Sea Isle Looks to Dress Up More Homes With "Bump-Outs"

By DONALD WITTKOWSKI They are called “bump-outs” – decorative features placed above windows or doors to dress up the larger, upscale homes that are now common in Sea Isle City. They are considered far more attractive than just having an expanse of long, blank exterior walls on a house. Sea Isle wants to encourage more homeowners to add bump-outs to make their houses more aesthetically pleasing, but with certain limitations. City Council has introduced a zoning ordinance that will allow homeowners with slightly undersized side yards to have bump-outs. A public hearing and final vote on the proposal is scheduled for the Oct. 25 Council meeting. “The reason we created bump-outs in the first place was to do away with that long, wall feeling that you were getting back in the age when they were building side-by-sides,” City Solicitor Paul Baldini explained during the Sept. 27 Council meeting when the ordinance was introduced by a 5-0 vote. Baldini noted that bump-outs will allow for “some architectural aesthetics to be put in place to break up that long, wall look.” City Solicitor Paul Baldini says bump-outs break up what would otherwise be long, bare exterior walls on the side of a house. Bump-outs are a way to expand a home while legally “encroaching” into setback areas in the side yards. Examples include ornamental roofs or decorative canopies placed above windows or doors to give homes more curb appeal. Currently, bump-outs are allowed in Sea Isle when a homeowner has at least 6½ feet of side yard. But they must be built a minimum of 5 feet from the property line to maintain enough space between homes, Baldini said. Under the proposed ordinance, homeowners with side yards of 5½ feet or 6 feet will be able to have bump-outs, but the bump-outs would have to be smaller in size. The homeowners would still have to maintain a minimum distance of 5 feet between the bump-outs and the property line, Baldini said. “What this does is to allow a person who has say, 5½ feet or 6 feet of side yard, not 6½, to still get a bump-out, albeit it will be a smaller bump-out,” he said. In recent years, architectural features such as bump-outs have been a touchy subject in Sea Isle, a town that has been dealing with complaints on social media about large, high-end vacation homes gobbling up precious open space on the narrow island. But Sea Isle officials believe that bump-outs are an attractive way to spruce up what would otherwise be the long, barren exterior walls on the side of the house. Now, the plan is to allow homeowners who have slightly undersized side yards to have bump-outs, too. “Rather than have those properties create these long walls, the hope is that by amending this (law) we would encourage them to also do bump-outs to break that wall up on the side yard. That’s what this ordinance is about,” Baldini said. In earlier discussions about bump-outs, Councilman Jack Gibson has pointed out that the side walls are often the most visible part of the house, so they should be the ones that are enhanced with decorative architectural features.