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Publication Date: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 Rebuilding the rules: Can Menlo Park streamline its home-building process while protecting neighborhoods from oversized homes?
Rebuilding the rules: Can Menlo Park streamline its home-building process while protecting neighborhoods from oversized homes?
(September 03, 2003)
By Rebecca Wallace
Almanac Staff Writer
Under bright lights, you look up at the dais where seven members of the Planning Commission sit watching you. You clear your throat and adjust the microphone to speak.
For some, this vision represents something to be avoided at all costs. For others, it's an opportunity.
When some people think about appearing before Menlo Park's Planning Commission, they fear they will be asked to make dramatic changes to their home-building plan: shrink a second story, move the windows. They see this as being unfairly told what to do with their own property.
Others imagine speaking as the neighbor of a project, given a chance to explain how a new home would affect the area, perhaps with an overpowering second story or windows that look into their home. Without this process, they fear they'd have no say in what is built nearby.
How great a role should the opinions of city officials and neighbors play in the approval process for new homes and major remodels? That seems to be a perpetually open question in Menlo Park.
Last November, the council adopted a new set of home-building rules in response to residents' concerns about "monster homes." The rules included a new review process for larger and two-story homes, and design guidelines for two-story homes and additions. But a new council majority elected later that month swiftly rescinded the ordinance, slamming it as overly strict and costly for homeowners.
Now another plan is heading to the council, championed by Councilwoman Mickie Winkler. Elected last fall, she voted to rescind the old ordinance.
She and Councilman Chuck Kinney, who supported the rescinded ordinance, worked together on this plan. The Planning Commission has been mulling it over all summer, and will present its suggestions for changes to the council on September 9.
While the rescinded ordinance relied heavily on human discretion to approve, deny and alter plans, this new tiered concept is rule-based and includes no design guidelines.
Plans that meet the set standards listed under Tier 1 would be approved by city staff. Designs can extend into a looser set of standards under Tier 2, but then require approval by contiguous neighbors or the Planning Commission. Exceeding the Tier 2 standards requires a commission variance, just as going beyond the current building rules does.
Supporters of the plan say it would make the approval process smoother and less expensive for applicants.
City staff say it's likely that far fewer projects would have to go through the Planning Commission; currently, about half do.
But several Planning Commissioners, along with two council members and some residents, have reservations, saying the plan offers little or no protection for the privacy of neighbors and the character of neighborhoods.
Those with serious concerns include Mr. Kinney, who says there are no safeguards against oversized second stories. He and Ms. Winkler "didn't always agree" when they were working on the ordinance, he said, adding, "I saw the plan as a starting point."
Mr. Kinney said he'd rather have one tier with standards that everyone can agree on; exceeding that would require review by the Planning Commission.
Bringing certainty to the process
Even in the best of economic times, building a home can be a daunting and costly undertaking. When subjective opinions are introduced into the approval process at too high a level, doubt results, Ms. Winkler said. Even applicants abiding by building rules never know when neighbors will object or what conditions will be placed on the project, she said.
"There's no certainty," she said of the current situation. "Rules are out the window."
In the tiered process, though, the applicant can choose whether or not to exceed Tier 1 and introduce human discretion into the process, she said.
Several types of measurements vary between the tiers. For example, the current zoning ordinance allows a second floor to be a maximum of 50 percent of the building's total floor area (the two floors could be equal in size). That number would also be 50 percent under Tier 2, but under Tier 1 it would shrink to 35 to 40 percent.
The plan would also have a major effect on lots that are called "substandard" because they are small or oddly shaped.
Currently, projects go through the discretionary process either because they exceed the building rules or are on substandard lots. Anyone building a new home or adding more than 50 percent of the current square footage on a substandard lot must obtain a use permit from the Planning Commission, senior planner Tracy Cramer said.
The theory behind that practice has been that homes on smaller lots are more likely to affect neighbors, she said.
Under the new plan, substandard lots would not be treated differently, with the exception of lots under 5,000 square feet, which would still require a use permit from the Planning Commission, Ms. Winkler said.
Dick Poe, a real estate agent with a background as a contractor, says much of Menlo Park's housing stock was built in the 1950s and that homeowners should be encouraged to remodel and get rid of older, hazardous materials such as asbestos and lead-based paint.
