Historic Preservation Commission

MINUTES OF THE HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2018, 4:15 PM CITY HALL, ROOM 310 A. ROLL CALL. 1. Members: Ald. Mark Steuer- Chairperson, Dave Boyce, Susan Ley, Patti Olson, and Dennis Doucette Mark Steuer, Dennis Doucette, David Boyce, Susan Ley, Excused: Patti Olson B. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA. 1. Approval of the agenda for the April 9, 2018, meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission. Moved by Board Member Dennis Doucette, seconded by Board Member David Boyce to approve the agenda. Motion carried. Yes- Mark Steuer, Susan Ley, Dennis Doucette, David Boyce, No- None, Abstain- None C. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. 1. Approval of the minutes from the March 20, 2018, Historic Preservation Commission meeting. Moved by Board Member David Boyce, seconded by Board Member Dennis Doucette to approve the minutes. Motion carried. Yes- Mark Steuer, Susan Ley, Dennis Doucette, David Boyce, No- None, Abstain- None D. NEW BUSINESS. 1. Consideration with possible action on window removal at 515 Spring Street. Moved by Board Member Dennis Doucette, seconded by Board Member Susan Ley to approve the design review for window removal at 515 Spring Street. Motion carried. Yes- Mark Steuer, Susan Ley, Dennis Doucette, David Boyce, No- None, Abstain- None E. INFORMATIONAL. 1. Review March 2018 Building Activity Report. Moved by Board Member Susan Ley, seconded by Board Member Dennis Doucette to receive and place on file the March 2018 Building Activity Report. Motion carried. Yes- Mark Steuer, Susan Ley, Dennis Doucette, David Boyce, No- None, Abstain- None 2. Review City Raze/Repair Orders and Demolitions. No report. F. NEXT MEETING DATE 1. Monday, May 14, 2018, 4:15 p.m. G. ADJOURNMENT Moved by Board Member Susan Ley, seconded by Board Member David Boyce to adjourn. Motion carried. Yes- Mark Steuer, Susan Ley, Dennis Doucette, David Boyce, No- None, Abstain- None VERBATIM MINUTES - They've got one item on the agenda about West Side Storage. - Oh, okay. Ready to roll? Good afternoon, everybody. Maybe we should reintroduce ourselves. It's been a few months, but anyway, welcome to Historic Preservation Commission, February 12, 2018. I am Chairperson Alderman Mark Steuer. We have Dave Boyce who is here, Susan Ley who is here, and Patti Olson and Dennis Doucette will not be able to make it, for reasons, so, in a sense, we do not have a quorum, but we don't have any agenda items that we really have to hold up, if you will, so we'll move forward. Approval of the minutes: Approval from September 11th, 2017 meeting and the November 1st, 2017 HPC special meeting. Do we have a motion to that effect? - Mark, could I just make a comment that I can't vote on the September because I was not present for the September meeting but I was at the November meeting? - Okay, that's fine. Well, we can't really vote on it. We'll save this for the next. To minutiations. Old business: nothing there. Under new business: actually maybe I could bring this up. As far as our previous folks that we had on the commission, Roger Retzlaff and Jeanine Mead. I need to put together a letter thanking them for their service, and then, in the past, I don't know if there's been a gift card or something to that effect from our budget. Can we do something like that? Have we done that, or is it just generally-- - I would have to check with the mayor's office. I know they usually do a certificate of appreciation for people once they leave the commission, but I don't know if there's a gift involved. - Well, just let me know what that may be, but we need to-- For our next meeting I want to have that. - I think in the past we didn't give a gift. It was a certificate of appreciation. - Okay. All right, that's fine. All right, so I think that's it for that. Now we'll discuss-- I think that's all I have for that. Reports: review the September, October, November, December, 2017, and January, 2018 building activity report. I don't know if you had a chance to look through any of this. I do appreciate that these are a lot smaller than the old days, and save a small forest. Some of these, for example, on page one, 622 Grignon, they'll have some of the fees. Okay, fees paid, but some of the work is like in the $10,000-$12,000 range, that type of thing, and it seems that, in the past, that we usually wait until there's a larger amount, of sorts, to really look at. I don't know if this is just the cost of doing business. I mean, they're talking about razing, so they're-- I'm just saying, for any type of project. So, that's all I have for that. That's really not an issue, at least on these. These are razed, razings, and so I'm not worried about those. We'll just move on. Does anybody else have anything? I don't really see much. We really can't vote on this anyway now. Most of the costs here that are a little higher are for razing of structures. Okay, I don't have anything. Does anybody else have anything? If you don't, we'll just save this for our next meeting. Okay, I'll move ahead. Review city raze and repair orders and demolitions. I know that, Jason, you normally go out. Will you take pictures on these, generally, or the city will go out and do that? - Any time that I receive a copy of a raze/repair order I go out and take a picture, so I recognize these photos. - Was there any pressing issues that you saw with any of these buildings? - No, the short answer is no. That's not a criticism of the buildings, it's just to say that there's lots of others like them, perhaps. - Okay, well, thank you for going out there and doing that. I don't know if anybody else has any questions on these structures. Otherwise, we'll move forward and just vote on that next month. - Have you guys liked that process of having Jay serve you them as I get them and them emailing to you to so you