appreciate that and um I don't I don't know that I have any concerns yet I I the concept steps and what we see so far it looks just great as we work through the details there may be some minor kind of questions but I just want to put out there that I agree the sensitivity and the the way that the buildings are are made more usable by the new construction I think is something that we really want to um appreciate as we go through our review thank you um any other comments or uh questions uh Elizabeth yes there was was one um item which I felt was really important to really understand the impact of these improvements is understanding what the adjacent properties are like a lot of times you're looking at an isolated design and it looks great um and again Witherspoon street is very different from the sign streets so I'm not familiar with what's happening behind the buildings or necessarily what's happening on the side adjacent to a development that goes into the sign so that's something that I feel is important to kind of put in perspective of the development to address all right other questions all right if the um there are people in the audience who would like to make comments I guess we could start a line and then um each person would be sworn in and you'd have um like under around 3 minutes to make your comments so um are there are there people in the audience who would like to speak if so I guess just head to the microphone and then our attorney Tara will take your name and swear you in and then you can make your comment uh can you just raise your right hand do you swear that any testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes and then can you state your name for the record sure Don Greenberg uh I live on uh Lial Street and right now uh my view out my living room window is the parking lot of your office so I took a picture of it the other day and it was filled so now you're adding a ton more usage how are you going to address you know the parking because you already have people parking from your office and now you're going to have more residents living there and you only require five parking spaces for what 12 units how's that going to work because as you know on l street parking is brutal during the daytime not so bad at night because you have to have a permit which is never enforced by the way um and I was wondering how you're going to address that and so now I also have my view out my living room window is this big box and granted you know the parking lot's not gorgeous but so does the building have to be that big and how are you going to address the parking the parking we we have an arrangement with the copper with copper wood or excuse me with the microphone mic your microphone I'm sorry we have an arrangement with the waxwood the waxwood has 54 parking spaces and it only has 34 apartments in it so it has 17 extra parking spaces and if you go by there at 4:00 a.m. in the morning you'll find those empty spaces there and we when when we acquired these properties it was easier for some of our um people who are in more demand and have to get in cars and go all out uh to park them there but uh we're not going to park them there we'll park them at at at the waxwood so your employees are going to park at the waxwood and then the residents will park on site yeah the residents for this building yes we'll park on site but there's only five you're only allocating five spots yeah and that's for 12 units I mean there's going to be more cars than that no no but if you go just as an example if you go to um the property at the corner of um well if you go to the the building behind uh what's going to be the saterfield right now at night there are 12 parking spaces there and there are three cars parked there every night that's all well yeah at night I'm not worried I'm talking about during the day because in addition so if you have people who maybe work from home or have more than one car which is possible right you're going to have people looking for parking spots and they end up parking on Lial street because there's no permit requirement on Lial street during the day but part of what we're offering by operating by is that the people who have this tendency are not going to have that many cars everything is walkable from from this this whole neighborhood and so they aren't going to have that many cars and why because they're only making 50,000 a year and a car cost $112,000 a year to have so well I there's a lot of people that live in the area that don't make a lot of money that have one and two cars so you know to say that they're not going to have cars I think is kind of pie in the sky I I'd also like to uh remind everyone that we are advisory to the plan planning board and that our role is to review the historic aspects of the application and the planning board will be dealing with parking most definitely fine I don't want to take everybody's time so all right thank you because I mean in general I mean it looks great but and my other concern was the bulk of the building on light my other concern was the bulk of the building on Lial street is there anything that could be done to address that because I mean you know I mean it it's it's cool design but it looks like a big box from my living room window yeah so is there anything that can be done to address that at all we can work with work with you on that I'm sorry okay yeah no take a drink thank you thank you all right other um folks who'd like to comment come on up just raise your right hand um my name is Annabel re sorry just raise your right hand I'll swear do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes I do thank you thanks hi I'm I'm a preservation architect and I am new in the neighborhood I have just bought seven Green Street um which is on one of the side roads that Elizabeth mentioned some concerns about sorry um sorry um I I live um on seven Green Street which I've just purchased in September I'm a preservation architect and um I've been reviewing Bob um the design and I like Elizabeth I'm very concerned about the side streets um I did do a little sketch to give an idea of my 1840 Federal style house and its relationship to the side view of your house your buildings and I'd like to put that as an exhibit if I can do that um so you can get a sense of the scale exit a I'm sorry exhibit a uh and B the we're going to you know what the we should Mark the sh slideshow as exhibit A1 yes the slide should be A1 and then could we do exhibit 01 yeah that makes sense that's Ty o1 and two because I have a second one to go with that yeah let's do 01 and O2 okay and I'll give them to you Bob as well so you have so are we trying to keep this to the three minute limit well there's nobody else behind me yet so okay we so far as I am um I think my concern is that um My Little Federal style house proportionate to this with a building being built about two foot away from my property line is really not an acceptable sense of character defining feature to the historic district I think it's disproportionate and not in keeping with the character I understand the finances but preservation is not about finances preservation is about preserving historic character of Street Scapes and I think it's a concern for all the side streets um I understand the desire um but we're really dealing here with something called facadism which is something that um you know has gone very much out of style not recommended by the SE interior standards um I have another couple of comments very quick comments about um um some notes um building um to scale and proportion is part of adding additions to um historic streetscapes and historic buildings um these buildings are not to scale a to proportion um with the existing buildings they detract from them I know there's been great efforts to not do that but I'm afraid they will detract for them particularly on the side streets um I express some concern about colors and um the research that was done by a student from Princeton um you can quite easily do paint analysis and identify historic colors accurately and maybe that will be done in the next step um so I would be concerned about that um I think we've got a lot of reconstruction here um uh and I think that you know requiring 9t ceilings I don't know anybody who's 9 foot tall um but but maybe there are people I'm sorry if I offended anybody but I really think that we could probably bring this down to an 8ot ceiling height and start to be much more in proportion with the buildings I also think that orientation of Windows um on the new additions is not necessarily in keeping with the character of the fenestration on the sides streets that's another concern that I have so I think that will cover a few things I also think that you can save a lot more material um than is um indicated here I've preserved all the original framing in my 1840 house and just sandwich new framing beside it and keeping the character defining features of a a site and of a building is very important I think with good preservation practice so that's my say on that b you know me well um and uh thank you for listening oh thank you all right do we have any other members up please head up to the podium oh sir I think the woman behind you is there and then you can go after her sorry you know what since you're both sir if you come back I I'll just swear you in both at the same time just to save a little great if you just raise your right hand both of you do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes um my name is aretta pinski I have a M's in historic preservation and architecture um could you spell your last name p a w l y NS k y aretta a r e t a um I agree and this is the first time I'm seeing this um I agree with the comments about the side streets while elevations from Witherspoon um are helpful the massing cannot be understood simply in elevation you know there are a lot of tools now for 3D um depiction and at the very least this tool of elevations should