A supporter of Ms. Winkler's plan, Mr. Poe believes a smoother process will make people more willing to remodel their homes.
"If you go through the discretionary review process, you have no idea how to design your home. You simply take a stab at it. Suddenly the reviewing body decides that there are elements that they don't like," he said. "A very small change can result in a huge bill from your architect."
Reining in homes
During the dot-com boom, when the number of new homes built in town swelled, the outcry over "monster" homes also grew. Neighbors decried them as overpowering, intimidating and out of step with the neighborhood.
Along with the floor-area limits, the plan has several other provisions that seek to address out-of-scale housing, Ms. Winkler said.
One set of measurements addressed is called the "daylight plane," a three-dimensional area within which one can build a home. Currently, the daylight plane, measured from the side setback, goes up 19.5 feet before cutting toward the center of the property at a 45-degree angle.
The plan would reduce the size of the daylight plane -- and therefore the home -- allowed under Tier 1, by limiting the height to 17.5 feet. Applicants could build to 19.5 feet under Tier 2.
Another change would add a limit to the unbroken horizontal length of second-floor walls. Under Tier 1, Ms. Winkler is proposing a 25- or 30-foot limit; at that point, a wall would end or change by angling in or out.
But those with concerns about the plan say these changes fall far short of the goal to keep outsized housing under control. Some say these limits are too weak to have an effect.
Some also point out that a rules-based approach can't cover everything. What falls between the cracks, Planning Commission Chair Patti Fry said, is the privacy of neighbors.
In Tier 1, a building's dimensions would be limited, but the rules wouldn't affect where on a wall windows could be installed, she said. Therefore, a person could build a two-story home with windows looking down into a neighbor's home without the neighbor getting any warning, she said.
"There's an assumption that daylight planes take care of privacy, but privacy is about where windows are," she said. "Going from 19.5 feet to 17.5 feet doesn't really change things."
She added, "Most people are considerate of their neighbors. But many aren't."
As a rule, far fewer neighbors would be notified of projects, Ms. Fry added. While Tier 2 projects only need contiguous neighbor approval, currently any project requiring use-permit approval from the Planning Commission must include notification of all property owners and residents within 300 feet.
Because each property is different, a home design might spark a chorus of complaints among neighbors on one street but cause no complaints elsewhere. That's why it's so difficult to address issues of privacy in a system like this one, Councilman Paul Collacchi said.
"The objective rule system of telling you what you can build does nothing to tell you what the impacts will be on your next-door neighbors," he said.
As an example of the need for the discretionary process, Planning Commissioner Melody Pagee cited two projects on Bay Laurel Drive that recently came before the commission.
Both houses satisfied the proposed daylight plane rule and had second-floor walls of less than 30 feet in horizontal length, she said. But the neighbors were still worried because both houses had windows looking down directly into their property, Ms. Pagee said. The commission had the applicant move the windows, something that would not have happened without the discretionary process.
San Mateo Drive resident Catherine McMillan, who has spoken against the plan, agrees that the process must accommodate the views of neighbors.
A few years ago, she and her family planned to add on a second story, but decided not to after reading articles about home-design rules and talking to her neighbors, who primarily had one-story homes.
"We realized that we would be taking away sunlight and privacy. ...We were changing their environment in a way that I felt was not fair," she said. "I'd like to see individual neighbors get involved. They need to be told what's going on and be allowed to address their feelings."
Beating back the box
Defending the plan, Ms. Winkler agreed that privacy is "tough" to protect, especially on smaller lots. But people have the right to build two-story homes, and residents can protect their privacy with landscaping, blinds and other measures, she said.
Ms. Winkler said she's heard more concerns from residents about loss of sunlight than of privacy. Limiting the horizontal length of second-story walls would lead to houses that are less likely to block sun or to appear bulky, she said.
At a recent interview, she pulled out a photo of a two-story house where a neighbor was unhappy about the 37-foot-long second-story wall.
"I think 30 feet would be better," she said, then confessed with a chuckle, "It's my house, but I didn't build it. I've always said I'm happy I live in the house and not next door."
Lorie Sinnott, in the minority on the Planning Commission because she supports the plan, agreed that the boxy look created by one long second-floor wall can be especially disturbing to neighbors. Ending the wall, angling it in or adding a protruding, "charming" dormer window can make a welcome difference, she said.
