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Garage dwellings are back
St. Petersburg, which allowed these kinds of apartments until 1977, will allow them again for certain neighborhoods.
By SHARON L. BOND
Published June 1, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Garage apartments are on the way back after almost a 30-year absence.
New land use regulations that take effect next spring will allow people to build garage apartments in certain neighborhoods "under very strict regulations," said Bob Jeffrey, the city's manager of urban design and historic preservation.
"As things get more and more expensive, this is a great opportunity for affordable housing," Jeffrey said.
The change may also allow a person to live in the same neighborhood for most of a lifetime, perhaps giving up the main house at some point to move into the garage apartment, he said.
Jeffrey said so-called bonus rooms now are allowed to be built above garages. They can have a bathroom, but no kitchen.
St. Petersburg allowed the building of garage apartments until 1977 and now has 2,246. That translates to about 6 percent of the space where they were allowed.
The main reason the city stopped was lack of parking. Families began to have multiple cars plus tenants' cars. Also, the population became more transient, Jeffrey said, leading to tenants that disturbed neighborhoods.
Construction of garage apartments will be allowed in so-called traditional neighborhoods, such as the Old Northeast or Kenwood, Jeffrey said. They won't be allowed in suburban areas. What constitutes traditional and suburban will be spelled out in the new regulations.
Within the traditional neighborhoods, lots must be at least 50 feet by 100 feet before they can include an apartment, Jeffrey said.
The city has 24,877 lots that size or larger in traditional neighborhoods. Subtract the existing garage apartments from that and the maximum number of new ones that could be built is 22,631.
Jeffrey said he doesn't expect that many will be built, since only 6 percent of the lots where they were allowed were used in the 70 years before 1977.
[Last modified June 1, 2005, 00:38:18]
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