New Historic Review Board Tackles Old School Issue Tonight

By DORIE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave

June 18, 2013

A new group of Cape Charles residents, advised by a new-hire town planner, will meet at 4:30 p.m. today (Tuesday) to consider whether proposed exterior changes to the Old School building in Central Park meet historic guidelines.

The Town’s Historic District Review Board is authorized by the State of Virginia to exercise regulatory control over properties in an officially designated Historic District. The Old School is listed as a “contributing structure” by the National Register of Historic Places.

Although the Historic Review Board has regulatory authority, the Town Council has authority to overrule the Board, which is what happened last February when the Board refused to approve the modern glass balconies on Hotel Cape Charles. All but one member of the Historic Board resigned after being overruled by Town Council.

The new Board has already tasted controversy after denying a request by the owner of 621 Jefferson Avenue to remove a non-working chimney.

But that was a minor issue in comparison to the Old School in Central Park, which a developer plans to convert into a 17-unit apartment building. The plans are the subject of two lawsuits now under appeal to the State Supreme Court.

The developer, J. David McCormack, has applied for federal and state tax credit reimbursements of up to 45 percent of his costs.

According to McCormack, construction of the apartment building will not happen unless he gets the tax credits. But tax credit criteria are stringent, requiring that exterior details as well as interior spaces remain faithful to the original 1912 design.

McCormack has requested tax credits from both the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the National Park Service.

His application to the Virginia DHR was denied on November 21, 2012, for failure to retain historic features and spaces.

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McCormack submitted a revised application on December 19, 2012, with “significant changes.” The DHR in Richmond has not issued a decision on the revised application.

The NPS in Washington, however, did issue a decision March 1, detailing additional conditions McCormack must meet. NPS official Audrey Tepper wrote that the project “will meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation if the conditions . . . are met.”

Most of the NPS conditions concern interior design, but two of them relate to the exterior as well. Most significant is McCormack’s request to divide the school’s gym/auditorium into a “family unit” apartment, which would require bedroom, bathroom, and other walls to intersect an unbroken line of exterior windows.

McCormack’s revised application states an intent “to truncate bedroom walls 3 feet from the window wall.” In response, the NPS requested clarification, noting that “The revised floor plans submitted with the amendment show new bathroom walls in front of windows. Are these actually half-walls that do not rise to the level of the windows? Please clarify; be aware walls and partitions must not intersect windows anywhere in the project.”

Walls butting into glass windows would alter the exterior view of the building and thus would come under the purview of the Town Historic District Review Board as well. While the Town Board has no control over tax credits, it is the authority that grants or denies permission to alter an historic structure.

The Town Historic Board last month expressed concern over a requested change to a roofline by removing a chimney. Now the Board must decide whether proposed installation on the Old School roof of heating/air conditioning equipment, as well as sky lights, should be approved.

The state DHR has not yet ruled on McCormack’s revised application. Normally, the National Park Service lets the state agency take the lead. And in fact, when the Wave spoke to NPS representative Tepper, she seemed unaware that the application was still pending at state level. When asked why the National Park Service had gotten out in front of the Department of Historic Resources, Tepper said she was “not sure how that happened.”

Town Manager Heather Arcos also was confused in thinking that the state DHR had approved the application. Arcos told Town Council April 25 that the application was approved.

The next day, the Wave sought clarification from DHR Deputy Director Julie Langan and received the following response: “I have confirmed that the most recent correspondence in our file is our letter dated February 4, 2013 in response to one of the submitted design schemes. This letter, which you have previously received, lists conditions that must be met and requests additional information. It also notes that we will complete our review upon submission of the requested materials. Therefore, it is not the case that the Part 2 has been approved.”

But the damage had already been done. On a motion by Steve Bennett, Town Council voted to require the developer (now doing business as Charon Ventures) to request approval from the Town Historic District Review Board within 30 days “since approval had been received by the Department of Historic Resources.”

The Town Historic Review Board now finds itself in the position of being asked to approve design changes still pending at the state level and which at the federal level have additional conditions for approval.

According to former Historic Review Board chairman Russ Dunton, in cases where the state Department of Historic Resources has been involved, the Town Historic Review Board has always deferred to the judgment of the DHR. That would make sense, since the DHR is staffed with professional architects and designers, whereas the local Board is composed of civic-minded volunteers who may or may not have any professional background.

The Town Board does have one professional advising them – Rob Testerman, the new town planner who replaced Tom Bonadeo last month. Testerman has six years’ experience as a land use planner for Accomack County.

With less than three weeks’ experience in Cape Charles, however, Testerman is stepping into a hornets’ nest of an issue that has divided the Town for more than a year.

Testerman’s June 12 memo to the Historic Review Board (contained in the information packet available here (part 1) and here (part 2) recommends approval of the developer’s request. The basis for approval is because “the proposed modifications meet the standards of the Secretary of the Interior.”

The recommendation fails to address the conditions stipulated by the NPS, or the clarifications sought. For example, the NPS has requested construction of “full scale mock-ups of all features that will be situated on roof, including HVAC and mechanical equipment as well as the proposed skylights.” No mock-ups have yet been provided.

The Testerman memo also fails to inform the new Board that the State Department of Historic Resources denied the developer’s application.

Additionally, the memo does not point out any problem with converting a school building on park property into an apartment building.  The previous Historic Review Board unanimously approved a motion July 17, 2012, that “the HDRB did not feel that conversion of the Old School Building to apartments was an appropriate use.”

The issue of appropriateness for an apartment building is particularly relevant because developer McCormack has complained in his application that it is not possible to meet fire safety standards for bedrooms if the original classroom spaces are preserved. “Per the building code, each bedroom must have ready access to a window for egress in case of fire. Since each classroom has one bank of windows, and often with no intervening wall, it is difficult to meet building code requirements without intersecting windows,” McCormack wrote on his revised recommendation.

Since the installation of intersecting windows fails to meet the criteria for historic tax credits, McCormack has in effect requested a waiver. “This project was developed before we were aware of the new requirement to avoid the intersection of walls with window frames,” McCormack wrote in his application.

The application was actually prepared by Paige Pollard on behalf of McCormack and Charon Ventures. Pollard is a former staff member of the Department of Historic Resources.

Members of the Town Historic District Review Board are familiar with Pollard, because former town planner Bonadeo chose her to train members of the new Board on historic preservation concepts. Several Town residents have complained that it is a conflict of interest for an applicant’s paid agent to instruct the Board on how to respond to applications.