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Zoning board questions large FAR request for mother-daughter suite; planner warns of precedent limits
Summary
Architects told the board the Kattells’ planned 116-sq-ft addition would raise the home’s FAR to about 36% to accommodate a mother-daughter suite; planning staff said the existing legacy FAR appears to predate the current code and cautioned that exceeding it further was not well justified.
At a July 7 Zoning Board meeting, the board debated an application from William and Kara Kattells seeking a modest addition to convert part of their home into a mother-daughter suite while also pursuing a two-family use designation.
Emily Gunsel of JM2 Architecture said the existing house measures about 34.2% floor area ratio (FAR) under today's code and the proposed addition is about 116 square feet — roughly a 1.9 percentage-point increase. She said the addition includes an accessible bathroom and laundry area designed for the homeowner’s mother. "This addition is a 116 square foot or a 1.9% increase to the FAR, again, solely to accommodate this mother-daughter suite," Gunsel said.
Planning staff and board members probed precedents and proportionality. Planning agreed the house likely predates current FAR calculations and called the existing 34.2% a legacy condition; the planner said that while the existing FAR could be acceptable, "going beyond that, I don't think it's very well justified." Board counsel and members asked for supporting grant letters and analogous cases; staff noted the closest approved higher FAR they found previously was 33.7% and had been denied, signaling sensitivity to increasing FAR beyond legacy levels.
The applicant offered a 1966 survey showing an original covered porch that, when included in today's code calculation, would have yielded a 36.8% FAR. The board discussed whether that historical footprint should affect current FAR calculations and whether that precedent would be persuasive for relief.
No final vote was recorded in the transcript for this item; the board discussed available precedents, noted the need for precise documentation, and the applicant thanked the board for its time. The item concluded with follow-up discussion but no recorded final outcome in the July 7 transcript.
Next steps: the board signaled it would consider concrete precedents and precise FAR calculations when deciding whether to grant relief for the addition or the two-family use change.
