Tag Archives: zoning

Calling local McMansion restrictions a “McMansion diet”

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Plenty of American communities have changed their zoning guidelines to limit the size of new McMansions, particularly teardowns in older neighborhoods. But, I’ve never seen this phrase before:

McMansion Diet? Continuation of Public Hearing to amend local law Chapter 197, Zoning, of the Rye City Code, Section §197-1, “Definitions and Usage”, to amend the definition of “STORY, HALF”, and Section §197-43.2, Subsection B, “Attics” to amend the Calculation of Attics in Gross Floor Area.

At its most basic level, the term implies the slimming down of McMansions. In teardown situations, a new home might not be that big compared to the average new home size in the United States of 2,500 square feet. But, if some of the neighborhood homes are 1,200 square feet and the new home is 2,300 square feet or the older and smaller homes are 1950s ranches and the new home is a Spanish with Tudor elements two story structure, the difference is more striking. The diet, which here looks like it relates to how attics should count toward square footage, will lead to smaller homes.

But, such a term also implies that McMansions need diets, that they are obese, that they may be the result of gluttony. These judgments are more involved with teardowns though the implication for McMansion in new sprawling neighborhoods is that they are unnecessarily large as well. And, some McMansion critics would argue, this diet should really be applied to an entire American consumption mindset that ranges from houses to fast food portions to SUVs.

I’ll be on the lookout for more links between McMansions and food diets and how this connection is presented.

Wheaton joins other communities in zoning medical marijuana dispensaries in manufacturing and industrial zones

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Similar to Naperville, Wheaton wants to restrict medical dispensaries to manufacturing and industrial zones, near the city’s downtown:

City council members Monday gave their preliminary approval of zoning changes that would limit any dispensing operations to the industrial and manufacturing zones immediately south and west of the city’s downtown…

“[State law] pretty much excludes all property in Wheaton from having a cultivation center. The dispensing organizations have slightly different restrictions,” said James Kozik, director of planning and economic development. “It seems to be the trend that the locations where a community is permitting them seems to be in the manufacturing or industrial area.”

The state also prohibits businesses that will dispense medical marijuana from being within 1,000 feet of the property line of a school or day care, from opening in any type of residence or residential area, and from referring patients to a physician.

Under the state statute, Kozik said, without city action, dispensing operations could also be located in the Danada shopping area, East Roosevelt Road, portions of the Wheaton College campus and portions of the DuPage County Complex along County Farm Road.

City Manager Don Rose said he believes law enforcement officials would prefer to have dispensing facilities limited to the manufacturing district. Most council members agreed.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out in Wheaton, given the community’s conservative political and religious character, as well as in other suburban communities.

Can a pleasant suburb like Naperville have medical marijuana facilities?

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Naperville officials are looking into how to regulate future medical marijuana facilities in their community:

Naperville will begin considering zoning regulations for medical marijuana businesses Tuesday night as councilmen review staff recommendations to limit such facilities to industrial parks, set a distance requirement from residential areas and require all medical marijuana operations to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis instead of allowed outright.

The proposed zoning code updates, which also would prohibit medical marijuana cultivation centers or dispensing organizations from opening in downtown and general commercial areas, are set to be considered during a council meeting at 7 p.m. in the municipal center, 400 S. Eagle St…

Naperville’s possible zoning changes are in addition to state restrictions that say cultivation centers cannot be within 2,500 feet of the property line of a school, day care center or residential area, and only one can open in each of the 22 state police districts statewide…

He said keeping dispensaries out of downtown and allowing only one in each strip mall or collection of buildings under the same ownership will help prevent the new businesses from being too widespread…

“The dispensaries are more like a pharmacy and should be allowed in retail areas,” Chirico said. “Legal, prescribed medication shouldn’t be restricted to an industrial park.”

It will be interesting to watch how wealthier suburbs treat medical marijuana facilities which are legal but probably not very desirable in these communities. Are the dispensaries better or worse than tattoo parlors? (If I had to vote, I’d go with better.) The interest in putting a dispensary only in industrial areas certainly would help keep it out view and away from impressionable people.

But, I could imagine a scenario where a resident of such a community is able to effectively tell how they need the marijuana to relieve pain from a life threatening illness and they don’t want to be made to feel like a ne’er-do-well in their own suburb. Telling that story in the right setting might make the community leaders and residents look uncaring and callous.

