Carlsbad revises its architectural guidelines

By: BARBARA HENRY - Staff Writer | Saturday, July 24, 2004 11:30 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ---- Front porches that don't have space for a deck chair and homes with backs that look nothing like their fronts may become a thing of the past in Carlsbad.

The city is revising its new-home architectural guidelines to add a little style to the backs of homes and to improve the usability of decorative elements on the fronts, Carlsbad Planning Commission Chairman Frank Whitton said Thursday.

The changes will "give personality to a neighborhood" and make the houses look more friendly "as opposed to just cookie-cutter type things," he said. Others on the commission said they've been frustrated for years by developments featuring postage stamp-sized porches and bland backsides.

"If you're going to have a porch, it should be a porch, not an architectural feature," Commissioner Bill Dominguez said, comparing it to a window box that can't hold flowers.

Among other things, the revised guidelines would require that front porches be at least 6 feet deep. A home's back side would need to have at least four "design elements" copied from the front --- such as balconies, window shutters, varied window shapes or columns. There are also additional requirements on the number of floor plans, the variety in the plans and the number of what's termed "reduced two-story homes," or houses with a small second story.

The revisions won approval from the planning commission Wednesday in a 6-0 vote, and are headed to the City Council. They've been backed, with some reservations, by the local nonprofit construction trade organization ---- the Building Industry Association of Southern California.

Industry concerns

"In large part, we support the guidelines," Scott Molloy, the building association's public policy advocate, said Thursday. "There were some concerns, but overall we didn't have any heartburn."

Molloy, who spoke at Wednesday's planning commission meeting, said the city shouldn't be too specific in its guidelines or it will end up with a new problem ---- houses that look exactly the same from one development to the next.

"The more specific they get, the more difficult it becomes to become creative," he said.

The association lobbied for one significant change ---- its members found a proposed floor plan requirement "excessive," Molloy said. As initially written, the requirement stated that developments with nine homes or more had to have three different floor plans. Each of those plans needed three variations ---- a single-story version, two-story option and a modified single story. That's nine different homes in a nine-home project, Molloy said.

Commissioners agreed that was a problem. The final version they approved had a range of floor plan requirements depending on the number of homes being built. Commissioners added that they're willing to revisit the document later if changes are warranted.

"I think this is one of those items we can go back and review," Dominguez said at Wednesday's meeting. "I'd rather be on the side of community standards rather than the minimum game we've been playing for years."

Setting guidelines

Carlsbad's architectural guidelines were established in 1989 during a city building boom. Prior to that, developers could have built a "flat-walled structure" without window treatments or entryway embellishments if they desired, planner Chris DeCerbo said.

DeCerbo, who was working for the city at the time, said city planners like himself sought the guidelines so they would have something to work as a baseline when they reviewed housing plans.

The city amended it in 2001 to incorporate "livable communities" concepts, including making neighborhoods more walkable and garage doors less visible, DeCerbo said. Those changes put the city in the leading edge of a movement known as "new urbanism," he added.

One of the projects resulting from that movement is Carlsbad's 585-acre Bressi Ranch development. Now under construction at Palomar Airport Road and El Camino, the project features narrower, tree-lined streets, and garages in back alleyways.

Looking good

Drive northward on El Camino past the graded lots for Bressi Ranch and there's an example of the ugly back side architecture the revised city policy seeks to prevent. Built within the last four years, the gated Sunny Creek housing development just east of the College Boulevard and El Camino Real intersection features elegant looking home fronts facing wide cul-de-sac streets. Garage doors have decorative paneling, while upstairs windows are inset beneath barrel-like arches or have separate miniature roofs of their own.

But only the residents who live there see that detail work.

The back sides of the homes face El Camino and College, and there are no shutters, no fancy window treatments to break up the flatness. A real estate agent who's selling three of the homes in development said not one of the perspective buyers he's had has ever raised the back-side issue.

DeCerbo said people don't usually complain about things like that, but they do notice when things look good.

"It's going to jump out at you because it looks good," he said, adding that's what the city hopes to encourage with its revised policy.

Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@nctimes.com.

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