1141.12 SCREENING AND LANDSCAPING REQUIREMENTS.
(a) Screening When Parking Areas, Circulation Aisles, Loading Areas, and Driveways Abut Residential Properties. When a parking area, circulation aisle, loading area, or driveway of a retail business, industrial, office or multi-family use abuts a residential district or use, the property owner of the parking area shall provide on his or her property bumper guards or curbs placed on the aforesaid parking, loading, circulation or driveway facilities, and the area between these facilities and the residential lot lines shall be landscaped. The location and type of structural or landscape features, such as bumper guards, curbs, walls, fences, shrubs, ground cover or hedges, shall be approved by the Commission and Council. The Commission and Council shall not approve, however, unless walls and fences or other solid visual screening is not less than five feet nor more than seven feet in height.
Shrubs, ground cover and hedges should only be permitted when the landscaping plan shows that the planting of such density and heights will effectively screen the visual evidence of the parking area from adjacent residences, and such screening shall be not less than five feet in height when planted.
(b) Perimeter Planting. A continuous landscaped strip of evergreen shrubs planted at intervals of not more than five feet on centers and at initial height of at least two feet shall be provided and maintained along any side of a multi-family residential, commercial or industrial parking area which is located in a required yard abutting a public road. The Commission may permit alternative forms of planting if it determines that the required planting is either infeasible or not in keeping with an area’s character.
(c) Interior Landscaping. Any single parking area with fifty or more spaces shall utilize at least five percent (5%) of its area for landscaping designed to interrupt the expanse of paved surface. Within such parking areas, landscaped islands shall be provided so that no row of parking exceeds twelve spaces in length.
(d) Occupancy permits shall not be granted until all of the above required barriers and screens are planted or erected in compliance herewith. Screening, landscaping and other required barriers shall be maintained in good order at all times, and no planting, except trees, shall be permitted to grow in excess of seven feet in height.
(e) Permitted Forms of Screening.
(1) A landscaped earthen berm;
(2) A wall or fence as compatible with the character of the area in which the wall is to be placed;
(3) A compact hedge or a combination of evergreen and deciduous vegetation;
(4) A combination thereof.
(f) Berming. Berms used for screening shall be a minimum of two feet high at all points. Slopes for earthen faces shall not exceed thirty-three percent (33%) if any portion is covered with grass and fifty percent (50%) if covered with other vegetative cover.
(Ord. 27-1999. Passed 10-13-99.)