Highway entrance design guidelines

[wsrd]

We are a small town, 5400, with an entrance overlay zone on all state highways entering our community. This overlay zone provides for building setback limits (min. of 15' and max. of 65').

We also have standards in this zone related to storage of materials, landscaping, street walls, etc.

The standards were adopted in 1997 and probably to assist the community in addressing the influx of big box retail. But, we have a local motel which says that the requirement to be so close to the highway causes problems specific to its type of use (noise, glare, etc.).

My question is whether other communities have these? If you do, please let me know and I will correspond with you one-on-one.

Thanks.

Gunnyco

 

[Cardinal]

While I can't help you with standards, I might easily disagree with their claim. I am assuming that they are looking for a standard hotel design, with outside entrys and parking on either side. I would suggest either 1) interior hallways for entry, with parking to the side and rear; or 2) siting the hotel perpendicular to the roadway, with the endwall on the street, and maintaining the exterior entrys and parking on either side.

 

[donk]

Could you not use a variance to solve the percieved problem and maintain the intent of the by-law?

i.e. - require that they provide additional landscaping and have reduced signage in exchange for letting the building be located farther from the road.

I also find it interesting in how small your minimum setback distance is. For most arterial roads in our district the minimum setback is 50 feet, with no maximum.

 

[Bullwinkle]

I also find it interesting in how small your minimum setback distance is. For most arterial roads in our district the minimum setback is 50 feet, with no maximum.

I bet the reason for the small setback is because the state highway is also the main street. That's the case in my town - also a small community with lots of tourists. We just approved a new Holiday Inn Express that is oriented perpendicular to the road - as Stumpf suggests - with a setback of about 15'. They solved the noise problem by placing the pool in the part of the building closest to the road. Only one of our hotels/motels is set back further than 30' or so from the road. Unfortunately, it was approved with a sea of parking in front. All of the others have the parking in side or rear.

 

[wsrd]

Thoughts on the responses

Thanks very much. This is my first posting ever. I have already tried to route them through the variance process, but (1) I have to add the variance from a "maximum" setback to the code lang. which is no problem, and (2), more importantly, they can't show a hardship at this point to justify the need for a variance....

As for the min. setback, we want them close to the road to avoid the expanse of parking everyone ends up with...yes, landscaping is a good alternative, but even a wide expanse of landscaping doesn't always fit the scale of a small western community. We'd take it, though, don't get me wrong...

Keep those thinking processes going. Thanks, again.