City of Aurora Historic Preservation Commission met Feb. 10.
Here are the minutes provided by the commission:
CALL TO ORDER
Chairman Miller called the meeting to order at 7:10 p.m.
ROLL CALL
The following Preservation Commission members were present: Justyn Arnold, Fernando Castrejon, Matt Hanson, Kristin Ludwig, Dan Miller, Simon Munoz and Mike Walker. Amber Foster, Seth Hoffman and Al Signorelli called in and excused themselves from the meeting.
OTHERS PRESENT
The following staff members were present: Mrs. Morgan, Mr. Curley and Mrs. Jackson.
Others Present: Roxana Ochoa (451 Spruce Street).
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
22-0104 Approval of the Minutes of the Historic Preservation Commission meeting on January 27, 2022.
A motion was made by Mr. Castrejon, seconded by Mr. Munoz, that the minutes be approved and filed. The motion carried by voice vote.
COA REPORT
22-0108 January 2022 Certificate of Appropriateness Report
There were no questions on the COA report.
This COA Report was discussed and filed.
PUBLIC COMMENT
None.
AU21/2-22.008-COA/HP- Ward 6)
Mrs. Morgan said the homeowners are here. I’ll just kind of introduce it and bring them up as well. You should have all the pictures of what’s being proposed in your packet. The home is in the Tanner District circa 1912. They are proposing to demolish the current garage that is deteriorated and appears unsafe and replace it with a new garage. Actually, I think it has been demolished. As you can see in the pictures, it was in a very, very poor unsafe condition. The current garage was a hipped roof with wide eaves and wood clapboard. The home is a front gabled with cornice returns molded ranking and wide eaves. The home is clad in wood siding. The new garage will be slightly larger at 16 by 24 and located in the same general location. The garage will have a gabled roof with 12 inch overhand and boxed rafter. It will be clad in vinyl siding. There will be lights on the front and right side. There is one metal garage door and one six panel metal door on the side. A sliding window is also proposed on the side elevation. Per the guidelines, our policy is to have new construction come before the Commission, so staff is bringing it before the Commission. In general, I think staff feels that it appropriate. It fits in with the character. The synthetic siding has been approved by the Commission before when it’s set back off the street and not as readily visible. Some of the ornamentation that we asked for was at the eaves. It is not the porkchop eaves that you see on most garages. The windows, it is a sliding window, but it’s on the side so it’s not really visible. Staff would note typically on the garage doors we’ve been asking for windows along the top just to appear a little more historic looking. Also to note that it does need to, per zoning, it will need to be slightly moved if they are not reusing the foundation.
Chairman Miller said can I ask a question about the zoning? I did some math on the plot of this lot and then I add like the 24 foot garage and the 30½ foot house, the 21 feet in front and I came up with only 9½ feet then between the house and the garage with a 5 foot setback from the back of the lot. Within that 9½ feet would also be the wooden deck. I wondered if that was enough room.
Mrs. Morgan said I don’t think there is an issue between garage location and decks.
The garage location and primary structures has to be, there is a certain requirement from code and our code would be taking a look at that.
Chairman Miller said I came up with 9½ feet between the garage and the back wall of the house, which seemed awfully close to me. This isn’t the Zoning Board, so I don’t know that we’re able to grant a variance to this.
Mrs. Morgan said right. It is a building code requirement. I can’t recall off the top of my head what the separation requirement is.
Mr. Curley said I think it is 3 feet.
Mrs. Morgan said 3 feet from primary structure to accessory.
Chairman Miller said so okay, it would meet.
I’m Roxana Ochoa from 451 Spruce Street.
Chairman Miller said did you have anything to add to staff’s presentation?
Ms. Ochoa said we don’t have a deck in our back yard.
Chairman Miller said so maybe I misunderstood the plot then.
Ms. Ochoa said we demolished the deck when we got the permit for the new driveway pavement.
Chairman Miller said I like what you’ve done with the house. I think you removed the siding.
Ms. Ochoa said we rebuilt the siding. They removed the lead from the original paint.
