Naturalist visits Fallon Park

This is a fine exploration of Fallon Park and its surrounds.

raleighnature.com

It is a clean, rock-filled creek with a wide range of trees and plants arranged around its slopes. There are small grass meadows at the top and bottom. It serves a surrounding community that maintains rich, semi-organic plantings in its large yards, and it drains steep wooded slopes with older houses and little construction. The creek’s quality reflects all of that.

And this observation is exactly why residents were so concerned about this little park that they requested a zoning that reflected the build-out of the current area.

Enjoy the virtual visit.

A Positive Development

Raleigh City Council voted in the expedited NCOD on July 1. A round of applause is in order...

The OTT/ITB Award for June goes to the Raleigh CIty Council for this Positive Development.

WTVD:
Victory for McMansion opposers
Tuesday, July 01, 2008 | 4:37 PM

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Raleigh homeowners hoping to protect their neighborhoods from so-called McMansions can claim victory.

The infill debate about how to regulate tear downs in older neighborhoods has been going on for more than one year.

Tuesday the city council agreed to adopt new rules about how neighborhoods create standards for homebuilding in their communities.

Until now it took neighborhoods two years to amend guidelines for how new homes could be built. The process has been streamlined to take about six months.

Under the new rule, older neighborhoods are able to have a say about nine different categories when it comes to rebuilt homes. Among the categories are housing height and the distance homes are set back from the road.

For more information, visit the City of Raleigh's Website.
(Copyright ©2008 WTVD-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=6239195#bodyText

N&O:
http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1127168.html

WRAL:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/3136711/

What Does Sustainable Really Mean?

Community Conversations II was inspiring. Two great things in one:

Being in the transplanted and restored All Saints Chapel.

Hearing Don Rypkema, of PlaceEconomics speak on sustainable development.

Rypkema was the keynote speaker at the 2008 Heritage Conservation conference in Ontario. PlaceEconomics is a Washington D.C. based consulting firm specializing in the economic revitalization of city centers and the development of historic properties. Rypkema is a self confessed provocateur on a mission -- to spur innovative and creative thought that results in solutions that are sustainable -- in every way.

"If you can't write it on a business card then you don't have a clear idea," he says. He summarizes these points early in the presentation:

1. Sustainable development is crucial for economic competitiveness.
   
2. Sustainable development has more elements than just environmental responsibility.
   
3. “Green buildings” and sustainable development are not synonyms.
   
4. Historic preservation is, in and of itself, sustainable development.
   
5. Development without a historic preservation component is not sustainable.
   

You can begin your exploration of his talks here.

Rypkema stated that one of the best examples of sustainable development will be Dubuque Iowa. They are adopting the sustainability model of which he spoke, shown above and here.

To quote:

Sustainability is defined by a community’s ability to meet the environmental, economic, and social equity needs of today without reducing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Sustainable Dubuque is a holistic approach to making our community sustainable. Our model involves a three-part approach that looks at:

• Environmental and Ecological Integrity
  
• Economic Prosperity
  
• Social and Cultural Vibrancy
  

Each of these pieces is important individually and helps contribute to a sustainable community. Here is how the model works:

When you have policies and programs that address Environmental and Ecological Integrity with Economic Prosperity, you have policies and programs that are viable.

When you have policies and programs that address Environmental and Ecological Integrity with Social/Cultural Vibrancy you have policies and programs that are livable.

When you have policies and programs that address Economic Prosperity with Social/Cultural Vibrancy you have policies and programs that are equitable.

However, when a community creates polices and programs that address all three pieces, such as Sustainable Dubuque, you have a community that is viable, livable and equitable.

It was a welcome message for sore ears.

Where's Waldo

Alert reader submission ... location unknown.

Greensboro NCOD in Action

Westridge revels in conservation plan

Westridge revels in conservation plan
The neighborhood’s plan to preserve its rural appeal unanimously passes the City Council.
Jun 9, 2008 | Greensboro News Record
By Emily Stephenson
Staff Writer

Good news: Democracy is alive in Greensboro.

At least, some residents of Westridge Neighborhood say their recent, successful attempt to restrict future neighborhood development is proof that the democratic process works.

The Greensboro City Council unanimously voted last week to support the Westridge Neighborhood Conservation Overlay, a plan that some residents say will preserve the neighborhood's countryside appeal.

"One of the things about Greensboro is there's always been a charge that developers determine what happens with developments," said Rob Luisana of 1208 Westridge Road, who organized the neighborhood's effort to direct construction. "It was democracy at work."

