Planning Commission Supports Zoning Code Amendment Aimed at Combatting Mansionization

The Planning Commission on Wednesday supported a staff recommendation for a zoning code amendment to address mansionization.

Local residents have been calling for an end to mansionization for years. Many times homeowners remodeling their homes create a structure that is out of scale, ill-proportioned, or out of character with its surrounding neighborhood. 

This is the second time the issue has come before the Planning Commission in two months. 

According to a city staff report, “New houses and additions to older houses sometimes appear larger and stylistically different than houses built in previous decades due to a variety of factors. In many of the citywide community meetings, these concerns [oversized houses, houses being “too big for the lot” and incompatible architecture] were prevalent.”

Although the amendments address the size and compatibility of new construction on single-family homes based on public input, the commission further recommended that proposed discretionary review for projects exceeding new construction above 35 percent of the median house size within a 500 ft radius be applied citywide and to historic districts.

“I was pleased the commission came up with a compromise to move the staff’s hard work forward with their recommendation, but also add in some design guidelines to help make new homes architecturally compatible,” said Chair Felicia Williams. “It’s been in the oven a long time, but I’m hopeful we will end up with an ordinance that effectively preserves the great housing stock we have in our city.”

“We recognize that creating enforceable standards is challenging but we have a wide consensus that this is an important issue that the city must address,” wrote John Latta, President of the Madison Heights Neighborhood Association. 

“We also appreciate the opportunity to comment on the zoning code amendment given we have some significant homes in our neighborhood which have sparked the need for these changes.”

The group called for clear neighborhood consistency regulations with no room for interpretation and impactful penalties when the code is violated.

Serious discussions about mansionization at the city level began in 2015. It was then that the Planning and Community Development Department held citywide community meetings focused on single-family home neighborhood issues.

Other meetings were also held focusing on Lower Hastings Ranch and on Hillside Overlay District areas, which helped the department learn of neighborhood concerns about mansionization from a wider cross-section of the community.

The meetings led to design guidelines that could eventually cover all other single-family home residential zones in the city.

The preservation group Pasadena Heritage has been vocal about these concerns over the years. The nonprofit has been saying that new developments were continuing in Pasadena “at an aggressive pace” and have presented a constant challenge to maintaining the historic character of the city’s residential neighborhoods.

“I strongly commend the Planning Commission and our City Council for reviewing the rules governing protection of Pasadena’s older neighborhoods which contain much of Pasadena’s history,” said Christle Balvin.

According to Balvin, she experienced the issue first hand two years ago after a couple moved into her neighborhood and demolished their home and built a two-story mansion that blocks the sun from reaching the surrounding gardens and homes, and erected a wall that exceeds height regulations.

“As a result we have a craftsmen neighborhood with one huge structure in the middle that does not conform with the style and feel of the rest of the area and that is choking off sunlight to surrounding homes and gardens,” Balvin said.