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Thank you.

And we'll call the meeting to order.

Member Webster.

Here.

Okay.

Any disclosures this evening?

Yes.

I have a disclosure.

I am working on a personal business project that would move houses set for demolition to a new site.

And in I have spoken with City Attorney Greg Sullivan about this, if this would present an ethical conflict with uh the discussion of interim zoning.

And he sees no conflict.

However, I feel like there could be a moral um public perception conflict.

So during the discussion of interim zoning tonight, I will recuse myself.

Okay, and I have got one uh this um last Monday when the community development board, otherwise known as the CDB met.

I spoke with Jason Delmu, the vice chair who was chairing the meeting that night after the meeting ended, and was just floating the idea informally of thinking of getting a few of us on the HPAP together with a few of the members of the CDB just to discuss certainly points of common ground and points of possible friction on um the NCOD and the landmark programs that we're working on.

And again, um just an informal conversation.

He was very excited and said, Jim, why don't you shoot a text or uh email to Ben Lloyd, our board chair, and float that by him rather than have me take that to him.

I said, sure.

So I did that.

Ben was out of town and he got back to me today, and he loved the idea too.

So that's just a disclosure.

This is obviously not a discussion item now, but perhaps later at FYI or whenever we can bring that up and give that a few minutes discussion.

Thank you.

Any others?

Okay.

Um can I get a motion to approve?

Oh, I'm sorry, are there any changes to the agenda?

Okay.

Uh then can I get a motion to approve the minutes from March?

I make a motion to approve the minutes.

Got a vote?

Yes, please.

Move a course.

I second Wilson.

Member Nicholas.

Hi.

Member Webster.

Hi.

Member Weisman.

Aye.

Member Holland.

Aye.

Okay.

We'll move on to public comment.

Um this is the time to comment on any matter falling within the scope of the historic preservation advisory board.

There will also be time in conjunction with each agenda item for public comment relating to that item, but you may only speak once per topic.

Please note the board cannot take action on any item which does not appear on the agenda.

All persons addressing the board shall speak in a civil and courteous manner, and members of the audience shall be respectful of others.

Please state your name and state whether you are a resident of the city or a property owner within the city in an audible tone of voice for the record and limit your comments to three minutes.

Is there any online?

If you would like to provide public comment online, please use the raise your hand feature.

No public comment.

Okay.

No public comment at this time, so we'll move on to our special presentation.

Overview of Bozeman's certificate of appropriateness review criteria and process.

I just need the desktop.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh good evening members of the historic preservation advisory board.

My name is Brian Kruger.

I'm the um development review manager for the uh Department of Community Development.

Uh I've been with the city for about 20 years.

Uh and uh currently manage the um planners that review development applications uh for the city.

Uh I also manage the historic preservation planner position.

Uh and uh so I'm intimately aware of the um the task ahead of uh this board and the commission uh and the consultants and staff with the upcoming project.

What I was asked to come here tonight is to talk about our current uh process a little bit and talk about a few projects that um staff has been involved in that were memorable, where we uh implemented um the guidelines and I think made a difference in the in the project.

Um the staff uh that that I work with, we literally have uh between uh myself and the staff have reviewed uh you know thousands of COAs literally over the years.

Uh and we see quite a wide range um of projects.

You're familiar with uh the boundaries of the districts.

Um, but the guidelines themselves, uh I was on the design review board at the time they were uh created.

I was not yet a city employee.

I was not yet a city employee and so I I feel like I've lived with these for a good portion of my professional career and have a good good sense of how we have um applied them.

And uh I think in general uh the staff is you know very proud of the work that we've done uh in in the district over time.

It's made uh I always use the phrase uh you've heard the uh the death by a thousand cuts.

It's it's sort of the opposite of that in my mind.

All the little decisions that are made uh according to the guidelines, all of all the work that the planners do in meetings with applicants, uh sometimes at the very early uh the first step of a project where somebody may come in, uh property might come in to talk to our planner of the day, and we're introducing the guidelines and the topics, and they progress from there.

And we work with a wide probably in this district too.

We also work on the widest range of projects.

Umtimes there aren't um professionals involved.

Sometimes there are just property owners trying to uh make their way through the process, and they can do that because the um these types of permits can be can be fairly straightforward and simple.

Um, but the guidelines are uh key component, understanding what those are, how they apply to property are a key component of the review that we spend a lot of time uh talking to people about.

So in the neighborhood conservation overlay district, it is literally an overlay.

Um so we have our zoning that our staff apply to all properties.

There are additional requirements if you are located within this district.

Uh we use a uh term called certificate of appropriateness as the tool, uh, the application type that we use to approve alterations.

And an alteration can be as simple as um you know, replacing the steps on a historic home or building um a new you know five or six-story building uh downtown.

There are extra criteria, review standards, um, and of course the guidelines, which I'm gonna talk um specifically about tonight.

Um I talked about this a little bit on uh on a walking tour this morning.

Um another thing that makes these types of permits unique and the district unique is that deviations are available to property owners.

And this is code flexibility that can be granted by the city if a property owner meets certain um certain criteria.

And this has been a tool that's been used uh frequently over time, and I think at the beginning of the beginning of uh my time applying these guidelines, uh, if you were asking for a deviation, you had to come to the city commission.

And there was a public hearing that was held, and it was a fairly um laborious and um intimidating process, I think for for many property owners.

That has evolved over the years, meaning the commission has changed changed the not the guidelines, but the rules that apply to deviations, and many of those are administer administratively granted.

Um and now, of course, with the new UDC, um they're exclusively granted uh or reviewed and uh either approved or denied by the city staff.

Um we do spend a lot of time answering questions about repair um because there are repairs and regular maintenance that property owners can make without permitting.

Um that is um that is specific specific in the code.

Uh we also have uh added over time uh permit types that can be um just done through, say a building permit or done by the property owner themselves uh and those are very specific.

Things like spent fences if they're a specific type, uh photovoltaic panels if they're installed in a certain way on the roof, uh, egress windows if they're on the side of the structure, um, roofing material as long as they're replacing the same roofing with the in-kind uh material, and then accessory structures under a certain size are exempt.

And we used to review those, we used to review all of those changes uh previously uh and um I think we find that generally people um have appreciated that change, uh, but we do spend some time in code enforcing for changes where people are confused whether or not they need permits for specific types of things.

So uh as I said uh permits can be uh minor, um meaning a standalone uh COA for an alteration to a building, or they could be um they could ride along with another type of uh project type.

Um so uh typically a site plan is the application type to build a new commercial building or alter um uh say the armory, the the boarded up building that you see there, that ended up being a very uh large project.

Um but there was a certificate of appropriateness review on that uh building.

Uh and so we would uh call it whatever the project name is, site plan uh and then COA.

Um we generally refer to the commercial COAs.

You might hear uh planners talk about CCOA, and then of course our more uh residential neighborhood COAs, we call them NCOAs.

Um just a little bit of uh nomenclature there.

So we have uh standards in the code that uh give us uh review processes uh in the UDC.

They also point us to uh the Secretary of the Inner Standards for certain reviews, and then we of course have our own uh local guidelines that were first uh approved and implemented in 2006, and they were last updated in 2015.

Um the Secretary of the Interior Standards generally apply to historic structures and generally apply to modifications to those.

Um there is not a lot of material in the Secretary of the Interior standards for new con new standalone construction.

Um, for example, building an entirely new building uh in a specific location.

Um they're really focused on, as you can read, uh preserving rehabilitation and restoring and reconstructing uh historic buildings.

And then, of course, our own guidelines are supposed to um comply with those standards generally for the historic structures, and then our guidelines also have other guidelines that apply to new construction that apply to other situations where a historic building may not be evolved.

So the image you see on the map there is from our uh online map that is available through the historic preservation materials on the community development webpage that shows the NCOD boundary, shows the MSU uh historic district in the kind of the salmon color, I guess, at the bottom of the slide.

Uh but the purple dots are um individually surveyed buildings, uh and we've uh spent a lot of time attaching the inventory materials to those properties.

So anyone can go in and pull up uh uh pull up a classification or an inventory form uh which provides us a classification for the structure.

Um we do update these over time.

Uh sometimes the city pays to have them updated.

The more modern form is uh I think that one's not all that modern actually is from 2014 at the bottom image.

But the top image is sort of the iconic 1984 uh James McDonald uh firm from I think they're from Helena that came down and did a bunch of survey work in preparation of implementing and uh creating the NCOD.

So the 84 forms um have uh information, but we will often uh have a property owner um update that inventory form depending upon what's being proposed, depending upon what type of structure it is, uh depending upon whether or not we think uh a change in information could be uh could be helpful in the analysis of the project.

But if if the building uh remains as it has uh since 1984, hasn't been altered, um, we still have pretty good information uh based upon the inventory form.

Sometimes we will have a determination on the form that we think might need to be changed, and we might suggest that the property owner go and uh have those updated.

It costs I I've heard costs for between two and five thousand dollars to get a new survey for a building.

So it's one of the reasons why we don't require it every single time somebody walks in in the door.

Um it costs the city a lot of money to survey in large uh areas, and I know that uh over over time that's been a contentious point uh where the preservation staff and I think board have been encouraging the commission to fund surveying, and there's always a push and pull there for um budgetary resources.

But I mentioned this because this page uh from our guidelines on the left there is to me and to the staff and to property owners, the the most important page in the entire book as it relates to the process because it's uh this matrix lists the type of work that may be occurring uh and on the left, and then it lists the chapters uh in the guidelines across the top, and if you're doing a certain type of work you follow the line across, and certain chapters apply, and if it's residential, certain things apply, if commercial certain things apply.

Um I would suggest that this is a one of the confusing uh of the many uh elements that we have in the guidelines that I think um we've been suggesting that the consultant look into as they embark on a review of the guidelines.

But today this is what we use, and the determination on the the inventory form really determines whether or not the property is uh classified as a historic structure, or um under that definition of a historic structure uh being a property that could be uh contributing to a potential historic district.

Um and so if that is the case, uh the guidelines apply as if it was in a district.

So can you clarify as where this is consistent in the NCOD, or this is like just what's in the city when you get applications?

Yeah, so this is in the design guideline document itself.

It's on page, I think 13.

Um I just uh snapped the page off the PDF available on the website on our historic preservation page.

Um that um that document is the I guess salmon color is the color of the night, that that that document on the right that has been slowly updated.

So we have to classify each property.

Um sometimes that doesn't uh we like to have the property owner include the form uh with their application because they're all available on the website.

It helps us keep that information with their file.

Um, but that comes in with uh whether it's a large project or small project, we we apply that matrix um the same.

So the guidelines themselves, uh I just quickly uh pulled the page out and um wanted to kind of highlight the what our design guidelines.

There's a lot of information on the guidelines on how to use them, uh what what um what rehabilitation is, what restoration is, what preservation is.

Um but uh I think the thing that I'd like to emphasize is when we apply these, um we apply them per the matrix.

Um but what they do, I think they these guidelines don't dictate solutions.

Um they dictate kind of a range of potential things that that could occur.

Uh and when we are when we're applying them, uh sometimes they're very distinct, and it's very clear whether one guideline applies, you know, A equals A.

Uh but sometimes there's a situation where there's multiple guidelines that are applying, there's multiple zoning uh base zoning requirements of the property, and you end up with this intersection where there's conflicts.

Sometimes you you can apply them all, sometimes you you uh some are inapplicable or it can't be applied, uh, and there's language throughout.

There's uh language that uh in the guidelines that uh language like should, may, um, you know, permissive language that I think um some people like the flexibility to be have uh creative freedom designers when they're working on historic properties, and then there's others that uh would like to see these be more regulatory in nature and be more uh specific as to what applies always A to A and B to B.

Um but often projects aren't that simple, and sometimes you end up with conflicts even some even amongst the guidelines, uh the internal guidelines themselves.

So every project gets reviewed for the chapters that apply to the project.

Um we come up with a recommendation, but very frequently when we get a project and review the the planner reviews the application, we may find uh some conflicts where the project doesn't really comply with certain guidelines.

And we usually write a what we call an inadequacy uh letter.

It it's in digital form these days.

We write comments into our uh digital software that then gets sent back to the applicant to respond to.

And they we would simply point out that uh the planner doesn't find that they comply with the guideline and they need to address that.

And often that will end up in a phone call, very frequently a teams meeting these days, sometimes it's uh in-person meeting where we're looking at the project, talking about the project, giving uh more explanation on how we came to that determination, uh, and then the architect or uh the applicant may be looking for solutions or proposing solutions.

So uh anytime you have guidelines uh that frequently there's of course interpretation of those guidelines and that can lead to how would you say it?

More more negotiation, where we're getting a larger story from the applicant, they're telling their their story as to why they're proposing a certain type of project or why they're making these changes, and sometimes all that story doesn't make it into the application.

Um we get the raw data and the materials that we require in the checklist.

Uh so those meetings are very helpful, uh, I think uh and generally productive.

Uh it's very rare that we deny an application.

It does happen.

Um, but usually there's um solutions that can be found uh during those uh negotiations during those meetings uh where we're trying to help the applicants navigate their way into compliance.

Meaning uh one of the prior planners' primary job is to is to help people uh understand the code and be able to modify their projects to be able to get get approved.

Um and I always say the the thing that uh planners like most, all we really want to do is shake our head.

Yes, oh you've read the city rules, you understand all the things, and you just did all the things.

Great, like there's nothing to talk about.

We'd have no corrections for you, we just uh stamp it.

But in reality, people uh have certain reasons for chasing things.

Sometimes they don't understand the the regulation or the guideline, but sometimes they just want to build more, or the client wants more.

Um, and so there's always a very interesting dynamic between the staff and whomever we're work directly working with, whether it be a representative property owner.

Sometimes we never meet the property owner, we just deal with uh professional uh consultants and the like.

So on to the projects, kind of the I think the fun part of although uh you know applying guidelines is actually I think a very interesting part of the planner's role.

Um there's a there's kind of an art to it, uh, and you get to work with a very wide range of people with a wide range of desires and tastes, and um I think it's an interesting part of what our department does.

So I'm gonna go through a handful of projects and just tell a little story about each one.

This one is um called uh 16 North Wellson.

It's a project you're probably most of you are probably familiar with.

It's on North Wilson.

It was a uh demolition and an entire um sort of rebuild, if you will, uh of a of a good portion of a block face on North Wellston.

Uh what made this project unique was there was a trailer park and small cabins uh and trees of sort on this piece of property.

Those were uh approved for demolition and removal because the property owner was just moving the trailers off, and uh they can they can do that.

Uh moving a trailer off a piece of property is not necessarily uh considered demolition.

Um if it has wheels on it, it can just be moved.

Um there were some cabins uh that were in bad condition.

