City prepares for land development code revision

In Southwest Austin, city staffers are reaching out to members of the community to determine what residents would like to see incorporated into CodeNext, the process of revising the city's land development code.

The LDC is a set of regulations that govern how things are built in Austin and how land is used, according to Matt Dugan, planning and development review department development services process coordinator.

The code rewrite will examine potential changes to city regulations, including those covering zoning, site plans and transportation features, Dugan said.

Through the ongoing South Austin Combined Neighborhood Plan process, residents of the Garrison Park, South Manchaca and Westgate neighborhoods are working to identify what they like about their area and where they want to see development.

Southwest Austin resident Eva Gonzales has been a participant in the SACNP process, which will be a community vision used when applying the LDC to South Austin. She said the area should be more accessible for pedestrians and cyclists, and the LDC should closely examine household affordability.

"Maybe [the code] should be a little more strict," she said. "It's still very important for us to have single-family homes, and if we are going to have apartment complexes, it's important that they be affordable."

Residents can provide feedback on the SACNP, which is slated to be presented at a Dec. 7 open house.

The neighborhood plan, like other completed plans throughout Austin, will help inform the LDC's regulations, Dugan said. For example, as part of the SACNP process, some residents have said they do not want much to change about the residential core, where most people live.

"So then the code would actually specifically say what zoning districts would be used on the ground to implement the vision for that area, to regulate what can get built, how [land] gets used, how much gets built and where on the different parcels it gets built," he said.

Dugan said the city is also presenting at local meetings and plans to host more workshops open to the community in January. Representatives will seek input from the Oak Hill Neighborhood Planning Contact Team at its Dec. 4 meeting, Dugan said.

Carol Cespedes, who has lived in Oak Hill since 1994, said although the current code's water quality regulations are better than those that were in place 20 years ago, there is room for improvement.

"We need to bring things up to date," she said.

She noted there is great diversity in Southwest Austin in terms of household affordability, and one obstacle has been resistance to multifamily housing.

"I think that this is inevitable, that we're going to have to go to more condominiums, townhouses, apartments [and] smaller-scale living, and Oak Hill needs to be part of it. It needs to be worked into our neighborhoods and into our long-term plan," she said.

Dugan said the city will consider a variety of factors including household affordability and where a mix of different housing types—duplexes, fourplexes and bungalows—may be appropriate.

The city's overall goal is to align the code with the city's master plan, the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan, said George Zapalac, the city's planning and development review department division manager.

Streamlining Austin's permitting process may be part of the rewrite, Zapalac said.

"We want to take a comprehensive look and see what is working well and what needs to be rethought or reconsidered and what sort of new ideas we can use to help address some of the challenges," Zapalac said.

One challenge to development in South Austin is the area's environmental sensitivity.

The city limits the amount of impervious cover, or covered space where rain cannot soak back into the ground, to 15 to 25 percent in areas that feed into the Edwards Aquifer, he said.

Separate from the CodeNext effort, the city recently made a major revision to the watershed protection ordinance citywide. Staff will take a closer look at that in conjunction with the code revision project, but it is unclear at this point whether impervious cover will be considered in the code, he said.

What is CodeNext?

The land development code rewrite, known as CodeNext, is the process of revising the city's code for how land can be used, including what can be built, where it can be built and how much can be built.

The code covers regulations in a variety of areas, including:

• Zoning
• Subdivisions
• Site plan regulations
• Water quality and drainage
• Buildings and signs
• Environmental regulations
• Transportation features (parking, sidewalks, new streets, etc.)

More information about CodeNext is available at www.austintexas.gov/codenext.

Source: City of Austin