Results of Patrick’s Meeting with the City
Patrick (Communitecture) met with BDS today to discuss the project and he feels like we’ll have a good case. Some positive news came out of this meeting including:
- We don’t need a full set of drawings for our land use review. There was some concern that our application would lock us into a design and prohibit future changes. According to Patrick, we can submit elevations with the option of making modifications later. The city will note in their review certain criteria which should not change (privacy mitigation requirements, for example)
- The fact that there is no development on adjacent lots is a good thing (density)
Our next step is to prepare a pre-review packet for the city. This packet will consist of the materials that we plan to use in the formal review and will be passed on to the land use review committee for a free review. These materials need to be ready by next Wednesday so that the committee can review it Thursday morning. The packet should include:
- Site plan with scale and distances
- Some sort of lot plan showing the location of adjacent houses and other structures. I’ll probably need to add to my current site plan and include the property to the east and south.
- Photo of house
- Photos of adjacent properties
- Photos of higher-density lots in the neighborhood
- Sketches of building (Patrick to provide)
The difference between the formal application and pre-application is really a matter of detail. The pre-review will have sketches, rather than full elevations. The purpose of the pre-review is to get a good idea of red-flags and other issues the city might have with the strategy. This way, we can address these issues while designing and hopefully save money in design revisions and major changes.