CANNON BEACH — Other cities have seen it happen: once buildable land becomes scarce, some people resort to buying two lots, demolishing the homes to build a larger one.

With few readily buildable lots left in Cannon Beach, City Manager Bruce St. Denis said the trend poses a threat to the city’s village character.

“And that’s not the direction we want to go,” he said.

During a meeting last week, the City Council unanimously adopted an ordinance prohibiting the combination of lots for the purpose of building larger homes. The council also repealed the city’s planned unit development chapter, blocking any future proposals.

But the city is not stopping there.

The work is part of a code audit process to address concerns over the increasing size of homes through combining lots, maximizing floor area and lot coverage ratios.

Over the next couple of years, the city will review and update policies to support a vision of maintaining a cottage village, which is outlined in the city’s comprehensive plan.

“There’s a wide range of things that you can build, per our code, that a lot of people would say, ‘Wait, that’s not what we want in Cannon Beach,’” St. Denis said. “Those are things we’ll be taking up as we move along.”

City Councilor Nancy McCarthy said the items approved last week were some of the more urgent and obvious policy matters. They were also supported during the public hearing.

“We don’t really want to see big ‘McMansions’ here,” she said. “We want to keep that village character. And I think we define the village as a cottage town.”

Planned unit developments have also proved troublesome.

Cannon Beach has only approved one planned unit development project, which has been entangled in legal appeals. No homes have yet to be built on the property.

The City Council also considered capping square footage and requiring larger homes to be rebuilt to the new standard if they are destroyed.

However, those items drew questions and opposition. The issues will come back before the City Council during a work session on Tuesday.

While coastal cottage homes built prior to 1960 are not on the historic register, the city said they are key to its cultural heritage. The pre-1960 cottages were on average below 1,500 square feet, according to Clatsop County records. Since 2000, the average has increased to over 2,250 square feet.

“I think we have to kind of think about where we want to limit the size of houses here and what we want the village to look like,” McCarthy said. “We’ve had a few houses built here that did take advantage, I think, of some of the loopholes. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we’re looking at the size of houses so that we don’t start getting some of these big box-like houses that just don’t fit the village character that we’re looking at.”

However, she said, there are still several questions that need to be worked out before a decision is made. How large is too large? How small is too small? How much does a family with three children really need?

“I have a feeling once we start making decisions, it may be that places like Gearhart and Seaside and Manzanita maybe might take a look at what we’re doing and want to do something similar,” McCarthy said.