Though county planning commissioners were at first skeptical of plans to raise a beachfront house in Seadrift, this week they unanimously approved the homeowners’ revised remodel proposal and even praised it as exemplary of coastal FEMA regulation compliance.
In January, Jonna Mazet and her husband, Jeffrey Mazet, who owns a construction company out of Napa, appealed the county’s conditional approval of their coastal permit, design review and variance to demolish a home and rebuild a larger one at 342 Seadrift Road. The initial approval had been contingent on a number of changes, including lowering the roof height on the beach-side by five feet.
But the Mazets had raised the height of the structure in part to comply with new FEMA regulations that require houses in high-risk flood zones to be able to withstand a 100-year storm.
Since filing their appeal, the owners lowered the proposed roof height by increments on two separate occasions—first for a February hearing, when the commission delayed its decision due to missing members, and again for the final hearing this week.
Commissioners approved their latest proposal, which includes a maximum roof height of just over 18 feet, around 3.5 feet lower than the original proposal and two feet higher than the initial alteration.
The Mazets may now tear down their two-bedroom home and replace it with a 3,207-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bathroom home. That expansion was not possible without elevating the entire home to comply with FEMA rules.
Though the home’s base flood elevation is at the lowest it can be while still complying with the regulations, the resulting total height is nevertheless above the limit for beachfront homes set forth in the county’s Local Coastal Program. That limit is based on the measurement of the structure’s maximum height in relation to the “mean lower low water line,” which is the average height of the lowest tide recorded each day during a 19-year recording period.
The conflict between county code and FEMA requirements is not unusual. Staff explained that in the last two years, four variances for exceeding roof height limits under the Local Coastal Program have been issued for Seadrift homes that are of comparable or greater heights than is proposed for 342 Seadrift.
Part of the problem is that the county is abiding by its 1982 Local Coastal Program as the update continues to be delayed by debates over a final section. In the current proposal, the coastal program will likely be more flexible around height limits to account for changing FEMA regulations.
The Seadrift Association, which has its own design rules, voted down the Mazets’ original proposal in January, also because it exceeded the association’s own height limits. It has not voted again yet on the new plans, but county staff said this week that the group had indicated support.
“I think this is a reasonable compromise between FEMA regulations, California building code requirements, Seadrift Association rules and coastal plan policies that are out of date,” commissioner Don Dickenson said. “What they came up with minimizes views from the beach and also has the minimum floor elevation requirements.”
Though she agreed with Commissioner Dickinson, Commissioner Margot Biehle voiced the caveat that the commission needed to stay attentive to the possibility that homeowners would use the FEMA regulations as an excuse to build taller homes.
In its rejection of the original plans, the county’s deputy zoning administrator had disapproved of what he called the obstruction of views from Stinson Beach, yet the commissioners said this no longer seemed to be a problem.
“I was on the coastal commission when Peter Douglas was promoting the policy of protecting views from the beach and so I am very attentive to this,” Commissioner Chris Desser, who represents West Marin, said. “I actually don’t feel that this is something that is detrimental to the view from the beach. It’s up against the sky, not the hillside, and not appreciably high like the Salesforce tower in S.F. that’s eating the sky. It’s not an issue from the street side as well, when I visited yesterday.”
Other commissioners praised the architect’s modifications, which included changing the roof from a sloped roof to a flat roof.
Inverness resident Bridger Mitchell, the only public speaker at this week’s hearing, is a member of the Inverness Association who recently fought plans for the Moonrise Kingdom project. He expressed concern that the house was still out of character with the neighborhood in regard to height.
Though commissioners ultimately disagreed on that claim, in his closing comments, commissioner Pete Theran also expressed concern about home heights creeping up over time as a result of changing FEMA requirements. “As far as dealing with projects that come to us, we need to put a major emphasis on the design review process to make sure they are compatible with the neighborhood as much as possible,” he said. “What FEMA requires could cause a major disruption with the compatibility with neighborhoods and—to the best of our ability—we need to minimize the negative impact that has on communities while still dealing with the relentless impact of sea-level rise.”
He went on, “Architects should look at what you have done to minimize view impacts from the beach and use similar approaches to deal with this complex problem.”