The Planning Commission on Wednesday was supposed to ratify city staff’s edits to documents recording the commission’s narrow votes the previous week for Matthew and Tatiana Prince’s plans for a new home overlooking Old Town.
Was the editing correct, complete? Did the new sentences say what they were supposed to say? Yay or nay?
Instead, Commissioner Laura Suesser sought to re-legislate aspects of the plan she’d voted against the previous week, taking up most of the next hour asking questions that had seemed well settled during previous meetings on the proposal.
She appeared confused between the building footprint and breakdown of square footage of the proposed structure after Commissioner John Frontero asked for a definition of “unfinished” space in the plan.
“I’d like to piggyback on that,” Suesser said after Frontero spoke, and she talked about the staff report on the proposal before the Jan. 24 work session. The applicant introduced revisions at that meeting to meet the interior height standard. The commission discussed them then, and again at length before voting Feb. 14 with a long list of conditions to pass the proposal.
“So I’m concerned about the footprint, and the height,” she began Wednesday.
This revision to meet the interior height requirement also reduced the “finished,” or living space, to under 7,500 square feet, second fewest of the five large homes in the Sweeney Master Planning District just above the rest of the historic district. And that left 6,000 square feet in the subterranean levels as “unfinished.”
The large amount of “unfinished” space had attracted the attention of commissioners, who spent long portions of the Jan. 24 work session and the Feb. 14 hearing on the topic, along with the roof length and the steep slope of the property.
Suesser also talked about how the building footprint was determined and her understanding that it was over 11,000 square feet rather than 3,500 square feet.
Commissioner Rick Shand suggested the square footage of the house and the square feet of the building footprint were being conflated, which confused the conversation.
“I hope that we’re not using some terms interchangeably,” he said.
Any clarity in the pause that followed didn’t last.
Suesser continued asking about the parking area and a home office that the Planning Commission eliminated from the building footprint as measured by the outer walls of the dwelling itself at each of four levels, two of those below ground, and the interior height — which are two different measurements.
The applicant team had pointed out how some other homes in the MPD had the same features eliminated in their building footprints, and so the documents were amended over the course of lengthy conversation on Feb. 14 to leave out the parking area and a home office in the building footprint, like the others.
“This is inconsistent with my understanding of the Jan. 24 (staff) report,” Suesser said at one point.
“But it is consistent with the Feb. 14 direction provided by the majority of the Planning Commission,” Planning Director Rebecca Ward replied.
And on it went.
Ward frequently referenced the staff reports and the Planning Commission’s deliberations a week ago in correcting Suesser’s voiced misunderstanding of the documents, the discussions, the resulting editing of the final action letters, and what they all had voted on.
Suesser dwelled on an apparent mistake in the staff’s Feb. 14 report that still had the interior height in an earlier version of the plan at 53.5 feet while recognizing the revised plans in two other parts of the report. She declared the 53.5 feet was correct despite the revisions in “finished” and “unfinished” floors.
The Feb. 14 staff report included the definition of the measurement as from the lowest “finished” floor, and noted at the top that the proposal had been revised to nearly 7,500 square feet of the “finished” space and the nearly 6,000 square feet of “unfinished” space. But the report didn’t correct the outdated height on the new report with the “unfinished” floors, leaving it at 53.5 feet when the new height by definition was really now within the 35-foot limit.
No matter, the commission on Feb. 14 had written the requirement of the historic district into the specific notes guiding the construction of the proposal, and added the provision that the Princes would have to go through the Planning Commission again if they ever wanted to finish the space. Further, the commission would have to agree to change the plat notes for the property to permit that, a more rigorous process.
Suesser never was satisfied, and she continued to argue her belief that the interior height was really 53.5 feet regardless of the specifics outlined for how the measurement would be determined.
Frontero kept coming back to ask for his definition of “unfinished” space. The applicant team and commission agreed that the space would be left in concrete flooring and used for storage and utilities.
Matthew Prince in earlier meetings had said he wanted to finish the space and believed that the MPD made the historic district restriction moot, but he would leave the space unfinished to meet the measurement requirement to move the process along.
Frontero and others had some minor questions about the landscaping plan and how many trees would be planted to help shield the house. The plan calls for more than 100 trees on the 1.3 acre property.
City Attorney Margaret Plane reminded the commission the vote was supposed to be on whether the language and edits that the majority of the commission sought in the plat notes, conditional use permit for the dwelling, and conditional use permit for building on a steep slope were in order. They weren’t voting again on the proposal itself.
“I don’t believe the commission properly analyzed and went through the appropriate process in processing this application,” Suesser said after Plane finished. “So I don’t agree that any of the final action letters accurately reflect a well-reasoned commission decision.”
“I’m in agreement,” Commissioner Henry Sigg added. “For me there just wasn’t enough empirical data and there were too many conflicting statements by some of the important review bodies, and that format that was presented at the last meeting was unfamiliar, and so on that basis I object to the findings of fact.”
With that, the commission voted the same on each item as they did the previous week, with Suesser and Sigg “no” on the language and rewritten forms of the plat amendments, and Commissioner Bill Johnson joining them to vote “no” on the conditional use permit edits.
Commissioners Frontero, Shand and Christin Van Dine voted for each part, and Chair Sarah Hall broke the ties again in favor of the conditional use permit language.
Unspoken in this meeting was the 45-day time limit that began by state law on Jan. 2 when the Princes asked for a vote. By Feb. 14, the clock indeed was ticking down, and several commissioners noted that during a relative marathon of a session. The Princes pointed out that they had been working on this for four years.
Critics have pointed out the timing with the state Legislature’s annual session that ends March 1. The Princes a year ago were unsuccessful in an attempt at legislation that would have enabled them to build their home outside of city control.
The proposal still must pass a historical design review, with a different board making determinations about the structure’s homage to industrial mining history vs. residential.
The Princes own The Park Record.