Its Not a Problem

Interim Control Ordinances (ICO)
This is the term used to help a municipality figure out what to do about the GAP issue.

The gap issue is the difference between older zoning ordinances that worked to maintain equitable rights in their communities and the change in the way real estate occurs now, a trend that was developed to take advantage of this gap.

This from Guide to Community Planning in Wisconsin by Brian W. Ohm

2.4 Interim Control Ordinances

Starting a planning process often raises the need for communities to suspend new development for a brief period of time while studies are completed and plans and ordinances are prepared or revised. A temporary moratorium is a technique that can be used to provide this needed "time-out."

A temporary moratorium, also known as an interim control ordinance, can be an important planning tool. Many communities throughout Wisconsin have imposed moratoria on new development as they engage in planning processes to address issues of growth and change. These moratoria have taken various forms, including moratoria on rezonings, building permits, and subdivision plats.

Quoting Mary Norwood from Atlanta when they took action:

“The legislation clarifies and closes many loopholes in the 1982 zoning ordinance.

The desirability of city living in Atlanta has led to the remodeling and redevelopment of many existing residential structures as well as the purchase structures for demolition in order to re-use the lot for a new building. With the preservation of neighborhoods as a high priority for both the City Council and the Administration, this new legislation can help protect the quality of life for all city citizens.

This legislation will allow our residents to continue to build and renovate to today's lifestyle preferences, and it provides some degree of oversight for appropriate and orderly development."

In Atlanta, there was first a moratorium while the Mayor's Infill Task Force began, and then Interim Standards, and then neighborhood input, and then professional study and recommendations, and then community feedback, final negotiated changes, and then acceptance by ALL affected parties.

Google this to see how prevalent the problem is and what others are doing about it.

Close your eyes and it will go away?

This is the first paragraph of the Infill Housing Study on Residential Scale in Atlanta Georgia. Seems to get to the point, yes? Today's N&O article has this quote:

The most contentious issue before the council has become what to do about tear-downs, the practice of replacing an existing home with a much larger one. Developers, real estate agents and homeowners who oppose restrictions have been hostile to council members who want to slow the practice.

The council has a hearing April 15 to discuss speeding the creation of neighborhood conservation overlay districts, which set standards for construction. But Councilman Russ Stephenson's plan to create a citizen study group has been criticized by people who question how big a problem tear-downs really are.

Well, if they were not so big, you could close your eyes, but to deny the problem requires a pretty expensive blinder.

How to Solve an Infill Problem

Atlanta Georgia is an example.

Be sure to revisit their web sites for more information. Many links can be found here at OTT.

Oh, Woe is We

OPINION: McMansions hit close to home
Once quiet street being torn apart by tear-downs

By LINDA LANIER FORTSON
Published on: 10/10/07 | Atlanta Journal Constitution
I can empathize with the three metro Atlanta neighborhoods, many with homes built around World War II, trying to set up historic districts. Atlanta's Virginia-Highland and Midtown and Decatur's Oakhurst are trying to stop tear-downs and the spread of "McMansions."

They are fighting for the very lives of their neighborhoods. And no, it is not hyperbole to say that. I know how real and urgent the battle is because I live near Chastain Park on Tuxedo Terrace, where the same destruction of family homes is taking place to make way for mammoth edifices totally out of scale with our existing houses.

In a recent article on the front of the business section ("Some still feel like a million," Aug. 31), a house under construction on my once modest street of ranch-style houses from the 1960s was profiled as an example of multimillion-dollar homes still selling well in Atlanta. While the story talked of the BMW 750 LI pulling up to the curb with the tanned and trim real estate agent, the 7,000-square-foot house offered for $2.2 million, the home theater, porte-cochere, wine cellar, gym, pool, etc., it failed to mention a few things:

For more than a year, a once close cul-de-sac neighborhood of 17 homes literally has been torn apart by two tear-downs and two renovations. It had been a street of different ages and financial means — some people had a good bit of money and some didn't, but none of us lived in faux chateaux or estates.