be used on the side streets on Lial and quy um going past where the new construction is because um it is it is at a different scale so if we're talking about the character of the neighborhood as the previous speaker um explained so articulately um I think at the very least you have to look at it this isn't just this strip that his is historic is it no it's a whole District I mean the side streets are included so that's very important so I would urge you to do that thank you okay hi Hi Sam borai I live at uh 29 Green Street um I just wanted to make a comment just in general I think it's a very wellth thought out plan it looks like uh you know a lot of really a lot of detail has been a lot of attention has been paid to the detail on the street on Witherspoon um you know one of the the themes that I've heard uh throughout discussions on the master plan through in Princeton a lot of people are concerned about the amount of affordable housing uh just the prices in Princeton keep going higher there's not enough housing for people that make a certain wage and I think this is a great way to not overdo it but allow for extra housing uh downtown it's to have it that close to downtown is really um you know a really nice feature and like uh Mr hiler said you know the fact that you know when people do live that close to downtown less Reliance on cars I I do agree with that I understand it's hard to you know un to to figure that sometimes you see the number of spaces per unit and it just doesn't make sense but you know some people Park during the day some people park at night and vice versa so there is some shared parking uh and a plan like this so I just came out to say that I think plan looks nice good luck Sam could you spell your last name please sure b o r a i e thank you thank you um up hi um you just raise your right hand thing uh do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes thank um just state your name for the record yeah my name is kathen Carol I live at 167 John Street um I want to um I'm glad to hear Elizabeth's comments on the massing of the buildings from the side streets um I I'm always driving Quarry around a John and then back on clean so particularly um those building on mlan Street um behind the old school is uh it's very close to the sidewalk um it looks huge from the side um so that building kind of concerns me and I just wonder if the buildings can have I know it's nice to have a big box where you have a flat roof and lots of roof space that you can turn green and stuff and put solar panels but if it were step back a little bit on the top level it would be less imposing um so I don't know if the roof lines could be changed to be a little more attractive because they do just look like gigantic boxes right now um so that the closeness to the um sidewalk also is concerned for because we're trying to make the town more pedestrian and the redesign of Witherspoon Street has been a bit of a disappointment because some areas don't feel any safer than they did before for pedestrians and I feel like having these big boxy buildings so close to the sidewalk is yet another minus for Walkers okay thank you all right would anyone else like to comment on the project okay can you raise your right hand do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge I affirm thank you thank you my name is Aubrey Haynes our company owns and manages five properties in town including 145 Witherspoon directly across the street from this project uh I also was involved in the 30 McLean Redevelopment uh which is the um property of John Street and mlan Street um it's currently 10 apartment units and when we came before the planning board um we had done two years of work interviewing neighbors around the uh Witherspoon Jackson Community we had uh two public meetings at the Arts Council um to uh to learn from the people who lived in the neighborhood what was most important to them and what we found was that the the number one issue was they wanted to have a place for their family members to be able to continue to live in Princeton and because the expense of living in Princeton had continued to escalate they really were hoping for a project where the uh units would be um I don't want to use the word affordable because that's a loaded uh word but but Workforce housing which is exactly what Bob's proposing here and we heard it loud and clear we went in front of the board uh we said to the planning board we're do we have a 7500 square foot building we could do 17,500 ft building which would be as of right or 2 3750 ft units which would be as of right but we're taking a risk here and asking for the board to provide some bulk variances by allowing us to do 10 units and we explained the reasoning why and the idea was the smaller the unit the less rent we could charge therefore could be uh reasonably priced for Workforce housing and that has been what that project has turned out to be um and I know it is a uh what Bob has done here has created a uh very expensive facade along with her spoon Street I I don't know his uh construction numbers but I'm in the business and I am sure that the the the properties that he's restoring along Witherspoon Street are he's losing money on each one of those properties I guarantee you he's not making money that's for sure and so the buildings in the back are what helping are what's helping to pay for the buildings in the front and if the buildings in the back are not of a sufficient Mass he won't have he'll be underwater financially with this project so I do understand the massing question I live in a house that was built in 1769 by my ancestors uh our family's 11th generation Quaker so I really understand the need to preserve uh historic buildings I'm I live that every day as I fix cracks in the walls and and restore uh you know it's a really expensive proposition to own a historic property but um what Bob has done to peel away the decades and and years of of of of Decay and decline in the in the physical structure but also the appearance of these buildings and to and to restore them as we see in this presentation uh to me is a tremendous community service and I'm wholeheartedly in support of the project thank you all right still open I've got another another person two people you know if we're going to have people line up we can swear you in both at the same time so sir if you just raise your right hand too do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge I do thank you and when you both come up just state your name for the record my name is yina Moore I live at 19 Green Street my family's been here since the turn of the prior Century 189 6 to be exact and the important thing that I think we've at least achiev part is that the street has been restored in terms of its livability and um the execution of the general themes that were intended in the study that created the historic district I just want to state that in the historic district study and the designation of Princeton's 21st district uh it acknowledged that the architectural and historic significance of Princeton's with a spoon Jackson neighborhood and this should be born out not just by the naming of buildings but to ensure through and I'm sure Mr Hillier will address this to the planning board that there will be the opportunities for people who who have lived in the neighborhood of history and have been unable to stay in the neighborhood will have opportunities to live in this expanded development the study found that the neighborhood to be a cohesive and intact expression of Princeton's largest African-American Community whose appearance and setting and well it may not be the most beautiful to some is a result of years of social economic and educational disparity brought about by discrimination and segregation and what we don't want this development to have is for a population to now view it as a part of a market opportunity the missing middle has not necessarily been uh the same population that has had had its roots in the Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood so I want that to be uh clear I do applaud you for having uh committed to uh the council memb requests not to reduce the commercial but I think it's very important that they are the same Market that's being addressed by those commercial property um uh not owners but tenants uh in terms of the Pega um of course the Saga shop and any other small shops because that's the population that is deserving and in need of those services and so I hope that you continue in your explanation of the work that you're doing that you're looking at these proposed land uses the mix of the residential and Commercial the market whether it's high-end or affordable and make some specific commitments in that regard and how the diverse populations will be served and that's versus the existing population and the new that you may bring in because each will impact the nature and character of the Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood I do want to commend um my new neighbor Annabelle who is uh more than qualified to give um the historic analysis of all the details of the buildings what I wanted to um reiterate that many of said that the side streets are not being attended to in the same way and that the massing of these rear additions as they turn corners or a but existing properties should um be reconsidered in terms of those ceiling Heights 9 ft may not have been what you've built you know since 10 years ago but it again has to do with the context of the neighborhood and the fact that I know you're trying trying to hide the um the solar panels and there are high parit walls that you're creating at the roofs in order to um have these somewhat concealed um public areas for the tenants of your buildings and that that should reduce it and Kate came up with a very good idea she was the speaker before me to perhaps give a different treatment to that third that Upper Floor whatever level that may be um to uh reduce the