May 14, 2018 Historic Landmark Commission on 2018-05-14 5:30 PM

6, 11, PM. Let's go ahead and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. And Kenneth, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. Alright, so we have two items for consideration tonight. The first is A, consider approval of the Historic Landmark Commission meeting minutes from April 9, 2018. Did everybody get a chance to look over those? Great. Can I get a motion? I move we approve the minutes as offered. Excellent. Thank you, Roy. I second. Thank you for that second, Helen. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Alright, the motion is approved. For those minutes. And let's move on to B, consider making a recommendation to the Planning and Zoning Commission regarding an application for Historic Landmark designation for the property located at 607 East College Street between Vine Street and Frame Street. And Roman has a presentation for us. Thank you, Roman. Thank you. Thank you, Chair and everybody for being here this evening. And I apologize for not sending out a notice, a reminder notice, but I'll do that next time. I just told Dr. Helen I think I'll just have a list on my cell in the morning I'll send out a reminder. Remind one or what? So this is a really nice opportunity to landmark 607 East College Street. The owners of the property are here tonight. And I've prepared for you a few slides that are a summary of what you would have, what you'd have in your packets. And just as a reminder, it's 607 East College Street in Denton, Texas, 76209. And there's the legal description. And it's a single family residence located near Texas Women 's University just on the east side. This home appears to have been built somewhere in the early 20s. You'll see going forward in these slides how we couldn't exactly pinpoint it. We couldn't find a mechanics lien for it. And I actually suspect that it could have been built by May and Henry Stevens or by J.H. and Mary Pearl Boyd. And it's built in the craftsman style. You'll see pictures of that. Now, it's important to note here at item number two that this small area was recognized in the 1996 Denton Historic Resource Survey as an area that was important, but it had lost a lot of integrity and it seemed to have been developed at a different time, according to that survey. So they didn't recommend landmarking it. The home has been in the same family, was in the same family for 74 years, the Boyd family. Now, in researching this, we thought the home belonged to the same family that Conti's house. And it turns out that's not, that doesn't appear to be the case. Here's a little history of the ownership of the property and the number six and seven I deduced from this document, which talks about the conveyance of the land earlier to C.C . Bell from John Henry in 1869, then to C.C. Bell by John Henry. At the time, in 1917 or so is when the subdivision was made , the plat was made and the streets were allocated. Then there's this interesting document. This gets to when was it built? And this is a loan, something filed in relationship to the loan on the property. And in this document, which talks about payments and what have you, you have here that there's some there's some co venants, or not covenants, but some requirements for this doc for this loan. And one of them is that that the building shall be insured or buildings to be built shall be insured. So I'm thinking that the loan that was taken out could have been to construct the home. And that's what those things are about. And then the 1925 after the Boyds take ownership, you have the city working with Jago to build the sidewalks in the area. And this is referencing one hundred and ninety five dollars and fifty one cents, I believe, to be paid by the owners of Boyds at the time. And they created a lien on the property till they paid that . So in the ninety six historic resource survey, it was the 1915 was put down as a bill date. I don't know how that could have come about, but there you have it. And it was a medium priority house at the time. And perhaps the medium priority comes from the fact that when you look at it in that ninety six image with the kind of the faux wrought iron columns that were there, you know, maybe didn't have so much of originality in it. There's the the Sanborn maps from 1926. And here's the property in the upper left. So we know it was there then. There's nothing before this area of town didn't have San born maps until twenty six. And then between twenty six and forty nine, you know, they just augment the maps. And so you see the structure end up the next door corner property ends up and as well as the map fills in. So if you see all the blanks before and up to forty nine filled in a little more. So we know the house has a lot of integrity. This is kind of a combination of things that make this house important. And so here's a long series of articles starting around 1930 and this page for women in the Denton record Chronicle . And it refers to the Tress Modern Bridge Club meeting at this house. And I'm just going to go through these rather quickly. In 1930, we have reference to Mr. Boyd being elected to the Masonic Lodge position there with the Masonic Lodge. And here we have. Yeah. So here in 1930, we have guests at the house, right. The 13 Bridge Club guests there. Now, I could not figure out what J.H. Boyd did in the research we've done thus far. But I hope by designating the property and in the future, we'll keep an eye out and try to figure it out. We do know is that he did declare bankruptcy in 1930. We also saw that he was served a salad. He was served a salad. I'm sorry. Yeah. Go back one slide. The hostess served a salad and ice. Ice. I love it. So there's a bankruptcy in September 30. So , you know, somewhere around the time the stock market crashed. Makes