It’s Unanimous!

November 17, 2017 by clove Leave a Comment

Matt and I outside Council Chambers post-public hearing

In my preparation for our public hearing, I replayed the cautionary voices of others who have done this before: ‘There is always someone who hates your project no matter what you do!‘ Or: ‘Sometimes you’ll go into the public hearing thinking you have community support only to be blindsided by a mutiny!’

My best case mental visualization of the event was that we would have enough positive voices to ring out over the negative ones. I sent invitations to everyone who had expressed support or interest throughout the process. A couple of neighbours said they would come, and a couple of others said they would write a letter. Otherwise, it felt (strangely?) quiet on our block in the days leading up to the hearing.

Here’s how it went down:

We were 3rd on the agenda of rezoning/development permit applications, and somewhere around 10th on the overall agenda, which meant we were called up at 8:45, over 2 hours into the evening’s proceedings. The public area of Council Chambers was full of people early on, and with each item that was ticked off the list, more and more people filtered out. A small group of our neighbours and friends were still among us, along with some people who were waiting for the agenda items after ours.

A member of City staff introduced the project and what was being proposed for Council consideration. I was then called up to the podium with a (strictly enforced!) maximum 15-minute window to present whatever we thought relevant to Council and the public. Using a pre-loaded presentation, I introduced our project goals and talked about our design choices, materials, and rationale. I described how the project fit into the Official Community Plan and the Gonzales Neighbourhood Plan. I summarized the consultation process and how it influenced the design. I concluded by expressing our appreciation for everyone who provided engaged input and ultimately made our project better.

Council then asked a couple of clarifying questions, then opened the floor to anyone who wished to speak for a (strictly enforced!) maximum of 5 minutes. Five neighbours spoke in support and none spoke against.

Every neighbour spoke so eloquently about their personal stories as they related to our project. One spoke about how the character of our community is not just about what the houses look like, but about the individuals who live here and make it their own. Another spoke about having lived on the block since he was 5. Another about how they’d originally lived in the townhouses next to us and then bought a house a few doors down so they could stay on the block as their family grew. This was by far my favourite part of the evening – each neighbour sharing their personal histories and experiences on the block, and their own reasons for supporting our project.

After everyone spoke, the public hearing portion closed. Council then asked a few more questions before offering their opinions on whether and why they supported prior to the final vote. All who spoke were emphatically in favour and the vote to approve our application carried unanimously.

Holy cow!

Never have I witnessed so much smiling and excitement at a public hearing! If you want to see it for yourself, you can watch it here (Nov 9, about 2h:45 in).

We owe thanks to City staff for their work moving this forward. Thank you to the City Councillors for their words of support and encouragement. And most of all, thank you to our neighbours and friends who have listened and made suggestions, shared their opinions and ultimately offered their support. We feel so fortunate to be part of such a strong, supportive, and forward-looking community.

We have some more work to do now to finalize the design prior to submitting for Building Permit. With a little luck, we will begin construction early in 2018. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

You’re Invited!

November 3, 2017 by clove 4 Comments

Dear Readers, Friends, Neighbours,

Well here we are, finally approaching the moment when City Council will vote yes or no to our rezoning application. The rezoning is what will change the use of our property from single family to two-family + suite. If we get through this, all that is left in terms of the City’s process is to apply for the building permit to begin construction.

First: We want to thank each of you who shared ideas for making our project better, for offering support, and even just for showing interest in what we are doing. Our project is better because of you! We have made many friends through this process and continue to be amazed by this incredible community we call home.

Second: We officially invite you all to join us at our public hearing next Thursday, November 9 at City Hall! The meeting starts at 6:30 and we are third on the agenda. The format is that we present for 10 to 15 minutes and then Council hears comments from any member of the public who wishes to speak.

