Waterfront Overlay design standards: setback areas, parking, basewalls and façades

Two setback areas, two impervious cover limits

The overlay divides the land nearest the water into a primary and a secondary setback area, and treats them very differently.

Parking has to hide, and going underground buys you the setbacks

Three rules, and the third is the useful one:

• Surface parking must be placed along roadways where practicable, and must be screened from views from Town Lake, the Colorado River, park land and the creeks named in this part.
• Above-grade parking structures must be on a pedestrian scale and either architecturally integrated with the building or screened from those same views. If the structure is adjacent to the water, park land or a named creek, it must also carry pedestrian-oriented uses at ground level.
• Setback requirements do not apply to a parking structure that is completely below grade.

That last provision is a real design lever. A wholly subterranean garage escapes the setback rules entirely — which on a constrained waterfront site can be the difference between a workable plan and an unworkable one.

Building design: 45 feet twice, and 160 feet once

Four standards govern how a building looks:

• No mirrored or glare-producing glass on exterior surfaces. This is absolute — no subdistrict exception.
• A distinctive building top is required above 45 feet — cornices, stepped parapets, hipped roofs, mansard roofs, stepped terraces or domes. A flat roof is permitted only to the extent needed to comply with the heliport rules in Chapter 13-1, Article 4.
• A basewall is required where a building fronts Town Lake, Shoal Creek or Waller Creek, adjoins public park land or Town Lake, or sits across a street from public park land. The basewall may not exceed 45 feet.
• No façade may extend horizontally in an unbroken line for more than 160 feet.

The two 45-foot figures do different jobs and are easy to conflate. One is a threshold — above it, you must articulate the top. The other is a ceiling — the basewall itself cannot be taller than that. A tall building on the water therefore has a defined base, a middle, and a distinguished top, which is precisely the intent.

Four bodies can touch a Waterfront Overlay site plan

Site plan review here is unusually crowded:

1. The Parks and Recreation Department director must review before approval, and decides two things — whether the plan is compatible with adopted park design guidelines, and whether significant historic, cultural or archaeological sites are on the property.
2. The Land Use Commission must request a recommendation from the Small Area Planning Joint Committee and consider it.
3. It must also request a recommendation from the Environmental Board and consider that.
4. Land Use Commission approval is required outright if the applicant is seeking a waiver under §25-2-713.

Both recommendation requirements come with the same escape hatch: if the board fails to make a recommendation, the Land Use Commission may approve or deny without one. So silence from a board does not stall the application — it removes that board's voice from it.

Utilities and screening

Underground utility service is required, unless the utility provider determines otherwise — the discretion sits with the provider, not the applicant.

And a broad screening rule: trash receptacles, air conditioning or heating equipment, utility meters, loading areas and external storage must all be screened from public view. On a waterfront site "public view" is a wider idea than it is on an ordinary street, because the park side counts too.