A homeowner in New Albany gets a phone call from a neighbor about a new deck going in next door. It's brown, low to the ground, and looks fine from the street. Weeks later, the family building it gets a letter. The city signed off on the permit. Their homeowners association did not, and under the association's own governing documents, one approval has nothing to do with the other.
That split is not a fluke or a bureaucratic accident. It's how New Albany is built. If you're buying, building, or planning a renovation here, the first thing to understand is that "New Albany's design standards" is not a single sentence. It's at least two separate systems that don't answer to each other, and which one applies to your driveway, your roof, or your solar panels depends entirely on which specific homeowners association holds your deed.
Two Committees, One Deck
The City of New Albany runs its own Architectural Review Board under Chapter 1157 of the city code, a citywide overlay district that covers nearly every zoning classification in the municipality except the Technology Manufacturing District and parts of the Limited Industrial and General Employment districts. That board has seven members, up to two of whom can also sit on the Planning Commission, and its job is to issue Certificates of Appropriateness for exterior and site changes across the city. The city amended this chapter in September 2025, so the version currently governing your project is less than a year old.
That's the municipal layer. It exists whether or not you belong to an HOA.
Then there's the private layer. Communities like New Albany Links run their own Architectural Review Board with five members appointed by the HOA's board of trustees, completely separate from the city's seven-member board. The Links guidelines put the relationship in plain language: municipal approval doesn't substitute for HOA approval, and HOA approval doesn't substitute for the city's. You need both, and you need them independently.
New Albany isn't unique in having an HOA layer on top of city zoning. What's worth knowing before you buy or build here is how many separate, differently run HOA layers exist inside one city, and how specific each one gets.
The Same City, Three Different Rulebooks
Tartan Fields runs a three-step approval process through its own Architectural Review Board, managed by NAI Ohio Equities' New Albany office. New Albany Country Club's community association uses something called the Participating Builders & Architects Committee, which pre-qualifies builders and architects before they're even allowed to submit plans for a renovation or new home. All three run through the same third-party manager, Ohio Equities, but the rules themselves are not shared.
| Community | Review body | Approval validity | Notable rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Albany Links | 5-member ARB | Not time-limited in guidelines | Driveways must be black asphalt; concrete is not permitted |
| Tartan Fields | ARB, 3-step builder process | Expires after 6 months | Post-completion photo required within 30 days of finishing |
| New Albany Country Club | Participating Builders & Architects Committee | Builder/architect qualification required before submission | Committee pre-approves who can even design your project |
A homeowner comparing a listing in Links to one in Tartan Fields isn't just comparing square footage and HOA dues. They're comparing two different sets of exterior rules, two different clocks on how long an approval lasts, and two different processes for even getting a contractor in the door.
How Granular the Rules Actually Get
The specificity is the part most buyers underestimate. At New Albany Links, decking must be finished in brown or gray tones, with the guidelines pointing homeowners toward Sherwin-Williams Superdeck or Benjamin Moore Arborcoat as reference examples. Garage doors can only use glass in the upper panel, never full glass. Patios have to be brick, stone, or decorative concrete. None of this is enforced by the city. It's enforced by the HOA's own board, using its own five-member review process, with its own fee schedule: $25 for small projects like a tree removal, $50 for larger ones like a new roof or driveway.
Skip the approval step entirely and the consequence isn't a warning letter. It's a $500 compliance violation fee, assessed per project, for any structural improvement, roof replacement, siding job, or window swap done without prior sign-off.
Solar panels are where the layering shows up most clearly, because there's a state law sitting underneath both the city and the HOA. Ohio's Senate Bill 61, signed by Governor DeWine in June 2022 and in effect since September of that year, created a presumption that homeowners in HOA communities can install solar panels unless the HOA's declaration specifically bans them. What the law leaves standing is an HOA's right to impose reasonable restrictions on size, placement, and manner of installation. That's exactly the gap New Albany Links fills with detail: solar hardware must be black, low-profile, and free of any decorative covering, wiring has to run to the rear of the house out of street view, and the panels can't extend past the roofline they're mounted on. The state law says you can't be banned. The HOA still gets to say how it has to look.
Why the City Doesn't Just Handle This Itself
The two systems exist because they're answering different questions. The city's building department is concerned with structural safety and code compliance. New Albany's residential construction is still enforced under the 2019 Residential Code of Ohio, even though commercial projects in the same city now fall under the 2024 Ohio Building Code. That gap alone tells you the city's permitting side moves on its own schedule, separate from anything an HOA decides about aesthetics.
The HOA's architectural board isn't checking whether your deck will hold weight. It's checking whether your deck matches the community's visual standard, which is a private contractual matter written into the deed you signed when you bought the house, not a public safety question the city has any authority over. That's why getting a building permit from the city's Tuesday-morning residential plan review meeting doesn't touch your obligation to also clear the same project with your HOA's separate board, on its own separate timeline.
What This Means If You're Buying, Not Just Building
If you're evaluating a home in New Albany with plans to renovate, the HOA's design guidelines are not optional reading. Before you write an offer, find out which specific association governs the property, not just that it's "in New Albany," and request the actual current guidelines document rather than relying on what a listing sheet summarizes.
Pay attention to the paper trail, too. New Albany Links guidelines specifically require that approval documentation be kept by the homeowner and handed off to the next owner when the house sells. If a previous owner added a deck or replaced siding without ever getting it approved, that unresolved compliance issue doesn't disappear at closing. It becomes yours.
A few things worth confirming before you sign a renovation contract or a purchase agreement:
- Which HOA, specifically, holds architectural authority over this address, and does it have its own ARB separate from the city's.
- What the current design guidelines say about the exact project you're planning, since driveway, deck, and solar rules vary by community.
- Whether any past exterior work on the property was ever formally approved, and whether that documentation exists and transfers with the sale.
- What the HOA's fee schedule and review timeline look like, since a $25 submission and a 30-day answer at one community can look very different at another.
A Few Direct Questions
Does getting a city building permit mean my HOA project is approved? No. New Albany Links states directly that city approval does not constitute HOA approval, and the reverse is also true. Both processes have to be completed independently.
Can my HOA stop me from installing solar panels? Not outright. Ohio's Senate Bill 61 prevents HOAs from banning solar installations, but it still allows them to set reasonable rules on size, placement, and appearance, which is why communities like New Albany Links require black-only hardware and rear-facing wiring rather than an outright ban.
What happens if I skip the HOA review and just build? At New Albany Links, unapproved structural changes carry a $500 compliance fee, in addition to whatever remediation the board requires. Skipping city permitting on projects like decks, roofs, or patios carries its own separate consequences through the building department.
New Albany's design standards are a real asset for anyone who values a consistent, well-kept streetscape, but they're not simple, and no single guide covers every HOA in the city. If you're weighing a purchase or a renovation and want to know exactly which rulebook applies to a specific address, Sharon Staub can walk through the HOA, the city process, and what it actually takes to get a project approved before you're under contract.