have-- - Oh, so we do look-- - Just in case we're between meetings? I think that's probably the most effective way to do it. Then we can just have discussion here if it's not pressing. - We'll just continue that. That's great, thanks, Stephanie. All right, next, number three, Informational: The downtown historic district, which we're all pretty excited about, so I don't know. Jason, you wanna-- - Yes, the state has requested a few revisions to our nomination package. The most exciting bit about that is that the district now includes the Initiative One building, the Karma Group building, the jail and Safety Center, and I think that's it. Only the Karma Group building, though, is contributing, of those. The others are non-contributing. - But you're happy for that, I mean, it's not for those two but for the other one. - Yeah, one more building, that's good. That opens that up to tax credits. And I have another round of revisions just to tinker with some figures. Everything's on track, and I will be in Madison later this week, the 16th, to do a very brief and not-all-that- entertaining presentation about the district, so, at that time, it will be added to the State Register of Historic Places. - I was going to ask you, then, Wendy, you're going down as well, correct? - I don't know if there'll be time to. - Sorry, it's really a boring presentation, though. - It's all for the betterment of the city, though. - Well, do you want to bring in some humor or something? - Ugh, in the gradual. - Well, we're very excited about this. You mentioned we had a presentation not too long back at the Meyer Theater, was that last month, I believe. I think it was pretty well received. - Same presentation. - Yes, well, I was entertained. I thought it was good. - Awesome. This crowd in Madison, they're maybe not as amicable. - Right, so as far as the designation, then, it is moving forward. - Yep, it's added to the state register on the 16th, at that meeting. It will then be forwarded to the Department of the Interior who, in all likelihood, will take all of 45 days to add it to the National Register of Historic Places. I don't know if that's 45 business days or calendar days. Probably business days if I had to guess. I don't see any obstacles now for it becoming a National Register District. There are 42 buildings in that district. Five of them are already on the National Register individually, and five of them will be considered non-contributing. That's the Initiative One building, the professional offices at the corner of South Washington and Doty, the Pierrot building, which is the building adjacent to the Associated Bank building, just north of that, also owned by Associated Bank. The jail/Safety Center stuff is non-contributing. - You got four. - And I always forget which other one is non-contributing. - Oh, the jail and Safety Center count as two buildings, according to the state, so that's your fifth. - I remember some years ago, Mr. Meindall here, I remember, we testified for that safety building. Remember that? That was years ago we tried to preserve that. I'm very pleased to hear this. I think it's gonna be a proactive initiative, if you will, for us at the city, and I think it's another tool for marketing and any other number of things. Wendy, if you want to add anything to that-- - To Bill for the effort, thank you very much for all that you've done to get us to this point. - Okay, anything else? Otherwise ... - I don't think so. - All right, thank you, Jason. Next we have Ordinance Update, another ongoing thing. - Yes, we've been working internally. Quite a few drafts have gone between Jason and I to try to figure out how this ordinance needs to move forward. So, since we've lost Matt, we've met with the Astor board. They received it pretty well, which was surprising the history that I know there's been with this ordinance and the Astor board. So we've worked with them; we've gone back and forth and sent email exchanges to narrow down some of the ideas they had had as well for the ordinance. So the plan forward is to go to their annual whole-day board meeting, which is on March 19th. So we'll be presenting the ordinance there, but that will mostly be like a question-and-answer kind of thing. We'll have a small presentation to make sure it's on the same page, and then I think all of the questions are gonna be "Well, What about my property?" So Jason has all the property details for Astor listed out already, so I think I think it'll just be much more interactive: "Well, if you were thinking of doing this, "this is what we would probably allow under this ordinance." But mostly we're just trying to run the point column that, "Right now you're still supposed to be coming to us "even though we're advisory." This won't change that. This will just make this a binding review versus the advisory review. So we're gonna try to nail up that column because I don't think that people are connecting that dot. - With an appeal process? - Yes. - Yes, and then I think the whole fact that we've been looking at it from a CLG status, too, and I think some of the citizens there, I think they were buying into that a little bit, I would hope. - Mm-hmm. That seems to be one of the better points that we bring up: the CLG status and what that offers to the city. People get really excited about that because they realize it isn't just for one specific property or one specific district. It helps the entire city be able to market ourselves with our historic properties, so that'll be really beneficial. - Yeah, I think a lot of times with preservation, in the past it's seemed like the half- full/half-empty type of thing, like, "Oh, what are gonna make me do on my property," and that. But we really gotta start looking at the positive aspects of this. So, March 19th. - March 19th is for Astor, and then the rest of the property owners for the other districts and other