Getting a Deck Past a Meridian Architectural Committee

There is a line in the City of Meridian’s residential accessory structures guidance that homeowners tend to skim past. Asked how tall a shed can be, the city’s answer is: see applicable Homeowner Association restrictions. The same document, in its shed installation notes, tells people to verify Homeowner’s Association requirements before anything else.

That is the city telling you that its permit is not the only approval in play.

Why Meridian in particular

Meridian is a young city built in waves of master-planned subdivisions. Paramount, Bridgetower, Tuscany, Lochsa Falls, Century Farm, Bainbridge and the rest were all planned communities with covenants written at development, and the majority of the city’s housing went up after 2000 inside one of them. The result is that most Meridian households live under a set of recorded covenants with an architectural committee attached.

This is not a problem. Committees exist to stop the thing you would not want built next door either. It is just a second timetable running alongside the city’s, and it moves at the speed of a volunteer group that meets monthly.

What committees usually want to see

There is no single form across the city, but submissions tend to ask for the same things:

• A site sketch showing the deck footprint relative to the house and the property lines.
• Dimensions. Length, width, and height above grade.
• Materials. Decking product and color, rail system and color, and often the fascia and skirting.
• Elevation or a rendering where the structure will be visible from the street or from a common area.
• Color samples for anything that is not a stock neutral.

Where a cover or pergola is involved, expect more scrutiny, because a roof changes the silhouette of the house from outside the lot in a way a low deck does not.

The rules that come up most

Covenants vary, but a handful of themes recur in Meridian subdivisions:

• Height and visibility. Structures that break the roofline or sit visible above a fence line get looked at hardest.
• Color palette. Many communities have an approved range, and a bright decking color or a white rail in a neighborhood of earth tones is where refusals happen.
• Setback from the rear line, sometimes stricter than the city’s requirement.
• Screening and skirting, particularly on elevated decks where the underside would otherwise be visible.

None of these are onerous once known. All of them are annoying to discover after a design is finalised and materials are ordered.

Timing, which is the actual issue

Two to three weeks is a normal committee turnaround in Meridian, driven mostly by when the group next meets. That is fine if the submission goes in alongside the city permit application. It is not fine if it goes in after the city permit is issued and a crew is holding a slot.

The sequence that works:

1. Site measure and design.
2. Submit to the architectural committee and file the city permit application at the same time.
3. Order materials once both are clear, or once the committee has approved the materials specifically.
4. Build.

Running the two approvals in parallel typically saves two to three weeks off the total. In a valley where the build calendar fills from the front, that can be the difference between a June deck and an August one.

Who submits it

Usually the homeowner, because the covenants run with the property and the committee’s relationship is with the owner rather than the contractor. A builder who works Meridian regularly will have the drawing and the material specifications ready in the form committees expect, but the submission itself normally comes from you.

Worth asking your builder for: a dimensioned sketch, the exact product names and colors, and a clean elevation if the structure will be visible. Those three things cover most committee requirements without a separate design fee.

If it comes back with conditions

Common and usually minor. A color change, a skirting requirement, a request to pull the structure back a foot from a line. These are resolvable inside a week if the design is not already in production, which is another argument for approving before ordering.

An outright refusal is rare on a deck and more likely on a tall covered structure. Where it happens, the workable response is nearly always a smaller or lower version rather than an appeal, because the covenants are the covenants.

And the easements

While the plat is out for the committee submission, look at the easements too. Meridian lots typically carry 10 feet across the rear yard, 5 feet along an interior side, and 15 feet on the street side of a corner lot, and a structure inside one can have to move at the owner’s expense. That constraint is covered properly in the easements piece, and it is worth resolving in the same sitting.

Two documents, one afternoon, and the design conversation gets a great deal simpler afterwards.