"It's the perception of bulk more than it is the actual square footage," she said. She added that dormer windows are currently only allowed on one side of a house, but would be allowed on both sides under the plan.
Are design guidelines needed?
When the Crocketts decided to add a second story to their home in the Allied Arts neighborhood in 2001, they submitted their plans early and worked to find a design that seemed compatible with the rest of the neighborhood.
Fortunately for them, the process went fairly smoothly, and the plans were approved. But Kim Crockett said she was still left with a few bad feelings. She felt that a few Planning Commissioners voted against the plan simply because they didn't like the design.
"I didn't really feel that it was their role," she said. "When it doesn't go your way, it's maddening. You can't do anything about it."
Like privacy, the design of a home can be difficult to legislate.
While rules can easily govern dimensions, they don't speak as easily to what fits into the character of a neighborhood -- or what a city official will approve of. So how far should Menlo Park go in determining the design of a home?
Unlike many cities on the Peninsula, Menlo Park does not have design guidelines. Matters of design are dealt with during the discretionary process.
The plan on the table has been criticized for not having design guidelines to help plans fit into the character of neighborhoods; instead, it would include a non-mandatory "idea book" of area characteristics.
The concept of guidelines has also been slammed in Menlo Park. Like Ms. Crockett, many take issue at being told how to design their own home. Councilwoman Lee Duboc agreed, saying: "I really feel like one's home is one's castle. Most people do a pretty good job trying to fit into the neighborhood."
It's also often hard to determine what the character of a neighborhood is or should be; some have a broad diversity of home styles, she said.
The plan does include a "zoning overlay process" that would allow neighborhoods to put in place different development rules. But neighborhoods could not add design guidelines or change the approval process; they could only alter specific rules, such as floor-area limits.
As a whole, Ms. Duboc said she is supportive of the plan.
"I think it makes a lot of sense," she said. "People who don't want to go through the Planning Commission will go into Tier 1."
Others disagree, saying a non-binding idea book is useless and could easily be disregarded, unlike formal design guidelines, which would be a major part of the process.
"If it's not incorporated into the process, the people who would tend to design projects that would cause problems are still going to design them," Ms. Fry said.
What happens next?
As the plan heads to the City Council, one certainty is that this is not an easy topic to resolve.
The Planning Commission has been divided on many issues, including the concept of the tiered system: ideas have ranged from only allowing single-story development in Tier 1 to replacing the tiers with a discretionary process.
It remains to be seen what the council will decide, with Chuck Kinney and Paul Collacchi voicing deep concerns about the plan and Lee Duboc and Mickie Winkler speaking in support.
Mayor Nicholas Jellins said earlier this year that he thought this plan was an improvement over the rescinded ordinance. Last week, though, he declined to comment further until he had thoroughly reviewed staff reports and results from the Planning Commission's discussions on the plan.
How the plan would work
The plan that the Menlo Park City Council will discuss on September 9 seeks to streamline the approval process for new homes and major remodels. While a previous plan relied heavily on human discretion, this proposal is rule-based and includes a system of tiers.
** Tier 1: Plans that meet this set of standards are approved by city staff.
** Tier 2: Plans can meet a looser set of standards, but they must be approved by contiguous neighbors or the Planning Commission.
** Exceeding Tier 2 standards requires a variance from the Planning Commission.
Several types of measurements vary between the tiers. For example, the current zoning ordinance allows a second floor to be a maximum of 50 percent of the building's total floor area (the two floors could be equal in size). That number would also be 50 percent under Tier 2, but under Tier 1 it would shrink to 35 to 40 percent.
What cities have design guidelines?
Unlike Menlo Park, many cities on the Peninsula include residential design guidelines in the home-building approval process. Intended to show applicants what design features are deemed acceptable in the city, they sometimes include pictures and can deal with a variety of topics, including roof styles and landscaping patterns. Planning officials and city commissions, such as Woodside's Architectural and Site Review Board, use the guidelines to help them evaluate projects and recommend changes. Copies of guidelines can often be found on cities' Web sites.
Here are some Midpeninsula cities with or without design guidelines:
** Cities with design guidelines: Los Altos, Palo Alto, Portola Valley, Woodside, Redwood City, San Carlos.
** Cities with no design guidelines: Menlo Park, Atherton
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