We did a new roof on the house as well, so we’ve been trying to work on it. With the last storm, it actually kind of knocked the garage over, so that’s why it isn’t there.
Chairman Miller said in this case, you may not recognize me, I happen to own the property behind you. So the fence in the back yard is my fence. I saw the garage was leaning. I was really glad you got that taken down.
Ms. Ochoa said it was a hazard, especially with the little one.
Chairman Miller said yes, it looked like a safety hazard.
Ms. Ochoa said we did try to get a contractor, but he cancelled on us. He said he didn’t do historic districts, so that’s why our permit wasn’t completed.
Chairman Miller said in this case for a detached garage behind the house, we don’t really require that it be all that historic, so we are allowing like the vinyl siding. Does the plan specify what the reveal on the vinyl is? Would it be like a 3 inch to match the house? Do you remember Roxana? Did you ask the contractor to put 3 inch reveal in the plan?
Ms. Ochoa said we did, but I don’t know if he included it in the plan.
Chairman Miller said I think the house has 3 inch reveal wooden siding on it.
Ms. Ochoa said yes.
Chairman Miller said often although the siding on the garage can be vinyl, we ask that the reveal kind of mimic the style of the house.
Ms. Ochoa said okay.
Chairman Miller said does anyone else have any questions about the design of the garage? Also could we note for the record we have Kristin Ludwig here. Does anyone have any other questions for the homeowners? No. Okay. I don’t have any issues with the plan. I would just specify the 3 inch vinyl siding and the decorative door like Jill said. Then, I guess, the setbacks from the sides of the lots, if you are pouring a new foundation, it would make you move it a little bit.
Mrs. Morgan said are you reusing the foundation?
Ms. Ochoa said we are going to reuse it.
Chairman Miller said you’re reusing the foundation?
Mr. Ochoa said we will probably do a new one.
Chairman Miller said yes, because the new garage will be a different size than the old one.
Mrs. Morgan said if you repour it, you just need to make sure it is 3 feet from the property line per zoning, so you will shift it a little bit.
Mr. Ochoa said so it is 3 from the side and 5 from the back?
Mrs. Morgan said 3 from the side and 5 from the back, yes.
Chairman Miller said and if the location is an issue, I guess you’d have to talk to zoning. When I looked at, I thought it moved the garage a little bit closer to the house. That’s up to you, I guess, if you feel that’s too close or not. I don’t have any other questions.
MOTION OF APPROVAL WAS MADE BY: Mike Walker
MOTION SECONDED BY: Fernando Castrejon
AYES: Justyn Arnold, Fernando Castrejon, Kristin Ludwig, Dan Miller, Simon Munoz, Mike Walker
NAYS: None
Chairman Miller said I might also add in, I forgot in this one, for the garages, I also like for us to at least discuss the tearing down of the garage. I think as per the guidelines, we really should approve the demolition. In this case, the garage was already down and there was no question that this needed to come down. It was actually falling. But I would at least like that on the record that the original garage needed to come down.
It was literally falling. I would not find that that particular garage was a historical artifact contributing to the historic nature of the district. It was old, but I wasn’t calling it something historic that needs to be reproduced. Just so that’s on the record. I forgot to bring it up.
A motion was made by Mr. Walker, seconded by Mr. Castrejon, that this agenda item be approved. The motion carried.
22-0109 Existing Residential Building Codes Training for Historic Preservation Commission.
