The Board of Architectural Review (BAR) met at 8 this morning (8/2/2019) to review the plans for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market development. The materials for that meeting may be found at this location. My recording of the session can be found at this Google Drive link (download 2019-08-02 ….). There were large stretches of the meeting where the microphones were not used, so some portions may be too faint to hear.
The key points are that 1) there was no material change in how this building would look and function and 2) the BAR will almost certainly provide final approval for this. The next meeting of the BAR is Thursday 8/15/2019.
Detail follows:
There were no surprises, and nothing controversial to write up. Only three citizens were in attendance. The discussion focused on details — e.g., a slight change of color for a retaining wall, perhaps adding some lighting, re-orienting the curb cut slightly, and so on. Every suggestion I heard seemed to be an improvement to me.
At the end of the day, this is more-or-less what you will see on Maple Avenue, taken from the Lessard Design elevations provided with the meeting materials referenced above.
The “public art” aspects of this are still to be determined. That is, the mural for a blank wall facing Maple, and a piece of statuary to go in the little plaza next to Maple, will both be determined at some later date by the Vienna public art commission. My wife’s suggestion is that the mural should depict the Silk Road. (It took me a while to get it.)
