Without a quorum present in the Urban County Council’s special hearing to vote on a potential ND-1 designation for the Old Colony neighborhood on Tuesday evening, the design overlay will automatically go into effect on March 13.
In December, the Planning Commission voted to approve the overlay, after which the council had 90 days to vote on the matter.
Perry Bozarth, the president of the community’s neighborhood association, said the council would not be able to gather a quorum for a new meeting before March 13, and the overlay would automatically go into effect – an outcome he said he favored, but under “bittersweet circumstances.”
“I would have liked for the opposition to have been able to make their presentation and let the council vote on it,” he said.
Different from an H-1 overlay, the ND-1 option allows a neighborhood to select from 15 specific design standards that can be customized to a particular neighborhood’s needs.
Bozarth said the neighborhood was interested in implementing three criteria for their community: 1. No front yard fencing, or front yard retaining walls, 2. No more than one accessory structure that exceeds 12 foot by 15 foot (such as a detached storage building), and 3. No house could be torn down, and no new additions to a home could be made that would make the structure 25 percent of the footprint of the lot it sits on.
The Old Colony neighborhood was developed in 1948 and many of the homes are on lots close to an acre in size or larger. Bozarth said that no house in the neighborhood currently exceeds an 18 percent footprint of their lot.
“So that still allows residents to continue to add on to their houses and still not exceed the standards, but still keep in in the character and eclectic nature of the neighborhood,” he said.
Residents interested in obtaining the ND-1 overlay had been working on the initiative for four years. Bozarth said part of the long process for obtaining an ND-1 overlay for the includes soliciting support among the neighbors. He said the neighborhood association sent out a petition to the neighborhood’s 71 households, or which 42 returned said they were in favor of the ND-1 designation and 18 were against; 11 did not respond.
“Hopefully we’ve done something to preserve the beauty of the neighborhood for years to come,” he said.