Residents of Kensington applying for a building permit will no longer need to include scale models and color renderings in their initial request.
After 18 months of planning, and a recent public hearing, Village of Kensington Board of Trustees last Wednesday approved two new bills updating zoning laws.
“We were told by the building inspector and others that our laws were not modern and not keeping up with some of the new things happening in the community”, Village of Kensington Mayor Susan Lopatkin said.
Twenty years have gone by since the village zoning laws were last updated, Lopatkin said.
“The first bill approved changed the architectural review board section of the village code to no longer require applicants for a building permit to include scale models and color renderings in their initial request.
The architectural review committee could later in the building permit process require scale models and color renderings if they considered it necessary.
The second bill updated the Kensington code. The changes included allowing the maximum ceiling height of homes on the first floor to be 12 feet, and second-floor ceiling heights to be a maximum of 10 feet.
The height limitation will not apply to front entrance foyers, vestibules and one-story additions.
Additional changes included a catastrophe clause, which will allow the rebuilding of a house damaged in any sort of disaster over 50 percent, to be rebuilt as is, even if it’s zoning non complaint, provided that there are plans in place on file in the village hall.
“Now the catastrophe clause was a very big deal, because I’d say about half of the houses in the village, don’t have current plans in place,” Lopatkin said. “Either they were too old, they were destroyed, there is a myriad of reasons.
Lopatkin also thanked everyone for their efforts in bringing forth their concerns and believed many of the concerns were addressed.
“I also just want to commend Mayor Lopatkin who has done an unbelievable job of analyzing every square inch of this code,” Village of Kensington Deputy Mayor Gail Strongwater said. “She has every single comment that was made by any resident, she took to heart she investigated, there was nothing ignored, she wanted to make sure all the information was totally accurate.”