Lawsuit brought by Bosnian Muslim congregation against Des Plaines

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A Bosnian Muslim group that was turned down by the Des Plaines City Council in regard to converting a building into a mosque has filed a lawsuit against the suburb:

But aldermen say allowing any house of worship in an industrial park would endanger pedestrians and impede neighboring manufacturers.

“I don’t care if they’re Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, whatever. It’s not zoned for that particular area,” said Ald. Mark Walsten, who was named in the suit because he voted against an amendment to accommodate the mosque. “Whenever there are children involved in an industrial area, I will not have that on my conscience.”

Members of the American Islamic Center, who have rented space in a Rolling Meadows mosque since March 2011, had hoped to purchase the vacant building, formerly occupied by an insurance company. Many of the center’s 160 members fled Bosnia in the 1990s to escape war and genocide.

In fact, Bosnian immigrants opened the first mosque in Chicago almost a century ago, Agic said, and Illinois has the nation’s largest Bosnian-born population…

The Des Plaines Plan Commission unanimously recommended a zoning amendment to accommodate the center. But in July, the City Council voted down the proposed amendment.

Classic suburban case: zoning laws against the ability of residents to pursue their interests. And the Des Plaines City Council is appealing to safety and business concerns. There have been several cases in recent years in the Chicago suburbs having to do with requests from Muslim groups being denied by suburban communities. See this case involving DuPage County near Naperville, this case near West Chicago, and and this case in Lombard.

It is not unusual for a Plan Commission to recommend one thing and the City Council to vote the other way but it would still be interesting to hear their different reasons.

Texas governor not the only one after Illinois businesses; also Florida, Wisconsin

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The Texas Governor campaigned for Illinois businesses and he spoke earlier this week at a conference. But, he is not alone – other states also want Illinois businesses:

Perry is not the only governor out to siphon commerce this week. Wisconsin’s Scott Walker on Tuesday attended the same Chicago conference, touting his state’s business environment and standing as a bioscience leader. A day earlier, Florida’s Rick Scott sent a “Wish you were here” letter to Illinois business owners, noting that his state is “nipping at the heels of Texas every day” as a place to do business and pointing out that “Illinois’ formula of more taxing and spending ISN’T WORKING.” (Never let it be said Scott is undercapitalized.)…

Perry isn’t just selling Texas in a state weighed down by budget crises and the lack of political will to make the tough choices that solutions will require. He is on a trip financed by a public-private partnership to sell the concepts of lower taxes, less government interference, “a legal system that doesn’t allow for oversuing,” lower workers comp rates…

In this, pitting one state against another is good, Perry argued, in “the same way that it’s good for the White Sox and the Cubbies to compete against each other. If you don’t have competition, you’re not going to get pushed out of your comfort zone. That’s the simplest form I can put it in. I think our Founding Fathers understood that you had these laboratories of innovation and the ones that were good at it would be successful.”

Perry ignores one area of competition present in the Chicago area: between cities and suburbs. There have been numerous discussions in recent years about the tax breaks offered in different communities (here is an example in Hoffman Estates) or Chicago attracting headquarters and businesses back to the city and whether this harms the suburbs. Granted, all of these communities have to deal with the issues and regulations of the State of Illinois. But, it appears a number of businesses have still found places they like including in the Loop, Schaumburg, Northbrook, Deerfield, Naperville, Oak Brook, and other places. Between these localities, businesses can look for favorable settings and take advantages of the peculiarities of each place.

There was also one issue that highlighted a possible problem in Texas that may have been highlighted by a recent tragedy:

Take a good look at how close the fertilizer factory that blew up last week was to a middle school and nursing home in West, Texas, and decide for yourself whether you endorse Texas’ stance on zoning (“We respect local control,” Perry said) or think the state should intervene. Laissez faire isn’t always the way to go.

I assumed Illinois provided for local control over zoning as well…though I’m not sure what happens when it comes to potentially dangerous fertilizer plants.

A boom in “mega basements” in London draw ire

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The London neighborhood of Kensington is discussing rules to ban “mega basements” being constructed under the home and property of the wealthy:

The “iceberg home” mega basements dug three or four storeys into the ground with private cinemas, spas and swimming pools are set to be banned in one of London’s most affluent areas.

