Bethany Beach planners brainstorm on FAR possibilities

Bethany Beach Planning Commission members this week continued discussion of whether the town should make use of the building control known as floor-area ratio (FAR), in an effort to control the trend of constructing “extra-large” houses.

Council Member and Commission Chairman Lew Killmer noted at the Nov. 19 meeting that the commission had received “a number of interesting comments” from other municipalities when it surveyed them as to their regulations and what their observations were in hindsight. While the number of municipalities utilizing FAR or similar regulations is small in the totality of Delaware, the statistics from the survey reveal that a number of local towns do use such regulations.

However, the range of options for FAR and its like is substantial.

“Some have done 70 percent, so I threw that out there,” Commissioner Fulton Loppatto noted of his initial suggestion for a starting point of the discussion some months ago. “Some also exempt non-heated spaces,” he added, referencing decks and porch as the most common of those exempted areas. “Some of the places go with an absolute,” he said of locales with a numerical cap on square footage for homes.

Building Inspector Susan Frederick had noted in previous discussions that Rehoboth Beach’s FAR regulation is particularly complex, largely due to exceptions made to encourage certain features, such as front porches. Frederick previously served as Rehoboth’s building inspector, so her understanding of that town’s FAR has been one of the touchstones of the Bethany commission’s discussion.

Frederick pointed out that Henlopen Acres doesn’t have a FAR regulation, as such, but has a maximum home size of 6,000 square feet, counting all spaces, whether heated or not, but making some exceptions for non-livable space according to ceiling height.

Similarly, Fenwick Island, Loppatto noted, has a 7,500 square foot absolute size limit, in addition to regulations limiting features such as the number of kitchens. Killmer also pointed out that the City of Dover has its own FAR – for commercial structures only.

Frederick said North Shores has among the most complicated of regulations, with an overall limit and two separate FAR sub-limits, separately setting maximums for livable area in homes that are generally on pilings and upon the non-livable storage areas that are often placed below the homes, in the flood zone.

“You have to hit one number under one and the other number under the other,” she said.

Loppatto further pointed out that most of the areas with high density in residential construction are on the east side of Route 1, “which makes sense,” he said, since the land closest to the beach is generally the most valuable and in demand. “Do we have one FAR on this side and one on the other?” he asked fellow commissioners.

“I think that would be a problem,” Killmer replied. “It would enhance that image that there’s two communities.”

Loppatto said he thought the commission ought to consider how whatever regulations it might propose would function for Frederick, who would have to calculate whether plans exceed limits as part of issuing permits.

“The 40 percent coverage is cut-and-dry,” he said of the town’s existing 40 percent lot coverage cap. “If we had an absolute, it would be easier for her to do the calculations. And, in that case, I would recommend we increase the percentage,” he added.

Killmer asked if Frederick would be able to easily calculate the needed figures from the permit paperwork filed with her office. She said she could do it, though it could be a laborious process.

“If the builders will give me the CAD files, I can check it quicker and more accurately,” she noted, adding that provision of CAD drawings by an applicant was not required in the communities already using FAR. “But don’t think any other building official knows how to use CAD,” pointed out Frederick, who is also a certified architect and uses the computerized design system regularly.

Discussing what kinds of regulations the commission might want to consider, Frederick acknowledged that some of the example homes she provided work out to above 100 percent of their lot size, such as a 5,000 square foot home on a 5,000 square foot lot (a lot size typical of Bethany Beach’s east side). That comes via multiple stories – sometimes three full stories – of living spaces, she said, just counting areas under roof alone and not things such as outside staircases.

Commissioners on Nov. 19 expressed some reluctance to use FAR as a simple restriction on the size of houses, asserting that the concern about the extra-large homes seems to be more in their design and aesthetics than in the actual size of the homes.

“We can write down what we want to encourage,” Loppatto suggested as a starting point for some kind of actual ordinance. “If you count the conditioned space only, it would encourage decks and open areas, which would make the house more interesting.”

Commissioner Chuck Peterson was in agreement that the angle the Town may wish to pursue is aesthetics rather than simple size.

“I don’t think FAR is going to significantly reduce the size of houses,” he said. “What FAR will do is encourage them to do something other than boxes, to have outside decks and unconditioned spaces. If that’s our goal, FAR does it.”

Killmer referenced the complaints he and other council members have heard about some of the larger houses constructed in recent years.