Anyway, where I'm leading with this is that it was a fairly large piece of property.

Um had an alley access to it, and uh what was interesting is that it had never really been subdivided, they just put the park over top of it.

So underlying it was these very nice little 25-foot town uh plat lots that the developer came in and wanted to build two household dwellings on, two plexus, if you will.

And they came into our office, they were a developer from California and said, we're gonna do the whole block.

And this is what you see above, this is what we want to build.

And if you look at these images, a couple things uh come to mind.

Uh large glass windows, um, there's a privacy, I call it a privacy fin.

I don't know if there's more technical name for it, but it's in between the entrances to the it's a solid wall that's in between the two entrances to the dwelling.

There's like this side-loaded staircase that comes up that very much uh I think uh emblematic of you know coastal California coastal architecture, some very a lot of height in the in the buildings themselves, some of the roof packages were um unnecessarily high, if you will.

And so we applied the general design guidelines.

This is not in a historic district.

This was just um outside of a district.

And while I uh again, I'm not here to, I'm not planners do not sell people on projects or say one thing is better than the other, uh, but this was the ending ending result.

And I think there are some people that um go by this and maybe notice that it's different and don't have a feeling about it, and then there's other people in the community that have very strong feelings about this.

Um but my message to you is that there were some changes here, right?

There's no privacy fin, the stairs come straight down, uh the roof forms are broke broken up, uh the uh there's some building elements on one of the balconies that kind of gets punched out as a as a dormant feature, and they became shorter.

And so I think that's an example of some fairly basic uh guidelines in our code being applied and having a fairly uh fairly good, uh fairly big impact on the on the outcome.

What you don't see in these images that don't translate very well uh is there are some change in materials in addition to that.

There's some change in the colors.

Um we walked by this on a tour uh a day ago, and there were some interesting comments from people about it, but um it was also the only time that the first time in downtown where we had a single developer developing an entire block face of detached housing.

We've had developers develop a mixed-use building or large building, but we had never had uh uh a kind of single development company want to do an entire project.

So that is also part of the outcome of this.

And I think there were some comments that well, it's it's not it's not very organic, it doesn't look like it was you know developed over time.

Well, it wasn't, and the city does not control who who owns the property and how they propose to develop it.

Um so if we move on to this, uh we two uh talked about this building this morning.

Uh this is the black olive uh mixed-use building.

This was uh uh a project that was reviewed in 2016 and 2017, why two years because the first version was denied in 2016 by the city commission after they reclaimed authority for it.

And uh the product the image you see below is the elevation that um that was denied.

And the commission had recently adopted a new uh subchapter in the design guidelines that made it uh easier for developers to build atypical non-traditional buildings uh in the what we called the halo around the uh core of the city.

And uh I I said this morning, I'm gonna say it again, it looked like a cruise ship when we when we first saw it.

Um the light-colored material was all eFus, so uh synthetic stucco material, a lot of glass, uh very little brick, um, and it was just a very big um big blocky building.

And if you notice the image on the top, that that was the applicant submitted that, and it is vastly out of scale.

Uh if you look at the um if you look at the size of the building next to it, uh that was a uh the building on the right was a much larger building.

So the commission did the commission denied it uh and gave some comments related to the design guidelines.

Um in a way that gave staff some ability to work with the developer to make some changes to the project.

And so the project they ended up getting approved and constructed.

The image at the at the top is not a rendering, that's a street view image.

Um the materiality of the building changed, there's some wood implemented, more brick, uh the openings in the windows were more punched in, less metal, um, and they stepped down the ends of the building, both both ends, uh, towards the east and the west.

Uh, and I think it makes a big difference uh at the street level there at the corner.

Um again, there are many that uh don't know any of that story and probably don't think about that building, but there's a lot of people in the community that were upset when that building came through, as it was really the first one under that liberalized uh subchapter of design guidelines that has led to some of the other infill projects downtown.

Um this one's a little simpler, but uh sometimes the simple ones are uh have a lot of meaning and have a lot of levity.

Uh the Rialto Theater was reconstructed, if you will.

It ended up being almost nearly an entire demolition of the the back side of the building.

They kept the front facade.

But when the applicant came in, they wanted to take the window openings of the historic facade.

Uh they recreated the historic awning, the Rialto awning from images, and they wanted to put doors on the front of the building and have people come out and sit and be able to cocktail out on the awning over the right-of-way.

And we pushed back against that uh vigorously with the help of the Secretary of the Institute's standards and the design guidelines, and we were able to have them pull that back.

Uh, and we did not um we did not support that proposal.

Um, and of course, the developer was not not happy with that, um, but ultimately that's where we ended up with the approval.

The next image I'll show you is what the result was.

But the on the left-hand side, you see a large um item in between those two windows or doors on the left, and that was a big blade sign that they were going to recreate the the neon sign for the Rialto, which they did, and they had to come in and get a deviation from the commission to do that because it was much larger than our uh sign guidelines would allow.

Um that's what it looks like today.

Uh the facade is intact, and here's an image of the room.

It's a little light in this.

Um, but one of the most uh one of the best uh places to sit in the city at night where you can see the L and across the street, the Rialto neon, and we don't have people sitting out over top of the over top of that uh canopy.

Onto a much different uh type of project.

This is not very far from here on North Montana, and we had uh a couple historic properties uh on this site that was owned by one individual.

And the image at the top left is what they originally came in with.

We had done a COA for the this uh 404, I believe is the address that had rehabilitated that historic house.

Um, but there were uh two more that one by it back by the creek and one was um very close to the creek.

Uh and we ended up having the applicant demolish that building due to its uh floodplain concern, uh, but they wanted to infill with a couple of new buildings, new smaller homes to replace the one that was back by the creek that they lost, that we were gonna leave the leave one to the rear that created some access challenges.

And they also wanted to build a couple of car ports uh for these new um these new houses.

And what we arrived at at the bottom uh was what was approved after applying the design guidelines, mainly focused on streetscape, uh moving the parking interior to the site, uh kind of minimizing the width of the drive access and kind of lining up the front facade with the historic home.

So what you have today is on the streetscape, again, a very a very kind of regular presence on the street.

Um, and then here's your drive access that has a pedestrian way to the back structure.

Really a simple kind of solution to that puzzle, and I think works very well uh on that street.

I think this is my final example.

Um this is uh project that was uh called the Greenhouse Condominiums.

This was 2013.

One of the oldest businesses in the city uh was located on this piece of property on South Tracy.

Uh it was uh called Langer's Gardens, and it had been around since I think I heard like 1901 or very, very like first decade of the 1900s.

Um and they had grown flowers and uh things at this location over time.

The Langers eventually uh retired and sold it to another couple who ran it uh uh for a couple decades.

And come 2013, uh the business was declining, and they had a little retail storefront down there that had been kind of legal non-conforming because it we don't have uh commercial businesses in our retail or in our neighborhood uh residential areas.

But this was there, they had a lovely outdoor garden.

Uh but they wanted, they were done, uh, and the property owners wanted to do infill housing, and they wanted to make a gesture to the community.

Uh they did not uh want to subdivide uh because that would have required them to with their layout put a street through there, and it was just a little consumptive.

So they ended up with a scheme to develop these detached uh homes uh and they sold them as condominiums with common property.

And at that time, uh this is again outside of a district, but guidelines still applied, and so we were really focused on the the building type and form and the streetscape uh sort of appearance and feeling of the project.

Property owner, when they originally came in, we're proposing really just fairly standard gabled roofed homes, no real uh connection to the neighborhood, and we ended up uh working with them looking at the context of the block, and this is what was uh constructed.

Uh and I think what you'll see, and I'll show you some images of what what they look like today.

Uh this is a model image from prune linen architects who who worked on this, but they built very smaller scale buildings, I think, than were typical for the neighborhood.

They were much uh shorter.

But the interesting thing when we had the conversation with them was um queuing off uh the images at the top are some of the mid-century modern houses and duplexes in the vicinity.

And you see these kind of flat roofs or shallow pitched roofs on these structures, and there's a couple of others that have a lot of tree canopy that you can't see the details, but the the brackets and prune Linen did an amazing job of designing these very uh the the streetscape is uh kind of very gentle, and you see these historic elements, whether they're flat roofed items uh or flat roofed elements, or these you know, gentle, gentle gabled elements reflected in those buildings.

And I think they've been really well received over time on that site, and uh really created uh uh quite a significant amount of infill in a very uh limited space.

So that concludes my presentation.

Um we we enjoy the work we do on behalf of the community and we work on a wide range of projects every day.

Um demolition is unfortunately one of the one of the things we spent a lot of time talking about and is one of the more challenging uh aspects uh in what we do there, and we have highly highlighted that for um kind of review during the Lamar project, but um the overall result again back to the I I still don't have a good word for what the opposite of death by a thousand cuts is, but all these projects uh have uh really interesting stories behind them and love hate or otherwise um have produced um pretty diverse uh fabric that we've been uh kind of have very happy to show our consultants in town and show some of the folks um in the city today and yesterday during some tours.

Happy to answer any questions you might have, or if you have other business, I'm uh happy to conclude and any questions.

I just had a real quick one.

Um early on in the matrix, you had contributing and historic, but not in a historic district.

Is that can you explain the difference between those two levels again?

Yeah, yeah.

So back to the back to the image.

Uh let me go back to the map of the district.

And again, it's a little unclear because the so the little green houses or the uh the C foam green houses are individually listed properties.

Um we may we may already have an individually listed property, so it may not be contributing to a district, but it might might apply in that circumstance.

We could also have a historic property that might not be there may not be a district there, but it may be eligible, maybe to be individually listed.

We we may not know, but we would still deem that under the definition in the UDC, still deem that as a historic property as it relates to demolition and uh as it relates to the design guidelines.

Okay.

And then what's contributing?

So contributing is uh either a property that's already in a district, okay, and the word contributing just means that it contributes to the significance of it why the district was nominated and approved initially.

So whether it's the type of construction, individual who lived there, um so there are buildings that are in districts that are contributing to the district that we very much are interested in making sure they stay contributing.

Um and so we apply the guidelines so that they're not altered in a way that removes their significance.

Okay.

Okay.

Um and then the potentially contributing are those buildings that may be older in 84, they might have been surveyed and deemed non-contributing, but here we are uh this many years, decades after uh you know, later than 1984, and they may absolutely be contributing to say a mid-century modern or kind of post-war district that would be eligible to be uh listed.

And in those cases, we might ask the property owner to update update their inventory form, and in many cases, those will come back as potential contributing to a potential historic district.

And as far as Bozeman's definition of historic structure is the same as being in a district.

Okay.

And is it sorry?

I would follow up.

Is it pretty typical to ask owners to update these forms?

I would say not.

I would say not.

Um again, due due to the cost.

And if we can make if we can make a determination based upon the information we have and looking at the home and reviewing it, um we can apply the guidelines based upon that definition.

Um it's just those edge cases where it's unclear.

Um we did we have one recently, we have one recently where they're actually they they it was deemed contributing, uh potentially contributing in 84.

There were some changes made to the property between 84 and 91 when the overlay was placed, and those weren't captured in the in the inventory form.

So they resurveyed it, and they proposed that it was not contributing anymore, uh, and we agreed we agreed with them.

So there are cases, there are all types of cases where somebody might have an interest in re uh re-inventoring the property.

Thanks.

My question was just um so if if there's a house in the Bonton district, but it was maybe built later, like closer to the 60s, it wouldn't be contributing to the Bonton neighborhood because it's not in line with those that older style house.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that that's correct.

And if it's not associated with, you know, I forget the criteria for the uh national register, but it's like a significant person, significant event, you know, part of the city's development, then uh it wouldn't be eligible eligibility to be individually listed, and then it's hard to say if you're uh sort of intrusive or non-contributing house inside a historic district where everything around you is already contributing to another district, it's hard to say, oh yeah, well, there's a potential district out there where we could pluck all these houses across the city and say, yeah, this these are all 1960s uh typology uh structures, and that's going to be a district.

That generally is not how districts are nominated.

So it would likely not be uh potent contributing to a potential district in that case.

And so those houses, yes, can be altered, uh can be demolished under the current rules.

But clarification, but not to like any extent since they are in a historic district, therefore have the protections of the historic district, even though they're not contributing property.

Yeah, so that that's an interesting question.

So and the answer would be no.

Um there are no protections, if you will, of the historic district itself, it's only the design guidelines that apply to a property.

And on that matrix, you then because you're intrusive or not contributing, you would drop down, less chapters would apply, less guidelines would apply to that property.

But of course, if something is refilled, uh, you know, new construction in that place, yes, then we would look at the design guidelines.

Correct.

Yeah.

And that was uh that was some of the some of the uh we saw some of those properties uh on the tour this morning where we do a significant amount of infill uh in cases where the building is demolished.

Um there's a wide range of range of responses of architecture, you can go very much similar to what what is there, but the Bozeman has been liberal in its uh application of the guidelines, and the commission uh applies the guidelines when they've reviewed projects for deviations in the past, many decades of that.

And um it would I would say we have more a wider range of infill type buildings than you would see typically in uh uh more pure East Coast Historic District, historic preservation program.

Thank you, Mike.

So before we dive into the exact guidelines and what where we're going with that, I feel like we have to address something that is hovering over the community, and that is whether or not the guidelines are enforceable.

And so in the new UDC update, um we did include the NCOD in Chapter 3820 as a zoning district.

So that could maybe help lend some enforceability to this.

It says when applying the standards of subsections one through three above, the review authority must be guided by the design guidelines for the neighborhood conservation overlay district.

Application of the design guidelines may vary by property, as explained in the introduction to the design guidelines when reviewing a contemporary non-period or innovative design for new structures or additions to structures, the review authority must be guided by the design guidelines for the neighborhood conservation overlay district to determine if it's compatible.

So you know, before we do a ton of engagement with the community, before we which we've already been doing, but you know, I think it's worth us making sure that we have a stronger ability.

We're just really shoring up that you know these guidelines are in fact enforceable and applicable, and and we have the sort of mandate that we need to in this language to address some of the concerns in the community.

Um is there anything that you three see as a challenge or something that needs to be addressed in that area of the code, not the guidelines.

Thank you.

Well, maybe I'll start and then uh turn it over to Director Georg.

I'll just say we we we apply them and use them every day, all day long.

Um we are actively enforcing the design guidelines.

We are using them uh rigorously.

Um and that has always been the case.

Um there are um you know, again, hundreds of applications that we receive.

We receive uh nearly a COA a day.

Um we're dealing with, I was telling I was telling Member Wilson on on the on the uh tour, you know, right now we're working on um five or six fairly difficult cases involving uh potential demolition of historic structures.

