By Anne Geggis
Home builders will face stricter rules about how much square footage they can stack on residential lots east of the Intracoastal Waterway in Delray Beach, according to an ordinance heading for final City Commission approval.
The ordinance, its supporters say, is due to a decade-long trend: New owners of lots tear down existing homes and build replacements that dwarf their current neighbors.
“The mass and volume of these new homes has been very transformative and quite disproportionate to the existing neighborhoods,” said Ned Wehler, a trustee of the Beach Property Owners Association, which spearheaded the effort to get the ordinance passed.
The new restrictions were tentatively approved with little comment at the Feb. 20 commission meeting. The guidelines that will be up for final commission approval March 5 would make it so that these new homes don’t loom over the older ones, as seen on Seagate Drive or in neighborhoods such as Vista Del Mar in the northern section of the city’s beachside, Wehler said.
Wehler said that the guidelines that specify floor-to-area ratio would not allow walls to go straight up, as has been happening with some new homes on the barrier island. The new regulations would also cut the potential square footage that could be built based on lot size. Under the existing regulations, for example, a 10,000-square-foot lot could have a 12,000-square-foot house on it, he said.
“With 40% (lot) coverage (allowed) and when you’re permitted to build three stories, you can literally put a 12,000-square-foot home on such a lot which is, in general, very disproportionate to the neighborhood and quite disruptive,” he said.
The proposal would mean that 10,000-square-foot lot would have a maximum of 6,500 square feet built on it — a 45% cut — Wehler noted.
Wehler said the new guidelines are the next step in the beach association’s growing interest in quality control of what gets built on the city’s barrier island. In 2021, the commission agreed to limit rooftop uses in single-family neighborhoods.
“It came up back in 2019 with concerns that these three-story contemporary homes were being built with flat roofs with swimming pools and entertainment areas on the roof,” he said.
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