INC NEWS - big hole in the UDO needs plugging

[RW Pickle]

it may have seemed strange for some of you to read the post from Pat about
the size of home occupations and the UDO. This is because some of us have
been talking about it behind your back.

I'm sure we're going to hear from Frank Duke on this, and that's great
since he has led us down this UDO path, but here is why this hole in the
UDO needs to be closed.

Currently, under the UDO, a home occupation license allows less than 30%
of the interior space to utilized for the occupation. You may say, no big
deal. Well it was over here where I live when that home occupation space
amounted to being more square footage than any of the business located at
Forest Hills Shopping Center but Galaxy Foods (the grocery store). Larger
than a day care facility, a bank, service stations with mechanic pits, a
hair salon, an insurance company, etc; any of the commercially zoned
businesses who are located around the outskirts of our neighborhood. (Our
neighborhood proper has no zoned commercial space within its boundaries)
But this "home occupation" would have been a 2,700 square feet operation.
I know some of you are saying "this is larger than my house". And by all
rights you should say that. And you should also wonder (as we did) how
something like this could happen smack in the middle of your residential
neighborhood.

Well it's the hole in the UDO that when we left the old zoning laws behind
to adopt the UDO, it went from 400 square feet max. to 30%. And over here
at least, this meant that it could grow to be 2,700 square feet instead of
the 400 square feet max. Where you have larger older homes, anything like
this is possible. I use the example of building a new 16,000 square feet
home. If I knew going in that I was going to run a "home occupation" from
this new home, I could build it (or convert it in an older home) and end
up with almost a 5,000 square feet space for a home occupation. This is
just not acceptable; in my neighborhood or in any other neighborhood in
Durham. It begins to change the residential character of neighborhoods
having "home occupations" that utilize this amount of space. As I told
frank Duke, this is the size of a business, not a home occupation. It's
way too big for that.

This is why, as a neighborhood organization, we need to work to restrict
this allowance for space utilization. Otherwise, as I found out over here,
you have a "business" opening up next door disguised as a home occupation.
Take this thought back to your neighborhoods and get a notion as to what
they think. Do we want something that seems incidental like 30%, or do we
want to adopt something like we have had in the past like 400 square feet.
Personally I feel we need a cap.

RWP
27 Beverly