sense. Maybe it was too much bridge. He lost a couple of times. And taking taking the articles a little out of order, you have this piece to kind of think a little bit about J.H. Boyd. And he had he was from New York, apparently, and he had two brothers, one. This is in 55. So we've jumped forward 25 years. But one brother was a reverend in Syracuse and the other brother was in Geneva, New York. So we know that. But now we're going back a little bit. Here's a book club reference to the secretary of the book club was Mrs. J.H. Boyd. And they were meeting at the house. And here are a couple more things. November 37. This is about a quarter of the articles that were written about the family that are in the Denton record Chronicle. So here it's going back to the question. Also, we were told whoever built the house built it for their daughters who were in school. But what's evident from here is they built it for themselves and that the the daughters would go to school. So in November 37, the daughters were in town from their respective schools. And in December 37, Jane and Eleanor Boyd of Dallas are guests at their parents house. So they both were in Dallas. Now, here, Jane is in New York, is in is in Dallas. Doesn't mention where where Eleanor is. Right. But this also tells you a lot of things. One that Mr . J.H. Boyd was ill. And and then the Mrs. McAdams is Mrs. Boyd's maiden name, McAdams. What I think is interesting here, too, is that Jane Boyd was living at 5004 Worth Street. And here's 5004 Worth Street in Dallas. And it's it looks like an apartment building because I zoom ed in on a satellite image in the back part of this is all paved. And the double front door makes me think that she was possibly had a residence there. So then just continuing in the prominence of the Boyds on the left, there's two brother organizations that that J.H. Boyd was in. He was a commander here, the Denton commander, number 45, with the temple of all Sir Knights and then the number 60 and the R.A.M. group, whoever that is. And so 1947 that right. I read that right. I already have numbers in 47. An interesting thing here is that if you go to the upper left there, Jane Boyd left today for Washington and points in the east and she will visit her sister, Eleanor Boyd, who is a member of the George Washington University faculty . And then down below that, just a year later, she was a dean of women at Texas at West Texas State College. And politics doesn't get left out. This is a Republican precinct chair meeting was held in in 607 Boyd. So you see the house has an interesting history and has in your package, you were seeing a lot more pictures of the property. I don't think I have more pictures of it, but it's it's it 's been been worked on extensively by the family and updated . And we're recommending that it were suggesting that it meets criteria. It's number one, twelve and thirteen from our criteria. It only needs to meet one. One is character, interest or value as part of the development heritage or cultural characteristics of the city, state or the United States. In this case, the home retains much of its original character defining features such as the south facing front porch and most of the original siding and the original windows. And number twelve is a building or structure that because of its location has become a value to a neighborhood community area city. And the home is located in a block that retains a significant number of homes retaining historical integrity. And the southeast side of Texas Women's University campus is referenced in the 96 historic resource survey as significant. And number thirteen, a value as an aspect of community sentiment or pride. In this case, the current owners have sensitively rehabil itated this home, retaining character, defining features while updating it for generations to come. The home was recently featured as historic property of the month in Denton and the owners participated in a preservation Denton video. So you can actually see more of the house in the video. And the quality of the restoration work has been very good and it's been, we recommend approval for land marking this house. Do we have any questions for Roman? This is a beautiful home. This is a great presentation Roman. Any questions? And the owners of course are here too. Right. Can we open this up and speak to the owners? Cool. Come on up guys. If you would like to. Do you want us to come up? Would you mind? Sure. I'll ask you one very simple question. I promise. I'll put it back to at least a picture of the house here. Right there. All right. And then if you'll get right behind that microphone so that we can record this. Okay. State your name and your address. My name is Liz Spoonce and I live at 607 East College Street in Denton, Texas. Excellent. And then why did you choose, why is it you're wanting a historic landmark designation? A lot of these homes in this neighborhood are being demol ished and I think there for a number of years the homes in this neighborhood were part of a designated expansion area by TWU. And so owners in this particular area felt like as soon as the properties were going to be sold they were kind of destined to go to TWU because they didn't feel like they were going to be taken over to expand the university. I think the university now has changed its focus. It's now moving its direction onto the golf course. And we bought the house because I love old homes that have history to them and of course I work at TWU so it's a hop, skip, and a jump for me to get to work. But our goal is to try to show people in the community that these homes have value and they do take some extensive renovations but once you restore them they're just something that you don't see every day and it's sad to me that there are not that many left. There are still quite a few between College