FairFAR.org

The first thing to note is that there are now a plethora of complex variations contained in the 70+ page 4 September 2009 staff memo that would interact with each other in even more complex ways, as well as a highly questionable “analysis” of how the proposed bulk plane ordinance would work on sloping lots.

Highlights:

• The staff recommendation has increased to a 35% building coverage and a .50 FAR.  The bulk planes remain unchanged, and would still force the mass of a home on a slope uphill (see our previous articles for illustrations).
• The report contains a number of alternative tradeoffs, including a small 240 sf exemption from the FAR for a one-car garage (but not for building coverage).
• There are two options for recommended starting points for Council to start redrafting the ordinance.  Option 1 uses the old numbers (30% and .45) as a starting point, while Option 2 uses the new staff recommended numbers.
• At the last Council meeting, Council asked for analysis of a building coverage/no-FAR/tighter bulk planes ordinance as proposed by Mayor Appelbaum.  There is an analysis in the last 20 pages of the staff memo.  However, we have discovered that the analysis that was performed by Winter and Company and staff may have failed to apply the proposed bulk plane ordinance correctly for sloped lots.  Hence, we still have no idea how well the Mayor’s alternative proposal would work.  Moreover, we don’t have a sound analysis of how the staff’s bulk plane ordinance would work on sloped lots either.

We would like to see council pursue further and more accurate information about how the bulk plane standards would interact with slope before taking any action.  We also strongly oppose the building coverage limit at 30%, and while 35% is a more reasonable number, we would suggest instead that council seek a different way to restrict the impact rear detached garages have on the effective building coverage after setbacks.  We would suggest that the current effective building coverage limits of just under 40% on a suburban 7000 sf lot and 42.5% on the old Boulder 6250 sf lots are just about right; the problems come in when–especially on the narrow old Boulder lots where alleys are common–rear detached garages occupy another 7 to 8% of the lot.

We have proposed two ideas to address this issue.  First, a rear yard setback of 25% instead of 25′ would increase the overall size of the rear yard on the narrow and deep (50′x125′) old Boulder lots, so a large two-car garage in the rear setback would cover around a third rather than nearly half of the rear yards.  Second, and alternatively, we could simply require those with detached rear garages to preserve that much open space within the primary building envelope on the lot–that is make detached garages count against the size of the building envelope that your main home must sit within, just as having an attached garage already does for suburban homes.

Lastly, we would like to point out that should council adopt a FAR of .50 or .45, as still seems likely, having a larger building coverage limit means that if first story construction is maximized, there will necessarily be a smaller second story and above.  In other words, if a home were to be built out to the limit of 35 or 40% on the first floor, the second floor would be limited to just 10 to 15 % of the size of the lot.

As we have repeatedly pointed out, most of the neighborhood compatibility concerns result from mass contained in the second story and above; the upper stories are what contribute most to perceived bulk and mass, generally require taller and looming walls, block neighborhood views, and decrease the neighbors’ rear yard privacy.  If instead Council persists in ratcheting down the building coverage limit, those problems will become worse, not better, as a result of an action that forces anyone expanding their home to build up and not out.