A new proposal for a retail center on Fourth Street was reviewed by the Italian Village Commission last night, and the group had a fairly strong negative response to the project. Last week when we announced the initial details, commission member Jason Sudy weighed in critically, and echoed much of his previous sentiment to the project’s applicants.
“You’re going in the completely wrong direction with this,” he stated. “I think your design is attractive, but this is just not the right use of a building in this location. There’s no way I’d be in favor of putting that large of a parking lot in back or abandoning the design principles for the neighborhood.”
Commission member Josh Lapp said that he appreciated the preservation plan for the carriage house on the property, but didn’t have strong feelings about the preservation of the larger warehouse building.
“I do have strong feelings about the parking lot,” he added. “To add a rear parking and have the front lot seems like a lot of parking for this site. The 1.5 cars-per-unit ratio is not really applicable to this area as it is to Morse Road. This is not necessarily an auto-oriented area.”
It was noted by commission member David Cooke that the existing front parking lot on the site has code violations that need to be addressed, and he expressed disappointment than in two rounds of proposals, no solutions to those issues had been presented.
“I couldn’t possibly be talking about approval until taking care of that,” he said. “There’s no stops to keep cars from parking right over onto the sidewalk and into the street. We have a very strong commitment to make sure this remains a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, and as residents we want to walk down sidewalks and not have to worry about cars shooting out from a lot like this.”
Commission member Rex Hagerling noted that this was not just a neighborhood issue, but that commercial overlay guidelines prohibit this style of parking lot throughout the entire central city. Commission member Ben Goodman offered an alternative viewpoint, praising the adaptive reuse of the warehouse building.
“One of the things I like about Italian Village is the variety,” he explained. “Sometimes working with what we have is the best solution. Given the pressures communicated about parking, maybe the same design aesthetic could be done closer to street without obstructing the old historic structure. I’m willing to get behind this if you can create some quality streetscaping on Fourth Street.”
The commission asked that the applicant return with a revised proposal at a future meeting for further review.
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All renderings via Architectural Alliance.