Small Lot, No Problem!
We've all seen that small, weed-covered lot on the corner of a popular urban neighborhood that would be perfect for a (fill-in-the-blank). The location is walking distance to popular restaurants and venues. Someone should develop this lot...but they don't. Why?
Seeing contextual and profitable solutions on small urban lots may be difficult from some developers, but we're here to help.
Let's start with the problems, because coming up with problems is the easy part:
ROI: This lot is tiny, how can I fit anything large enough to make any money? It's true, a little creative thinking will be required to achieve a good return. By staying attuned to market demands and collaborating with architects from the early planning stage, developers can devise numerous profitable solutions. The key lies in early-stage collaboration.
Construction Costs: A smaller project means less construction materials, so cheaper to build, right? Not exactly. Tight sites require more forethought and potential problems in staging construction equipment and access. And while less material is required, the skill required goes up as spaces are tight and margin of error is much less. Trades prefer wide open spaces.
The benefits of small lot projects can overcome these drawbacks.
Case in point: our project at Thalia + Constance:
To start, we did not combine lots, giving us separate smaller projects that could stay below code thresholds and work together from a functional and spatial standpoint. The two lots share public space and access points. We devised a planning strategy where each lot could reinforce each others' goals - the best neighbor you can have is yourself!
Small building footprints can be designed so that they only need one exit stair to maximize the leasable area, and an elevator can be avoided with proper planning of accessible spaces in small buildings.
For small apartment buildings with three units or less, the FHA requirement for accessibility (elevator) does not apply, or you can have four units as long as the building owner lives in one of the units - this is cutesily referred to as the "Mrs. Murphy" exception. Even beyond four units, when just one accessible unit is required, placing that unit on the ground floor can avoid elevator requirements up to an even larger threshold. Additionally, most buildings with less than 3000 sf and four stories are exempt from an elevator requirement.
We leveraged these code thresholds to open up the floor plans to create quality, natural-light filled spaces, especially the apartments' common spaces on the third floor which have access to an internal balcony with excellent views of the CBD. We took advantage of the City of New Orleans' forward-thinking zoning for mixed-use neighborhoods, which allows for parking exemptions for small businesses and requires no setbacks.
For the two retail spaces on the ground floor, we used the courtyards for each building to provide shared access to each space. By placing the courtyards next to each other, they each leverage the other for more open space. We also worked with the city to raise the sidewalk to help bring accessiblilty to our flood-protection compliant first floor three feet above grade. Another way the courtyards help each other is that the bigger one sits on stormwater storage tanks that hold rainwater during storm events, alleviating the potential for area flooding.
The ultimate advantage of small lots is that they take extra vision and thinking to develop, hence the reason many of them were not snapped up for more cookie-cutter development types; meaning that for you, the visionary developer, they are ripe for the picking!