Mr. Curley said I’m going to blow through some slides very quickly. I had attempted to pare this down a lot today, but unfortunately, we’re looking at a PDF presentation that we gave in 2015 or 2016. What we wanted to talk about today is a follow up to our existing building code presentation I made 3 months ago, which was commercial. There are similar tools in the residential code book that we would like to see used more often, and as you can see, we’ve talked about this publicly before what we’d be willing to do. I just wanted to share with the Commission what the tools are and how they work. It is a little simpler than the commercial one. Hopefully I demonstrate that today. I’m going to use a, I think this is 448 Wilder, I’m going to use the Eugene Malmer home as an example. It is a completely made up project, but I just wanted to try and demonstrate, especially the way the definitions work, because at first blush a lot of people don’t think this is helpful, but if you understand the definitions and if the code official understands the definitions and the design professional understands the definitions, it actually can help. That’s what I really wanted to stress. This is a lot of text too. This is exactly the same benefits that I talked about for the commercial. The thing I would stress is that if the municipal reaction to a remodeling project is not easily understood or predictable, it turns away projects. That’s the simplest way I can put it. I feel it is incumbent upon us to try to shepherd people into understanding that we are allowing the flexibility of the existing building codes and, frankly, we end up coaching people on how to use it. I’m literally talking to two different towns in Kansas this month because they’ve heard about how we use the existing building code. Here is some history. I jumped ahead here, but the predictability, again, in the middle of the page there, is a really important part of getting people to use this. That’s been demonstrated by many states and I’m sure many municipalities. That’s a quote from the New Jersey Sub-Code adoption in, I think it was, the late 90’s. It’s a little history. Here is a little history of the Aurora codes. I’m not going to go into this. I just want to pay attention to that second row. So essentially when the codes first were adopted in our region, there was an area standard for how much things changed is how much they’d have to comply. Based on the definitions that existed at the time, it was very difficult to use. Eventually, it transitioned into a cost, a replacement cost standard. That proved very difficult to use and to prove between the design professionals, the contractors and the building officials. So they kind of went back, ultimately, in the ICC. There’s a bunch of history. I’ll just send you guys this email. It might be interesting for somebody to see a little bit of the history of the codes here. I want to talk about where we landed. This presentation is based on the 2015 code, which we are under now. We are starting to work on adopting the 2021. As I mentioned last time, kind of the way that we look at it in the Building Department here is that our necessity for the change needs to be greater than the suffering that’s caused, like that kind of idea of proportionality. You’ll see that, again, I kind of stressed that in this kind of graphic that you are familiar with from last time. In the residential code book, there was one method, which if you remember, was called the performance method, which had all the math and all those little bars that I was showing and then moving some up. That’s not really applicable to the residential, so it’s not available to single family residential. What single family residential would lean on primarily is called the work area method, so that’s what I’m going to talk about. As the work gets more intense, the code response gets more intense. What that means if you’re not doing a lot, you’re not going to be asked to do a lot with respect to the existing conditions. The definitions that are defined in this Appendix J are repairs, renovations, Level 2 alterations, Level 3 reconstruction or extensive alterations and then there is also some retroactive requirements. There are some things that when we’re invited into the project through a permit we have to ask for. Primarily those are smoke detectors and carbon monoxide, which some of that involves the state laws, which are required anyway, but if they are not there, we have to ask for them. So there is some retroactive kind of baseline that needs to happen and then based on how intense the project is, the code will define how much you need to change on the existing or how much of the existing, you might get the match if you are replacing something. Again, I’ll go real quick through this, put repairs is really pretty self-explanatory. You are repairing something that’s there or patching, maintaining something that exists. Level 1 renovations generally are not reconfiguring the space. That’s the larger kind of threshold there. I’ll get back into this when we can look at an actual floor plan and talk about it a little more. Level 2 alteration is basically what you are trying to get to when you are using this tool. The Level 3 alteration pushes too close to being a new construction. The repairs are relatively simple and generally, well some repairs you don’t even require a permit anyway, so we are not even really talking about it. This is the area everyone focuses on because that’s where you want to get to get your larger remodels to have a more reasonable code response. The definitions here, again, it came back full circle to work area, but there are a lot of exceptions in how that work area is defined. I’m going to show you those as we go