A multiple-unit residential development along North Donahue Drive was approved with conditions by the Auburn Planning Commission Thursday, Dec. 10. The proposal will head to the Auburn City Council for a public hearing and final approval next week.
Planning commission documents designate the proposed development as the Cottages at Donahue, located along North Donahue Drive on the northwest corner of the Bragg Avenue intersection. The new development lot will include two existing lots totaling 1.33 acres.
According to the site plans, 10 separate units are being proposed. The cottages would be similar in style to the Sweet-Auburn Cottages, which are located across from Amsterdam Cafe, according to planning director Forest Cotten and Brett Basquin, representative of the applicant, the Foresite Group, Inc.
Six of the proposed 10 units would house four bedrooms, two would contain three bedrooms and two would have two bedrooms. The four bedroom units would have a 770-square-foot footprint. The three and two bedroom units would cast a 700 and 630-square-foot footprint, respectively.
In total the development would contain 34 bedrooms. According to the planning department, total square footage is unknown.
"I think you'll see a mix of single and two story," Cotten said. "My guess is they'll do them in some type of craftsman style."
All of the cottages would surround a shared green space, according to the site plan. Four of the cottages would front North Donahue Drive and three would front Alabama Highway 14.
"They'll have front porches oriented all circularly toward a common green-space, courtyard area," Cotten said. "They're indicating that they're going to do something similar [to the Sweet-Auburn Cottages] in terms of kind of varying them architecturally. Each of the units will be somewhat different."
The units oriented toward North Donahue Drive would have double frontages to meet city requirements that at least 40 percent of the buildings have a frontage facing a public street, according to Cotten.
The south property line is required by the city zoning ordinance to maintain a 15-foot buffer zone between the development and the highway, as well as a fence. The planning commission approved two waiver requests, one to reduce the buffer zone from 15-10 feet and the other to omit the requirement for a fence.
The existing lots support two small single-family homes, but the lots are mostly vacant and zoned under the Redevelopment District Zone.
The Redevelopment District Zone is intended to transition lots within the zone from lower density residential developments to developments with a greater residential density, according to the city zoning ordinance.
Three other large multiple-unit residential developments would surround the Cottages at Donahue. Planning commission documents state any additional traffic produced by the Cottages at Donahue would not warrant the need of a traffic impact study.
The commission will send a recommendation to the City Council for a conditional approval. The City Council will hold a public hearing and vote on final approval next week.
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