What about building style and architecture?

The overlay district does not concern itself with the architecture or style of the buildings nor does it dictate building materials, colors, or ornamentation. There is no architectural review board or other body that reviews plans for this type of compliance. What is included in the overlay is there for pedestrian safety and comfort---again, to encourage pedestrian use of the community centers.

The first requirement worth discussing is facade transparency, which is fancy terminology for windows. In order to provide security for the streets (by people inside the buildings) as well as for merchandising purposes, the overlay requires that between 20% and 75% of each floor be windows. For storefronts, the ground floor requirement is 50% to 75%. While these requirements seem very technical, they would appear very standard and intuitive to someone looking at an example (see below). Window requirements also help prevent blank walls which greatly discourage pedestrian use.

Another area of consideration is doors. The overlay requires that larger buildings have storefront entrances at least every 50 feet. This ensures a mixture of uses and prevents expanses of blank walls. The code also requires that primary entrances face the street, again, to ensure that the buildings maintain a relationship with the sidewalk / street and to the pedestrians that use it.

In order to protect pedestrians from the elements (mainly sun and rain here in Mobile), each building should include appropriate shading via awnings, marquees, balconies, colonnades, galleries, or arcades. Each has a different dimensional standard, but the code doesn't dictate a specific type or architectural style. The proposed overlay also includes requirements for lighting as well as facade coverage exceptions for forecourts and other facade plane variations. There are also a number of smaller requirements that would only apply in select cases, so it's worth reading through the code to pick those out.

The main point to make, and one that has been made in other posts, is that the code's concern comes from the building's relationship to the sidewalk and street and to ensuring appropriate pedestrian use. The requirements about building form are actually very minimal and only serve to define the basic envelope of the structure. A great variety of styles and architectural elements will undoubtedly leverage these exact same requirements. The Blueprint does contain some excellent guidance for architects and developers who want to achieve a traditional main street feel with their buildings: