Sunroom Desk

Two very different projects, a commercial structure on Foothill Blvd. and a residential remodel on Kenneth Road, reveal the pros and cons of the city’s new Design Review Board two-hearing limit.

The proposed three-story mixed-use office building along Foothill Blvd. outraged area residents who showed up in force to protest the scale and design of the building. The DRB asked the applicant to submit a redesign without third-story frontage, to be reviewed at a second hearing.

In the submitted redesign the applicant ‘pushed the envelope’, in the words of one DRB member: the front of the property was reduced to two stories, but the rear remained at three stories. Residents still objected to the building’s scale, mass, and other elements. A video link to the extensive comments and deliberations is here.

Lacking community development guidelines for the far north area, the DRB deliberated for a considerable time at its April 9 meeting before unanimously denying the project. Board members vocalized dismay at the two hearing limit, while also indirectly chiding the applicant for not fully implementing their redesign recommendations.

The Foothill project will end up before the Glendale City Council. An earlier Sunroom Desk post on the controversy is here.

The first DRB hearing on a Kenneth road remodeling application, held September 2008, resulted in nine signficant conditions for redesign. At its second hearing in December 2008, the DRB grappled with a complicated redesign still quite deficient. A bare majority ended up approving the project with ten other conditions, and one of the board members asking “Are we going to back down because we don’t want to deny it?”

The Kenneth Road project is stalled in controversy after neighbors voiced concerns about project noncompliance with a long list of DRB conditions.

How did the two-hearing limit promote or frustrate applicants’ goals and resident demands for neighborhood compatibility in these cases? In the first, applicants were perceived as trying to push through as much as they could in two hearings and that was just too much for the DRB to approve. In the second, DRB members appear to be pressured by the two-hearing limit to approve a deficient project with a long wish list of improvements.

The two hearing limit isn’t that draconian, according to Assistant Director of Planning Tim Foy. A denial at the second hearing is basically the same as a first hearing decision of “return for redesign.” In each case, the applicant must resubmit plans, pay another hearing fee of several hundred dollars, and notify surrounding property owners. The denial simply indicates that the basic plan itself is deficient and should be completely redone, obviously at additional expense to the applicant who may decide to retain another architect or designer.

Text from the revised Design Review Board Ordinance states on page 11:

For final design review the review authority may, on the initial project review.. make a decision that a project be returned for redesign; or may approve the project with conditions; or may approve the project without conditions. If the decision of the review authority on the initial project review is that a project shall be returned for redesign, the applicant shall file a new application and present plans showing revisions to the project design and additional infonnation as necessary to address the comments of the review authority within 90 days of the review authority’s decision. The applicant may also file a new application within 90 days of the review authority’s decision and request that the original project design be considered by the review authority at the second project review. For the second project review, the review authority may approve the project with conditions, or may approve the project without conditions, or may deny the project.

The ordinance language was revised so DRBs wouldn’t be worn down by applicants appearing time after time with slightly revised plans. The imposed limit is supposedly insurance against deficient projects, allowing them to be denied fairly quickly with a message that applicants need to go back to the drawing board. Is it working that way in every instance? Apparently not.