Susanna (presenter) led the Carbondale Historic Preservation Commission through an initial draft of design guidelines intended for the Old Town Residential (OTR) zone. The draft focuses on guidance for new construction — site planning, street-facing orientation, massing and scale, outbuildings, parking placement and architectural elements — and proposes strategies to encourage context-sensitive design while avoiding overly prescriptive style rules.

Susanna said the commission’s existing guidelines for the historic commercial core provided a template for the OTR work but emphasized that OTR’s “eclectic” character requires a different balance between specificity and flexibility. She suggested: using street-by-street context (for setback guidance), encouraging a mix of small and large building scales, breaking large building masses into smaller volumes, discouraging front-facing garages and limiting the number of different facade materials. She proposed a possible quantitative threshold (discussed in the meeting) around 1,300 square feet as a point at which massing should be broken into multiple volumes; commissioners asked staff to verify whether that threshold makes sense for local lots and codes.

Commissioners discussed incentives to bring projects into the voluntary review program, including code relief (for example relief from impervious-surface limits), permitting additional floor area or alley-oriented accessory structures in exchange for undergoing design review. Staff and commissioners noted the town’s planning and zoning (PNZ) commission will be revising ADU rules, and they recommended coordination so incentives tied to guidelines align with any zoning changes. Participants also emphasized that enabling incentives must be tied to the design-review process (for example, detached ADUs in OTR would be allowed only if a property owner participates in the review) so the program retains leverage.

The group reviewed outreach and public-engagement plans for the OTR open house. Commissioners agreed on a short (10–15 minute) introduction, printed maps showing the OTR boundary, and station-based activities where attendees use sticky notes to respond to prompts (for example, priorities for setbacks, character-defining features, or preferences on roofs, porches and porosity). Practical logistics discussed included 24x36 poster maps, easels, a small poster explaining the voluntary nature of the program, and a plan to compile comments after the event. Staff estimated mailed notices to roughly 73 property owners and forecasted about 25 attendees; commissioners agreed to a refreshments budget of about $250 for the event.

Other local details covered in the discussion: OTR minimum lot size examples cited as 25 by 110 feet for original lots (some properties contain multiple original lots), the town’s street-tree program and tactical urbanism traffic experiments, and the suggestion to consult other mountain towns (for example Crested Butte) about language that discourages repetitive new construction.

Commissioners asked Susanna to revise the draft with clearer thresholds for when specific guideline rules apply, to return with recommendations for design-review incentives that coordinate with PNZ, and to incorporate the commission’s street-by-street context approach before the next meeting.