At the request of the developers of the Ontario/Scholl project (Ontario Townes and Yukon Valley), on September 22, 2026, City Council directed staff to put on an agenda a discussion of the Planned Unit Development (PUD) Overlay standard for front door design standards in relation to the front of a house.
The developers are requesting that front doors be allowed to be set back more than 12 feet from the front of the house, which the current PUD standards do not permit. The current standard is intended to minimize the appearance of garage doors proportionally to the house front facade.
In the case of the subject developments, the developers presented house plans where 6 of the 7 types of house plans have doors setback between 17 feet to 21 feet 5 inches from the garage. Each project also includes a row of rear loaded homes along Ontario that meet the standard because the front faces Ontario and garage face the internal street.
City Council first considered revising residential standards to increase housing variety on June 23, 2020. Ultimately, after a review of options and developer input, Council reviewed a Planned Unit Development (PUD) Overlay District ordinance on May 11, 2021, and adopted the ordinance on June 8, 2021. Council created the PUD Overlay to offer more flexibility in design in order to facilitate housing variety with certain open space and design compatibility standards. This was considered an implementation measure of Plan 2040.
The PUD ordinance allows for certain deviations from code (lot area, lot width, lot frontage, setbacks, site coverage) in exchange for set standards related to building design for front doors and garages, including the minimum distance the front door can be from the front of the dwelling.
When the PUD Overlay was initially adopted, garages could not protrude in front of the front entrance. However, in 2024, City Council amended the standard in response to the development community request from the "Short Term Housing Taskforce" to create more flexibility for the PUD standard.
The current Compatibility Standards per the 2024 amendments (Ord. 4541)
(a) Garages and Driveways. Garages and off-street parking areas must be located so that they do not define the front facade of the dwelling. This standard is met with a garage does not protrude forward from the front facade or the front entry is setback typically no more than 12 feet to the front door and includes the required entrance design requirements. City Council may approve a development on through-lots without meeting this standard when it is determined to be impracticable for the home design and street types.
The development must include adequate right-of-way and driveway spacing to accommodate parking and street trees. The width of driveways may need to be reduced and garages setback an adequate distance to accommodate these elements. Shared driveways are encouraged to address street design goals. Alley or private rear lane access is also an option.
(b) Entrances. Main entrances to dwelling units must be clearly identifiable and accessible to the owner and visitors. The main entrance must be demarcated by one of the following: covered porch or stoop; sidelight windows; or other significant architectural treatment that emphasizes main entrances. Main entrances shall be directly connected to the pedestrian circulation system of the development.
The 2024 change to allow the front door to be no more than 12 feet back from the front of the house was made in conjunction with other modifications designed to ease development regulations in response to the Short Term Housing Taskforce request. The requirement that front doors be set back no more than 12 feet in the PUD matches the requirement for duplexes in single-family neighborhoods. The Council Action Form makes clear that the 12 feet are to be measured to the front door, not to a front porch.
At the time of the original PUD adoption in 2021, staff reasoned that the compatibility standards (including front door location) were necessary to mitigate the impacts of the denser development that was anticipated to be facilitated by PUDs. This was part of the Plan 2040 emphasis on design requirements related to density increases.
Staff sought direction on priorities for flexibility and design with the original 2021 PUD Overlay. With smaller lots, staff felt that having a street with a line of protruding garages was not desirable. On larger, standard single-family residential lots, the greater width and setbacks give adequate room and homes are therefore not designed with the garage as the most prominent feature. The garage protrusion standard was specifically identified at that time as an interest by the Council after reviewing home designs that had primarily garage doors as the front facade.
HOME DESIGN EXAMPLES:
City Council has approved a variety of small lot home and townhome-type projects since 2021. As a result, there are examples of houses within various zoning districts that help provide visual context to the front door standard when it has been applied and when it was not required. Attached to the report is visual presentation of homes with notes about the homes.
