Planning magazine — October 1999

Cutting Monster Houses Down to Size

Communities across the U.S. are doing what they can — short of outright bans — to rein in the new mini (and mega) mansions.

By Ruth Eckdish Knack, AICP

A friend likes to tell the story of her move to Washington. Searching for a place to live, she passed the Renwick Gallery, a red brick extravaganza that houses the Smithsonian's American art collection. "I'd like to live there," she said. It seemed preposterous at the time to mistake an art museum for a house. Today, with houses growing as we speak, it wouldn't seem so strange.

According to the Census Bureau, the average single-family house built last year offered 2,195 square feet of space, compared with 1,520 in 1971. At the same time, lot sizes are going down. The 1997 Census figures put median lot size at 9,000 square feet, 1,000 less than in 1990.

Meanwhile, families are growing smaller, from an average of 3.1 persons per household in 1971 to 2.6 in 1997. "There are lots of rooms I just don't use," confessed the owner of a 30,000-square-foot house in Manalapan, Florida, to a New York Times writer, explaining why the house was on the market (for $28 million).

In the scheme of things, of course, monster houses are not the greatest social ill. We've always had mansions, from the Vanderbilts' Biltmore estate in Ashville, North Carolina, built in 1905 (175,000 square feet and 250 rooms) to Bill Gates's newly built 40,000-square-foot number in Medina, Washington.

But today, bigness is spreading. "Tract mansions" of up to 6,000 square feet are increasingly common in outlying subdivisions. And mass builder Pulte Homes says its average new unit is adding 150 to 200 square feet every few years.

Teardowns are the culprit in established communities, including resorts like Nantucket where quaint seaside cottages are being lost by the score, and city neighborhoods like Chicago's Lakeview, where frame workers' houses are replaced by concrete block.

In the old, leafy suburbs, wrote Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic Blair Kamin recently, paving has replaced the front yards that once "represented a community asset."

The new houses often loom over their neighbors, are stylistically incompatible, and of course cost far more, making the suburbs more homogeneous than ever.

But just when it seems that the bloat will never stop, there are signs to the contrary. In a consumer survey published in May by Professional Builder magazine, respondents, all baby boomers, said their "ideal new house" would have 2,065 square feet. Last year consumers as a whole voted for 2,105 square feet. Even the small difference is significant when you consider that boomers head 40 percent of U.S. households.

When it comes to the morality of encouraging bigger houses, planners are often caught in the middle. They may wince at the design excesses characteristic of some of the new models, and they may lament the loss of affordable housing in their community. But they must also listen to residents' desires — and to the lawyers who warn them against messing with property rights.

In the end, says one consultant who has helped communities deal with the issue, "the planner's role is to assist communities in determining how to manage change so that the most desirable characteristics of the neighborhood are preserved."

Looking for answers

Babette Sangster, senior planner in Littleton, Colorado (pop. 41,000), is trying to stay ahead of the game. Sangster called APA's Planning Advisory Service recently looking for some model regulations. "We've had a number of 'poptops' — second-story additions — over the last couple of years. But we've only had a couple of 'scrapeoffs.' We're expecting more when the new light rail line opens next July." The rail line will run from downtown Denver to the suburbs southwest of the city.

What Sangster was looking for was a simple regulation to control new construction on lots less than 60 feet wide. "We have been calling different cities," she said, "and we've found guidelines," but they're either too vague ("They just say they want new construction to fit in") or too complicated (a bulk plane ordinance that requires detailed calculations).

So what to do?

Sangster could look at the zoning ordinance enacted by a city that has been dealing with the big house phenomenon for almost 20 years: Vancouver, British Columbia. "People would move into settled neighborhoods, and build the largest houses the zoning would allow," says Larry Beasley, codirector of city planning.

"The neighbors complained to their local politicians that the zoning was out of synch."

With a large number of Asian immigrants, who wanted bigger houses for their extended families, it was sometimes difficult to sort out the urban design from the cultural and political issues involved, Beasley says.

Vancouver's solution was to propose a neighborhood-by-neighborhood rezoning, which by now covers about a third of the city.

"Beginning in the late 1980s," says planner Ted Sebastian, "the city started working with residents to develop single-family zoning schedules that encourage new homes to be compatible with adjacent homes. We started by identifying the characteristics that mattered most to residents. Then we created a set of guidelines to improve the 'neighborliness' of new development." All single-family neighborhoods may choose to replace their existing zoning with the new schedule.

Today, Sebastian says, there are about 800 to 1,000 teardowns a year, less than in the past, in a city where there are some 70,000 single-family dwellings.

