and use the rocks as the walls inside the building.
What I think is difficult to fully appreciate
in these photographs is the reality of the scale
of these rock surfaces.
They are upwards of 20 feet plus at their highest points.
They're difficult to perceive scale-wise
because we have to keep in mind the context.
The rooms on the inside are large rooms.
These structures that you see around them
in these photographs are large structures just to keep the scale. Well to your point Mr. Layden I
believe the photograph on the right I think that I actually am standing there during one of our
walkthroughs so the board can get the sense as to a knowing knowing my basic height how a human
compares to some of these natural rock outcroppings correct? Correct thank you. If you could advance
the slide the next three slides are the sections that we were seeing with the markers on the floor
plan. And this first one is cut closer to Shores Lane. In fact, it's cut through the project that's
currently being constructed on the left side there that's got the gray tone over it. That is 11
Shores Lane. And then you can see at the bottom center of the image, you can see the rock out
cropping and you can see that we've noted the top of it. It does vary and undulate as it goes along.
That's why you see the various lines running through it there. And you can see that that is
right at the property line at the most narrow part of the site. And then off to the left you
will see the notation for the property line at the deeper part of the site. We will get to a section
of that in a couple minutes. You can see there the railroad and the coal spur or the railroad
siding that also are quite substantial structures on the north edge of this property. While we're
on this section, you'll see that we have dwelling units on the second floor. So the first floor is
parking. The second floor is a dwelling unit facing Main Street, but you'll see that we have
no dwelling unit on the other side of the corridor, and that is due to it being at the level below the
rock outcropping and is what we consider to be the subterranean undesirable, therefore not viable
dwelling unit right where the cursor is pointing right now. I also just want to point out that the
gray wall at the first floor at the right hand edge of the first floor is against the main street
sidewalk. That's the existing wall. We will see a blow up of that shortly to demonstrate where the
windows are. You could advance the slide please. This is a view a little bit further east on the
site and here you can see we are no longer cutting through the building at 11 Shores Lane
but the rock outcropping is in fact still present in this section. You can see a
little bit more of the impact of that railroad siding on the left-hand side of
the image and you can start to see the windows in the existing wall on the
right-hand side of the image. And again the one dwelling unit on the Main Street
side of the second floor corridor. You could advance the slide. This third
section that was indicated on the plan, this is cut through the wing that
extends at the deepest point of the site. And what's significant here is that what's
colored or infilled in magenta is the lobby at the first floor. It is the only occupiable space
on the first floor. And then you can see the rendered in the tan color above that are the
dwelling units on the typical floors and the dwelling unit on the second floor. Within the
yellow bubble, what that's demonstrating is those are the areas that are again
subterranean, windows with dwelling units, dwelling units with windows, I'm
sorry, that would have views or be inhabitable and viable from a renter's
perspective just are not possible at this compromised location. If you could
advance the slide. So here we have some floor diagrams, and I'm just going to
start with the one in the upper left-hand corner. And these diagrams, so we saw
with the sections and the photos of the rock outcroppings how the rock and the
floodplain both impact the height of this building, which cause it to need to
be higher than the proviso by eight feet nine and a quarter inches. Through these
by eight feet nine and a quarter inches. Through these plans we'll demonstrate the impact of the
THESE PLANS WILL DEMONSTRATE THE IMPACT
rock and the floodplain on the typical plans. So in the upper left-hand corner is what we consider
a typical floor plan. It's a pretty simple double-loaded corridor bar parallel to Main Street
with a shorter wing running along Schur's Lane and then a deeper wing at the deeper,
a longer wing at the deeper part of the site. The count for that typical floor is 34 dwelling units
so we're going to use that as a basis for the typical if we go to the lower left hand corner
of the screen that's the second floor plan so a couple things are happening here that reduce the
unit count everything that's colored in the beige color in the lower right hand corner of that plan
is the lobby uh leasing offices some amenity spaces that ordinarily in a building like this
would be at the ground floor but because we cannot have occupied space in the floodplain
we're faced with putting them on the second floor so they occupy space that we otherwise would use
for dwelling units at the upper left hand corner of that plan you see the area that's rendered in
gray that is back of how um a little bit lower than that uh mr labor thank you right there that's
the loading dock coming in off of shur's lane and some associated back of house spaces that are
rendered in the gray color. Those also ordinarily would be spaces that we would have at the
first floor, but again, due to the floodplain and also due to topography on the site, they are in
fact at the upper or the second floor level, further reducing the ability to have dwelling
units. So you can see in the blue, we have nine dwelling units. The magenta line that's dashed in
there represents the outline of the typical floor with 34 dwelling units and so if we do the math
you'll see that it is a reduction from 34 uh it's a reduction to of 25 dwelling units if you subtract
nine from the 34. so again where we would typically be able to have 34 dwelling units in this case we
can only have nine and then if we jump to the sixth floor which is the plan in the upper right
hand corner, we will see that we have amenity space at the left hand end of this plan. We
originally had this at the seventh floor, but due to some massaging of the massing through the
historical commission process, we lowered the amenity spaces interior and exterior to the sixth
floor. This further reduced the dwelling unit count. So on this floor, instead of the 34 typical
units, we're down by five units. And so to make up those units that we lost at the second floor
and that we lost at the sixth floor, we have introduced the seventh floor of the building.