We drove each other to the airport, baby-sat each other's children, celebrated births and mourned deaths. We were a real community. That was before the developer feeding frenzy moved onto Tuxedo Terrace, transforming my street — as much of the rest of Atlanta — into a landscape worthy of Dali with bizarre out-of-proportion monster mansions on small lots next to one-story family homes.

Our street started looking like Appalachia before the War on Poverty; instead of outhouses, we had lines of portable toilets. Inexplicably, a venerable landmark poplar tree on one lot disappeared right where a developer wanted it to be gone. Dirt was hauled in to build up one side of a lot for a daylight basement, a large magnolia was bulldozed up by the roots. Cracks occurred in the foundation next door, all un-reimbursed. Lines of concrete mixing trucks and long tractor-trailers delivering lumber and Sheetrock were daily obstacles, at times totally blocking all access to enter or leave. One neighbor finally gave up hosting her bridge club because her friends were afraid of the relentless construction with no place left to park. Another neighbor, 6 feet 4 inches tall, ran off an eager portable toilet delivery driver at 4:20 a.m. Repeated calls from my neighbors have been made to the city arborist, inspection office, erosion control, City Council members. Even the fire department arrived one night after a fire was left burning in front of a construction site.

I was working downtown during the MARTA construction in the 1970s and remember the booming, window rattling pounding. Being across the street from the house profiled in the AJC, I can assure you the digging and pouring for a 7,000-square-foot house with home theater, wine cellar and pool, which consumes most of the lot, is only a decibel less shattering day after day. Every day I pick up the remains of the fast-food lunches rotting in my front yard.

The Tuxedo Terrace Truck Stop opened at 5:23 a.m. Oct. 2.

That was when the tractor-trailer began grinding and bumping in reverse up the driveway across the street, delivering an empty commercial trash bin and winching up a full bin. Massive headlights shone in my living room, dining room and bedroom windows, a scene rather like one of those old drive-up to the room motels, but on steroids. When a neighbor and I converged on the driver to ask him to wait until the legal time of 7 a.m. to begin, he rolled up the truck window on me and continued without pause.

For six days, a long-bed trailer loaded with irrigation pipes and an irrigation tractor with digger attached parked at the end of my cul-de-sac, day and night. While it's irritating for cars to make the turn with such an obstacle in the way, it was nearly impossible for the school bus.

While the other three houses torn down or renovated on my street are larger than the original homes, still they are in keeping with the lot size and are attractive. However, the one profiled in the AJC is three times the size of the originals.

When I'm in my sunroom, looking out on what was once a totally renovated home before it was bulldozed for this altar to get-rich-quick, I miss the woodsy, low slung home with the Frank Lloyd Wright attitude. Now I see this barn-like Bates Motel looming up, up, up. Having fouled our nest, the developer will make his millions and move on. While I appreciate the good intentions ... finally ... of the Atlanta City Council attempting to restrict this kind of architectural rape of our neighborhoods, I wish it had come soon enough to save Tuxedo Terrace.

— Linda Lanier Fortson lives in Atlanta

"New city homes must 'fit better'"

The Atlanta City Council voted unanimously Monday to adopt zoning regulations that are designed to end the era of big houses being built on the sites of previously demolished smaller homes.

Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

August 21, 2007 Tuesday

New city homes must 'fit better'

Atlanta council's vote keeps developers from building big houses that tower over those already in neighborhood.
DAVID PENDERED; Staff

The Atlanta City Council voted unanimously Monday to adopt zoning regulations that are designed to end the era of big houses being built on the sites of previously demolished smaller homes.

Developers no longer will be able to build houses that are drastically bigger than others nearby, or which tower over adjacent rooftops because the new house was built on a mound of dirt trucked in to get around a zoning code.