individually listed properties, we're gonna do around that same time. We don't have a date for that yet. So the Astor people will do their own neighborhood association meeting. It'll be at that meeting that we'll present. And then the next will be more of a public meeting format where we invite the property owners, but anybody else who's interested to hear about the ordinance update. - Okay, well, if there's anything, I mean, I'll ask our committee to be there, and if there's anything we can add to the fabric, we definitely want to do that. - Yeah, once we get some of the more grassroots neighborhood support, then we're obviously ready to make a public forum where we ask the public opinion, maybe do a survey with it, not quite sure yet, but trying to make sure that we kinda cover our bases, because we don't want people to think that we're trying to sneak this in, by any means. We've been working on this for a long time, so I want to make sure that everyone has chance to give their opinion on this as well. - As far as the raze ordinance, is that gonna be incorporated? Something to that effect? Do we have a date? - Yep, everything will be in one ordinance. - Right, but as far as the number of days, because I know we have looked at 30, 15, 10, different things. - I don't know. - Is there a number that we have? - Do you remember that? - I think that's separate ordinance issues. - It's separate, I know, but it kinda ties hand in hand, so I don't know if someone ... If it is a separate issue, then we'll make it as such. - Well, it can be two separate issues, so anything we'd be able to say is a historic property would have it's own, under the Chapter 15 revision that we're working on. I know that, historically, there have been-- What was the date that-- - Concerns that somebody could apply for a raze permit on a non-designated but potentially historic otherwise structure, so there was some feeling that we should have a-- - A wait. - A cooling-off period, if you will. You apply for your raze permit, then you have to wait so many days to give the HPC the opportunity to say, "Wait, we want to re-designate that." Or not. - I don't know if you're incorporating that thought process in right now, but that's something that we had talked about pretty extensively over time. - Yes, I've always treated it as a separate ordinance issue that should be addressed under the raze section of the-- - Right, well, as long as it's not ... - And that would be throughout the city? Every building? - No, not necessarily. I think definitely for historic structures, but the fact is, over time, one of our thoughts is that we will have more and more historic districts over time, as the city gets older. And Jason brought up a good point, that even though it's not on the list, there's always the possibility that something that could become historic might be knocked down tomorrow. That type of thing. So we're just trying to have something in place so that we can at least just look at it. Chances are we may not be able to save it, but I look at some of the buildings, like the Farmers Exchange building, for example, looking at 1001 Club. They had the fire there and that's just sitting vacant. The old Fisk Library, that's been for sale forever. And I worry that these structures, over time, are gonna fall into disrepair. And then, I know Milwaukee, for example, I think they penalized owners of buildings if they let them go delinquent, if you will, they just let them fall apart. It's kind of like razing by neglect. I think that's something we need to look at. - We do have some language in the new ordinance that details anything that would be demoed by neglect, basically if there was a lot of-- Because it does seem to be the biggest problem that we have in Green Bay is that people are letting their properties fall into disrepair because they know that it'll eventually just lead them to a demolition permit versus being able to take responsibility for the property, and that that might be available to help them. - Right, I know that's always an issue, trying to get moneys available and that type of thing. Speaking of that, does that tie in a little bit with the moneys that we got from the excise tax? That could be under "Other." - The revolving loan funds? - Yeah. - That's made a lot of progress. Thank you, Stephanie. - Yeah, it turns out we don't know how to run one of those, so we've been learning on our feet, but we do have an application in, so that's been good. I think that we'll use that as the-- We're trying to change the ordinance here, so it's gonna affect you, but also we have this brand new program available that can offer you up to $10,000 in a loan that's at 2 percent, so we're gonna be presenting that to the public as we do these public meetings for the ordinance update as well. Granted, they're not tied together, but I think it'll be good to present it in a fashion that, "Here's the new ordinance change, "but here's a new program to help you pay for the stuff." - Right, and I know that a lot of times folks couldn't afford that initial $10,000 to get the thing rolling, if you will. Remember the woman, the single mother, that lived over on Jefferson Street? I don't remember her last name, but she came before us. We'd have to dig that name out, but she would have been a perfect candidate. - So a particular action? And you were meeting over at the museum? - She came to one of our meetings. This was over a year, year and a half ago. I'd have to dig through the minutes, but I think was, I want to say 720 South Jefferson, I believe. And she just had a number of issues, and it seemed like she wanted to really protect her house, but she needed that initial money to get to a point so that she could apply. If we could dig through that, I'll see if I could dig through it and find out her name, but she would be a perfect candidate unless-- - Was that for a