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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.hpc.19920319 HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMITTEE MINUTES OF SPECIAL MEETING MARCH 19, 1992 Meeting was called to order by chairman Bill Poss with Linda Smisek, Jake vickery, Martha Madsen and Karen Day present. Donnelley Erdman, Les Holst, Joe Krabacher and Roger Moyer were excused. INTRODUCTION Bill: This is a public hearing and every five years the Historic Preservation Committee is required to re-evaluate the inventory of historic sites and structures based on our CLG grant from the State. Tonight we are taking public comments on different sites and listening to applicants that have additional information to add to their files on their particular property or structure. The information in the files is a form on the evaluation, a photo from the 1980 inventory and 1986 rating structure. Now we use the State format which rates structures as to supporting, contributing and significant. Linda: Do we have a list of designated properties. Bill: Yes there is a list of designated properties available. 635 E. HOPKINS W.R. Waltum (Adam) owner. Jake: What is this right now? Roxanne: This is rated a #3 and we are recommending contributing. In 1980 it was rated notable and in 1986 it was given a three. Bill: The form that I show is supporting? Roxanne: That form is not Staff's recommendation, that is the consultant's recommendation. We are still working on the worksheet. Consultants generally rate everything lower. Adam: Perhaps I should wait until it goes to city Council to form my opinions. I do not even know what could be accomplished tonight. What are you trying to accomplish? Bill: Tonight is a public hearing at which time we take information from the actual property owners or their representatives if they have any information to add or correct on the forms and the information we have collected to date. This is the time we take information before we do our evaluation rating of the structures. Jed Caswall, attorney: This is also the time to argue why your Historic Preservation Committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 property should be on or off. You will have another opportunity when the ordinance is presented to council on the public hearing. You basically have two shots at it. Adam: I am certain that I can argue until time ending that it should be off but that wouldn't do much good. I like my house there and 20 years ago I and my X spouse worked hard to make it into what it is today. We were into historic preservation in Aspen long before any of you or the people that came before you were giving lip service to us. Let me say this that you along with Roxanne Eflin have done a commendable job in helping to preserve what we know is Aspen's historic structure and little charmers. Many people in Aspen seem to consider their importance by the number of years they have been here. I read in the paper that a friend of my was giving a book review of a book that he had written at Explorer Bookstore. He had been here since mid 80's and they referred to him as along time local. I had neighbors in my neighborhood that were born here. Those are the people that I consider long term locals. I think while I congratulate you on what you have done to help preserve these buildings I am really going to criticize you and those that have gone before you in what you have done to some of these long term locals. Before I get into that may I say that you all are 30 years too late. This should have been done as a complete overlay at least 30 years ago but I can see why they didn't. It was pride and there was too much opposition from developers, architects etc. We can't go back in time and it was done in the wrong way in my opinion. You came in too late but you are doing what you can. I don't feel too happy as well as some of these other owners that the government bureaucracy is taking over my property. I spent 15 years paying for that house the first time around and another ten years buying out my wife's portion. I am finally paid off. Now getting back to these people that I think you have done a great dis-service too and the reason why I say that is because if their assessed evaluations are anything like mine have gone through this past year from the assessors office. To double my assessed evaluation, you can imagine what that will do to my property taxes. I am disappointed in Miss Eflin who worked so hard in trying to place these in historic preservation but she has done damn little to help these owners. I discussed this with the assessors office and those who were concerned about their high assessments were appealing and they said has the HPC or Staff person assisted and we said we called her but she was too busy. Bill: That is the county assessors office and with all due respect to Roxanne she is staff representative of the city. Adam: As much as she knows about this situation and as hard as she has worked, taking control of these places away from the Historic Preservation Committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 owners. Their property represents their biggest material asset to many of them. There are a lot of people who have been here all of their lives and have nothing other than their house and they had to move or have to move due to the sky rocket of taxes. Bill: That is an economic issue not historic inventory. Adam: It is economics in addition to you taking control of our property. What you should have done in my opinion she should have worked with the State Legislature and given us some relief on property taxes. This income tax incentive is a bunch of baloney!!! A lot of theses people do not have enough money to pay income taxes. These incentives you have here listed are minimal in my opinion. I have told Miss Eflin this before. If you are going to take control of our property, which in fact you are. Sure there are incentives as we don't have to go through growth management plan provide for employee house, off street parking etc. All this is well and good if you are going to develop your property. But the majority of these people can hardly put up a fence. Give something in return for what you are taking away; property tax relief is what they want. I have talked to them. They want to keep their houses and do not want to tear them down and build ugly