Montgomery County Planning Department will bury old zoning code to unveil up-to-date, user-friendly rules that simplify and consolidate land use regulations
Silver Spring, MD – On Thursday, October 30, 2014 at 11:30 a.m., staff at the Montgomery County Planning Department, part of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and members of the County Council will pick up shovels to dig a grave for the County’s old Zoning Ordinance. The documents will be laid to rest the day before Halloween in the community garden next to the Planning Department headquarters at Royce Hanson Park, located at 8787 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring.
Montgomery County Council President Craig Rice; Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee Chair Nancy Floreen; and Councilmember Cherri Branson will join with Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson and Planning Board members to debut the new Montgomery County Zoning Ordinance and commemorate the October 30th effective date.
The new Zoning Ordinance can be accessed on the Montgomery Planning Department’s Zoning website starting October 30.
Following this symbolic burial, the County’s new Zoning Ordinance will be unveiled, followed by a short presentation about the new law and comprehensive zoning map for the county, both of which were approved by the Montgomery County Council earlier this year.
The new code is a vast improvement over the former one since it is far more up-to-date and user-friendly. It embraces the most current planning concepts and offers new tools to achieve the goals of the county’s master plans. The Zoning Ordinance encourages better development, enhances sustainability and enables more mixed-use zoning.
“The new code provides a more adaptable and progressive framework for our efforts to build vibrant communities,” says Casey Anderson, chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board. “The years of work that have gone into this project will produce benefits in the form of more sustainable development patterns and better design.”
This code is the first comprehensive update to the County’s land use regulations since they were last revised in 1977. Piecemeal updates to the code over the past several decades resulted in a document with more than 1,200 pages, more than 120 zones, more than 400 uses, hundreds of footnotes and many confusing and sometimes contradictory provisions. Developing the new Zoning Ordinance required years of community meetings, stakeholder discussions, work sessions and redrafting.
The new code seeks to bring more vibrancy to Montgomery County by encouraging mixed-use, walkable communities. The law allows flexibility for more housing in and around commercial centers and encourages more pedestrian-friendly, sustainable developments while providing greater protections from new and infill development for existing residential neighborhoods. In addition, it improves the efficiency of the development review process by allowing more consolidated plan reviews, reducing redundant requirements and codifying review deadlines.
History and Goals of the New Zoning Ordinance:
Since the last major update to the zoning code in 1977, the County has grown and changed substantially, and many of the zoning laws have become outdated. The County Council tasked the Planning Department with undertaking a comprehensive rewrite of the zoning code in 2007 with the following goals in mind:
-simplify and consolidate the regulations;
-improve their clarity and consistency;
-accommodate the county’s changing markets and demographics, while protecting established neighborhoods;
-reflect more sustainable policy goals;
-provide the tools to shift from greenfield development to infill, mixed-use development.
After an extensive public review process, the Planning Board approved a draft of the new code and presented it to the Planning, Housing, and Economic Development Committee (PHED) of the County Council in May 2013. Numerous open houses, community meetings and discussions in local neighborhoods provided feedback from residents and property owners on the code and associated zoning map. In March 2014, after 15 work sessions at the PHED and Council, the Council adopted the text of the new Zoning Ordinance.