impact of what appears to be a box which it is um and the flat roof which is not characteristic of the neighborhood um and that's not to say you have to do a French monard but I'm saying that you need to do something that gives that upper story uh diminishes its effect thank you all right thank you um my name is Jim Floyd Jr and and uh I'm the one nobody knows knows my father I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this because this is a different take this is sorry see I don't do this my father would have known exactly what to do okay um I have lived in the neighborhood I started out there on Quarry Street until 6th grade I moved back into my house different house but in the house on Pary Street in 1979 so I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this because it's a bit of a different take we're talking about history here and that's the term that gets applied to this event and to the the committee um some of us here my friend G my brother various other folks are the history we keep referring to the John wers neighborhood the black neighborhood this that and the other on my street Quarry Street there are a number of rental units so people come and go um there are other people who um are not in appearance the people who I grew up with they were always Italians in our neighborhood that's so it's not always been just a black neighborhood um so I appreciate our new neighbors on Lial Street on Green Street on my street um there are a few of us who um I live down the street from Shirley um who was our esteemed historian but um we aren't going to be there much longer many of us are old folks I said to my daughter who lives in Vancouver um well you're going to inherit the house and she rather um in a way I appreciate said look I grew up with kids and went to high school with kids who can't afford to live here okay as has been mentioned as J has mentioned and she said I'll try to find a way to use our house um for some of them who I know so um bottom line um however this is developed um there are many black folks who have grown up here gone to school here their whole Lives who once say I'm not going back back there I've had enough of Princeton and many more who say I'd like to be back there I can't afford it um people my age or my um or the Next Generation older say I can sell my house to newcomers for X number of dollars that will see me out okay um I don't know that there is way I know that Bob has some folks who I grew up with living in the waxwood and and I think that they very much appreciate that um but if people can keep in mind this kind of testimony that I and Y and Wayne in the back and and various others can say as a helpful perspective as you do your work I I invite you to do that I know that Bob has helped us with plaques in the neighborhood Bob has helped us with the summer um focus on the neighborhood and and that's been a major attention getter and and way for people to think about us but um that's a different perspective it won't be dealt with with architecture but it still is the history so thank you for these moments thank you all right are there others who'd like to make comments Michael okay okay so just ma'am you can as well just raise your right hand uh do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge I do thank you my name is Michael Floyd 64 Harris Road I think I first saw drawings of this um with a private sitting that Bob granted maybe three years ago three and a half years ago something like that um here we are today um first I wanted to come and say you all look very attentive on this and I rely on you from the historic preservation uh perspective there's been some comments regarding bulk height um I assume that uh and it sounds like you're pretty much pretty much okay with this I I welcome more comments from the HBC board if you have some um I think the renovations rehab of the existing dwellings are very very good um appreciated I did have concern about the massing which we've heard a couple times a few times I think between green and Quarry it's hidden better and I also appreciate that it's away from the Presbyterian Church I see Ben cobbert here and a few other people um and that's that spacing of course when you move the bulk away from something you move it to something and we had some speaker about that um then the other sites they are Corner sites which gets a little problematic because from your board's point of view is what you can see from the streets so you can see the the the second property from Quarry Street you can see it from Witherspoon luckily the elevations um of the buildings in front because they're up on a little bit of a ridge they're not seen as much of course from Quarry it's setback I do have concerns about the safield house as you call it um and the bul behind that uh the framing as you look at it picture framing uh from Witherspoon Street um I kind of wish it didn't extend on the mlan street side so much um and of course the slide that's up now with the Lial Street property it may be in P proportion to the building on the left but always when we talk about proportion so so many times we forget about the ones it's not in proportion with and obviously it's drastically out of proportion with the house in front of it but that house in front of it is small small as far as Heights um also when you look at it from Lial Street you see what you see and we all see the same thing um I do want to say a lot of this not a lot but some of this is obviously right out the bat couched about the African-American historic community and it somewhat rides on that now as was said by other people there's not too many in that neighborhood I don't know if you have an African-American living in any of the Witherspoon Street Properties why do I think there's going to be any in the new properties I don't know maybe it will maybe it won't I don't think so I I worry about the fact there's so many studios you have to do one twos and threes for the affordables but there's a lot of studios in the combined properties and you've spoken to that I I do worry about that um I'm going to say something it's pretty blunt the last thing I want is you to name buildings after my parents and there ain't an African American in none of your buildings it's some serious stuff who's going to benefit all right chair yes yes since I am someone historic myself a five minute break oh yes yes we could take a five minute break they are can we just hear This Woman's comments and then take a break because she's been waiting okay sorry go ahead good evening Maria hga I'm a resident of grber Avenue and uh I'd like to um speak to you uh from the perspective of the tenants the current tenants of this housing um Mr hiler and I have um spoken about this um on a couple of occasions and I have a request for him um and that is that he uh attempt uh or engage in uh some specificity what his plans are what your plans are for your current tenants um what's the process how this is going to work I I do want to communicate the level of anxiety that exists among uh the community um when I hear you speak about um Studios as been mentioned and when I saw the plans that basically uh show that roughly half of the units you're going to build are going to be Studios very small some of them um and know from knowing the community very well that your current tenants are primarily families um with children um standard families in some cases I don't need to interrupt but this is kind of a planning board issue yeah go to Historic preservation yeah and and honestly we really can't deal with the specific people that live in the units because we don't control that um so if we could take a five minute break just for the benefit of the applicants um I appreciate it and then we'll come back and continue public comment if I may say that preserving the buildings but not considering the people inside the buildings may be very shortsighted thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e hello could could we get started thank you all right thank you so we can continue public comment um if anyone would like to speak uh please line up and we'll swear you in um I have to say I'm very happy to have an in-person meeting it's a we're one of the few boards that really try to do that all right uh go ahead okay uh do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes Joe Butler 18 hibbin Road um I have a couple of questions we've we've veered away I know a little bit from a strictly historic preservation perspective um but I just have to pile on then a little bit these homes from a historic preservation standpoint used to be single family homes many of them some of them were single family homes and while we all want more affordable we want Princeton to be more affordable the results of the town's master plan survey said what people want is really um smaller homes for purchase and I'm wondering if you're willing to talk about what the ownership of this will be like will any of these homes ever be able to revert back to their original single family home do do any people who live in the neighborhood will they ever have the opportunity to buy them are they is this all going to be one huge apartment complex do you mind the um do I answer that um if you am I allowed to if you want to yeah but you need to talk into your mic oh but I appreciate the eye content right now we're thinking of uh of Condominiums but it will be designed as a rental um so that we can get the financing for it it has to be designed otherwise they ask for uh the banks ask for pre-sales and the selling units even if they're single family houses selling them off of blueprints is very difficult and they say sell if you got 10 sell five of them and then we'll talk to you about financing it's that kind of a deal and and and the reason is they when they when a property gets in trouble now these are all multiple family units that I'm talking about um we we're not doing any single families on no I understand