If you can’t make the hearing, or speaking in public isn’t your thing, feel free to send a letter or email. These do get read and considered. Here are the City’s instructions for doing this:

For those who are unable to attend, your input can be via mail, an email to publichearings@victoria.ca, or you can drop off your written feedback at Victoria City Hall to the City Hall Ambassador located to the left of the main entrance. Correspondence should be received by 11 a.m. the day before the Council meeting.

Please note that all correspondence submitted will form part of the public record and will be published in the meeting agenda. Your address is relevant to Council’s consideration of this matter and will be included as part of the public record. If you choose to share your phone number and email address with us and wish that it not be disclosed, please let us know and we will ensure it remains confidential.

Thank you again and see you out there!

Public Hearing, Here We Come

September 29, 2017 by clove 2 Comments

On one hand, this project feels like it’s taking forever (2 years and counting since we first shared our concept with our neighbours), but on the other, I’m not sure we’d be able to handle it if it moved any faster, what with the rest of life and all. We’re currently looking at a construction start of early 2018 and there’s a lot that has to happen before then!

At the Committee of the Whole meeting in August, Council voted 7 to 1 that our project was ready to go to public hearing. So mark your calendars for November 9, folks! This is the day we present to Council and the public, and anyone with an opinion is welcome to speak. After that, council weighs in and then votes yes or no to our application. If they vote yes, then we’re done with the rezoning part and can focus on getting to construction. If they vote no, it’s back to the drawing board.

Our general plan is that we be ready to submit for building permit as soon after the public hearing as possible. Once we have our building permit, we can start construction.

Here’s the “lot” that has to happen next:

Finish the passive house model to a point that our certifier can review it and flag anything big before we apply for our building permit.
Find a structural engineer to look at our renovation plans, as well as any strange lateral loads we are introducing by attaching a second house to the side of our current house. Last time I called around, half my calls went unanswered, and the other half said they were too busy to take on any more work. This input will be a requirement for our building permit.
Meet with Mark A (our architect) and Russ (our builder) to firm up our assemblies and talk about cost and constructability issues. The big one currently on my mind is how we will insulate a hip roof transitioning to a flat roof. We’d like to do exterior insulation, but how realistic/affordable/buildable will this be?
This meeting should give Russ what he needs to work up a construction budget, which we can then use to secure financing (another big looming question that I look forward to resolving very soon!).
Prepare for and present at the public hearing.
Prepare building permit drawings and apply for building permit.
Find a place to live during construction, pack up and move there!
Clear out as much of our existing house as we can before Russ takes over.

As for the rest of life, there’s work, hosting Thanksgiving dinner, celebrating our anniversary, visiting friends in Toronto, watching a few movies, hanging out with family and friends, riding bikes, sleeping, eating, reading, being healthy…no big deal, right?

A Sign of Progress

July 29, 2017 by clove Leave a Comment

We posted this enormous sign in front of our house last weekend:

This sign means that we are on the agenda of an early August meeting of the Committee of the Whole, and it will stay up until the Public Hearing. The meeting of the Committee of the Whole is attended by both City Council and city staff, and it’s when they discuss staff’s recommendations for a given project application in advance of the Public Hearing. The meeting is open to all (you can view them in person or remotely here), but we are only allowed to listen in, not participate.

This is the last step toward rezoning approval before the public hearing. We would not expect any further comments from city staff, but it’s possible that Council may raise something major.

In other related news, I also recently reviewed our neighbourhood’s new draft Community Plan – the first update since 2002. Hey, get a load of this:

Duplexes + suites are specifically called out! This was the riskiest part of our rezoning application – that we were asking for a custom zoning because the existing two-family/duplex zoning does not allow suites within the duplex.

While we’ve heard in principle that the city wants more of this type of infill, and the Official Community Plan refers more generally to it, there is currently no zoning to support it. So having a nearly official document explicitly name what we are proposing is very encouraging.

Thanks to all of you who have followed along and supported the project so far!