structures that have been built along that whole block of Hopkins there but because of those buildings being torn down and new building being constructed property values have sky rocketed. Bill: The incentives that we have are meager and we have gone to the City for more with Roxanne's help. We are always trying to get incentives for the people. Adam: You need to go to the State. Roxanne: The reason why we are having this public hearing is to consider whether or not this property should be on the inventory or not. If this is going to be-a worksession it should be tabled until the end of the meeting. I have to completely and totally disagree as to what Adam is saying about me ever telling anyone that I was too busy to work with them. I work with people all the time. Adam: The person that told me that was one of the top appraisers at the court house. Roxanne: I have never said that to anyone. Secondly and I have talked with Adam about this at the State level there is a group of people working very hard to get the tax situation changed. We do not at the local level have the ability to reduce taxes on historic property as the State requires limits. Tom Isaac tried to do that and was notified from the State level that said that was Historic Preservation Committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 discretionary and he was not able to do that. As a matter of fact we have been working on that for a couple of years and there are legislators' working on this exact issue. John Sweeney another historic property owner on the west end has offered to take a petition around and do some real lobbying. Bill: Bill Tuite had the reverse mortgages to help people when they came in. Adam, you need to address the City Council. Are you requesting that we take your house off the inventory. Adam: I am sure that would never happen. I have replaced about everything except the soffets. The post have been cut in two and applied to an applique on the porch. That house was built in 1885 and the original structure inside the house was an one inch board without any studs. It mentions foundation but there is no basement and there was a fruit cellar that has been cleaned. It is sitting on rocks. I am in a unique situation for the fact that the property is quite valuable and the longer I live there the less desirable it becomes as a residence. I am not against historic preservation and I love old houses and that is why I live there. We are glvi~g this charm to the community and why are we the ones that have to pay for it. At the moment I don't plan on coming into you and asking you to allow me to demolish my house. I would like relief to my high taxes. Bill: That is a good point and we will present that to the state. We believe in the same principle that you do and people should have compensation for that. Adam: The older people will not come in and talk with you. Bill: We are trying to help those people. Adam: Thank you for listening to me and I hope we can get some relief by review and reduced property taxes. Bill: I hope we can call on you for support when we discuss this issue. Possibly we can get the City behind us. Adam: Is there any meeting that I can attend after this meeting? Roxanne: April 13th is the tentative date for the public hearing with city Council but that could change. 811 E. HOPKINS Roxanne: John's was rated #1 in 1980 and notable in 1986 and we are recommending supporting. Historic Preservation Committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 John Gates, owner: What is our rating. Roxanne: Supporting. John: I would like to correct a couple of things on the form. It is lot C Block 31. I only have one lot. The landscaping pine trees, one is in Ray's yard and the other is in someone elses yard, not our yard. Let me give you a brief history on the property; it is indeed a miners shack. We are also neighbors with Ray Bates which is something important with us later on. According to Ray who is a good historian in the area and collaborating information on our house this was originally indeed a miners shack with two rooms. Old man Balser lived there from the 20's into the late 50's. The house was then bought by Dr. Zeln, an optometrist in town who turn it into his office. He had that through the 70's and then he sold it to the owner prior to us who did nothing to it. The front facade is what everybody feels is historic about our house. The actual facade up until Dr. Zelm had the house was this brick asphalt paper over the structure and siding which is 1 by 6's vertically which is the entire structure of the existing part of the house. We have structural wall paper and structural asphalt siding. The closed in area of the porch did not exist until the 70's. The studs are white star studs building up the porch which we know were sold around here in the early 70's. It was two rooms. We do not believe that the bay window was original to the house. Balser's daughter visited two years ago and to the best of recollection there was only one window in the raised side of the house when she lived there. On the west elevation you can see where the new siding from the 70's go and where the asphalt darts back. As soon as we have the funds we are going to remove the brick asphalt wallpaper and get actual insulation and siding on the house. We have permission from the Bldg. Dept. and we need to do it. Other than some of the massing we are not sure what is historic on that. We would like to be removed from the inventory mainly because we are not sure what is actually historic about the house. Further and I hate to bring up the economic situation because that is not in your guys realm but literally everything we have is in that house. We have added onto it immensely and the original house constitutes 1/6th of the square footage. The value of the property is tied to Ray Bates property. He owns three lots and we own one and there are condos everywhere else. If in some future date we're not sure we want to be tied into asking someone else permission to sell our house if somebody makes an offer on Ray's property and says we'll take yours too. Or if that we just prefer to have the freedom of choice with what we do with our property. We have no intention to changing the house anymore and we intent to keep the streetscape. Bill: Yours is rated supporting. A lot of structures add support Historic Preservation Committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 to an individual neighborhood or area in town and a lot of the integrity is lost due to unsympathetic additions or alternations but they are considered retrievable and someone could someday go in and restore the historic structure. That is why we attempt to keep these structures even though they are low on the inventory. We tend to retain them on the inventory until a definite plan is submitted to us. We will take this information given to us in account when we re-evaluate the property. John: At what point does it stop being an historic structure. If we were to go in and actually bring the house to a proper level of building code there would not be anything historic left. The existing state of the house is bad. Had we had more funds when we added on we would not have had to live in it and would probably have kept the scale of the house but no one else would have kept the house to begin with. As citizens what point do reconstructions pseudo-victorians become supporting. Bill: When we get clarification on that we will let you know and thank you for attending. 918 E. COOPER Tom Melberg: I would like to listen to what the meeting is all about and possibly you could answer my questions. How significant is this little place and what the significance might entail. It is a one story 750 sq. ft. which has been basically redone with aluminum siding and metal roof and aluminum windows and it sits on a newer foundation. They do have the property up for sale and the house presently sits on the lot line and we are anticipating whoever buys this property it is in a residential multi-family zoned area that they will apply for a lot split and do a duplex for a single family. From a realestate broker it would be great if we could get a demolition permit and not have to deal with it but I understand what you might be trying to accomplish. I would like to discuss the possibility of what would be the best relocation on the property because it sits over the lot line. What I see happening one block closer toward town in the 800 block is a remodel and basically what they ended up with was an entrance foyer and they did not maintain anything historical. To me what should have been saved did not get saved and got through the loop holes. I would suggest that if the house is significant to save and to be able to pick it up and put it in the cottage infill program. Then the structure would be saved to scale and it could be an employee dwelling and functional. The Luchines first option is to get it off the list. If not I would like the committee to give us feedback as to what they feel should happen. The only thing significant is its scale and size and lets think of the Historic Preservation committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 possibility of 9utting it in the back with less of a setback into the alley and leave it as an employee unit. Possibly it could be divided into two studio units and that way the scale would be maintained. Bill: Sometimes we loose little cottages but we will take everything into consideration that you have given us here today. Tom: Is the Committee open to moving the cottage. Bill: We encourage all creative ideas on how to save these structures. Possibly we could schedule a worksession. Roxanne: There are numerous things that could occur and one would be to keep the little house and designate and get the advantages and benefits of designation. Tom brings up the tragedy of 824 E. Cooper and how we learned from that one. 918 was originally a notable and rated a #3 in 1986. I am recommending because of its scale that it is supporting which would be a lower category due to the changes that have taken place. About 10% of the inventory is in the lowest category. Tom: We are willing and this is plausible. Roxanne has been very open and willing to work with us. Bill: We work with individuals all the time. Tom: The property is on the market. George Vicenzi: Is there work being done with the State regarding Taxes. Roxanne: The Assessor and the Planning office are working with northwest colorado and will be taking information forward to the State regarding tax reduction for historic designations. We have not gone to legislation as they are booked for the summer but intend to present this fall. Linda: Are the historic properties taxed the same as all properties? Roxanne: Yes, but Tom Isaac has been reducing them on different criteria. Roxanne: The State has indicated that it is community specific as to whether a property should be off the inventory. There is nothing specific. In the East there are strong guidelines. Bill: Until we have a development plan proposed to us it is still Historic Preservation Committee Minutes of March 19, 1992 retrievable in some sort. Jake: There should be a relationship between the development review standard and the inventory list that we are using to evaluate when people come in. If large additions were approved on the basis of it not affecting the primary or secondary facade of the historical resource then it still maintains historical integrity and should be preserved even if you look at the big picture and the overall structure may have lost its integrity relative to scale. So the question is at what point can the element get so small relative to the percentage of the overall picture. Roxanne: It is not that easy because you are not just dealing with facades, you are dealing with the entire building which includes the context of the building in its entirety. Jake: The gazebo has history to it but it is totally new material. If it is a total re-creation then possibly we should have a new category and acknowledge that. Linda: I feel numerous properties have lost their historic integrity because of what has happened to the additions. If there is a way to categorize reproductions as Jake has suggested. Roxanne: Significant is specifically that category. Jake: I think control over the re-development of the parcel is good and the cottage infill is good also. Roxanne: In order to get variances etc. the property has to be designated. Bill: If we had greater incentives you would see people restoring their properties all over town. MOTION: Jake made the motion that we continue this public hearing to March 25th; second by Linda. All in favor, motion carries. Meeting adjourned at 7:30 p.m. Kathy Strickland, Chief Deputy Clerk