Staff believes that the issue of front entrance design is most significant for the narrower lots, which is consistent with staff's original analysis when creating the PUD Overlay. By making narrower lots, generally less than 50 feet in width, it leads builders to allocate a greater percentage of the front facades to garages and have less area to the side for living space, thereby pushing the living area to the rear of the home. This is exactly the situation for the subject development of Yukon Valley with 43-foot foot lots where most of the homes have no living area abutting the garage.
For single-family attached development, both the new PUD development at 400 S. 4th Street and the PUD Harrison development at Harrison Road and Welbeck Drive have units that comply with the requirement that the front door be no more than 12 feet setback from the front of the structure. In both cases, the lots are the same width or narrower than what is proposed on Yukon Valley and Ontario Townes. The units are all comparable in width.
For single-family detached development, Domani is comparable to Yukon Valley. The Domani lots are wider than what is proposed at Yukon Valley with correspondingly wider houses. Many of the homes have doors setback no more than 12 feet, while others exceed 12 feet. As a Planned Residence District (PRD), the same PUD standard does not apply.
Staff is aware of desire for the upcoming Hayden's Preserve to utilize the PUD Overlay to make narrow lots of potentially only 40 feet of width for detached homes. Staff identified the front door standard to them as well and they referenced some homes that have been built in Waukee as likely being able to achieve the standard.
Luke Jensen, representing Ontario Townes, provided a cost estimate for how they would modify two plans to meet the requirements. He assumed a construction cost of $200 a square foot. Staff can not verify the per square foot cost for the small additional area, but $200 a foot is reasonable cost estimate for whole house construction.
The cost estimates assume extension of basements if the plan has a basement or just extension of habitable area on a slab if there is no basement. The developer states that additional space would provide a larger entry way and storage area, but no other additional habitable floor area due to the narrowness of the house plan. (See attached information, and elevations of buildings within Ontario Towns and Yukon Valley.)
1. Direct staff to modify the PUD compatibility standards to allow for front door setbacks greater than 12 feet as a design guideline.
With this option, Council could make modifications to provide more flexibility to the standard and make it a case-by-case decision with each PUD. The change would make the standard a guideline for Council approval of the PUD Plan. This option would make the most sense if there was a rationale on why the standard could not be achieved and the expectation would be that more projects or homes would still achieve the guideline.
2. Direct staff to modify the PUD Compatibility standards in relation to public vs. private streets or as a percentage of houses along a street.
This approach attempts to allow some additional flexibility to developers. The emphasis would be on public streets or that a substantial amount of the homes (75%) within PUD achieve the standard. If City Council adopted a public vs. private street expectation, the Ontario Townes townhomes would meet the requirement but the Yukon Valley project would still need to meet the standard. Alternatively, Yukon Valley could propose a private street to match the narrow lots that they propose for the development.
3. Direct staff to delete the 12-foot setback standard in its entirety and only require the design elements of a front entrance.
Staff believes there is no reason to adjust the 12-foot distance to different value, instead under this option the setback standard would be deleted. This approach has no distance requirement, but would still require a covered entry and windows to provide some visual significance to the house entrance. This option would meet the developers' interest.
4. Take no action.
With no action, the current standard will apply. Ontario Townes and Yukon Valley will need to utilize house plans that comply with the standard.
Other than Des Moines, which relies upon a form-based code, cities generally do not have single-family design standards and review each proposal on a case by case basis with a PUD request. Initially, the standard was added to the PUD overlay to avoid case-by-case discussion and to have an efficient and set expectation. From staff's review of projects in Ames, it appears that compliance has been driven mostly by the developer's lot size and house plan choices rather than trying to create customized house plans for the PUDs.
There are examples within Ames of new housing with single-family detached or single-family attached, in Ames that meet the maximum of 12 feet setback requirement. However, developers indicate that the additional costs of developing different floor plans or to construct additional square footage are not desirable.
This is the third instance that City Council has discussed the design expectations for PUDs over the past five years. Staff is looking for either affirmation of Council's expectations for the current standards, Option 4, or to provide direction on its preferences of either deleting the requirement or modifying again.