When it comes to architecture, Hillsborough Community College has proven to be an institution of higher loathing in Ybor City. Historic integrity? Doesn’t apply to them. The Barrio Latino Commission? Go away; they’re exempt.
HCC has shown over the years – and recently again – that it need pay less than lip service to the history and aesthetics of Ybor. Its regional Ybor campus is a paean to all that is contemporary – and its student services building, currently under construction, is similarly ill-suited. Along the way, it has made clear that it does what it wants and answers only to its own designs. That’s HCC’s history.
And then in mid-arrogance, HCC learned that its $14-million, 63,000-square-foot student services building was going to be too tall. It would exceed the 45-foot limit (for YC-3 zoning) by more some 18 feet.
It was too late to turn back and too high to put on a mansard roof and call it a day. Now HCC needs an exemption. And it needs it from the Barrio Latino Commission, of all entities.
So HCC has to take its thumb from its nose and make architectural concessions. It says it will do some retrofitting that includes pained windows instead of a glass wall façade and the use of beige brick on the building’s exterior, which will match the color of the nearby Cuban Club.
HCC hopes these and some other architectural accommodations will offset the height variance it needs. The BLC will formally hear the request next month.
Word is the BLC will enforce a no-gloat zone, but who would blame them if they didn’t? What goes around comes around. Not just in architecture styles.