Second in a series.
Re: “How Tight Can Building Rules Be?”
Effectively, the City Council still is standing at the bottom of the hill in resolving the debate over mansionization, in the view of Councilman Jim Clarke.
A hill’s worth of topics still to be settled.
“We have a lot to address,” Mr. Clarke says of the six-month dispute about so-called overbuilding. “An issue I was sympathetic to is relatively different profiles of various neighborhoods. We have a lot of different housing stock.
“For the majority, there is a certain standard in each neighborhood, whether a side garage, a side driveway, or a front garage,” Mr. Clarke said.
How restrictive should new rules be?
Mr. Clarke wonders: “Should we have a policy that varies, depending upon the predominant nature of each neighborhood?”
He offered the following illustration. “In a neighborhood where there is a side driveway leading to a detached garage in the back, the people on that side would not be as angry or intimidated by a 30-foot wall of a two-story building as opposed to a 30-foot wall that is five feet from the property line.
“I have questions. Does that mean you are looser where you have those driveways? Detached garages were also an issue.
“Another question is, do we want to build in incentives?”
Answers still are months away.
(To be continued)
