As the calendar hunkers down this week and prepares to change its name to a new year, it may be comforting to some residents that the often arcane debates about overbuilding in mid-town neighborhoods will end.
As chairman of the advisory Planning Commission, Kevin Lachoff, a realtor, repeated a mansionization conundrum facing his colleagues:
“There are only so many ways,” he said, “you can restrict development on the lots of our size before you become overly burdensome and really do affect property values,” a common worry among protestors, especially in Carlson Park.
How close the Planning Commission is to a resolution remains a clouded question.
With ambitious Carlson Park neighbors building up instead of our, privacy invasion has been an unrequited theme in this half-year drama.
“While privacy certainly is important,” Mr. Lachoff said, “after the last meeting I was speaking briefly with one of the City Council members about requiring neighboring sideyard walls to have clerestory windows (typically above eye-level) and to not have balconies.
“It occurred to both of us that the more you tell people what they cannot have on the sides of their houses, the more you are just going to have stark walls with no windows or features at all.”
Mr. Lachoff expressed sympathy for a woman who said she and her husband had lived in their home for 50 years. In an earthquake-sized jolt, the couple were forced to keep their blinds closed all day because otherwise their mansionized neighbor could peer in directly on all of their activities.
Mr. Lachoff returned to his options-limited stance. “At the end of the day, there is only so much we can do,” he said. “Here we talk about protecting a driveway –great, it is protected. But you still have a very big house juxtaposed to the one next to it.”
What to do? That stumper has been addressed, just not resolved.