that you're not but originally some of them were and perhaps in the future someone would want to buy them back as a single family and I mean live long and prosper but I think as one of the Floyd Brothers says we're not going to be here forever and things change and and this is something that we will be probably discussing at the planning board as well okay so um so my other question to you is um about the comments that have been made so far expressing concern about the massing of the buildings behind and um the impact it will have on the side streets what is going to be the process for HPC to take that up because that is in your purview right to look at that and with regard to the uh roof lines because I was the lia on historic preservation when this was made a um historic district I remember that in the report there was a lot of um con not concern but a lot of a lot made of the roof lines and this the roof lines as shown here in the back on these larger buildings is not doesn't seem consistent with the neighborhood and the variety and I mean massing aside the rooftops don't seem to be um consistent with the historic preservation all rightor discussion um after comments for uh the the commission's reaction um to that issue so and we will be preparing an advisory memo to the planning board with our suggestions okay but you've got to do that rapidly like there will not be another chance for the public to speak to the historic preservation commission about anything that you might have recommended or now that they have time they've seen this to go back out and take a better look at the property there's no other unless they do it opportunity to come in at the plan well at the planning board but not on the historic preservation elements of it this is the chance tonight and then the planning board will take up this discussion in Janu on January 23rd but we do have a meeting tomorrow as well if if this carries over yeah if this carries over we have a meeting tomorrow okay um um you know whether it carries over or not it might be good to have the meeting even briefly so to give people a chance now that they've seen that to go walk the streets and take a better look at it and finally I just um for the record is Miss safield recused on this matter I can speak today she's not just ABS not she's recused because um she is part of the was with Jackson historical culture society which Mr Hillier also is The Treasure of that society and and the council liaison is also correct okay thank you all right thank you are there other uh people who'd like to [Music] comment okay oh thank you uh do you swear the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes okay thank you okay Bernardine Hines I live on John Street I think I had three comments I should have wrote them down because the five minute break I may have lost it number one um I really don't like the Office Building Concept um that that Hill you're suggesting it looks like you've got a big office building and you're sticking it on to um a um a a private residence it it's not in character it's not in flavor of the historic neighborhood and I think it I I think it just distorts everything and if you're going to extend the back um for to make room for more housing then I think it should be in the flavor and the context of what is already there the idea that he's proposing now I I I think it's atrocious and it doesn't look good at all number two um with the incoming president and his um determination to um get all illegal immigrants and um aliens out of here and you seem to be this project seems to be moving towards providing housing for that particular demographic and you said we're not talking about demographics but Bob did bring it up so therefore I'm bringing it up um what happens if if a whole span of undocumented aliens and are gone this way a field yeah okay well let me finish and and then then who where's your people coming from to um to house all of um this space this extra space that you have built all right that's all I'll say on that um what was the third wife for God I knew I should have wrote it down there was a third comment all right well I don't I'm sorry I don't remember the third comment okay well thank you um if Elizabeth if you could just briefly speak about the a07 overlay so people understand that there is an overlay to this neighborhood right so um the chair felt that it was important for the public to understand that all this although this is Zone RB a residential business that has an overlay for affordable housing which is classified as ah7 affordable housing overlay 7 and that is uh specifically within this Witherspoon Jackson historic district mainly on Witherspoon Street um there is ordinance 2023 D2 which you could look up on the municipal website for that and what um it talks about is that um they are they um designated this overlay Zone to very similar to the ones they have one through five um to accommodate for affordable housing they have a list which actually designates properties that must retain uh the the primary Front Street facing structure for them to be able to apply the ah7 um and I'll just tell you some of the bulk SK schedules on this so uh the minimum yard requirement so the front yard is zero it's either zero or 10 ft I believe is that correct Bob yes okay uh the side yards are zero setback the rear yard is 15 ft um the uh impervious coverage the maximum is 90% the maximum Building height is 3 and 1/2 ft but not to exceed 45 ft you mean 3 and 1/2 storage I'm sorry three and a half stories yes um and then it talks about kind of the uh if you have five units then you get a credit on parking but every unit after that you must provide for a parking space so but that's generally gives you um information on how the building the site improvements are cited on the property and what what the applicant had to do to try to make those although you know I believe the applicant probably can talk about some of the variances they have on there because there are few that they and actually the Z guideline standards as well I think what I'd like to say on that I think what I'd like to say on that is I think the key thing about the zoning if you look at is the key thing is the mass and the height of these buildings is in total Conformity with the a07 zoning ordinance and as the few minor bulk variances uh which we're asking for dealing with rear buffers and rear parking lot buffers I think that's really a planning board issue again rather than a HPC issue and all right just to um to let the HPC know even though an applicant whether it be Mr Hill or anyone else um might meet the bulk schedules and if they don't have it variance HPC under their HP PC um design review criteria can State well we feel that for these historic reasons that we would not support this portion of it or we would like to see this amended that is also written within the ordinance where it says it it does not nullify the um the approval review which HPC makes for any application all right thank you I just want to keep it open to the public for one more uh chance because I I have haven't closed it yet and I just wanted to make sure that everybody had an opportunity to say what they wanted to say I'm back again I remember my third number three yeah my third point was um Bob made um reference to um uh demographic and you said don't bring up demographics but he did um I'd be very careful about stating that the certain demographic that's moved into the neighborhood now only needs bicycles only uh walks this is so far a few sir let me finish my comment thank you very much objecting your comment well you can object after I finish speaking you're cutting in while I'm speaking just consider you still can wait till I finish talking I'm going to give Bernardine another minute just to finish up okay that's all I'm saying is I would be very careful about um explaining the demographics and what they need and what they do not need thank you okay than you all right so are there other folks who would like to speak so come on up to the mic he's prepared you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes I do thank you thank you Bob do you plan to resign the South Wall of 114 Witherspoon Street Kevin oh it's can you just give your name oh I'm sorry I'm Kevin Wilks thank you the South Wall of 114 your southernmost building mhone it's very difficult because yes it is isn't it space in there there's about 15 Ines between it and 112 yeah that's something that when we're um rebuilding that wall we're going to have to figure out how to do it at that point so would you consider working with my client the church so we might have the opportunity to reside 112 your facing wall yeah in simultaneous conjunction with when you're undertaking your work because unless you make a move first neither one of us can do anything no I we'll coordinate on that great thank you very much all right thank you all right is there um still open more public comment come on up the Price Is Right do you swear that the testimony you're about to give this evening is the whole truth to the best of your knowledge yes I do notice I have a Tremor essential tremor it's going to get worse as I talk cuz I don't usually speak um my name is Jeff tillet I've lived here all but two years of my extremely long life at least that's way I feel now lucky um I lived at one Harris Road and walked to what we call the Witherspoon school or Quarry Street School that was interchangeable I think our uniform said Withers on it and I keep I never hear anybody talk about it being called Witherspoon school um that was the junior high school so I'm familiar with the neighborhood every day I walked through that neighborhood and every afternoon those porches were filled with people who said hi to my friends recognized them watched out for them the neighborhood was full of people on porches and I I should say that I was I was Carpenter for 23 years probably more like 30 years now that I'm retired um from