Some Bay Space neighborhoods which have traditionally resisted efforts to develop high-density housing of their enclaves now are embracing historical past as an end-run round a brand new state regulation that permits owners to construct as much as 4 residential items on a single-family lot.
A gaggle of householders in one in every of San Mateo’s wealthiest neighborhoods has filed an utility with the State Historic Assets Fee for designation as an historic district, which might exempt the upscale subdivision from California’s SB9 regulation.
The marketing campaign to create a Baywood historic district in a leafy neighborhood populated by Spanish Revival-style properties with tile roofs, fruit timber and hydrangea bushes has divided the Peninsula metropolis into two camps, based on a report within the San Francisco Chronicle.
A gaggle calling itself the San Mateo Heritage Alliance has indicated that if it succeeds in getting the state fee to simply accept Baywood as an historic district, it could search historic designations for neighborhoods throughout central San Mateo, together with the Central, North Central, Aragon, Hayward Park and San Mateo Park neighborhoods, the report mentioned.
In the meantime, yellow indicators declaring “No Baywood Historic District” are also popping up on entrance yards in Baywood. The indicators promote an internet site known as lessredtape.com.
Metropolis officers, who apparently didn’t authorize the applying from Baywood earlier than it was filed with the state company, look like lining up towards the proposal.
“Permitting a gaggle of unelected people, that don’t essentially stay within the neighborhood, to impose a blanket historic designation that comes with further purple tape and prices is deeply regarding,” San Mateo Mayor Amourence Lee informed the Chronicle.
San Mateo Planning Commissioner Seema Patel, who opposes the historic district designation, mentioned the designation might kill efforts to extend housing designation in among the metropolis’s most walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods, the newspaper report mentioned.
In response to the report, the kerfuffle over the historic designation was touched off when somebody who purchased a Spanish Revival residence relationship to 1933 filed plans to demolish the present constructing and change it with a bigger home and an adjunct dwelling unit generally referred to as a Granny flat.
Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis regulation professor who’s an professional on California housing regulation, known as using historic districts to restrict the applying of SB9 “a gaping loophole.”
“SB9′s historic exemption is de facto broad and native our bodies have handled it as an invite to exempt no matter they wish to exempt,” Elmendorf informed the Chronicle, including that it’s simpler to designate a whole district than a person property, just by “drawing traces on a map.”
