Plandome seeks to change village building, zoning codes

Amelia Camurati
Plandome trustees Donald Richardson, right, and Katie Saville discuss the potential building and zoning changes in the village. (Photo by Amelia Camurati)

Village of Plandome trustees on Monday night discussed potential changes to the building and zoning codes that Trustee Andrew Bartels said are meant to simplify the formulas and help keep the character of the village.

“We collectively have concerns about what’s been happening in the village in terms of the size of properties,” Bartels said. “We’re concerned that those properties in some cases are pushing the boundaries of size and becoming quite large in proportion to the rest of the village.”

Bartels, who worked with the village’s zoning and architectural review boards on the proposed revisions, said the village is seeing a rise in the number of new homes that seek to maximize the gross floor area, overwhelming neighboring homes.

The Village of Plandome is divided into four districts based on lot size.
(Photo courtesy of Village of Plandome)

The proposed changes, which have been posted to the village website for resident input, include reducing the maximum gross floor area in each of the village’s four zoning districts to approximately one quarter less than the current standard, simplifying formulas for calculating maximum gross floor area and height setback ratios, revising some definitions for clarity and shifting 12 lots on Plymouth Road from District C to District A, which contains the largest lot sizes.

The Plymouth Road lots, Bartels said, are much larger than the other District C lots and would fit closer to the sizes in District A.

In the proposed changes, the maximum gross floor area in each district would be reduced  — from 10,000 square feet to 8,000 in District A, from 8,640 to 6,500 in District B, from 7,200 to 5,500 in District C and from 6,200 to 4,700 in District D.

Bartels said if the proposed regulations were currently in place, very few homes in the village would have been affected. Some of those homes are older and would have been grandfathered in, and the others are either in District A or are the Plymouth Road homes planned for redistricting.

In District A, 10 homes are between 8,000 and 10,000 square feet and the other 104 homes in the district are less than 8,000 square feet. The current average gross floor area is 4,662 square feet.

In District B, two homes are currently larger than 6,500 square feet but smaller than the current 8,640-square-foot requirement and both homes — 25 West Drive and 57 North Drive — would be grandfathered in because of age, Bartels said. The current average gross floor area is 4,012 square feet.

District C is the largest district in the village with 212 homes, but only five — 55 Plymouth Drive, 65 Plymouth Drive, 152 Plymouth Drive, 142 Plymouth Drive and 132 Plymouth Drive — exceed the proposed 5,500-square-foot amendment and would all be moved to District A under the proposed changes. The current average gross floor area is 3,442 square feet.

In District D, no homes exceed the current or proposed maximum gross floor area measurements and all are less than 4,000 square feet. The current average gross floor area is 2,397 square feet.

In all districts, the formulas to calculate floor area ratio have been replaced with a simple figure per district. In District A, maximum floor area ratio would be .31; in District B, the ratio would be .32; in District C, the ratio would be .34; in District D, it would be .35.

“We also recognize that there are a number of formulas in the code that are very complex and require quite a bit of difficulty calculating from the architect’s perspective, which we will simplify,” Bartels said.

Zoning board member Susan Frooks, who helped with the proposed changes, said at the meeting that the current measurements were being abused, from home sizes to the roof height, which would be changed from a formula dependent upon slope to a standard 35 feet throughout the districts.

“I do think the tendency is to build as much as you’re allowed to build if you’re a developer, whether it’s necessary space or space that’s even going to be used,” Frooks said. “I think there is a lot of pushback from the people in the village who are upset about that. It needs to be shuttered, but how far we can go without affecting people’s property values is another question.”

The plan will be reviewed by attorneys and residents, Bartels said, before the Board of Trustees votes, possibly in April.

Share this Article