Planning Commission to weigh Land Development Regulation limits for large-development impacts

The Planning and Zoning Commission is set to review a package of Land Development Regulation amendments under PM25-011 aimed at reducing the impacts of large projects, especially downtown, and send a recommendation to the Town Council agenda packet. Draft changes include a new sliding-scale version of the 2:1 workforce housing bonus (and removing the bonus from the commercial downtown area), new maximum sizes for deed-restricted units, and a cap that would limit short-term rentals to 33% of a building’s total habitable floor area. Staff also proposes (1) prohibiting residential and lodging uses within 30 feet of street-facing ground-floor facades in the Downtown Design Overlay (lobbies allowed, with an exemption for projects that are at least 80% deed-restricted housing), (2) requiring third stories downtown to be not visible from across the street, and (3) counting habitable basement floor area toward the Town’s 40,000 and 50,000 square-foot maximum building size limits agenda.

Earlier in the year, the same PM25-011 effort was framed as a direction-setting workshop, with staff saying it had no specific recommendation yet and laying out the same core topics (2:1 bonus, stepbacks, short-term rental share, and basements) for commission input before drafting redlines June 3 packet.