Skinny house contest designs put to test

Neighborhoods - Infill homes being built in Portland use ideas from the Living Smart Project

New skinny houses under construction in Portland with award-winning designs are arming City Commissioner Randy Leonard with a new litmus test for critics of infill development.

The houses, so named because many are as narrow as 15 feet and built on 2,500-square-foot lots, often have had floor plans with a garage in front and living room in back.

Critics think the style clashes with houses in established city neighborhoods, and that, coupled with demolition of more traditional houses at their expense, produced a chorus of complaints, particularly in parts of central Northeast and Southeast Portland. Opponents said skinny houses were undermining livability by drastically altering the character of neighborhoods.

In helping address the matter in 2003, Leonard worked with city officials and community members to conceive the Living Smart Project, a design competition. The goal was to produce imaginative standard designs for houses for 25-foot-wide lots.

Last month, construction began on two homes in North Portland that use one of the two winning designs from the 2004 contest, which drew 426 entries from the U.S. and 21 other countries.

Judges selected the two winners from among 21 chosen for the "Portland Catalog of Narrow House Designs." Ann Hill, project manager for Living Smart, said construction is scheduled to start later this month on two houses using the other winning design.

Leonard is confident that reaction to the new houses will be something like: " 'Wow, that's nice. That's an addition to the neighborhood. That's a plus.' "

"And if they don't respond that way," he said of critics, "then they have to say, 'I don't like infill. The house looks OK, I just don't like the idea of infill.' "

Infill development is being driven by the scarcity of developable vacant lots in Portland. By 2017, the city will need to add roughly 70,000 housing units to help the city absorb its share of the region's growth.

Infill often has been controversial, and tensions have spread into suburbia. The city has received interest about Living Smart locally and nationally, including from Troutdale and Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland.

Rich Faith, community development director in Troutdale, said he and the city's senior planner referred to the contest Web site to see design entries. Interest stemmed from plans to accommodate infill residential development in and around Troutdale's downtown.

"It was more in terms of design and appearance of the type of units that would go in these lots as opposed to what are the standards behind creating the lots," Faith said.

Christine Caruso, a Planning Commission member and architect, was a Living Smart judge. As land use chairwoman for the Roseway neighborhood in Central Northeast Portland, Caruso in 2003 was among neighborhood leaders pushing for changes in the development of skinny houses.

"I think it's a really positive thing to have these designs available to people," she said of the catalog.

And she thinks the designs will better fit the character of the neighborhoods. "It's not just the look, it's the quality of the design," she said. "I think the overall quality is better than what were getting from a standard spec home."

Hill said the new houses, being built by developer Jack Wagnon of The Wagnon Co., are scheduled for completion in February. They are being built in the 8100 block of North Haven Street. Later this month, Hill said, Wagnon is scheduled to start building two houses in the 4900 block of Southeast Knapp Street.

In 1991, Portland approved zone changes intended to encourage infill housing development. It proved a boon for some developers, who started carving standard 5,000-square-foot lots into pairs of 2,500-square-foot lots for 15-foot-wide houses.

The city council in 2003 established a design standard for skinny house development on 2,500-square-foot vacant lots, restricting the footprint of the house to 40 percent of the lot, or about 1,000 square feet. Caruso hopes the new houses being built using Living Smart designs will encourage developers to refer to the Portland Catalog.

"There's a number of other designs that I think are equally as good as the two that were selected" as winning designs, she said. "If the program is actually successful and moves forward, I hope that additional designs will be put out there" and built.

Wade Nkrumah: 503-294-7627; wadenkrumah@news.oregonian.com

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