Historic commission approves town DPW’s new vehicle storage garage and salt shed with design changes

The Nantucket Historic District Commission on April 29 approved plans for a new vehicle-storage and maintenance garage and a salt shed for the Town’s Department of Public Works (DPW), following months of design review and revisions intended to reduce visibility and better fit the nearby industrial and airport-edge context.

Drew Patanoid, the town’s director of public works, and John Como of the project architect team presented the revised design for the 29,000-square-foot vehicle storage and maintenance garage and the adjacent salt shed. Patanoid said the site is east of the Nantucket Memorial Airport and adjacent to industrial properties, and that the structures would consolidate municipal equipment and increase storage capacity for materials the town needs to respond to winter operations.

Why it mattered: commissioners and preservation staff said the project is large but sits in an industrial portion of town with existing tall, non-shingled buildings. The HDC focused its review on massing, materials, screening and read-ability from public ways and nearby properties.

What the commission approved: the HDC approved the garage as submitted with changes requested in the meeting. Key elements captured in the approval were: - Massing and height: the highest storage ridgeline was reduced during design review (commissioners noted the revised peak was reduced to roughly 30 feet at key portions), and the team separated the vehicle storage volume from a canopy area to break the façade’s scale. Commissioners accepted the overall approach to break the long building into differentiated volumes. - Materials and cladding: the commission preferred the option that uses white cedar shingles for the administrative/employee building faces that face public view and recommended that the long vehicle-bay elevations use articulated shingle fields separated by vertical board/board-and-batten elements rather than plain, uninterrupted metal wall fields where visible. For the salt shed the commission approved wood board-and-batten siding as the preferred option (a metal-panel option was shown as an alternate). The HDC also required that any rooftop solar be reviewed as a separate COA application. - Salt-shed height and function: commissioners approved a 30-foot-high salt shed (revised downward from initial submissions) to allow trucks to lift dump bodies inside the building and reduce salt runoff and environmental impacts. The HDC approved the salt-shed design with the condition that the cupola be removed (the commission rejected a decorative cupola as unnecessary) and that materials match the approved palette. - Hardscape and landscaping: the commission asked the applicant to preserve and add perimeter screening and plantings resistant to road salt, to provide granite curbing and sidewalks where shown, and to consider adding shade trees in the administrative parking area if final parking counts allow it.

The commission approved the project by voice vote after the applicant agreed to the requested guardrails and to return to staff for a post-approval review of the final materials and rooftop-solar details. The DPW team told the commission they would file a separate Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) for rooftop solar and provide a final site and landscape planting plan to HDC staff for post-approval review.

Quotes from the meeting included DPW director Drew Patanoid saying the larger interior volumes were necessary for equipment height and to maximize salt storage so the town can respond to back-to-back storms without running out of material, and architect John Como describing the massing changes: “We broke that volume so the canopy area on the left is stepped back about 5 feet and drops down to differentiate itself from the main mass of the vehicle storage garage.”

Next steps: the DPW will proceed with final construction documents. The HDC’s approval requires follow-up staff sign-off on material samples, final screening/landscaping, and a separate COA filing for solar panels.