Salt Lake Council OKs limits on house sizes

Residents of some of Salt Lake City's oldest neighborhoods claimed a victory for preservation Tuesday night.

The Salt Lake City Council approved a special monster-home ordinance for the Avenues and Capitol Hill neighborhoods that imposes tougher regulations than those for the rest of the city.

The council unanimously approved the tighter restrictions after about 30 minutes of public comment, most of it in support of the ordinance overlay, which has wended its way through community council meetings for the past several months.

"Working on this overlay, we've tried to consider everybody who lives in the neighborhood to make it so it would be easy for them and also easy for the neighbors to live next door to them," said Ann Wesley, an Avenues resident for the past 25 years. "A family is not made by the size of the house. A family is made by the people living in it."

The ordinance is meant to balance the rights of people to build or renovate larger homes while not encouraging those renovations to fit the character of the neighborhood, said Eric Jergensen, the council member for the Avenues and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.

"This was never about big homes vs. small homes," Jergensen said. "This was never about making it impossible for families to live and grow."

Houses will now be restricted to 23-foot roof heights — or the average of building heights on the block — in most of the lower Avenues and some portions of the Marmalade District west of the state Capitol. The ordinance limits accessory buildings to 480 square feet for one and 120 square feet for a second. Additionally, the house must be four feet from the property line on one side and 10 feet on the other side.

Architect Sandra Hatch told the City Council that taking a client through the permit process with the tighter restrictions was a "nightmare."

"Everybody at the counter is afraid to make a decision," Hatch said. "If they can't come up with a way of doing this tomorrow, we can't wait months for this to work. It has to happen tomorrow because you're holding people up."

Council member Jill Remington Love acknowledged the planning department might need some time to smooth the permitting and approval process.

"I think of tonight as a Band-Aid," Love said. "I know that it will not be smooth, and I do not think this is the solution. It's a beginning, and we have to do something to protect those neighborhoods."