forward. It’s not as large of an area as you might at first blush think. Then reconstruction and extensive alteration, again, it gets closer to what the new code requirements would be. Again here, our project, our Malmer project on Wilder, 448 Wilder. It’s a Tudor Revival, a lot of arts and craftsman details inside. It really looks like a nice home from the drawings I could find. But I wanted to highlight kind of the key definitions here. Part of the other presentation was for design professionals and code officials. I’m just suggesting some things to help the process work better. For key definitions, the work area is probably the largest and most important definition that most people at first blush do not, in my opinion, apply correctly. So the work area, and the most important part of this is in the second sentence there, I think, the work area excludes other portions of the building where incidental work entailed by the intended work must be performed, and portions of the building where work not initially intended by the owner is specifically required by these provisions for a renovation. I’ll go through an example of this. Just like I mentioned in the existing building code, I need a design professional to work with on this. We’re generally, for these larger remodeling projects, we are requiring it already anyway, but I need someone who can work through the codes with us so that we can come to an agreement, generally before any documents are prepared is what I always suggest. So sending, asking one of my inspectors to go out there an look at and determine everything without the ability to look at the project as a whole, figure out the percentage of area that’s included and then let them make a determination on the percentages is not the way I want to manage the project so that we can use the tool to its largest benefit. That owner intention is a very important part of that definition. In addition to that, the exception is another area I’ve seen in particular inspectors argue that the area is bigger than I want to argue is that if the work is exclusively plumbing, mechanical or electrical, as you can imagine, you are going to be traversing things in your basement to do any remodeling on your first floor, sometimes even on your second floor. Maybe you need to work on some electrical things. If you are not remodeling the basement, that’s not an area of work. But that’s not generally the first blush of people that are looking at this tool. In addition to that, if arguably areas of a project that are happening or two projects that are happening simultaneously, do not have to be considered one project. So if you are doing a small amount of work in a couple of bedrooms, I’ll show you an example in a second, and you happen to be doing a lot of work in another area of the building, it’s possible that the fact that one area could be classified as a Level 1 alteration, it might benefit the project by not including that in the larger work area for the Area 2. There is a little bit of complexity in the definitions, but you have to work those in order to get the largest benefit of the tool. We talked about this last time, the purpose of the existing building codes and the fact that they are still compliant is what that slide was about. In Appendix J, there is a technically infeasible clause on the bottom there. As an example, we run into this all the time with stairs, again, if you ask my framing inspector to go out there and say I’ve got to have 6 foot to 8 foot headroom at your stair and then he’ll come back to the office and we’ll talk about it and say well there’s a section here that tells you you don’t have to get that if it means you have to reframe the whole first floor and that there’s really nothing that justifies us asking for that. So this is the tool that gets you toward the reasonable answer, so I’d like to see it used more often. This is a little history of housing units that have been in Aurora and several of kind of the code changes or maybe technology changes that have happened over time. Generally this is census data. The blue bars are the existing units at that year. The red or orange is the number that expanded in that decade. Then all of the verbiage there starts with knob and tube wiring, the introduction of BX in the National Electrical Codes, spacing of outlets, handrail heights, stair widths, ceiling heights, guard heights, egress window sizes, egress windowsill heights, stair widths. Outlet spacing changed again. Egress windows sizes changed again. Stair rise and run geometry changed. GIF’s are introduced. Stair geometry changes again. AFCI arch vaults was introduced in bedrooms and the arch vaults was introduced. It just gives you an idea of the things that have changed over time and what might be impacted and how they might relate to the kind of the age of some of the structures we’re talking about. So kind of getting to the meat of the matter here, again, this is that house on Wilder and, again, a completely made up project. I intentionally did some things to try and demonstrate a couple of these things there. Again, if we were to hand this to one of our inspectors, I think their knee jerk would be this is over 50%. They’re planning on, in the upper left, they are planning on doing a powder room, they are planning on remodeling a kitchen, they’re changing a little bit of a stair. Then on the upper right, there looks like a master suite remodeling and a couple of bedrooms that are being remodeled to the left of that and then the basement is in the lower left and, again, my assumption is most people would say the basement is in because there’s going to be plumbing work, electrical work and there is a stair modification that’s being done by the first floor. At first