Street and what 's the street down by Texas and -- Austin. Frame Street. Frame Street and all in that area and there are still some really good homes that could be restored and make a nice neighborhood. And we -- since the revitalization of downtown, you know, you're seeing a lot of people who really are valuing living close to the square, valuing older homes and historic properties and so I think you've seen a really strong rise in the interest in these homes. So, you know, we're hoping that our home kind of serves as a beacon if you will that you can fix these homes up and they can be really extremely livable and something that preserves the heritage of the city and the history and can be here for many, many, many more years to come. And were you involved in any of the renovations to the house? We actually picked everything out. We tried to -- I got online and tried to research on inside the home when we did the restoration, we kept the original walls and we looked for details that would be consistent with the age of the property. So, in a way, yes, did I pick up a hammer? No. It would look near as nice as it does if that had been the case. I love that you guys did this with this house and loved this house. I don't know if you all owned this house maybe five or ten years ago when we had a big meeting at Kevin Ritten's house ? Yes. Yes, I have. Yes, we did. And the points that you're bringing up are so important. I don't know if everybody here sort of knows that history, but that was at the time when TWE was actively eating up as much of those homes as possible. They were using some -- and they were beginning to gut homes in between. One of the houses was being used as a swap team classic place. Sure, yeah. It was on the verge and it was so important when we were all talking about trying to get that stabilized. This hopefully might give other of your neighbors the idea to stabilize theirs as well. Well, we've had several on our street do a lot better job of maintaining and then a couple who have completely restored like we did. So, you know, it was important to us. I hope it's going to be important to others as well. You've done a beautiful job. Thank you. It's a beautiful home. Thank you. Thank you so much for making the effort to do this because I know that it's not always an easy process, but this is incredible. Well, we'd love to. We'd love for you to come by sometime. Yeah. I would love to. Yeah, you're all welcome. We'll be there. Yeah, it doesn't take long at all. You're on one of my walking routes, so I might walk by. It has happened before. Well, knock on the door. You're welcome to come in. Yeah. I love it. Thank you. Do we have any other questions for this booth? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. I guess we're technically open to the public, but that is all that is here. So we're going to close the public portion of the meeting and discussion. I think they did a great job. This is a perfect example of restoration done well and in a very important part of the city. And I really do hope that this helps to stem the tide. It does look like TWA is looking at a different place to expand. Yeah. And that could only mean good things for this little block. I agree. Do we have anybody who's ready to make a motion? I'll move. Great. To approve? To approve, yes. Okay. I'll second. Excellent. Thank you. So motion was made by Debs, seconded by Kenna. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Great. The motion is passed. Congratulations, May. Thank you, guys. This is amazing. You get a beautiful plaque. Yes. Yes. That's very happy. I will tie it down. Where do they put his ideas? Is there a design? Oh, you can put them up. It doesn't need to be advertised, right? We put ours on the left. When's the next meeting? Well, unless we're reducing the number we're advertising, unless we just only advertise the same thing, in the past we've standardized three units, P and Z. I don't know if you're doing this. Well, I guess I'll just inform the applicant that this says go to P and Z. Okay. So it's been approved through HLC, and so next it will go before P and Z, and from there it goes on to council, correct? Correct. Okay. Great. Thank you so much, y'all. He has a pretty stand-up fella. We agree. We'd like to keep him around. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What a beautiful house. Oh, gorgeous. All right. Let's move on. Item C, receive a report, hold a discussion, and select a historic property of the month, which I would like to point out that was a historic property of the month. Yes. And that's a good example of why we want to continue to look outside of the historic districts to spur this and seed it all through the city. Absolutely. All right. Yeah, they didn't like that. All right. So we have three properties to recommend. Actually, there's two new ones here because one of the previous ones had been on the list three times, and the rules we approved is that if you're on the list three times, then you don't get picked. There was a house that's no longer on. So this house at 411 West Prairie in the Stroud neighborhood just south of downtown is being nominated to Queen Anne style. It looks to be fully restored from the outside. And as Eric asked, I just went up and knocked on the door and left my card and waited for a call back. And then someone said, sure. Oh, I'd love to be a part of that. That'd be great. And the home was actually purchased from the man that restored it, who was Mike Cochran actually, who worked on this house. And he did a really thorough restoration from what I understand. I don't have the details of it, and I don't want to sway anyone's opinion. All these homes are fantastic. The second house here, this picture doesn't do it justice. This is 605 Robert Street. John Laney was the architect, as you all know, was a partner