Land Use and Planning Committee (LUPC) hosted the Mass, Scale, and Character committee members Tuesday night at the regular LUPC meet held at The Terrace restaurant on Washington.

Sue Kaplan, chair of the ad hoc committee, Brian Finney, and members of the committee all explained their path and goal for this committee and the residents of Venice. Their objective is to have rules or guidelines for architects to work with for the design. These are ideas at this point that the committee has considered.

Finney, who did the power point presentation, said they were trying to quantify the mass perhaps to provide a set back for second and third floors to, perhaps, a percentage of first floor.

Scale, Finney said, perhaps, could be controlled by Floor Area Ratio (FAR). FAR would be based on the square footage of the lot.

Character, which is harder to pin down in Venice, would be based on the “street scape” block where project was to be built on. This was really a conceptual challenge. Kaplan explained that perhaps 2/3 of the houses on the block were before 1920’s and that might play a part. Perhaps, 2/3 of the houses were one story. That might play into the picture.

None of these figures or ideas, both Finney and Kaplan explained, were quantified as of yet. They were looking for input.