Category: snout house

Buggy whips still gone, but protest petitions survive

Bill that would limit N.C. cities’ power to ban projecting garages passed the N.C. House but not the N.C. Senate. This street in Corpus Christi, Texas, features so-called “snout houses.” Photo: Brett VA, Creative Commons

 It turns out protest petitions did NOT go the way of buggy whips, at least not in the just-ended session of the N.C. General Assembly.

Here’s what I wrote last month: “Protest petitions going the way of buggy whips.” But elected officials are nothing if not predictably unpredictable. As The Charlotte Observer’s Jim Morrill wrote (while I was vacationing at the beach) : “Right to protest zoning changes survives N.C. Legislature.“

The bill that contained the end of protest petitions also contained a variety of other regulatory changes. This one will be of particular concern to environmentalists: As the blog for the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition put it, “For the next year, local governments are prohibited from adopting any new environmental regulations that exceed state or federal law, unless they do by unanimous vote.”  Here’s a link to that REBIC blog item.

The not-loved-by-planners provision that would limit local government’s ability to regulate the placement of doors, windows and other architectural elements for single-family housing and some multifamily – House Bill 150 – passed the N.C. House but didn’t make it out of the Senate. REBIC notes this bill was its top priority.

Planners had deep concerns that it would ban them from regulating so-called snout houses, in which garages projecting from the front of houses can, in subdivisions of look-alike houses, create the visual image of a street of garages, rather than a street of houses. In addition, a growing number of communities have adopted form-based zoning codes (here’s a link to the Form-Based Codes Institute) which worry less about density or the uses of buildings, giving developers far more flexibility, but which instead concentrate on how well buildings fit in with their surroundings. Architectural design elements play a larger role in a form-based code than in a conventional zoning ordinance.

For a pro-con package on House Bill 150, check out PlanCharlotte.org‘s articles from March: Bill to limit local zoning powers: two views.

Legislature 2013: Most ‘pro-business session in N.C. history’?

‘Snout houses’ in Indiana. Photo: John Delano, Wikipedia.com

Ran across an interesting post from the blog of the local Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, reporting the doings at a Friday forum the lobbying group held for legislators from Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties. Sponsors were REBIC and the N.C. Home Builders Association.

The session “gave home builders many reasons to be optimistic that 2013 would be one of the most pro-business sessions in North Carolina history,” reports the blog.  Read it in full here.

All the legislators on the panel agreed they’d support legislation similar to Senate Bill 731, which passed the Senate in 2011 but didn’t make it through the House before the session died. That bill, sponsored by Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, and Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, R-Cabarrus, would have limited munipalities’ ability to regulate architectural details such as windows, doors and garage doors for single-family residential developments with five or fewer units an acre.

Planners informally called it the “snout-house bill,” because one of the most contentious items in some zoning ordinances, including Davidson’s, is a provision forbidding garages to project far in front of the rest of the house, dwarfing the front door and windows. Planners call those “snout houses,” and say they create a street view that emphasizes cars over people.  Home builders counter that on small lots it’s more economical to build garages that way, and that cities shouldn’t get so deep into architectural details.

Download the text here.
Read its history in the 2011-12 General Assembly here.

Back to the Friday forum:
A bill requiring a sunset provision for “all state administrative rules” won plaudits as well. Primary sponsors include Rep. Ruth Samuelson, R-Mecklenburg, and Rob Bryan, R-Mecklenburg.

Lipstick on a ‘snout house’?

You’ve heard of snout houses, I assume? Those are houses where the garage projects so far forward it overpowers the rest of the architecture. Developers like them because you can put a garage (a selling point) on a much smaller lot. Architects hate them, and planners tend to look askance at whole neighborhoods where it’s easy to tell that the cars are happy but hard to tell whether any people live there. They’re much more common in the lower end of the price spectrum for single-family housing, but you’ll sometimes see very high-end snouts. I know of one that some neighbors have dubbed the “Taj Garage.”

I’ve read articles about how in some neighborhoods, the garage-with-open-door has become a sort of front porch, where neighbors gather to drink beer, play cards, etc.

But what do you do when you have to keep the garage door shut? Private enterprise (European-style) to the rescue. Now you can buy a garage door photo tarp. The company, from Munich, Germany, is style-your-garage.com. The garage door tarp pictured atop this blog would set you back 289 Euros (about $393).
For a chuckle of the day, check out their wares and imagine them decorating garages all over town.