And we are rigorously going and looking at the language in there, working with those property owners to make sure that they are eligible for demolition, and many and many are not going to be.

Uh and that's difficult conversations to have.

We have difficult conversations with people every day based upon the design guidelines.

So I if there's some sense that we're not enforcing the design guidelines or not using them or they don't apply, I think that that that's unfounded because I can tell you know, we use them and we have we apply them citywide or NCOD-wide.

Thanks, Brian, and thanks for the question, Commissioner Sweeney.

Um, yeah, I think this that question uh is exactly why I asked Brian to come here tonight uh and to share uh this presentation is to show um the board members and the public examples of just how his staff are using the design guidelines every day in COA reviews.

So absolutely they they are being used.

Uh I think some of what we've heard in the last couple of years uh from the public in concerns about enforceability uh staff probably my my perception is that they stem from some of the judgment calls that staff is having to make.

And I do think he and his staff are doing an incredible job every day with those those judgment calls.

But every once in a while, there's a building that is proposed that gets uh questioned, and those judgment calls are called into question, and it's understandable.

Any time interpretation uh of of guidelines or or code is necessary.

There's going to sometimes be a question of, you know, well, whoever is preceding it, did they agree with the the interpretation that was made?

And so the goal in updating the design guidelines, and you'll hear Lakota talk about this in a little bit, is to strengthen those and clarify them so that the verbiage is uh even more easy to use.

But it's also important to remember again that uh design guidelines, design standards around the country are intended to be used to guide design and to provide design options.

Uh code is law, and uh is written a certain way and is more direct.

Uh so our hope, and Lakota will talk about this more, is that the design guidelines will um be rebranded as design standards and uh potentially can use um a color coding method to separate what is uh what are required within those design standards and which elements are best practices or recommendations uh more for maintenance and things like that.

So we'll get into that more, but thank you for that great question.

And thanks, Brian.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Before we move on any further, we received some feedback that the Zoom is it's difficult to hear, so I'm just gonna troubleshoot something really quick if that's okay.

I just want to avoid that audio feedback again for fun.

Do you need a minute to do that?

Okay.

Otherwise, just press pound.

You have entered the meeting as a panelist.

Attendees can now hear you speak.

This meeting is being recorded.

I just tried the audio on and off again.

That's what I was trying to do.

Okay, you can hear us, Jason.

Okay.

Next up uh is a first action item work session to discuss the neighborhood conservation related district and our presentation from the Lakota.

All right, good evening.

HPab, uh, my name's Rebecca Harbage.

I'm the deputy director of the community development department.

Also you're our staff liaison.

And I just wanted to give a quick intro for our lovely consultants, the Lakota group.

Um a couple meetings ago, you heard from them virtually as they presented on the um proposed at the time community engagement plan that has still uh has been adopted by city commission, and we are now right in the midst of our really intensive week of community engagement.

Tonight we have Lakota group representatives here with us.

Uh they have been in information gathering mode since they arrived on Sunday.

Um they have uh walked through many neighborhoods.

They have driven the NCOD, they have um read a ton of different reports, they've heard from a lot of people.

Um, and tonight they're gonna be giving you some of their first impressions, letting you know kind of what they're hearing as they're talking to members of the community, and then they'll walk you through some of the same discussion topics that they've been sharing with some of those groups as we're as we're doing community engagement over the course of the week.

Um before I turn it over to them, I do want to just emphasize that we are here doing an intensive community engagement week this week, but this is not the end of community engagement by any means.

So they are gonna go back home and process everything that they are hearing and let us know through discussions kind of what they've heard and what direction they think that we should be going.

Um we're gonna have an opportunity to come back to you and come back to the community to share, you know, is this right?

Did we get it right?

Or is this what we're hearing from you?

And is this the right direction that you want us to go?

Um and then of course you'll also have a chance to weigh in as we start to prepare drafts for review, and this project continues to move forward.

So lots more opportunities coming up, but I'm excited to turn it over to the Lakota group tonight, and they'll introduce themselves and take you through their presentation.

Thanks.

Awesome.

Thank you so much, Rebecca.

Just try to move this guy up a little bit.

Uh we do have a presentation.

I'm not sure if I can access it.

It's on the desktop, so explain something.

It's on desktop already.

Yep.

This one.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, good evening.

I don't know if you remember me.

Uh probably my voice was better last time.

But my name is Sarajas Bahani.

I'm a senior vice president with the Lakota Group.

And with me is the team from Dakota.

Uh Matt Cole, Director of Preservation, and Doug Curry, senior associate and preservation planner.

And um our last member left us a couple of hours ago.

He had to go back home.

Um, Douglas Gilbert, uh, with um Douglas Gilbert's architect.

So he's our subconsultants on this um project as well.

So before we get into it, let me just start by saying we had a lot of fun um walking around your community, really.

It's been such a pleasure.

We started on Sunday.

Um and we just we've been going up and down Main Street.

It's it's a beautiful downtown, and um there's a lot to appreciate, whether it's the level of entrepreneurship, you know, you have very little vacancies.

I mean, put aside the architecture for a second.

There's just there's livelihood, right?

And we see that and we appreciate that.

So it's been such a pleasure um going through the different neighborhoods and seeing all the variety that you have um within within the community.

Um and what really stood out the most to us is just how much people care.

People care about this community, um, they care about the NCOD and uh, you know, people coming um out on tours with us, wanting to talk to us, finding us at the open house.

Everyone is very knowledgeable, and everybody um has a passion for this place.

And that really is um just great to see and is we've been thrilled by this so far.

And um we also we're we were able to have some conversations with the community, right?

And we'll walk through through a lot of this.

But a big part of the conversation is this is a huge district, and we all recognize that.

This NCOD is very large.

I don't think we've ever seen anything as big as that, if I'm being honest.

Um, and it encompasses a variety of different architectural styles and development patterns, and that just comes with its own implications.

But I think part of the understanding is we all know not not not everything in there is historic.

We all understand that not everything in there is old and necessarily worthy of preservation.

We're trying to understand how change can happen in the future, respecting the context that we have and understanding where it best applies and where it doesn't.

So there is a lot of baseline understanding that we've been able to kind of get to with our conversations with the community that helps kind of inform the next steps, right?

So how does this work?

You know who we are.

Okay.

So Rebecca did already kind of give you an overview, but um just to kind of rehash it, we uh we started conversations on Monday, and you know, we met with city staff, design professionals, architects, real estate professionals, developers, community members, we got a lot of folks coming out to the open house, and it was a it was um really great conversations.

We met with the neighborhood focused group, which was um very new to this process and to Bozeman and to us as well, and we were able to have focused discussions with them.

Um we met with downtown bid earlier today.

Um we had some focused conversations with city commissioners, and then tonight with you all.

So we've already been able to gather some input.

I'm just gonna walk you through what we've heard so far.

So to first and foremost, and just to get that out of the way, yes, the conversation always starts at scale.

We're all recognizing that.

Height massing and scale dominates the conversation.

We all understand that.

This is the entry point in almost every conversation, and um it's often seen as the one thing that we sort of want to figure out.

All of that is understood, and there's most sensitivities around the transition areas.

We also understand that that has been part, and that has been largely regulated by zoning.

And what we're trying to achieve today is an understanding of design character.

So slightly different, and just wanting to make sure that there aren't any kind of false promises that are coming with this document necessarily.

So, yes, we understand that now knowing what we know about scale, knowing what we know about zoning, how can design guidelines or design standards, what we're hoping to call them, um, better inform what's coming into the NCOD, knowing that there is an underlying zoning?

I think this is the exercise that we're trying to achieve, and just kind of making it clear for everybody involved.

So that's the first thing.

Once we talk about scale, then it becomes about character.

So once we're past that, we're able to start think about thinking about the context.

So we've had some preliminary conversations, trying to um wrap our heads around the scale of the NCOD.

One approach that we're thinking about is a tiered or context-based approach.

Meaning we have eight historic nine historic districts in the NCOD.

Do those merit a more strict stricter approach when it comes to design standards, when it comes to materiality, when it comes to new construction, um, when it comes to overall streetscape and pedestrian experience compared to other areas within the NCOD.

Namely, we have um we've already seen some character zones within the NCOD, and um others on the team can talk about that.

So, aside from historic districts, there are some potential identified character areas, and then there's everything else.

So, can we think about this in a three-tiered approach?

And if we do, how does the design standard shift and vary between those three areas?

What do we care most about, and how are we best enforcing it um differently in the three different areas?

One easy way is materials.

We've we've had a lot of conversations about materials.

And um of the more interesting things that we heard in one of the last meetings is that we've allowed for quote unquote lower quality, whatever that means, lower quality materials to come in to the NCOD in hopes that that would allow us to subsidize even more, right?

Some of the development that's coming in to achieve some affordable housing.

Unfortunately, the majority of our new construction and development that's coming into the NCOD is at market rate.

So affordability is not necessarily justifying the material anymore.

That being said, that just simply weakens that um argument of choosing specific materials to advance development and bring in more units.

Well, can we now flip the table and talk about higher expectations?

How can we rethink materials in the NCOD to achieve higher quality design?

And when we talk about higher quality design, are we trying to better blend into what we have?

We always want to make a distinguishment between what's old and what's new.

That's for sure.

And we do not want to fall into false historicism.

That's also sure.

But to what extent are we moving to the other side and why?

Right.

So are we thinking of the overall fabric, of the overall pedestrian experience?

So these are all conversations that we want to have.

And mind you, even when it comes to materials, we can break it down into three different tiers.

And we can then start understanding what are alternate materials that are accepted in certain areas of the NCOD.

Right.

So that's all part of the conversation.

This one was fun.

People love additions.

And they've been done very successfully.

They've been following the current guidelines.

And we saw a lot of great examples today on the tour with Ryan and the rest of the team.

And people love these editions.

Really, there isn't that much opposition to what's to the editions that we saw.

And everybody seemed to be content with what's going on today and how the current guidelines have been applied in specific to additions.

So we thought that was a success.

And I believe this is my last slide.

So the focus is not always just the individual building, but the overall neighborhood fabric and how everything comes together.

That's what we've heard so far.

So there's definitely a lot more detail in what we've gathered.

And there's pages and pages of notes, and we're happy to obviously document all of that.

And during the open house, we've gathered a lot of comment cards, which we're happy to provide and submit in raw form, and then also in our own summary of what that means and kind of how we're finding thematically like what we're hearing.

So all of that will be provided for sure.

But that's just like a high level for you all.

And now everything we talked about earlier, we're gonna have a discussion about next.

So there is about seven topics that we want to go through, whether it's materials or the tiered approach, um, overall design elements.

And we're hoping to maybe have a 10-minute discussion um about each of these.

If we need more time, we need more time.

Um but it's really about us listening to you all and seeing how you want to see change happen.

Can I say my question?

Yes.

Um, you're talking about uh design standards earlier.

Right?

So are standards flow or they differ in code.

So this is the I just want to make sure I clear on what the term are using.

I'll ask it again.

I was using my teacher voice.

Uh clarification between what the term standards means in this case.

Yeah, so um design guidelines are commonly in their own sort of document in a booklet.

That's really common around the country.

Um the term design guidelines is also very common around the country.

Umbrand and also Lakota came up with the same idea in discussion with us.

Um it was in response to concern over the word guidelines that it was giving a perception that it was uh that it had no teeth.

And so my uh the idea to call it standards is more for perception more than anything.

It doesn't, I don't think it gives it a different legal meaning if I'm being honest.

Uh but again, code is law.

The code references as uh Commissioner Sweeney read for us, references the NCOD design guidelines, and even if we change the title of them, the code is still going to reference them.

Um I do hope also in updating the code that we might explore the verbiage in the code.

So under the landmark project, we are looking at that whole chapter that the NCOD co-language lives in.

So that verbiage about must be guided by, that's a terrible sentence because must is compulsory, but guided suggests suggestions.

So that sets up a conflict on its own.

So that's one way we can fix it in the actual code under the landmark um code amendments, and then the other is making the guidelines themselves clearer, calling them standards more for perception.

Hopefully that's hopeful.

So right now the word standard is a euphemism for guidelines.

I wouldn't say it that way, but I suppose yeah, I you could yeah.

Can I I think I think we found that words were just getting in our way?

And if we call it the design guidelines that was causing some angst that was not intended, because when we say design guidelines, we're referring to a set of things that may be standards and maybe guidelines, maybe compulsory, maybe mandatory, maybe recommendation.

It's a combination of all of that and the wording is what was causing some of the problems.

And so we're shifting to calling it design standards for the perception issue, as Aaron said, but also because we want to acknowledge that there may be more pieces of this that are very obviously mandatory moving forward.

Thank you, Rebecca.

I just want offer Saraj, if you've seen something along that those lines nationwide that is helpful, feel free to chime in on that.

I hear you.

Um the idea here is that design standards, the way the design guidelines you have today are very much open to interpretation, a lot more than a typical design guidelines slash standards are meant to be.

And I think this is where the confusion is happening, is they're having to interpret the guidelines more than the guidelines themselves are being um easily understood.

So design standards or guidelines overall will always be a combination of both, certain elements that are enforceable and certain things that are best practices.

There is always going to have to be room for flexibility and design creativity, otherwise everything would have to look the same in your district.

So the way we would look at them is some elements lend themselves to be more kind of clear and forceable, think placement setback, think um material expectations, think um what's going on on your primary facade versus your secondary facades.

Um these things are meant to be more can be more enforceable, right?

And these are certain details that matter to all of us, and we're hoping to enforce.

But at the same time, you know, some architectural um features, whether it's um like the detailing you bring to your porch or the detailing you bring through door.

Like we we cannot specify down to the T.

So some of these then become best practices.

Um, in certain in certain communities, it's color, right?

So we want to try and enforce as much as we can while allowing for some flexibility.

Does that answer your question?

So I'm understanding it correctly.

Um there can be elements in the standards that are enforceable, but they would have to be enforceable via code because that's the only mechanism we have at this point.

Not exactly.

So the code, first of all, the the standards, it's the NCOD design standards in their updated form when we're done with this project will get adopted by city commission.

They will be referenced in the code as well.

So they have never been unenforceable.

That is a misperception.

They have always been something that we can use and apply to development applications, and we have been for decades.

So to clarify what he was describing and to answer your question more directly, um, the breakdown that he's describing is to have elements in there that say that that are clearly identified as mandatory, and then other elements which are clearly identified as advice, so that it's there's no question about what's a suggestion versus what's a requirement.

So, yes, they can have actual requirements in them.

They do now.

We're just proposing clear wording.

I think that is more clear now.

Thank you both.

So I guess with that, we can start our um engaging session engagement session with you all.

And we kind of brushed on this and talked a little bit about the potential tiered approach.

