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HomeMy Public PortalAboutMinutes 2018.09Historic Preservation Commission Meeting Minutes 8-13-2018 Attending the meeting: Lynn Johnstone (LJ), John McCreery (JM), ArdeneSchoeffler (AS) and Michael Flowers (MF), and DeAndraNavratil (DN) Approval of Minutes MF Call the meeting to order. Has everybody had a chance to look over the minutes from the last meeting? Can I get a motion to approve those? AS So moved. JM I have a couple of comments on the minutes. I think I am listed as stating the approval of the last minutes. I second those, JM, I don’t know who actually moved to approve. Oh PK, that’s ok. Moving down, ok I just looked at these. In terms of the letter to the mayor, AS Oh yeah that letter to the mayor, I was wondering if that is still a standing issue. I did not get a chance to look at this. JM Just some wording, just some grammatical things. AS Yeah like right here, does anyone “had” instead of “has”. JM Since I am attributed to that statement, I would like to have that corrected. MF Yeah I think they are mainly paraphrased too, which is fine. JM I’m not going to object to the approval of the minutes, I think there might be a few little details in terms of sentence structure but nothing significant. MF So, does anybody have any corrections? Ok, so one correction. Where was that at so we can get it? JM Under accomplishment letter, on the first page. AS Uh, third entry down, JM. So it should be “have”. MF So we have one correction. Motion to approve the minutes with the correction? JM So moved. MF Alright can I get a second? AS Seconded. MF All in favor say “I”. All I. MF All opposed, same time? Motion carries. Staff Report 2.1 Request or one non-voting advisory member for Unsafe Building Commission MF Alright so we’re going to move into staff reports? DN We have one item for staff reports. We are requesting for one non-voting member to be appointed by the Historic Preservation Commission for the Unsafe Building Commission. This does not have to be a member, just someone to sit in and be non-voting. JM When do they meet? DN There is not a set schedule yet. But they are going to start reconvening soon. JM Since I am remote from the city most days I would ask that somebody else who lives closer do that. MF I’d be more than happy to. Do we need official action? JM It’s a voluntary thing. MF Ok, just keep me updated on when those meetings are going to be. DN Ok. Old Business 3.1 Ordinance Proposal Status MF The ordinance proposal status, was that in regards to the funding ordinance or to the amendment? DN That was from the previous old business that was listed, so I wasn’t sure if anything would want to be brought up so I listed it under new business as well. MF Oh ok, so well I think we can just tackle it now since it was old business. The ordinance was approved by city council, so we can now create local historic districts without having to make them conservation districts. LJ Does that automatically roll over to Linden Hill? MF No, that’s grandfathered into the old method so if we want to make Linden Hill a local historic district we still need 51% of signatures, and a new ordinance. LJ I don’t think we’ll be doing that, I thought Scott was doing that. Getting the 51%. MF We’re still in limbo, because there had been such a staff shake-up but we had asked for that GIS list of property owners because we do want to see Linden Hill become a historic district, I’m now aware that they have a neighborhood association as well. So I went and spoke there will Phil Krauss about the issue regarding potential development, but I mainly went there just to report on Crane as a Landmarks employee to kind of ease those worries and provide an update on where I’m at. LJ Did you talk to Chris? Because I did. MF Yeah, he spoke at that meeting as well. LJ He said he wants to get it back and give it to a not-for-profit. MF I think there’s some in town that would be more than willing to take that on, from what I’ve heard he wants to foreclose on that property through a breach of contract from the Johnsons, take it back, and from that point he’s the owner, he’s responsible for the easement but if he donates it obviously that changes. So Landmarks is still involved through the easement. We will be notified when the ownership changes, so we can strategize from there. LJ Conserve Richmond paid for all of that, and he never paid us a penny back. It was 3600 and something. MF That’s definitely something we’ll have to bring up with him. LJ Oh we have. But I don’t know if there was anything else that would happen. You know? MF I don’t think so. Unless there’s an agreement, a contract that was signed. LJ There was, yeah. But he never paid it, and then he sold it. Well they split up the property, he sold the Smith house. MF Those were both on contract. LJ Yeah but he sold the brick first. But anyway. MF Moving on, that’s just where we’re at on Crane. The point being there’s a neighborhood association so we will want to loop them in, we’ll get a list of property owners, devise a strategy. The first step would be contacting the neighborhood association and making sure they’re even comfortable with a local historic district. Because this needs to come from the homeowners as I said at the City Council meeting, if they’re not into it there’s no point in pursuing it at the moment. LJ Right. JM In terms of the procedure, do we have and SOP right now that we can share with neighborhood organizations