Item B: Brown Measure 37 Claim - Laserfiche WebLink

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ATTACHMENT C E-mailed Public Correspondence From: ANSLOW Gordon (SMTP) Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 3:26 PM To: O'DONNELL Heather M Subject: Duncan Measure 37 claim Dear Ms. ODonnell, I am writing in support of Rich Duncan’s claim, regarding Tax Lot # 7100, Map #17 03 31 42. This is an unusual claim, in that the general pattern of such claims is to wish to put the property to more use than is currently possible, and thus file a claim to compel the City to allow that higher level of use. In this case, the request is to have to meet the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) which previously applied (.65) versus the current FAR requirement of 1.0. The property is in C-2 Zone, and is within the Transit Oriented Development (TD) Overlay Area. Our office was contacted by Rich about a year ago, concerning their desire to develop this lot to house the Duncan & Brown offices. We performed a feasibility study, which presented several possible schemes that could be pursued, which would both meet their needs, and comply with all the requirements of the Zoning Ordinance (ZO). The lot has 7482 sq. ft., and thus is required to have a building of the same gross area (including credits for covered front porch and Enhanced Pedestrian Area) built on it. As the requirement of the business for office space is considerably less than this figure, it was thought that some of the area might be devoted initially to apartments (outright allowable in C-2, on upper floors), as a means to “soak up” some of the area. A building with 3300 sq. ft. of parking and 3 apartments at 1200 sq. ft. each would require 13 parking spaces, which can be reduced by 25%, to arrive at 10 parking spaces. Note that if the apartment space was converted to office use, at current parking ratios, this would require an additional 8 parking spaces. 10 spaces already takes up almost all of the alley frontage with the most efficient right angle parking; to get to 18 would require the entire first floor in parking, which invokes new problems under the ZO. The option of going to underground parking is extremely expensive, and for the small amount of spaces required, would be sufficient to render the project economically unfeasible. With these minimums, and taking all the relief available in the ZO, we studied the mass of the building that would be required to meet these area requirements, under the 1.0 FAR. The result is a building that, while honoring minimum setbacks similar to those on adjoining single family properties, otherwise occupies the entire lot footprint, and rises two stories for the entire footprint, including building over the parking area. (The latter being attractive to transients, in our experience.) An option is to go to a three story building, which would allow the building to pull back somewhat from the “ram it to the limit” setbacks, but the height would then be 50% greater. Our opinion, voiced to Rich, was that to build either of these building scenarios, while technically legal, in fact outright compliant with the ZO, would be a disservice to the character of the neighborhood. The streetscape of West 12th Street, between Lincoln and Charnelton, is