Back on May 28th I posted an entry about allowing towering 3 story “skinny” homes to be squeezed in between single story homes and the degredation of the property values and increase of property taxes for the city as a result. At that time I also emailed city planners, Mayor Sam Adams etc looking for some reasoning behind this; it took almost two weeks to get a response, but they finally did respond.
Eric Engstrom with the City of Portland Planning Department acknowledged this as a problem and mentioned a few projects like the www.livingsmartpdx.com/home from a few years back that attempted to address these issues and the zoning and design standards that lead to things like this. The highlights of that email are that near major corridors infill is being encouraged, height restrictions of 45 feet and the zoning at this particular home is R1 meaning multifamily (duplex’s, apartments etc). After citing the design and zoning information that led to that particular home he did mention:
“clearly we must do better with the design. Current state law prevents the City from imposing mandatory design review, except in the central city. The City has asked the legislature to allow us to regulate design to a greater degree along our main streets and infill corridors outside the Central City. Unfortunately this bill was defeated in the recent legislative session. Homebuilders and affordable housing advocates have generally not favored tighter design controls, expressing the concern that it might increase housing cost”
Straight forward enough I suppose…He did also mention something I mentioned in my blog entry on this but not my email to him specifically about the garage:
“For example, this house might be less objectionable (and much shorter) if the garage were omitted, and a parking pad was permitted in front. I’m exploring what we could do in the code to facilitate that kind of design”
So it’s good to see Eric recognizes the obvious here which gives me hope that his, and others, efforts to bring common sense to the table might actually have a chance to prevail, it’s just too bad it didn’t take hold years ago before this trend of less than desireable building styles began.
Eric also mentioned that as part of the regulatory Improvement project (RICAP 5) other standards and some relating to such things as the garage placement (or preferred ommission of one in this case) are going to be posted soon here http://www.portlandonline.com/planning/index.cfm?c=36736&a=201135
Thanks for the reply Eric, much appreciated!
~Scott McDonald, Your Oregon Relocation Specialist!