and do we have anyone designated from the commission or from Landmarks who will go to a meeting for instance? Like you attended, and share that SOP with the neighbors and then work out a timeline for their surveying and then develop a schedule so that we can do these things in a reasonable way. MF In the ordinance it spells out how the process of designation happens. Now we don’t necessarily have to have a community meeting, that’s not outlined or required, but that’s recommended. Through Landmarks we do this stuff all the time, I mean part of my job description is going to meetings like that so I’m more than happy to put together a presentation or talk but we could also have other members of the commission attend the meeting as well. So we would just need to contact the neighborhood association, I’ll get that information, and then we would just need to meet with them and figure out if they’re even on board with it. It is to my understanding that they actually believe they are a historic district, I don’t think people in the district know they’re only a conservation district. JM Well they’re a national district aren’t they? A national historic district. MF Yeah they’re part of a larger district that includes Glen Miller Park and East Main. JM So that’s probably how they came to that understanding. MF Sure. So we can clear that up, discuss what the implications would be, have a couple of meetings if we needed to. I think the GIS list is important so we can see who is homeowner verified or homestead verified from the tax, figure out who’s renting and who’s not. And that’s important just in how you approach a homeowner, you don’t want to go knocking on the door on somebody who’s a renter who has no jurisdiction. JM As a follow-up on that same topic, it would be nice to have a newspaper article that outlines the possibilities under this new ordinance for single building designations as well as districts, and some brief description of that process so that people could maybe approach us with that desire for us to assist them. MF Does the city do press releases on stuff like that? DN We do. So if you produce a press release we can send it out. MF Ok. JM This is good. AS That is good because I had the same questions about the historic Depot district, an individual business owner, not one of the leaders had asked me what that means. Are we a historic district? And I said no we will have to approach the association, outline the process, and meet with you guys. JM It would take some of the mystery out of this if we just publish the ordinance. MF Just to say this is what it used to be, now we have this power to designate direct local historic districts. JM It needs to be put into plain English. AS Just like you said you would present to that neighborhood association, the Depot District has their association and I think it would be nice to say this is what happened if the association decides they would like to pursue this, just to give a briefing and it would be up to them to start it and come to us right? Like you said. MF Yeah. AS And they would have to initiate it. MF Well they don’t have to initiate it, we initiate it and we need support to do that. Because the way the process works is essentially we draw a map, create boundaries, and then go to City Council. They can petition us if they wanted to, I don’t see that happening, but citizens could petition us to do a district. They could say “we really want one, here are the boundaries, and we want to take it to Council”. That could start the process too. Generally it’s going to come from the commission. AS So we’re not going to be getting signatures before Council? MF You would want to get the petition signed. The way that this would potentially start is that we would have to clearly define what the project is. We have to clearly define what the boundary is, what homeowners live within that boundary. The whole point of having a community meeting as the first step is because why would we waste all of that time if we talked to people and they didn’t want it after we drew up all the maps and lists and then it didn’t even matter. I think the property list is a good first step too. So this one’s already clearly defined. The point being is it needs to come from us first. But of course we would need to draft a petition, get all that. The first step is community knowledge, and then the list because we need to budget for things too. If we do start this process there has to be a mailing, and we need to figure out how to pay for said mailing. And then how much that would be, how much the process is so we can plan appropriately. You know, I doubt landlords are going to be at that community meeting so we have to figure out how to approach them, whether it’s a different type of letter or something like that just so they can get information. And they may decide that’s something they want, because it does improve property values. AS Well, I’m a landlord and I would like someone to initiate that in my area hopefully, and I’m really kind of upset that the Ball State thing lists me as an absentee landlord. It lists my house as non-owner occupied and my properties as owned by an absentee landlord. MF Anyways, you said our new planning tech is GIS oriented? DN Yes. He has a GIS specialty. MF And he will be in on the next meeting? DN Yes. MF Ok great. So we will push the GIS list until next meeting, I think once we have some staff again and your department’s not so barren we can move forward and start planning this. But I do think it’s going to take planning to figure it out, getting in front of the neighborhood associations, and I really think that’s what we need to gauge first. LJ Yes, absolutely. 