Planning and Zoning Commission to hold second public hearing on new unified development code

The Columbia Planning and Zoning Commission will continue hearing public comment on the proposed Unified Development Code for the city Thursday night.

Last Thursday, Oct. 20, city planner Pat Zenner said commission members held a six hour public hearing on the first two chapters of the UDC. Video of that meeting can be found on the city’s website.

At tonight’s meeting, commission members will hold the second public hearing and it will cover the mixed-used downtown zoning district and portions of Chapter 29-4 of the new UDC. It starts at 6 p.m.

A third public hearing will be held Nov. 2 at 6 p.m. It will wrap up the remaining portion of the codes within Chapter 29-4 and Chapter 29-5.

Zenner said the commission is expected to take a final action on the code Nov. 10 during its regular meeting. The code would then be sent on to the city council to review. The code is tentatively scheduled for introduction on Nov. 21 at the earliest.

Clarion and Associates helped the city develop the new code back in 2014, ditching most of the old zoning regulations and references for a “form based” style of development.

The commission has already introduced the code and heard hours of public comment on the new code. These hearings are the last step before commission takes a final vote and sends it on to council.

Back in June, members of the Planning and Zoning commission requested to delay any decisions made on a new code. That put them at tentatively having a document around this time.

At the time, Zenner said the commission wanted more time to analyze the code, a 400-page document that contains more than 1,000 city zoning and ordinance changes.

“It’s just a meaty issue and commission just needs to have time to sit back and say wow, how do we want to approach this,” he said in July. “We knew we needed to make changes, we just didn’t know to what extent and that extent being a little bit more clearly painted for us.”