Design Board Tweaks Affordable Housing Project

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

May 20 -- The fight over a proposed four-story, 44-unit affordable housing project on Main Street is going into round three, but the outcome is a sure bet after the Architectural Review Board Monday night asked the developer to make minor changes.

Objecting to the lack of retail space and dearth of “soul,” the board once again asked Community Corporation to redesign the project, which opponents fear is a monolithic “monster” that will destroy their neighborhood and proponents champion as a rare chance for poor families to live near the beach.

“I see the bones of a good structure, I just don’t see the soul of the building yet,” said board member Rick Abelson. “Of all the ones I’ve seen, this is my least favorite,” he added, referring the half dozen affordable housing projects he has reviewed during his eight years on the board.

“We are going to make this a great project, and we’re almost there,” said board member Howard Laks, who commended the developer for responding to the concerns of the community and the board.

Before unanimously granting a continuance, the board asked the developer to add color to the all-white façade and perhaps some tiles at the ground floor level and to eliminate some of the industrial materials.

They also asked staff to provide more information about the courtyard, which some board members had suggested could be eliminated -- potentially decreasing the building’s height -- because the project was near the park and beach.

While some board member’s wanted to do more to address opponent’s concerns that the proposed 27,046-square-foot development with 82 subterranean parking spaces is too massive and incompatible with the neighborhood, City staff told them their authority was limited to the building’s aesthetics.

“I wish there would be more ways of meeting more of the community’s concerns without compromising CCSM’s needs,” Board member William Adams lamented.

When Laks asked why the developer did not heed the board’s previous request to line the ground floor facing Main Street with retail to enliven the street, Community Corp’s executive director Joan Ling, responded: “Because the zoning code allows us not to.”

Ling -- whose agency runs 2,000 units in 80 buildings in the city -- added that they “could” line the ground floor with storefronts, but noted that the community room that now dominates the façade would have to be moved the other side of the building, forcing users to walk around the structure.

Laks was not appeased by this answer. “Anytime we have an opportunity to add retail activity on Main St. we should take advantage of it,” he said.

In a rare appearance, Mayor Richard Bloom, Councilman Ken Genser and Planning Commissioner Jay P. Johnson joined board members on the dais, while Councilman Michael Feinstein sat among the dozens of community members waiting to voice their concerns in the chamber, which is often nearly empty for ARB meetings.

The elected officials sat in silence intently observing the proceedings for a project that is exempt from City Council and Planning Commission review by an ordinance to encourage affordable housing. They examined the miniature model of the project that was handed around, but said nothing throughout the hearing.

Members of the audience, however, had plenty to say. Opponents of the project lambasted the design, calling the building a “monster” and comparing it to Soviet bloc architecture, and called for more stores along Main Street.

Gordon McKee, who lives near the proposed project, said the building would appear as a huge “wall of stucco” from street level. He said that the architect’s renderings were drawn from a distance no one will ever view the building.

Without more stores on the ground level, McKee added, the building “perpetuates what is a dead zone on Main Street.” He beseeched the board to “be the voice for the neighborhood fighting the 800-pound Gorilla of development” by cutting the “monster” down to a smaller size.

Rene Montagne, a resident who lives across the street, agreed. “I am looking at a building that is huge, absolutely huge,” Montagne said. “To say that it is compatible with the neighborhood is absolutely absurd.”

Dr. Mike Gruning, rejected the architect’s assertion that the project is designed in the International style exemplified by buildings in Sweden and Germany.

The only International style the project resembles, said Gruning, an optometrist who is the chair of the Chamber of Commerce’s board, is “East German block house architecture.”

Slightly outnumbered, supporters of the project praised the building’s design, with some contending that public housing projects were the “best maintained, best looking” of all the buildings on their block.

“It is time to move ahead with the project and get some people housed,” said Patricia Hoffman, a Community Corp board member.

Former Mayor Jim Conn, who lives across the street from the project site, welcomed the prospect of having neighbors who live in affordable housing, and not more “rich people,” who are increasingly populating his street in million-dollar condominiums.

“I am willing to give up a little air and little light so people who make as much I do” have a place to live, said Conn, who lives in a rent-controlled apartment.

The redesign unveiled at the meeting moved three one-bedroom units from Main Street to Pacific Street, relocated tenant walkways on the upper floors to the Main Street side (pushing back the façade five feet) and reduced the width of the pedestrian passageway on Main Street from 21 to five feet.

The redesign also broke up the façade by adding articulation, toned down the colors and added 300 square feet of retail space to enhance pedestrian activity along Main Street. There will also be more landscaping along Pacific, where the building faces a row of houses.