Palm Springs committee approves self-storage facility on Farrell Drive after months of design revisions
The Architectural Review Committee approved a 92,400-square-foot self-storage facility on North Farrell Drive, capping months of back-and-forth over the building’s design.
The Palm Springs Architectural Review Committee voted unanimously Monday to approve a major development permit for a 92,400-square-foot self-storage facility on a 4.2-acre undeveloped parcel at 900 North Farrell Drive.
The approval came after the committee’s third and final review of the project, which is proposed by Legacy Built Investments & Development LLC. City policy limits the committee to three meetings on a given matter before a final decision must be reached.
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The committee’s approval came with a final condition: symmetry among the building’s four corner elements. Committee members asked the applicant to raise one corner element to the roofline and lower two others to match, so that the same architectural treatment appears on all four corners rather than creating what one member described as “two separate expressions of the same element on opposite corners.”
“I think you have a good four-corner building if all four corners are talking to one another,” Chair Lance O’Donnell said, adding that without the change, the design “just feels like something that blows off in the wind.”
Eric Foss, representing Legacy Built Investments & Development, said the corner elements had been raised above the roofline to give the building some visual presence once landscaping matures and screens it from view. The applicant agreed to the committee’s requested change.
The committee had rejected an earlier version of the design in May, when it featured a glass window cut-out displaying fake self-storage roll-up doors, a feature the applicant said served to advertise the building’s use to passing drivers. Committee members at the time compared the element to “a penalty box or broadcast booth hanging off the side of the building.”
The applicant has since removed the faux roll-up door elements at the building’s corners and added landscape screening along Farrell Drive, including berming and additional trees, to soften views of the building from the street.
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