So this is a question to you all.

Do you see value in having distinguishment in um in our design standards based on context?

And if so, how are we deciding where you know these standards are more strict versus Lenians?

Is it simply historic districts versus non-historic districts, or do we want to add a third layer where we identify other character areas that are not necessarily historic districts but still merit a higher level of um provision?

Certainly I think you start with the historic districts having the highest standards that just stands to reason they didn't get that way by accident.

Correct.

Now other areas, sure, it's good to have some standards maybe if you've got a mid-range area or another district that might be considered for historic status later.

Sure, maybe there's some leniency in there because I think we all know on this board.

I know I learned it 25, 30 years ago, that our job is not to try to save every brick, and nor should we, and you gotta pick your battles.

But I think picking a battle with keeping the historic integrity of the historic districts intact is very important.

So I think I was the only one who put my little sticker on the board, said no.

Okay.

Because I thought, you know, we've got these historic districts, but then there's spaces in between the it's a historic neighborhood, but it isn't, you know, it's in between the Bonton and whatever the next one is.

And I thought those areas, you know, what about those areas?

They're they're still important.

Um, but now I do think like maybe the tiered approach would have like a more of a buffer or something where like, okay, maybe it's not one very strict standards of the entire thing, but respecting that there are gaps within those historic districts that probably nobody would know that it's not in historic neighborhood.

That's great feedback.

Um, and so let me ask you this.

So we know what how we want to preserve Bontan, let's say that's the strictest it's a historic district.

When we talk about buffer areas right around the Bonton, how what in those are you hoping to preserve?

Is it the materiality?

Is it um the like it would you prefer seeing certain choices of materials there um versus not overall streetscape?

Um yeah, I think I mean just on the walk this morning and seeing the streetscape disrupted was pretty impactful.

Um but I do think materiality also, although yeah.

Yeah.

But I think the street shape, and then also yet the size and the height, obviously, right?

That goes without saying.

Right.

So materiality can be one of the things that we want to think about in transition areas, possibly.

I think so.

Yeah, I'll agree with Ashley there.

Mass and scale again is like a number one, as you've been hearing from our community members.

Um, right, so that in those buffer zones, right?

It's not like the big one gets transitioned down to the more restrictive, right?

But that on the other end where there's like the more restrictive, then that carries over into the other one, right?

I didn't say that very well, my bad.

Um and then yes to what Jim said.

They're historic districts, these are nationally recognized areas.

They need our help, support, and protection.

100%.

Agreed.

I think uh one of the things we've heard from staff is that they've talked about there's a little bit of that already, like when they look at something in the historic district or like Brian Kruger was saying with things that are contributing or historically significant, they they get a little more scrutiny.

I think what would be nice if we look at a tiered system is just to clarify those divisions and make that much more obvious as to okay, what is getting a harder look and what isn't?

And I think um if we look at I I like that concept of character areas because I think there are some areas where we're outside of a historic district.

Um there's no you know requirement that they be maintained to that level.

Uh but part of the NCOD's mission was to set a boundary of where future historic districts might come from.

And so I think not losing the integrity, you know, it's it's it's a growing organic thing, and I think it needs to maintain that, and that's kind of the flexibility on the guidelines side, but but I think also we don't want to lose things that could be included later.

So I think having those tiers is a nice way to sort of say this is definitely a historic area.

This is stuff that we need to watch because it could be, and this is stuff that maybe is newer or is new enough that there's you know it's not close to a future historic district, or it's just something completely different.

Right.

That's great.

That's the great thoughts, really.

Um I think it would help us to also understand where you see some of these character areas.

I mean Ashley, you started kind of sharing potentially some areas, and maybe that's because you're most familiar with, but are there other areas in mind that you um can think about?

Midtown comes to my mind.

Excuse me, midtown.

Right.

We've heard about midtown.

Should I also read Alison Brecke's submitted answers, just since she's not here, but she did provide answers.

Um Alison Brecke is an AI CP planner, was a former historic preservation officer.

Um her answer to question one tiered approach.

Yes, the updated guidelines should distinguish whether a building is a contributing feature in a historic district.

While implementation of a local landmark district program may be delayed, the city should still consider national register historic districts and the implications of alterations, remodels, and demolitions to structures within those districts.

Okay.

Can I say one more thing on that?

Yeah, please.

And with the um guidelines, oh, I don't know what this falls under.

So the guidelines with the historic districts.

Um I'm thinking right now of Babcock, part of Cooper Park's historic district.

I live in Cooper Park, so I'm most familiar with that area.

Part of that historic district is on Babcock.

There's contributing houses on either side, and right now it's two lanes one way and starting to turn into a highway.

And so that's eroding at the integrity of the historic district.

I don't know where that falls in all of this, but when we are talking about character and things like that, that came to mind as something that's actively degrading a historic district.

Okay.

But that's a great point.

We'll definitely look into that.

All right.

This is really just the follow-up to the first question.

And in the case that we said yes, we want a tiered approach, then it comes down to how are we regulating certain things and what's the regulation intensity in the different character areas, um, whether we're talking materiality, whether we're talking um, you know, depth setbacks, um, new constructions, additions.

Um it's just open for discussion.

And if you feel like we've covered that, then you know we can move on to the next item.

I just want to read.

Oh, oh, sorry, go ahead, Jim.

Okay.

I was just going to say areas of the NCOD.

Certainly, there's a hot one now, Siraj, and if we we may run out of time and not get to it.

But the last item on the agenda is talking about a interim zoning or ordinance, but where that comes from around the main street historic district, you've got what's called the halo area.

And I'm sure you've heard um some about the uh UDC height regulations going up to 90 feet, and what again it may sound very subjective, but it's something that a lot of people are going to have a lot of opinions on and already have voice them at various meetings for the CDB or the commission.

But we're application of the Boseman guidelines.

I mean, many people feel the guidelines just got eroded, and we've seen some projects that maybe were coming online that now are having an increase in height, and without trying to sound overly subjective, and maybe you've been privy to some projects where you've seen how something tall is interdispersed into say buildings that are shorter.

We think very much there needs to be a big discussion at the community level about what's appropriate, because certainly the public's trust is feeling eroded here.

And although again very subjective, you just look at some of the plans and you say, wow, would an average person just buy into that and say, yeah, that looks okay, or certainly on some of these projects, people say, what are people thinking?

So I'll leave it there.

That's definitely a big vibe.

Right.

I'm gonna pounce on that for just a quick second, but try to keep it moving forward.

Would the average person look at that and like it?

That's what's hard to put in the design guideline, right?

You can't dictate taste, you can't regulate style, you can like I mean you can, but just point earlier, everything would look the same.

Um but I think in context of stricter guidelines, um, I think that's where we could start to look at maybe we could on these in future ones, the materiality.

Um if if if we set scale and transition aside for a second as zoning issues and not design guideline issues, I think there are some other tools the design guidelines could use to put a little bit more um force those projects to put a little bit more effort into fitting in.

Because I think there's a lot of ways, and Commissioner Sweeney and I were talking about this, and she had images of you know, taller buildings in other parts of the country, and they look nice, right?

They look interesting.

Um but I think there are ways to do that in a contextually sensitive way that get around some of the broader issues of the scale.

Um and I think you know, looking at street front set uh treatment, um pedestrian interface treatment, those kind of things, and definitely materiality and uh roof forms and those kinds of things.

So I think I think we could find those overlays, and I think that definitely those are the areas that are most ripe for that kind of tension that we could look at stricter application of guidelines.

I think that's a good point, Mike.

Like um Brian was talking about one reason the greenhouse condominiums were successful, although I do really miss Langer's flower, Sean is me.

Um was the connection to the neighborhood, right?

That those were because they're connected to what's around them.

Right.

Right.

And in the beginning of your uh presentation, you were talking about how change can happen while respecting context.

I think those are two huge guiding um guiding lights, guiding themes, overarching lenses, however you want to say it, right, that are super important here and kind of refers to what some of what Mike was talking about.

Yeah, I really really appreciate all the comments, and I think um I mean uh uh James and uh sorry but a little confused.

Usually you guys are like commissioned, and then I say commissioner wepster, but I just say board member Webster.

Anyway, um I think we're all kind of saying the same thing is is to a certain extent if zoning is allowing certain heights, how can the guidelines kind of soften that soften the impact of what zoning is allowing in these in the NCOD overall?

And I um I when we were walking around, one of the things we were thinking about is if I were to take some of the buildings that currently are in the NCOD and write around downtown and change the materialities on them and just bring them to the community as part of a workshop and just say, without saying where this building is or what, and just say, how do you feel about this building versus how do you feel about what's there today?

Same height, same everything.

I really don't think I'll have the same level of opposition that um current materials um do really play a role in how buildings seem to fit in and how they stand out, right?

So that has to be part of the equation when we come to talk to the community again.

And we're gonna have to bring some visual examples.

We're gonna have to show them what potentially um the how materials can play a role in all in in this whole conversation.

And so yeah, I appreciate that.

I'm just gonna relate it back to the materials um in the tiered system.

So I I don't know if this building is actually I think it's in the NCOD, the building that was just constructed across from the co-op on Babcock and Ninth, I believe.

Um like that would that would be a situation where if those materials were different, and maybe they did a little bit more work on the I don't know, punching out of different I don't know.

But um I just wonder, like in that situation, that would have been helpful to if there was more standards for that developer to have to follow rather than the building that they did build is very obvious that it doesn't fit with the neighborhood.

So it's just a shame.

Right.

And maybe that's one of the things that's missing in today's standards is really just more and more visual examples of what we would like to see.

And then in that case, when we have conversations when uh submittal comes to us is hey, let's actually show you more and more of the examples that the community has agreed on and community voted for, and like they would love to see more and more of.

So um, yeah, that's one of the hopes of the standards.

Yes.

I just like to uh kind of chime in once 50 years is considered a historic structure in property, and that's 1976, which isn't at all.

And you touched on the 60s property.

These all contribute, these are all part of our historic districts here.

And by allowing those to be destroyed, even kind of take creates a scarcity of historic structures within this historic district that we're trying to create.

Um, and their scarcity, I mean, having more of it creates a demand, which also increases the value of these properties.

Um, which I think living in historic district before, um, there's a real value in that people pay more for that because of the scarcity that hasn't gotten lost.

And I mean, here you see you've wandered around, there's some our tech, there's 30 stuff around that's cool that aren't being maintained and restored.

Um I mean, can you touch on that when you're feeling is I know the materials are important and you know, glass block and stuff is cool, but you see a lot of that stuff is disappearing with more modern now as materials.

And probably some of it's for functionality as well.

You know, we got wind and we got dust and we got elements now that were around some of these things weren't were built.

Yeah.

Um I I'm not sure I have an exact answer for that.

I I would love to see some examples to be able to kind of talk through it.

But um, yeah, I I something that is 50 years of age can start can be considered historic at this point, but it's just up to how much it's been altered and um all that.

And um do you want to Matt, do you want to share more?

Okay.

So I think the the way we need to think about this is that um just like the standards or these design guidelines need to be updated and evolved, just like a district will naturally update and evolve, so must our assessment of the fabric in these neighborhoods.

So right now the historic districts each have their own um period of significance and their own context.

And so that defines within those districts what is historic.

Um that doesn't mean those that period of significance, that context for each of the districts can't be updated and expanded to bring in these other buildings.

Um doesn't mean that there couldn't be through multiple property listings or other mechanisms, um new ways of designating buildings to be included to expand what is historically designated, but that has to be uh an important next step in the process.

Uh um and something that will probably emerge, I imagine, from the new local landmarks program as well, because we need a mechanism to understand you know what else should be designated and why.

Um but yeah, that is that is a critical thing, because what what happened, how do you create that next historic district if everything that was left out, everything, you know, so these were done in you know, everything that's essentially post-World War II, more or less was left out.

If those are demolished and go away, well now we don't have a whole lot to work with.

Thanks.

Um I'll just read what Alison Brecke wrote about this.

I think it sums it up really great what everybody's kind of saying.

Um are there areas of the NCOD where the application of the guidelines should be stricter or more lenient.

She says yes, where there is record that a structure is a significant feature of a district, or has the potential to be a significant feature of a future district, or is significant on its own, stricter requirements for historically appropriate construction should be required.

And something that strikes me when I read that, and um what Chairman Wiseman pointed out is you know, the NCOD was created with the thought that there would be these future historic districts, and we just haven't created it.

Right.

So maybe we should get on that.

Um I have also just heard anecdotally people say on the street, just sub chapter 4B in 2015 is where the NCOD went off the rails.

Those are people's words.

So they're definitely that chapter about commercial character areas.

Um, you know, maybe it was an experiment to uh spur development, but I think there's widespread thought that maybe we missed the mark on that one and allowed a little bit too much.

So just anecdotally.

It's sub chapter 4B of the design guidelines.

And it regulates commercial character areas.

Is that the word commercial?

Yeah.

So I guess what part of it do we know like what is I think materiality was probably changed.

Um I know there used to be a standard that said block character, which maybe made those greenhouse condos that replaced the flower farm.

It made that comply with the neighborhood escape, but then the commercial character areas don't have to have that block character reference.

Is that what do you think, Aaron?

I just wanted to add that um it is commercial character area correct.

There's chapter 4B, sub chapter 4B of the design guidelines, but it also is specifically for B3 district.

Okay, so that would not apply to the Cooper.

I think that building is called the Cooper, right?

At 9th and Babcock.

Um quick, I'm gonna interject here so I don't have to keep looking at the clock all the time.

Is everybody okay if we just go to at least 8 30?

Or do we want to just say go to 9?

We can end earlier, but then we don't need to keep anybody.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm gonna say I'll have to just peel out at some point.

What's good for you?

When my teenager gets home, so she's not there by herself too much.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, let's just say that 8 30 then for now, and then if we feel like we need to keep going, we can.

Thanks.

Awesome.

Thank you.

All right.

So the next topic is really repair and rehabilitation.

Here we're trying to get an understanding of what are certain elements of a historic home or a commercial building that you believe uh have the most most struggles, or there's a need for more conversations on or there's unclear of like how to approach whether it's repair replacement.

Um whether it's maintenance even.

Um do you hear a lot about foundations?

Do you hear about porches, roofs, windows?

And we did some due diligence and went um through a number of COA applications that were submitted and tried to find the commonalities and uh was reading math.

And he figured out the well, he saw a lot of common common elements being windows and doors and specific.

So and honestly, that's common across um other communities.

But we you know, we want to get an understanding of what some of these issues are.

How are we hoping to address them?

And then when it comes to commercial, um, we saw that storefronts and again windows and doors.

So do you have some thoughts on those um elements?

Yeah, um I'll read Alison's comments this time, and because uh there's a couple I want to dovetail on.

