The Urban Growth Master Plan is officially adopted!

Last Thursday, the Planning Commission voted to adopt the Urban Growth Master Plan (UGMP)! This plan sets a vision for how development should look in the expansion areas of the Urban Service Boundary (USB).

The Planning Commission voted to amend a few components of the UGMP. The most significant change related to the concurrency regulations.

Typically, concurrencies are a type of regulation placed on developments to ensure that infrastructure and other public services are available or planned for when new development is approved. In the context of the Urban Growth Management Plan, the concurrencies that the planners recommend relate to requiring commercial space in residential development, intending to ensure that residential areas are walkable, with amenities existing nearby to residents.

• The original recommendation was to require developers to build 4,200 square feet of commercial space if their residential developments provided 20% or more of the recommended single-family housing units in Town and Village Centers — which are planned commercial and activity hubs for each USB expansion area. Once 20% of the units were built, the 4,200 square feet of commercial space had to be built before more housing could be built.

• The Planning Commission increased the number to 40% of total housing units in a project, not just single-family units. It also exempted Affordable Housing and Workforce Housing projects from the concurrency requirement.

Other changes include:

• Specifying that protected bike lanes should be the default bike-lane type on avenues.

• Clarifying that utilities should not be placed within the root-zone of street trees.

• Establishing a 100-foot landscape buffer between development and rural land on the edges of the USB expansion area boundaries.

With the Planning Commission’s vote, the plan is finished. The UGMP will not be sent to Council for another vote.

** Disclaimer: CivicLex served as a subcontractor for public engagement with TSW, the firm who developed the Urban Growth Master Plan.