And you'll see there that that is pretty much the basic double-loaded corridor that we see in the
typical floor. It is not quite the 34 units that we gain back, but we regain 26 of them.
We lost 30. We've regained 26. So that's a demonstration looking at the plans of why
we need the height of eight feet nine and a quarter inches above the proviso height.
If you could advance the slide.
Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, this is a slide that shows in a little bit more detail the
condition at the existing street wall, which is the light gray rendered wall that's along the
main street sidewalk. This is the portion of the historic facade that we committed to preserving
as part of the project through the historic commission process. And there you can see
our second floor structure would ordinarily only have to go to the magenta line. And you can see
that the magenta line is labeled as the design flood elevation. It's a relatively high flood
elevation. This is one of the lowest spots along Main Street. So that increases our first floor
height. I'm sorry, second floor height. But then you'll see that we bumped that second floor up.
And I think Mr. Laver already spoke to this a little bit. We pushed that second floor up in
order to have its structure not be visible behind those historic windows. And one might
suppose that we could have put a thinner structure there, but I will point out that it is occupied
space. You'll see that we pulled the front of the second floor units back behind the existing
parapet to give them the benefit of some outdoor space. It gives that historic facade some relief.
That also was part of the Historic Commission process and approval.
Um, but it is occupied space. So structurally, it gets treated the same way as interior occupied space. So the structure can get no thinner. And I also would add that we are using the structure of that second floor to brace the top of the existing wall, um, so that it doesn't topple into the street nor back into the into the parking level.
But it is occupied space, so structurally it gets treated.
So there are other structural reasons why it is, in fact, not a lesser structural area, but in fact, maybe more robust at that point.
So architecturally, you're addressing a site challenge directly through this vehicle.
That's correct. That's correct.
So that puts our second floor two feet seven and a quarter inches above where the flood regulations require it to be.
the plus the plus of that is that we um have built-in resiliency uh down the road we're so
we're exceeding by two feet seven um what the minimum requirements are now um and then but
but that contributes to the necessary eight feet nine and a quarter inches above the um the proviso
height and the record reflects this we're not bringing back uh akrf as an expert because we're
limiting this to additional information that speaks to the issue before the board yes let's
continue on okay if we want to advance the slide please so these next two slides are um an example
that is less than a third of a mile down the river on the opposite side of main street from
the proposed project this is uh 3750 main street also known as the bridge five condominium um what
I want to note here is that this project was approved with a zoning height of 75 feet which
is about six feet three inches more than what we are asking at the proviso plus eight feet nine and
a quarter inches if you could and I'll just in the upper right hand photograph that's the river
side of this building and where the dash lines are we'll see in the next photograph is where
of that building is raised on columns.
You see them in the lower right-hand corner more vividly.
And if you could imagine with our project
and the rock outcroppings,
imagine those columns or stilts, if you will,
being another floor taller than that.
Because if you remember our sections,
our second floor doesn't have units on one side.