of O'Neill Ford. And you see the ceramic light fixtures just in the porch. There really were three there. They don't know how it happened, but one of them was shattered one morning. Again, knocked on the door, talked to this house. This is an incredibly beautiful home. It's almost a movie set inside. It's almost entirely period. And right now, it is undergoing some renovations. That's a pool company sign in the front yard. So they're installing a linear pool in the back and actually a guest quarters. But they have hired architects who are doing it so it'll fit in nicely. And you really won't see much of that from the front. So this is a nice home. And then the last one here, who's been on the list, this is actually the third time that we'll present this home at 1003 West Oak. And it's in the Prairie School style of architecture. And this home has a lot of original detail. And you can see it has a state marker on it. And it's been kept in very, very good condition. And these are the three options I have for you on the property of the month. Do we get to vote? We do. I'll talk to you guys. Do you have a question, Deb? No, when we have time for discussion I'd like to weigh in. Oh, on your vote? Any questions? Just discussion on the properties. Oh, go for it. I was just going to say that is Mike's property. And the woman who lives in there used to own the preschool in town on-- The Montessori School? The Montessori School. Julie Winnett is the name of the owner now. She's in our book club and she sent a letter, an email to all of us telling us that this house has been-- Nominated. --under consideration for being a store. She was so excited. It was ridiculous. That's cute. But having said that, one reason I would vote for the Str oud house is because-- for her house that's in that Stroud area is because I think that is a really important area for us to turn our sights to, to try to stabilize. And this, just like on Congress, might give us a little toe hold that might really get those neighbors to really start thinking of stuff. We've got one property that's already in a historic district. I don't know. I really like the idea of just planting those seeds outside of the historic districts. That was actually the one I was favoring as well, the West Prairie House. So is this the--how many times has this one been up? Is this its first time? First. The first time. The first for both this and the Robert Street, which I think it's really important to also consider many more of the historic mid-century houses, especially since there just really aren't as many, I feel like, in stock for that really cool mid-century, not just the 1968 Prairie House, which that ranch style is awesome, but I mean, these are a lot harder to find. But we will have another opportunity to vote on those two again, correct? Yes. Yes. I just, just as a note, I believe that--I did knock on the door. He wants to landmark that house, and I want to say she told me the same thing. I love that. So that's just-- Yay. Cool. All right, well, do we want to go ahead and take a--is there any more discussion? All things up? Great. Cool. Let's go ahead and take a vote. If you are wanting to vote for the White Stroud House, please raise your hand. One, two, three. That's 411 West Prairie, right? Yes, sir. Got it. The West Prairie House. Four. All right. That one won. Four or five. But Kenneth, I would--oh, do I have to vote on all of them? I would think--just if somebody makes a motion, just a second, just a comment on all of these, I think, just so I can-- Oh. Because it's actually--just to select, so that you're-- We always just voted before. Okay. Well, can we vote and then make a motion? Sure. Okay. It's just someone motorized it. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. We can do that. All right. I move we approve the home at 411 West Prairie Street as our House of the Month. I second the motion. Excellent. All in favor? Aye. All right. All right. So that moves--we have selected the Prairie House. It's so cute. All right. Kenneth, I would like to ask you, which one were you going to vote for? C. Oh, I like that one too. It's always been on. It's always been on. Okay. So, I would like to ask you, which one were you going to vote for? C. Oh, I like that one too. It's always been on. Okay. So, I would like to ask you, which one were you going to vote for? C. Oh, I like that one too. It's always been on. You know, it's really hard to not like any of those. It is. Yeah. Well, sometimes it's just-- Y'all, you will make a person who has had a lot of bad illness and a lot of bad things happen very happy. Oh, good. That doesn't matter, but she will be really thrilled. Excellent. All right. You have to be hard and fast on that three times in your rule because it's hard. Can we bring back a best of at the end of the year? I didn't even like making rules for that. That was--we had--we remember we were--oh, let's formalize it. I was trying to keep it loose, but I don't know why. It seems like a fun thing. We can always loosen those rules back up. I'm just saying. And so, Helen, if you want, we can bring one of them in. Well, I mean, it's just a gorgeous house. I hate for it to be out of consideration forever. It's, you know-- Forever. Maybe--actually, I don't think we said how long it won't be in consideration. Oh, maybe it's just the next meeting. Yeah, just to keep going. All right. Yeah. All right. Let's go on to D, the Historic Landmark Commission Project Matrix. Are there any items that need to be added or updated on the project matrix? No? Not in there? Where are we on local designation of downtown? Yeah, good question. Because it-- Okay. I can update you that we just met--presented that to Planning and Zoning. Okay. The Design District. I'm not sure it actually has an official name yet. But that Design District was