blush, I think some people might think that that’s over 50% and then you’re going to meet new code. This is trying to demonstrate. The definition of, in the basement here on the left portion of the basement, which is, again, the lower left slide, any of the work there would have been overhead, only plumbing and electric I’m surmising, so that should be cut out because of that definition. Additionally, the other work that’s in the basement was not what the intention of the owner was. They’re intention was not to change the stair. Their intention was to remodel the kitchen upstairs and it resulted in something changing on the stairs. So I think there’s an argument to be made that that may not be included in the area too. So I would argue that the area is really more like this, which is clearly less than 50%. Additionally, the 2 bedrooms, again the upper right slide here, the 2 bedrooms on the left of that slide and the lower and left of this slide are kind of the mirrored bedrooms there. I’m not showing any large amount of work there. I’m suggesting it’s more minor work, maybe there is some electrical work. It looks like I am enclosing a door there. It’s possible you could make the argument that that is a separate project from the large remodeling and maybe not include it in that work and not make those 2 rooms specifically meet the Level 2 requirements, but only the Level 1 requirements. Again, I’m suggesting that those 2 bedrooms are not a reconfiguration, but they could qualify for Level 1. So those 2 bedrooms would fall into the lighter yellow, the second column from the left, and the kitchen, master suite remodeling parts would fall into the Level 2 alternations, the kind of goldenrod one, the third column on the right. I won’t go into all these things, but the code prescriptively kind of tells you what happens in each one of those levels and I’ve broken it out by what the trade here is, so this is what happens framing-wise, and I summarized this under the slide at the end. This is what happens electrically, plumbing and mechanically. All told, the way the code reaction would be here the way I’m describing this would be there’s a retroactive compliance requirement for smoke detection and CO detection. There are some repair requirements for any glazing to meet an anti-shatter, the tempered glass requirements. If there were replacement windows, they’d need to meet the state energy code. That’s the state stuff. I’m just adding that in so people remember. There are some other requirements. Electrically, if anything’s over-fused, you need to change the fuse out to a safety fuse. For the renovation portion, which would be the 2 bedrooms that mirror each other, the outlet spacing could remain the way they were, but whatever you added would need to meet AFCI and GFCI. I focus a lot on electrical here because electrical is the one I argue about with everyone the most. There’s arguments to be made on what’s smart and what’s the smartest thing to do when you’ve got a wall open, but I’m trying to just lay the groundwork on what the codes say. Then the alteration items that would be required, again, I forgot the powder room before, but the powder room, the kitchen remodel and the master suite. In the kitchen, you’d have to have a minimum of 2 duplex outlets. They do need to be GFI. Again, you don’t see a spacing requirement here, so Level 2 lets you stay, I don’t remember the years, but I believe the spacing requirements changed somewhere in the teens and then the 20’s I want to say, so anything earlier than 1920, the spacing of the outlets is incorrect according to today’s codes. If you are not remodeling the house extensively, it’s possible you don’t have to deal with adding them. It might be smart, but the code would allow you to not do it if you’re not doing a major extensive remodel. The powder room, same thing. Master suite, same thing. If there’s a panel, this is another thing that I frequently argue about for code compliance, not necessarily about homes, it would be anything, but anytime an electrician sees a panel that doesn’t have the right clearance, again, by today’s standards in front of it, they want it fixed because if someone is going in that panel to add some circuitry somewhere else, they want the panel to now comply. That’s not what this code says. This code says that if the panels in the area work, that’s when you have to make it comply. It’s a big distinction in my mind. The stair geometry, that one, I think we’ve gotten it hammered into our staff’s noggins well enough to understand we’re not going to require you to reframe a floor because you have to meet today’s stair geometry requirements. As that little graph showed, I think the geometry has changed 3 times at least on that graph. In fact, it actually went up and down, believe it or not, somewhere in there. It actually got harder, it got easier, then got harder again today. The last thing I had here was kind of, again, trying to coach code official and design professionals on how to use the tool. I was probably discombobulated. I’m sorry my tech stuff didn’t work. I’d be happy to share with you what I was actually going to show you today in a little better order if you’d like.
Chairman Miller said thanks for bringing this. I just wanted to back up a moment. The tools you are showing us would really be helpful when there’s an older home that may have a lot of things that aren’t up to modern code just because of when it was built and there’s some major interior renovation that requires like inspection. So we are really talking about interior renovations?
Mr. Curley said yes.
Chairman Miller said okay. This might help someone who’s doing quite a bit of investment in an older home to help them get through the process.
