A 1.2-acre property at 13750 Fenton Avenue in Sylmar could soon be transformed into a cluster of 10 small-lot homes, each paired with its own garage, rear yard, and junior accessory dwelling unit. The proposal, laid out in a new application, would reshape a stretch of the San Fernando Valley neighborhood with a housing style the city has allowed for two decades but that remains a relatively uncommon sight on many residential blocks.
What's Being Proposed on Fenton Avenue
The application was submitted to the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, according to Urbanize LA. The plan calls for 10 lots carved out of the Sylmar site, with each lot slated to hold a single-family home, a one-car garage, and a rear yard, the outlet reports. Every home would also come with a junior accessory dwelling unit tucked onto its lot, adding a secondary living space to each of the 10 parcels.
The structures themselves would rise two stories and be arranged in rows encircling a shared common driveway, per the same report. That layout is a hallmark of the small-lot format, which clusters compact, fee-simple homes together rather than spreading them across large individual yards.
Who's Behind the Project
CSE Management Group, LLC is listed as the applicant behind the Sylmar proposal, while 121 Design Build is credited as the project's designer, the outlet's report states. The Fenton Avenue property last sold for $1.1 million this year, according to the same account.
How Small-Lot Rules and Parking Work in LA
Los Angeles created the small-lot housing style through its Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance, adopted in 2005 to introduce a new housing typology to the city, according to Los Angeles City Planning. Before that change, a roughly 5,000-square-foot minimum lot size had made traditional detached single-family construction an impractical option for many developers, per a case study from HUD USER.
Parking at small-lot developments also follows different rules than standard single-family construction. Citywide, the Los Angeles Municipal Code generally requires at least two automobile parking spaces on the same lot as each one-family dwelling, according to the Los Angeles Municipal Code. But for small-lot subdivisions approved under the relevant municipal code section, required parking spaces don't have to sit on the same lot as each unit — they just need to fall within the overall parcel or tract-map boundaries, per the same code.
Junior ADUs Carry Their Own State Rules
The junior accessory dwelling units planned for each Fenton Avenue lot would be subject to state law governing how many such units can exist on a single parcel. Under state legislation, the number of junior accessory dwelling units may be limited to one per residential lot zoned for single-family residences that already has a single-family residence built on it, according to California Legislative Information.
Small-lot proposals have been surfacing elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley and beyond in recent weeks. A separate application recently filed with city planners targeted a 1950s single-family home near Cal State University Northridge for a similar small-lot subdivision, Urbanize LA has reported separately. And in late September, a developer filed an application with city planners calling for small-lot homes to replace a single-family property in West Adams, according to The Real Deal.