3.2 Accomplishments Letter MF So I guess the next thing on the agenda is the accomplishments letter. JM I don’t have an update on that. I haven’t heard from anybody with any suggestions or corrections. If I don’t hear from anybody else on the commission in the next week or so I’ll go ahead and draft that up to bring to the next meeting. AS Would you please bring me up to date on that? JM It was presented as a memo, and I objected to the lack of formality in that presentation. It really was a minor change, I just wanted to have it drafted as a formal communication from the commission to the mayor. AS Ok, I got you. I’m there. JM On behalf of the community so that it demonstrates the success that we have achieved as a commission under his leadership, and as a feather in his cap as it were. And that feather we’re still grabbing for. MF I think we already talked about what we wanted to accomplish with that letter so if you want to draft that letter and make it formal I think they’ll move forward with that. Do you have any updates on Reid Memorialthat you’d like to share? 3.4 Reid MemorialChurch Status JM I have continued to try and get in touch with Judy Rust, who was the director of this Synod team in charge of making this transfer of the building to the heirs, this would be the month when the building is transferred to the heirs as it’s been a year since the building was vacated if you can believe that. LJ Gosh, it has been very quick. JM We do have communication ability with the new owners. We do have their phone numbers. AS The family? JM Right, the family. We do have their contacts, which is the lawyer, and one of the sisters who has been very active in putting together a photo essay in the small book about the building for the family. So that communication has to be done. I expected to get a call from Judy, and I’ll continue to try and get in touch with her. If I don’t I will try to call directly, to get in touch with the heirs. MF I will say Landmarks is still in contact with their representation. The family is being represented by a lawyer right now to help sort everything out. Jesse Russet, who’s our director at the eastern regional office, is in contact with that representative and I do believe based on the communication that they’re waiting for legal things to be resolved. They want to see the community take care of the building, so they may be looking for a community owner of some sort, or a non-profit or something. AS Are they aware the other Presbyterian Church is interested outside of the Presbyterian USA? There’s another church too. MF I don’t know. LJ It’s the next block up. MF One thing I will say as kind of a caveat to that is if they’re interested in it they will need to show they have the financial resources to maintain the building. LJ Right. The other Presbyterian Church is located off of Backmeyer. JM Oh, that modern building over there? LJ Yeah. JM Oh yeah that’s a very conservative church. AS They have talked about, and I don’t know if they have communicated with Landmarks or not, but they were interested in moving their congregation there, and they have a few family members that would like to purchase homes in the Starr District and make that their home church. I would love to see something like that happen. JM Well they had better move pretty quickly. Because the caveat in that deed is that the building has been abandoned for a full year and not used as a religious institution for that time. MF Based on what I know from the Synod is that they’re afraid of legal action and so they’re just going to let it transfer to the heirs. But I think until something can be done, it doesn’t mean it can’t be given to them, if they can prove they can maintain it. I think that’s the biggest thing. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen. LJ Right, but they’re going to need to contact the heirs. MF I guess at this point it seems like it’s going to transfer to the heirs. The Synod is not interested in battling this, they’re afraid of the legal repercussions, it’s going to go to the heirs, and I think that has to be figured out. Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t think the family is interested in destroying the building. JM Yeah, they do respect the building as a piece of art I think. MF I think that if it moves into new ownership, the building will be ok. But that’s something to keep in mind because if they do have the financial resources to maintain the building and can prove that then they could be an avenue after the heirs get it. AS That connection has to be made between the heirs and that church. MF Have them contact Jesse. LJ There’s no way to have covenants on that is there. AS There are covenants there. LJ I mean after transfer. MF The owner has to donate them. So if the heirs thought that it was a good idea to donate covenants to Landmarks they could. It’s just that we have to have permission from the owners. JM And that would be an exterior easement. MF Yes. And that would protect the windows indefinitely. So something to think about there, they are aware of it and we do want to see something good happen at this building. JM One of the challenges has been, and I’ve talked to several people in Richmond about this, is because I did that brochure