She summarizes really well.

Um most common in character impacting real rehabilitation issues include adding a basement floor under a structure and increasing its height, increasing the number of window openings or the size of existing openings, removal of porches or increase of porch size, compatible yet distinguishable additions and appropriateness of new materials when historic materials are removed or replaced.

Um that list, I think the basement and porch components are big ones because they tend not always, but they have the potential to push something, uh a project that currently conforms into something that doesn't conform.

Sometimes that's a hard nut to crack either for an owner who's not working with a professional or with a design professional to understand um, you know, at one point I was doing uh a new porch on the front of a building, and we were trying to add some ADA access, but at the same time I was making the porch look more like the neighborhood porches, but I was getting pushback because the zoning didn't allow me to go that far to the street.

So it was kind of a back and forth to get to get that you know where it was supposed to be.

But I think um, you know, certainly like raising a house, you know, a lot of there's still a lot of houses that are on rubble foundations, so putting a real foundation under that.

So putting a real foundation under that if you try to add a basement that's got you know kind of garden level light or anything like that, um, that can if your property, you know, if you've got a property that's too far forward, like it's farther forward than current setbacks would allow.

If you raise that whole house, sometimes that's an issue because it's and and Aaron or Rebecca, you jump in any time if I'm misstating this, but it's kind of making a non-conforming situation worse, even though it might be better for the house, better for the owner, better for the use, whatever.

And so sometimes those are issues that get hard to navigate because it's it's not something that is going to necessarily uh negatively impact the historic value or the structure, you know, the the the remodel may be very appropriate, but it is pushing it into a zoning uh conflict where all of a sudden it's it's a struggle to make that work.

And I've had suggestions of well, if you have to add like you know, go into a second level on a house.

If you have to do it, do it on the back side of the house.

You know, the form of the house might be much better looking if it was the whole house and not just the back half of that.

So I think things like that can be very difficult.

And I I think the one thing I would add to that is simply cost.

Um and I know uh we're we're getting into some of these on some of these other slides, but just the cost of that level of repair and rehabilitation is is often a really hard thing.

And I obviously the guidelines aren't gonna do anything about that, but um if if you know if there's some sensitivity there, it's it's helpful, but at the same time, historic district, so you gotta keep the quality up.

Right.

I think it does help with um replacement materials, and it does help with um giving a better understanding of life cycle um for certain materials.

And I think you already have that in your current guidelines, if I'm being honest, it's more um it's just more clarity on that, and then um even potentially trying to show just the uh a cost comparison between certain materials versus others versus um you know in kind.

Okay.

Um are we seeing anything with storefronts?

Um I mean the only thing that really comes to mind there is um you know, count what Brian Kruger mentioned about wanting to put the the balcony on the front of the Rialto.

I that usually comes down to a more contemporary application of something when it's not really appropriate on that building.

And it's it does tails, I think a little bit with material materiality in that we get newer materials all the time, and some of them look great, some of them function great, some of them function better than historic materials, but um you know they're not necessarily gonna look as good or function in a historic context as well.

But I don't know if that's I don't know if I I don't know if I call that an issue or just something that's usually got to be navigated.

So okay, yeah.

So we're talking commercial storefronts, we're talking off in downtown.

Um you're saying if they're uh if if a storefront needs to be replaced, right?

And then what comes with the replacement as potentially maybe better function but a different form of what was there.

Um what I would argue typically is in a historic district when you're replacing storefronts, you probably want to reconstruct the um something to match the original.

And then if that in appearance at least, no push aside materials, preferences, materials and appearance, but um if physical evidence is maybe you know, you you don't have physical evidence of what the original storefront was, um, then you kind of look for clues in the local context.

But um that that is typical, but uh the it would be a good conversation to understand what situations are they that the new function is that the new function cannot work with the original storefront um design or at least overall appearance, right?

So we'll have to figure that out.

I'm kind of thinking this question could be read a couple of different ways.

Like what are the most common rehabilitation issues?

Does that mean like the maintenance problems of owners of historic properties?

What are they most often seeing?

Or when they go to do repair and rehabilitation, where are they running into issues with the guidelines?

I think it's both.

Both.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, first and foremost, like issues with maintenance.

Are they like are they running into issues with maintenance?

Maybe there's like in certain communities, we'll see like there's a lot of parging.

I don't know.

A lot of fun.

Parging.

Yeah, like your your birk material is, for example, covered with another material as a result of modernization that happened in the 80s or something.

So now how do we uncover original materials when maybe possibly that is causing structural issues of the original brick that's underneath?

So that's repair.

But sorry, that's you know, main it goes across both maintenance and repair.

But but yeah, so what do you do with situations like that?

Or maybe certain materials are just not standing the test of time.

Like, you know, they're not able to repair property.

I feel really bad for a lot of people who own a historic resource that don't have the financial means to maintain like this one right here was redone so beautifully, and I think it got a historic preservation award.

But porches, um, and Bozeman just doesn't have a good foundation or deep enough pockets as a city to assist homeowners in these kinds of things.

Um I mean, you know, something I'd like to do is try to help find grants, but you know wooden porches, wooden stuff in our climate, I think struggles.

Wooden siding if you don't keep your paint up.

Yeah, I mean, so some folks might say we're having issues with missing cornuses overall.

I don't know.

Uh you know, that could be one architectural feature that has been kind of repeatedly a struggle in the downtown or so.

That's what we're trying to understand is what you know, what are some elements that you're either having to come across as part of COA processes or hearing about so issues that people who own historic homes have to deal with foundations is like a huge one.

Um we are still on rubble, a lot of them are still on rubble foundation.

Um, I know that we had to lift and dig a foundation to support our house.

It's a 1905 home from collapsing in, right?

And it did get raised a little bit, and actually this is funny because actually Aaron Brecky was the historic preservation officer at the time and her and I went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth other.

And it's a on the height, the like still height and all that, and um it's a little bit higher, but the rest of the house was able to be preserved as um as a result.

And there's another project around the corner from me where kind of by the evergreen apartments um in that vicinity that it's a little bit higher, right?

But they put a basement in and gave this house another hundred years.

Like that's good, and that and that flexibility there allowed this house to continue to contribute to the historic district.

So yeah, for what that's worth.

That's really great.

Another simple example, and then we can move on.

Um, if we're thinking about residential properties, if we're thinking um single family homes, often issues come with windows or shutters, or you know, are people trying to install shutters um maybe just decoratively, and they do not even match the profile of the window, or they're coming in at a slimmer profile, like little details like that.

Um, you know, we're like, oh, we've had to deny like a bunch of shutters because they, you know, they're not necessarily following the profile of the window.

Aaron or Rebecca, can you speak to that?

Because I I guess we're I am not aware aware of what applications get to like our board doesn't know necessarily what's denied or what's even in the works.

Yeah, thanks for asking.

Um I think as Brian referenced earlier, the planning staff are working with applicants in general to get them into compliance.

And that's what we do in all types of permits, not just COAs.

Our job is to help customers understand the city's process and the city's regulations.

And um some customers understand it very quickly.

Uh it doesn't take them too many bites at the Apple to get into compliance.

Um but uh also is a function sometimes of the quality of the consultants that they hire and how familiar they are with our processing requirements if they do hire professionals.

Um I think windows and doors are are definitely um the most frequent is noted on the slide, but they are the easiest and fastest usually to get through our process.

Uh but the more complex ones, which are um additions, remodels, and demos and rebuilds, like those are definitely where the meat is, and those are the more difficult projects.

And um denials are relatively rare, but there might be one or two a year.

Uh if it really what happens is if we have an applicant who just um it's usually a consultant, you know, a designer, and their client is only willing to do so much.

You know, their client has a certain design that they want.

And um, you know, we're working with them, their consultant is working with them, we're trying to get them into compliance.

And um at the sometimes they reach a point where the extent of the changes they're willing to make is not enough to get into compliance, and we get to a point where we have to deny it.

So I don't know if I answered your question, but hopefully that's helpful.

Right.

Um, I guess one question for staff, like uh d do you get applicants, for example, asking to change um the window opening, like wanting to make windows bigger or wanting to for existing homes.

And um, is that something we would like to maybe limit in historic districts and make sure we don't do that versus other transitional areas that that might be okay if we change the window profile.

Yeah, I think um replacing windows is common, certainly.

Uh and wanting bigger windows is more common these days as well.

Um, you know, bigger windows are kind of in style and have been for a while now.

Um but yeah, deciding where that's appropriate versus not, I think is definitely up for discussion.

I know so far um in applying the existing design guidelines, staff are looking at uh consistency with the design of the other homes on the block and trying to look at what is typically uh what is typical of that architectural style that you're seeing on the block.

But it gets really tricky if you have some variety already there.

Right.

Right.

All right.

So I thought the solid to void ratio conversation on the tour today was really helpful.

I feel like that was like such an important.

I never realized before until touring with Mr.

Kruger that it it really impacts the story.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in that sense, the city, the planners do that that is the consideration.

So I think they're doing a good job of it.

Yeah, for anyone who's wondering, because that's kind of jargony, um, solid to void solids like the wall and the void is the windows.

So it's uh looking at the ratio of how big the windows are in relation to the walls and comparing that to what's typical on the rest of the block.

We feel like we've covered this question um at this point.

Um because we I mean we were trying to kind of have the conversations of historic district specifically versus the rest, but I feel like we're kind of going back and forth um anyway.

So I don't feel like we have to have a specific conversation about historic homes and commercial buildings overall in the NCOD not being in a historic district.

I feel like we've sort of covered, unless there's more comments and thoughts, or if there's uh written comment that we'd like to share.

I'll just add a couple of uh Al Sabreki's comments just just to have them out there.

Um part of this uh for this slide specifically, she mentioned low availability of contractors experienced in historic rehabilitation, which is it's common in a lot of places.

Um building code requirements to create your appropriate rehabilitation outcomes.

Um that's that's pretty common too to run into things you could do 50 years ago you can't do anymore.

Uh and sometimes that can be an issue.

Um new elevator and stair shafts required by code and additional emergency access requirements.

Um, you know, meeting accessibility standards is definitely a that's always a hard one.

And you know, where do you put your elevator, where do you put your penthouse?

Even mechanical upgrades, I would add too um, you know, where do you, if you're replacing a bunch of mechanical equipment, especially commercial, where does that go?

How do you screen it?

How do that how does that screen interact with you know preserved construction?

So I think there are it's that considering modernizing old stuff both under new codes but also to perform to modern standards.

So I mean, those are just issues that that come up.

Right.

That's great.

Uh one of the things that we think about often is also solar panels when it comes to um you know mechanical equipment, quote unquote.

But we also know and understand that these are um like reversible.

You just put them, you can take them off.

But in certain historic districts that we've worked in, um and and maybe you all have already made that decision, but in certain historic districts, they're only allowed on side um side uh elevations or rear elevations, but also that doesn't really um necessarily always play well with the sun.

So it just depends where the sun is and how we want to put our solder panels up.

But um screening certain mechanical equipment is definitely something that we can think about when it comes to commercial buildings behind canopies and also their placement overall within the site and how we screen them.

So I would just say I worked for a solar hot water company installing.

Um when this city made the move to allow a flush-mounted solar system to skip the COA process, that was a big win for solar energy and for um people in the historic in the NCOD, and you know as you say, like you can just take them off.

Right, that's exactly it.

Um I would really hate to see the city backtrack on that one.

Yeah.

Interesting.

All right.

Um the next question has to do with materials in specific.

Um what are some of the issues we're seeing with material repair?

Um tuck pointing, um, you know, chipped wood or paint peeling or issues with glass, terracotta.

We saw some tiles.

I mean, everything is minor that we saw, if I'm being honest, that it wasn't like anything major, but just getting a sense of um how historic materials have been functioning and how alternate materials in the current guidelines, I mean, we already have those.

Are we hoping to make changes to the suggested alternate materials that we have today?

Um bring in maybe new ones or consider eliminating some.

Just overall discussion.

And another one would be to be on, I mean, I think the new NCOD kind of limits EFIS to 10%, right?

On primary facades or something of that sort.

Um another discussion would be metal, and to what extent are we using metal decoratively versus full panels, and then that within NCO within historic districts versus outside of historic districts and the overall NCOD and within certain character areas.

So do we want to limit the amount of black boxes essentially?

Um certain areas.

I would hope we would want to limit the amount of metal.

Uh I know that on the walk this morning, Brian pointed out a few houses that had metal roofs, and that was uh very rare.

Um, but they they did it in a night a nice way, I would think.

Um but my personal view is that we would not want metal.

Although when we're talking to the community, to be honest, I I think they didn't love the black metal, but they did like uh rusted um metal.

That that was something that was favored.

So I know that's why we're opening the discussion to I I have to put on my architect hat and say I can't just say no metal.

Because a lot of people like the grain elevators downtown too.

Um and there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of context for that here.

Um, it is an agricultural material.

Um, and in the case of a metal roof, you know, the it's it's potentially a higher performing roof, but as you just said, done right, I think it can look, and that's I think where we start to look at you know that level of strictness of you can have it if it's a slippery slope because that's that gets into guideline territory.

Um instead of you know standard regulatory territory, but that's that's exactly what that flexibility is there for.

It's you know, uh somebody could do everything by the book and still have a not very effective design.

And somebody could do nothing by the book, but a lot of people to Jim's question, oh the average person might go, yeah, that looks great.

Um so I think that's it it needs attention, but I don't think there's a real I don't feel like there's a real blanket statement of this material, yes, that material no.

And there's materials we don't know that don't exist yet that in the future might be fantastic.

I mean, solar panels weren't that common 30 years ago.

Um you know do you guys feel differently if the metal is on the roof were used for the siding and how much of it?

Yeah, I mean, using it as an accent is a good way to break it up and have it not be maybe so monolithic or so offensive.

I know you're still not.

I still I don't know, metal sighting.

One of the things that kind of did depends upon the builder, and we got lucky 30 years ago on our renovation where we live in the Noble House, Kenyon Noble, and Noble, because he ran the lumber yard, he went out and chose his own wood, and what did he choose?

Blonde Mahogany.

Or he probably had to source that from somewhere else.

It probably wasn't lying around.

A lumber yard Bozeman.

But anyway, the point is when we built an addition 30 years ago, we wanted to match the wood.

Blonde mahogany was not an option for obvious reasons.

But our builder, a guy named Ken Ryder, he's still alive, but these old artesians are disappearing.

And Ken said, Jim, Valerie, check out Alder.

Alders of semi-hardwood, and may not be as fancy as blonde mahogany, but you can stain it, and I bet it's gonna look just as good.

And he was right.

And we don't feel like we know we shortchanged the noble house.

