New design guidelines to determine look, feel of downtown Kent
The city of Kent is in the beginning stages of updating design standards meant to guide signage and facades of buildings downtown and some business owners and community members hope the consultants hired to draft them will spend enough time getting public input.
The city is partnering with CT Consultants Inc. on the project. The firm has been tasked with establishing guidelines that will reflect the aesthetic of the current downtown, which includes historic buildings in close proximity to new construction, as well as creating plans to help future development projects complement existing styles.
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Bridget Susel, Kent’s community development director, explained that through community input the city is attempting to craft standards and guidelines based on what residents want.
“We need to see what are going to be guidelines, what’s going to be codified, what the community is supporting, what they want to keep, what they want to change, what council supports,” Susel said. “Right now we are very early in the information gathering process.”
The consulting firm held a meeting at the Kent Police Station last week to begin gathering public input and to give the community an idea of how the process would go. It is expected to the the first of several sessions CT Consultants will hold with the public.
“We have defined it as having three distinct phases,” said Alisa Duffey Rogers, the project manager for CT Consultants. “We are currently in phase one, which really is that information gathering and evaluation phase.”
Upon completing that first step, CT Consultants will write a report compiling the proposed changes to the current design guidebook. City officials will then assess those suggestions, after which the process moves on to phase two — drafting the revised guidelines and further altering them per the city’s instruction.
“And then in phase 3, we’ll provide the new design guidelines update document to the city, and the city will begin the adoption process,” said Duffey Rogers. From start to finish, the project is estimated to take around eight months.
Along the way, there will be more opportunities for input, she said.
“There will be [today’s] meeting and you can provide input to us at any point,” said Susel, “and then there will be another meeting once we get draft comments done. And you can speak at council committee sessions as well.”
Doug Fuller, a retired architect who practiced in Kent for more than 40 years, asked if there would be a summary of the curated information made available to the public once the comment gathering phase is complete.
“You collect a ton of information, it would be great for all of us to be able to jump into it with you, and see what it looks like,” he said.
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Duffey Rogers said the plan is to compile a recommendations report, which will include recommendations as well as a summary of what they heard from the community.
Susel said once it is prepared, the report will be available to the public as well as posted on the city’s website.
During last week’s meeting, the consultants asked participants to select from a number of photos of buildings and street scenes in the downtown area that, in their mind, best represented downtown Kent.
Participants were also asked what the goals of the new guidelines should be, how they felt about a variety of proposed signage, and to show on a map of downtown Kent using stickers, places where they work, live and play.
Ryan Tipton, co-founder of Bell Tower Brewing Co. at the corner of Gougler and Park avenues, said he was initially worried that there wouldn’t be enough community input incorporated into the guidelines.
“I’m still kind of wondering how much there’s going to be, hoping there’s going to be a lot,” he said. “Tonight was a little bit eye-opening just to know and to understand their path forward. I think only having one additional public meeting is probably too little.”
He added that public input meetings can be a wealth of valuable feedback from neighbors and business owners.
Mayor Jerry Fiala said that he felt positive about what he heard at the meeting, but that he was going to stay neutral.
“I want to know what the people have to say about what Kent’s direction ought to be,” Fiala said.
Tom Hatch, board member for the Kent Historical Society and member of Main Street Kent’s design committee, said that the process CT Consultants developed to approach the revision of the design guidelines was a good one.
“Obviously there are a lot of people who would like even more opportunities for input, but I think there are plenty along the way,” Hatch said.
CT Consultants met with City Council
Following the public meeting, CT Consultants met with City Council, where the distinction between guidelines and standards took center stage.
Duffey Rogers asked council about the role of the city’s Architectural Review Board.
Councilman Roger Sidoti said he thinks it is logical for the ARB to continue reviewing signs, facade alteration and new construction.
However he said that if you create a standard for signage, the ARB’s job becomes easier. Enforcement becomes harder, he said, if there is only a guideline — a suggestion — pertaining to, for example, signage.
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“To a certain extent, yes,” said Duffey Rogers. “What the guidelines do, and I hate to repeat myself, but they really do sort of guide the conversation, and they tell the applicant up-front what the architecture review board is thinking. And it gives the applicant an opportunity to think of either a conventional way to meet that guideline, or an unconventional way. But either way, they know up-front in the process what’s important and what the community values, and what the architecture review board is looking at.”
It’s up to the community whether they want standards codified in the zoning code, a separate document containing only guidelines, or a document containing both, she said. From there, administration of these documents becomes pertinent.
“Depending upon how you define the role of your architecture review board, whether it’s advisory, or whether it has final authority, that also plays into whether or not someone can deviate from those standards,” Duffey Rogers said. The option exists to pick and choose the function of the ARB in specific instances.
Susel pointed out that a violation of the zoning code is a civil offense.
“If something becomes a standard, it would be codified, and staff would administer it the same way we do all of the other zoning codes. We issue fines until compliance is met,” she said. “If it becomes a guideline, we can…determine what kind of authority we would want to put on that.”
The consulting firm plans to meet with council again to gather more information.
“The more input the better,” Susel said. “There’s a lot of complexities and layers to this, but it’s really important that you get that feedback to [Hopkins] and [Duffey Rogers] so that we can make sure we’re really looking at this thoroughly.”
Contact reporter Derek Kreider at dkreider@gannett.com.