people are looking at me as being sort of the key person to make these communications and I’m really not that central to this project. I was interested in assisting the Synod so that people could communicate the values of the building and have a better sense of what it was. But I’m not the person dedicated to work full time to trying to coordinate the various money interests in town, the various artistic groups, all of that. A lot of people have expressed interests individually, from the business community also. MF I think that at this point in time, because we do this as a job, tell them to contact Jesse and see what can happen from there. It might not mean anything but she is involved but she is involved enough that she might have better answers. What we do a lot of times is play middleman in situations like this because sometimes it’s the only way to save the building. 3.6 Richmond School of Painting MF Next on the agenda is the historic sites for the Richmond school of painting. I think maybe we should table that until we have some more information, we can then bring some ideas to a meeting, maybe the staff with the GIS technician or skills could make a simple map just as sort of an educational tool. DN And that’s something he would have access to because he’s working with Shaun right now. JM Good, good. Super. AS We would gladly link that map on our page. JM We should even have several maps on our page. All of the historic districts, including the national and the state designations. We should have locations of all the historic markers, these cultural maps also. New Business 4.1 City Webpage Update; Endangered Properties List, Removal and Addition of Documents MF So I guess that’ll move us into new business. I take it the City webpage is easier to update now? DN Yes. MF I saw that our names are now on it, so it is updated. Mostly removing old names and adding our new members. I’m going to sort of interject a new business here since it has a lot to do with what we’re doing. I think what we need to do, and we talked about this before, is put together a work plan with clear actionable goals like we did last time. I’m talking very concise: “this is what we want to accomplish in 2019”. So what I think needs to go on there is we need to actually update the endangered properties list and cut it down to size. LJ Just briefly so we can discuss. MF I’m talking about how Landmarks does it, so we change properties every year. So we start out with 3 or 5 properties, we don’t need to do 10 or 15, let’s have clearly endangered properties on this list and then make an announcement every year so that we generate some press around that. We do a press release, we send it to the Pal Item, or Mickey Shuey who writes those types of articles, because the whole point of an endangered list is to get attention to the properties. Having a list that has the same properties over and over gets stagnant. LJ I think it should’ve been annual anyway. MF It needs to be annually updated, different properties and then we eventually need to report back on it. But the way Landmarks does it is that we do 10 properties every year, sometimes they will roll over but it’s generally new properties and then there’s a huge announcement with a lot of interest around it. It generates interest in these buildings, which has at times saved them. JM Is there an update on the old list? MF She updated it. JM But the status of the old list? MF It’s this huge, cumbersome list. I’m not saying we can’t take properties off of this list, but I think we need to do a new format. We need to do one for properties that are prime like the Bradford place, you know, really needs a lot of work. I’m just saying we need to put together that form. I don’t know if we need to get all that formal, but we need to update the list and make it concise, something that can be written into an article and publicized. Maybe get the list on the website in a nice format. Something like this is good, but you know we need to cut it down. Yes there’s a lot of endangered buildings but we want to highlight the most endangered. We need to put it on a work plan and actually roll it out. JM If it’s endangered we should show some of the factors that make it so. To identify some of the challenges that some of those buildings present. MF We just need to reform how we present it. Because this has been updated, and thank you Arlene for that, I just think that if we have a big reveal every year it generates a lot of interest in the properties and it might put it in front of somebody who didn’t know about the endangerment. JM In relation to that as well, the opportunity to engage local financial resources to put some incentives for developers to come in and look at some of these endangered sites. MF And then I think the second thing that could be on the work plan is I think we want to do the big tent again. Right? All Absolutely. MF I don’t think we should overcomplicate it, we should just do something simple like we did last time. But I do think we need to do something to bring people together, like invite the neighborhood associations. JM There’s a lot of action right now on radical deep retrofits of buildings, architecturally that is from an energy management and air quality standpoint. There’s a lot of attention being put to that. Special symposia are actually being run around the country. That might be nice to have a presentation by somebody with experience. AS Would that be Bob Kester? JM Bob could