10/16/2002 Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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anything, why we wouldn't as a city want to showcase how it can be done properly is beyond him. This new building will be there 70, 80, 90 years, more than likely, and so the decisions that this team is making will influence how people react to retention and detention throughout the city. He feels the designers have been given enough opportunity to look at it and do it a different way. He is not an insurance carrier but there are plenty of people who do put in those ponds. Most apartment buildings do and they build walkways around them and brick walls that are dynamic. This site will ultimately be as big because he hopes they are planning retention for some of the future activities that will go on at this location, and that it is not limited. Mr. Hunsicker said the retention is designed for another 5-6,000 square feet onto the building area itself. Mr. Zergott asked how Westlake can have open retention or detention such as at the hospital and not worry about liability. It is a beautiful walking area. The water is right there. Mr. Yager said it happens all over the cominunity and people are selective about what they think is safety. If it's nice enough aesthetically, it seems to be worth it with regard to safety. Maybe there is a clause in the liability insurance. It seems to him that every community and every site takes that on by choice. They are not held or handcuffed to what their insurance carrier tells them. There are oodles of sites that are able to do this. His greatest fear is if they did have the water and they put a fence around it, it looks horrendous. The Mayor pointed out there is a site that has that set up on Dover Center, the Westlake library. Mr. Yager said that is not a designed pond; it is a utilitarian pond. They just put a fence around it. He can show example after example of how this would be an enormous benefit to the whole city hall complex. He thinks the landscape people and the designers are capable of doing this. If these are the choices they made, he thinks it is a missed opportunity. It's one of the few things he is disappointed in. It doesn't mean that he won't accept it, he is just disappointed because it is a great opportunity for city hall to show applicants how to make this city be better very easily. He added they have a design team in place that can do it. Mr. Hunsicker said the other aspect to the site is the lighting. He said the plans show by their placeinent of lights on the interior part of the site, they have near zero foot-candles along the edges. He referred to the plan and pointed to two lights that will have the designed cutoffs on them. The calculations were run without them. The light poles in the center are going to have brackets for the hanging of banners for community and library events. They will augment the lighting over at the book drop area with exterior down lighting. Mr. Zergott asked how trucks will come in by the dumpster area. Mr. Hunsicker indicated they will come in the opposite direction. They will come straight in and then go back out. The building will have sconces at the door to enhance the effect of the building. The building up lighting will be at the corners. The intention there is to wash the face of the building and highlight the corners. Along the walkway, they have lighting, as well as in the plaza area. They want to light the site but not over-light it or over-power the neighbors' areas. He said the elevations have evolved since the board first saw them. The Lorain Road side has not changed much. The Butternut Ridge side has changed quite a bit. They had a rounded element originally. They received comments indicating people wanted the two sides to look similar to each other. They reworked the plan and the elevations to get the two sides to work well and yet still get some of the covering that they wanted from the elements, and still meet the requirements of the'library system. Mr. Hunsicker mentioned the materials to be used. He said one change is the cornice areas. They switched it to a siding material that is meant to look like a board on board type siding with a bead to give as flat an appearance as possible, without going to big sheets of aluminum or wood, something that would be a maintenance issue. They designed everything keeping in mind the long-term maintenance of the different materials. The chose two different types of brick, one is a base bid and one is an alternate to get competitive pricing. They did not want to leave it up to a contractor to tell them they are getting a certain brick. They want control over that. They did the saine with the roofing shingles. He said they have stone accent banding throughout the building. There is some metal roofing at the book drop area. On the side elevation there is a smaller,porch area with metal roofing as well. They have not altered the design tremendously because the image was set early on. He showed a rendering of enlarged elevations of the trash enclosure area where the generator and transformer have decorative metal fencing and gates. On the opposite side of the wall they had to have a decorative metal fence in place because of the generator and the movement of air through the enclosure. He referred to a 12