Concord’s planning board adapted its previous approval for the balconies on the Remi’s Block apartments Wednesday to accept the design and color as built, which don’t look how they were supposed to.
The six balconies installed on North Main Street and six on Loudon Road use a vertical balustrade system – instead of a horizontal cable system – and appear a different shade of gray than what was shown to the board in April.
In a unanimous voice vote, the planning board members approved the change – but not before voicing their disappointment that they felt their hands were tied, they said.
“I’ll tell you right out of the gate,” Chairman Richard Woodfin said, “they’re ugly, ugly, ugly balconies that are on there. They look like pieces of guardrail that have been formed into a balcony and cut out.”
Woodfin said he heard “loud and clear” that many residents aren’t happy with the look. He said he understood there are unavoidable deviations between renderings and reality, “but this is a marked deviation.”
“This isn’t a beautiful, gray, powder-coated-looking metal finish. This is a steel shark cage,” he said, repeating a characterization he said he’d read online.
He also noted the process didn’t play out as it’s supposed to. The planning board reviewed and approved the previous design at its April 20 meeting last year.
“Simply changing them and putting them up isn’t how we do it, you know? I mean, you got approval for a (horizontal) design, and it’s completely different,” he said.
Sheldon Pennoyer, the project’s architect, said the project “has had its challenges budget-wise.” The general contractor underbudgeted the cost of the work, he said, “so we were constantly battling uphill from Day One.”
Pennoyer said the vertical railing system “was claimed to be more cost-effective.” He conceded that Woodfin was “absolutely right” that the balconies differ from the approved design.
Given the financial challenges in restoring the historic building, planning board member Suzanne Smith-Meyer said she wished she would have had the chance to give input on the new design.
“I probably would have said don’t have balconies, just put a window. That would have saved you a ton of money and headache,” she said, sighing and adding, “It is what it is.”
Remi Hinxhia, the building’s owner, said the project is nearing completion and he already has seven or eight tenants lined up for the 20 apartments. He’s planning for residents to move in at the end of the month.
“Hopefully by the end of the month, we’ll have all 20,” he said.
Hinxhia said it wasn’t easy for him to be appearing in front of the planning board again – two weeks before the project’s completion – after 21/2 years working on the five-story building at 148-158 N. Main St. that he bought at a foreclosure auction for $975,000.
He bought the building and paid nearly $100,000 in back taxes, promising to rehab a space where the city ordered tenants and squatters to move out with barely 24 hours’ notice in August 2014, citing numerous violations of fire and life-safety codes that made the building uninhabitable.
“At least I’m proud for one thing. I’d like to say at least we never tore down this building,” he said Wednesday, adding that the 1860 original brick there baked on-site by Joseph Stickney will remain.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at
@NickBReid.)