Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 3, March 2003

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Much ado about short platting: Are two lots better than one?

By MATTHEW PREUSCH

There are a number of things that can alter the character of a neighborhood. Some are dramatic, such as a school closure or new business development. Others are more subtle.

In Broadview, Gloria Butts has her eye on a low-key, but increasingly common, vehicle for change in her quiet residential neighborhood: short platting.

Short platting, simply put, is a technique used by developers to build two houses where there had previously been one. The results are not always pretty.

Butts, a Broadview resident since 1963, has taken her concerns about short platting in her neighborhood up with City Council member Judy Nicastro, chair of the Council's Land Use Committee.

While City planners are looking at revising the code to better address short platting, currently there are few legal restrictions to it if done properly.

Butts is not to happy with the results so far. "You can see they gerrymandered the lot so both houses would fit," she said, pointing out a short plat at NW 120th Street, just a few blocks from her home. In this instance developers had cleared a wooded yard behind an older red brick home to make way for new, larger home; the two are now tucked closely together on formerly spacious corner lot.

Butts said the new house itself was attractive, but that over time many short plats could lead to crowding in the neighborhood, much of which lacks sidewalks and or any traffic signage. It makes for "more density" she said. "When people who moved in here, they wanted the lots the same."

So what does the City have to say about short platting? Bill Mills, a planner with the Department of Construction and Land Use, said there are a number of legal means for a developer to get two houses out of one lot, and most don't require public notice.

The first and most common short plat relates to two adjacent plats, one with a home and the other serving as as that home's yard. The homeowner can simply choose to develop their heretofore undeveloped second plat.

"What the neighbors are going to see is something that was a yard is now being developed," said Mills.

Another technique involves a rule called the '"5/80" test, which says a land owner can split a plat into two parts and build on each one as long as they both are either 75 percent the size of an average residential lot or 80 percent of the average size of the plats on the same block.

The third technique, the only that requires the DCLU to solicit public review, allows a developer to tuck a new home behind an existing one, out of view of the street. The only requirement is that the new home's plat include 10 feet of curbside property, usually accomplished by squeezing a driveway alongside the old home.

"Essentially you end up with one house behind the other, and that looks odd to the neighbors," said Mills. "That particular result, it's not something we really want to see, but it's not something we can do much about."

The primary incentive for homeowners to apply to the DCLU to create a short plat is economical: it stands to reason that a new house wedged in an already dense neighborhood is worth far more than a similar house in a new development. Or, as Mills put it, "It may not be economical for a developer to build a new house at the moment, but it may be economical to buy a piece of land and split it into two plats for future development."

DCLU approves the majority of the applications for short plats. Mills said recent attempts to turn some down have been fruitless, largely because there is little legal justification for rejecting them. Most of the effects of individual short plats are purely aesthetic, he said.

"There's not much that can be done to overturn a short plat just on the fact that the new plats are odd shaped, or that they would result in development that's not consistent with what's already on the block," Mills said.

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For more information, visit the DCLU's Web site, www.cityofseattle.net/dclu, or call 684-8467.