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City studies the possibility of a one-story-only ordinance
At issue are Saratoga Woods and Brookview
By Oakley Brooks
Of the more than 700 homes in the city's Brookview and Saratoga Woods neighborhoods, only about four dozen have a second story. Over the years, residents of both areas have fought tooth-and-nail with developers and individual homeowners to keep the roof lines low.
Now the city is considering a new zoning law that would allow them to lay their efforts to rest.
Saratoga is studying an ordinance that would prevent any new second-story homes or additions within the two neighborhoods--tucked in the northeastern corner of the city between Cox Avenue and Prospect Road.
The study has just begun--in the coming weeks the community development department will send out questionnaires to every homeowner in the two areas asking their opinion on the proposal.
And because, city council members say, no zoning change of this type has been proposed in the city, they have not decided whether the proposed change would be finalized by a vote of the council, the entire city or just the two neighborhoods. (Los Altos has instituted a one-story limit for certain neighborhoods, based on a 70 percent favorable vote from those specific areas.)
But support is apparently widespread among Brookview and Saratoga Woods residents to limit second-story growth in the area.
Last summer, in an attempt to defeat a proposed second-story addition along Brookview Drive, several Brookview residents polled the area and found that 168 of 198 respondents opposed the addition.
In an early January meeting of the Saratoga Woods Homeowners Association, board member Carl Nielsen says that all 50 members present that day supported the idea of the new one-story law.
And the proposed law has the backing of Vice Mayor Evan Baker, a Saratoga Woods resident who first suggested a one-story mandate soon after he was elected to the city council in 1998.
Since Baker and the city council sided with the neighbors in rejecting the plans for the Brookview Drive second story in July, he has been in conversation with Community Development Director Tom Sullivan about bringing the one-story law before the council.
"No other neighborhood in the city has this widespread one-story craftsman-style home," says Baker, who has owned his own single-story house on Obrad Drive since 1977.
Baker notes that of the 26 original two-story homes in Saratoga Woods, a vast majority were part of two developments built during the last two decades.
One of the tracts, constructed during the early 1980s, involved land near Prospect High School that the Moreland School District sold to developer J. Lohr. Later the Kocich family sold off its remaining acreage near the corner of Saratoga Avenue and Lawrence Expressway to the Pinn Brothers development company.
Baker says the neighbors opposed both building efforts but could only succeed in reducing the number of second-story homes or pushing them deeper into the development tracts.
Later, individual additions and new homes outside the tracts slipped through the planning department without much neighbor input.
"The planning department was kind of loosey-goosey in those days," Baker says. "There weren't nearly the kind of controls in the city as there are today."
During the period between 1950 and 1970, when Baker estimates that most of the one-story homes in Saratoga Woods and Brookview were built, the neighborhoods and the city had a sense of modesty about them.
"Saratoga wasn't considered a rich man's town then," Bakers says. "It was a more desirable place to live, but the average home was between 1,500 and 3,000 square feet."
Baker said in more recent times, leaders in Saratoga Woods have tried to keep their areas from being over-built by closely monitoring applications before the city's planning commission.
Brookview residents have similarly kept a close eye on planning proceedings and lobbied convincingly to limit second stories; during last summer's appeal of the Brookview Drive addition, residents showed that in seven planning hearings dating back to 1994, no second-story application was approved over neighbors' objections.
Some residents of the area are still opposed to the proposed restrictions. Thirty residents did support Lisa and Mike Palumbo in their bid for the Brookview Drive addition last summer. Lisa Palumbo says the character of the neighborhoods can be protected without outlawing second stories.
"There needs to be some reform--some houses in the past have not been integrated into the neighborhoods," says Palumbo, who has lived in her house for three and a half years. "But some lots can handle it. There's something fundamental about [being able to expand] but we live in a community and we do have to be oriented toward others."
Carl Nielsen, the Saratoga Woods Homeowners' Association board member, says the one-story law is not just about keeping the style of the areas intact. One-story houses protect neighbors' privacy, and they limit the density and added traffic along residential streets, Nielsen says.
"Many of us cherish the small amount of privacy we have," he says.
The coming survey from the city will determine how many neighbors actually agree with Nielsen and are willing to support a law that will end the debate on second stories in Saratoga Woods and Brookview.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
