EVERETT — Worried about too many homes being crammed into too little space, the City Council on Wednesday increased the minimum lot size for most new homes.

In 1995, the council lowered the minimum lot size from 5,000 to 4,500 square feet to help accommodate the city’s growing population. In some cases, owners of large lots subdivided their land so developers could build one or more homes on what had been a yard.

"They plop two or three homes as big as they can get behind a small cottage, and they don’t fit at all with the character of the neighborhood," said City Councilwoman Marian Krell, who said she heard complaints about the small lots when she was director of the Office of Neighborhoods.

On Wednesday, the council returned to the 5,000-square-foot minimum. The 4,500-square-foot lot size was the smallest in Snohomish County, said Paul Roberts, director of planning.

"The biggest problem is that, as the size of the lots has decreased, the size of the houses and other things that people own haven’t," Roberts said. "We want to have houses be compatible with the land it sits on."

Crowding homes together also sometimes causes crawl-space flooding and other drainage problems for neighbors of the new homes because there is less exposed soil to absorb water, said Larry Crawford, the city’s chief administrative assistant.

Some cluster developments of six or more homes that are built on lots that currently do not have a house will continue to have a less stringent requirement as low as 3,000 square feet for a home that does not have a driveway.

The shift in lot size is one of a long list of changes in land use and zoning that the council made Wednesday.

One change requires at least 600 square feet of yard space next to each new home. Previous regulations allowed some of the yard space to be accessible only by going through a garage; now it must be directly adjacent to the home.

Another change requires two-car garages for all new homes to help avoid on-street parking problems, said David Tyler, a planner with the city.

The Council of Neighborhoods endorsed Wednesday’s changes, but some builders and surveyors opposed some of them.

Dave Gardner, president of the Everett land-surveying firm ASPI, said the yard requirement will give developers less flexibility on where to build. The garage requirement, he said, will make it about $10,000 more expensive to build homes.

But he said the changes are better than those originally proposed. Gardner said city officials met with him and other surveyors and builders and made adjustments. The changes are "workable," he said.

Reporter David Olson:

425-339-3452 or

dolson@heraldnet.com