Item 8: Ordinance Establishing Chambers Special Area Zone

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Infill compatibility and impacts For each lot with inflll development, volunteers recorded elements of the structures' appearance, compatibility, and negative impacts on adjacent and nearby properties. Compatibility Although dwelling structures in the R.2 study area have several types of architectural style, there are common design patterns both for the structures themselves and their placement on the lot and in relation to adjacent structures. The basic "compatible" pattern is a }. to 1 Y.1-story dwelling facing the street (or alley) with a relatively narrow driveway and possibly a small garage setback or in the rear of the house. Characteristic dwellings also have a consistent range of height and mass, which is configured to avoid excessive vertical wans close to the street or adjacent properties. For a more extensive description of characteristic development, see the "Identifying the 'East Traditional Neighborhood' Character" section earlier in this report. Other than on the Eco Village site, the R-2 study area doesn't have any examples of well-designed structures that are significantly different in style than the characteristic pre. and post-war houses. Consequently, our analysis didn't present the challenge of how to characterize a well.designed house that was a radically different style than one of the characteristic styles found in the ETN. In fact, the most common reason for characterizing an infill development as "highly incompatible" was because the design or placement of structure(s) was noticeably too high, too large, too plain, lacked any orientation to the street, or a variety of other obvious deficiencies in height, mass and scale, basic design, placement on the lot, or other factor. Impacts To assess an infill development's overall negative impact (if any), we identified specific impacts from the list presented earlier in this report. Again, while in theory any judgment of impact is to some degree subjective, it was rarely necessary to make fine distinctions. Most frequently, an infill project's negative impacts were all too obvious. Although we recorded individual impacts for all infill developments, we tried to avoid nitpicking when summarizing the overall impact of an infill development. In this report, we use the term "substantial impact" for those developments that have multiple negative impacts that are clearly recognizable and which would likely to be of concern to most adjacent residents. We use th~ term "severe impact" for those infill developments that are so bad they are likely to prevent many prospective buyers who want to live in the November I, 2005 Chambers Revisited - Neighbors' Report 43