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Applicant revises Fern Residences design; staff concurs, no formal vote required
Summary
The applicant for the Fern Residences project returned to the committee with architectural updates addressing landscaping, utility screening and color palette; staff said revised plans comply with prior approvals and will proceed to site plan sign-off and building permitting.
Representatives for the WPB Fern Residences presented architectural revisions March 12 that staff said address conditions from an earlier committee approval and allow the project to move toward building permitting.
Meredith Lee, representing the applicant with Schutz & Bowen, told the Downtown Action Committee the revision responds to three conditions set at the June 2024 hearing: improve the service alley and adjacent streetscape, screen utilities on the south elevation, and reexamine the building’s color palette. Lee said the project—approved previously for about 340 multifamily units with roughly 60 micro units, ground-floor commercial, rooftop amenity and an eight‑story tower—had been updated over nine months to respond to those conditions.
Lee described changes that include added foundation planting and an additional street tree at the Dixie frontage, relocation of a bus stop bench closer to the curb for better access, a planted screening strip in the service alley, and landscaping to screen water meters and utility equipment on the south elevation. She said the design team replaced a previously dark gray plaster finish with a lighter “creamy white” color to better complement the adjacent historically designated building at 401 South Dixie.
Staff told the committee the updated plans address prior conditions and still comply with the approved site plan. No public comments were offered at the meeting, and committee members who spoke praised the revisions.
Because this agenda item was an architecture update to a previously approved conditional site plan, the committee did not take a formal vote; staff may proceed with site plan approval and building permit review once outstanding checklist items are satisfied.
The applicant and staff said the next administrative steps are final staff sign-off on the revised site plans and then the building-permit process; no new hearings were identified in the transcript.