from doing something else a lot of that was historic preservation but I don't really have much to say about that except that I consider this neighborhood to have been one of Princeton's greatest treasures I lived in the Italian neighborhood I live on Ying street now Harris Harris Road was the Italian neighborhood the parking lot for the hospital was Italian Gardens with peach trees in it when I was a kid this place changes in ways that just makes me well I don't like um in the name of diversity we're always waving flags but what we have is a bunch of dver phds and this looks to me as if it's housing for a Workforce my undergraduate thesis was on migrant Farm Workers it just looks like really nice migrant Farm worker housing migrant worker housing I think that what this town needs what this neighborhood needs is family housing and I don't see any provision really for family housing this looks like more of the same of what Princeton's moving toward and that is being basically unaffordable um and I really don't have anything else to say good luck all right thank you [Applause] thank you are there any other people who would like to make comments um if not I'll close the public comment um all right let's get back to deliberating um the applications here um now I'm looking towards our commission members for their comments Elber you want to start yeah yeah just use the microphone hi I don't want to too close because I can't hear anybody when that's too close anyway El endersby uh I used to say that when I was always worried that people were worried that people come from out of town and they would change Princeton and my feeling up until quite recently was the other way around that Princeton somehow changed people who arrived here and and and at the same time that the town grew as the population became increasingly diverse Bob when you first moved to but when you first got a tow hold in the in the community here I have to say I was pretty skeptical the building um the that double house nicely designed but it just didn't seem like it fit I have to feel though that after all these years now that you've been involved in the community this this neighborhood has rubbed off on you and and I honestly think we have so many third grade architects who come before us who show us things that they really I think they they're designed on their CAD programs and not by individuals who get a feel for what it would be to live in a space like that or in the neighborhood or whatever the context um I think you've addressed addressed most of the points that I would bring up to anybody who was going to take advantage as so many people seem to be doing now of this affordable housing crisis we have to give us third rate plans this is not a third rate plan this is a well a well-considered um attempt to to um increase the capacity of the neighborhood without um without overwhelming or completely destroying it its existing character I've had other people who are involved well you take a look at the buildings that's that's going up or has been going up on Tane they pushed it right up against the sidewalk I mean there there or the building went up behind Bryce Thompson they have 42 units and they're they're so proud of the fact they've got rain barrels on the Four Corners personally I could deal without the green roofs but but what I've said for to individuals who've asked my opinion is how important it is there various things like proportion the way the way these buildings address the street the way they address each other with a degree of individuality as Jeff was saying front porches I I I'm all in favor of of shutters going back back on buildings which had them I have some questions about how the shutters are being treated but to me what's more important is that those front porches are being saved whether or not people can tear the themselves away from computers long enough to sit and talk to their neighbors is is a is a problem which we are faced with everywhere but the the attempt has been to keep the character of the neighborhood um the proportions are good the treescape aside from the ones that were torn down on with the Spin Street over the last year as it was improved um there's a real effort to have some green space between the fronts of these the facades of these buildings and the street and I think that's very very important I too have concerns about the the volume of the of the new buildings um I think in some cases even if the if the designs of the windows are are not copying the buildings that that front them I do think the scale of the windows could be improved in some cases like the one behind the behind the saterfield building but the materials seem appropriate the color the colors are muted um the um the the anyway individuality has been preserved and and even with the new buildings instead of just doing one um model and using it all over they're varied and I think that's that's very much that's very much in character with the neighborhood um I do have a couple of thoughts though and um one is you mentioned the fact that when you took over the the um the waxwood building um that you were able um to to to uh allow a certain proportion of the units to be retained by people from the neighborhood I think that's really important the fact that we have Shirley here um unfortunately not tonight but but when people have come in with applications for the withman Jackson area in since we designated it as our 20 20th historic district she she's able to provide some sense of the community the people who have lived there before the people who who she used to know growing up here um all those various connections the the danger of course is that no in a town which is not an affordable town for most people that the fewer and fewer of the residents who've called that neighborhood home are going to be um occupying these these these and all the other structures in the area to have some representation of the people who have who have roots in the community I think is really important and finally um I know that you've had a sort of personal PCT with Shirley over the years that you're going to restore that Schoolhouse and you've said I'm going to do it for you Shirley I'm going to do it and you are going to do it but what I what I think it begs for is that there that it it is a building that has been that was built to provide for the community and even if given zoning and Ada and all the rest of it you might not be able to do this for the Upper Floor I I would love to see the first floor of that building have some sort of public entity to some sort of community function so that there would still be a sense that it that it was a it was a like the churches and whatever in the area that it still functions um to try and reflect the community on a larger scale but I I I honestly think as I said I was skeptical when when I first learned about the possibility that there would be um an overwhelming pattern to this that would kind of affect all these buildings the fact that you've preserved the individuality you've really looked at the community as it is and tried to reflect it in what you're doing I I I'm I'm very pleased and uh uh and I and honestly think that even though many people may have questions about individual aspects of this by and large the people who people appreciate the fact that you appreciate the community thank you all right thank you elri are there other commission members that would like to make comments or ask questions um so Roger you want to say anything um I agree with elor I think it's a well-conceived project and I think you did uh attempt to uh fit yourself into into the neighborhood and also like El and other people who have spoken I have concerns about the scale on some of the side streets U and what that does to the the uh appropriateness for the rest of the neighborhood um I have one General comment um I think it's 116 18 um which which seems from the schematics to be done as half a house and I'm not sure it's sort of incorporated into the uh the new building and I think that's a function of the affordable housing ordinance uh which says you have to keep part of significant portion of the house it just seems kind of strange to me maybe I'm reading it wrong maybe I'm not seeing it correctly from the plans but it seems like it's sort of a half a house sticking out of the the new building uh I don't think the it's a full roof line and you were saying this is I think it's 11 118 it's the middle house in the first block I believe um18 is so Madam chair I had a question in my report which was actually uh meant for the attorneys ours and the applic which actually reads about the retention of the street facing primary building um my interpretation of this that and uh when the ordinance was going through the planning board is my understanding was that it wasn't anything that might be a auxiliary building or one that wasn't fa in street but it was a primary one that the retention of that building not just the facade but the building itself had to be preserved so that was one of the questions in the report I can speak to that actually and that is uh the ordinance section to which Miss Kim refers is section B17 A- 457.9 and it say says that uh utilization of the ah07 regulations requires the retention of any Street fronting princip any Street fronting principal buildings to the extent practicable that qualifier is in the ordinance and I would argue that then the demolition standard which we're seeking approval from you says if the structure cannot be put to reasonable use I think we've Dam Mr hilers demonstrated that these buildings the parts that we are requesting demolition for are in such bad shape that they can't be put to reasonable use therefore they also meet the qualification of the ah7 section I cited because it's not practicable then to preserve them either so the thing is that we never saw the structural reports and that was one of the comments also that typically we will