The following is an analysis of the project's consistency with the Residential Design Guidelines.
Forest Character: Residential Design Guidelines 1.1 through 1.4 encourage preserving significant trees and minimizing impacts on established trees, protecting the root systems of all trees to be preserved, and maintaining a forested image on the site.
Staff Response: The City Forester identified seventeen (17) trees on, or adjacent to, the project site during the preliminary site assessment, including eleven (11) Monterey cypress and six (6) Coast live oak (Attachment 3). All trees have been rated ‘significant’ except one Coast live oak (Tree No. 2). No trees are proposed for removal. The City Forester is not recommending planting additional trees because the property exceeds the recommended tree density of three upper-canopy trees and one lower-canopy tree.
Privacy and Views: Residential Design Guidelines 5.1 through 5.3 encourage designs that preserve reasonable privacy for adjacent properties and maintain view opportunities of natural features.
Staff Response: Staff did not identify any potential privacy or view impacts.
Parking and Access: Residential Design Guidelines 6.1 through 6.7 encourage subordinate parking facilities that do not dominate the design of the house or site, minimizing the amount of paved surface for a driveway, positioning garages to maximize open space, views, and privacy, and minimizing visual impacts.
Staff Response: The applicant proposes to construct a 225-square-foot attached garage. The driveway would be 9’-6” wide and 17’-8” long and contain two permeable paver tire strips. The project meets the objectives of parking and access.
Mass and Bulk: Residential Design Guidelines 7.1 through 7.7 encourage a building’s mass to relate to the context of other homes nearby, minimize the mass of a building as seen from the public way or adjacent properties, and relate to a human scale in its basic forms.
Staff Response: The lot to the north is vacant, and the lot to the south contains a two-story residence. The garage is mostly detached; however, the upper level attaches to the northeast corner of the garage to provide access to a 150-square-foot roof deck on top of the garage. The deck is surrounded by a glass railing and is setback 5 feet from the west (front) elevation of the garage and 2’-8” from the south (side) elevation. Plants are proposed between the glass railing and the edge of the roof.
Exterior doors are proposed to be 7 feet tall. Upper-level windows in the living and dining room (west and south elevations) are 6 feet tall. The windows in the upper-level primary bedroom (west and south elevations) are 4 feet 8 inches tall, and the remaining windows (north and east elevations) are 3 feet 6 inches tall. None of the windows contain divisions. Condition No. 2 requires the applicant to reduce the size of the windows in the living and dining room to be more human-scaled and include divisions on all windows.
Building and Roof Form: Residential Design Guidelines 8.1 through 8.5 encourage traditional building forms, using restraint with variations in building planes, using simple roof forms that are proportionate to the scale of the building, and roof eave lines that are low in scale.
Staff Response: The building form is a simple L-shape with one front and one side facing gable. The roof pitch is 4:12. Eaves are minimal at 7 inches. Gutters are proposed to be galvanized bent metal. The project meets the objectives of building and roof form.
Finish Details: The wall cladding is vertical and horizontal western red cedar and thin stone veneer. The windows and doors are aluminum-clad wood, and the roof is standing seam metal. The deck railing is glass.
Fencing/Gate/Arbor: A new 4-foot high pole fence is proposed within the front yard setback on the north property line. Condition No. 3 requires a fence detail to be submitted prior to the final details review. No other fencing is proposed.
Site Coverage: CMC Section 17.10.030.C (Site Coverage) limits impermeable site coverage to 22% of the base floor area allowed for the site. On a 4,000-square-foot lot, the allowed base floor area is 1,800 square feet, and the amount of site coverage permitted is 396 square feet. Impermeable materials include asphalt, concrete, mortared brick and stone, decomposed granite, unspaced decking and balconies at any level, garden walls, solariums, bridges, sheds not counted as floor areas, ponds, hot tubs, and swimming pools.
If at least 50 percent of the property's site coverage is made of permeable or semi-permeable materials, an additional amount of site coverage of up to four percent of the site area, 160 square feet, may be allowed for use in a single driveway of up to nine feet in width. Permeable and semi-permeable materials include gravel, spaced decking and exterior stairs, sand-set bricks or pavers, garden walkways of small paving stones, and arbors.
Staff Response: The applicant proposes a total of 556 square feet of site coverage with half being semi-permeable. Semi-permeable materials include the driveway and gravel pathways, patio, and landing. The project meets the requirements for site coverage.
Right-of-Way Character: The applicant is proposing to retain an existing 20-foot wide driveway in the public right-of-way. CMC Section 12.24.020.A limits the width of driveways in the right-of-way to 14 feet. Condition No. 4 requires the width of the driveway to be reduced.
Skylights: No skylights are proposed.
Chimney: CMC Section 17.10.030.B.1 (Chimneys) limits the size of fireplace chimneys and vents, including caps, as follows:
Chimneys. Fireplace chimneys and vents, including caps, shall be no higher than required by the UBC and shall not exceed four feet in height above the building height. Chimneys, vents or chimney enclosures which project above a roofline, flat deck or parapet wall shall also be subject to the following standards.
a. Maximum horizontal dimension: three feet and four inches. No cap or ornament shall exceed 24 inches in any horizontal dimension.
i. Exception: three feet and six inches for double-flue chimneys.
b. Chimneys shall not contain any storage space, access openings or other uses unrelated to the vent function of the chimney.
Condition No. 5 requires the applicant to revise the chimney to meet these dimensional requirements.