Chair Ung round 2: Mangin on neighborhood character and out-of-scale buildings
Ung asks whether buildings out of scale with context adversely affect neighborhood character, giving a hypothetical 14-story building in R5 zoning. Mangin says BSA cannot approve actions affecting neighborhood character, but notes some R1-R5 areas have tall buildings, making edge cases harder to answer definitively.
And now we're actually gonna move on to the second round of questions.
So I just wanted to start off with a follow-up question.
So back to neighborhood characteristics.
Do you view proposed buildings that outscale the immediate built context as something that you adversely affect the neighborhood character?
So for example, is there any BSA permit or variance that you think would be granted in an R5 or below zoning for a building that would be, let's just say 14 stories with a density equivalent to an R8?
Thank you for the question.
Again, BSA is not able to approve any actions that would alter the neighborhood character.
So you can say that pretty definitively.
When it comes to individual applications in individual sites, it's harder to answer that definitively because we do have areas in R1 through R5 that have 30 plus story.
buildings on occasion.
Or it's very common, for instance, even in one or two family areas, to have pre-1961 six-story buildings around there that could be relevant to neighborhood context.
But, you know, if you're asking about an edge case, like could you put a high-rise in a neighborhood where everything else is two stories, like it seems extremely unlikely that that would be possible.
Okay, thank you for that.