review that um in conjunction with um the the request for demolition so we we would like the applicant to discuss that to say Okay the reason that we are taking half of this off is or you know four fifth of this off is because of this you know deterioration structural um loss of Integrity I would argue that well we didn't have I mean I don't know if the reports were submitted but the testimony that Mr hiler gave this evening more than amply demonstrates the uh problems that we have and why it's infeasible to uh restore these buildings and why they need to be demolished all right well I think um if I could just finish my point go ahead I mean I it seems to me I think we're hamstrung by the the wiggle room that the language in the ordinance provides but I think it's neither good historic preservation nor good architecture frankly uh the way that particular uh facade comes out as as just a facade and that's that's my point you're talking can we go back to that picture cuz I know I can explain why that is if it's what I think you're talking about it's you just passed that one it's that crazy like box in the front right that's what you're talking about if you go back you just saw it on the plan view you could see there were three buildings and you how does that do that not that one it was actually showing the demolition of the building you just push that button that center button that right the interpretation that the zoning department has given us is that uh if we were to alter that front facade we would not comply with the AA because that's even even though it came on if we altered that front facade we would not comply with the ah7 overlay and would need a use variants so that's why we have that silly thing there could you do you have an elevation of that I'm not really sure what we're looking at you sure I don't want to move to oh you did it is it the enclosed porch there the one on the left you want go forward or backward oh neither I just want to do the here it is this right okay um I actually remember that Jim Banks said stopped by early on in the development and he had talked about that the intent was that you wanted to door back to an open porch and because it was said at the time that the ordinance went in place uh what I had said to I said you know I would recommend for you to come before HBC because I think that HBC would support having it an open porch which is historically appropriate and you you've already have so many variances already but see Elizabeth it's a use VAR oh a use variance yeah okay that's a use variance wait wait why is that a use variance to take to I I agree with you that's not a use variance it's the well yes Derek Bridger has determined that it's a use variance why because it's because that's the facade as of the date the ordinance was adopted and if we change that front facade as of the date the because it was as of the date the ordinance was adopted it would require a use variance you see the ordinance says that you have to maintain everything exactly the way it is at the time that at the time the ordinance goes in place right and we complained about that sentence and specifically about this particular unit because the porch was extended illegally I saw that it has a foundation with no permit it doesn't have a foundation basically has an air conditioner hanging out by two wires over the right of way it's absolutely an illegal situation and it's going to be maintained and so we went to the and suggested that we could do this and it could still be a store right but it would have a porch on it and it would have a big window on it and still operate as a store it would do fine as a soccer store frankly but um but we can't do that according to the ordinance but that's what we wanted to do right no I I recall that conversation and we suggested that maybe parts of the ordinance was just that one sentence could be re written to let the historic preservation continue otherwise it just says it's got to stay the way it is now right all right I I definitely see that there's there's a yeah problem with with the overlay there um so but I think that that's different than what we were talking about demolition right I mean what I'm talking about is is not that but I was talking about how much demolition you're taking off each building on each site and I mean I saw the basement I've lived in the basement like you you were part of those discussions right I don't proper it like that I still do um but you see with some of them uh where the building's been stucko we're we are able to change the siding and where there is still an image or ghost of a window which there is in some of these stucco buildings we are able to replace those windows so we we're pretty good on type of thing except in this case here which is one of the worst cases uh because it's it's the first building in the whole neighborhood uh after the library and the uh and the art center and it's it's not the right introduction to what you're trying to have as a nice neighborhood M right I understand that I see all right so as far as the demolition goes I mean um Tara do you want to see if you you know what your interpretation might I mean typically we when HBC has reviewed anything for demolition they have a structure report it's not something that's presented by the applicant but it's provided they review it often times they'll have an opportunity to to question it or ask for further information but we didn't have that as far as the as far as the application submission so it was it didn't I knew wasn't arbitrary but I guess to present for demolition which is a a big thing in historic district to just go through the property and say well you know we found from this point on that the floor joists were were you know really not going to be able to be um survive without an extensive amount of work and maybe because there was an addition already that it wasn't the original historic part of the building you know that's the information that HPC typically looks at yeah the the intent in the ah7 ordinance is not to override the historic preservation commission commission's ordinances and in the hpc's ordinance it does say that um if structural unsoundness of any portion of said structure is presented as a reason the commission will hear that testimony and consider it so I think I don't know if we necessar it would be up to the commission if they need a full-blown report of a structural engineer or if some pictures and just I believe that Mr Hiller said that he had two structural engineer reports already I think we just need that information put on the record we we'd be happy to I mean we've got what Mr Hiller put on the record and we'd be happy to provide those reports to the commission all right good thank you all right let's go back to the commission for comments um Freda did you want to say anything I do actually and I will also say that it's a wonderful presentation I think Bob you have really considered the withers Jack Jackson neighborhood um which I'm not a part of I just want to make that clear um it's yes prinson does need a lot of affordable housing um and this is not uh part of the historic preservation commission but I I often wonder you know affordable and yet you're renting forever just put it out there um the one thing I'm a little bit concerned about is the roof lines I think and I don't know which number it was towards the end the one I was on on the screen for a long time I'm wondering the scale I think is fine because how are you going to achieve what you want to achieve without uh that scale but I think the roof lines don't complim ment what is already existing so is there any possibility of taking a look at that again and and just seeing if somehow you can bring it a little closer to what's there um is there any way to go back to the to the image that was there for a while so you can see what I'm talking about the one towards the very end yeah yeah okay it could have been even in the last one even there um but this is not the one I was talking about and you see this one is a perspective versus the other one which is an elevation and what you're seeing there is how and I can show it on this diagram actually if if I'm standing on the street say o o over here and looking there that sight line goes like that right yeah and I we can build a building 45 ft high so I can put a roof on here and now you're going to see it and so that you know there's no question as Aubrey had pointed out you have to have a certain number of apartments in order to make the whole thing work at all and this is you have no idea how razor thin this is uh but we could put a slope roof on it now the other thing to do would be maybe number one we could take a 6 in out of each four and get those ceilings down they're actually around 8688 now now so we could drop them to 8T ceilings and that would that would lower this a little bit and then the other thing we could do is drop this one unit down to just a a window height window head height that's the top of the window and just go up like that and then this could just become a screen for what the other is but you see what you're doing is you're now getting a little sense of a pitched roof I mean that's a way that we could redesign it I think yeah I that would I hear you and I've heard what people are saying and I think that would that would frankly help it I think so all right oh yes go ahead Charlotte just it's called designing On The Run that's right um did you I'm sorry Freda did you have okay um I just I I do really appreciate the the philosophy that you rebuild but you know this additional housing that you need in the back is not um you know you're not trying to replicate the historicism there and it's kind of I I guess I really see it as working actually very successfully as a sort of a shadowy backdrop to you know what what are the stars of the show the the beautiful houses on Witherspoon um so I think it's and I I I guess by interrupting that kind of