Inching Ever Closer to Rezoning Approval

June 2, 2017 by clove Leave a Comment

We submitted our revised rezoning package March 14 and received comments back from the City last week. We waited longer than we’d hoped for this response, but I’ve come to accept that things taking longer than hoped is standard operating procedure when developing a project.

Granted, we also threw a couple of wrenches into the process by pushing back on two of the City’s requests from the first round:

The City asked us to provide an additional 1.4 m Statutory Right-of-Way in addition to the 1.0 m already required between the property line and the back of the parking stall (see this post for details). In Round 2 of comments, they have removed this request. Phew! As one of our project goals is to preserve as much backyard green space as possible, this is an excellent outcome. We can now move the building closer to the front of the lot as originally intended.
The City had also asked if we were willing to sign a covenant to show we are serious about pursuing Passive House. Initially, we said yes to keep things moving, but then we thought about it some more and talked to a few friends about their painful experiences with covenants, and concluded that we’d be better off avoiding if possible.

A covenant is a legal encumbrance that gets attached to a property and stays there for the life of the property (in some cases), or is there until you have met certain conditions and it can be removed. In our case, the covenant would say that we are designing and building to the Passive House standard and when the city is satisfied that we are indeed building to the standard, then the covenant can be removed. The problem is that both the adding and removing of a covenant means thousands of dollars in legal fees that provide no lasting benefit to the project.

If we weren’t proposing to go well beyond code, we wouldn’t be facing these legal costs. So we are being penalized, not encouraged, for going above and beyond. This didn’t feel right and we believed it wasn’t what the City was going for either, so we wrote a letter suggesting that we instead demonstrate that we have engaged a Passive House Certifier to review and certify the project. This in itself is a several thousand dollar endeavor – but at least it is one that will have a lasting benefit on our project.

The City of Vancouver takes a similar approach. In Vancouver, Passive House is an accepted rezoning path – meaning, to rezone in that city, you have to go better than code minimum, and Passive House is one approved way to get there. No covenants are required, but their code inspectors have the authority to shut down a job site if they find that you are not building to the permitted documents. They also now have several Passive House trained staff, one of whom will be assigned to your project to help you work through the process.

Happily, the City of Victoria appears to be in agreement (or at least not opposed?), and asked us to update our letter to Mayor and Council to reflect this proposed approach.

Next Steps: We now have to update our drawings to remove any reference to the extra Statutory Right-of-Way, respond to a few other minor comments, update our letter to Mayor and Council, and resubmit the whole package.

We think this means that city staff are now preparing their report to the Committee of the Whole, which is a group composed of staff and council and is the last stop before our public hearing. With a little luck we will have an approved rezoning application in hand by mid-summer.

One step closer!

Argh, Parking! (Responding to City Comments Part 1)

February 17, 2017 by clove Leave a Comment

Lest you surmise I’ve been idly twiddling my thumbs for the past 3 months, I’m overdue to lift my head and share an update.

Besides shivering through Victoria’s longest cold snap in over 30 years, we’ve been working on 2 big things:

Responding to the first round of city comments on our rezoning application.
Completing the Passive House PHPP model.

I’ll cover the first item here. See this post for the Passive House model update.

We received our first round of comments back from the city on December 22 – four weeks after we’d officially submitted. When I first reviewed the comments, I felt discouraged, as there appeared to be a long list of issues. But Ian, our planning consultant, pointed out this key sentence at the beginning of the letter:

The application as submitted can be considered with the land use policies relevant to the property.

Ian thought this was an excellent response. It is saying, albeit obliquely, that the city is likely to support our application, provided we address their comments. Great!

Ian and I met with the planner responsible for our project to clarify some of the comments. Nothing earth shattering resulted from this meeting, but it was good to have the face time and confirm that we understood their intent.

There were two major comments that affect our design: parking and roof lines.

Parking:

I long for the day when the level of consideration, money and space we devote to places to put our cars do not vastly overshadow the resources we devote toward places for people to actually live. Alas.

