43-17 Updated Rezoning- 1237 & 1303 Ironwood

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Staff Report 8/4/2017 Utilities: The site will be served by municipal water and sewer. Agency Comments: The City Engineer commented that the Department of Public Works recommends approval subject to completion of a utility verification form; approval of sidewalk, curb cut, lighting and overall site improvement to reflect the Master Plan for the surrounding area; approval of a draining plan; and verification of required (if any)waivers. They suggest investigating the line of site on the western approach to the site and shifting the driveway on building 30 to the north. Community Investment offers a favorable recommendation subject to the following site plan suggestions: The houses facing Rosemary Lane (Lots 1, 2, and 30) should be rear loaded and accessed internally from the site. The street facing side of the Ironwood Drive and Rosemary Lane houses (Lots 1, 2, 15, 16, 17, and 30) should be fully designed as the front of the house-While these houses have front porches,their 60'length allows the possibility of sections of blank wall. To mitigate this, street-facing windows could be added to the rear of the garage. As they will be viewable from the streets and have a prominent place at the end of the project entry drives,the houses on Lots 14 and 29 should have a porch that turns the corner and/or have special building articulation at the front corner. To concentrate the visual impact of garage entries,the houses on Lots 15 and 30 should be flipped to provide driveways at the end of the internal drives (similar to Lot 17). To avoid too regimented an appearance of the houses, the houses should employ varying fagade treatments/articulation, building materials, window styles, colors, or other similar approaches even if the basic floor plan is identical. The petitioner may consider reducing the number of houses in the project by two, eliminating one from each of the east-west rows. This would allow: A north-south sidewalk to be installed to provide additional access to the central green and to offer a small break in the massing of the units (walk could be installed between Lots 8 and 9 and Lots 23 and 24 or could be offset to stagger slightly the middle units to the east and west); Provide the houses on Lots 3 and 29 with a western side yard: and Lessen or eliminate the need for a front yard setback variance for the houses along Rosemary Lane and Ironwood Drive. The parking bays along the north and south property lines have 4-6 spaces between tree islands. A pattern of 2 spots, 1 tree should be employed to provide additional landscaping and to break up and reduce the paved area. Parking space counts will be reduced somewhat, but the total parking proposed is nearly 3.5 times the ordinance requirement. The installation of the privacy fence along the south property line should not create any significant no-man's land between it and any existing fences of the Peachtree Lane properties. DCI has not seen the list of requested variances but would generally be supportive of front and side yard variances to achieve the layout proposed on the preliminary site plan or something similar. The Building Department noted that because of the nature and orientation of the interior units at this location, and for the sake of clarity, it is more important to reference the north and south ends of the buildings that face the interior courtyard and include the front door, as the front and the opposite ends as being the rear. The east and west units along Ironwood and Rosemary will have typical fronts and other yard references. Commitments: Staff is requesting a written commitment: 1)properties adjacent to Ironwood and APC # 2836-17 Page 2 of 4