Last week (October 6 – 9), the Zoning Commission held four nights of public meetings on ZRR. Over the course of over 17 hours of deliberations, the Commission reviewed and took proposed action on many specific proposals. These discussions, of course, followed seven years of public hearings and meetings, so the issues themselves had been examined and discussed on numerous occasions by the public and by Commission members in advance of these meetings. However, the Commission did provide OP with instruction to re-examine or revise many of the proposed provisions, including ones related to parking for specific uses; parking for motorcycles and mopeds; use groups; corner stores; accessory apartment size and access; use restrictions for non-residential space in low density commercial zones; Green Area Ratio tree canopy; theatres in residential zones; and revised or additional definitions.

The Zoning Commission instructed the Office of Planning and the Office of Zoning to prepare a revised draft of the complete zoning regulations, for submission on November 3, 2014, incorporating the direction provided by the Commission at the recent public meetings. This will, as with all ZRR documents, be posted on the OP and OZ websites. The Commission will then take this draft up at a further public meeting on December 11, 2014 for proposed action on the entire text. The previous draft, submitted in September of 2013, was very much a working draft so we expect the final version to cleaner, tighter, and, yes, shorter. Thanks again to everyone who provided comments on the first draft.