Zoning Code Rewrite Session 3

Tomorrow the PHED Committee will hold its third work session on the Zoning Code Rewrite. Our agenda: Commercial Residential (CR) zones.

To make sure you are able to follow along as we continue to work through the Zoning Code Rewrite, we now have a page dedicated to the rewrite where you can get all of the staff memoranda and watch recordings of earlier meetings. Best of all, there is now an FAQ section that answers the questions that have come up most often in testimony and communications from residents. If you are looking for even more background information, check out the overview or the interactive map where you can see how proposed changes would affect your property.

Council Approves Wheaton Sector Plan

The Council approved the new Wheaton Sector Plan, which establishes a vision for future private sector redevelopment of this vibrant and diverse community. We rezoned large portions of the area to encourage mixed use development, including retail, office and residential, while protecting surrounding residential neighborhoods. We hope incentives in our new family of commercial/residential (CR) zones will preserve small businesses while allowing for large-scale development and adding the creation of a tree canopy as a priority. It has been a great collegial effort among planners, community members and the Council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee, and I think it does a good job of accounting for a wide variety of needs and visions.

New Zoning Means Montgomery is Open for Business

Check out my opinion piece which appeared in today's edition of The Gazette. I have reprinted it here for your convenience:

We have a new tool for economic development, and it comes from a place you wouldn’t suspect — the zoning code. In this case, changes to the zoning code represent modern and innovative action that helps the private sector create jobs and commerce right here in our communities. The new tool is what we call the commercial/residential, or CR, zones.

After months of study, the Montgomery County Council made bold changes to a complicated and sometimes inconsistent zoning code that has been characterized as unfriendly to both businesses and communities.

The new family of CR zones can strip away much of the red tape that has hindered business, particularly small business, for decades. By allowing a hodgepodge of commercial zones to be replaced with three flexible CR zones, we’re making our standards clearer, more predictable and ultimately more accessible to those who can create jobs and housing.

The CR zones do away with the traditional approach of land use planning by specific uses, such as commercial or hotel, and replace it with zones that allow commercial and residential uses to coexist in the same street or block. The zones strictly regulate the height and density of buildings, thereby creating attractive communities where people can pick up a pair of shoes, grab a bite to eat and catch a movie on their way home from work, all without getting in a car.

Some people have expressed fears that skyscrapers will go up right next door to their single-family homes. That couldn’t be further from the truth. CR zones provide incentives for business to develop in ways that benefit neighborhoods and focus density near transit. They are designed to create interactive streetscapes where people can live, work, shop and play all within one neighborhood. It is important to note that the zones will place absolute limits on the allowable total density and building height.

The original CR zone already has been applied to the White Flint Sector Plan, which centers on the White Flint Metro station and which the council adopted in 2010. That ambitious and complex plan soon will transform the White Flint area along Rockville Pike into an exciting destination where strip malls are replaced by housing, stores and restaurants located together. Now the CR zones, which include lower-density provisions for towns and neighborhoods, are ready for other locations to be determined through our master planning process.

My hat is off to the Planning Board, planning staff, community activists, council staff, the council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee and all who participated in creating the family of CR zones. This new tool is an action statement to the business community that Montgomery County’s doors are indeed open for business, while at the same time serving as a commitment to residents and communities.

Nancy Floreen, Garrett Park

The writer is chairwoman of the Montgomery County Council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee.

Council Approves Commercial/Residential Zones

After months of work, we approved Zoning Test Amendment 11-01 that adds changes to the County’s Commercial/Residential Zone (CR Zone) and will greatly influence the scope of future development near Metro stations. The changes will encourage more urbanized, mixed-use development in those areas, allowing neighborhoods to evolve with retail, restaurants, services, entertainment, offices and near public transportation.

The Planning Board proposed ZTA 11-01. In our reviews, we made significant changes in the ZTA. Our revisions better protect communities by limiting land uses in CR Neighborhood zones, increase respect for master plans by implementing them through site plans, add increased incentives for affordable housing and create more certainty for communities and developers by clarifying the sketch plan process.

The ZTA provides incentives for developers to build near Metro stations. Current Commercial/Residential Zones allow for buildings in some circumstances to be between 16 and 27 stories high. To get permission to build, developers must meet specific criteria, which award “points.” Developments closer to Metro stations qualify for more points than those further from the stations. The new regulations clarify the criteria to get points, while also adding more options for developers to add points. For example, making buildings more environmentally friendly would earn additional points.

By this week’s adopting of two additional series of zones with lower building heights and density than allowed by current mixed-used zones, the Council will have more flexibility to respond to the competing demands of commercial and residential property owners reflected in master plans.

Future development will be required to get site plan approval to a greater extent than current standards, providing increased opportunities for the involvement of neighbors.

Those developing under the new zoning will be able to choose from a longer list of land uses. Dense development will still be required to provide public benefits, but development in the new zones will have to provide fewer public benefits than currently required on higher density mixed-use development.

The Commercial/Residential Neighborhood (CRN) and Commercial/Residential Town (CRT) zones were developed for areas where there are smaller properties, lower densities and more challenging economic conditions than where the Commercial/ Residential (CR) zones apply.

The new zones are structured like the current CR zones. The total floor area ratio (FAR), the residential FAR, the non-residential FAR and the maximum building height are identified with each zone.

One zoning series will apply to areas where existing commercial zones are located next to single-family residential neighborhoods. Another zoning series will apply to areas where requiring too many public benefits might impede redevelopment.

The allowed land uses and development standards vary with each zone. The CR Neighborhood zones would have the most limited land uses of the three commercial/residential zones.

Optional method development—where developers are often granted permission to build higher structures than would be permitted under regular zoning in exchange for providing certain public benefits—would not be allowed in CR Neighborhood zones.

The CR Zones will apply in some aspects to the future stops along the planned Purple Line and Corridor Cities Transitway, depending upon provisions of master plans for those areas.

Zoning as Economic Development

The Montgomery County Council stands poised to make bold changes to a complicated and sometimes inconsistent zoning code that has been characterized as unfriendly to both businesses and communities. The proposed family of Commercial/Residential (CR) zones strips away much of the red tape that has hindered business, particularly small business, for decades. By replacing a hodgepodge of commercial zones with three flexible CR zones, we’re making our standards clearer, more predictable and ultimately more accessible to those who can create jobs as well as the people living nearby.

The CR zones also incentivize business to develop in ways that benefit neighborhoods and focus density near transit. They are designed to create interactive streetscapes where people can live, work, shop and play—all within one neighborhood. After months of work on these new zones, the Council is scheduled to take action on October 4.

Council Holds Worksession on Commercial/Residential Zones

Tune in to today’s Council session on County Cable Montgomery (channel 6). Beginning at 10:15, the Council will hold a worksession on Zoning Text Amendment 11-01 that would amend provisions of the County’s Commercial/Residential (C/R) Zones. The discussion is expected to continue with the start of the afternoon session at 1:30 p.m.

The Planning Board proposed ZTA 11-01, to which the PHED Committee has suggested significant changes. The committee’s recommendations better protect communities by limiting land uses in C/R Neighborhood zones, increase respect for master plans by implementing them through site plans, add increased incentives for affordable housing and create more certainty for communities and developers by clarifying the sketch plan process.