B.4 - 8009 E. 9th Street - Project description — original pdf

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Good Morning Steve and Cara, As you should know, GNDC has an affordable senior housing project in the works for the Lopez Property. We are at the point where the site plan can be approved, however, because the property has historic zoning, the site development permit cannot be issued until your office provides a certificate of appropriateness. We have until mid-August to get that done, but would love to have it sooner. We have made great efforts in the design process to maintain the structural and historic integrity of the Routon-Alvarez-Lopez House; stepping the tower away from the house (despite the incredible site constraints we face), removed balconies, reduced the size and minimized the visual impact of the hallway connecting the tower with the house. I joke with people that we should have started with the idea of of relocating to house to a site somewhere else and then, when that got shot down, moved to a design where we built over top of the house, and then, after that got shot down, proposed our initial design and it would have been hailed as wonderful. Instead, we tried to design as sensitively as possible from the start while being responsible to our mission of providing as much affordable housing as possible on a site with zoning and development entitlements that call for dense and tall buildings and prohibit the development of single-family structures. As you know, GNDC includes historic preservation as part of our mission, so the idea of demolition or relocation is something we would turn to only as a last resort. We're going through a Section 106 review and the Texas Historical Commission reviewed our initial designs (which were sent to you as early as January and again in March) and they made recommendations for changes which we then incorporated into the designs that I've attached. On May 27th, Lydia Woods-Boone,Program Coordinator for the Federal and State Review Program responded to the revised design as follows: Thank you for taking the time to change the design in order to more appropriately work with the historic structure. This design is greatly improved and seems to address all of our concerns. Please have the applicant resubmit the project with these designs through our eTRAC system so they can be formally reviewed under the Section 106 process. If there are any additional questions just let me know. Mr. Hatch, Thanks, Lydia Steve and Cara, I'm not very familiar with the process, but assume the City and County historical commissions would follow the recommendations and conclusion drawn by THC. Please let me know what we need to do to move our project through the process with the City of Austin Historic Preservation Office. Thanks and stay safe! Mark