backdrop look and you know pitching the roof in the front and then it drops down and I really see that as um you know making it more not making something more noticeable when just keeping the continuous line sort of I think it's going to sort of disappear in a way but you know can uh so I I just uh it was a wonderful presentation I appreciate it I used to come here as a little kid when my grandparents and great-grandparents lived on hibbon road and that neighbor you know the withers Jackson neighborhood has changed a lot since then and that's true you know we're all like how do you reconcile you know Aesthetics and affordability and time passing and yeah I mean so part of that was the reason I was trying to celebrate the history of the neighborhood because if the history is documented we did the plaques uh and for the tour the self tour and we're going to have that on a phone phone also but we we wanted to celebrate what was there when it was flourishing as its own segregated neighborhood you know the teachers live next to the students and I grew up with that generation and it's amazing how successful a lot of them became and they all come back for church but they don't live here anymore because they can't afford to the average house in Princeton right now is $1,412 th000 that's you know that's and the only people who can afford to live here are in the top 5% of the you know and you and I think it's 56% of the people who work in Princeton drive into Princeton and that's because they can't live here it's too much money right right and this doesn't correct that all it does is provide the the necessary people that you need the Librarians the beginning teachers Etc you need them here to have a flourishing town and you want them to be part of this town not driving in right well what I'd like to um Echo with what El said is that the way you've kept the individual character of each of the houses is really heartwarming because we've seen a lot of kind of faux Colonial a lot of um replacement materials that haven't been so great and this really you recognize the building after the renovation like which is not something that always happens so I think we're all very um you know really appreciative of the fact that you've respected the original buildings and you know what they mean to the community I think for the side streets um you know maybe there could be a couple elevations so that um you know at least we could have an understanding of what that Jos is going to look like between um you know the apartment building and the rest of the neighborhood you know for example on lle um or Corry and so those those elevations I think would be very helpful in the in the explanation um and then obviously a lot of people don't understand that there's an overlay here there's an the the ah7 is something that the council passed that applies to this area and does dictate a a certain number of things that don't normally happen in other neighborhoods um so Elizabeth did you want to yeah I thought that um maybe this was a good time to Circle back to my comments and that way might give the HBC something else to talk about okay um so there was a lot already discussed and addressed by Mr hiler um there is a six and 4 foot high fence which is a certain te buff Tech and that's a vinyl fence um and I had recommended maybe the applicant consider a wood fence instead of vinyl um the the six- foot fence what I see on the plans are the Privacy fencing and I find that that's kind of high uh which are usually proposed along the rear property line to screen the new parking and maybe the building I'm not sure however um uh it's recommended maybe the applicant consider uh lowering it and maybe softening with some vegetation and maybe a mix of the of the two might help with um addressing the buffering and perhaps also being sensitive to the neighbors there were comments about the hunter research archaeological monitoring plan but that's really just to reference that they um talked about the Princeton burough ordinance that's tactical stuff will comply with okay just to let you know to look at the ordinance in the um historic preservation um also there is a lot of different types of lighting there and so any exterior lighting HPC always recommends it to be in the warm Spectrum no higher than 2700 Kelvin and then uh at the end of the report I kind of summarized a lot of the comments that were made at the beginning um that um you know that I felt that the applicant should be commended for their efforts on the application they really did an excellent job providing detailed drawings materials and I think that um that it's also later opportunity for HPC to come down and look at the materials that are proposed for the um the buildings um and and in addition that the restoration of the Douglas Hall and the full restoration of several of the buildings on sites two or three are sensitively proposed um and this in addition to Street facing building Restorations will bring these buildings um back to their glory and shine a bright light to the Witherspoon Jackson historic district which is the 20th historic district in Princeton um the height of the building addition to Douglas call is appropriate and there's I had no objection to the height and mass of the new construction of the former Allen's Tavern site although um I didn't know why it was being demolished again that might be something that's found in the structural um but it seemed to be within the same footprint a little bit wider and much deeper but again it it's an internal lot so a lot of that massing in the back is not visible um from the streetcape um but again information on the neighboring properties would be good um however there is concern on the connection of the new addition to number 204 and 204 Withers s buildings which is on site three and it's visual impact along Li Street and I think that I already discussed that the new edition over the ons surface parking lot in the side of the addition compared to the much smaller storic building is a little bit Troublesome at this location CU it is so visible um the size of the dish dwarfs historic building which is really not the 10 and it's not considered to me compatible um and also um the relatability of the facade on this side is also the same reasons that I mentioned in report on the Douglas Hall one on that side which was quy right yeah um site two um these are the comments on all the sites um slightly lower the building addition would make it proportionally more appropriate with the historic building site sorry that was site one site two perhaps plant a hedge or other plantings in front of the community garden by the parking lot to introduce more vegetation in the site so I looked at Henry Arnold's landscape plan but I know that in a lot of the presentations there seems to be a lot more planting so perhaps his isn't consistent with what you envisioned there um on for site three set the building back 10 ft this is the one for the Douglas Hall um from mlan Street to allow Douglas Hall to be more prominent on the street and provide space to add plantings in front of the near addition and um the reason I felt the removal or moving that brick wall back is because it's really on the right of way and the sidewalk is almost near the RightWay as you know in that neighborhood the N the sidewalks are small so have to have a 6ot wall there it's kind of inconsistent with the design and kind of tight um but setting that building back if possible to the 10 ft which is allowable 0 to 10t um would would I think help um again all that work on the Douglas Hall I think it'll it'll really showcase it and on site four reduce the building height or break up the mass to make it more visibly compatible with the small histor building and L Street neighborhood um I know that um what I said internal to the report is that their variances for landscape buffer which the landscape buffer is 15 ft and also for parking and I would recommend to the HPC not to support them because the buffer is important to the neighbors so if you're taking that away um you're becoming you're getting that much closer to their property and if you're asking for a variance that's also reducing or shrinking your landscape plan um and all of this affects really the historic size of the massing of the buildings because the site improvements are dictated by the size of the building so it seems like I mean you really did a great job but I think that it's a little bit overbuilt on some of the sites that if it if you were able to bring it back and not have to uh rely on a variance to reduce that landscape buffer I think that would be a big Improvement but in any case those are all my comments all right did I um did anyone else have any comments on landscaping or light in um which we really didn't discuss too much I mean I do feel like this is a such a large amount of construction that there there should be some kind of landscape review um maybe that would be at the planning board level yeah Mr Dober milsky the Landscape Architect's given a memo and that'll be uh discussed I'm sure extensively at planning board yeah yeah so there's always um that and as well as storm water which um looked very good so um let's see I'm just trying to see if there's anything else we haven't covered we need to kind of be thorough and uh as far as Elizabeth's comments um did anyone have any comments to her comments David um I'm not sure there are comments to Elizabeth's comments or or more comments to some of the things I heard from the audience and some of the things I don't understand how they work historic preservation commission review and the overlay review but I I don't know that the subject of the massing as it relates to the side streets has been uh figured out or or talked about you mentioned a few minutes ago about seeing some more drawings on that um so after our work is done we write a report to the planning board saying these things will there be other opportunity for