Mr. Curley said we do use these tools more like on a one off basis a lot in working with Jill on exterior stuff with respect to historic guardrail heights, historic guard spacing, handrail heights, so it does get into exterior stuff, but this would be the tool that shows you hey you can actually replace what was there. We just need a little bit of a level of comfort to convince ourselves that was what was there. Another important tool and probably some of the stuff that I’ve got in here for the code officials, and part of why the historic stuff is in here, my staff needs to understand what the history was. Six inch spacing for guards was happening, I think, into the 80’s I want to say, so there’s a lot of historic interior and exterior guardrails that don’t meet, again, today’s standards, but if they are maintained appropriately, the stairs aren’t changed at all, they should be allowed to remain. There are some tools that would allow you to even replace them with like if you could convince yourself essentially that that’s what was there when it was built.
Chairman Miller said that could be the case with some older homes. They would have railings that were lower than what you normally see now.
Mr. Curley said right.
Chairman Miller said in fact I owned an older home that I would see markings where a railing around a small exterior porch, I could see a marking in the siding where the handrail had connected and it was definitely lower from what I would expect to see now. It was in a historic district. Had I recreated the railing, I thought I would be able to recreate it at the height that it apparently was, since the groove was still in the siding. Would that be correct?
Mr. Curley said yes.
Chairman Miller said it would look great. I don’t know how good it would be at preventing people from falling off the porch.
Mr. Curley said the codes change for a reason, obviously, but the code is trying to strike a balance between what’s reasonable for what’s been there. I can see someone wondering about that, but I also presume that would have been there for 80 years and we are unaware of any issues that occurred with it. That’s why all these tools exist. Again, we are just trying to promulgate their use more. I think we’ve gotten a lot of traction on the commercial side. I’d like to see more on the residential side.
Chairman Miller said has this been used with older residential in Aurora?
Mr. Curley said only on kind of a piecemeal basis, not to the extent that I just showed you. If it had, I would have been showing you a real example.
Chairman Miller said there was a home on Sunset. I think they came in for a COA for their exterior work, but he was also gutting the entire inside of the house.
Mr. Curley said that might have fallen into Category 3 anyway and then you wonder whether…
Mr. Chairman Miller said because he might have been at 100%.
Mr. Curley said I guess I just want to stress again, we need a design professional who is willing to work with the tool. We have people that are fantastic design professional in town, local guys and gals, not interested in using it at all and if that’s who you bringing to the table to work with me on it, we are not going to get anywhere. They are not interested. We’ve done some training on this in the past and usually when someone asks me about that, I’ll say well here’s the people who have been interested enough to sit with us, in this case a day, on the commercial side, 2 days, to learn about the tools. Here’s the list of people who learned and make sure when you are engaging them that they are willing to work with those tools if that’s the way you want to go. Otherwise, we can all build something that meets today’s standards too.
Chairman Miller said thank you for coming. This was interesting as always.
This Information/Discussion was information only.
PENDING
COMMITTEE REPORTS
A) Grants
B) Near Eastside Historic District
No Report.
C) Riddle Highlands Historic District
No Report.
D) Public Awareness
No Report.
E) Landmarks
No Report.
F) FoxWalk Design Review
No Report.
G) Tanner/Palace Historic District Committee
No Report.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Mrs. Morgan said I handed out the cases closed. If you want to take a look at this. These are the cases that have been closed since the last time we did the report in October. You can note we’ve got several violations corrected. A window that they replaced with a vinyl has now been replaced with a wood window. One of the ones at 419 N. View where they changed out the door and the windows had been boarded up for years, the windows have been unboarded. The windows are behind it. They replaced it with a salvaged wood door. Staff felt probably not completely to the style of the building, but with it being a salvage and it was really a high stylistic building, I approved it. We gave the owners contact information for Rebuilding Together Aurora and the Neighborhood Project to try to help actually restore and do some work to the windows and porch. At 361 West Park, they had replaced the door and removed some of the surround of the door. They’ve reinstalled a new door. They actually had the original surround, so they put it back. There are a few that have been, I think we’ve kind of talked to this before, that unfortunately it can be a long process once you go through the violations internally. Then we take it to Administrative Hearings if we have no corrections. It can sit at Administrative Hearings for several months trying to get the homeowners attention to come. If they still don’t come, we can close it with a fine at an Administrative Hearing. Then it is a discussion internally whether we take any further actions into like the court system or we can re-cite it and start the process over again. So several of them, that’s kind of where they stand. We’ll probably have to re-cite them.
