Los Gatos Weekly-Times Photograph by George Sakkestad Story poles on Blossom Hill Road near Union Avenue make it easier to visualize what the completed project will look like. Before buildings, there are story poles By Jeff Kearns What are those things? The tall, orange netting that took over a former orchard on Blossom Hill Road recently isn't the newest attack on common sense by renegade outdoor conceptual artist Christo. Rather, it's a new tool for residents and town officials to get a better idea of how new building projects will fit into their environment. Call them story poles. Assistant planning director Bud Lortz brought the idea back from a vacation in Carmel, when he spotted the strange structures around town, and, like a true planner, snapped a few photos to bring back to the office. He brought it up in a staff meeting, and the Planning Department passed on the idea to the Planning Commission in July. The rules are simple: Build a wooden skeleton in the general shape of the building, then drape plastic orange snow fencing around the roofline. The poles are supposed to go up before notices go out to neighbors and stay up until the town has made a final decision on the project. Los Gatos started requiring the poles for all development applications last August. Monte Sereno began asking for poles a few weeks later. Both cities based their guidelines on Carmel's. "We've gotten complaints over the years that people didn't know something was happening or that what happened didn't match the plans or renderings of what the building was supposed to look like," Lortz says. Additionally, Lortz says, most people can't look at a set of plans and visualize what's going to be on the lot, and architectural renderings and photo illustrations can be costly and inaccurate. Since the guidelines went into effect, Lortz says, the department has had dozens of calls from people wondering what was going on with the strange netting, but he hasn't heard of anyone complaining that they didn't know about a development proposal. Out on Blossom Hill Road, the new structures outline where 11 of the 39 homes will be built by developer SummerHill Homes. On E. Main Street, Diane Ogilvie also put up the orange netting where she plans to put a new hotel. One of the first applications that used story poles was a new multipurpose building at Calvary Church, which had neighbors on the attack because they feared that it would tower over the existing single-story homes. In 1993 Los Altos Hills became the first in Santa Clara County to require story poles for some projects. Assistant planner Shaunn O'Connor says that the poles are only required for some projects. Los Altos Hills adopted the practice because most of its topography is hilly, a difficult proposition for design review. Other hilly, upscale areas followed, including Woodside, Atherton, Hillsborough, and Saratoga. Projects in hillside areas of unincorporated Santa Clara County also require poles. "We wanted to give the Site and Architecture Committee better visualization of the bulk of the structure, and this also puts neighbors on notice," Monte Sereno City Manager Brian Loventhal says. "A lot of times just sending a notice isn't effective, but when you see orange netting going up you know there's something going on." Some builders and developers have complained about the added hassle and expense in both cities, but feedback has been mostly positive. "Homeowners can see what their new home is going to look like, and some of them have even made design changes once they saw the poles go up," Loventhal says. [ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 10, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.