Sigma Chi wants to build a fraternity house at 340 N. Milledge Ave. The location is in an historic district, so their plans need a certificate of appropriateness to build there.  The Historic Preservation Commission is the appointed body that decides whether to approve a COA. The HPC evaluates how the new building would fit into the context of the Reese Street and Cobbham historic districts. The proposed site is between Meigs Street and Hancock Avenue.

People who live in the historic neighborhoods surrounding the site are overwhelmed by the huge size of the house that Sigma Chi wants to build.  Neighbors look at the plans and see a building that does not relate to or respect the historic districts that surround the site. Each historic district has a unique identity that the HPC is charged with promoting, protecting and preserving.

Sigma Chi’s plans fail to meet the Athens-Clarke County design guidelines for historic districts in these important ways:

• The large historic houses on the street average less than one-third the size of the proposed Sigma Chi building. The most historically important structures would be dwarfed by the new facility.  Sigma Chi’s proposal is 18,600 square feet; the historic house next door is 4,551 square feet.
• New construction should be similar in massing to historic structures; Sigma Chi is not similar at all. Its façade is exceptionally wide at  138 feet, on a street where most house facades measure 40 to 55 feet. Most of the nearby historic properties are simple in shape, some have additions, and even the Victorian Cheney House at the corner of Hill Street  is less complex.
• Placement of new structures should follow the historic patterns of setback from the street. Sigma Chi has pushed its proposed structure forward on the lot to maximize rear parking. The forward placement greatly emphasizes that it is out of scale with the historic houses nearby.
• Historic lots are narrow and deep. Where original lots have been combined, as they were here, a building with a façade three times as wide as the houses nearby is not appropriate. The combination of lots at any time after the demolition of historic buildings does not justify a radical change of scale, proportions and orientation in an historic district. This lot formerly had six structures on it. Those original buildings were victims of the urban renewal period of the 1960s and '70s.

A new structure in an historic district that is so obviously and disproportionately large compared to historic standards diminishes the relative importance of the neighborhood’s historic buildings. It fails to preserve the integrity of the historic district as a significant cultural resource. It casts doubt on the purpose and effectiveness of creating historic districts.  

My husband and I were applicants to the HPC in 2007. We planned and built a 2,000 square-foot house one block from the proposed Sigma Chi site. The guidelines of scale, massing, style and the other aspects of appropriate historical context were constraints that we were willing to accept, with the understanding that all construction within an historic district is subject to the very same restrictions. We followed all the rules with the assurance that, in return, we would also be protected from inappropriate infill in the future.  The rules are an acknowledgment that the homes around us have historic and cultural value to the community that we agreed to respect.

The HPC has not yet expressed a consensus on how excessive the size of this proposed building is in relation to the historic buildings nearby. Bad examples of infill that came before the historic districts were created are not justification for making the same mistakes again.  

Sigma Chi’s 135 active members cannot fit all of the desires that their plan represents onto this one-and-a-half acre lot within the guidelines of the HPC. Unfortunately, any attempt to decrease the size of the facility or the amount of required parking will only make the impact of this proposal more detrimental by pushing people and cars and activity off the fraternity property and into the surrounding historic neighborhoods. The fraternity has been and should continue to be encouraged to choose a more appropriate site, where everything that they want actually fits, without doing harm to the historic integrity of the area in which it is built.

The HPC will consider Sigma Chi’s application for a COA at its Wednesday, Nov. 28 meeting.