Role of Architecture Board Under Scrutiny

Should the Kent Architectural Review Board having binding authority or simply play an advisory role in development projects?

That's the question members of Kent City Council are struggling with as they try to determine how much power the citizen board should have when it comes to making decisions on new building projects and remodels in the city.

Earlier this month, in committee, council members voted to strip the board of it's authority to make binding decisions on such projects on the advice of Kent's law department.

But Wednesday during its regular meeting council members voted to reverse that decision and instead put the issue back into a future committee meeting for further review.

"There are a lot of questions that are unanswered," Councilwoman Tracy Wallach said. "It seems we may not have to change the architecture board to an advisory board."

In 2012, council gave the board authority to cast binding votes on projects presented to the group. Since then, the board, which is comprised mostly of local architects, has affected change in the designs of multiple downtown redevelopment projects — not the least of which has been the Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center.

But after some review, in a Feb. 19 memo to the architecture board Kent Law Director Jim Silver wrote that members of the panel are identified as "public officials" under state and local law, and as such members of the panel who are architects by trade cannot represent clients in front of any of the city's governing boards, including the Kent Board of Zoning Appeals and Kent Planning Commission. 

Prior to that memo, some members of the board had presented projects they worked on or designed on behalf of clients to the architecture board, which then cast votes on those proposals even though the presenting members typically recused themselves and did not vote on their own projects.

Kent Assistant Law Director Eric Fink told the architecture board in February that represents a direct conflict given the "public official" status the board members hold.

"We have determined under both city and state ordinance that any member of the architecture review board cannot present in front of the architecture review board," Fink said.

That determination of the law department is what led council to vote earlier this month to remove the board's authority.

However, council agreed to take a second look at the issue Wednesday after hearing from two members of the board: local architects Doug Fuller and Alan Orashan.

Orashan suggested council change its ordinances to allow architects who serve on the board to be able to present to city boards and commissions such as the planning commission and zoning board to remove the issue of a conflict as defined by state and local laws.

"We’ve had some important decisions that affected the development of the downtown that I think have been positive," Orashan said. "We've managed to guide the architects on these projects in a way that we thought was most desirable to the citizens of Kent."

Fuller agreed.

"We’ve seen many, many good things happen in Kent," Fuller said. "It’s been an amazing transformation. One component of that … that I think has had a contribution is the architecture design guidelines ... And the architecture board having the ability to use these guidelines, not their personal opinion, as to what the city of Kent and downtown might look like.

"I think if you saw the evolution of the buildings that have come before the design committee, you would agree there has been substantial improvement in the buildings from what was first presented to the (architecture board) and what we see downtown today," he said.