Everett, Wash.
Published: Monday, April 7, 2008

Snohomish County may require new houses to blend in with neighborhoods

Officials draft rules on greenery, building heights and garage doors

By Jeff Switzer, Herald Writer

 When the woods near her south Everett neighborhood were cut down and tightly packed homes went up, Jennifer Juckett wondered if the people who moved in could hear each other's toilets flushing.

She mourned the loss of the trees, and the new houses felt out of synch with her older neighborhood of ramblers and split-levels. One of them even had 13 steps climbing to the front door.

"I counted," Juckett said. "I thought it was ridiculous."

As housing in Snohomish County boomed in recent years, whole neighborhoods were built in a flash. The final vacant lots in some urban areas were snapped up and developed with new houses.

Residents started complaining -- and are still at it -- about how developers were building homes that just didn't blend in.

In response, the county is drafting its first ever batch of architectural and housing guidelines for urban areas. The County Council is expected to consider the guidelines for unincorporated areas this spring.

The proposed guidelines call for toning down overbearing two-car garage doors and better matching building heights and roof lines to the surrounding neighborhood.

When a developer wants to mow down the trees on a property, the county will call for new trees to be planted. For each tree measuring 24 inches across that is felled, the county is calling for three new trees to be planted.

A task force of 12 building companies is calculating how much the rules will add to housing costs, said Mike Pattison of the Master Builders of King and Snohomish Counties.

"Nothing will affect us more," Pattison said. "Everyone who builds housing in the urban area will be under (these rules)."

The county has worked closely with the construction industry on the proposed rules, something worth praise, Pattison said. Even so, he plans to haggle over proposed tree replacement rules.

The cost of architectural upgrades could add up to 2 percent to the cost of a housing project, said Mark Hinshaw, director of urban design for LMN Architects in Seattle. Hinshaw helped the county write its proposed regulations.

Future projects built by Bothell-based Pacific Ridge Homes might have to meet higher standards for landscaping to shield neighbors or nearby retail shops, said Lynn Eshleman, land development manager for Pacific Ridge Homes.

That could mean fewer houses per acre, and that could increase the costs per house, Eshleman said.

"If it's a higher cost to us, it's a higher cost to the home buyer," said Eshleman, whose company has built 1,000 homes since it started eight years ago.

The county rules take an important step toward settling long-standing concerns with residents in unincorporated areas of the county, County Councilman Dave Gossett said.

"An awful lot of the frustration with growth from neighborhoods has to do with how it's designed," Gossett said. "The sites, when they're done, have no trees. People viscerally react to that and not positively."

Residents say the houses don't look like the rest of the neighborhood, Gossett said. "When they look at the street and all they see is garages, it doesn't look like the neighborhood."

Snohomish County's problems date back to 1995, when the county adopted state growth management laws to funnel housing into urban areas, planning officials said. Building codes weren't overhauled, and the feel of neighborhoods changed as new houses were built.

Today, dozens of homes are being built on the final vacant pockets of land in urban neighborhoods. Some homes are being demolished and replaced with up to a dozen densely packed houses per acre.

The county wants to pay more attention to preserving neighborhood character, Gossett said, and protect property rights from being harmed by nearby housing that clashes in style or size.

The county is behind the times in setting residential design rules compared to other urban counties in the state, Hinshaw said. Spokane, Douglas and Clark counties, smaller than Snohomish County, already have such rules, and the city of Edmonds has had them for decades.

The county spent a year and a half working on the guidelines to make them flexible enough and give builders a menu of choices, said Craig Ladiser, county director of Planning and Development Services.

Cities will eventually take over responsibility for the county's urban areas, and support from cities is needed, Ladiser said. That means producing housing developments that the cities won't spurn.

"We wanted to shift away from cookie-cutter assembly line residential construction," Ladiser said. "We have to balance the density needs of population growth with the existing character and fit of the community."

Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA