Smyrna Commercial Building
This was a project we completed at the “Gateway to Smyrna”. At least, that was what the town planners called it. As we’ll get into, this opens up an interesting discussion about planning and regulation versus property rights. The city didn’t really have any zoning regulations about it, but it was a prominent site at the intersection of the main highway and a major road into town. For that reason, we started with a very historical design.
You can see in the gallery below, initial renderings were all about respecting traditional buildings in the downtown. The basic shape was symmetrical. We used a brick veneer over most of the building. We included shutters, arched top windows, and brick arches. These are all details that were common to a lot of the older buildings in the town.
About six months after finishing the design, the client came back with some changes. There had been some massive changes to the proposed tenants, so we redesigned the plan. Gone was the symmetry. However, we tried to keep some of historic detailing while making the building work for the new tenants. We also looked at some cost saving measures in decreasing the number of windows and going to a stucco style finish over much of the building in place of the brick.
The final, as built design, is similar to the last set we devised. The windows got simplified even more, but did maintain the brick veneer and wainscot. We think that, in the end, this building stopped trying to please people with no stake in the building and focused on the needs of the client. It’s an attractive, if not historic structure that, while not as expensive as originally detailed, still maintains some hints of the local vernacular architecture. It became less about standing out and more about functioning for the users.
Owner’s Vision versus Community Standards
This building does a great job of illustrating the core argument for and against various regulatory efforts to control architecture. Many towns in the area do have historic districts or overlays or other zoning regulations to encourage certain construction. Without that regulatory framework, there’s nothing enforceable the community can do if they disagree with the owner’s vision.
We’ve had this discussion with some clients before. On a recent project in an historic downtown, the committee made it very clear that they wanted the building to look like the other buildings and they didn’t want a garage. The owner’s protestations that a house with a garage would be worth more and therefore generate more tax revenue failed to convince them. Why not? Because that board’s sole focus was to maintain a specific character for that neighborhood. Tax revenues weren’t of interest to them. Once we got them to understand that, we flew through the approval process that required the historical committee’s approval, as well as several variances to the zoning code to achieve what the committee wanted.
Without the regulatory framework, buildings will look however economic or aesthetic choices of the owner want them to. That can turn out great for a committed owner. That can turn out interestingly for the community. Even if you have the regs, they don’t always work as intended. At the same time, if you create the regulations, you’ve got to be careful that they don’t undermine the value of building under them by requiring the wrong things, or making things unaffordable. No one is going to go broke to create a building that costs more than the value they’ll get from it.