The rules around parking are largely inflexible and at odds with our desire to preserve green space on our urban lot. At the same time, the more we push the rules, the longer the timeline drags out and the less certain our outcome becomes, so we’re working toward a reasonable solution that satisfies city engineering but does not compromise our project goals.

We’re required to provide 2 off street parking spots for a duplex (the secondary suite does not require a third spot thankfully). Our neighbourhood has a precedent to allow for front yard parking, which we are invoking to preserve as much back yard space as possible.

One of the unbendable requirements is a 1.0 m setback from the rear of the parking spot to the property line. In the initial review, the engineering department also asked for an additional 1.4 m right of way in the front yard. Why? Because they might one day widen our entire block from the current 15 m street width to the more standard 18 m. Really? We already have sidewalks on both sides, parking on both sides, and boulevard green space between the sidewalks and street. The narrowness of our street also has the desired effect of slowing vehicle speeds. Sounds OK to me.

We do not agree with this request, nor is there any policy requirement that we grant this request. So we’ve decided to provide 1.4 m total, not 1.4 plus 1.0 m, as a compromise that we feel is likely to be accepted. Here’s how the design has evolved as a result:

Before: We were just a hair short of the 1.0 m required between the end of the stall and the property line, but thought we’d give it a shot:

After: We’ve shifted the house back 0.7 m and shortened up the back end of the new addition to achieve the 1.4 m setback at the front without infringing on rear setback limits:

This design change has the added bonus of simplifying the enclosure shape, which is good for Passive House, and we’re pleased with this evolution.

Roof Transition:

The City questioned the transition between old and new roofs. Something wasn’t working, and they rightly pointed out a weakness in our design, if not a simple lack of clarity.

We bandied about the idea of a more dramatic change to the existing hip roof to a gable roof. In addition to being a bolder shape, a gable roof would open up the potential for a loft space, vaulted ceilings and other cool design elements.

But then we thought through the implications – changing most of the roof line, extending the walls up to create the gable; interior redesign to include a stair or other access to the loft space, and potential zoning floor area restrictions we might now bump up against. Besides the fact that our existing house would no longer resemble its original self, there were a whole host of ripple effects that were going to add cost and stretch out the project timeline.

Fortunately, though, as the creative process often goes, this exercise led Mark A to a more elegant solution for the hip roof, which is what we chose to stick with. Here is the before transition from old to new:

And the after:

Renderings by Mark Ashby Architecture

We’ve been working on these revisions for the past six weeks. When complete, we will submit an updated set, a revised letter to Mayor and Council, and an updated narrative. We may get another round of comments, or if all goes well, we will move on to the meeting of the Committee of the Whole – one step closer to rezoning approval, and we’re holding firm on our current goal to be under construction this summer!

Over to You, City!

December 1, 2016 by clove 1 Comment

We have officially submitted our rezoning application! And don’t be silly – of course it didn’t go as smoothly as expected. One of these days, I will know better.

View from the northeast, rendering Mark Ashby Architect

A couple of Thursdays ago, I hauled 10 lbs and $120 worth of paper down to City Hall for my 11 AM appointment, including:

80 sheets of 24 x 36 plans (5 sets)
2 sets of 11 x 17 plans
3 sets of 8.5 x 11 plans
letter to Mayor and Council
completed Rezoning Application forms
plus a check for $2150
and a flash drive with PDF versions of all of the above

At this required appointment, a staffer takes a first pass to check for completeness before your application wends it way through the various departments. I suspect this is ultimately a time saver for everyone, although it left me with a feeling that I’m navigating my way through a labyrinth with more dead ends than ways through. In reality, there is simply a lot for a first timer to wrap one’s head around and get right.

Turns out we were missing the “average proposed grade” calculation and a line indicating such on elevations and sections. We were also missing a label for the setback distance between the main structure and the accessory building.

