The MBAKS email to Planning Commission made me say, wait… why are they asking for eaves again? They had specifically been requested before and were added in the March 20 strike-draft (see page 19, where it was highlighted).
Instead, there is a new allowance that up to 25% of lot coverage and impervious surface coverage may be permitted for site area that is used for a cottage’s covered porch (new strike-draft, page 22).
I think this may be substantially a response to my protest that the April 9th draft did not include any porch requirement, and that counting 75% of the porch against the FAR allowance would naturally result in builders omitting porches in favor of interior space that they can charge more for.
I assume they plugged my request for porches into a discussion with the builders, and this is something they said they could work with, but…
- Porches are still not required
- Porches that receive the extra lot coverage and impervious surface coverage are not required to face either each other or the open space.
- There is no minimum porch depth
- There is no minimum porch area.
It shouldn’t be complicated to do this right: just look at the Model Ordinance, page 16: All cottages shall feature a roofed porch at least 60 square feet in size with a minimum dimension of five feet on any side facing the street and/or common open space.
Lot Coverage and Tree Viability
You will recall that the cottage housing previously got an additional five percent lot coverage in the April 9th strike-draft (page 28). The expanded note with an allowance for the porches is now on page 31 of the new strike-draft, and it means that in LL-1 through SR-3, there is 35% max lot coverage for single family homes, 40% for middle housing, and up to 70% for cottages. In the more densely zoned areas (SR-4 and up), it’s 40%, 45%, and 75% respectively. There are still setbacks that would presumably include most of the remaining 25%, and I should look at Bellevue’s rules to see if porches are allowed to intrude into them.
There is also a new clarification about an arborist evaluation on page 40:
“If a Qualified Tree Professional demonstrates in writing that the number of trees required to be planted to meet the required minimum tree credits would negatively affect the viability of the planted trees, then the Director may award more tree credits
per planted tree to achieve the maximum number of trees that can be planted and, in the written opinion of a Qualified Tree Professional, still be viable.”
Well, when we ask why we can’t expect trees to have enough room to thrive in a cottage development, part of the answer is that in addition to allowing building on 75% of the lot, the common open space that we have a (very minimal) requirement for is allowed to be 75% impervious and 25% pervious. There is a requirement for internal walkways (page 32), so it appears that this can be met by the common open space. If there is a 5 foot wide path on each side of the 15 feet, that leaves a 5 foot strip in the middle, ugh.
Ok, why would anyone build ridiculous cottage towers that are jammed in next to each other (requiring higher fire rated sheathing) and possibly require 32 or 48 flights of stairs on a single lot?
Well, one reason is that there is a fenestration (window) limit that’s based on the overall structure surface area. If you have a bunch more wall than would be present in, say, a stacked flat, you have less efficient thermal performance because of the extra surface area, but you’d be allowed to put in an entire wall of windows, making your thermal performance even worse on hot days. Don’t worry, you can just get an air conditioning unit to keep your solar gain in check, but I wouldn’t want to be your neighbor who relied on natural air flow and/or shade from the trees that have been removed!
I think the porch wording allows them to be built under a building overhang, so that the upper floors have a larger area than the storage/garage. Will try to make renderings at some point.
Requests
I am still annoyed that cottages with four or fewer units can count their driveway as common open space, that the amount of common open space per cottage is only 100 sqft instead of 300 sqft (like the Model Ordinance), and that cottage housing is onlly required to have a quarter as many trees as other middle housing in LL-1, LL-2, and SR-1, and half as many trees as other middle housing in SR-2, SR-3, and SR-4. I support an allowance for eaves as requested by MBAKS, up to 36 inches. I do not think we need to allow cottages to be 38 feet tall whether or not it means they are 3 or 4 stories (which I still think is dependent on the lot slope), though I do think 3 stories with high ceilings or a roof deck will have less externalized AC exhaust needs. It may be more reasonable to limit cottages to 22′, as was proposed in Seattle’s Interim MH implementation draft. We could also just copy the Model Ordinance wording for the porches, and adopt more standard rules for landscaped percentage of the common open space.
Let’s remember the community feeling that we had hopes these cottages could have, as advertised on the project page for Bellevue’s Middle Housing implementation project, and make rules that will get us there!
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