Fairmount Properties 'Building C' gets Architecture Board Approval

The newest building proposed as part of downtown Kent's redevelopment received a certificate of appropriateness from the Kent Architectural Review Board Tuesday.

The board signed off on plans for Fairmount Properties' "Building C," which will stand at the northeast corner of Erie and South DePeyster streets and will include 32 apartments with the restaurant Bricco on the ground floor.

Adam Branscomb, a development manager at Fairmount Properties, said the building design has changed somewhat — due to the owners' goals and project budget — since it was first proposed as part of the redevelopment along with the new Davey Tree and AMETEK buildings.

"There's a number of reasons why the design has continued to evolve," Branscomb said.

Ed Fehér, of Glavan and Fehér Architects, which is designing the building, told the architecture board that the evolution led to a fairly simple design with the restaurant on the first floor and apartments on all four upper floors.

"We've constantly been trying to tune this up," Fehér said.

Bricco will occupy all of the first floor, which is about 7,000 square feet total. The 32 apartments will be spread out with eight on each of the upper four floors. The apartments, which will be one and two bedroom units, will vary in size from 680 square feet to 1,200 square feet.

The exterior facade will appear similar to the buildings surrounding it.

Fehér said the brick work on the exterior will come from the same coloring and design that wraps the Davey Tree and AMETEK buildings — the neighboring buildings within the city's redevelopment block.

And the facades facing the Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center to the east and Acorn Alley to the north will mimic those projects' exteriors, he said.

"One of the things I constantly try to keep in mind with this building is respect to the buildings around it," Fehér said.  "The buildings in Kent aren't massive. They're broken down quite a bit. And that's what we're trying to do with our building."

The timeline for construction of the building was not given Tuesday. It has yet to go to the Kent Planning Commission for site approval.

The architecture board voted unanimously yesterday to issue the project a certificate with little comment on the design.

Elizabeth Eaken, a member of the architecture board, said she liked the design presented Tuesday better than its previous incarnations.

"I think this responds better to what we've got going on here," she said.