Westridge's overlay — the city's first such plan, possible because of a 2007 city ordinance — requires larger setbacks from the street and neighboring homes than are mandated by city rules.

The plan also ensures tree protection by requiring that developers preserve at least 60 percent of existing trees when houses are built or expanded.

"Essentially it's a tool that helps residents recognize and preserve distinctive elements in their neighborhoods," said Mary Sertell, an urban designer with the city's planning department.

Sertell helped guide the Westridge residents through the conservation overlay process, which began last spring.

The process involved several months of neighborhood hearings, an application and approval from property owners making up more than 51 percent of the land area.

Sertell said Lindley Park Neighborhood soon will begin working on an overlay.

Although Westridge is the first Greensboro neighborhood to create a conservation overlay, it is not the first to try to control growth.

In February 2007, the Kirkwood neighborhood convinced the planning department to change nearby zoning rules to keep out a Walgreens.

And the Westridge Neighborhood Association last year lobbied the city to pre vent rezoning that would allow townhouses in the area.

Beverly Willingham, who has lived at 1201 Westridge Road since 1965, said she moved to the neighborhood because the trees made her feel as if she lived in the countryside, though her home is less than 3 miles from Friendly Center.

She said most Westridge residents want to preserve the neighborhood character, especially in the face of new development in the area, so they are pleased with the results of the yearlong process.

"Developers tend to go in and clearcut because it's simple," Willingham said, joking that she has nicknamed nearby subdivision Westridge Forest "Westridge Deforest" because of its cut trees.

Fred Robertson, whose mailing address is 1112 Westminster Road but who helped create the neighborhood's overlay plan, said Westridge has Greensboro's first ordinance to protect trees from residential construction.

"That is something that we hope the City Council will endorse," he said. " There's a lot of attention and press about global warming. Not enough attention is put on the clearcutting of trees."

Not all Westridge property owners like the plan — some argue that it allows too many exceptions, others think restrictions might hinder current owners from making expansions to their homes — but more than 90 percent signed the plan's final draft.

The City Council approved the plan with an 8-0 vote at Tuesday's meeting. Councilman Zach Matheny was absent.

"Sometimes you think, 'Is it worth going through all this?'" Luisana said. "It made me feel good about the City Council."

Contact Emily Stephenson at 373-7080 or emily.stephenson@news-record.com

Note to Raleigh deciders: Greensboro went the majority of the land area route:
The process involved several months of neighborhood hearings, an application and approval from property owners making up more than 51 percent of the land area.


This is a current concern in the Planning Commission: what constitutes a vote and how many is a majority.

While the land area formula is strikingly similar to the land baron system, it would be a good idea to look deeper into the statute in Greensboro to see how those votes took place.

Fallonia leans toward one person one vote, and a majority is 51%. That is the American way. In land use, deciding what is a property owner is getting harder and harder. For example, up on Anderson Drive, one man is behind 2 re-developments, but he has different business names, and multiple partnerships. So he would get two votes, 6 votes, 50 votes? And a single property owner would get 1 and their neighbors with joint ownership get 2? It is a tricky question and may require constitutional scholars to figure it out.

The Most Important Meeting You Can Attend This Year

Is Your Neighborhood on this Map?

RALEIGH, NC | Infill
If your neighborhood is not on this map, then development activities in your neighborhood are bound only by city-wide zoning ordinances, which treat property the same for established neighborhoods and raw land. This means, for example, a home can be built to a maximum height of 40 feet to the midline of the roof. Couple this with a home built to maximum setbacks and the house next door may take on renewed significance in your neighborhood.

Raleigh Planning Department to the Rescue

The Planning Department will host the second public meeting regarding residential infill construction on Thursday, May 29. The meeting will be held in the City Council chambers in the Avery Upchurch Municipal Complex (room 201). The meeting will begin at 7 p.m., and will focus on the results of the visual preference survey and nationwide best management practices. Please come to the meeting and make your opinions known!

They are not kidding. If you do not come to the meeting, they cannot hear you. If you are a resident of an established neighborhood and wish to have input on the future of your investment, this is the best opportunity for you to be a part of this discussion.

Did I mention this is the only formal invitation to shape this debate that you will be getting?