do that. He would be a good resource for identifying local activists that have done that. Also PatrineLindenburg, who is the director of the Passive House Institute in Chicago, who is a Ball State grad, she is leading a national initiative of deep retrofits for buildings and its part of their training for contractors, engineers, and architects. MF Why don’t you see if we can get something set up? If we could sponsor, maybe work with Richmond Neighborhood Restoration, try to sponsor a talk and have it in a historic building. JM That would be great for all of these people who come in for the town. To give resources they could use back to them. I can get that scheduled. MF Alright, so I think next meeting on the agenda let’s have a work plan session and sort of hammer out what we want to accomplish in the next year. And make it very concise and reasonable so we can meet all of those goals or close to it. So bring some ideas and then we can set a due date for the endangered list. But we are accountable for getting that done. DN Question. Do we want to have the work session as a separate meeting or as a part of the main one? MF Let’s just have it as a part of the official meeting. It doesn’t have to be anything intensive, just let’s get 3 to 5 actionable goals that we can accomplish in a year time span, get it down on paper. I don’t think it needs to be included in the agenda but we should have a document that maybe lists it. And then we can just reference that. JM What will assist that process? Like a flipboard or a writing tablet would be good. DN Yeah that sounds good. MF So I think that if we can get clear goals ahead of us, get organized, and continue to accomplish goals that would be great. Obviously the ordinance amendment was a huge accomplishment but let’s continue to move with that momentum. JM In project management there is that term CPM, that’s a critical path method of scheduling, and what it does is exactly what you’re saying. It identifies the objectives, it places those in time, then with a backwards from that completion date, all of those necessary activities that have to happen are identified. So right from the beginning when we have to put up the tent. Well first we have to get the tent. How long does that take? All of these things take time over that immediately beginning. And usually, with any kind of objective set, you realize that you have to start acting now. With all of the things that you want to achieve, there’s something to do to start because you realize that due date approaches very quickly. CPM is the key term here. MF And then I think once we’ve established the date, every year at that same month we have a work planning session. JM And then after that it can just be a procedure of going through the same motion. MF Well we already talked about the ordinance approval so we can move to the next hearing of visitors. Hearing of Visitors (Unknown) I am a native of Richmond. I was hatched here, I went to Richmond High School. Since which time I’ve been in Ohio and Michigan, you know for education and then have been in Indianapolis most of the time but we’ve kept our property in Richmond. One contribution I might make, and it’s a trivia one, is some ecclesiastical help. The Presbyterians are now 2 bodies: the PCA, which is the one on Henley Road, and they are theologically politically the more conservative. And then there’s the Presbyterian Church USAwhich is the larger body. The Civil War split the Presbyterian Church in North and South, which have merged in more recent years. I suspect you will have theological and territorial conflicts if you’re trying to get PCA to occupy the Reid Memorial space, which has traditionally been in Presbyterian Church USA control, but if they’re motivated sufficiently by the Holy Spirit maybe they will decide that it is indeed appropriate. The other piece I will suggest, if I err then correct me, the term is not “SynOD” as much as “SynID”. “SynID” is used by the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterians, and the Lutherans. In the Roman Catholic context the Synod is a meeting of people. And in the Presbyterian Church and in the Lutheran Church Synod is a denominational judicatory organization. So in this case the Whitewater Presbytery is a triangle-shaped territory which has certain ecclesiastical and judicatory and denominational rules. And then the Presbyteries form a Synod, which in this case is the Synod of Lincoln Trails, I think it’s in Illinois as well as in Indiana, and that’s Presbyterian Church USA. So it’s a little bit like some of the Lutherans. The Lutheran Church was very Synod-based, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, they are very good Christian folks and they love each other but they don’t speak to each other. So that’s sort of how that sometimes breaks out. So I’m not sure where the responsibility does lie in terms of the Synod, in the Lincoln Trails or the Whitewater Valley but those are the groups that are in control. My hunch is that they would not be jumping up and down over PCA acquiring a piece of property. But that’s my small contribution. I’ve enjoyed being here and hearing about what you’re doing and hope you’ll move forward on all the kinds of things you talked about this evening. With that, I’m pleased to have been here. Thank you. MF If we have no additional announcements or new business, I move to adjourn. I just need a second and then we’re good. LJ Seconded. MF Alright, we’re adjourned.