community design element CD-3: Design Quality

Only areas below are considered part of the General Plan.

Design Quality

Through physical improvements-including overall site design, landscaping, building design and orientation, architectural details, site furniture, building materials, and land use buffers and transitions-Menifee will help achieve vibrant places, enhanced value, and livability throughout the city. Projects and buildings shall be designed with consideration for adjacent land uses and the city's natural amenities, and when incompatibilities arise, projects may be required to provide sufficient land use buffers and transitions to ensure a harmonious environment.

Goal

• CD-3: Projects, developments, and public spaces that visually enhance the character of the community and are appropriately buffered from dissimilar land uses so that differences in type and intensity do not conflict.

Project Design

• CD-3.1: Preserve positive characteristics and unique features of a site during the design and development of a new project; the relationship to scale and character of adjacent uses should be considered.
• CD-3.2: Maintain and incorporate the city's natural amenities, including its hillsides, indigenous vegetation, and rock outcroppings, within proposed projects.
• CD-3.3: Minimize visual impacts of public and private facilities and support structures through sensitive site design and construction. This includes, but is not limited to: appropriate placement of facilities; undergrounding, where possible; and aesthetic design (e.g., cell tower stealthing).
• CD-3.4: Develop or participate in programs to rehabilitate older residential neighborhoods and commercial centers to prevent blight and maintain the quality of the built environment.
• CD-3.5: Design parking lots and structures to be functionally and visually integrated and connected; off-street parking lots should not dominate the streetscene.
• CD-3.6: Locate site entries and storage bays to minimize conflicts with adjacent residential neighborhoods.
• CD-3.7: Consider including public art at key gateways, major projects, and public gathering places.
• CD-3.8: Design retention/detention basins to be visually attractive and well integrated with any associated project and with adjacent land uses.
• CD-3.9: Utilize Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) techniques and defensible space design concepts to enhance community safety.

Building Design

• CD-3.10: Employ design strategies and building materials that evoke a sense of quality and permanence.
• CD-3.11: Provide special building-form elements, such as towers and archways, and other building massing elements to help distinguish activity nodes and establish landmarks within the community.
• CD-3.12: Utilize differing but complementary forms of architectural styles and designs that incorporate representative characteristics of a given area.
• CD-3.13: Utilize architectural design features (e.g., windows, columns, offset roof planes, etc.) to vertically and horizontally articulate elevations in the front and rear of residential buildings.
• CD-3.14: Provide variations in color, texture, materials, articulation, and architectural treatments. Avoid long expanses of blank, monotonous walls or fences.
• CD-3.15: Require property owners to maintain structures and landscaping to high standards of design, health, and safety.
• CD-3.16: Avoid use of long, blank walls in industrial developments by breaking them up with vertical and horizontal façade articulation achieved through stamping, colors, materials, modulation, and landscaping.

Land Use Transitions & Buffers

• CD-3.17: Encourage the use of creative landscape design to create visual interest and reduce conflicts between different land uses.
• CD-3.18: Require setbacks and other design elements to buffer residential units to the extent possible from the impacts of abutting roadway, commercial, agricultural, and industrial uses.
• CD-3.19: Design walls and fences that are well integrated in style with adjacent structures and terrain and utilize landscaping and vegetation materials to soften their appearance.
• CD-3.20: Avoid the blocking of public views by solid walls.
• CD-3.21: Use open space, greenways, recreational lands, and water courses as community separators.
• CD-3.22: Incorporate visual buffers, including landscaping, equipment and storage area screening, and roof treatments, on properties abutting either Interstate 215 or residentially designated property.