Ben Noble:

 

And so, you know, I think that when setting the upper story stepback standard, whether or not that should apply to the full perimeter of the building, or percentage of the building, I think is going to be an important topic of discussion.

What’s here is a transcription of a six-minute segment of the February 11 & 23, 2023, workshops with the Ben Noble, City’s Form-Based Code consultant, and the Planning Commission.

From the efforts of concerned citizens, a video, separate audio track, PowerPoint slides, and the “Lookbook” of the workshop can be viewed here on Arcata1.com.

This segment starts at bout 1 hour 14 minutes at the workshop.

We can specifically note what Community Development Director David Loya says:

“You could have a building that’s designed so that there’s no setback, say, on the north side of the property — which would create the maximum shading onto properties that are north of that building. The concept around the stepbacks was — one of the primary motivators for that is to ameliorate the shading impacts of these new buildings. And so you could have an additional requirement that pairs with this one that establishes that the stepbacks occur on the north sides of the buildings, for example. And then you could even further refine that.”

Here David Loya acknowledges that with this first draft of the Form-Based Code, a building could be built with no setback on the north side of the property. And that there could be additional requirements in the code to prevent this. But in this first draft this is not there, at all. No mention of the effect of a tall building on adjacent properties.

This is the graphic that Commissioner Peter Lehman refers to. Note that this image shows a 10-foot setback at the rear (right side) of the property. The current requirement is zero setback — meaning the building can be placed right on the property line. It does not matter that on the other side of the property line is a single-family home.

Ben Noble:

Okay, so I want to take a minute to walk through the height ratio concept. This is something that you’re maybe less familiar with. You don’t have any rule like that currently. It’s something that you see in codes occasionally, but it’s maybe not as common as some of these other tools.

And, basically, what this concept is, is that there is a limitation on the percentage that upper floors occupy of the ground floor building footprint.

So, in the way this is set up right now, for the first and the fourth stories of a building, that all of those floors can occupy 100% of the ground floor building footprint. Just as would be the case with your existing rules right now. For a fifth story, that would be limited to 80% of the ground floor building footprint. As would the sixth story as well. And then the seventh story would be limited to 60% of the ground floor footprint. And so obviously, these numbers can change so that a sixth floor could be limited to say 40%. The fifth and the sixth story could be limited to less as well. But this is a standard that operates along with a stepback requirement, as well. To limit the volume of building that exists on the upper stories.

Planning Commissioner Peter Lehman:
So are you implying that there’s only one setback [stepback] required up to seven stories? That’s what it looks like.

Community Development Director David Loya:
There would be two, in this version there would be two once you got to seven stories. One once you got about four, and then one once you got above six.

Planning Commissioner Peter Lehman:
But if you look at the left hand side of the building, there is only one setback [stepback.]

David Loya:
Yeah, so that the way that this concept of height ratios interacts with requirements for stepbacks gives you a little bit more flexibility around where you want to see those stepbacks occur. And so, for instance, with this standard alone, you could have a building that’s designed so that there’s no setback, say, on the north side of the property — which would create the maximum shading onto properties that are north of that building. The concept around the stepbacks was — one of the primary motivators for that is to ameliorate the shading impacts of these new buildings. And so you could have an additional requirement that pairs with this one that establishes that the stepbacks occur on the north sides of the buildings, for example. And then you could even further refine that.

I also want to point out right now because this graphic doesn’t necessarily comport with what’s in the Gateway Area Plan right now. There’s a graphic in the Building Form that says that there will be setbacks starting about three stories. So I just want to acknowledge that that’s what it says in the Gateway Plan. This has a different standard here. The reason why Ben presented it this way, because this is the current standard. Currently you can build four stories without having the stepbacks. And again, you know, that’s the point of delivery for the Commission. Do you want to make a recommendation to change that in the Gateway Plan, that it’s four stories before you start to seeng stepbacks.

Ben Noble:
So, here is the massing diagram using the ground floor commercial building placement standards. And this shows the minimum and maximum height. It shows the height ratio standard. And it also shows the stepback requirement for above the fourth story, as David was just mentioning. And for those of you who look closely at the draft standards, the requirements for upper story stepbacks is that there must be a stepback for at least 75% of the street frontage.

So you can see with this proposed standard, there is a segment of building wall that does not have a stepback. And from a building design perspective, I think that creates more interesting buildings, or at least allows for it. An alternative is to require the stepback for the full perimeter of the building, which may be less preferable in certain circumstances by forcing a more wedding-cake type design. And so, you know, I think that when setting the upper story stepback standard, whether or not that should apply to the full perimeter of the building, or percentage of the building, I think is going to be an important topic of discussion.