This reminds me of my father about 10 years ago when he was doing infill housing. It took him a year to get a building permit. They city was refusing because of the setback (distance between sidewalk and house). The allowable setback is based on the houses on each side, the idea being that all the houses on the block should be similar distance to the sidewalk. Well this was on a corner, so the setback was based solely on the house on the other side. These where the last 2 houses on the block to be redeveloped for infill. Because of this old house, he had to limit the size of his infill, loosing about 8 feet to the curb, and about 250 square feet on each side of the duplex. A couple years later, the last house was knocked over, and it could come much closer to the curb, they got the extra square footage and better profit margin.
This reminds me of my father about 10 years ago when he was doing infill housing. It took him a year to get a building permit. They city was refusing because of the setback (distance between sidewalk and house). The allowable setback is based on the houses on each side, the idea being that all the houses on the block should be similar distance to the sidewalk. Well this was on a corner, so the setback was based solely on the house on the other side. These where the last 2 houses on the block to be redeveloped for infill. Because of this old house, he had to limit the size of his infill, loosing about 8 feet to the curb, and about 250 square feet on each side of the duplex. A couple years later, the last house was knocked over, and it could come much closer to the curb, they got the extra square footage and better profit margin.