New draft rules that will limit basements to a single storey and impose much tighter limits on how far they can extend under a garden were today published by Kensington and Chelsea council.

The move follows a huge surge in applications for basements over recent years as wealthy owners have sought to by-pass planning restrictions on changes to their homes above ground by massively extending their living space underneath.

The subterranean extensions have often outraged local residents because of the noise, dust and disruption caused by digging them out, which can last for up to two years…

One of the most notorious applications was by former Foxtons estate agency owner Jon Hunt who successfully submitted plans for a cavernous basement under his home in Kensington Palace Gardens that included a tennis court and a showroom for his collection of Ferraris.

This sounds very similar to anti-McMansion ordinances with outcry over the disturbance to the neighborhood and restrictions on how big these basements can be. But, on the other hand, there is a big difference: these underground basements are hidden out of view and theoretically shouldn’t change the visible character of the neighborhood much. In some ways, the basements are genius: why not make use of underground space that is less disruptive and doesn’t alter the neighborhood’s appearance? I wonder if this is really just about construction inconvenience or it is more of a reaction to rich newcomers making changes.

Reformatting a zoning map of Chicago to look like SimCity 2000

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Zoning maps can include a lot of categories but what happens if it is converted to a SimCity 2000 format? Check out this recolored Chicago zoning map:

To spice up their interactive “2nd City Zoning” map of Chicago, Derek Eder, Juan-Pablo Velez and Aya O’Connor paid tribute to the SimCity franchise with some familiar color-coding. Blue for commercial, yellow for industrial, green for residential.

Then they got carried away, incorporating a few choice icons from SimCity 2000 as well as some of that legendary game music, which you can listen to while you browse the map.

Zoning is a little more complicated than the tri-color scheme implies, but by the time you get to the portion of the site that explains the difference between Manufacturing and Planned Manufacturing Districts, it’s mission complete for the designers.

Here are more details of the SimCity change from 2nd City Zoning – including a plea to not be sued.

It is too bad there isn’t a longer discussion about the simplicity of SimCity zoning versus real world zoning. Are there benefits to presenting a simpler zoning map to residents? (This assumes that there are a good number of residents that want to look at such maps.) How much complexity compared to real life was SimCity missing in the 2000 version? SimCity players might have learned something by playing the game but might also have been misled by the reductionism.

The music takes me back…

Can an older home be remodeled into a McMansion?

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Teardown McMansions are common but here is a less common scenario: an older home remodeled into what a neighbor claims is a McMansion. Here is the original complaint:

About four weeks ago, this project began with a slow stripping of the original cape on the site. The stripping got all the way down to just the chimney and a few original 2x4s. But in a week — boom! — a giant plywood box erupted as if from nowhere totally around and above the old house’s frame.

Why wasn’t the original modest house just razed? Surely it would have been easier for the builder just to get the old house completely out of the way first. Could there be a builder-friendly municipal regulation that gives special tax treatment to the builder of a “remodel” instead of a “new build?” Are builders being permitted to perpetuate a fiction of remodeling for lower taxes while really building anew for higher profits?

A believer in personal property rights, I don’t begrudge property owners (even speculating builders) to do as they wish on their own land. I accept that McMansions are now an unfortunate fact of Princeton life, even if I don’t like the crass, in-our-face, beggar-the-neighborhood architectural “lifestyle” expressions that some of them egotistically manifest.

As a local taxpayer, however, I (and many others) would have a big problem with any municipal sweetheart arrangements with the builders of these whales, permitting them by some perverse incentive to pay less than their fair share of local taxes on such imaginary “remodels.”

And then a reminder in the comments that people have been adding to houses for a long time:

There is no sweetheart deal going on. Working off of an existing foundation does simplify the permitting process because you are rebuilding or adding on to the “existing” house.

If you tear down the old house including the foundation you start off with a completely new house. This requires a new house permitting process. This may take time and money. Possibly hearings with public input if variances are required.

You might also want to take a tour of Princeton’s old houses. As happens today, houses were expanded and added to as families grew or as the family was able to afford more house. The issue was no different 200 years ago as it is today.

There is also a lot of pressure to preserve open space which restricts any kind of building which then puts pressure on rebuilding in existing areas.