I was told to come back again when I had corrected these omissions. I grumbled that there would be no celebrating that weekend, and grumbled louder that I had to haul the giant roll of paper back home; reprint and repeat. The patient staffer assured me that it would be quicker next time because she’d already checked everything else.

So Mark A made the requested changes, I reprinted the five affected sheets in the various sizes and quantities, reassembled the sets, and made a second trip down to City Hall the following Tuesday after work.

One thing that I thought to ask at this second appointment was about the Development Permit Application. From what I understood, the Rezoning Application is required for a change in use to a property; for example, from single family to two-family. A Development Permit Application is also required for any requested variances; for example, moving parking from the rear to the front yard. I had been told by my planner contact that they would review both applications at the same time. Was there a separate application and fee for the Development Permit piece? Oh, yes, in fact there was. Fortunately, I was able to fill out the second application on the spot, and add the extra $750 to the $1400 check I was already writing for the rezoning.

I’m happy to report that this time, our application was accepted and the 6-8 month processing time clock has officially started ticking!

I feel a muted celebration is in order as we await the first round of comments. We already know that adding a suite to a duplex is not allowed in the current zoning, and the staffer pointed out as much. Our proposal is well aligned with the more current Official Community Plan (OCP). Still, there is a possibility that the city will recommend rejecting our proposal on the basis of existing zoning, and we will have to appeal to City Council to vote against city staff recommendations, but in line with the OCP. We’re building exactly the same square footage as we would build if we were not adding a suite, and by adding the suite, we are adding housing diversity and affordability in an extremely efficient manner – all key goals of the OCP. So we’ll see.

And here’s a fun feature: I can track the progress of our application (and any other application) with the City’s Development Tracker app:

We can expect comments within a few weeks. Stay tuned!

Community Meeting: Success!

November 20, 2016 by clove Leave a Comment

Our community meeting was a success! (At least it felt that way for a while.)

The intent of this meeting, hosted by the local Community Association Land Use Committee (CALUC), is to gather comments from neighbours that will be submitted as part of your rezoning application. The comments may also lead to design changes. While this is the official opportunity to gather community input, you’d be foolish not have at least introduced the project to your neighbours well in advance. In our case, we are over a year into the conversation.

I had sat in on several meetings for other projects, so I knew the general format. Still, I felt a lot of uncertainty before our meeting because I didn’t know who would be there besides our neighbour who had vocally opposed our small lot subdivision proposal.

The meeting started at 7 PM. There were four projects on the agenda, and we were #2. The room was packed and stuffy. I knew a handful of people.

The first project was a proposed 4-storey condo building to replace two single family homes across from Beacon Hill Park. The presentation went for an hour and a half, with a lot of discussion around scale, height, parking, privacy, views, and south-facing light – very typical discussion points from what I’ve seen.

After much of the room cleared out, we taped up our drawings and presented to about 15 people plus 5 members of the CALUC. At least 8 people were there for our project; many but not all were familiar faces.

We heard the full range of comments, from ‘everything about it is brilliant’ to ‘everything about it is horrible’. No kidding! On the whole, though, the feedback was very positive, and we had a thoughtful conversation about how to do creative infill in our city. I hesitate to represent the comments of others, so I will just say that those who supported the project seemed aligned with what we were aiming for, while the ‘horrible’ comment was too vague to draw any constructive criticism from. Our neighbours who were strongly opposed to the small lot subdivision focused on the details – plantings between our properties, the design of the roof line etc, which I took as an encouraging sign.

To get to this point feels like an accomplishment, even though we still face many more steps before we can break ground.

We originally chose this property because it is in a fabulous location and well suited to a small infill project. Early on, I heard a lot of stories from neighbours who had fought off various developments over the years. I wondered whether we had chosen the wrong neighbourhood. And yet we persisted through comments like ‘You’re ruining the neighbourhood’, ‘I’ll fight this to the death’ and ‘We’ll have to sue you’. We clung to the encouragement of those who liked what we were doing, and in talking to as many people as we could, we discovered that opposition was very localized; a minority talking like a majority. Still, we listened. We changed our design. And here we are, ready to submit our rezoning application.

