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Tarpon opens doors to front porches

New city rules embrace New Urbanism, a neighborly style favoring pedestrians over cars.

By NORA KOCH
Published June 25, 2005

TARPON SPRINGS - The front porch, where generations have sipped iced tea and shared idle conversation, is making a comeback in Tarpon Springs.

In an effort to make the city's streets more inviting and safer, the City Commission this week voted to change its land-use regulations to encourage more front porches and detached garages.

"People sit on their front porch and watch nature go by," said Mayor Beverley Billiris. "It gives the small hometown feel to the community."

Turning to a tenet of New Urbanism, a school of planning that aims to build areas where people can both live and work, Tarpon Springs officials changed the land code to let front porches extend 10 feet into front yards. The new rules also allow detached garages to be built just 10 feet from the rear property line, 5 feet if there is an alley. Before, those setbacks were 20 to 50 feet.

The idea, city staff told the commission, was to make streets feel safe and inviting by having front doors, porches and windows face the street rather than have a lot of garage doors and large yards.

Tarpon Springs' move toward more porches follows the trend of neotraditional communities, which have been a novelty in the home-building industry in recent years. Communities such as Seaside in Florida's Panhandle and Celebration, a neighbor of Disney World, were constructed in that fashion. Locally, homes in West Park Village, the neotraditional part of Westchase, have sold well.

For Doris Walker, the front porch was a selling point when she bought her new home last fall on Levis Avenue in the Union Academy neighborhood. Walker, who moved here from Philadelphia with her husband, Robert, describes herself as a "people person" even without a porch, but said it has helped her get to know her neighbors.

"It's a way to have access to the outside while you're in your house," said Walker, a 65-year-old retired social worker.

"To me, a porch helps me relate better to the neighbors, and communicate better, be part of the open community as opposed to just being inside a house."

Walker articulates the mantra of architects and planners who advocate bringing back the front porch, which quietly went out of vogue during the residential building boom that began after World War II.

Then, builders wanted to produce a simple, cheap home that could be replicated throughout the country, said David Hudson, executive vice president of Congress for the New Urbanism, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that promotes its principles by working with architects, developers and planners nationwide.

Porches went by the wayside as matching, "antisocial" tract homes sprouted in subdivisions all over the country, Hudson said.

"They didn't think they needed them," Hudson said. "They profoundly underestimated the value that a front porch has to neighborhood vitality."

Now developers and architects look to front porches as a way to build community and deter crime, as people are less apt to commit crimes when there are more eyes facing the street, Hudson said.

In the same vein, New Urbanism also encourages detached garages, sidewalks, homes closer to the sidewalk and other features to foster a more pedestrian-friendly environment, not one that is exclusively for automobiles.

In Tarpon Springs, more people were asking for permission to build new homes in the neotraditional style, or to add front porches to new homes, Billiris said. But the zoning regulations made that difficult, so the city decided to amend the code to accommodate such features.

When developer Joe Heidenreich started building new, affordable single-family homes in Union Academy, front porches were paramount to the master plan. Each of the two dozen homes he's completed has a front porch.

"You're seeing the cities recognize that what they had 50, 75, 100 years ago really made a lot of sense," Heidenreich said. "It's refreshing to see them taking that kind of approach and start to encourage the rebirth of front porches."

For Doris Walker, her habit of idling on her front porch has led to friendly encounters even beyond her neighborhood. Once, a neighbor approached her at the grocery store and asked if she was the lady with the two nice rocking chairs on her porch.

"I've found it great, just sitting on the porch, waving as they go by, talking to the neighbors."

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Nora Koch can be reached at 727 771-4304 or nkoch@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 25, 2005, 00:35:14]