By Steve Plunkett
Future two-story homes along Gulf Stream’s signature Polo Drive and Gulfstream Road will have smaller second stories, while new one-story homes there will be able to be five feet closer to the street under new rules the town is considering.
After an ad hoc committee delivered its recommendations on how to limit large new residences that overpower their neighbors’ homes, the Town Commission declared a “zoning in progress” on Dec. 13 to stop building permits from being issued while it enacts the changes.
The overall recommendation was to create a zoning overlay district comprising the homes on the east side of Polo and the west side of Gulfstream to address massing in the Core District.
“We’re looking at relatively small footprints,” said Malcolm Murphy, chair of the town’s Architectural Review and Planning Board and a member of the ad hoc committee. “We went through many ideas, but the main, overriding theme was, let’s make this desirable, let’s encourage people to want to build a one-story home.”
The committee — Murphy, chair Paul Lyons, and members Gary Cantor, Michael Glennon, Bill Koch III and Thom Smith — met monthly since being formed in March and sought input from architects, planners, other experts and the town of Palm Beach.
To incentivize building one-story homes in the overlay district, the panel recommended raising the floor area ratio, or building square footage to lot area ratio, from 33% to 36% for roughly a 10% gain for those homes.
“Typically, you’re looking at (an extra) 300 to 350 square feet, which is based on the lot sizes in this area,” Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro said. The largest lot would get an extra 600 square feet.
Also for one-story homes, the panel said to count all covered, unenclosed area at only 70% for FAR instead of 100%, and to reduce the front setback to 25 feet instead of 30 feet.
To limit massing of two-story homes, the committee recommended reducing the second-floor FAR to 30% of the first floor FAR instead of 50% and to reduce the maximum roof height to 28 feet instead of 30 feet.
“Disincentive is the wrong word, but we wanted to make sure that people understood fully what they had to work with if they decided to go with this two-story home application,” Murphy said.
Mayor Scott Morgan said he was “more than impressed.”
“When I first came on the commission, massing was an issue that we wanted to address,” he said. “And we have tinkered around with it. This commission has changed a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but we never could really wrap our heads around it.”
Commissioner Joan Orthwein’s suggestion that the town incentivize building one-story homes led to the creation of the ad hoc panel, Morgan said.
“I think what you’ve come up with is an excellent approach to dealing with the problem of massing in a fair and reasonable way that doesn’t punish two-story people but encourages what has been historically the aesthetic of the town, at least of the Core, and that is the single-story, more understated but elegant home,” the mayor said.
Morgan also said the Dec. 19 meeting of the ARPB was to be Murphy’s last as its chairman. The Place Au Soleil resident is returning to South Africa for an undetermined period of time.
“I just want to say you’ve been an outstanding chairman and member of the ARPB,” Morgan said. “You have a calmness about you. Maybe it’s the British accent, I don’t know. ... I just want to thank you for your service.”
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