Burbank officials address guidelines, design rules for single-family homes at recent meeting

Burbank City Council members said they believe community development staff have been making headway in their efforts to craft clearer guidelines and design rules for single-family homes being built or renovated around the city.

Council members directed city staff during a council meeting on May 17 to continue looking into keeping some sections of a temporary ordinance passed in March 2015 — such as frontyard setbacks and changing how floor-area ratios are calculated — and modifying other aspects, such as finding different ways to address sideyard setbacks and how second-story setbacks are determined.

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The building restriction, known as the Interim Development Control Ordinance, is effective through March 2017 and was passed by the City Council after numerous residents expressed concerns about overly-large homes being built in Burbank.

Should council members approve of the rules included in the ordinance, city staff would come back to them and present those changes as amendments to the city’s zoning code. Council members could also direct community development staff to create design guidelines that developers should follow when building a new home or doing a full tear-down makeover.

The city and architectural consultants have been working with residents to determine what kinds of homes or characteristics of homes they would like to see in their neighborhoods.

Several community workshops and “walk-shops” — where residents and Planning Board members toured different neighborhoods to get a sense of the types of houses they liked — were organized to gather feedback to better draw up housing-design guidelines.

“I went on two of the walks, and folks really get into it,” Vice Mayor Will Rogers said.

While most of the council members agreed with a majority of the suggestions city staff offered, there was one that required additional information.

Community development staff suggested that additional zoning code-options be adopted on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis to establish guidelines for specific areas around the city.

“Certain neighborhoods have a very unique character,” Councilman Bob Frutos said. “That was part of the biggest complaint, that we weren’t taking care of the very precious neighborhoods with all of these remodels or tear-downs. I want to respect the people’s wishes with that, so I’d like to see that [option] come back.”

While having specific guidelines per neighborhood could result in more compatible houses in a given area, Rogers said he was concerned about how the city would implement such a process.

“I am skeptical, and it looks like an awful lot of work,” Rogers said, adding that he would like more details about the process to better understand how it works.

Mayor Jess Talamantes was also concerned about having different guidelines for various neighborhoods and how the city would define what constitutes as a neighborhood.

Carol Barrett, the city’s assistant director of community development, told council members that she has worked in a city where neighborhoods were determined by groups of homes that had neighborhood associations. However, with that guideline, she saw one neighborhood that had only two houses.

“They registered as their very own neighborhood association. So clearly, it has to be large enough, a territory [or] a geography, that makes sense to the community and to the city,” she said, adding that with the association guideline, development standards could “vary block by block.”

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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio

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