From winterety at sbcglobal.net Sat Aug 14 17:26:21 2004 From: winterety at sbcglobal.net (sheryl lynn gerety) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 17:26:21 -0700 Subject: [OldNorth] ONDNA, This Week Message-ID: Saturday, 14 August, 2004 Old North Neighbors: Two issues of significance to ON occupied many hours of meeting time this past week. Thursday there were four separate meetings affecting ON and projects of the ONDNA. Fifth Street Safety and Traffic Calming: In the first meeting, Steve Tracey initiated a request to meet and he and I subsequently met with Roxanne Namazi and Pat Fitsimmons to talk about the agenda and issues to be raised in the public meeting later that evening on the ON Fifth St. proposal. We specifically objected to the way Namazi and Fitsimmons characterized the project?s pluses and minuses in the flier sent to the community by the traffic planners, with negative outcomes stressed over positive ones. ON representatives at the evening meeting were Steve Tracey, Dennis Dingemans, Angela Wilson and Dan Quickert. There will be more about the public discussion on the Fifth St. proposal when Steve has returned from traveling and can add his notes to Angela?s. As you might imagine, there were proponents for and opponents against our ideas. Zoning and In-fill: In the early afternoon, Z Smith, Dan Quickert, Val Smith and I met at Hattie Webber for two hours with Esther Polito and another planner from the City to discuss issues related to the Design Guidelines, R2-CD Zoning and infill in ON. Our goal was to get a clear sense of the advantageous and disadvantageous consequences of three zoning options, as well as the different procedures for implementing each: (i) down zone to R-1; and/or (ii) ask for official listing on the California Register of Historical Resources, for which we qualify; and/or (iii) amend specific elements of the R2-CD zoning code so that they better address the community?s wish to adhere to the Design Guidelines so far as the scale and character of architecture in our neighborhood. I will have a tabular summary of the results of that meeting ready for discussion at the next monthly meeting. In the evening there were two meetings scheduled for 7-9 PM. The first, mentioned above, was the public review of the ON 5th proposal. As I indicated above, more on that to come. The second, which I will summarize here, was the first of several gatherings scheduled as a follow-up to the City Council resolution, adopted at the request of ON in January along with the R2-CD zoning, to explore further zoning changes that would protect the ambiance, diversity, scale and historical character of the Residential Design Guideline (RDG) neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods include Rice/U Lane, Old North and Old East. This issue was given urgency by the emergence of several high-density infill proposals for projects along B Street and in Old East. This gathering on August 12th was specific to a project proposed for the Old East neighborhood, to be located at 532 J Street. Valerie Vann and I attended as representatives of ON; Sue Greenwald and Stephen Sousa were there as the City Council subcommittee on infill in the RDG neighborhoods. I should note that we, that is ON, also will meet with the City Council subcommittee, perhaps at our next monthly meeting, prior to a combined neighborhood meeting. The developer and architect presented their proposal, which had been modified based on earlier input from OE residents. To simplify, their initial proposal was to demolish the present, pre-1900 residence and build four single-family homes on what are now two adjacent lots (approx 13,000 sq ft). After input they revised so as to preserve and renovate the older home to its original appearance, relocating it to the corner lot. However they still would build three additional, two-story (above ground) family homes on the balance of the combined lots with a common central space or courtyard. The historic home would be sited on the street-facing corner. Those three additional homes would have exterior features appropriate to the latter part of the time period in which OE developed, the 1930s and 1940s. The architect and developer argue that this new proposal faithfully addresses the Residential Design Guidelines. OE residents lauded the decision to save and restore the older structure, but expressed concern and frustration at the density, height and mass, and street presentation of the three additional structures. Adjacent lot owners spoke with particular eloquence and concern about the impact these tall, near and close-set units would have on them. Although the developer emphasized window placements that would help to preserve the privacy of adjacent homes, the owners of those residents expressed their objections more in terms of inappropriate mass and the unrelieved height and width of the exterior walls. As had been intended by the City staff who arranged this meeting, the particulars of this project led to a discussion of what residents felt was appropriate vs. inappropriate infill in their neighborhood. In terms of the example, the modal answer appeared to be two houses, one restored, one new, with two granny-flat type cottages of one story behind them. More generally, the discussion kept returning to the idea that ?mass? should be comparable to that of adjacent structures. Mass became the way of expressing an aesthetic feeling of being crowded, loomed-over, screened-in, out-scaled and dominated by nearby structures. There also was concern that the design of the three new units emphasized a private, interior courtyard rather than the public spaces of a front porch and lawn. Although there were moments of tension, the meeting appeared to me to be quite productive, resulting in both more concrete definitions of appropriate fill and direction for a proposal that would be more acceptable to the neighborhood: two full-sized homes with a granny flat attached to each. Some summary comments: i) City staff did a great job of directing the discussion so that it elicited ideas. Souza and Greenwald got to hear firsthand what we and our OE neighbors are trying to achieve: not a veto of all infill in our parts of Davis, but assurance that any infill that occurs is appropriate to our neighborhoods. ii) Sue Greenwald mentioned a City report of several years ago which suggested that it would not be reasonable for the RDG neighborhoods to absorb more than a very small fraction of the City?s target for regional infill. I will follow-up and try to locate this document. iii) We should think carefully and hard about the concept of ?mass.? It appears to summarize quite a few intuitions about what is and is not right for the Design Guideline neighborhoods, and it may be susceptible to a clear, quantitative definition that can be written into code, to everyone?s benefit. * Bruce Winterhalder -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 6971 bytes Desc: not available URL: From valerie at vanngroup.com Sat Aug 14 20:44:10 2004 From: valerie at vanngroup.com (Valerie Vann) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:44:10 -0700 Subject: [OldNorth] ONDNA, This Week References: Message-ID: <411EDC0A.E74FE25A@vanngroup.com> sheryl lynn gerety wrote: > > Zoning and In-fill: > > In the early afternoon, Z Smith, Dan Quickert, Val Smith Make that: "Val Vann & I" :-) Its been a heck of a week.. Valerie Vann