The bad, the ugly, the uglier. . .
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008After three years of review, the city is still working on a proposal aimed at making townhouses less ugly. Mayor Greg Nickels announced Tuesday he wants the proposal to include a required design review for every new townhouse.
Many of the townhouses now standing did not go through design review. That’s because they either didn’t have enough units to trigger a review, or developers permitted different portions of the project separately, avoiding the review.
It’s unclear what exactly would change if city planners reviewed the aesthetics of townhouses. Nickels says it will let designers be more flexible and creative. DPD is still working out the details. Read more about the proposal here, and a critique by Livable Seattle here (townhouse pictures at left and bottom are from Livable Seattle’s own review of townhouse aesthetics, included in the report).
Meanwhile, council president Richard Conlin has a proposal of his own aimed at mitigating the ugliness of a different kind of new construction. His proposal targets “McMansions” and takes aim at specific issues: height, scale and garages.
New formulas and guidelines are set for calculating height and lot coverage allowances. That would stop the practice of averaging neighboring heights to build higher and of using a footprint allowance set for a bigger lot size.
Garages would be limited to a certain amount of the facade and builders would get a size bonus for getting parking and garages entirely out of sight. The proposal had its first vetting in a council committee today. No legislation has been introduced.
The multifamily code update is more complicated, with dozens of prescriptions aimed at improving the look of townhouses, like shorter fences, pedestrian entries and more windows in front. It also cuts out parking requirements for some townhouses in higher density zones, meaning those townhouses could be built without multiple garages and driveways,
Interestingly, it also widens townhouse entry driveways and parking spaces, meaning the driveway footprint will be bigger. That’s because some townhouses were designed so badly that driveways are inaccessible.
The proposal does not cut townhouse height limits. In some zones, developers will be able to build higher if they earmark a certain number of units for people making median income. They will also have to use green building techniques.
