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PROJECT BACKGROUND
What Does the Land Use and Development Code Do?
The Land Use and Development Code ("LUDC") is City law about such things as:
- How land may be used and may not be used;
- How much can be built (e.g., how tall the buildings can be, how many homes can be put on each acre, how much of the lot they can cover, how much parking and landscaping must be provided);
- What resources have to be protected and how;
- How projects should be designed; and
- How approvals are granted for new development, expansions of existing buildings, or redevelopment.
Why Rewrite the Land Use and Development Code?
The City has had a LUDC for many years. In fact, the LUDC that the City uses today was originally adopted in 1989. That document has been amended about 160 times over the last 20 years.
Since 1989, the City has developed and adopted a number of plans for its future development -- and it has grown, developed, and redeveloped. The LUDC has only changed incrementally in anticipation of, or in response to, new development.
Because of the many things it does, the LUDC started as a complicated document. 20 years of amendment has increased the document's complexity. This situation reduces certainty for landowners, adds unnecessary confusion to the development review process, and makes administration of the LUDC more difficult than it has to be.
Accordingly, over the next 16 months, the LUDC will be directly calibrated to the City's plans and shared values (identified at public meetings), substantially reorganized, updated, and rewritten to ensure that it is easy to use, and consistent with the City Charter and applicable state and federal laws.