Small Residential Dwellings plan under research by Planning Commission

Overcrowding and development within city limits are at the top of the list of concerns for many Gig Harbor residents.

Specifically concerning to many are the Small Residential Dwellings (SRD) plans — also known as Cottage Housing — that the Gig Harbor Planning Commission is currently reviewing for the City Council.

Residents voiced their concerns loudly at an open house held recently by the Planning Commission, while others wrote letters to the editor and guest columns in this newspaper.

The goal of SRDs are to provide a variety of housing options to Gig Harbor residents and to develop the urban areas of the city in accordance with the Growth Management Act, said Planning Director Jennifer Kester.

“As a city in the state of Washington, we’re required to accommodate a certain number of people within city limits so the rural area outside city limits could remain rural,” Kester said. “People in our community have different circumstances in their lives and need different ways to live.”

The idea is nothing new. SRDs were first investigated by the City Council in 2008 and have remained on the Planning Department’s work program since 2009.

The department began working on the proposed amendments last year.

Senior Planner Lindsey Sehmel has served as the project lead for the research and analysis of the cottage-style developments.

“The work that was done by the council group back in 2008 saw that (these types of houses) could fit within the area,” Sehmel said.

The Planning Department looked at Cottage Housing developments in several other cities similar in size to Gig Harbor to determine how these developments fit into the surrounding communities. The cities with SRD developments they looked at included Port Townsend, Lacey, Buckley and Ferndale.

Cottage Housing was a building movement in the early to mid-2000s that favored smaller, single-family homes clustered around a shared outside space, Kester said.

They are small footprint homes designed around common area and are not car-centric. Many developments have “micro-lots” for residents to park at and then walk a short distance to their homes.

“The other idea of cottage housing it trying to create more aesthetically pleasing area and reduce impact on (the) land,” Kester said. “(They) require less parking in order to maintain more green open space.”

The draft considerations for the SRD include a maximum building footprint of 900 square feet, with a maximum of 1,400 square feet in living space, which can be laid out in a variety of ways, Kester said, either in a single-story or two-story.

The Planning Commission has identified several areas throughout the city where SRDs could be placed, but no potential changes to zoning codes have been presented.

Sehmel noted that these SRDs must meet the existing requirements for building and fire code, which include a minimum of 10 feet between dwellings, along with meeting setback, height, building code and parking requirements.

“There’s not a deviation from those standards,” she said. “The standards that are currently being proposed and discussed — with the exception of density and units per acre — are the same as would be required to be met for a single family home.”

The proposed density and units per acre for the SRDs would be between four units per acre with a maximum of 12 units per acre. A half-acre minimum is required for the proposal of each development, and the proposal limits the number of units in any development to 36.

The housing type is designed to appeal to a few different demographics, Kester said, from young professionals to retirees or people later in their career.

“It’s people generally looking to downsize or don’t want a bigger house they have to maintain,” she said. “There’s a variety of different ways (these dwellings) can be used.”

The SRDs are still currently in the “research and analysis phase,” according to Sehmel, and the Planning Commission has not yet made a recommendation to the council.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 11:52 AM with the headline "Small Residential Dwellings plan under research by Planning Commission."