In Fredericksburg, people are getting upset by a trend of gauche new residents tearing down old houses and replacing them with McMansions. Such tension is inevitable in a growing region where property parcels in traditional, small-town neighborhoods are a scarce commodity. As property values rise in these desirable settings, new owners want their house to match the price they paid for the land. Why shouldn’t they be able to build what they want?
But the reaction is understandable as well. A hulking monster can visually overwhelm its smaller neighbors and disrupt the scale and sight-lines that made the neighborhood desirable in the first place. What is a City Council person to do?
Reports the Free Lance-Star: A proposed ordinace would regulate the dimensions of a new house: the maximum height and the percentage of the lot it covers.
City planners found that most homes in Fredericksburg neighborhoods have two stories or fewer. The ordinance would bring the maximum building height in residential districts down from 35 feet to 27 feet to try to keep new houses more in line with existing ones.
Planners also looked at maps and found that most city homes cover between 10 and 30 percent of the lots they stand on. To keep new homes within that norm, the city is proposing that new homes cover no more than 25 percent of a lot.
Property owners would be able to seek a special use permit to go beyond the height and coverage limits, but would have to show that exceeding those would not adversely impact their neighbors.
