The Joys of Zoning

I’ve been interested in buildings and design topics for some time now, thanks to a friend who morphed from marine science (my original line of work) into architecture. But it wasn’t until we tried to get our reno off the ground last year that I really got into the innards of city planning and zoning bylaws.

Our little piece of heaven is zoned RS-1 – one of the more restrictive residential zoning districts. I’m all for planning guidelines and zoning to protect the integrity of neighbourhoods. What I don’t particularly understand are some of the quirky side effects. As an example, when we were going to do our reno, we made sure that we followed all the rules and guidelines (e.g., window area, height restrictions, FSR, building envelope, etc.). I’d be happy to nerd-out and post the various spreadsheets that we used to assess these things but I’m not going to. If you’re interested, drop me a line and I can send you the tools we used. I assumed that the fact that our house was 18 inches too close to the property line on one side would be grandfathered, given that the house was built over 80 years ago. No such luck. Krista met with the city while I was off on yet another work-related road trip. The first request from the city planner was “please move the house.” Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re going to spend an extra 50K (minimum) to raise the house, re-pour a code-worthy foundation 18 inches to the south, and then redo the required structural work, plumbing, gas, and electric lines as we drop the old house onto the new foundation. With us nixing that idea, the only way we would be able to do the planned reno was to go to the Board of Variance and ask for a relaxation of the side-yard rule that our builder violated 85 years ago. Long story short, we did that (after a 3 month City strike) and the BoV ruled in our favour.

 

Fast forward to 2008 and now the topic is parking. The City’s parking bylaw states that we’re to have one off-street parking spot for each dwelling unit. It has an admirable goal – to control parking congestion in dense neighbourhoods (anyone tried to park in Kits in the last 20 years?) and to put the onus on those who build to provide parking for their buildings. OK, but what about an RS-1 neighbourhood like ours? We’ve got lots of parking on our street (though many of the houses have suites below) and no back lane (which would have provided us with a “free” solution for this). If it was just a cost, I’d suck it up and do the right thing. The real issue we have with this is that to make two off-street spots, I’m going to end up cutting the curb and eliminating two on-street spots. How dumb is that. Not only that but what about life beyond the car? Krista and I have one car and we both ride our bikes to work (or take transit). Do we really think that in 50 years (and this house is still going to be around then) people will have the same reliance on the automobile? Not likely. In this forward-thinking city we’re still beholden to the car. We’re in discussions with the City on this point and we’ll keep you in the loop as things move forward.

 

07/13,2008 Posted to Architecture

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The Wall of Fame

With summer well under way, the lads called us over to the fabulous Wolfe Ave house for our first project meeting. Part of the conceptual design process, the goal was to go over a preliminary program (the spatial goals for the house) and to introduce some concepts that could become part of the design. The program was bang on – 3 bedrooms in the primary space, open living/dining/kitchen space, a couple of bathrooms, and a one-bedroom suite downstairs. The next step was to look at a few massing options – the general shape and size of the house. There were three choices but the clear winner was a version with the kitchen/dining room (with double-height ceiling) sharing the ground level with the suite, master bedroom and living room on the main floor, and then a half floor upstairs with two small bedrooms and a bathroom. Great potential for combined indoor/outdoor space, good entertaining area, and bedrooms upstairs to keep the kid away from the noise. With that decided, we were introduced to the wall of fame (photo below). They had dedicated a wall of the studio to photos, drawings, and information related to our house. They walked us through it, asked our opinion of the photos of houses that they thought would influence our design, and discussed the zoning limits on the lot and where the house was likely to be sited. Curiously, our current house is about 7 feet longer than it’s supposed to be and (as we knew) it’s about 18 inches too close to our neighbour to the north. That means the footprint of the new house will be shorter but a bit wider than the current building. All in all it was a great meeting and we’re excited that the guys are working on things (since we haven’t really thought too much about it).

 The wall of fame - revision 2 including site sketches and other project-related visuals.

07/11,2008 Posted to House

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