the public to have a chance to talk about that side street massing or are we supposed to try and Hammer that out here I think we're supposed to hammer out here because the planning board hearing would be um in a couple weeks okay so then the idea of side street drawings and that we have another night reserved is how we would do this or I mean I think obviously couldn't get elevations overnight so I think what would be the cases we would put in our memo to the planning board that we suggest that the applicant bring more elevations to that discussion so that that can be continued okay I just at the planning board yeah at the planning board I just I'm sorry we can do that okay we'll get to work tomorrow all right then just two more little things get by tomorrow as to the the you know the the things that we do have perview over and that's you know history and interpretation of this area um I would question the um confusion to history renaming some of these buildings even though we love some of these people that have been named I I'm not sure it's it it complies with what we're supposed to do about making sure history doesn't get confused so just just my point I mean do you think if we made a recommendation that the the Witherspoon Jackson uh neighborhood organization had some input review the naming and have the input as well right and that's just just my my feeling so that's I guess yes that would be I think an ideal thing all right so that would be something we'd include as well and then the the third thing is just a response to something that was brought up earlier and I'm not sure if it was meant to be uh to convince us on economics or it was some sort of dig at preservation overall but the comment about all of Williamsburg being rebuilt is totally false it's two buildings were rebuilt on their original foundations the capital and the palace over 80 buildings are original 18th century buildings period oh of one Williamsburg okay wellas we heard a few minutes ago at the beginning that everything was new and um you know I just in this day and age right so y all right so again I don't know what his purpose was I just putting that back out there all right other items anyone has noticed or wants to comment on El you have anything no yeah Elizabeth so Madame chair I don't remember who talked about it but they wanted to know was it um something that was available to the public that they go out to the sites today and come back to the meeting tomorrow were you looking to um resolve this issue today or were you having that open for tomorrow I think we'd like a vote I mean I know we'd like the recommendation tonight and I don't well I I feel like because the planning board is going to continue to address these issues I feel that um there's obviously no time for hillier's organization to come back tomorrow with new materials I don't think that it was the intent was new material but it was intent for the public themselves to go out and maybe even the commission looking comment at planning but I I definitely feel like I don't know I mean I feel like I have enough information here um that we are doing diligence on this application are there other members who feel like they we should delay this discussion the only issue was the justification for the demolition of that one of of some of the structures to comply with the HPC ordinance they do have um structural engineer reports so I don't know if the the commission would want to deal with that instead of having an additional meeting and any comment letter saying that you know our recommendation is contingent upon an assumption that they have these structural reports and that they show those to the planning board as well I mean that would work that we that we stay that we would would um make this contingent on supplying structural information to the planning board regarding any demolition involved in the project let the record reflect the applicant's attorney is nodding okay all right all right if are there other commission members that would like to um you know say differently or okay I'm just trying to get a sense of of the commission and where we're going so if if the Structural Materials are part of our recommendation um that that would need to be supplied as well as Elizabeth's comments on looking at the landscape barrier um uh looking at the elevations on the side streets um looking at ways to reduce the height of the massings of of the larger buildings [Music] um and I don't know what else do we have in there the having the local organization have input on the oh and having uh the with Jackson um organization looking at the naming process and uh weighing in on that um how about the landscape buffer right the landscape buffer I think I I yeah so we that the the to preserve the landscape buffer is uh is preferred um and that uh the landscape also be in the parking reviewed um the lighting would be a a warmer tone of um and um um probably uh I don't know if we would recommend to have a subcommittee that would review any issues that came up with the restoration of the houses I don't know Elizabeth what do you what do you think about that I think that you could appoint the subcommittee now and then offer it to the planning board if they want to go in that direction it's already set all right so who would be willing to serve on a subcommittee okay Charlotte El I'm only here for two more weeks oh I know but they're not going to start this for a while so you'll be back by summer right all depends on politics yeah well we'll we'll make you come back all right so El and Charlotte and do I need one other person or that's good okay so so with those recommendations do I hear a motion to approve the uh is this a vote well this is a letter but Endor I guess I guess I'm wonderingly recommend yeah is there a is that is there a vote on a recommendation Julie does does it matter that um since there's been a meeting advertised open to the public tomorrow I don't that if we don't have that that could be a problem I'm confused right I don't know if it said continuation I don't feel it said it said continuation yes but if you look at the the municipal [Music] calendar said needed some Madam chair just a member of the public couldn't come tonight and was anticipating coming tomorrow all right let's just check what the calendar says because I definitely think we have to stick with whatever has been advertised publicly we have it on the calendar for tomorrow and someone just asked me about that that someone might be coming tomorrow that couldn't come today it's on the calendar right it is it's on the calendar and it doesn't say if needed or anything like that uh what does it say carried from the eth right here's the agenda for tomorrow I think it says carried carried from it says continued from January 8th meeting all right so I think we have to do our vote tomorrow I don't think there's any way we could I know El is groaning I mean it if it says continued then we we don't have a choice I mean it could be a very short meeting yeah I mean I think it's a bit I think if it said continued if needed but it's on there is continued from this meeting which appears to provide the public with an affirmative nod that the meeting will be held but right to put a silver lining on it then your recommendation wouldn't be contingent upon them providing the structural reports they can just bring them with us tomorrow and you can attach them you can attach them to your to the memo issued all right bring the structural rep can the attorney uh Supply an outline of the bring the structural report a supply an outline of the memo that's pretty fast yeah let's just we bring them to I don't know I think we can if if you're okay with just you know bullet points yeah okay all right soer so we'll ask for the structural report we'll get bullet points from Tara and I'm afraid we'll all be here at 5 o'clock tomorrow probably very briefly um Julie what are the obligations to the public that is in here do you summarize something for that yeah so we would sum sumarize our memo yeah we can summarize because we'll have the bullet point we can summarize all of that for the public I think they'd have to see Elizabeth do you know when they'll be posting this video like on YouTube because could we could we have it's supposedly live so it's supposedly live live like so you could we can make it we can create it yeah you can I understand it's live but we have to get it I have to get it from the clerk to be able to upload I don't think there's any obligation to provide this presentation to any public that's here tomorrow because the meeting was just continued it wasn't a we're going to redo the meeting for anyone that couldn't make it the yeah right okay but to your point um I guess we will uh be reconvening tomorrow at 5:00 and um so is there a motion to adjourn oh wait we have other business wait wait wait wait a minute yeah what so El just a minute so I'm going to tell you how people can actually watch this he says going to keep up on YouTube yeah our uh our videos are currently or this video is currently live on YouTube and it'll it'll stay up there if you uh go to the uh Princeton Municipal YouTube page and go to live videos it'll it'll remain there oh fantastic so we will be able to tell folks tomorrow that they can watch the video from today um if you get calls during the day you can tell people to watch the video yes all right so that they won't they'll be current on everything all right okay I'm sorry gonna say motion to other business this is worth it um we just had we didn't have anything on the agenda oh we have the subcommittees for the um the re the renewal so I guess we're done here we're done here yeah we're done here okay see everybody tomorrow than see you tomorrow thank you so much we could do that tomorrow what I guess we could do it tomorrow David how about if we do it tomorrow okay all right is there a motion to adjourn okay all right second everybody in favor bye app