Arcata, California Strategic Infill Redevelopment Program, 11 Aug 2022

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From YouTube: Building and Massing Presentation Module #2: Solar Shading

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Building and Massing Presentation Module #2: Solar Shading

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Okay, so now I want to jump into how the design standards will put additional limitations on height and how that impacts the uh the community around these new builds. They impact shading street impacts, massing and design among a whole host of other features.

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We're going to go back and take a look at the car wash now looking at it from the aerial image looking west southwest, and you can see 10th street there in the foreground running out to the bottoms and what we're going to evaluate here is impacts on shading, so here's our model we're going to zoom in a little bit. This is again our rough model. You can see the glass boxes and the rough model inside the car wash parcel there.

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You can see some solar shading in the the background gis there, but we really want to use the gis tools to their maximum potential.

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The tools allow us to evaluate different models and what the shading impacts would be, and so I've run a couple of different scenarios. I'm going to share with you now.

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This is that same model with the shadowing for december 20th, and it's showing us areas that are in shade for more than two hours during the periods from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon.

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As we all know, the winner winter here on the north coast is typically a darker time of year, cloudy rainy, but solar access is still important.

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Because of this, we want to make sure that we design appropriately and ensure that the the new designs don't unduly cascade on other buildings. This two hours of shading is sort of a standard in the industry, uh and the 94 is a slightly larger window than is typical.

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What you can see from this model, though, is that the shadow comes all the way across the street. It encompasses these existing buildings. These are a couple of the the multi-family residential units on the lord house property, and it goes quite a bit into the parking lot for german motors here.

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So that's pretty intense shading on december 20th uh by february 20th.

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The two-hour shadow uh cast is to about 10 feet within the prop front property lines, the southern property lines of those properties we'd looked at before, and so recognizing that the as we get closer to the summer and the sun gets higher in the sky, you're going to have fewer and fewer impacts. So december, 20 is kind of, like worst case scenario, we're starting to see those resolved by february in this uh real rough model that we've got well.

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What does the the more refined model look like and again, I'm not suggesting that these standards be the standards that we adopt, but I'm showing you how, if you adopt standards that further refine the development potential, how they can have an effect on these these impacts, so here's december 20th with the refined model, you recall the shadow was up on top of the rooftops of those existing one-story buildings.

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Now it does cast on to the buildings, but not all the way up to the rooftops again. This is two hours of shading on december 20th by february. Two hours of shading is all the way out to the street and there's no impact on the rooftops, and so the vast majority of the year there's no shading across the street to the other existing development or even proposed development on the german motors back parking lot, if that's to develop in the future.

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Okay, so I know what you're thinking well, two hours of shading, uh you know: that's that's one threshold, but maybe your threshold is lower.

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Gis model can also show us what hourly shading looks like, and so here, you're looking at, that same refined model that we're working with that could be the result of a form base code, and you see these uh pools of shadows getting progressively lighter, representing fewer and fewer hours of shading extending outward from the the building, and this is in february, so we're looking at the area where, by february uh this building had no impact on the two-hour model. You can see that it does shade the exit, the adjacent parcels to some extent.

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So how much we don't know how much? To that extent, this area right here is 45 minutes there you're up to 60 minutes, so you're, almost off the property before you get to an hour and it's five hours in the middle of the street. There are many places within the city of arcade. I think you'll find that you get five hours of shading in the middle of the street with any sized building, but this uh shows how you can ameliorate the impacts to other property owners, if not to the street.

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So again, just recapping uh the form-based code can refine what you're seeing in the jewel box. It can further refine what you're, seeing in the rough model and the form base code can really address. uh You know a lot of these uh impacts that we're all concerned about those decisions will be adopted by the council and so to the concerns that we're going to adopt some kind of code that would have undue impacts on the adjacent neighbors.

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I just want to remind us all that the council is in charge of that process and is very interested in hearing from you, and so, if you have particular ideas, they want to hear about them. The planning commission also, likewise, is an important recommending body to the council on this, and they want to hear your thoughts too.

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Just wanted to close this portion of it by showing you what that building looks like by april by april, yeah you're going to get shadowing right adjacent to the building right, underneath it you're going to you know during the daytime you're going to have some some shading that you'll have to walk through if you're walking on the south side of the street, but for the most part, you've resolved all the impacts to even the street, as well as adjacent neighbors.

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Okay, so just to recap, form based code can refine those development standards so that they're appropriate to the setting and the maximum building height can be further limited by these standards.

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Limited limitations imposed these standards can address many of the things that we're concerned about in larger stature buildings in our community.

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