Hermosa Beach is a dense little 1.4 square miles, and is a little bit short on parking. There are lots of older beach cottages with no garage or driveway. There are also lots of narrower streets and alleys without any sidewalk, meaning each house just runs right up to the road (or 'street' as Americans call it - who knew?).
In an attempt to rectify this, when people renovate or rebuild the city requires them to put in parking spaces on their property, and a sidewalk. Loma Drive is almost without sidewalks, and therefore street parking, for most of its length. If we were just tarting the place up but adding less than 50% to the living space, we could leave it as is. That extensive patchwork of spaces for us to park in would remain, 'grandfathered in'.
But we are going to build a brand new house and that means bringing the whole lot up to code. Not only will we need to add a section of sidewalk but we will need to provide off-street parking for 3 cars. And if we have a garage, we'll need a driveway that is at least 17' long. That's the code, them's the rules.
Given that we are about to be a three car family (well, two cars and one golf cart), and in the long run we will want to build a garage we use as a gym / storage space (as people do around here), creating parking for 2 or 3 cars on a driveway makes sense. But our longest car isn't even 16' long. I know it's only a foot, but we want every inch of space we can get to use for our actual house and courtyard.
So the news that we can get an easement from the city, to use some of their land for our driveway, felt like a big win. There's a good 3 or 4 feet of city land between the edge of the standard 4' sidewalk and our property line. As long as we meet certain requirements (30% of it must be landscaped, for example), we can use that gap to meet our driveway length requirements.
Honestly, the time I spent at Planning and Public Works learning about this was the highlight of my week. This City Hall interaction is a drop in the ocean - a mere glimmer of what is to come over the next couple of years. Let's hope it's an omen, and all future interactions with City Planning go our way too.
In an attempt to rectify this, when people renovate or rebuild the city requires them to put in parking spaces on their property, and a sidewalk. Loma Drive is almost without sidewalks, and therefore street parking, for most of its length. If we were just tarting the place up but adding less than 50% to the living space, we could leave it as is. That extensive patchwork of spaces for us to park in would remain, 'grandfathered in'.
But we are going to build a brand new house and that means bringing the whole lot up to code. Not only will we need to add a section of sidewalk but we will need to provide off-street parking for 3 cars. And if we have a garage, we'll need a driveway that is at least 17' long. That's the code, them's the rules.
Given that we are about to be a three car family (well, two cars and one golf cart), and in the long run we will want to build a garage we use as a gym / storage space (as people do around here), creating parking for 2 or 3 cars on a driveway makes sense. But our longest car isn't even 16' long. I know it's only a foot, but we want every inch of space we can get to use for our actual house and courtyard.
So the news that we can get an easement from the city, to use some of their land for our driveway, felt like a big win. There's a good 3 or 4 feet of city land between the edge of the standard 4' sidewalk and our property line. As long as we meet certain requirements (30% of it must be landscaped, for example), we can use that gap to meet our driveway length requirements.
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| Stop me if this is too much detail... |
Honestly, the time I spent at Planning and Public Works learning about this was the highlight of my week. This City Hall interaction is a drop in the ocean - a mere glimmer of what is to come over the next couple of years. Let's hope it's an omen, and all future interactions with City Planning go our way too.
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