HDC lambasts Point Breeze phase II plans
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
The Historic District Commission found preliminary plans for phase II of the Point Breeze Hotel so objectionable the architect agreed to a complete redesign.

Easton Street elevation, part of the proposed Phase II, Point Breeze Hotel

"I think the whole thing needs to be redesigned and with the massing and everything I've seen about it, it is inappropriate," said HDC Chairman Dirk Roggeveen.

The HDC roasted developer Bob Matthews' first submission for public review for a second hotel building - to be called the Maidstone - on the corner of Easton and North Beach Streets. The HDC said the scope of the project was unacceptable for the area, did not have enough green space and that it would form one long, unbroken wall of buildings nearly down to the original hotel.

Commissioners lambasted Matthews' architect Matthew Koenig of the Philadelphia, Pa. firm J.K. Roller on multiple fronts. The 39-room, 17,235- square-foot building overpowers the lot it is proposed for, they said, as do five proposed new cottages - the existing six are being offered free to anyone before being demolished.

Whatever open space might have been available, the commission said, is further taken up by three tennis courts, despite Matthews' attorney Sarah Alger reminding the commissioners that the Planning Board open space calculation factors in the entire Point Breeze property.

Still, the commission was not kind to Koenig.

"I agree with everything Dirk said," said HDC member Linda Williams. "It's too close to the street. If you're trying to replicate what's across the street (the Harbor House), that's not what's across the street. Attaching these cottages by decks is not working. This needs to be rethought. Three hundred feet of building… it's not working. It still looks like one long building, with too many gang windows on the street."

In addition to the proposed buildings' dominating presence along Easton and North Beach Streets, the HDC picked apart specific architectural features of the Maidstone and its cottages. The low roof pitch, the number of windows grouped together, known as gang windows, the less-than historic look of the buildings and how this second part of the Point Breeze Hotel complex does not jibe with the appearance of the original hotel building down the street were all points the board stressed to Koenig.

"I feel like we are starting where we started when we started with the Harbor House," said HDC member Dawn Hill-Holdgate. "I think it's the wrong approach; it has too much of a modern look. There's no room for gardens on the street."

Hill-Holdgate continued, "The whole approach to this building has no relationship to the hotel. When you're designing a hotel for Nantucket, [and] looking at the old hotels that used to exist you can do something interesting. This is not interesting at all."

Koenig said he would not pursue the drawing he submitted to the HDC for last week's meeting.

"I acknowledge that it would be crazy to continue with this," he said.

In addition to a brand new plan from Matthews, the HDC asked Koenig to determine the age of the cottages before committing to giving them away or demolishing them, as Williams said she thought they were built in the 1930s, and not 1945 as Koenig had said. It also put a proposed new barn behind the main

hotel back on its viewing list. I