City Council discussed the "new" (3 year old) zoning code during their July 8th study session, and since much of their conversation focused on preservation, preservation-minded folks should watch that section of the meeting. The staff presentation begins at 36 minutes. Council discussion begins at 55 minutes and ends at 1 hour 12 minutes.
Patty Evans wasn't there but submitted written comments (p. 5). She appreciates the focus on preservation but thinks the code rewrite has had unintended consequences, including more scrapes of old homes that are then replaced by multiple homes on the subdivided lots. She thinks the new code has made housing more expensive in Golden. She wants to take another look at allowed garage space and including basements in square footage.
Here's a brief summary of comments by the rest of City Council:
The Mayor was concerned that the code focuses too much on single family homes and large duplexes. It's too concerned with rewarding preservation and not focused enough on building diverse (smaller) types of housing. She said that surveys and discussions with residents show that they are more concerned with getting additional affordable housing than they are about scrapes and preservation. She added that there are homes in Golden that haven't been maintained for decades and there's not a lot of value in preserving those. We have too many houses for families and not enough for smaller households (1-2 people).
Staff replied that they can take another look at the single family neighborhoods to find ways to encourage adding more cottages and multi-family housing types in the current single-family zones.
Rob Reed agreed that the code was focusing too much on preservation. We should be focusing on smaller lots and smaller houses. He would like the Planning Commission to offer more incentives for small house developments.
Don Cameron agreed that preservation isn't a hot topic for him. He would like to revisit the decision to keep "RE" zoning. These are extra-large lots, mostly in the Beverly Heights neighborhood, and he would like to change the zoning to allow the lots to be subdivided or converted to cottage clusters.
The mayor agrees that we should revisit the decision to keep RE (bigger lot) zoning. She would like to see more cottage compounds, even if it means an individual lot contains more square footage of building.
Staff pointed out that the price per square foot on cottages would tend to be higher, but that the smaller size might result in their being more affordable.
Paul Haseman isn't as concerned about preservation but wants to make sure new homes built among older homes are compatible.
Lisa Vitry thinks scraping homes is OK, but not scraping all the vegetation (as in 24th & Illinois, where large trees were removed to make more room for houses).
Bill Fisher thinks we need to avoid making it worthwhile to demolish an $800K house and replace it with a $3 million house that's much larger.
The mayor repeated that she wants to incentivize developers to build small homes rather than big homes.