“I think our main goal is the perception of having extra-large houses on small lots next to other houses that are more in proportion,” he said. “They are out of context with the surrounding properties. People have issues with it. They say it’s almost like there’s a wall between their house and the next house over. It takes away quality of life. That’s how people look at it.”

Commissioners also wondered whether the issue might be one of closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. But Frederick said she feels the Town still has an interest to protect if it enacts regulations now.

“There are still a lot of properties where people are buying them and tearing them down,” she said of older, smaller homes. “We can have setbacks that say they can be so far away but still not let them cover that whole remaining area. Lot coverage is based on the total lot size,” Frederick added of the town’s 40 percent limit. “But maybe there’s some portion that should remain open so they can’t go setback to setback.”

On a corner lot, Frederick noted, a typical set of setbacks is 20 feet in front, 15 feet in back and 7 feet on each side. “The remaining area is just about 40 percent, and you can build in that entire area.”

Frederick said another concern often expressed was the unsightliness of low-pitched roofs. The town has a 5/12 minimum roof pitch in place now, but the regulation also allows for shallower roof pitches in some areas. With a home built to its maximum height and targeted for three stories of living space, she said, “they get a low-pitched roof.”

The draw of having a tall house is also significant at the beach, she noted, with small rooftop decks being a popular option. “Everybody wants to see the ocean. Nobody ever uses them after they build them, but there you go.”

Loppatto said he had been impressed with the end result of FAR in Rehoboth Beach, where small street-level cottages with front porches are still common, but he wondered if Bethany Beach was perhaps too late to the party.

“It seems Rehoboth has done a good job, but maybe they got it in a long time ago. Even South Bethany and Fenwick Island have a FAR, but by the time they got theirs in, they were already built,” he said. Still, he allowed that, even now, a FAR regulation could be useful. “There are going to be a lot of houses torn down,” he said. He also acknowledged concern about how the town could look in the far-distant future and what that might mean for it and its citizens.

“The attraction of Bethany Beach is the small-town cottage atmosphere,” he said. “That’s Bethany’s moniker.” Relating the story of an acquaintance who said he’d originally looked at New Jersey’s shore for his retirement location, Loppatto said, “The house were too big and too dense, so he came here. And now it seems we’re starting to look like Jersey.”

“FAR’s not going to solve that problem,” Peterson commented.

“We’re not going to have small cottages,” Loppatto acknowledged. “Some of the houses over here I like because they’re cottage look, even though they’re big. But some of these are so boxy you lose that. They almost look like apartment buildings. If you let the people build screened porches, it still looks like a box,” he noted.

Killmer referenced South Bethany’s FAR regulation, which allows for a minimal encroachment for houses built prior to 1984 and has a maximum size of 750 square feet for livable areas on the first floor of the home. The regulation then limits total space to 70 percent of lot size and livable space to 60 percent of lot size, not to exceed 5,500 square feet in total area, no matter how big the lot.

Loppatto noted Fenwick Island’s limits on bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, per home. “We already have a limit on kitchens,” he said.

“Would that achieve what we’re trying to do?” Killmer asked.

Frederick’s answer was simple: “No. What concerns us,” she said, “is the feeling that it’s a box. … It doesn’t create that cottage charm look. Rehoboth Beach – this is why it got complicated – they wanted front porches. If there’s a feature you really want to see… You get 250 additional square feet if you have a front porch, but you can’t have a deck on top of it.” She noted also roof pitch requirements and allowances to encroach into setbacks. “It guarantees you’re going to put a front porch on it, because it’s giving you a lot more room.”

“Not having screened porches and decks on the front is something to think about,” Loppatto added. “I like the front porches on the first floor. It really gives us a cottagey look. … But with two screened porches, one above the other, and a deck on top of that – that looks like a box.”

Frederick said her concern wasn’t making the regulation so simple that she could easily calculate the numbers involved, but the end result.

“It doesn’t matter to me if it’s harder to do. It just has to be less of a box.” She suggested the commissioners even consider further fine-tuning the regulations regarding roof pitch, to further reduce the incidence of low-pitched roofs, if desired. “That stops that boxy look.”

Killmer asked her to put together some ideas for the commission to consider moving forward, at which point the commission could invite in other stakeholders, such as builders and designers, to garner expert input on the potential impacts of any proposed legislation. That’s a model the commission followed with its forays into regulation of geothermal, solar and wind-power systems.

The idea still remains in its earliest stages, as council consideration and a hearing before the commission would be required before any such ordinance could be adopted.