Fruit Valley restrictions nixed

After a last-minute push by neighbors, the city of Vancouver has scrapped plans to impose restrictions on new construction and home renovations in the Fruit Valley neighborhood.

Fruit Valley contains the Pacific Northwest’s largest stock of wartime shipyard housing — all one-story houses with low-pitched roofs and a pair of square windows in the front.

A recently approved neighborhood action plan called for keeping that history whole, and so city staff worked for a year to create “residential design guidelines,” which would be incorporated into Vancouver code, long-range planner Sandra Towne said.

“We thought we were following what neighbors wanted,” Towne said.

The regulations were part of a proposed overlay district encompassing about 300 homes from Fruit Valley Road to Yeoman Avenue, and from La Frambois Road to West Fourth Plain Boulevard.

They forbade second-story additions taller than the roof line; bay windows facing the street; and regulated chimneys and roof pitches, among other prohibitions. However, making changes to the back the side of a house — if a side addition is set back from the facade — would have remained OK.

But John Ransone and his girlfriend, Greta Lavadour, who own a home on West 28th Street, weren’t so sure that’s what residents signed up for.

They said someday they may like to add a full second story to their home, and the guidelines would have kept them from doing it the way they wanted.

“We started talking to people, going door to door, and very few people had any idea about it,” Ransone said. “They’ve been calling these ‘guidelines’ the whole time … and they were surprised that they were actually code descriptions.”

Vancouver mailed fliers, held a year’s worth of meetings on the guidelines and tried to get word out through the neighborhood association, Towne said. A public hearing was held before the Vancouver Planning Commission in June, where the guidelines passed 6 to 1.

So Towne said staff was surprised at the massive turnout for this month’s meeting of the Fruit Valley Neighborhood Association, where residents voted 100 to 5 against the guidelines.

“They were not happy with the overlay and let us know very clearly,” she told the council Monday. “Based on this new information and input, we would like to withdraw the overlay.”

Other Vancouver areas also have design guidelines — including downtown, the newly created waterfront district and Central Park — that are part of the city code.

Still in place in Fruit Valley is a design guidebook, full of descriptions about what residents can do if they want to follow historic architecture and design when they remodel.

The city council said Monday that the more free-form suggestions seem to reflect what Fruit Valley neighbors want.

“These are homes you can start with,” Councilor Pat Campbell said, taking into account the neighborhood’s 35 percent poverty rate. “People have been able to get into these things affordably, and then be able to affordably remodel over time.”

Councilor Jeanne Stewart said that perhaps the larger issue is preserving Fruit Valley’s quality of life as industry and infrastructure continue to grow on all sides.

Fruit Valley is one of 15 subareas in the city’s Comprehensive Plan. Along with the now-defunct design guidelines, the Fruit Valley subarea plan focuses on transportation issues, encourages urban farming and community gardens and other topics.

The subarea plan will go before the city council on Sept. 13 for a first reading, and then to a public hearing on Sept. 20.

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542 or andrea.damewood@columbian.com.