Commission begins shaping Old Town Residential design guidelines, weighs incentives and outreach

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…