County cities tightening design standards

With both commercial and residential constructions exploding throughout Boulder County, cities and towns are scrambling to establish building design guidelines.
“Broomfield has gone from a sleepy little town where few businesses wanted to build to a place where everyone wants to be,” says Don Gisi of Broomfield’s building department. Although the city’s original master plan had general building guidelines, Gisi says, “In the early days, developers could do pretty much what they thought would sell.”
Now a developer is required to submit a Planned Unit Development (PUD) plan, which allows the city planning department to have more control over building design, landscaping and other features.
John Franklin, Broomfield’s planning director, says his department encourages developers to be creative while keeping in mind the city’s goals of maintaining a community identity and constructing quality, thoughtfully conceived buildings.
Interlocken business park, south of U.S. 36, exemplifies a planned development. Its earth-tone buildings mirror the hues of the geographic area, a three-dimensional office building demonstrates an architect’s creativity, and landscaping throughout the business park adheres to the park’s strict specifications in addition to city requirements.
This past summer the Longmont City Council approved a residential development design plan intended to create variety, improve the visual aesthetics for the overall community and provide greater access for residents to parks and open space.
According to the Longmont plan, no more than 20 percent of all lots within a new residential subdivision may be similar, and comparable lot sizes must be distributed throughout the subdivision. Adjacent lots must contain dwellings of varying styles and architectural features, thus eliminating, as much as possible, the cookie-cutter appearance of neighborhoods.
In addition, front yards within a subdivision are to be varied, and adjacent homes are required to be set back from the street at unequal footage.
Landscaping must meet specific requirements, and fences built along the perimeter of residential subdivisions must be constructed of durable, easily maintained materials such as stone, metal, brick or treated wood.
Superior’s municipal code, drawn up and approved by its Board of Trustees, contains basic building design guidelines. The trustees and town planning commission also attempt to negotiate improvements to the basic guidelines with new developers. Once a development has begun, every other new business in that development must abide by the same architectural theme.
Future business around the newly opened Costco in Superior, for example, is required to use the same building design and type of building material as the Costco warehouse.
Traditionally, builders in Lafayette needed city council and city planning commission approval of their building plans. A newly formed Architectural Review Committee met for the first time on Jan. 12 to draw up building design guidelines and will include such things as range of color allowed on new structures, window styles, general appearance of a building and what materials may be used in construction. Details still are being hammered out.
For several years Louisville had been trying to improve the construction quality at the Colorado Tech Center, southeast of the city, but had no established guidelines to present to developers and architects. This resulted in long, frustrating city council meetings for everyone involved.
Last summer, Louisville Mayor Tom Davidson set up a task force to establish building guidelines, which are now in the public input phase of the adoption process.
Bob West of OZ Architecture in Boulder and a member of the task force sees the proposed guidelines as a win-win situation for the city council, the planning commission, developers and architects.
“Developers and architects will better understand the city’s goals, and the city will have objective criteria to guide them in their decisions,” West says.