Beverly Hills Wants the House to Fit the Lot : City Council Wrangling Over Limits on Size of New Homes

Can a Beverly Hills family of four find happiness in a 5,000-square-foot or larger house complete with computer room, weight room, Jacuzzi, maid’s quarters and two-story pool house in the back yard?

Maybe, but what will the neighbors think, especially in the blocks of small lots south of Wilshire Boulevard, where a big house next door can block the sun and where the lawns and trees that made Beverly Hills a famous garden suburb are giving way to enormous driveways in front of boxy housefronts?

At a long and contentious meeting that came after two years of hearings and negotiations before the Planning Commission, the City Council early Wednesday reached a tentative consensus on new rules governing the bulk of single-family homes--but many questions remained unanswered.

Size Limit Sought

Sparked by protests against a recent fashion for bulky houses, city officials have been struggling to come up with zoning changes that would answer the demand for bigger homes on smaller lots while maintaining the city’s leafy look. At the same time, they also want to stop houses on large lots from getting too big.

In a community where all but 25 of the 149 houses currently listed for sale are priced at more than $1 million, tinkering with building codes has not been easy.

While residents warned of property values falling and expressed fears that the beauty of their city is fading, society has solved tougher challenges, said Planning Commission Chairwoman MaraLee Goldman, who has traveled widely in Africa.

“But this isn’t Rwanda and people don’t live in huts,” she said in an interview. “We have to deal with what we have here. The good news is that people will be able to have good-size houses, but the (houses) will have to fit into the neighborhood. The bad news is that we’ve had to legislate good manners between neighbors.”

Standing Room Only

There was standing room only in the City Council chambers for the Tuesday night meeting, where supporters of the proposed rules sat on one side of the room and opponents on the other. City Councilman Bernard Hecht regretfully noted that this was the first time that division had happened since he took office a year and a half ago.

Partisans took turns applauding as Mayor Robert K. Tanenbaum called on 44 speakers to make three-minute presentations. The attendance dwindled as the night wore on and only a few dozen of the 150 spectators were left by 1 a.m.

Resident Sherman Gardner set the theme with his comment that “a 5,000-square-foot lot for a family of four, in my opinion, is not a large house.”

But Max Strauss, a consultant for the Beverly Hills Municipal League, said that while that may be true, “his lot is too small. That’s what I tell my doctor when he tells me I’m overweight. I say, ‘No, I’m not. I’m just too short.’ ”

In the end, the City Council tentatively agreed on new requirements for the distance a house must be set back from its neighbors and from the street, depending on the size of the lot. They adopted a height-limit formula designed to discourage the flat-roof look that has become popular in recent years as a way to increase square footage, and they decided on a sliding scale to govern the square footage of houses according to their lot size.

City staffers must now go back and redraw the proposed zoning changes for consideration at the City Council’s next meeting, which is scheduled for Feb. 21.

Under the plan, homeowners whose building projects do not fit within the guidelines can take their case to a committee of architects and residents, with the right to appeal to the Planning Commission and then to the City Council to seek approval for an unusual design.

Or they can move to Los Angeles, “where they don’t care what you build,” one resident commented.

Unsatisfactory Formula

Previously the square footage had been set at no more than 55% of the lot size, but “perhaps the code no longer met the needs of the community,” Goldman told the council.

She said the construction of two “monster mansions” high over Coldwater Canyon started the craze for bulky buildings three years ago, and the steep rise in property values across the city since then may have been a factor in the construction of larger homes farther south.

Robert J. White, an attorney who led a petition drive seeking even tougher limits on house size, said: “I don’t know if people just changed the mentality of what they need, or it’s that you’re paying so much for the land that you feel you need a bigger house.

“People are tearing down (existing structures) and building houses that are totally out of character with the neighborhood.”

Change Supported

But Shelley Kravit, who organized a residents’ group called the 90211 Organization, named after its ZIP code in the southeast corner of the city, said she felt the change is for the good.

“I have four new houses on the block and three of the four are charming,” she said. “A lot of these houses are 50 or 60 years old, and if they haven’t been remodeled they’re falling apart. A lot of the new houses have put a polish on the neighborhood.”

Kravit, who fought for looser restrictions, said she was satisfied with the City Council’s decision to use a formula of 1,500 square feet plus 40% of the lot size in determining how big a house can be.

“Should we ever sell, then the person that buys it should have the ability to build what he needs on the lot,” she said. “I don’t want (city officials) to come and say that you can’t have what other people on the street already built.”

The cheapest house for sale today in Beverly Hills is listed at $649,000, while the average sale price of single-family homes zoomed from $837,000 in 1987 to $1,090,245 last year, according to Tricia Moore, executive vice president of the Beverly Hills Board of Realtors.