Um we did something because certainly environmentally to go after blonde mahogany was you know, that was a problem too.

But anyway, that was an example of where somebody had a good idea.

And here I know our board has thought about doing preservational workshops and the like, because it's this type of knowledge that we need to pass on.

That gets into a whole different area, but at least that is something that our board is working on every year for preservation week or whatever.

We try to do this because the passing down of knowledge is so key.

Right.

Yeah, and I'll go through real quick uh what Alison had down.

Um brick color and size matching.

I run into that before.

A lot of those are made in batches, and trying to get something that matches well if you're if you're restoring can be tough.

Window materials um trying to stick with wood sashes.

Um again, it's a dying art.

There is a um there's a workshop out of Helena that that will help rebuild and restore wood windows, but it's a you know it's becoming more and more limited.

Um tile roofing and metal iron details and welding.

Um, old wrought iron work is uh is hard to find and really expensive.

And I think a lot of the aside from the finding matches to materials that may have been discontinued or aren't made anymore, trying to find something you know that's just just not that available and match as close as you can.

That's probably one of the biggest one, followed quickly by just the cost of actually reusing or even trying to replicate a material can be a real hurdle.

Terry, I just wanted to ask if Trent, if Chelsea's still on there, I think we might have forgotten she's on there.

Does she have anything to offer on any of these questions?

I do not see her on here.

I'm still here.

I don't know if you can hear me.

Um, I've been enjoying the hearing of the discussion.

Um I don't want to interrupt because I know there's a lot to get through.

Um but I don't have any uh anything that hasn't already been said, I don't want to add anything additionally to it.

So Saraj just needed to take a little break, so I'm gonna pop in here and um talk about landscape and streetscape a little bit.

Um certainly when we talk about uh the character of an area, uh the of a district of a space, uh generally we immediately go to the buildings, right?

We go to the most obvious three-dimensional uh piece of an area, and that's gonna be buildings of some sort or another.

But there's all these other sort of ancillary pieces that also define the character of a place, right?

And some of that is what we've heard a lot about is trees.

So I'll put that right out front.

But it's also and also what we call parkways, which you guys call boulevards, which took us a little bit to be like what were you talking about?

But different parts of the country, different nomenclature.

But it's also signs.

It's fencing to some extent.

We know that there's there's a big conversation about where fencing, if fencing was in a given space or if it wasn't, and what that should look like.

Sidewalks we heard a lot about, and you know, certain lighting and other pieces.

So I think what we would like to hear from you is what are these sort of streetscape features that we need to be thinking about as well in the design guidelines, because certainly um design standards, I should say.

Um certainly a portion of um the standards already deal with sort of urbanism, and we want to make sure that that some of the stuff is captured in that urbanism.

And it may not be strict in the sense of um of telling people that hey, you have to put a garden in your parkway.

But it could be that, hey, this is a recommended practice, like as a best practice.

Um so those these are the type of things we'd like to hear from you about as to what we should be thinking about.

Yes, on the trees.

Mature trees are a huge part of our landscape and and streetscape and and uh urban living here.

So yes, I'll another tally mark on that one for sure.

Um and then do we have and this might be a question for um Aaron and Rebecca, like a an FAR, like a floor area ratio of how much of a lot can get built.

Because that seems to play a huge role in this.

We we did, and then I'm looking at Chris.

Uh Chris, I think we did away with that with the recent UDC.

Am I remembering that correctly?

Hi, Chris Saunders, community development.

Um we did remove the FAR.

We do have lot coverage, which limits the physical footprint that can be on a space.

Um then we do also have setbacks, maximum heights, and other standards that control the total envelope.

Nothing that limits your ability to go down just the stuff above.

Thanks, Chris.

So yeah, just a different way of measuring it.

Yes, basically.

Okay.

So make sure that those are appropriate within a historic because you could have like a like, yes, that's an important part is not making sure that too much of a lot is built.

Because if you look in these historic areas, right, it's a mix of yard and home and that kind of thing.

Um then the on the tour today, the one thing that really struck me was this whole thing with the with the parking, right?

And the driveways and where there's walkways and people's porches in a way that encourages communication at a human level from like neighbor to neighbor, and where I forget what I think we were on that part of that weird part of college that comes up maybe and hits Wilson, that there's the full-on like suburbia, like two-car driveway into a garage.

No, that's a not a good idea.

Yeah.

So I would also point out too that there are areas, especially some of these mid-centered post-World War II areas that do have driveway cuts for the buildings as well.

Really like third, like third where Halloween is, and you also come back from Halloween on third.

It's a great time.

So those are a lot of our really beautiful homes here in Bozeman, and they have these driveways that go down, right?

But again, a lot of them are those like two-track ones.

And I think that the garage is back, right?

It's not up here, it's back, so that like car garage is not what is on the streetscape.

It's it's porches and human beings and you know the gardens and the landscaping and that kind of thing.

So I think that that's a really important thing to consider.

Fantastic.

And Daniel, some of that's covered just in the design guidelines, but just the uh zoning and setbacks for regular residential construction.

So like a garage, if a garage is facing a street, it's gotta be 20 feet back, but the house can be up to as close as 10 feet, but there's a the garage has to be set back from the front of the house.

Yeah, but then they're like gets wiggled around sometimes.

So these are things that like shouldn't be wiggled around on.

You know.

It was what I'm saying.

It was really stark to see the difference that curb cuts made in especially the older, and maybe this is the character area thing that you guys are talking about.

If it's a really mid-mod area and it the homes were built with the driveways, maybe that's a continued okay practice.

But then in like the neighborhoods built before cars where there is not driveways largely.

Maybe that's an important streetscape to keep.

Certainly people like the convenience of the of the offs of that I'm gonna put through the instead of coming off the alley, I'm gonna kind of put through that really convenient, you know, right off the street, but certainly something to be thought about in terms of you know, how does it impact the character of the street?

Because a street cut definitely changes things.

I think about the street cuts in terms of like my eight-year-old writing spike.

And I want I would love to live in a neighborhood that did not have driveways every 20 feet, and you have to like warn them every time they leave that you're like, watch out for cars, they're backing out, they can't see them.

You know, like I I would love that.

Um but my I had another question though.

Um is the landscaping do people need to obtain a COA to landscape their yard?

Or is this just like an added is this a the landscaping part of this discussion right now?

Is this not require COA?

Right.

Uh the reason this is included is because we're talking um, we're wanting to gather feedback from um everyone we're engaging with this week about what elements comprise Bozeman's uh historic character in the COD.

And we couldn't leave out landscape and streetscape because that's part of the character.

Well um but tree, I would say that yes, trees um and I mean the natural landscaping as always.

Though landscaping has come up.

We are dealing with design standards uh that were starting project in Raleigh, North Carolina, and their historic uh their historic ordinance regulates any changes to the primary landscape of a building.

I'm not saying that that's the route to go.

Um but I'm just saying those are things that sometimes ordinances and um design guidelines do deal with.

Right.

Yeah.

Like in certain communities, we see brick streets or we see um stone, you know, in and sidewalks and walkways, and those sometimes contribute to the overall character, and and there's uh maybe a desire to preserve these, whether it's encouragement or enforcement.

And so the question is I mean, we've driven around, we haven't seen necessarily brick streets or stone streets.

But you know, that we bring it up to try and understand are there um site features that you think contribute to the overall character, historic character of of neighborhoods um or overall character that's not necessarily historic that we need to pay attention to.

So what we heard, for example, in the Northeast, we want our unpaved, we want our alleys to stay unpaved, and we don't want in portions of Northeast, I should say we don't want sidewalks.

Because we never had those.

And we want to keep that sort of character of how things were.

Um those are just some of the feedback that we heard.

Correct.

And then there's actually a structural of reasoning behind it with the engineering department, keeping gravel at least to certain extent because of stormwater runoff and necessarily not having the current capacity to handle any runoff had it not gone through gravel.

So what do you guys think about traditional setbacks?

Our new code allows a much smaller setback.

And you know, in these historic neighborhoods, I noticed they were set back really far, and that's often where a lot of the trees are.

And so, you know, when you're walking, like does that having the house way up to the sidewalk versus back, does that make a difference?

Yes.

Yes, it does, Alice.

Yes, it does again for sure, especially where you've got the mature trees, and we've seen projects here in the city where in bringing the setbacks closer to the sidewalk, mature trees bit the dust, and that seems to be something that does not get perhaps enough attention, although we do have a tree coalition in town, and they are working very hard to do what they can to save the trees.

But uh more work needs to be done there, so we should not overlook that aspect in this whole process.

Thanks.

And I should uh also say that the city is working on an update of their forestry plan uh right now.

So that that is something that is in conversation, both in terms of um public right-of-way and on private, if I recall.

Okay, real quick to my fellow board members here.

I need to leave one of our action item agenda, action items G2 about decide whether to send a letter to commission asking them to hold a public hearing and consider adopting an interim zoning ordinance.

My vote is yes, we should.

So I just want to make sure that that vote was clear.

Okay.

Thank you to our consultants, thank you, city staff.

Yes.

Thank you.

And our last topic here is new construction and additions.

And I wonder if you feel like we've covered some of this or if we want to talk a little bit more about it.

Um what are some good examples?

I mean, Ryan really walked us and during the tour, we saw we saw a lot of great examples of new construction, and we want to use those as precedents, but we want to focus on what of those new construction, like what are the elements that make these good precedents and try and better highlight um how new construction should happen.

So just wanting to get your thoughts on that.

I think um it was great to see on the tour today because there was definitely a lot of examples of really well-done ADUs and backyards that looked some of them were compatible with the architecture of the home, and then some of them were creative and more modern, and they they all kind of had this um they all just looked nice.

So I thought that it is being done well right now.

Yeah, Alison mentioned on her thing, just look at past preservation award winners because we've got different categories for restorations, remodels, reuses, um rehabilitation, infill.

So there's a pretty wide range of stuff that we try to recognize through the wards program that I think all those could serve as pretty good examples.

Right.

And when we were walking on the tour, and sorry to interrupt, um they you know the conversations were um detailed.

Like we we we we went into a discussion of you know how far certain buildings were set back and you know the front entry and where that was located and also where it was facing and and and roof forms, and so there was a lot of discussion that went into um explaining how some of these new construction buildings were approved, and also more importantly, where we started.

Where did the applicant come in and what was their original right um proposed building, and then how we were able to use the current design guidelines to push them in the right direction?

Is there um is there opportunity to be more and more prescriptive with how we want new construction to be?

Yes.

And I feel like that's what we're trying to gather is um some of that input.

Can I can I ask so I I noticed we haven't really touched on any color palette about painting and and uniformity within the historic district, and maybe create having somebody who can help creating that palette so that whoever owns these store columns who want to make changes have access to that palette.

Do you want to talk a little bit about paint?

No, it's adding another layer, but yeah, feel free.

Um yeah, I mean we can regulate color.

We can regulate um paint if we choose to.

That could be something we talk about.

Um and we have in the past and previous design standards um shared paint color recommendations based on the architectural style of the building that we're working with, or um when these buildings were built.

And so, you know, if we're talking more classic classical revival, more Greek revival, we can talk about primary colors being along you know the lines of more personal or ivory and then secondary colors for more detailing, kind of bringing in deep reds and deep greens.

If we're talking um, and I'm just looking at a precedent document that we've worked on in the past, if you know Queen Anne, some of your primary colors are actually colorful.

So you you bring in um teals and reds and greens, and then um for secondary colors, you can bring in more like sand colors, gold colors, and so we can provide color palettes if that is something you all see value in, whether or not it's a recommendation, meaning best practices, or it's something that we want to regulate is another conversation.

I would say I don't think we should regular color.

Or just to I mean, I think if people want to paint their house in a historic tone, they can find the information online pretty easily.

But um that's my personal view.

Here's another question about paint, though.

If something was not sorry, if we're not talking new construction, if we're talking historic homes and they were not originally painted, do we want to allow paint on previously unpainted um brick, for example.

Just chiming in to say that we currently do not allow that in the guidelines, if I remember correctly, you're not supposed to paint over the brick.

Right.

Unless it was previously painted.

Yeah.

Thank you, Aaron.

I excuse me, I did go on a brick tour with Extreme History Project and learned some really remarkable things.

First of all, Bozeman's brick is notoriously terrible quality.

And so it can either be damaged by the elements, but also sometimes the paint itself will affect moisture retention and whatever.

So maybe if we're going to include anything, there are paints that are good for brick and designed for brick to help it breathe and maintain some sort of um integrity.

So I mean maybe we could include a suggestion that if they're gonna paint it, they use that kind of paint and give them a resource for where to find it.

But yeah, I I think us subscribing paint color, people are gonna hit the roof.

Nope.

I'm gonna real quick extend the meeting till nine unless anybody's got objections.

Okay.

Right.

I had a question, and this is just uh putting it out into the universe, but um would there be a way?

I don't know.

So one of the houses today we looked at was next to the it was the ken next to the Kenyan house, and it was the white house next to the brick house.

And I just wonder, would there be a way to have a lot of leniency in like an ADU or more like or something to to inspire more creativity in those situations, but in a situation where it's it is the house of on the property or a duplex in that situation to maybe pull in more d elements from the neighborhood and less uh relaxation.

I don't I anybody else can chime in, but that was just a thought I had to pretty much potentially recommending or regulating, but let's say recommending colors um for primary structures but not for secondary structures.

I'm not talking about color anymore, I'm just talking about the actual style of that building that where the um sorry if I was unclear about that, um the building that was constructed would after the existing historic or old old house, I don't think it was historic, but the old house was demolished and and the new construction just it looks pretty out of place, but I do know you know Brian went over how they the city the planners worked with the owners and and there was a lot of um back and forth and work on it, but the end result still looks pretty like it does stand out.

Um I hear you.

I maybe um do you do you know what parts of it makes it stand out um more than it needed to kind of thing like is I almost think it was I wonder if it was the materials and the the siding and um yeah I think it may have been that understood.

I think Virajtu, since that house is a block from where we live on South Third, it comes back to and this was really well done in a recent Dutch video that I saw and got passed around to a bunch of people here and it boiled down to the traditional style versus the modern style or the modernistic or whatever and people saying it again, this gets very subjective, but the video was suggesting that when it boils down to it, people don't like some of the modern things out there and really kind of have a quiet or not so quiet hankering for the traditional style in that house having you know walked by it a million times because it's only a hundred yards away from us.

Yeah, Ashley's right.

We don't feel it blends in that well, and the house did it replace.

Nothing wrong there.

The house was so far gone, it really needed to be a demo.

And there are some great examples in that neighborhood, and maybe Brian pointed them out of new houses built to fit in in a more traditional way, and this one just kind of went the other way.

Obviously, it's too late.

