Joint meeting of city planning board and HARB today

On Thursday, September 13, 2018 Historic City News readers are invited to attend a joint meeting of the city’s Planning and Zoning Board and the Historic Architectural Review Board when they take up the review and update of the King Street entry corridor.

The meeting will start at 2:00 p.m. in the Alcazar Room, located off the courtyard at City Hall, 75 King Street.

One of St. Augustine’s most striking and valuable assets is simply the way it looks. Residents appreciate the fact that every day they live, work and play in a city that does not look like “just anywhere,” but rather in a city whose distinctive architecture expresses the city’s past and its unique ambiance.

In 2003, the city recognized that while the historic downtown was protected by strict guidelines, it might be losing control of the ambiance of the city’s entrance ways, specifically along King Street, San Marco Avenue and Anastasia Boulevard. This concern led to the creation of design standards for those important thoroughfares. These guidelines are contained in the Design Standards for Entry Corridors Guide.

In 2015, a dozen years after the original guidelines were adopted, it was determined that an updated version was needed, so an intensive, community-involved review and revision of the guidelines were compiled first for Anastasia Boulevard and then San Marco Avenue.

The process for the King Street corridor began with a public meeting to discuss the area that stretches from King Street’s intersection with Ponce de Leon Boulevard east to Granada Street and west to the railroad crossing and the city limits on West King Street. The initial meeting on Tuesday, August 28, 2018 was an opportunity for the community to meet members of the design and planning team working on the look of a street that so many residents and businesses travel so often.