11/7/23 - The Goods
I'd like to wrap all this up (sort of, more on that at the end) covering a few of the places I think the new code got it right. Without further adieu -
Eliminating the residential design standards. For 20 years, every house built in the city had to look basically like every other house on its street or risk the wrath of neighbors while getting a variance for the standards. They didn't enforce good looking design - any gabled roof 2-story with a porch and vinyl d4 siding usually got the job done, but they made it really challenging to build small homes and single story homes, hurting the availability of diverse options in the city. They won't be missed.
Allowing adaptive reuse in all districts. Reactivating small commercial buildings in all districts, especially without parking requirements, will go a long way towards creating more options for small business owners. It would have allowed me to open my restaurant without an administrative adjustment process that was significantly delayed by the start of the pandemic. I don't know if it makes as big of a difference here as it did in Buffalo, where they have just an overwhelming stock of these buildings around, but it won't hurt.
Completely rewriting the downtown code. As it stands, the current code for downtown is form based. But it is exceedingly fussy and difficult to meet. Since downtown is not subject to the same oversight as the other zones in the current code, this has teetered along for years without too much of an issue, but it's grown increasingly untenable. The tacit admission that large projects will happen whether they have horizontal elements that match up with the other buildings around it downtown is a good step towards reality.
Cleaning up the sign section. While I'm not fully on board with the sign situation, it's vastly improved over the current code. With a few tweaks, it could be pretty good.
Defining stoops in the code. Even if they are unclearly differentiated from a porch, it truly is a new day.
I had hoped to do some numbers on houses people submitted, but only a few people entered their home in the My House section, and I won't write about an identifiable group of people. I will email each of them individually over the next few weeks.
Thank you all for reading my musings on the code for now. I hope to see all of you tomorrow night for the first open house on the draft at the Edgerton R-Center at 6:30pm.
Fin.