Reply to Arlington Missing Middle Housing Q&A

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the county should prioritize denser housing along existing commercial corridors. Giving developers carte blanche to build 6 and 8-plex monsters in the middle of SFH neighborhoods just sounds...ill advised.[/quote]

MM housing in residential neighborhoods would have the same setbacks of a SFH. They wouldn’t be any more of a monster than the standard Arlington McMansion. [/quote]

The MM people want the ACB/Zoning to relax the setbacks to 15 feet rather than the current 25 feet. The only exceptions would have to be streets where there are neighborhood covenants that have a 35 foot setback.  
The tricky parts are going to be lot coverage, storm water management, side setbacks, parking, side lots with traffic lines of sight,  and tree coverage.

I had to politely point out to a neighbor who is the Arlington County planner working on  MM housing that not all the lots in North Arlington are flat.  All of the plans assume that multiple units can be placed on any lot.  In hilly neighborhoods, there may be a 12,000 square foot lot (where planners envision 8 units can be built) that will only support one house, because most of the lot is a hillside. This would be very attractive to some people buying a single family home because they would have nice views and privacy.  But it would be very expensive and difficult to engineer those 12,000 square foot lots to support 8 units.  Thinking of Tara, Country Club Hills, Bellevue Forest, Crystal Spring Knolls, Dover, Riverwood, RiverCrest, Dominion Hills, Madison Manor, and other hilly areas.  Her response was "I've never seen lots in Arlington where you could not build multiple housing units."
Mkay.
[/quote]

Anything can be done for a price. You’re not going to dump $500k in engineering and grading on a lot that cost you $1m and would support a $2m home. But you might if you could sell 8 units at $1.2m each. Like anything, the more desirable lots will be redeveloped first, but when those run out and prices go up they’ll go after the low hanging fruit as well. [/quote]

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