The city's decision to increase its floor-to-area ratio for industrially zoned buildings allowed one company--BAE Systems, an aerospace technology and military systems firm--to expand at its current site in Rancho Bernardo rather than move out of the area, according to John Turpit, president of Turpit & Potter Architects.

The company scoured the area for a suitable expansion site and found nothing, Turpit says. But Turpit & Potter found that the new ratio, adopted by the city council in December, would allow BAE Systems to build a new six-story, 213,000-sf office/engineering structure and an adjacent five-story, 340,000-sf, 1,009-space parking structure at its current site.

In December, the city increased the allowable floor-to-area ratio from 1:1 to 2:1, permitting developers to build mid-rise industrial projects for the first time, Turpit says. Under the old rules, the project would have blown out the site's allowable building area by 263,416 sf.