Commission’s Olympic Place Denial a Hint of Conversations to Come?
Decatur Metro | February 8, 2011‘Twas a curious clash of old ways and new ideas at last night’s City Commission meeting, which may portends more awkward deliberations destined to take place over the next ten years as the Strategic Plan’s various tasks are implemented.
The meeting, which followed a “work session” where the commissioners were presented with the current draft of the Strategic Plan, included a request by a property owner looking to subdivide a large lot with an existing apartment building. Shaving off a currently undeveloped portion, the subdivision would result in at 38′ wide single family lot, which is substandard according to the R-60 zoning.
But here’s where it started to get interesting.
Even though much of Oakhurst is zoned R-60, the majority of its lots are closer to 50′ wide and some are even smaller than that. In consideration of this, Commissioner Patti Garrett noted that, though substandard by existing regulations, the request presented some interesting parallels to the Strategic Plan goals presented just minutes before. Most notably that the plan recommends adjusting the city’s zoning to allow for more types of homes in a wider variety of sizes as a tool for fostering age and income diversity.
Commissioner Baskett countered by saying that, in all the years he’d been involved with city government, they had always rejected substandard subdivision requests because allowing one would lead to a flood of others. And later in the meeting, Mayor Floyd suggested in an aside that perhaps smaller lots in a new subdivision – like the one just approved on Lenore Street – were a better way to accommodate the Strategic Plan goal of provide a more diverse array of housing, as opposed to “cramming” them in around existing neighborhoods.
If you blinked you may have missed it, but THAT was an important, yet brief, clash of new ideas presented in the Strategic Plan vs. Decatur’s historic precedent. Both sides make reasonable points, but this is obviously an unresolved conversation that has only just begun to rear its head.
In the end, the Commission–all voting together–rejected the request, which seems a perfectly valid call, all things considered. We don’t need to have a debate over the specifics of this one request, I just find the contrast interesting and am curious how things will play out over the next ten years as the ambitions of current residents periodically don’t jive with the way we’ve always done things.
Latest from Decaturish
Interesting Patti would take this from an affordable housing standpoint. Most if not all developers wouldn’t. After all, several people just finished talking to her last summer about the new build on Underwood- an old, pre-R60 lot with an over built, overpriced house that barely has any lot around the footprint and basically removes one neighboring property’s privacy in the back yard as it literally is so close to the fence it could not be built without parts of the fence getting destroyed. I know the point was made to Patti by more than one that Decatur does need to look at development rules and zoning and who our current laws benefit….
Patti Garrett did the Oakhurst folks proud last night. She definitely “gets” the vision for adapting to allow for smaller homes & avoiding the building of “too much house” on a small lot.
I was gonna say, it wasn’t mentioned here but basically her quote was something along the lines of “I’m less concerned with the size of the lot than I am with the size of the house in relation to the lot.”
Good. She is definitely listening then to what many of us articulated last summer. Too bad it’s too late to stop that rather unpleasant man who built the place on Underwood (and yes, he was really was unpleasant to neighbors!).
Wasn’t unpleasant to us. On two occasions when we paused in front of the house to see how construction was going, we were offered tours of the home. I personally am not big on the way it was tucked in there so didn’t consider buying it, but I don’t think any city rules were broken to build it…were there? Obviously what one person considers overbuilt, might not be the same to others and as for overpriced, it certainly was not since it sold with very little effort.
No, it was a lot that was grandfathered in as it was a lot before the r-60 but never built upon..
The builder was not terribly gracious to a neighboring homeowner whose fence he destroyed and whose trees he damaged. A number of not very positive things were also said by him about my neighborhood. And yes, I know that firsthand.
I am sure he was very nice to people he thought were potential customers.
I do realize so much of all this is a matter of taste. I personally consider houses like that eyesores. Other people don’t. I understand. Doesn’t change my opinion though.
All lots that predate the R60 designation are still required to conform to R60 when constructing something. There is no grandfathering that I’m aware of. It’s my understanding that the house you’re talking about met the zoning requirements imposed on infill construction.
