Sizing up the zones

Several second-story home addition proposals over the last five

months or so have been denied by Costa Mesa Zoning Administrator

Perry Valantine only to be overturned by the Planning Commission or

City Council. Much of the debate over such projects has rested on the

phrase “harmony and compatibility.”

City Editor James Meier wanted to learn a little more about this

concept, as well as the differing opinions on the projects, so he

stopped by Valantine’s office at City Hall on Wednesday.

Many second-story home additions that you have denied as the

zoning administrator have been approved by either the Planning

Commission or City Council. Where have you and the two planning

bodies differed?

Well, I think that things changed in about fall of last year

where, as zoning administrator, I began denying a number of

applications for second-story applications on the Eastside,

especially in areas where the properties have alleys in the rear.

Maybe I should back up a little bit.

Initially, I’m looking at design review applications. The criteria

is compatible and harmonious with the neighborhood, and I was doing

that from the standpoint of what you see on the street -- front

yards. In about fall of last year, we received a petition from a

group of homeowners on the Eastside that felt that there was another

aspect of compatibility that we weren’t considering, which was what

was it doing to back yards of these residents.

Where they have alleys in the rear is different than on properties

where they don’t have alleys. Basically, your back yard is further

forward on the lot because the garage is at the rear along the alley.

So, they presented the City Council with a petition requesting that

an overlay zone be established for their tract to change the way we

look at those things. In fact, that was continued from Monday’s

Planning Commission meeting.

Council asked us to go ahead and study that request. As a result

of the awareness now of this concern on the part of a large number of

residents over there, I started looking at new developments from the

standpoint of not only what it looks like from the street, but also

what it looks like from the neighbors’ rear yards. And that’s where I

started denying some because of the feeling that it did close in

those rear yards somewhat and provided them a little less of an open

feeling in their rear yards compared to a standard R-1 property that

doesn’t have a garage alley in the rear.

So that’s when the percentage of the approvals from the zoning

administrator reduced, I would say. A number of those were appealed

to the Planning Commission and some ultimately to the City Council.

In one case, the project was redesigned so that they got out of that

rear yard area, and I ultimately approved that redesigned project.

The other cases, they were generally overturned by commission and

council and were approved.

It’s not so much a question of a difference of opinion between a

zoning administrator and commission or council, but a matter of still

trying to feel our way through what does compatible and harmonious

really mean. It’s unfortunately not an exact science. Maybe it’s

fortunate that it’s not an exact science. It’s a rather subjective

thing.

As evidenced by some of the controversy and the differing

positions at the public hearings, there are at least two different

ways of looking at a project as to whether it fits or doesn’t fit,

and it’s just a matter of trying to get enough experience with what

the community feels is appropriate and what the Planning Commission

and City Council feels is appropriate to give us a comfort level that

we’re going in the right direction.

As the zoning administrator, do you judge projects according to

specific guidelines or do you try to tailor the projects to the

commission’s and council’s preferences?

Well, we have a set of residential design guidelines that

articulate a number of design features that we’d like to see in a

project. Basically, we don’t want to see boxes that go straight us on

all four sides. We want some variation in the wall plans and roof

treatment. There are a couple of specific numbers in there. The

second floor shouldn’t be more than 80% of the first floor, etc. But

those are just guidelines.

We’ve denied some where the second floor has been smaller than

that and approved some that were larger than that. It depends on how

the design is done.

So I think we use as guidelines -- I think the ultimate finding we

have to make is if the project is harmonious and compatible with the

neighborhood.

The genesis of this whole process came from really two different

areas. One was a project in Mesa Verde where a house was added to

that was just too large and out of scale with the neighborhood. The

other was a concern on the Eastside that a lot of this new

development was changing what was referred to as the quaint charm of

the Eastside.

So I’ve been looking at projects from a standpoint of whether the

mass of the building itself is out of scale with the neighborhood and

whether it’s affecting the charm or character of that neighborhood.