Well, Well, Well

Snippets from Metropolitan Home
Bigger Isn't Always Better
Communities across the U.S. are taking action against the supersize houses invading their front and backyards
Written by Peter Hellman

The good news is that grassroots anti- McMansionists are fighting back. Often, they’re out ahead of local government when it comes to preserving the character of their communities. In the architecturally rich, fully built-out Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, for example, village officials did nothing as more than a dozen Victorian and Prairie-style homes were demolished to make way for McMansions. “A bunch of us residents decided we wanted our officials to get more involved in the loss of these significant older homes,” says longtime village resident Jackie Bossu. “But their response was that they couldn’t do anything so long as our 1969 zoning law wasn’t being violated. They were just running on autopilot.”

Responding to rising citizen dismay, the village’s building review committee called a meeting on teardowns in late 2003. “It was a weekday evening, but more than 200 residents showed up, even though we have only 830 homes,” Bossu says. Belatedly, regulations were adapted to the new speculative realities, including a required “cooling-off period” for teardown permits. FAR computations were also changed to benefit existing homes rather than new construction, so owners have less temptation to sell out. And so-called snout garages, which protrude from facades of new homes (sometimes called Garage Mahals), were banned. This year, Kenilworth expects to have a revised code that is tilted toward preservation of the village’s traditional fabric rather than teardowns.

In booming Dallas, a city with a surprisingly large reservoir of pre-war houses, the last few years have seen more than 1,000 teardowns (exceeding the size of Kenilworth’s entire housing stock). “It’s not just a problem of new houses being out of scale and proportion with others on the block, but of materials and style,” says Katherine Seale, director of the civic group Preservation Dallas. In a neighborhood of low, wood-framed bungalows you’ll get a limestone-faced, two-and-a-half-story house with a large faux Frenchstyle turret. It’s so discordant.” Seale hastens to say that “building new houses in existing neighborhoods can be compatible, and lots of architects have figured out how to do it.” But too often, they don’t.

The most potent factor in the invasion of McMansions on urban infill is the rising cost of land. A modest old home on a highly valuable lot is teardown bait to a speculative builder. The new house he’ll build will be proportionately more expensive in keeping with the cost of the land. “When you buy a teardown in New York, or Washington or San Francisco, places with very high property values, you’ll build a house worth three or four times the price of the land, so you’ve got to build an awfully big house,” says architect Sarah Susanka. “Some of the most beautiful inner-ring suburbs are being lost before our eyes to these humongous houses dumped into their midst. And yet, it’s often unintentional. People see a plan in an architectural grocery store and say, gee, that’s lovely. But just because something looks good in its own isolated setting doesn’t mean it’s going to work where houses are densely packed.”

And it’s not only new houses but the expansion of existing ones whose new bulk can dominate their neighbors. “People will keep one stud from the original house to call it remodeling and then build a massive house,” says Susanka. “They’re determined to get every square inch out of their valuable lot,” says Susanka, whose 1998 broadside against houses with too much unused space, The Not So Big House, will be published in an updated tenth-anniversary edition this year.

Invoking the mantra of sustainability, Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute, a Boston-based land-use think tank, argues that big new homes on urban infill can actually be a good thing: “You have folks who will say that its better to build close to town where land can be reused and the infrastructure exists rather than building it out in the cornfields.” Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Places, disagrees. “It’s good that people want to move closer to town, but not when they bring their suburban sensibilities to historic districts,” he says. The large houses that they left behind “aren’t designed to fit in these differently scaled neighborhoods.”

The graceful neighborhoods now under siege from McMansions, it’s worth remembering, were created not so much by regulation as by an earlier generation’s sense of style, proportion and landscaping. “What we’re trying to do is not about judging someone for having too large a home, but what’s appropriate for a community that’s been here for more than 100 years,” says Lauren Norton, an Atlanta preservationist.

And what are cities trying:

A task force in [Atlanta] did create a new set of regulations on square footage that should bring down the size of many homes. In Dallas, new Neighborhood Stabilization Overlay Zones allow residents to decide what they’ll permit, and what they won’t, when new buildings are to be erected. In Minneapolis, home footprints are now limited to 50 percent of lot size. In Boulder County, Colorado, where home size averages a gigantic 6,500 square feet, a bold plan is afoot to create a system of transferring square footage rights from small houses to large houses.

In Raleigh, the first step is still admitting we have a problem.

Raleigh Builders' Perspective on your Community

This letter is circulating as a call to arms for this Tuesday's City Council Meeting.

Despite the actions of the Raleigh Planning Commission in December, our City Council is getting ready to force something on every property owner in the City of Raleigh. If you care at all about the value of your home and property, PLEASE let your voice be heard. At the meeting of the Planning Commission in December, there may have been 50 or 60 supporters of our property rights.

