Setback discussion with the architect

The main reason for the "not approved" from planning is our setbacks on the sides of the house. The building codes had once again changed such that for our lot, we need 6' of clearance on each side. The old code was that you needed a total of 12' clearance on the sides. So we met up with our architect to discuss which rooms to narrow down to meet that setback requirement. We decided not to try to appeal the decision since it would most likely be rejected anyway and just end up wasting a lot of time and money.

She was very upset because she had met with the planning office twice during our design process and there were no comments on the setbacks.

So annoying!
But thankfully, she came up with a good design to minimize the damage of narrowing the house.

Planning Department

On March 9, we contacted the city planning department because everything had been approved except the planning review. The planning review is usually the first to respond but somehow for our project, it still had the status of "routed" since Jan 03. Apparently the guy who was supposed to be reviewing our project was out and it had just been sitting there.

Thankfully, the guy who originally accepted our plans was able to get the planning department on it asap. We got a response in 24 hours!

Not approved...setback issues.