"I think what we're going to see in new home construction in neighborhoods throughout the city are homes that are going to be more compatible and generally fit better into the scale and character of the neighborhood," said city planning Commissioner Steve Cover. "And we can do that without taking away any of the benefits of building homes of the size people want to build."

That concept delights Buckhead resident deLille Anthony. She moved to Buckhead last year, after a big house was built across the street from her former home in Virginia-Highland. No sooner had she moved to Garden Hills than the house across the street was torn down and replaced with two that measure at least 6,500 square feet each.

"I don't want regulations that are so strict people can't do anything on their property, but some of the developers have gone too far," she said.

The zoning ordinance would allow bigger homes on bigger lots and smaller homes on smaller lots, except for two neighborhoods where lots are unusually small, and bigger homes would be allowed. In addition, the ordinance would require that the square footage of basements and attics that can be converted into living areas be counted toward a house's overall square footage. The plan also would prevent a developer from hauling in dirt to create a hill on which to build a house, so that a finished basement could be added later.

Mayor Shirley Franklin is expected to sign the ordinance.

Councilman Jim Maddox commended Councilwoman Mary Norwood for her work to pull together the development community, planners and residents to craft a method to regulate the new houses without thwarting the city's renewal. ...

The information about the zoning changes can be found here.

Fallonia used to say that she did not want Raleigh to turn into another Atlanta, but today, she is rethinking that.

Atlanta Rules

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/10/07

Proposal aims to limit big houses on little lots
City Council to consider regulating scale of new houses
By DAVID PENDERED

Eighteen months after Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin ordered a temporary stop to construction of massive homes on lots where smaller houses once stood, the City Council is starting to look at rules to regulate the scale of those new houses.

The council's Zoning Committee is scheduled to consider the proposal at its meeting at 11 a.m. Wednesday at City Hall.

Under the proposal, the scale of the new houses would be determined by the size of a lot. Bigger houses would be allowed on bigger lots, and smaller lots would require smaller homes.

Another provision would require that the square footage of basements and attics that can be converted into living areas be counted toward a house's overall square footage. The plan also would prevent a developer from hauling in dirt to create a hill on which to build a house so that a finished basement could be added later.

The story continues, and says what is said in every neighborhood confronting this. "Community leader David Patton said the proposal would halt desired development in the neighborhood. Many future houses would be limited to about 2,000 square feet because many lots in the neighborhood are small. 'We're not interested in kicking people out of our neighborhood just because they want a large home,' Patton told the city's Zoning Review Board."

And.

"When all is said and done, this ordinance will make new residential developments, and developments where someone might take down an old house and build a new one, compatible with the neighborhood," Steve Cover, the city's planning commissioner, told the Zoning Review Board at a hearing last month.

According to Mary Norwood, the city council woman who has taken on the infill issue since her election in 2002, "The proposal has widespread support across the city. This is a matter of closing loopholes and clarifying definitions."

Atlanta's building moratorium was issued in January 2006 to begin the process of resolving the tensions caused by infill development in some of Atlanta's changing neighborhoods. Replacing smaller older homes with houses three and four times as large is exactly what is happening here in my neck of the woods. This quote could come from Anytown, USA.

Residents who complained said the fabric of their neighborhoods was changed overnight when a bungalow or ranch home was demolished and replaced with a house that towered over others. Mature trees were routinely cut down, furthering the sense of a neighborhood in transition.

What is it about the quest for quality of life that makes us destroy it as we seek to have it?

Golden Geese in Atlanta

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a cover story on April 26, 2007.

"They really get it," said City Councilwoman Mary Norwood, who has been making the rounds of NPU meetings to field questions about the changes. "Home builders, preservationists and the city's Planning Department have already signed off on this. It's not complicated. It's just clarifying the code, closing loopholes, and is very much needed as we bring in new construction and renovations to our communities."

So, what did they figure out?