Does it really look out of place with that neighborhood.

Again, those are subjective things. I don’t use a criteria that

says, “Does Perry Valantine like this house?” It has to do with

whether the house is compatible with that neighborhood, and there’s a

lot of factors involved in that, and certainly the feeling of the

neighbors there is in an important one because, obviously, they’re

the ones who are going to have to live with it.

The Planning Commission and City Council ultimately set policy for

the city, and their direction is important in giving me some guidance

as to what they feel they’d like to see in the city. So I use them as

whether I’m on the right track or not or if I need to adjust how I’m

looking at these things.

Now, with the recent decisions, are you changing your thoughts on

these projects?

I guess if you could call it a pendulum, it’s swinging toward the

center a little bit. If it were approving too much before and denying

too much later, it may be averaging out a little bit better now. Some

of those decisions were fairly recent, so it’s hard to say what

effect it really had.

But I think they’ve all given some guidance as to what kinds of

things they feel are appropriate and important. And certainly, our

impending changes to the zoning code and design guidelines will give

us more guidance.

Now, at the same time, you’re spending countless hours on these

projects. Is it frustrating when you put so much time into these

decisions only for them to be overturned?

Not really. I’ve been here long enough that I don’t take those

things personally anymore and I know it’s part of the process. It’s

not like there’s a moral or ethical issue involved and that I feel

real upset when it gets overturned. It’s a professional disagreement

as to what’s compatible and harmonious in that neighborhood, and it’s

just part of the process.

Is it dangerous to have guidelines of “harmony and compatibility”?

Perhaps dangerous isn’t the best word.

It makes it difficult because it’s hard to measure. If the

guidelines said no more than 80% and 5 feet here and 10 feet there,

you can measure and say, “We’re there.” When it’s compatible and

harmonious, it raises the question what elements you’re looking at.

Are you looking at the size, the architectural style, the sides of

the building in a neighborhood where they’re all stucco? Those are

all things that different people look at in different ways. Is a

wood-sided building incompatible in a neighborhood where the homes

are all stucco?

I think through some of the hearings that we’ve had at the

Planning Commission and subsequently the City Council level, we’ve

found that the type of building material that is used is not an issue

that they feel is part of this discussion. To a certain extent, the

architectural design may not be an issue we need to get involved in.

It has more to do with the mass and scale of the project.

And by architectural design, I mean Tudor versus Spanish. There

are obviously architectural design issues that we get involved with

in terms of how the wall plans vary.

How did harmony and compatibility come about?

Well, there’s a general review criteria in the code that’s been

there a number of years for other discretionary projects where we

have to find, among other things, if the project is harmonious and

compatible with the neighborhood. And that applies to everything from

new construction to certain types of residential and commercial

buildings to conditional use permits.

So that general criteria of “Does this fit in the neighborhood?”

has been around for a while, and I think we’ve just repeated it in

this area to be sure that was one of the considerations that was

made. Unfortunately, it became the overriding consideration, I think.

I say unfortunately simply because it’s so hard to measure.

What will this proposed Eastside overlay zone do exactly?

The proposal was to basically limit two-story construction to

about the front half of the lot. The idea being that, where everybody

else has the rear 20 feet of the lot as their rear yard, on these

properties where the rear 20 feet is the garage and the rear yard is

20 feet in front of that and then the house happens. The idea is to

protect that second 20 feet where the actual usable rear yard is from

having two-story homes from being adjacent to that. So their proposal

was to limit about the rear 40% of the lot to single story.

The specific request is to that one tract [Tract 1154], though it clearly could apply to a number of other properties on the Eastside

that have the same characteristics.

About how many homes is this going to affect?

There are 140 homes in this tract [built in the late 1940s].

There are about 550 other lots on the Eastside that have

characteristics similar to Tract 1154. So although we’re looking at

140 homes now, it could logically be extended to about 550 more.