Scale model

"You can't just say no to teardowns," says Charles Crook, AICP, the planning director of Lake Forest, Illinois, Crook estimates that the suburb of about 19,000 on Chicago's North Shore has about 12 to 15 teardowns a year. "I don't even think you want that authority, because the teardown process is a natural cleansing process. Some houses deserve to be torn down.

"On the other hand," he says, "you need to be able to control what you put up in their place."

Control in Lake Forest takes two forms. One is a rider that all local real estate agents are asked to attach to sale contracts. The document warns buyers that the city discourages teardowns. "It has had a real effect on at least making sure that people come to us and talk beforehand. Most do," Crook says.

The second control is a building scale ordinance passed in 1989 that Crook says may be the first in the country. "It's like a floor area ratio for houses, although we count more than floor area. The formula counts vaulted spaces formed by high-pitched roofs, for instance, as a way of controlling the mass of a house.

The ordinance, which applies to all houses and to major additions, is effective — but also labor-intensive. "We have a part-time employee who does nothing but building scale calculations," says Crook. Variances are considered by a building review board. "We do grant some exceptions for additions, and sometimes for new construction — if owners can show that other houses already exceed the formula," he says.

Controversies occur not in the city's historic districts, Crook says, but in the neighborhoods dotted with small houses from the 1950s. "Those are the ones people want to tear down," Crook says. "Yet they give the neighborhood its character. That's when we have most of the debate, when people want to build these big replacement houses."

On the whole, though, Crook approves of the replacement houses, "because most of those that are torn down not that good architecturally. Those that are built instead are, because of our review process, which pays attention to width and height."

The ordinance also addresses the garage issue, a big one wherever teardowns are prevalent. In June, the Newsweek.com web site reported that 16 percent of Americans had three or more garage spaces — as opposed to 10 percent a decade ago.

In Lake Forest, Crook says garages in older neighborhoods are generally at the rear of the lot. "We don't want garage doors facing the street," he says, "and we want to limit the size." The solution was to set standards in the building scale ordinance: 400 square feet of garage space for lots of less than 40,000 square feet and 600 square feet for larger lots.

What the ordinance can't solve, says Crook, is the affordability problem. "A very high percentage of Lake Forest employees used to live in town," he says, counting himself among their number. But today that's less likely. The average cost of a house in Lake Forest is in the high $700s, and "just like that," says Crook, snapping his fingers, "it goes over $1 million."

No encroachment

Additions are more of an issue in Pasadena, California (pop. 140,000), says zoning administrator Denver Miller. In fact, it was a second-story addition to a one-story house that led to passage in the early 1990s of the "mansionization" provisions of the city's zoning code. "The house was built to the max" under the zoning then in effect, Miller says, "but it looked very large on the lot."

The amendment to the ordinance's single-family residential district essentially made square footage a function of lot size, says Miller. To keep light flowing to neighbors' side yards, it added a mechanism called an encroachment plane. "Basically, it sets the building back as it gets higher," he says.

"The 30-degree plane is measured six feet up from the side property lines," he explains, "and the building cannot encroach into it." Flexibility is built in. For instance, the ordinance allows attics under existing eaves to become living space without being counted as part of the gross floor area.

In addition, larger lots (over 32,000 square feet) get a floor area bonus. So do houses that are under 20,000 square feet.

"Pasadena has quite a variety of lot sizes. We tried to factor that in," Miller says.

The ordinance has been modified for the city's hillside area, where floor area is reduced more or less depending on the slope of the lot. The provision will be amended again when a current zoning code revision, being done by a consultant, is finished. "It will address such issues as exactly what 'remodeling' means," Miller says.

Unintended consequences

Finally, a bit of advice from Drew Petterson, AICP, senior vice-president of Thompson Dyke & Associates, a consulting firm in Northbrook, Illinois. Petterson, who is also a lawyer, warns planners to be on guard against the unintended consequences of large house zoning provisions.

It's all too easy, he says, to create a nonconforming lot by, for instance, requiring a certain size side yard. "If the lots in the neighborhood are narrow, every extra foot could be a problem."

The result could be to discourage remodeling — and inadvertently encourage teardowns since a new house could be built to more lenient standards.

Similarly, Petterson says, introducing new regulations such as impervious surface ratios may unfairly penalize the owners of older homes.

Design review may be the best way to ensure that new development respects neighborhood character, Petterson says. But, he warns, be prepared for debate about the procedures.

Ruth Knack is the executive editor of Planning.