garage? - No, I don't know if it was just for a garage. Do you remember that person, Susan? - No, I don't remember-- - She was a lady that showed up at the museum meeting one time when you were over at the museum? - No, it was-- - It was a different person? - Yeah, I'll make a note of that to see if I can dig that up, but that was over a year ago. And we just got to thinking, and this was before that money was available. So now that it is available ... Something like this, too, I think, if the people are willing to share that, I think it's a good idea to get little bit of press on some of this over time, too, that we're proactively doing these things. - Good news. Good news. That's what I want to hear. Okay, anything else on that? Otherwise ... - Press. If only we knew somebody in the press. - Yeah, that's-- Hi, Bill. - What's that? - He said, "If we knew somebody in the press." We're all pointing at you. - Sure. Sure thing. - Okay, other than that, Other? Is there anything else anybody wants to bring up? - Is there anything happening over at advising on a renter? - Let's talk. Stephanie will talk a little bit. Yeah, we need an architect. - We're down a couple people, so it's been a little hard to get a quorum, but there are a couple vacancies that need to filled. Obviously, having an architect on here, I think, is really important to the integrity of our commission. Originally we were holding off on replacing any of the members who had left, only because we wanted to do the rollout with the new ordinance. Reappointments, that way people weren't having one meeting where they were in an advisory committee, and then, their next meeting they were at a different type of committee. I thought it would be confusing for new members, but I think that we're just running up against the issue of we have too many open seats, so I'm gonna recommend to sales team that start the reappointment process sooner rather than later, I'm hoping at our next meeting. - So we have two right now? - Two. - Okay. - Ideally, that would be done-- - And also, and I know we can look that up, but as far as our terms, if you will, and just making sure we're current that way as much as possible. - There are some reappointments on terms that are needed as well. - All right, as long as we keep track of that, that's fine. But yeah, we need that, as far as an architect, but Jeanine was a bit of a historian, and when you look at our commission, there's normally seven, correct? We need seven, so what other area do you think-- - Real estate, which we have. Council person, which we have. Architect, historian ... - Real estate. - And citizen members. - And the rest would be citizen members. - And as an advisory committee, we are covered by Jason being a historian at this point. - I'm not-- - He's a contract employee, so he can still give us advice. - He gives us advice but he cannot be on the board. - Yeah, so we're held over right now by his knowledge, but he's not one of our current members. - You gotta really stretch it on the architect, too. - Well, you did some work on your house, right? - No, I'm a naval architect. -A naval ... - Still ... - Close enough. - Close enough. - If the bow and the stern can get confused on your house, I'm the right person to call. - Anything else? Otherwise, thank you for all coming. Our next meeting date will be March 12th, 2018. It'll be about one week before Astor. And I think that I would really emphasize that our committee be there, and I think it's important to show support. And we'll work with you. I'll work with Jason - I'll follow up via email, too, with our new meeting materials that we're gonna have, or what time, and that kind of stuff. We just haven't sorted out those details yet. - I feel that we're going about it the right way even though it's taken time, but when we tried to do this in the '80s and the '90s, we kinda rammed it ahead, and we didn't have the input from the citizens as much, so I think we're doing it correctly. Godspeed on that. All right, I'll make our motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? - So moved. - So moved. Second by Dave Boyce. - So that's a second we have? - Yes, so all in favor? All opposed? All right, thanks.

AGENDA OF THE HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2018, 4:15 PM CITY HALL, ROOM 310 1. Roll Call. A. Members: Ald. Mark Steuer- Chairperson, Dave Boyce, Susan Ley, Patti Olson, and Dennis Doucette 2. Approval of the Agenda. A. Approval of the agenda for the April 9, 2018, meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission. 3. Approval of Minutes. A. Approval of the minutes from the March 20, 2018, Historic Preservation Commission meeting. 4. New Business. A. Consideration with possible action on window removal at 515 Spring Street. 5. Informational. A. Review March 2018 Building Activity Report. B. Review City Raze/Repair Orders and Demolitions. 6. Next Meeting Date A. Monday, May 14, 2018, 4:15 p.m. 7. Adjournment Agenda of the Historic Preservation Commission April 9, 2018 Page 1  1) THIS MEETING IS VIDEOTAPED: THE VIDEO OF THIS MEETING AND MINUTES ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT www.greenbaywi.gov 2) ACCESSIBILITY: Any person wishing to attend who requires special accommodation because of a disability, should contact the City Safety Manager at 920-448-3125 at least 48 hours before the scheduled meeting time so that arrangements can be made. 3) QUORUM: Please take notice that a majority or quorum of the Historic Preservation Commission will attend this commission meeting and will constitute a meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission for purposes of discussion and information gathering relative to this agenda. 4) REPRESENTATION: The party requesting the communication, or their representative, should be present at this meeting. Agenda of the Historic Preservation Commission April 9, 2018 Page 2