The horse is out of the barn.

Right.

And just for the record, is that's in the historic district or not in a historic district.

Yes, it's in the historic district.

Right.

Okay.

So I wonder as we look at that concept of doing tiered levels, things like that.

Um is that period of significance, which as we look at character areas, historic districts, those kinds of things, maybe that is something that we could expand on in the design guidelines and sort of describe what is the actual period of significance for some of these areas.

Because it's obviously going to be very different if we have a mid-century modern district versus something that was you know late 1800s, early 1900s, and something that was 30s.

Um that might be a way to give some uh more appropriate precedent or kind of just some context overall that still allows for contemporary looking things, but they know they have to relate to this period.

Because I think part of it too is you look at the NCOD as a whole, there's so many different areas, so many different socioeconomic influences on how those came about, so many cultural influences.

Um I think that defining those characters a little more succinctly.

I think about it like just breaking it into bite-sized chunks would be a lot easier to deal with than one blob.

So maybe that as part of that to help things have a better target to shoot for, if we have that kind of period of significance of like this is the area you want to be in.

So that it's not quite such a departure, but there's still some room to do contemporary things a little bit different, but not completely off the rails.

And I think over the last couple days walking around, we really heard like the north side is much more okay with like something like that bottom picture there that's maybe a little bit modern.

Um they're kind of a lot more comfortable with that, and then in the Southside Historic Districts, something might stick out like a sore thumb.

So that could be this tiered approach.

Um then like also the the business improvement district met today, and their conversation was kind of interesting.

Um they did talk a lot, I think, about like how are we blending the new with the old?

And some of them, quite a few of them actually thought like maybe the really, really starkly modern is not doing a great job.

Like maybe we want to blend a little more.

So I thought I thought that was interesting.

I thought downtown business people were gonna be like bring it on, all the new, you know, but they were kind of wanting us to be a little careful.

Sounded like.

Yeah, to be yeah, we heard I think it was um one member um was not in favor of blending, but I think um a few other members were more so in favor of blending with the rest of the fabric.

And I just want to reiterate, no one is saying false historicism.

Um let's just be clear on that.

It's more like overall cutter pallets, overall um ratios of void and mass and solid and that just plays a role, you know.

Um, like it yes, to a certain extent, there's some subjectivity into it, but you know, a big concrete wall, you know, around the historic bricks buildings sometimes can be questionable as to why, like, could there have been other alternatives and um have they been considered, I guess.

Big concrete wall makes me think of that house on eighth.

Do you guys know it?

It's a big black house with big concrete wall around it.

I was not signifying anything.

Um I think that really sums our conversation.

The last piece was just meant for open discussion.

If there's anything we have not brought up, but I feel like you all um kind of voiced your concerns.

Um, but here it is again.

Is there anything else we have not talked about that you all wish to bring forward?

And clearly this is not the end of the conversation.

We're gonna put some design guidelines together or some parameters and um design standards and bring it back to you all to think through true on the same with the community to get their input um and keep refining as much as we can.

But then when the rubber meets the road and there are new projects coming up for approval.

What is the exact approval process?

Meaning more specifically, what input does the public really have?

And I know that's not you know, this is not part of what you guys are here for.

But again, we can build the finest mouse trap in the world, but if the process at the end of it to actually get it to be a good mouse trap.

The process is questionable there at the end.

How does that work?

And a lot of hard work can go down the drain with that.

And I'm not saying that our process is bad right now, but certainly it's up for discussion and whatnot, which is the very next item on our agenda to finish things off.

So that I think is understood.

The unspoken truth.

Well, I don't want to hold you up for your next agenda item because it sounds like you all are also eager to discuss that.

But I very much understand your um concern.

And um we certainly hope the best for Bozeman and the NCOD.

There's a lot of beautiful architectural features and elements, and we found joy just walking around, and we hope to be able to produce a good set of design standards to help preserve as much as we can and um also advance change in a meaningful way for the community.

So with that um follow up.

Did I just read Alison Brecky?

Oh, yes, please.

Also, sorry.

It's just I think she really has a forceful impactful statement here.

Um the following issues represent critical gaps that the updated design guidelines must address.

Demolition in the NCOD, both partial and full demolition must be explicitly addressed in the guidelines.

This is currently the top issue within the NCOD, far more prevalent than rehabilitation concerns.

And I think you guys heard that loud and clear during your week here.

Um wall height in front of building face height that is out of scale with immediate neighbors.

Um lack of consideration for the effect of new construction on the streetscape.

Um current guidelines are very weak in this area, and there are significant opportunities to strengthen them.

Um lack of consideration for rehabilitation or demolition proposed for structures that may contribute to future historic districts, effectively reducing the city's ability to create historic or local landmark districts in the future.

These design guidelines must be fully embedded into the zoning code and city regulations to ensure consistent enforcement.

We appreciate that.

Thank you for the conversation.

That was great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks, and real quick, and because there was a lot in there, I just wanted to touch really quick on demolition just for everybody's awareness.

Um demolition standards live in the code, um, not in the guidelines.

And that is part of the scope of the landmark project to consider uh amendments to that code section.

So it doesn't mean the guidelines can't refer to it somehow, but I I wouldn't suggest that we're separately regulating demolition in the guidelines when they're already like a code and we're working on that.

Thank you.

And then um reminder that we need public comment on this item.

Thank you.

Yeah, at this time I'll open it up to any public comment.

I'll be brief.

Uh Natsuki Nakamura, I'm a Bozeman resident member of the economic vitality board, but speaking on myself.

Um I went on the tour yesterday on the north side, which was great.

Um I think the things that stuck out to me was the comment of how can we evolve without erasure and how do we avoid displacement um with all the pressures of redevelopment?

So um, I guess my questions with this either the NCD overhaul or the landmark project, I'm not sure which one it falls under.

Um, is there anything we can do to help like put tip the tip the scales towards reuse rather than demolition or you know, rehabilitation sort of demolition?

Um can we address the issue of demolition by neglect when a house is just left until it's oh no, nothing can be done with it.

We have to demolish it now.

So is uh what can we do um to prevent the demolition from happening in the first place?

Um I think on the north side it was clear also that the issues about compatibility is a lot about mass and scale.

So I'm curious what we can do to address the compatibility for mass and scale when the zoning by right in a lot of those areas or six stories, sixty feet, seventy feet in some of the areas, 90 feet and B3.

So what can we make mandatory when it's in a zoning, even though the whole area currently is one to two-story homes, but by right that could be 60 to 70 feet.

Can we do something to kind of control the mass and scale in some of these areas that have a lot of height by right?

Um and then also lastly, just my concern about the tiers.

Um there are a lot of neighborhoods that haven't had the resources to become a historic district.

So I guess I'm worried that they won't get as much protection just because they haven't had the historic resources to get the yeah, get the protections or to get the even the surveying to say that they would be contributing.

So those are my concerns that they would just kind of fall more and more behind and we'll we'll lose those things, and there'll be nothing left to preserve.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Hi there, uh Mark Campanelli.

I'm a pogert park neighbor.

I want to thank everybody who went on the tour this morning.

I appreciate it.

I learned some things.

Um I try to keep it brief.

I was uh on a ASTM standards board for solar photovoltaic standards, uh basically the measurement standards, and they are very clear.

Uh I can read this.

Shell shall be used to indicate that a provision is mandatory.

Should is used to indicate that a provision is not mandatory, but is recommended as good practice.

May is used to indicate that a provision is optional.

And will is used to express futurity, but never to indicate any degree of requirement.

So like this is some is a problem that's solved.

You just gotta okay.

So on to my second thing.

Um, like I make good money, but like I look at this and this is a wealthy person's game.

Like I'm I was scared to try to redo my tear down my garage and turn it into an ADU.

And like I'm even more afraid to even bother now.

Like who knows what the standards are.

I'm gonna be held to I'm gonna get into it and have you know there's asbestos.

I already know I have aspustos tiles.

Great material, by the way, it lasts forever.

Um just don't you know drill into it and breathe.

Uh so uh yeah, I mean, I just want to reflect on that because I would love to add some infill density to my place.

And uh I I tell the commission this.

Like if my kids don't want to stay here, I'm just gonna sell to some sell to the highest bidder who's gonna have the money.

It's not historic.

It's just an NCOD, it's not historic.

But I mean, this is the economics here, are really, really hard.

Um I see passive houses.

It's like everybody should build a passive house.

Like I'm all about high performance buildings.

They're all rich people building the passive houses.

You cannot get contractors that can do it efficiently.

I mean, there's so it's such a big hurdle.

So anyways, I just want to remind everybody, like cost still matters.

So thank you.

Thanks.

Any other public comment?

Any online?

If you'd like to provide public comment, please use the raise your hand feature.

No public comment.

So we can move to discussion.

Is there anything else we wanted to discuss before we move on on this item?

Pretty well covered.

Okay.

We will move on.

Um last item of the evening.

Um Chris Saunders is here to answer questions.

So I'm gonna step out.

Okay.

No.

Greg Sullivan recommended I just leave the room.

Gotcha.

So that there's just a lot of things.

Okay.

Thank you again, Douglas, Matt, and Saraj.

You guys are fabulous.

Good evening, Chris Saunders, Community Development.

I'm the long-range planning manager for the city and uh handle a lot of the code development.

And so I've been asked to uh provide some information on the scope and process of code adoption, including interim zoning and how that works.

Um I'm gonna give you some information.

The city attorney is the official legal representative for the city and advises the city commission as well.

Uh for context, I'm gonna give you a short enabling uh presentation on the enabling legislation, the regular process, so that you can contrast that with what the interim process looks like.

Um the structure that we have to work with is called the Montana Land Use Planning Act.

Uh we have to follow this under state law, and it is the state law that describes how interim or standard zoning gets taken care of.

Um this is uh fairly recent.

Many folks are familiar with it in the community, uh replaced all of our prior enabling legislation, and uh puts a lot of emphasis on the plan first, regulate second, and then apply things to individual projects.

The UDC as a whole covers a lot of different topics, um, processes and uses and standards as well, and um establishes um standards for all of these different elements.

There's other portions of the municipal code that also touch on these issues.

For example, parks in the UDC is talking more about dedication and initial development.

There's a separate portion, chapter 26 that talks about how they do reservations and maintenance and various other kinds of elements of operating parks.

Part of our process when we look at um developing regulation is what we can and cannot do and what we must do, uh courtesy of the state.

Uh this is a list uh on both sides that tends to grow every legislative session.

Um there were quite a few that have been added over the last couple of years.

And um so uh sometimes this affects um what we can do as well as how we can do it.

Um for example, most recently um in the last legislative session, there was a new requirement that says cities cannot have zoning below 60 feet for certain kinds of areas of town.

So the legislature has uh begun to become very uh detailed in the direction that they're giving, and their ability to do that was recently upheld by the Supreme Court.

So when we talk about implementing uh an amendment, this could be the same process where a change in the map or the text.

Uh the if the city is the initiator, the only people who get to kick that off is the city commission.

Has to be on an agenda, opportunity for public comment, majority vote of the commission to say this is what we want to do, let's go ahead.

Um advisory board, staff, none nobody but the commission gets to to push the button that says go.

So once the commission says that they want to move forward, uh there are requirements in state law for public participation, and there's several different components to that.

We've implemented much of that locally in division um 730 of the Unified Development Code, specifies in more detail the substance that needs to be on the uh notice, uh, how long we need to do notices for, the methods that we do notices, public hearings have to be held, those kinds of things are all spelled out.

And then um any kind of amendment uh is subject to review for the criteria set by the state.

That's the new ones here are on the screen.

We used to have different ones.

Uh those are all gone.

They're not relevant anymore to any future zoning.

Um there's a couple of projects that are finishing out uh their review process that will still uh maybe see some of the old regulations applied, but the new regulations we have to look at substantial compliance with these various materials uh specified by the state.

So the process that something uh goes through.

First of all, we kick off with that commission vote, um, and then we begin this big long process.

Um determination of completeness means that all of the necessary information has been submitted uh for the city to conduct its review.

Determination of substantial compliance means there's an evaluation done that says um yes, whatever has been proposed actually does line up with the law.

It doesn't mean the commission has to approve it, but it's made that first step.

If either one of those things, the answer is no, it's not, then it kicks it back to the applicant or staff to do some further work and documentation analysis as needed.

Um staff reports written up, which says here's the conclusions that uh have been reached.

Public notice goes out, um, planning commission or community development board, they have to hold the public hearing, and they have to also make a determination of substantial compliance.

And their recommendation comes up to the City Commission.

City Commission has the ability to say yes, they can say no.

They can, if it's text, they can give some direction to modify it.

And a couple of uh tidbits about uh process here.

One is anything that is through a process that has reached a stage of completeness, and there's a very similar path for site-specific projects.

If it's hit that stage, then no further changes that happen in the law apply.

And so that's just a protection from somebody getting torpedoed at the last minute by something that changes.

Um then anything that's um currently non-conforming is protected by state law and local code.

People can continue to use that.

So any kind of zoning amendment is very much forward-looking rather than retroactive.

Um after going through all of that, the commission can change the processes, the uses, and the standards anywhere in the unified development code, um, as it showed on the slide, has to go through a first and second uh adoption, and then there's a minimum of a 30-day delay before it takes effect and starts influencing um individual development.

So that's the standard typical amendment process.

When we start looking at interim zoning, the first stage looks identical because it is.

City commission, they're the only ones who get to kick it off.

They have to have the uh scheduled meeting, uh, they have to have a vote to initiate.

A vote to initiate is not a commitment to adopt.

It just says we are going to have this process, we are going to have this conversation.

When that kicks off, um, as you can see, there's a lot less steps in that process.

And so the notice period is considerably shorter.

It's 15 business days minimum prior to the planning commission on the first one.

Here it's five days uh notice prior to the city commission uh having a consideration.

Uh the city commission does have to hold a uh public hearing.

They do have to make that determination.

Um then there's some limits if they decide to proceed forward with an interim that I'm gonna walk you through here.

So the first thing is limited authority.

So with the law, um this language here is a direct quote from the statute, and um cannot use this until a conforming land use plan and zoning regulations have been adopted.

That's done.

So this piece has been fully satisfied.

Nobody has to do anything else to change it at this point.

But um just one clarification: there is interim zoning under the prior laws that we used to use.

Um that's completely irrelevant under any circumstances.

This is the only section that we use going forward from this point.

So there's also specific limitations on the purpose.

Uh City Commission has to make specific findings for these elements as they go through their discussions.

Um looking at the scope and purpose.

Um public case health safety and welfare is is the basic function there.

Uh limited scope.

So you can't just pick anything that you want.

Um, this is specifically to regulate or prohibit uses.