And I'll also point out that on the left side photograph,
there is a minimal screen between the sidewalk or the public facing side of this building and the
parking that's underneath it. I think it's fair to say that our project benefits from keeping the
existing historic walls and that's what we're presenting to the public, not an open parking
area under a building. If you could advance the slide, please. These next two slides are about
historic context. There's been discussion about there being no buildings that were on Main Street
that were as tall as what we proposed. These slides on the left-hand side are different images,
and we found different images from different eras of the same buildings that were on Venice Island.
in order to count the number of floors
and verify that in fact these buildings
were eight stories tall.
And you can see in the middle image
on the right-hand side
that although they're not directly on Main Street,
they are a tenth of a mile from the proposed project.
Just to give some context
that it is not unprecedented historically
for buildings of this scale to be in this neighborhood.
And if we want to advance the slide, please.
This is another pair of historic images
that also demonstrate that while not buildings,
there were significantly scaled historic structures
right adjacent to this project.
On the left-hand image, what is rendered there
or colored over in yellow is the existing buildings
at 4045 Main Street.
And you can see right adjacent to it,
colored in the magenta color,
is what was a gas storage tank.
And you can see how massive that was.
And in fact, in the right-hand photograph,
a little bit. I think that's a little bit. I mean, I think I heard things he said before,
but talk about historic pictures of tanks, I don't think is where we'll move along. Fair enough.
This slide demonstrates something that we felt that we needed to look into as a result of
receiving the proviso at 60 feet, the height limit at 60 feet. If we take the podium height,
So the second floor and the third floor, the dimensions due to structure, the construction type, transfers of structure, transfers of utility.
structure, the construction type, transfers of structure, transfers of utilities that happen at
the upper floor of a podium. We take the podium height, again, floodplain, the rock outcroppings,
take that as a given. So if we say level three is a given, we wanted to understand what would it take
to get a building of the number of stories that we need to achieve the unit yield. Could it be
done within the proviso height and so the section that's on the left demonstrates uh what we
attempted which was to suggest that this be an all concrete building uh our thinking is that
concrete floor structures would be as thin as you could get them and uh so we were looking at a nine
inch slab and then we reduced it to a nine foot ceiling height that goes without saying we didn't
attempt to needle in the, or thread through the HVAC sprinkler pipes and all the mechanicals,
the plumbing. And you can see here that when you add, when you do the math, you can see at the
very, very top of the image that even with all concrete, we still would need three feet above
the proviso height. And I would add that suggesting that this building would be all concrete would be
inconsistent with what is typically done for a building of this scale concrete is a very very
expensive construction method we know that if if one were to go to the city's eclipse website and
go to the the development tax calculator they cite the international code council
dollars per square foot for a construction type of what we've proposed versus the concrete and the
concrete is indicated to be approximately two times the podium with the stick framing above it,
which is what we've proposed. So what we're seeing right here is specifically in response
to the challenge, if you will, of build this building to 60 feet. And in the effort by CBP
architects to look at two different scenarios, correct? Correct. And the section on the right
is what the proposal is for. And there you can see again the proviso height of 60 feet is indicated
just above the level six, the level six marker. And you can see there that's where the eight feet
nine and a quarter inches is necessary to get to the the roof deck on that section. And so this
sort of, that last slide sort of coalesces the concerns or the reasons why in order to make
this a viable project, have that upper floor, we need the eight feet, nine and a quarter
inches. These last two graphics are basically just to reinforce the floor plan. This adds
the outline in the yellow color in the upper left hand corner is actually the footprint
of the project that's currently being constructed on that site. And it shows the close proximity
that we come to it. We've tried to position our building so that we knew about it early
enough to position our building to keep away from it you could advance the slide and this is what it
looks like on the typical floor and if we could advance the slide the next series of slides we
go through very quickly they're simply a reminder of uh the potential of this building um to improve
this stretch of main street um you've seen these before um thank you mr layton uh in the interest
of time, I'd like to call Dr. Angelides for a much briefer presentation, but we appreciate that
important review. Sir, could you please state your name as spelled for the stenographer? Peter
Angelides, A-N-G-E-L-I-D-E-S. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth? I do. Counsel? Good morning, Dr. Angelides. Can you please
comment on market constraints concerning the height limitation that's currently associated
with the approval of record?