Because most Oakhurst lots are substandard in terms of width, the infill requirements have a sliding scale that allows increased lot coverage over the standard 40% max in some cases. I believe that was the case here.
Not advocating for the house, of course, but the blame lies with the zoning. And to make it even more delicious, the infill zoning regs were not written by the city. They were written by a citizen task force. So, in an oddly ironic twist, your real issue is with your fellow residents.
I bet it’s the same folks that wanted to parking lot the old courthouse!
I agree completely, Scott! and I have said it here before- a lot of this stuff is really about taste. Mine obviously doesn’t match that of most developers out there!
Or the people buying them. Developers are in the business of developing what sells. Unfortunately small new homes would still have to sell for high prices because of the land they sit on, and that’s not what sells.
I know it is a tight fit, but I actually think that this is a fairly nice looking house, as far as new construction standards go. I have seen, far, far, far, worse.
That stinks. Did he fix the fence or the trees?
Happily, yes!!
As it pertains to the strategic plan, this does indicate a problem with not looking far enough ahead. If residents have decades of advance notice (and many reminders) about possible character changes around their residence, they should react with resignation rather than indignation when change eventually comes knocking.
Glad to see this discussion, but I think it has to be done on a systematic broad change rather than one lot at a time. Why not just rezone all of or sections of Oakhurst to smaller lot size of 50 feet. On a different note, I still think it is funny that there can be so called “fundamental” clashes of old v. new ideas and yet every one of the Commissioners vote lock step. At some point there is going to have to be vote of yeas v. nays of these ideas.
The School Board almost always votes unanimously too. I was thinking this was a Decatur or Southern thing, as in “It’s not nice to disagree”. Always makes me wonder about whether the spirit of the Open Meetings Act is being observed. On the other hand, I see what happens when Boards and Commissions can’t work well enough together to function, as in Atlanta and DeKalb. Isn’t there a happy medium between lock-step and internecene feuding?
I do also wonder why our Commissioners must feel like they should not cast a dissenting vote.
I bet if you were to look, 99.9% of the votes in a given year are unanimous. What is that all about? Is there pressure to conform to the group? Are any issues sorted out behind closed doors (and possibly in violation of open access laws)? Is someone threatening retaliation for acts of dissent? Or maybe this is just the unique legislative body where all 5 Commissioners really do agree with each other and the recommendations of city staff.
I’m thinking the anti-skateboarding law downtown as another example where Commissioner Garrett, based on her comments, was opposed, but the vote was unanimous to approve the law.
But on this particular vote, I’d agree, if we want to create smaller houses on smaller lot sizes, then that should be undertaken by changes in our zoning code, not by special variances.
So maybe this particular vote was the right one, whether you believe in being able to create small houses on small lots or not, but like DM, at some point these issues in the Strategic Plan are going to need to be debated by the Commission, and yes or no votes will have to be taken. We should not NOT do it because it might be an uncomfortable debate or that there might be some dissent.
If you are brave enough to get involved in these discussions as an elected official, it can be tantamount to sticking your hand into a wasp nest. Land is very expensive (especially in our little burb), and the economics of building and selling a home almost require that a builder construct a large home to justify the land cost. Building a 150k home on a 200k lot generally makes little sense marketwise. It can be forced by local regulations, but what this also does is reduce the value of the lots by quite a bit. No big deal, unless you happen to own a lot! Restrict the utility, restrict the value.
That being said, almost everyone knows of a “Macmansion” in their neighborhood that is really out of place. Some are very tastefully done so they don’t appear as large as they are from the street, some are not. If you are unlucky enough to live next door and your formerly sunny backyard is now dark, it is a real issue. The only solution is reasonable home footprint, height limits and setback requirements adjusted by lot square footage. Don’t know what Decatur has in place along these lines, but these limits are where the battle takes place.
Never understood the R60 zoning in neighborhoods that have 50′ lots. Is this the way the city insures that everyone will require a variance to do anything?