The Newport Historic District Commission (HDC) held its regular meeting on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers, 43 Broadway, Newport, RI. The meeting began with a pre-meeting workshop on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) led by Zoning Officer Nick Armor and Preservation Planner Jillian Chen, followed by the regular agenda which included approval of minutes, summary approvals, action items on extension requests, and hearings on several new and continued applications. The meeting concluded with a vote on a contentious window replacement application for 1 Bellevue Avenue.
Hey, how are you? Well, so are you well by yourself? Hi guys. Do a lot of trialing on that folks up. Yeah, Ray is likely not coming. It's not coming at all. Okay. I'm back. Sure. Okay, go. Okay. So we have the zoning officer here, Nick, who you're all familiar with, who is going to kind of go into the zoning piece of it. And then I will go into the HDC piece and design, you know, after we we learn what an ADU is and what the HCC's role is in reviewing these applications, because we are going to see and we have seen an uptick in applications for accessory dwelling units. So Nick, if you want to take it away. Good evening. Yeah, will you please introduce yourself? Just for the record, Nick Armor zoning officer would say. All right. So ADUs are a thing that's been around in other states for a long time. And in Rhode Island, they were uh introduced originally as accessory family dwelling units, which had to be associated to a disabled or elderly family member. Um that was changed uh about a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago, uh, to eliminate the family relationship requirement. Uh there is still a path for uh a little bit different ADUs for truly disabled family members. Um not worth totally getting into right now, but essentially they get to go uh around some of the zoning regulations if it's truly for a disabled individual. Um so we introduced uh a new chapter 17.79 of the zoning code uh to the city council last year, and it was adopted a couple months after the state uh adopted it. And I will go through all uh pieces here. So um ADUs are only allowed through new construction on a property that is at least 20,000 square feet in size. If you have a residential lot that is less than 20,000 square feet, it must be done through the conversion of an existing structure that can be either an accessory structure or a portion of your home. Uh ADUs are only allowed on a residentially zoned lot with a residential use. So you can't put an ADU in the general business area if you have a property that's already commercially designated for whatever reason it cannot have an ADU. It has to be a strictly residential property. Um so on any lot in a residential zoning district where the ADU is located entirely within the existing footprint of the primary or accessory structure. Um ADU is allowed per lot regardless of how many units are on the property. You could have a multifamily property, but it is only allowed to have one ADU. Um ADUs are prohibited from being used as short-term rentals. That is both per state law and through the city ordinance that we passed. ADU well, short-term rentals are also not permitted in residential zones anymore, so it kind of is triply effective here where these these units cannot be used for short-term rentals. Um they can be used for month to month rentals if they're registered with the city, but it has to be 30 days or greater. Um, as far as we understand the state law and how we pass it in our code, an ADU on a property has to be on a property that all the structures on the lot are under one single joint or common ownership. So we believe that means that they cannot be on condo properties because those are not under a single ownership. Yes, the uh square footage of the lot, 20,000 square feet, not a lot of lots in our city. Correct. Or of that size. So is that an automatic knockout that says no ADU? Uh no. So we'll get into the the way that we have been seeing a majority of these right now are through a conversion of an existing structure. Yeah. Um, and we'll get to some of the there's a couple loopholes there on how they can do that. But a brand new construction, which means either building a new accessory structure as an ADU or in addition to a home that's a new construction on that addition. Uh, we have not been permitting ADUs in that way. They have to be like they could potentially add the addition to their house as just an addition and then convert a portion of it to an ADU.