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Home My WebLink AboutTiny Bungalow Court R2 Density Bonus Zonng 1-20-2017 (Meyer) Purrington, Teresa From:Eric Meyer <frenchbicycles@gmail.com> Sent:Monday, To:Advisory Bodies Subject:Fwd: tiny bungalow court R2 density bonus zoning Please forward the following letter, the included email chain, and the attached jpg. to the Planning Commission. Thank you! Eric Meyer Begin forwarded message: From: Eric Meyer < Date: November 20, 2017 at 11:12:05 AM PST To: "Codron, Michael" <mcodron@slocity.org> Subject: Re: tiny bungalow court R2 density bonus zoning Michael I understand your predicament but must respectfully disagree. Requiring parking kills the liveability and affordability of what I am trying to create. If we need to park 4 cars... on this 50x150 standard city lot that will either: 1) force garages under the units and require a driveway where there is garden in my drawing. Thus most all landscape opportunity is replaced by pavement. This also destroys the neighbor’s privacy because we need to build up. It also requires stairs within the units to a bedroom upstairs which precludes the elderly from choosing this typology. The cost of building that garage and the second story and stair volume raises the cost of the home to where it is no longer affordable. Or 2) it requires a common parking lot area separate.. which means we are going to lose one of the units as there simply isn’t enough room. This dramatically raises the cost of the remaining three units such that the project is no longer financially possible. It also means that the street frontage is now a parking lot... or it means that the garden is replaced by a driveway and the parking is in the back. Or 3) we park the cars between the units and create a lot almost entirely covered by driveways with almost zero garden. Nobody wants to sit on a front porch surrounded by driveways. —- Requiring the parking effectively kills this proposal as a possibility on a standard city lot. It kills the liveability, affordability, and social (front porch lifestyle) quality of life aspects of the project. It reduces the density and ruins the neighborhood character by either forcing the units to be too tall (two story 1 rather than 1.5 thus creating overlook issues with neighbors) or by requiring a parking lot.... which we may not need in ten years. I suspect neighbors would rather have dense one story development next door and parking on the street than dense two story with driveways and thus no back yard privacy and more automobile noise/intrusion. Have we asked this question? See Adriance Court on Santa Rosa and Islay... or the other old bungalow court on the east side of Toro at Walnut. Neither has parking. The entire point of this proposal is lost if we kill it with parking requirements. It is no longer a happy place to live. If we want this typology downtown we cannot have both affordable and happy places to live AND off street parking given the existing lot sizes and the land cost here. We must, as a community, choose to either require parking OR affordability and liveability. You cannot have both within our downtown. We need to stop allowing the automobile to dominate our planning decisions when discussing how to create small happy living spaces in our community. It won’t work. This has already been proven out. Your suggestion is what creates car court development. It is almost diametrically opposite what I am trying to encourage. I would prefer to drop the discussion entirely than to ruin it with parking requirements. The housing typology created by forcing parking into this concept is an unhappy dense place that is already allowed by our current zoning codes. Allowing further density bonuses to create denser “car court” typology is ABSOLUTELY not my intent. It will hurt neighborhoods more than help them. Eric Meyer On Nov 20, 2017, at 9:20 AM, Codron, Michael <mcodron@slocity.org> wrote: Mayor and Council, I wanted to follow up on this input from Eric Meyer and provide a status report. When I received this e-mail, I asked staff to look into our current Zoning Regulations and evaluate if a project such as the one illustrated in the attachment could be developed under today’s code. Our analysis shows that a property owner could get pretty close to the project envisioned in the attachment, but it is slightly over current density limitations, and provides no on-site parking at all. If it were proposed as an affordable housing project, the density limitations would be addressed and the parking requirement would be reduced to one space per unit. This input was also forwarded to the Planning Commission as agenda correspondence, as the Planning Commission is holding ongoing hearings on the Zoning Regulations update. The last meeting was cancelled due to a lack of quorum, but the issue will be revisited in December and staff will share its analysis and seek direction from the Commission on further changes to the 2 Zoning Regulations that could accommodate this or other creative courtyard housing concepts. My thanks to Eric for his engagement in the Zoning Regulations update and for sharing his creative ideas (please keep them coming)! Michael Codron Director of Community Development <image001.png> Community Development 919 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401-3249 E mcodron@slocity.org T 805.781.7187 C 805.540.0767 slocity.org Bcc: City Council From: Eric Meyer \[ ] Sent: Monday, November 13, 2017 1:39 PM To: E-mail Council Website <emailcouncil@slocity.org> Cc: Davidson, Doug <ddavidson@slocity.org>; Codron, Michael <mcodron@slocity.org>; Johnson, Derek <djohnson@slocity.org> Subject: tiny bungalow court R2 density bonus zoning Council, How do we create friendly and fun smaller houses downtown? We do it with specialty Form Based Code bonus zoning for R2, R3, and R4. and by unbundling the units from parking requirements (car habits are changing rapidly anyway). Call it a bungalow court overlay zone or a bungalow court density bonus if you will. See my drawing attached for a clearer idea of the following: In SLO's downtown we have a lot of ±50x150 ft. lots. The typical density solution by developers under the current zoning code is to build a driveway back to a carriage house with a unit over a two car garage. Alternatively developers combine 2 or more neighboring lots and build "car court" centered three story Planned Development or condo units… (two stories over parking around a car court). These housing types dedicate approx 40% of the land to automobile usages and destroy the people centric uses.. aka livability. Nobody knows anyone because they all drive home and park in their garage and walk upstairs. The front doors for the humans are secondary to the car usages… and the people are sequestered from one another. It also basically only allows 2 units per standard city lot. BUT... What if we could create tiny bungalow courts… with 700 square foot or smaller one bedroom units… and sell each unit separately on a tiny 1500 sq. ft. lot… but do this within our existing stock of existing lots downtown rather than having to create new lots via sprawl? 3 I suggest a new specialty density bonus concept for R2 (or greater) zones with a form based code housing type no larger than 700 square feet. These would be one bedroom cottages (bungalow court) style. 1 story plus loft in the rafters where parking is not required, and the lots are approx 1500 sq ft… There would have to be a LOT more specific language around floor area ratios, solar orientation, plate height restriction, hardscaping coverage restrictions, height restrictions, zero lot lines, building separation, easements, ownership and especially around rental uses, etc… which I won't detail here… but it could work and it can create four separate livable nice small homes where there was once just one Take one 50x 150 lot… and split it into 4 lots… keep the existing 20 foot front setback… and the 5 foot rear… leaves you with room for 4 lots all facing sideways. See drawing attached. I very much want to see tiny lot subdivisions and smaller unit sizes become available here in our zoning code update we are doing right now. It could serve to house our aging senior population as well as our growing millennial population in an affordable housing typology that they are looking for but cannot find… and one which does NOT tower over the neighbors… but instead fits into the existing pattern of 1.5 story development that SLO is known for. Eric Meyer see attached: <image002.jpg> -- Eric Meyer frenchbicycles@gmail.com <IMG_0207.JPG> 4 00�S %94 x o; s