Have Sebastopol's zoning rules made charm illegal?
On a tour of Sebastopol's older neighborhoods, the planning commission asks, "Should we reconsider parts of Sebastopol's zoning code?"
Last week, the Sebastopol Planning Commission canceled their regular meeting and scheduled a walking tour of Sebastopol—the downtown business district and the charming old residential neighborhoods west of downtown.
It wasn’t just a casual stroll. Planning Commission Chair Paul Fritz was on a mission.
“We’re going to talk about things that we allow in the zoning code and don’t allow in the zoning code, and why that is,” he said. “Because I think there are examples of projects that none of us would give a second thought about—that we think are perfectly fine—but would not be allowed to be built today. So maybe we should make some changes to the zoning code.”
Planning commission members Evert Fernandez and Seth Hanley came along for the tour, as did Associate Planning Director John Jay, Planning Technician Nzuzi Mahungu, and one curious citizen.
#1: A single family home that is now three apartments
The first stop on the tour was a pretty pale blue Victorian on the corner of High Street and Wilton.
“This house has been here forever, and actually, there’s three units in it. So three probably relatively small units, and probably, because they’re relatively small and it’s an old building, they are probably relatively affordable. This property is zoned downtown commercial. So, according to our zoning, it’s required to be mixed use, and to do 100% residential needs a use permit. But why would we care?” Fritz asked.
“The other thing about this property is that I think that this would be totally appropriate anywhere in town. You know, it’s three units, but it looks basically like a single-family house. So why not allow something like this to be built anywhere in town, like right now?” Fritz said. “I feel like we should consider opening up the single-family zones around town to allow this kind of thing to be built.”
Fritz said that all formerly residential properties along Main Street—or in this case, near Main Street—are now in a commercial zone, which means they need a use permit if the owners want to revert to using it as a residence—even if that’s what it was built as in the first place.
Jay mentioned the case of an owner of a house on Main Street, who wanted to turn the house from a commercial property back into a residence.
“That is the most boilerplate, should be residential allowed, no questions asked, but because of the zoning, we have to do a use permit,” he said. “It’s not as long of a process as it could be, but for a homeowner that doesn’t go through this on a regular basis, it can be extremely difficult and daunting to go through,” Jay said.
#2 and #3: Two spots on Main Street
The next stop, just down the hill on Wilton, is possibly the most frustrating property in all of Sebastopol—the smog check business/storage site for derelict boats and old cars.
Eventually this property will be redeveloped, Fritz said, but zoning laws (particularly the parking restrictions) limit what can be done here.
“It would make sense to do a multi-story residential over commercial here, but again, it would need to be parked. As an architect, when you get a project like this, the first thing you would do is to figure out the parking—like how many parking spaces are there? That will tell you how many units, because it’s all going to be driven by the parking. Even if you’re allowed to go four stories here, which you are if it’s residential, but there’s probably not enough parking to go four stories here with residential.”
John Jay suggested that, “You could get away with it maybe if they were like studio units, because the studio parking is only half-a-parking space.”
“Still, it’s like the tail wagging the dog,” Hanley said.
“The other thing that Jane and I have been talking about,” Jay said, speaking of Jane Reilly, the new interim planning director, “is there are state laws that if you’re within half mile of a transit station, your parking requirements are basically nothing. So we’ve been trying to look at vacant parcels in town that we could make a transit station, and then the buildings that are near it no longer need to meet the parking minimums.”
The group wandered down Main Street and stopped in front of the Italian restaurant, Portico.
Here, again, Fritz noted that the inability to meet parking requirements limits the ability of building owners and developers to, say, put housing above some of the storefronts downtown.
“If we had apartments above some of these buildings, I think that would be good for the town,” Fritz said. “Businesses would appreciate having a closer client base. You could walk out the door and go to a restaurant, go to a cafe, or go to Copperfield’s or whatever. It’s better for the city's bottom line financially and it’s better for businesses financially, and I think it would make a more lively, vibrant downtown.”
