The Arlington guidelines would reduce the footprint of a single-family home, driveway and outbuildings according to a sliding scale that would vary by lot size and location.
For two-thirds of the county's properties, the rules would limit the portion of a lot that could be covered by construction and asphalt to 40 percent, down from 56 percent.
A big new house towers over its more established neighbors on Culpeper Street in Arlington, whose County Board is considering imposing restrictions.
(Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)
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James Sheehan, 80, a retired land surveyor who has lived with a cramped galley kitchen in his Arlington Forest home for 50 years, said the proposal could reduce the allowable size of the addition he wants to build -- to include his dream kitchen -- from 1,394 square feet to 706 square feet.
"I spent 35 years paying for a house. Why should I be prevented from expanding in accordance with the rules that were in place when I bought it?" Sheehan asked.
County officials insist that the proposal would not affect the typical homeowner, and they cite a study showing that 90 percent of existing homes would be in compliance if the guidelines were passed.
They also say the problem of outsize homes is so great that action is overdue.
Demolition permits for single-family homes are on the rise across the region. In Arlington, the number of demolition permits increased from 73 in 2000 to 116 last year; it has more than tripled in Montgomery County, from 107 in 2000 to 367 last year.
In Montgomery, officials are considering stricter limits on home heights after complaints from neighbors about big houses from Bethesda to Silver Spring.
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) recently asked his staff to examine what, if any, limits could be put in place in the county.
Tinkering with personal property rights is such a dicey issue that other efforts across the area to target McMansions -- such as a 1998 "mansionization" task force in Montgomery -- have stalled.
Montgomery County Council member Howard A. Denis (R-Potomac-Bethesda) thinks he will be lucky to get the council to so much as discuss his "modest proposal" to curb abuse of the county's 35-foot building height limit this year.
In response to the proliferation of outsize homes in the District, zoning officials have imposed tighter restrictions on home sizes along University Terrace and Chain Bridge Road and in the Wesley Heights neighborhood, both near American University.
Approval is pending on similar limits in Forest Hills, north of Cleveland Park, according to D.C. zoning administrator Toye Bello.
Forest Hills residents started pushing for the limits three years ago after developers began "clear-cutting" lots on its leafy streets near Rock Creek Park to make way for bigger homes, said Carl Kessler, an advisory neighborhood commissioner.
