By Susan Kerr

Photo by Joe Hu, Town Crier

City guidelines may not restrain subjectivity over look of homes

When Alison Hussey was looking for a site for a new house, she was attracted by the seeming friendliness and quiet nature of Los Altos. Likewise, when Peggy McGrath and Anita Kapadia moved their families to Los Altos a few years ago, they admired the look and feel of the town.

Little did these women know that they would one day find themselves caught in the middle of a neighborhood conflict that at its heart asks how Los Altans define their neighborhoods.

While some call Los Altos a “village,” there is no doubt that the city has changed since its 1952 incorporation, when ranch houses were all the rage. Is there still a style that characterizes the town, and if so, can and should it be preserved? Who gets to make these decisions anyway?

As is the case with many suburban towns, Los Altos has thick documents filled with residential housing guidelines that explain in excruciating detail such matters as fence height. Yet, as those who want to build or remodel a house - or those who wish to preserve their neighborhoods - have found, when it comes to the issue of taste, the opinions of just a few people are what count.

This is the lesson learned the hard way by Hussey, McGrath and Kapadia.

Each of these three women owns a house on Benvenue Avenue, a quiet street just off El Monte Avenue. Hussey, a Zimbabwe native who moved to California 18 years ago, and her husband, a California native, recently bought an older property on Benvenue on which to build a new house. The Husseys, who currently live in an Eichler house in Mountain View, prefer modern architecture and as a result chose a contemporary design.

This decision did not sit well with their new Benvenue neighbors, including McGrath and Kapadia, who launched a fight all the way up to the five-member Los Altos City Council to try to block the house based on the argument that the Hussey design was too “radical” and did not fit in with the style of the neighborhood. Late last year the city council gave the Husseys the thumbs up, saying the house met all code requirements, but did request some minor design changes. However, it was clear that some council members felt more strongly than others that taste in design should be taken into greater account by the planning department.

While all three women were gracious in their comments, stressing that nothing personal was involved, it was clear in separate interviews that each found the process tiring and frustrating.

“They (the Husseys) were really nice,” Kapadia said. “I’m sure they’ll be good neighbors.” But she felt that their design didn’t fit in with what she called the “friendly” and “approachable” architecture styles on Benvenue.

“The city has good rules,” Hussey said, “but when it comes to design, when it comes to taste, you can’t legislate that - and I don’t think you should.” She estimated the appeals process cost them $15,000 in architect fees.

“We knew there were not a lot of contemporary houses in Los Altos,” Hussey said, adding that they did their homework up front. “Even before we bought the property, we scoured the guidelines.”

They have found that guidelines can be open to interpretation.

The original goal when the town was incorporated was to encourage a rural-like atmosphere and houses with relatively low profiles, according to the official Los Altos Design Guideline handbook. The result was that the ranch style dominated the landscape for several decades.

The 1980s and 1990s, with their tremendous infusion of new Silicon Valley money, led to a change in design. The notorious two-story, pink, faux-Mediterranean mansion became synonymous in some people’s eyes with the new Los Altos.

The ironic thing about recent building was that while some of the new houses were different from the “traditional” ranch style, many of them resembled each other. Thus, a contemporary style still stands out in town.

“A very popular style the last 10-plus years is the stucco Mediterranean with tall entrance elements and palladium windows,” said James Walgren, Los Altos community development director. This style, he added, “is starting to fade, thankfully. Everywhere you go in the state you see the same style. I see a gradual trend toward the more traditional California home,” along the lines of the Craftsman style.

Phoebe Bressack, an architect and one of the three members of the Los Altos Planning Commission who sits on the Architectural and Site Control subcommittee, which unanimously approved the Husseys’ design, agreed with Walgren that the Mediterranean craze is waning and Craftsman is on its way up. While Bressack believes that Los Altos never has had just one style of housing, to her the biggest change is size.

It was in reaction to the size issue that new regulations were written to lower acceptable building heights and establish floor-area-to-lot-area ratios. The planning commission’s primary objectives before approving a new or remodeled house today are to ensure neighbors’ privacy and reduce the bulk and mass of the structure, according to Bressack. “We’re not here to regulate taste,” she added.

The Husseys’ house has a very small second floor, and it more than met all the existing codes for size and bulk. Both Walgren and Bressack said they found the house well designed and agreed it should be approved.

“The planning commission said they passed the plans because there were no bulk and two-story issues,” Kapadia said. “They looked at those as a priority, but that wasn’t what the neighbors objected to.”

To Kapadia and others, the issue was one of neighborhood compatibility.

“The design guidelines are very broad,” McGrath said. “Because they’re so broad it creates misunderstanding and hence neighborhood controversy.” Some 43 Benvenue residents wrote 22 separate letters to the city council on why they thought the new house shouldn’t be built, according to McGrath. The Husseys in turn wrote to all their new neighbors and met with many of them.

“Nobody wanted to start a ruckus, but whoever sits on city council makes personal judgments,” McGrath added. “The design guidelines need to be either more lenient or more strict. Their house got approved for good reason and we appealed for good reason.”

The official guidelines list contemporary as one of the architectural styles present and, one would assume, welcome in Los Altos. But the document’s introduction also states, “The primary purpose (in housing is) to maintain the existing positive physical qualities and character of the residential neighborhoods of Los Altos.”

In a further attempt at clarification, the guidelines say there are three types of neighborhoods: consistent, diverse and transitional. Houses should be compatible with their intended neighborhood, but “will not necessarily be denied” if they’re not, the document states. If your block is deemed “consistent,” with houses of similar style and size, it’s harder to build something different. The opposite is true with “diverse” neighborhoods.

But what about “transitional” areas? Mainly as a result of the numerous two-story houses built in the past decade, many blocks officially now are considered transitional, Benvenue included.

“There are a lot of transitional neighborhoods now,” said city council member Kris Casto. “We have all styles represented in neighborhoods (in Los Altos).” This transitional definition disturbs and confuses some people. Leslie Lodestro, president of the Los Altos Neighborhood Network, three years ago became active trying to fight a two-story house on her block.

“We got tagged as a transitional neighborhood and there was nothing transitional about us,” Lodestro said. “It’s easy to get that stigma. Neighborhoods need to be careful how they’re tagged.”

But what’s transitional to one person isn’t to another. Despite quite a bit of remodeling on Benvenue Avenue, some of its residents believe that the houses have maintained a similar - cohesive, though not identical - look. Hussey, on the other hand, pointed out that there are numerous styles on the block and the house that they will replace already has a flat roof and a modern appearance.

Personal opinion enter through the appeals process. The city council gets the final say in whether a house is approved. This political side of the process means that design reviews will never be based solely on facts.

“I think it’s an interesting challenge for the people in policy-making positions,” Hussey said. “Diversity does add to a place.”

“The council is made up of reasonable people, and what we try to figure out are the main reasons” that people are appealing designs, Council member Lou Becker said. “My opinion is that we need to leave it (regulations) fairly open. Having said that, we must be sensitive to neighbors.”

But another council could have voted differently. “This sets policy in this case - a precedent - that we’re not here to dictate architectural style,” Walgren said. He added later, “The design review by its nature is subjective. If you had five city council members who thought differently” the appeal may have been upheld.

Yet it wasn’t. Those involved thought the process worked as well as it could since the Husseys had their house approved and neighbors got some of their requested design changes.

“Nobody ever walks away 100 percent happy,” Becker said.

Furthermore, Casto said, the night that the Benvenue appeal was heard by the city council, she sensed progress. “I did see (people) treating each other as neighbors, not as buildings … The focus should be on the folks, not the facade.”