Larger houses targeted

Proposal focuses on McMansions

By: Lea Kahn
   Township officials are drafting an ordinance to control the size of the new houses in an attempt to balance the needs of existing neighborhoods and the needs of builders who want to construct larger homes.
   Philip Caton, the Lawrence Township planning consultant, said he expects to present a proposed amendment to the township’s Land Use Ordinance next month that would limit the size of new houses.
   The planning consultant said he also is preparing a report that would include the rationale for the proposed amendment. Both documents are expected to be presented to the Planning Board in December.
   The amendment to the Land Use Ordinance would have to be adopted by Township Council and would likely be presented to Township Council after January.
   Mr. Caton said the Planning Board has indicated it wants to examine regulating the intensity of development on in-fill building lots, vacant lots that are scattered across the township in different neighborhoods.
   "(The maximum size of a new house) would be in relationship to what is in the immediate neighborhood, rather than a single standard that applies across an entire zoning district," Mr. Caton said.
   Citing statistics provided by the National Association of Home Builders, Mr. Caton said nationwide, the size of the average house has grown from 1,905 square feet in 1987, to 2,320 square feet in 2002. Today, many of these large houses have been dubbed "McMansions."
   Township officials have said Lawrence is on the verge of being built-out, meaning there is little land left to develop. Builders have therefore begun to eye small lots in various neighborhoods as possible sites for new houses.
   Mr. Caton was asked by the Planning Board earlier this year to create an ordinance amendment that would control the size of new houses built on the vacant, in-fill building lots, following a series of applications approved by the Planning Board over the past several years.
   Since 2003, more than a dozen applications have been approved by the Planning Board. Many of those applications sought to subdivide a larger piece of land into two or three smaller lots, allowing the construction of new houses on the subdivided lots.
   There have been a handful of applications that called for demolishing existing houses on the land, then subdividing the parcel into smaller lots. For example, six new houses have been built on the east and west corners of Darrah Lane and Birchwood Knoll. Two houses — one on Darrah Lane and another on Birchwood Knoll — were leveled to make way for the new dwellings.
   The Planning Board reacted to the trend by identifying the so-called "McMansion issue" in the Master Plan re-examination report released in April. Mr. Caton, who prepared the report, noted that in a large number of cases, the new houses are out of scale with neighboring houses.