Overlay district question from PPD virtual workshop

project planning & design
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@coachcandaceseda In this past Sunday’s virtual workshop for Part One, you all discussed the zoning districts. You mentioned that because C and D sites were in residential districts that didn’t allow for commercial they were discarded as a possible answer. However, they did have an allowance of commercial within the overlay district. This was not discussed as a consideration but shouldn’t the overlay district come into play for the commercial FAR for sites C and D?
I want to clarify that the overlay district would apply and supersede the zoning district R-2 that said FAR 0 for commercial and what would apply is C1-1 overlay district with FAR 1 or C1-3 overlay district with FAR 2. Please let me know if this is correct as a process.

I know the correct answer is site B since even with the overlay district the commercial FAR is still not enough in site C or D to match the need of this client.

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Hi! Thanks for following up!

You are correct that the overlay districts would come into account. I did overlook them this go around. Part of practicing the test taking is being able to eliminate answers quickly, and that’s generally the strategy I used. With the overlay districts another quick way to eliminate them, even with the commercial FAR allowance, is to solve for the the highest two FARs anyway.

Because Area C4 and C3 had a higher commercial FAR than C1-1 and C1-3, If you don’t get what you need from C3, then you don’t even need to check C1-1 or C1-3.

Hope this helps clarify that, and thanks for bringing it to my attention!

-Coach Candace

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