HARB continues review of Sisters of St. Joseph mother house proposal after members call for smaller massing and more contextual design

The Historic Architecture Review Board continued its review of an application from the Sisters of St. Joseph to build a new mother house and associated site work at 241 St. George Street, saying July 15 the project’s scale and the look of its street-facing facades need more study.

The project team that presented to the board described a new institutional building with a gross footprint of just over 13,000 square feet and a total gross floor area of a little over 35,000 square feet on a 2.41-acre site that “takes up an entire block in Downtown Saint Augustine,” Autumn Martin Nagy of Matthews DCCM told the board during the presentation. The proposed structure would stand about 46 feet tall and include a porte cochere, arcaded loggia, new hardscape and landscaping, and repairs to an existing masonry coquina perimeter wall.

Board members said the scheme shown at the opinion stage emphasizes a long, relatively unarticulated wall on the Cadiz Street frontage and reads as overly vertical and institutional from the sidewalk. “The appearance, at least in the renderings that we see here, is very institutional…