It is not enough to write these people an email. You should go to the meeting! The Council has scheduled this meeting on short notice in the middle of the day so that most of us cannot be there. Forward this message to everyone in your address book. The internet is the only way to get people who care about this to stand up and defend our rights as property owners. They have NO BUSINESS telling people what size addition to put on their homes.

Currently the City of Raleigh has CAC's or Citizen Action Committees to review proposed changes in established neighborhoods. However, the City chooses not to utilize this option, as it is too hard to enforce.

Instead, they'd rather create new laws and rules to wrap around the ones they already won't enforce. I for one am sick and tired of having someone who doesn't even live in my neighborhood trying to control my home and my neighborhood. [note from FP: me too]

This effort by Councilmen Thomas Crowder and Russ Stephenson is part of an overall anti-growth message that just a few people want to send to the business community. That message is that growth is bad for Raleigh and that new homes and/or cleaning up and rebuilding old neighborhoods is bad business. This all comes just days after Wake County doubled the value of your property for tax purposes. It will take eight years for them to revalue your homes again, all the while the market value will be declining because people who want to remodel, add-on or tear-down will move to a place where adding on to or replacing old homes is welcome.

PLEASE look into this, write your city council representative, and attend the meeting on Tuesday at 1pm. Your retirement nest egg will definitely be adversely affected.

ALSO, FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

Fallonia has tried to stay out of the fray, but this letter is over the top, so it is fair game.

Red herrings include FEAR (loss of rights, control, anti-growth) and MONEY (bad business, market value, retirement nest egg) and FREEDOM (restrict your additions or renovations, restrictive regulations). None of this is true. I was amused to see that our neighborhoods need their help in cleaning-up. Freudian slip mayhaps?

What we at OTT-ITB advocate can be summed up in this statement found at Tulsa OK's Preserve Midtown site (whose excellent resources I have been sharing this week).

What is infill?
Infill is new construction that 'fills in' empty lots in areas that are already established. Good infill should "develop seamlessly within an existing urban fabric, balancing, completing, and/or repairing the surrounding sectors." Key considerations are:

"Setback is the distance from the front facade of the house to the steet and should be the same distance as other houses on the street. Height should be compatible with the height of buildings surrounding the lot. Mass pertains to the bulk of the house. It should be similar, rather than wider or longer than its neighbors. Scale of the house's height and width should be compatible with the proportions of other homes in the block. Facade, the face of the house, should not appear flat, nor should it be dominated by a garage. Windows and Doors should emphasize the vertical, taller rather than wider. Roofs should have a pitch, or angle of roof, that is similar to others in the neighborhood."
— Glossary of Terms (The Lexicon of the New Urbanism: MCDA, Minneapolis, MN)

If you live in a neighborhood you love in Raleigh, the City Council meeting on Tuesday, January 8 at 1 pm, is vitally important to you. This weekend is the perfect time to contact your councilors and let them know your position on Infill Standards. While the matter is being studied in the Planning Department, now is the time for INTERIM measures that will protect your street from irreparable changes until this is sorted out. Please contact the city today and let them know you are concerned. Their addresses are HERE. Be sure to include your name/address/phone so they know you are a resident.

Attending the City Council Meeting is a good civics lesson. Standing room only.

Over in Greensboro

Growing pains in Irving Park
By Jim Schlosser | Greensboro News & Record
Friday, Nov. 2, 2007 3:00 am

Amid yard signs touting City Council candidates, another kind of sign is popping up in exclusive Irving Park.

"Let's preserve the character of Old Irving Park ..." the signs say.

Irving Park carries with it a deep history in Greensboro. It has been a "good" neighborhood since it began in 1911. Quoting one resident, the teardown trend "is changing the appearance of Irving Park." She adds that it is a "unique neighborhood'' and was designed by two renowned early 20th-century landscapers, northerners John Nolen and Robert Cridland.

"It is not the teardowns that upset everyone in Irving Park, that is to be expected a little with age. It is what is being built on those empty lots."

This is the chorus to songs being sung in older neighborhoods across this land. The times they are a changing. But are zoning regulations the answer, or consciousness raising, sensitivity training for the builders, Golden Rule lessons for the buyers? I suggest a visit to news-record.com for the complete article.

Here's a clue, tho.

Although many replacement houses have blended well, others meet only minimum setback requirements — and those are meager, [the resident] says.

The rules mandate houses stand at least 30 feet from main roads, such as Sunset and Country Club drives, and 25 feet on smaller streets.

