Over its past two meetings, the Lexington Planning Commission signed off on the remaining landscaping elements of the Founders Hall site presented by Washington and Lee University.
The new building will be located at the corner of Washington Street and Lee Avenue where the Early-Fielding Building currently sits.
While most of the elements of the site that were included in the original application for a certificate of appropriateness were approved by the Planning Commission at its March 12 meeting, some elements were carried forward.
Specifically, the Commission requested an alternate light bollard to one proposed by the university to ensure dark sky compliance, as well as requesting additional detailed drawings of the eye-level view of the side of the building that fronts onto Lee Avenue from several different angles.
Those elements were brought back before the Planning Commission at its March 26 meeting, with a dark sky compliant bollard being approved in a 4-0 vote following a motion from Tori Bates and a second from Mary Stuart Harlow. Commission members John Eastwood and Leslie Straughan recused themselves prior to the discussion and vote, reaffirming the conflict of interest statements they read at the March 12 meeting, and Krista Anderson was not in attendance.
The landscaping elements led to a more lengthy discussion, in part due to a miscommunication leading to Tom Kalasky, the university’s executive director of facilities, providing only one eye-level view of the Lee Avenue side of the building (looking directly on from the street) and several other angles that were taken from a higher angle.
The other concern about the landscaping elements was that the four trees proposed – one dogwood on either side of the proposed Lee Avenue entrance and one pyramidal European hornbeam tree at either end of the building – were inefficient for screening the building from the street.
Harlow moved to approve the proposed elements of the Lee Avenue landscaping except for the trees and Charlie Hall provided the second. That motion also passed in a 4-0 vote, and Planning Commission requested that the university submit a revised proposal for the trees.
That proposal was submitted to the city planning office prior to the Planning Commission’s meeting last Thursday, with additional hornbeam trees replacing the dogwoods at either side of the Lee Avenue entrance and the dogwoods being moved to sit midway between each pair of hornbeam trees.
“I think it makes a huge difference,” Harlow said of the new tree placement prior to making a motion to approve it. “The hornbeams are appropriate for the city and I think they will fit that space beautifully.”
Hall seconded the motion, which carried in a 4-0 vote. Eastwood again recused himself from the discussion and vote, while Bates and Straughan were not in attendance.
