Proposed FCC senior apartments presented to planners

Plat of the proposed senior apartments on the corner of Xenia Ave. and Limestone St.

By Virgil Hervey

The conceptual plan for the Friends Care Center (FCC) senior apartments on the Barr Property at the corner of Limestone Street and Xenia Avenue was unveiled at the Nov. 13 meeting of the Planning Commission by architect Mary Rogero of Rogero and Buckman Architects of Dayton. The 1.6 acres of land was donated to FCC by the Morgan Family Foundation last March.

Rogero, by her appearance, was initiating an application for a planned unit development (PUD). Planning Commission Acting Chair John Streuwing noted that since the FCC is seeking to build more than 12 units per acre, an appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals will also be necessary.

The Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the phase one concept plan at its next meeting on Dec. 10. Rogero was asked to have all the materials that will be presented at the public hearing available for public review at the Bryan Center by Nov. 30. Approval by the Planning Commission means that the preliminary concept plan will go to the Village Council for approval. According to Clerk of Council Debra Benning, the Board of Zoning Appeals will meet to hear FCC’s application for a density variance on Dec. 12, provided the board receives the paperwork in time.

Rogero’s site plan, which she displayed for the commission members, calls for a three-story, 30-unit apartment building situated along the Limestone Street boundary of the property. The 10 units on the ground floor will have doors opening directly onto Limestone. Apartments on the building’s upper floors will be fully accessible by elevator. The driveway to access the parking lot on the north side of the building will enter from Limestone along the south property line. The main entrance to the building will be from a plaza adjacent to the parking lot, which will also be accessible from a gateway on Xenia Avenue.

The building will be set back 20 feet from Limestone Street and 36 feet from Xenia Avenue. There will be 68 feet from the building to the property line of the house to the east of the property, she said.

Rogero noted that she evaluated the property with the Yellow Springs Tree Committee and that 22 trees will have to be removed due to their poor condition. Care will be taken, she said, to preserve as many trees as possible. The house on the property, the old Barr home, will have to be demolished, she said, however, plans call for “harvesting” materials from the house and landscaping that will not be used so that villagers will have an opportunity to take such items as woodwork, mantles, doors and plantings.

The building was originally planned for two stories, but had been changed to three in order to reduce the footprint to 10,000 square feet, according to Rogero, who said she had also met with owners of neighboring properties to discuss the project’s impact on them.

All of the units will have either a balcony or a deck. Elevated renderings have been prepared, but Rogero was not prepared to present them to the Planning Commission, because she had not yet shared them with FCC’s Senior Apartment Committee, something she said she would do in the next week.

According to Paul Webb, chair of FCC’s Senior Apartment Committee, plans are for approximately one-fourth of the apartments to be subsidized in order to insure affordability for all. The remainder of the apartments will rent at market rate. The board also is planning a marketing policy designed to insure that the apartments are filled first by current senior residents of the village. There will be studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, he said.

“We have had a lot of response,” he said. “We expect it to fill quickly.”

There is no official sign-up list yet, but Webb expects that one will be started soon. His committee will meet again this week to discuss that and review elevated renderings with Rogero.

According to Webb, the building will incorporate such green features as geothermal heating and cooling, a green roof, and a porous parking lot in order to keep drainage on the property.

The apartments are intended for the healthy and self-sufficient, as are the independent living condominium units at FCC’s main campus. Part of the arrangement, according to Webb, is that residents in both those places will be given a preference as their needs change to move into the FCC assisted living or extended care facilities on Herman Street.

The plan leaves room for the new construction of a separate senior center building with access from Xenia Avenue. However, according to Yellow Springs Senior Center Director Rodney Bean, there are no plans at this time for the Senior Center to move from its current location.

“We are still working on an analysis of the limitations of our current site,” Bean said in a recent interview.

The seniors have an engineer looking at the possibility of adding a second story over the great room and a building contractor looking at remodeling the rest of the building, he said.

“We have had a number of meetings, but nothing concrete has emerged,” Bean said. “We are happy that they have set aside a place for us. We need to move forward.”

In other Planning Commission business:
• Commission member Tim Tobey reported that the Bike Enhancement-Northern Gateway Committee is working on a list of requests from Council, some of which will involve a cost and some will not.

• The Commission opened a public hearing on the Village Comprehensive Plan, which will continue at its next meeting on Dec. 10. Streuwing said the plan with its appendices and reference materials is not as complete as he would like, therefore he suggested that they proceed by identifying those items that are missing. The commission proceeded to go over portions of the plan, concentrating on the land use guiding principles, after which they reviewed the appendices and reference materials. It was noted that all the materials would eventually be scanned and posted to the Village’s Web site. Public comment was invited, but there was none. The members voted to keep the hearing open until its next meeting.

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com