In the old days, setbacks hardly mattered. Wealthy families built large houses far back to allow for spacious lawns.

The city has yet to approve an NCO district. Westridge Road's application is winding through the approval process, which Sertell says can take six to 18 months. ...

Although some of Irving Park's 719 property owners surely will oppose being an NCO district, [the resident] says, "Everyone has come up to me, and said we should have done this 75 years ago.''

Million Dollar Babies

There are now 9 over-a-mil ready-to-buy houses within a mile of my modest homestead (actually I think my home is quite nice, but the scale is changing dramatically, so I guess I am living in a future teardown in someone else's mind).


There are also two tornout lots available for approximately 500K each. One of these lots had plans for a 5000 square foot private home, those plans were abandoned after the teardown. (see several stories in June and July).

Two in the 1.25-1.5M range have sold this summer; the on-sale prices were $1.1M and 1.15M.

The replacement house for the poster child for teardowns on Anderson has a SOLD sign already on its new build. I am thinking it is less expensive than its half-sibling, dubbed "Entertainer's Paradise " by their builder cum real estate company. That house has a price tag of TBD, BTW.

This means that over on the sidestreets of Anderson, there are still 5 spec castles in the over 1.25M range, and some have sat vacant a long time (a year is a long time, right?). The over-a-mil spec house on Cooleemee has been in process since before Tropical Storm Ivan blew through.* Unsold: 6 out of 9, 2 out of 2; shooting too high? We are looking at approximately $10 million dollars at stake here.

And this does not include 3 properties in process on Claremont.

* The original speculator on this property was fined for his failure to secure the site against runoff. During Ivan, a red stream flowed from this construction site to Fallon Creek for days.

Another one down

The second teardown on Cooleemee was completed this week. The house sat next to the May OTT award winner, which, by the way, is still for sale.


The house sold for $300,000 on 9/28/2007. 926 square feet, built 1950, on .25 acres. Renovation in 1990.


The first thing to go was the trees.


Cooleemee was part of a rezoning effort in the 1980's -- from R-6 to R-4 to match the buildout of the neighborhood. Imagine how this would look if these houses were built even closer to each other and the street.


So, will it be a compatible structure with the existing neighborhood, or the imposing new neighborhood they are building on top of us?

Fallonia holds out hope for an undermilliondollar house here. But she is not putting money on it.

The Heart of the Matter

Edina Neighbors Distraught Over Teardowns
By Bruce MacDonald
We sometimes think of Edina as a wealthy enclave but it’s really an old Minneapolis suburb comprising smaller houses, by today’s standards. Neighbors on Oakland Avenue have produced a video to express their outrage at builders who teardown ...
VIDEO here

Garage Mahal on Glenwood

This house has so many OTT qualities that it is nominated for the belated July and current August Over The Top Award.

There are many things that make this house special. I hesitate to nominate it since it is being built as a private home rather than a spec house. But as I walked the neighborhood, it was clear this one is Over The Top from so many perspectives, it could become the poster house for defining the problems of over-sized rebuilds in old neighborhoods. Let me count the ways.




1) Streetscape: The original house on this lot blended with its neighbors. When in doubt remember this handy formula:
Streetscape = S1 + S2 + S3, where S1 = Setback, S2 = Style, and S3 = Size





2) Impact on existing neighbors: this courtesy can be accomplished by careful design. Pay attention to height, setbacks, views, tree canopy, and possible runoff from large amounts of impervious surfaces. Your neighbors will love you for it.



3) Respect neighborhood quality of life: this ambiance is what attracted you here in the first place. Lifetimes were spent tending this ground for future generations' enjoyment.






Up close and personal ...






This property was purchased for $385,000 in June 2005. Two years in the making, and still going, this house may single-handedly change the character and tax values of this section of Glenwood Avenue and the settled community behind it. We can be all for rights, but one's rights should require balancing with the impact such freedom can have on the wider public and private realm. I am certain that is why they invented zoning regulations.

Setbacks: Part IV

There are several ways to maximize an addition or renovation in ways that impact less the surrounding community. We can even go so far as to call these improvements because they were done in consideration of the tone of the neighborhood.

In this example a one story house received a second floor. It is next door, and slightly uphill, to a house that was already renovated and that has a 2nd floor bumping out of the roofline. The design solution was to step the roof of the renovated house down on the side. You can see the difference this makes in these pictures. There are probably variances involved as well, as that line is pretty close to the structure on the left.




In this example, in the same area and with the same zoning requirements, all effort was put into maximizing the size of the new home.



