Summary of ARB/Planning Commission Meeting
Friends,
Clayton is experiencing a near record level of commercial development. Every one of the CCBA Member Condo Buildings is impacted to some degree by this development. Your CCBA Board of Directors is very cognizant that you, our membership, are increasingly interested and a bit concerned with what all of this proposed development may mean for our City and our homes.
We have noticed that increasingly there is a lot of communications about several of these projects that has made its way through our City and we note that many times the points communicated are not factual thus causing increased levels of angst on the part of our membership.
As you may recall from past communications, The CCBA is working with Mayor Harris to develop better communications protocols. In fact we delivered our initial recommendations to the Mayor earlier this week and her preliminary response was very positive.
Among the items we are recommending is increased transparency regarding proposed projects. This transparency will help keep our membership informed, focus the debate on the important elements of the proposals and help our membership to know when they can and should be actively involved to have their areas of concern or support for a project heard.
With this in mind, members of the CCBA Board participated in the December 2, 2019 ARB/ Planning Commission meeting where two proposals were discussed. We have outlined on the accompanying page a summary of what transpired and we hope this will help you as you consider your views on each project. Our intention is to attempt to develop a set of objective facts after similar such meetings and to publish them on the CCBA Website.
We hope you find this helpful and we look forward to your comments.
Best personal regards,
Brian Kinman, CCBA President
SUMMARY OF ARB/PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING
Two projects were reviewed at the ARB/Plan Commission meeting Dec 2. Both were conceptual proposals, meaning formal plans have not been submitted to the Clayton Planning Dept. Instead the owner/developers presented a summary of their projects to the Board members in order to solicit the Board's thoughts about the projects before submitting their plans.
The first presentation was for a new hotel to replace the vacated two story buildings at 8125 Forsyth, across from Shaw Park. The hotel (Residence Inn) will be 11 stories tall with a full service restaurant on the street level. Comments about the project from both the Board and the public were generally favorable. There were only two recommendations. First, the Board wants to reduce the amount of decorative lighting on the exterior of the building facing residential neighborhoods on the other side of Forsyth. The owner agreed. Second, the Board recommended the owner firm up the amount and location of parking spaces in the adjacent parking garage that also serves adjacent office buildings. Again the owner agreed.
The second presentation was done for HBE Corp that purchased the land & buildings bounded by Central, Maryland, Bemiston and an alley. This was a second, follow-up, conceptual proposal for a high rise condominium with street level retail. The first presentation was done last summer, but it did not receive favorable comments from the Board. One of the main criticisms of the design was the height of the condominium tower: 21 stories. This is much higher than what the city's master plan calls for at this location: only four stories. Since then the owner/architect conducted several public focus group meetings to solicit feedback about the design.
The revised design presented Monday night was for a 14 story condo tower, but the number units remained the same: 115. Thus the footprint of the tower is now larger than the original design resulting in less area for retail. The exterior of the tower has been modified slightly but remains largely brick. Both Board and public comments reflected a concern for a loss of retail vibrancy with the revised plan, especially along Central. In addition there were numerous public comments about saving the historic Harris Armstrong (Shanley) building at the corner of Bemiston & Maryland. The Board did not indicate any support for the revised design.