NATCHEZ &8212; After two months of developing a new design for the proposed condos on the Natchez bluff, architect Jimmy Hebert revealed the new design for the project &8220;skin&8221; and all Thursday afternoon during a work session of the Natchez Historic Preservation Commision.

Architects and designers spent two days last Novemebr during a workshop developing a design that met the criteria of the Natchez preservation ordinance. When the design session for the proposed condominiums ended, the architects for developers Ed Worley and Larry Brown had what Hebert called &8220;the skin.&8221;

What they didn&8217;t know was whether the new skin would fit the goals of the developers and the project.

Since then the architects have been busy developing a design that would do just that.

Members of the commission during the work session got a first look at the new schematic design for the proposed 64-unit complex to be located on the old Natchez Pecan Shelling Co. site.

After the meeting, commission board chairwoman Marty Seibert said the members who attended the session are &8220;pleased&8221; with progress of the project.

&8220;This project has become a handsome design,&8221; Seibert said.

Ron Miller, executive director of the Historic Natchez Foundation, agreed. &8220;(The developers) have made some small changes and all of them have been improvements,&8221; Miller said.

Some of the changes in the project include breaking up the mass more and fine tuning many of the design&8217;s details.

The new design features six buildings carefully detailed to minimize its overall impact on the surrounding context.

Five of the six buildings are designed to be five stories high and one building is designed to six-stories.

According to Miller, the number of actual stories is deceiving because the design acutally appears as three stories, with a bottom story built into the site and the top story hidden in what will be percieved as an attic space.

Developers plan to submit the schematic design for review at the preservation commission&8217;s regularly scheduled meeting Wednesday evening. They also hope to unveil new renderings of the project to the public as well.