HomeMy WebLinkAbout5/6/2019 Item 4, Cooper (3)
Goodwin, Heather
From:Allan Cooper <allancoope@gmail.com>
Sent:Sunday, May 5,
To:Scott, Shawna; Advisory Bodies
Subject:A Follow-Up Letter On The 1185 Monterey Street Project
To: San Luis Obispo Architectural Review Commission
Re: 1185 Monterey Street
From: Allan Cooper, San Luis Obispo
Date: May 5, 2019
Honorable Chair and Commissioners-
Regarding 1185 Monterey Street. I assure you that I have no objection to the demolition of the auto repair
building at 1185 Monterey Street. I also have no intention of stopping this development from going ahead. It
has been suggested that I bear some personal animus toward this particular architect/developer and this is
truly not the case. Nor do I bear any animus toward developers in general. I and Save Our Downtown had
extremely amicable relations with the previous developer for this site, Mr. Matt Quaglino. Save Our Downtown
in 2018 reached an agreement with Mr. Quaglino that it would be appropriate to build a taller building on this
site.
My concerns are that this building (unlike Mr. Quaglino’s) emphasizes verticality in a context where the
surrounding buildings are primarily emphasizing the horizontal. As staff directed the ARC to consider, this
building should have “more prominent setbacks above the third floor to foster compatibility and visual
transitions based on scale and height of the surrounding development”. This building, like its previous iteration,
should have broken up the large expanses of blank wall facing Toro Street. And this building should reflect the
fact that lighter colors predominate on nearly all buildings along Monterey Street as well as within the
downtown core. Bearing witness to this fact are the two structures recently completed at 1135 Santa Rosa
Street and 460 Marsh Street which are clearly incompatible with the color palette (and scale) present in the
surrounding area.
Beyond my concerns about 1185 Monterey Street, I am also concerned that signficant development is occuring
within this area before the realization of a much promised (by the City) "Upper Monterey Area Plan". For
example, staff characterizes this area as undergoing a transition from low-lying structures to taller structures
without recognizing that there are many surface parking lots that can be developed first, thereby increasing the
density of development in this area without dramatically increasing the height of our buildings. Staff makes the
false assumption that all new development must involve demolition of existing buildings. As we now must
address the exigencies of climate change, new development involving demolition is clearly not sustainable.
Abdicating any responsibility for the long term preservation of our existing inventory of buildings will not only
result in SLO losing its small town character and charm but it will result in the loss of precious embodied
energy tied up in these buildings along with the associated removal of our carbon sequestering trees.
We should consider preserving a plethora of unremarkable but quality buildings in the immediate context as
these bear witness to another time and represent our City’s flow of history. Should you discard and disrespect
the surrounding context, you will de facto be giving a green light to other developers to demolish the many one-
, two- and three-story structures on adjoining sites. Buildings worth preserving and respecting include the one-
story Mortgage House at 1131 Monterey, the new three-story Spanish revival Montoro office building at 1200
Monterey, the two-story Anam-Cre Pottery Studio building at 1243 Monterey, the one-story Streamline
Moderne Volvo dealership at 1219 Monterey, the charming turn-of-the-century false front buildings including
the two-story Ruby Rose at 1235 Monterey, the one-story Pipsticks building at 1239 Monterey and the one-
story mid-century modern Body & Balance Center at 1248 Monterey. Thank you!
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