Let's go back to Jan 31, 2006, in an Op-Ed column by Mary Norwood, city councilor:

During the task force's work, residents were asked to identify structures they believed to be out of scale near their own residence. Something interesting happened: A street would have had four or more renovations or rebuilds, but only one would be considered out of scale by its neighbors. They would point to the same structure again and again. What this tells us is that it's not redevelopment itself that concerns neighborhood residents; it's the speculator exploiting the value of our long-term investment in our community to "push the envelope" that worries us.

The Infill Housing Task Force analyzed hundreds of structures to quantify "scale." We sought advice from the construction and real estate professions. We drafted legislation last fall that was modest in scope. After extensive additional input, we are now in the process of finalizing its language.

In the meantime, with out-of-scale development now a public issue, teardowns in the neighborhoods accelerated. Perhaps this was a ploy to get ahead of any restrictions that might be coming, or maybe it simply reflected the state of the economy. Either way, voices from the neighborhoods sounded growing alarm, and they requested that I introduce a moratorium to give them "breathing room" while the final draft of the infill regulations was going through our 90-120 day review process. I understood their concerns. I conducted an analysis of demolition permits and focused on the neighborhoods that had the most teardowns. Our courageous Mayor Shirley Franklin issued a moratorium until Feb. 6 so that the Atlanta City Council has time to bring some order to this frantic land rush.

Well, that must have brought some people to the table. To be specific -- homeowners, neighborhoods, architects, homebuilders, planning commission, planning institutes, realtors, urban planners, preservationists, city councilors.... The timeline and details of the process can be found here, kindly provided by the American Architectural Institute, Atlanta Chapter.

And that seems to be what it takes. This extract from the executive summary shows the depth of the recommendations.

The proposed revisions are divided into sixteen sections. The majority of the proposed revisions are intended to provide clarification of the existing zoning ordinance rather than introducing additional regulations. The City of Atlanta, working with the Atlanta Infill Development Panel (Panel), was consistently sensitive to the balance between zoning ordinance controls and property rights. New verbiage, such as the controls on retaining walls, was introduced only after specific requests heard during the 2006 public forums hosted by the Atlanta Infill Development Panel.

The proposed revisions only apply to the R-1 through R-5 residential zoning districts. The proposed revisions to the zoning ordinance are not intended to be retroactive or affect existing housing stock. They would not prevent an owner from finishing an unfinished space so long as that space is within the existing building envelope. Owners of existing houses would only be affected by the proposed revisions to the zoning ordinance if they chose to make an addition to the house.

The above document is found here. It details setbacks, height ratios, footprints, attics and basement space, yards, streetscape ... it is all spelled out and falls within the realm of common sense, which sure beats the nonsense going on around here in the name of property rights.

As Mary Norwood stated in her Op-Ed,

In the past, urban renewal meant bulldozers sweeping clear huge tracts of land for housing projects, highways and malls. In today's Atlanta, change often proceeds parcel by parcel, within neighborhoods. Generally that piecemeal development is an asset to the community; both the developer and the new resident have an interest in preserving and even cultivating the very charm of the neighborhood that made the parcel attractive for redevelopment in the first place.

The problem is that some are prepared to "kill the goose that lays the golden egg." Anyone can drive around town and see parcels that have been redeveloped without any effort to fit into the existing neighborhood. This kind of development imposes a cost on the surrounding community. Much of a home's value comes from the character of the area, the charm of the neighborhood, and the physical condition of the streetscape. One "McMansion" can depress property values of nearby homes. Our residents know this. They are concerned. They turned to us, their elected representatives, for help.

So, who is the Mary Norwood of Raleigh that we can call on to get this egg rolling?

For more information, see these sites:

Councilwoman Mary Norwood website: Infill Regulations

Councilwoman Mary Norwood website: Infill Background

Councilwoman Mary Norwood slideshow on infill issues in Atlanta

Atlanta Infill Development Project at the American Architectural Institute, Atlanta Chapter

Executive Summary of the new Zoning Code for Atlanta

Proposed changes to Atlanta's Zoning Code for Residential construction

Atlanta Planning Department's Explanation and Illustrations