The result is not so pleasant for the original neighbor in the house on the right.



Remember, this streetscape looked like this for the past 60 plus years.



On the same street, an example of how you can bump out in the front without challenging the setback appearance. This house could legally have built into the front yard.



Like this one, and its twin up the street.



Problem solving is actually the mother of creativity. We have been fortunate to have so many builders working in the neighborhood, before the teardown era began, that created some fine solutions.

"Builder" only recently became a word met with mixed feelings. Maybe some things are just over the top.

Setbacks: Part III

Investigation Continues Into Rolesville House Fires

The heat from the flames were so intense, it melted the siding on nearby houses. The fire chief said that because the homes were so close together, the blaze was hard to contain.

As a result of the fire, residents are raising questions about the proximity of the houses and how that may have played a role as to how the fire spread so quickly.

A committee made up of building inspectors and developers is being formed to discuss whether zoning laws may need to be changed. (from WRAL-TV5)

Fire Destroys Nottingham Road Home (video)

RALEIGH, N.C. -- An early morning house fire burned a home under construction near the intersection of Farrior and Nottingham roads Wednesday. Investigators said the home, which was in the 1500 block of Nottingham Road, was unoccupied at the time the fire broke out just before 4 a.m. Wednesday, Aug 01, 2007 - By NBC17

Early morning fire tears through $900,000 home

Fire all but destroyed a 4,000-square-foot house under construction inside the Beltline early Wednesday morning. Investigators have not determined what caused the fire at 1419 Nottingham Drive.

. . .

Given the severe damage, work crews will have to tear down the house, Bland said.

"When all that's charred like that, you have to knock it down completely and start over," he said.

Bland said that firefighters told him the flames were shooting up 30 feet from the roof when they arrived shortly after 4 a.m.
The main living area appeared to be completely gutted, though the attached garage was untouched. (from N&O, see link above)

So, it is possible that setbacks affect more than community character. As in the fire in Rolesville, the possibility that stick built homes 10 feet apart can spread to the next home is cause for pause. In the Nottingham case, the house is one of 5 in a row that are being built in R-10 zoning. This house is on .28 acres. The description of the flames in the fire make one realize how lucky the neighborhood was that it was contained so quickly.

Here are setback tables for Raleigh zoning.

R-4 is 4 units per acre
  (10,890 square feet minimum lot size)
R-6 is 6 units per care
  (7,260 sq. ft. minimum lot size)
R-10 is 10 units per acre
  (5,000 sq. ft. minimum lot size)

Yards and setbacks
Zone .. Front .. Side .. Aggregate* .. Rear
R-4........ 30’ ..... 10’..... 20’ ..... 30’
R-6.........20’ ..... 5’ ..... 15’ ..... 20’
R-10.......20’ ..... 5’ ..... 15’ ..... 20’
* The total of the two side yards. There are variations for corner lot side yards.

Just because you can develop to minimum setbacks does not mean you should. Common sense and a sense of community are always the best guide to setback standards, in Fallonia's humble opinion.

Setbacks: Part II

When you develop to the minimum legal guidelines, then you will see more house and less yard. This new neighborhood is being developed from the ground up to the minimum setbacks. It will have more conformity than some of the surrounding streets because of this visual consistency.

At R-10 or R-6, the minimum side setback is 5 feet, but the combined left and right must be 15 feet. So one house may be 5 feet from the line on one side and 10 feet from the other side. Houses in this zoning will generally have a driveway on the wide side, and no drive on the short side. This means that the minimum spacing between houses could be 10 feet and the the maximum could be 20 feet.


This is what 15 feet looks like:



This is what 10 feet looks like:



When homes are torn down and replaced with structures that conform to the letter of the law, they may not blend with the spirit of the established community.

What's the deal about setbacks: Part I

As one neighborhood's rezoning effort winds its way thru the process, one word keeps coming up over and over.

The word is Setbacks.

Defined as: Zoning restrictions on the amount of land required surrounding improvements; the amount of space required between the lot line and the building line.

Boring sounding stuff, but it is the one thing that unifies a neighborhood -- more than building style or color.

Setbacks from the street are usually a combination of factors. The minimum setback is set in the zoning, and is in addition to the right of way. In older neighborhoods, the setbacks may be even deeper than the minimum. The tone was set by the orginal development.




Over the years, multiple renovations have occurred in this neighborhood, by respecting the established setbacks, there is a uniformity.



In older neighborhoods, you also see greater setbacks between the side lots than the minimum requirement. In our neighborhood, we call these yards.