While the Santa Clarita Planning Commission has canceled Tuesday’s meeting, there are plans for a June 16 meeting, with an important discussion scheduled: objective design standards.  Such a topic might be unlikely to dazzle dinner guests, but as far as regulations go, they’re extremely fo rmative for the city’s future — particularly while thousands of homes are being planned throughout the city.  At a time when the City Council has increasingly lamented its lack of local control, the objective housing standards are one of the few ways the city can still implement some measure of conformity for a project.  City planners used to refer to it as “compatibility with the neighborhood,” according to City Attorney Joe Montes, but now that’s considered too subjective, and cities are not allowed to create subjective standards.   “So the way to get around something like ‘compatibility with the neighborhood’ is you try to put as much detail in what you want the residence or the building to look like, so that it would end up being compatible — setbacks, colors, bump-outs, 360-degree architecture, stuff like that,” Montes said, ahead of a presentation on those items by Dave Peterson, senior city planner.  “The state’s intent here is to take the city’s opinion out of this discussion,” Peterson said, referring to arguments about the color of a shade of paint.  City planners want to be able to present a themed palette as its objective standard that essentially says what colors can be allowed, as one of the ways of preserving each community’s separate design intent. This can be seen in projects throughout Canyon Country, Newhall, Saugus and Valencia, according to city officials.  The first public presentation on the topic to the City Council’s Development Committee had no attendees outside of media and city staff.   The city has conducted outreach on the topic of housing standards with local builders and developers, Peterson said. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they asked first and foremost not to raise their building costs with any new standards. He also said they’re looking for a more “predictable” review and approval process.    They also told the city it should be mindful of retaining “the character of its buildings and the architecture that we have today,” he said.  “They warned against a loss of character or the creation of cookie cutter boxes,” Peterson added. “They encouraged us to put standards in that would prevent that and so … that’s exactly what we intend to do.”  City Planning Manager Patrick Leclair said the discussion was expected to happen in the middle of June, and the city has “several big projects” lined up for discussion in the coming months.  “(The objective design standards) will help with some of our housing element goals, so we’ll bring that up for your review,” Leclair said.  There’s also a pair of projects on the horizon for planners.    In addition to the standards discussion this month, a new senior community, Belcaro Sand Canyon, is expected to be presented in July, Leclair said during his May update.  “That’ll be an opportunity to review the project description again, go over the details on the project,” he added, noting that by next month, the project will have likely just started the circulation of the state-required environmental impact review.  The initial discussion for the project one year ago called for a gated senior community with 341 single-family homes on approximately 194 acres in Sand Canyon.    There’s expected to be at least a monthlong summer recess before an August meeting, in which the Golden Valley project could come back to the Planning Commission with the traffic study that was requested during last month’s meeting.  The plan for Golden Valley Road and Sierra Highway — a 60-room hotel, a four-story assisted living facility and 73 senior condos — drew a host of residents at the May meeting. The commission called for further traffic study, noting the plan’s impact were based on 2021 figures, which could have been significantly impacted by COVID-19.   The post Santa Clarita planners to discuss standards, projects appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less