And I actually believe even more strongly now that this is the perfect neighbourhood for our project. The way it has evolved reflects not only our vision and values, but also those we share with our neighbours. It reflects the eclectic and thoughtful character of and characters in our community.

POSTSCRIPT: I since received an email from a neighbour who attended the meeting that was very negative and attacking on our character. Two steps forward…

A friend told me before we started on this path that someone will always hate your project, no matter what you do. Fair enough, but I could do without the personal attacks. Needing a lift, I went for a long walk and checked out a couple of Passive House project tours that were happening around town (the 5th Street Passive House currently under construction and the North Park Passive House, which has been occupied for over a year). I got a few new ideas and my spirit was buoyed by the conversations I had with people who are committed to improving our environment, enthusiastic about learning, open about making mistakes, and hopeful for the future.

To all of you: Namaste!

CALUC, Here We Come!

October 10, 2016 by clove Leave a Comment

We are presenting our duplex proposal at the Fairfield Gonzales Community Association Land Use Committee (CALUC) on October 20! The Association’s political struggles have sufficiently abated that the Committee has resumed its activities.

Everyone who lives or runs a business within 100m of our property will receive a letter inviting them to the meeting, and anyone can attend. We present our plans; neighbours ask questions and provide comments, and the CALUC records those and submits them to the city. Depending on the comments received, we may make some revisions before submitting our official rezoning application. Then the 6-8 month clock starts ticking as our application wends its way through the various city engineering and planning departments. If all that goes well, we present at a Public Hearing, at which City council votes yay or nay to approve our application.

Then we apply for our building permit and then we can put shovels to the ground – phew! With a little luck, we’ll get rolling with construction early next summer.

We are still tweaking a few things, but here’s how the design is shaping up.

Front Elevation, sketch by Kate Stefiuk

Landscape plan, sketch by Kate Stefiuk

Attached Duplex Design is a Go!

July 17, 2016 by clove 2 Comments

Attached model experiments by Mark Ashby

We’re going ahead with a new attached duplex design! Here’s why:

The attached option addresses some neighbours’ concern that the small lot house would have been too close to our neighbours. The attached option creates more space on the sides and fits better on our lot.
The attached option provides more distance to the large Garry oak in the adjacent yard to the south – better for its roots and less shade for our rooftop solar photovoltaics.
I’ve identified at least a couple of lending options that are viable for the attached option.
The massing is better for energy performance (less exterior walls = less energy lost through the envelope).
The approval process is simpler – we can meet the two-family zoning regulations with fewer variances and no longer need to collect petition signatures.
The city fees for the rezoning application are lower and we eliminate city subdivision fees (which amounts to savings of $5,000-$8000).

If we were set on the small lot subdivision option and were willing to wait a while, we might have been able to get it through. But the attached option does meet our needs and we do want to get the project going, so it felt like the best solution given the circumstances.

The design in now in progress and we’ll share renderings soon. One of the debates we’ve had is how to design an addition to an old existing house. Do we blend the design so that it looks like one unified whole? I think if we were designing from scratch we would do that. But to make the structure look like a unified whole, we actually would have to change the form of the existing house dramatically – particularly the roof.

We believe that the best way to honour the existing home and to retain as much of its existing structure as possible is to create a marked distinction between new and old. Mark A is taking a sculptural approach to the addition to contrast with the existing form and work with the existing roofline. Not an easy task, and we’re thankful we have an architect like Mark working out the details.

I had hoped to present the design at the mid-August Fairfield Gonzales Community Association Land Use Committee (CALUC), but discovered that the committee has been disbanded. Well, temporarily at least, as the group reconciles its status as a charity organization with its role in land use development issues. I am attending a community meeting to learn more. Stay tuned and in the meantime, enjoy the sun!

Holy cow!

Parking:

Roof Transition:

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