BURLINGTON — Mayor Miro Weinberger says planned revisions to development codes for downtown and the waterfront are an “evolution in city planning” that will help the city realize its vision for the future.
Burlington’s master plan for downtown and the waterfront anticipates the use of what are called form-based codes, which are more prescriptive and leave less open to interpretation than the current zoning rules.
“Form-based codes yield more predictable results because they are very clear and direct about what the community wants and expects from future development,” said David White, director of the Burlington Department of Planning and Zoning. That’s because form-based codes are regulations rather than guidelines.
A joint committee of city councilors and members of the Planning Commission has worked for the last two years on drafting the new codes. The commission could approve a final version as early as March, White said. That could set up a City Council vote in the fall, but no clear timeline has emerged.
During a recent panel discussion at City Hall held to acquaint the public with form-based coding, Lee Einsweiler, principal of Code Studio in Austin, Texas, who was brought in as an expert in building and land development codes, said form-based codes would be more visually oriented than the current code.
The current rules are written more for attorneys than developers or designers, Einsweiler said.
Erik Hoekstra, a developer with the firm Redstone, said he’s unsure whether form-based codes will produce more predictable results once implemented.
The city of Burlington’s current process allows for the Development Review Board to have a lot of discretion because it’s not always clear what the rules are, Hoekstra said. Sometimes it’s up to the DRB to decide what rules apply in a specific instance, he said.
“In theory, form-based code could remove some of that discretion of the board and make the rules clearer and more predictable,” Hoekstra said. “But it depends entirely on how the actual code is written.”
Burlington’s new zoning plan is more visual, illustrates the plan’s vision, targets architects and designers rather than lawyers, and includes the best practices from Burlington’s zoning today, Einsweiler said.
“I guess that’s the point,” Hoekstra said. “That our current zoning ordinance is written in a way that can be difficult for an average person or designer or developer to interpret and oftentimes it takes attorneys to figure out what it means.”
White said the change would offer more clarity. “A form-based code explains where on the lot the building and the parking must go, how tall the building must be and how it must face the street, and how the bulk of the building must change depending on its height and width,” White said. “Our current zoning does not offer this level of detail and direction.”
Conventional zoning includes density use, floor area ratio, setbacks, parking requirements and maximum building heights specified, according to the Form-Based Code Institute website. Form-based codes include, on top of the conventional zoning guidelines, street and building types, build-to lines, number of floors and percentage of built site frontage specified, according to the website.
The Burlington City Council voted in support of using form-based code for the downtown and waterfront in October 2014. The same resolution also created a joint committee of the Planning Commission and the City Council, which held a work session Jan. 4 after roughly 30 public meetings in the last two years.
The latest draft version of the downtown form-based code was released in November. The plan separates downtown along the waterfront into seven districts. The districts go from more rural to urban, with the downtown center near the middle of the districts.
The joint committee will make its final revisions to a draft form-based code and send them to the Planning Commission, which will start the adoption process, White said. That could happen by March, but it could also be delayed by additional testing and community outreach that the joint committee is interested in doing, he said.
The Planning Commission must hold at least one public hearing before sending its recommendations to the City Council for a possible vote, White said.
City Councilor Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, a member of the joint committee, said the process will include several more meetings and may take six more months. Final approval by the City Council may come in late summer or fall, Tracy said.
“At the end of the day, we should see better development in our city because we have both raised the bar and provided a clear path forward for how new development can be done,” White said.