Without knowing more details of this particular situation, it is hard to know whether this is a big remodel or an intention end-run against zoning regulations that make it difficult to build teardown McMansions. Is this a tactic that could be pursued elsewhere? I assume there are also some limits, or at least necessary permits, to remodeling so municipalities could respond by tightening those rules.

Additionally, one marker of a McMansion is a garish facade. If the remodeling is primarily done on the interior or the additions are to the back, this could mean the front still looks like a more traditional older home. The home could still be a McMansion due to its relative size compared to its neighbors but it may not appear from the front to be as much of a McMansion as other homes.

83 year old Hamptons resident sues for demolition of McMansions in her neighborhood

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The McMansion battles continue, this time in the Hamptons as an 83 year old resident takes on the newer big houses in her neighborhood:

Evelyn Konrad claims in a new federal lawsuit that her high-powered neighbors — many of them finance honchos — have turned her subdivision into an overcrowded “Queens by the sea” because of an improperly adopted zoning code.

The suit doesn’t seek money — it seeks demolition.

Undeterred by her wealthy opponents, the brassy Stanford law graduate once skewered the supersized digs as “multimillion-dollar penis enlargements,” in a letter to a local newspaper…

In addition to Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley, the suit names a host of cash-flush neighbors, including former Merrill Lynch honcho Donald Quintin and Manhattan attorney Denis Guerin.

Not your typical octogenarian, the yoga-practicing, bikini-wearing former NBC business reporter said that her modest, 2,200-square-foot colonial, purchased in 1984, has been slowly encircled by ballooning buildings ever since a new zoning code was adopted in 2005…

Konrad has demanded a jury trial and will argue the case herself, thank you very much.

I wonder what a jury would do…

It sounds like the zoning change from 2005 that is really at issue. I have no idea how often zoning regulations are overturned in court but I suspect they are infrequently challenged and even more rarely overturned.

Demographics suggest don’t invest in McMansions; invest in group homes

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Looking at the demographic trends in the United States, one analyst suggests investors shouldn’t look to McMansions but rather group homes:

A large majority of older Americans want to remain in their homes, and more importantly, in their communities. The homes they raised their families in might not suit their purposes any longer, so what are their options? In 2005 (before the housing crises) a survey was taken by AARP of adults over the age of 50, and they reported that the homes they currently lived in wouldn’t accommodate them “very well” as they aged. So these seniors have a push-pull of wanting to “age in place” but their homes aren’t suitable for them to remain independent.

Seniors in the early stage of making a housing transition will remain in owner-occupied or rental housing and live independently. Only about 4.7 percent live in a group home and 7-10 percent live in a senior facility.

I see group homes as an area of opportunity. Group homes could become the answer for many seniors. I have been preaching for the last year or two that new homeowners aren’t looking for McMansions. New buyers (Echo Boomers and younger) want something simpler that gives them more flexibility. So what will happen to these McMansions? Group homes could be perfect. Many of these homes were built with private baths attached to each bedroom, large kitchens and great rooms. These homes can be adapted for disabilities by adding lifts and rails in bathrooms, for example. Then these homes can operate very well as group homes. This can give seniors the option to stay within their community, but not be isolated. Not to mention it’s a cash cow for investors, I’ve seen these kind of properties create a 100% positive cash flow (this would include covering the debt service).

As seniors make the enevitable change they will release much more housing than they absorb, but it will be absorbed by newly formed households. For example, between 2000 and 2010, people who began the decade age 55+ moved out of 10.5 million housing units. Most of these were owner-occupied dwellings. During the same period households grew (under the age of 55) by 21.8 million. Thus leaving about 11.2 million new households needing housing. Take into consideration that forty percent of this time was during a major recession where we saw much slower household formation.

I can see two quick issues with group homes. First, some of these places today are very expensive as they can require residents to buy a unit and pay extra fees on top of this. Second, communities would have to approve the zoning necessary for these homes.

This reminds me of Kate Bollick’s Atlantic cover story “All the Single Ladies.” She ends the story by discussing a “dormitory” for women in Amsterdam that helps provide community while giving adults some individual space. Bollick suggests this sort of living space could be the wave of the future but I think it might take some time to catch on in the United States.