presented to P&Z for their input. And we're taking that back and going to take into consideration their recommendations. And I believe--oh, no, it's going to City Council. Richard may be able to come in. It went to P&Z for a work session item. Okay. It'll now go back to City Council for a work session just to update them on all of the input that was received. From that point, any sort of final direction from Council, it'll get memorialized into an ordinance. And then we'll kind of go back on the circuit, if you will, meeting with the property owners, business owners, the various groups that we met with within the area. It'll come back to HLC, go to P&Z for formal recommendation , and then to City Council for formal adoption. Okay. Great. And it's been unanimously supported in every group that it 's been to. That's what I wanted to ask. As Scott emphasizes, there's not been one. Scott McDonald, the development director, has said that there's been no opposition to that. So it's just a matter of not working. There's been no opposition on P&Z. There's been no open opposition yet from outside sources. Okay. Great. What's the timeframe if everything keeps going? Positively. Positively, and then when would it be designated? Well, this isn't for the designation of -- this is just getting the design guidelines in place. That's what we're -- Yes, that's right. I mean, we're moving at a pretty rapid pace. I think it's just as -- Within the -- Get on every agenda and keep -- nothing slowed it down except just the sequence of the meetings. I suspect by the summer, June, maybe July, the very latest, that this would be adopted. And the only reason is because of the advertising of when we can have those meetings. There's typically a 30-day notice requirement. That would be the only holdup. Okay, so there's two items up there. There's the design guidelines, and then there's the local designation. Right. So what's the status on that? Yeah, the design guidelines. That's what I was -- Well, that's for the historic district. The local designation. Well, what's going to happen is that this will create, in essence, an overlay that will require certificates of appropriateness. So it's not being called a local historic district, but then it is being unanimously supported, however we're calling it. So it's going forward nicely, and there have been efforts in the past to create a local historic district over downtown, and sometimes, for whatever reason, those have gotten held up. But here we're going about it a little differently, and they started by meeting with the business community at a restaurant and business owners and got that support early on, and it seems to have the support. So it may be that it's a local -- it's not really a designation of downtown in the sense of a locally designated district, but it is creating a district that we can protect. Yes. Okay. Thinking of the design guidelines, this is just slightly off, but where are we with the final city council presentation for the design guidelines for the historic district that we changed? For Bell Avenue? No. For Bell and for just all the design guidelines? That was -- you mean the ordinance changes? Yeah, the ordinance changes. Or preservation organizations. Yeah. Those are just waiting. The Denton Development Code review process, we've just had about seven meetings within the community to refine the Development Code amendments or revisions, and we're going to just dovetail in those preservation ordinance changes into that when that gets approved. And I think we're just a few months from that same period, maybe July. Richard, could you speak to that? Yeah, we're looking at -- we'll have a -- the full -- The full consolidated draft. If you recall, we've taken a number of modules. What we've now done is really put that together into a full consolidated draft, which will be out within the next couple weeks. But once that goes out again, we'll be moving pretty rapidly. But that's looking to be adopted in August, I think, is the latest schedule. What we can do is have Roman provide everyone a copy of the latest schedule, where those amendments are and how that's moving through the process. That helps. And we're not discussing that those preservation ordinances , at least at this point, are going to be altered significantly. It's just a matter of having the numbers match and going into the Development Code. Yeah, it just got incorporated in. Actually, I don't think anything has changed since P&Z. Yeah. Right. I know. I'm just eager to get the historic designation down. Sure. Absolutely. And I know it keeps getting tied to this, which keeps getting pushed farther and farther back. We thought that was going to supposedly be done last November, so -- or last December, excuse me. It's hard to wait. No, I understand that. It's definitely hard for me, too. And especially with the preservation plan RFP, which we just met with on that. So we'll be -- there's an RFP, we'll be reviewing those and we're starting that process right behind there, too. Great. Okay. Is there anything that needs to be added to the matrix? Other than Yahoo for the downtown progress, that's fantastic. Okay. Good work, you guys, on that. It's needed. Yes, it is. A giant hole in the middle of downtown is a terrifying reality that we have to deal with. That and just any building wanting to redevelop or redesign , there's really nothing that we could -- Exactly. -- hold their feet to the fire on. Right. Kind of shocking. Yeah. This was such a good way to go about that. We've been looking at how to tackle that problem for so long. No, it happened at just the right time. Okay. All right. Well, then I think we are done, which means I can call this meeting. It's a conclusion, right? There's no other business, right? Then I can adjourn this meeting at 6 45 p.m. Good job. Good job. Thank you.