So you can't be changing processes, you can't be changing standards, you have to tie it to a use somehow.

Um then further, those uses have to be in conflict with something that is either under consideration now or is intended to be to be evaluated.

Um we look at the uses, you know, tying all of that discussion to something.

Uh there's one uh section of the municipal code that puts all of those together for the different districts.

And so as part of what the commission would need to do is to make uh specific call-outs.

It says it this interim ordinance applies to these things and not those things.

And the things that are not affected, they continue to move forward exactly as they were.

And so opportunity to look at the pieces that are uh of interest, maybe a uh uh interim might affect a specific use only in some districts or other so you can get pretty granular with it, and that's something the commission needs to boil down.

When folks are looking and saying, well, what are these things?

Uh these are all defined in Article 8 of the municipal code.

Um and so opportunity to look at the pieces that are uh of of interest maybe a uh uh interim might affect a specific use only in some districts or other so you can get pretty granular with it and that's something the commission needs to boil down when folks are looking and saying well what are these things uh these are all defined in Article 8 of the municipal code um and so uh some of them have unique standards that are applicable to them throughout the city others vary by district so it gets again pretty granular there's the process for participation limit um like I mentioned public hearing has to be held uh upon notice reasonably designed to inform all affected parties so some interesting language there depending on the scope and um functions that we need to do uh there may be multiple different methods that are needed to accomplish this but that's the standard that needs to be taken care of um under the law and then the the com public has to have a chance to weigh in and participate in the discussion and advocate for whatever perceptions that they have on the issue and then uh finally there is a limited time period so um this is one of the differences between the old law new law old law used to be able to be extended over several periods of time this one you get one shot not more than a year um and it does take effect immediately on passage so instead of going through step one step two delay period then taking effect um this goes for if the city commission approves something like this it would take effect as soon as they drop the gavel on it and then it automatically expires no action necessary um one year from that date it can be deliberately lifted sooner if that is desired from a practical standpoint uh the shorter public notice not including the community development board in the discussion in this process and then not having that multi step uh approval and effective period makes a difference of about 90 calendar days um in the effective date for when this uh kind of thing would be going in under um under review so let's see I think I I missed something just a minute sorry I need to jump back up here um this is a really important element of the findings the commission has to make is the idea that it's an urgency measure there has to be some um real tangible concern um why is it that this cannot continue um has there been prior discussion on uh issues of similar topic um why is it that it it needs to go fast as I showed you originally um a lot of emphasis on uh public engagement public participation public consideration prior to adoption of any uh regulation that includes an interim ordinance as well so the the justification and the findings for the urgency component are uh very significant element of what the commission would need to address um in taking any kind of action to implement a uh interim ordinance and that's me so I'd be glad to take questions before we go to that Chris I just wanted to ask if you would um also share the times that we have used an interim zone proposal.

Yes uh we have used a f a few times um the first one I personally worked on uh when the federal government decided we were going to have a whole bunch of telecommunication providers instead of just the few that we had before and all of a sudden we were dealing with technologies and scales of things that had never been considered um so we uh uh adopted an ordinance limited certain kinds of facilities while we went through the process um short-term rentals was another one um we also did one on uh cannabis uh and a few others so all use specific and then identifying the very narrow elements that would hold while other things moved forward thank you for that that reminder questions so I suppose um if we were going to so the interneighborhood council was asking for um demolition and new construction of a certain size um within the NCOD so would that be like multi-unit dwelling as the use um you know picking out the uses that would um that would be the that would be the kind of thing but then if you made it that specific if somebody came in for a commercial project they would be unlimited in their ability to move forward.

So you've got to think through all the bits and pieces.

Yep.

Yeah, so it's planned use of the project, not the action that project is taking.

Right.

So like when we did telecommunications, um we said, you know, not for projects above X.

If somebody came in one inch or a hundred feet, they were subject to it.

Anybody that was underneath that was able to proceed forward under the rules as they stood.

So that sounds like you did tailor it to the scale of something.

We did, but we tied it specifically to the use.

Ah, okay.

So you've got to come up with the use first.

Okay.

And then figure out again to this question of urgency and all the rest of it.

What is it that has to be on hold while we deal with whatever this proposal is that's being evaluated that we need to make different than the standards that are currently uh in play?

Okay.

Well, and I think what we're talking about today is do we want to move forward with writing a letter recommending that the city consider interim zoning?

And we can take the time to craft whatever uses we think, whatever reasons we think for urgency.

Do we still have a quorum?

Yeah, Chelsea's here.

Okay.

I hope Chelsea's still here.

Yeah, I'm still here.

Yeah, but thanks for the clarifications on how we have to craft that.

You're welcome.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much.

What did you take it off?

And Ashley's still is right.

Yeah.

Um I mean, I'm I'm still fine with moving forward with that recommendation to the commission.

Um I think really it's just we need to decide who's going to work on drafting that letter uh and make a subcommittee to do that, kind of outside of outside of quorum.

Sherry, do you it's an action items you may want to request public comment?

Oh.

Thanks.

Is there any public comment on that before we discuss it?

Mary Bates and Bozeman residents and I just gave a thumbs up to making the res recommendation to the city commission.

Thank you very much.

Uh Daniel Cardi Bozeman resident, I support uh Mary Payton's previous public comment.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Um one of the things I had talked about.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm just sorry.

Um Mark Campanelli Bogar Park.

I also agree, I think things are just too convoluted at this moment.

And this isn't the perfect answer, but I think it's the best thing we can do.

So thanks.

Anyone else?

Was there online?

Yes, we have Jason Delmu.

Go ahead.

Good evening.

Uh good evening, board members.

Um, we probably should refer to it as a moratorium.

I mean, I realize the statutory term is uh interim zoning, but it really it would be a moratorium.

Um it seems like it's mostly not about historic preservation.

Um might be somewhat about transitions between districts, which was a topic that was uh addressed at length and and settled upon in the UDC update.

Um the survey that was sent out was um essentially a one-sided argument with the question uh essentially you agree, right?

Um there was no attempt at balance and no mention of the value of new development of creating places that people might live or work or make something.

There's also no reference of reference size buildings given.

Most of the buildings that people are upset about are five and six stories.

Um I think the survey most popular size that was uh size trigger was 20,000 square feet.

Uh Black Olive is 84,000 square feet, the Ives is 172,000.

Um eleven uh both together is 177,000.

The revised government is 54,000 and it's only four stories.

Um I also think that the arguments uh blurred the distinction.

I mean, it started uh the progression in the um presentation just was blurred.

It started off with the issue about 70 feet versus 90 feet being allowed in B3.

Then the argument discussed the historic downtown, which is the B3C, and I mean it's true that the B3 is uh quote unquote halo around it.

Um the NCOD boundaries, which are so much bigger, were not explained.

Um so I would hesitate to use those survey results as a supporting of accurate valid public opinion uh because it seems more like bootstrapping of um you know presenting something in a way to get a response and then saying, look at this overwhelmingly favorable response.

Um and then the last uh comment is I would just say that like really protect your board's credibility as a trusted advisor to the commission by trying to show understanding of the the complex uh nature of of development and all sides of the issue you know, before asking for something so drastic as a essentially a moratorium within the entire NCOD of buildings as small as 20,000 square feet or even 30,000.

Uh thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Okay, well, I'm happy to respond to that.

Was there any other public comment?

No other public comment.

Okay.

Okay.

So any rate, I'll feel free to step up and talk on this issue since I'm the one that pretty much brought it up for the INC group.

And looking at it, it wasn't so much the finer points of the survey that we were trying to craft.

It was just to do a gut check in the community to see what is the pulse of the community on this topic, all the small specifics aside.

And there was plenty of feedback where people disagreed.

So certainly no guns were held to anyone's head to do this survey, but still the survey came back with people just talking freely, and that's the whole point of this was to have democracy at work, and there were over 300 people that responded, and a lot of them over a hundred were outside of the NCOD neighborhoods that it provided.

This was the first survey of its type done in the community, and obviously we never get 300 people packing this room in a commission meeting.

So we had to start somewhere, and we did, and certainly could a survey be refined much more in the future?

Of course it could.

But for the purposes of getting this say out of the on-deck circle and actually into the batter's box, so to speak, this was our approach, and we're sticking to it, and we understand Mr.

Delmi's point, and he also spoke up at the INC meeting, too, and that's fine, because we encourage public discourse on this, and certainly we're getting it, but that's what we want the commission to have.

And sure, we'd love to see them vote one way or another on it, but even before that, what we're really after is just getting the commission to put this on the agenda to have a public hearing and discuss it publicly.

Jim, just a point of clarity.

You said we a couple times there.

Who are you referring to?

Is the weekend Okay, I should say that that comes from the INC board because we have not in good good point community director George.

I am not speaking for the whole HPAB at this point.

We still have to discuss it and take a vote on what we're going to do.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think this is um, you know comments about board integrity and things like that.

It's this is us asking to have this discussion with the commission with the public.

Um there's a lot of unanswered questions for us.

What we're looking at though is a pretty major overhaul of an existing code that may have uh well have most undoubtedly impacts on what's going to come next under the auspices of that of those design guidelines in that code, it's gonna affect UDC, it's gonna affect the NCOD, um HPAB is involved, community development board is involved, um, which our public commenter was a member of and it's really about with this much change, is this an appropriate move?

And I think that's a discussion we'd like to have.

Um, and I I you know, speaking personally, I don't have a a stake in the uh which way it falls, but I think it's worth having that discussion and worth exploring if if that is in fact uh a prudent measure, it is exactly what interim zoning is designed for is to deal with those transitions between one set and another set of regulations and things that are out there, and speaking to urgency of the um I forget all the terms now.

Uh the public health safety and welfare.

Um, you know, there's I think there's a lot to unpack there and look at.

Uh and it may be that it's not appropriate, and it's not the right thing to do, and it's too whatever, but I think that the discussion can still be had and I think that's a good point because again, the sense of urgency here is the fact that the NCOD guidelines with the Lakota groups work behind that, and then the uh the landmark program, those are two big things out there, and those are far from being resolved at this point.

And what we're asking for, it's or at least what I have suggested, say for HPAB and what Inc.

as the INC board is asking for, it's a pause and it's temporary, it's not permanent.

It certainly strikes those that have been involved in the process so far that because certain other things are not set in stone or resolved or whatever, these two policies that gee, it makes sense.

Let's pause for a little bit and let the guidelines process catch up with the rest of the process, and then when that's all done, okay, we'll move forward and whatever it's going to be is whatever it's going to be, but nobody is saying you can't ever have a 90-foot height as an example.

It's just a temporary pause to get Bozeman's house in order.

Vice Chair Weisman, just to clarify, because I I think I I heard what you said, and I think I've heard the discussion and seeing what's been in some of the comments, and I want to make sure that when the board votes, you are voting on the specifics of what you're recommending to city commission.

Um, because I think what I just heard you say is that you would you would be encouraging commission to have the conversation, to have the public discussion, not necessarily encouraging commission to adopt an interim zoning ordinance.

So I just want to make sure that the board is very clear on what you're recommending in the letter.

Yes, thank you.

Uh what we are, and I'll I'll kind of define this you guys agree or disagree.

What we are going to do is write a letter to recommend that the city commission consider an interim zoning ordinance.

Is that clear enough?

Okay.

Yeah.

And so it'll just be up to us to then internally draft outlet or put that together.

But speaking with other board members who are not here, I know there's general favor for that.

Or I wouldn't have you know, probably we wouldn't have brought this forward, but um, yeah, that's that's what we're looking at is recommending that the can the commission consider an interim zoning ordinance.

And in that letter, do you want to leave it at that, or do you want to make findings for why like pros and cons?

Yeah, I think our plan would be to provide why we think that's an important thing to discuss.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And certainly to bring out what did come out at the INC board meetings last two, a few times, that given the public's interest in this now, which is pretty darn high, the public, and I know it goes way beyond INC or HPAB at this point.

The public very much has voted to say with its uh, you know, with its raising of their hands to say yes, let's have that discussion.

Let's have the commission consider this and push that forward to see where it goes.

But we definitely want to have the public hearing, and the sticking point has been up till this point, the commission has said not three votes on the commission at this time to put it on the agenda.

That was made clear to us at our INC board meeting last Thursday, April 9th.

But it was also made clear too that the commissioner liaison, deputy mayor Fisher, would go back to the commission and put his best foot forward again because I feel that he really heard that particular board, and he's the most sincere about doing that.

So I think what this what's good is that we're having a good open process, and that process at the INC meeting was a very interesting two-way conversation.

That is not something that often takes place between a commissioner and say a board on a on a topic like that.

Certainly Commissioner Sweeney.

Here we're having a two-way conversation.

Um, but it's a little different than the one that was had at INC last Thursday.

But it's all good because I think it is making, in my own humble opinion, it's making Bozeman's process better in the long run and will be better for it.

So just a point of clarification for everyone, just so you know the process.

In order to put something on the agenda, the mayor can do it unilaterally, or you need three commissioners.

Um then also if you guys do want to make a motion, Mike as the chair cannot do that.

So someone else would need to do it.

Okay.

I will make the motion that we write a letter to the city commission recommending that they put this on their future agenda here in the short term in the future for a formal public hearing.

And I think we leave it at that, right?

We don't need to well it to in the public hearing is to see about adopting a possible interim zoning ordinance, which certainly has the um the support of this board at this time.

Second yeah, any further discussion.

Chelsea.

Uh I have no further items to add to that discussion.

Mover Webster.

Aye.

Second chorus.

Aye.

Member Wiseman.

Aye.

Member Holling.

I.

Yeah, can we include that?

Danielle.

What was the question?

If we can include Daniels is it kind of before she knows she because she departed before this item was heard.

I I don't think that can officially count.

I don't think so either.

So that is yeah, it's a it's a Robert School's issue where unless it is specifically provided for in like by commission that we could take absentee votes, it's not generally recommended.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Chair, can I just um suggest because it it's my understanding this letter has not yet been drafted.

So you've taken a vote on something that's not yet been drafted.

So if you're going to do that and email it to the board, that's fine, but just a reminder not to get into a discussion over email with the entire board because that would violate quorum rules.

So if you have questions about the content, you'll need to call each other separately or have a conversation separately if it's not a quorum.

Okay.

Thank you for the reminder.

Does that have a letter come to us from you once we get something drafted?

No.

No, we are staff is not writing this letter for the board.

This is something that the board wants to draft.

Yeah.

Uh yeah, so either Jim or I will talk to board members individually.

Um I think we'll probably write draft circulating but we're we'll actually write it.

Okay.

Uh I think we are done then.

Yep.

Okay.

Okay.

Where's that gamble?

Thank you for another wonderful chair meeting.

I work on that.