Chairman Miller said thank you for bringing this. I just have a question. Is it possible to get a similar report of just all the cases that are pending?
Mrs. Morgan said the open ones?
Chairman Miller said yes. Some of them I know are open for years. Sometimes we give people several years to comply.
Mrs. Morgan said I tried to get like kind of the bottom, some more of the active ones that still seem to be happening a lot. I will try to kind of give another one kind of where all of them stand. I know the one vinyl sided one where the homeowner sold it and with the agreement the new owners have come in to begin discussions with me about removing it and restoring the wood siding. That seems like they are aware of it. They did sign and saying they were, so that seems like they are starting to address that.
Chairman Miller said okay good. That would be helpful if we got like an active violation report. I probably would review it and see if there is anything I think is missing.
Mrs. Morgan said then just for the grants, I did do a call for applications for new grants, so please share that with all your neighbors. The current grants, a lot of them are closing up. The porch restoration on May Street is done. The owner just has to paint it in the spring. The Lawndale Avenue one where the stucco and the wood fascia have timbering, it is completed and then they are going to finish doing the windows through the Neighborhood Project through the winter into the spring. The one homeowner also doing soffits, fascia and gutters has the soffits and fascia work done. She still waiting on the gutters and for the weather to turn and get nice so she can get those in. They are ordered and ready, the half round gutters.
Chairman Miller said if we can bring up old business. There was a presentation, I was absent, but there was a presentation on work done to the Mutual Ground and we have some people in the audience that had talked about that previously. Could you recap?
Mrs. Ludwig said I just noticed you in the audience. You had come before asking about the Mutual Ground work. The architect and several of the people from Mutual Ground came and they gave a presentation to us on the work that they are doing and how they are doing it and they even brought in like plaster replicas of what they are doing. Jill, I don’t know if there is a way to share that information, but it was a really, really good presentation. They were showing us not only the attention to detail, and I think they were asking for approval from us on the cornices, I believe, on the design, but they brought in a lot of stuff to show us. It was very detailed, even the way they were planning to reconstruct the columns to the point that we almost thought like should we be documenting this in some way to be able to share with the community. I don’t know if any of you guys want to chime in on that, but we were so impressed, and we were like we wish you were here to be able to see it because it was really cool.
Mr. Petit said I was working.
Chairman Miller said so the approval they needed from us was maybe that it was to use some non-original material on the cornice.
Mrs. Morgan said on the capital.
Chairman Miller said on the capital. I wasn’t here for that meeting, unfortunately. It sounds very interesting.
Mrs. Ludwig said even the way that they were going to reconstruct the columns and they talked about how these would have been built originally and the things that they were bringing in to do the same. It was really cool. I don’t know if I understood everything that they were saying, but I was just very impressed with the level of detail that they were taking, not in just the looks, but the process. I don’t know. I just thought it was really impressive. Is their architect, is she on the Commission for the…
Mrs. Morgan said she’s on Oswego’s Preservation Commission.
Mrs. Ludwig said so it was interesting because there were people that actually would care. Even the like the triple checks where they are going to be taking the original components and even when it’s pieces of it, they have all these cross checks. There was like a three check process to make sure that all the measurements and details are the same before they go and put it back up. It was way more than I would actually have even expected. I just thought that was good news to be able to follow up and report back because at that time we hadn’t really seen the details of what they were doing. It hadn’t come to us yet for any kind of questions. I thought it was just good to see how careful they were going to be.
Chairman Miller said that sounds encouraging.
ADJOURNMENT
A motion was made by Mr. Castrejon, seconded by Mr. Hanson, that the meeting be adjourned. The motion carried by voice vote. Chairman Miller adjourned the meeting at 8:00 p.m.
https://www.aurora-il.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_02102022-2816
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