#4: The El Favorito development area
From downtown, we walked south on Main Street to that queer little El Favorito and Hip Pizzazz Pizza plaza, a large potentially developable property.
There are problems with the site. The northern edge of the property can’t be developed because of a year-round creek, currently hidden in a culvert underground. This is a continuation of the creek that runs through Ives Park, and in an ideal world where money was no object, the city would like to daylight the creek.
The property (it’s actually multiple lots) also has some ground contamination issues due to an old dry cleaners that used to be located there. Despite these limitations, it’s considered to be one of the few large developable properties in the city.
“What needs to happen, from a zoning standpoint, to allow that to happen?” Fritz asked. “Are whatever restrictions we have on this good or should we take a look at this? It’s downtown, so you don’t have setbacks. It can go four stories if it’s residential. So it’s somewhat flexible—again because it’s a pretty big property and transit’s very convenient.”
#5: A small old-fashioned apartment building
Further down Main Street is this old-fashioned apartment building.
“It’s a perfectly nice old apartment building, and I think we should have these all over town,” Fritz said.
“It has a little gravel driveway, which is totally non-compliant with any parking lot standards, to a little parking lot in the back that has space for three cars. This apartment has six units. I think they would be considered two-bedroom apartments. So under current zoning regulations, that would require 12 off-street parking spaces,” Fritz said.
He noted that some of the houses around it also had small apartments added on—and some had no driveway or parking. “And I think it's fine, like, it's fine. I mean, people obviously park on the street, but there’s space for cars”
#6: The case of the disappearing setback and the death of charm
From the apartment building, we walked up the hill to the house on the corner of Calder and Vine.
It too looked like a single-family home that had been broken up into multiple apartments, but what Fritz really wanted to show us was the setback on the side of the house facing Vine Street—or rather the lack of a setback.
“Does anyone actually mind this?” he asked rhetorically. No one did.
The group then spent quite awhile singing the praises of Sebastopol’s old neighborhoods.
“When I tell people where I live, they’re like ‘Oh my God, I love that block,’” Fritz said. “High Street is great, and pretty much every house on it is non-conforming.”
“It’s like we’ve made charm illegal,” Hanley suggested.
“That’s a good point. It’s like things we find charming are illegal. Why are they illegal if we find them charming?” Fritz said with evident frustration. “It’s like someone wrote a zoning code at some point and said a single-family house should have 20 foot setbacks and everyone started copying it.”
“If you dig into the history of single-family zoning, it had a very racial overtone,” Fritz said. “It was a way to keep poor types of housing out. Having all these sorts of setback things made it so you can only build a house in the center of a lot—and you can’t build multiple units, which would be more affordable, so you keep ‘less desirable’ people away.”
As we walked back toward city hall, we passed beautiful house after beautiful house, all with non-conforming features that meant they simply couldn’t be built today—because it would violate one part of the zoning code or another.
How to change this?
Fritz said he has asked city staff to put the question of zoning on the agenda for the next Planning Commission meeting, which is Sept. 24., 6-9 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St.
“As the Planning Commission, we are able to make modifications to the zoning code,” he said. “That would ultimately have to be approved by the city council as well, but we can initiate those changes based on our role as overseers of the zoning code in the city.”
He thought that some things, like changing the size of setbacks, would be relatively straightforward, while larger changes, like changing the zoning of certain areas of town, would take longer.
But the wheels have started turning.
I really enjoyed this article. I think having walks like this (that town residents could also attend), would be very interesting to improve knowledge of zoning law considerations.
Thank you for covering this issue. I agree that zoning rules can be changed to accommodate stylish, affordable housing. Most zoning rules were established almost a century ago and exacerbated the sprawl which has caused non-human-centered design. Everything is farther apart and distance creates cost for the city. This was partially due to industrial practices of the time that were very hazardous. Maybe it is possible to improve general parking near downtown to allow more non conforming residences.