We've blogged in the past
here,
here, and
here about the City of Raleigh's massive zoning
re-mapping process, which is meant to migrate all properties in the
City's land use jurisdiction into the reach of the new Unified
Development Ordinance. The re-mapping will have a significant
effect on non-residential properties, of which there are
many.
If you own or have some other interest in nonresidential property
in the City, you should pay attention.
The City recently issued an update as to where it is in the
process. Here is the gist, directly from the City:
The City is in the process of rezoning a large area of land to
replace older zoning districts with new UDO districts. City Staff
developed a draft map of recommended changes to take to the Raleigh
Planning Commission and City Council for approval. The draft map
was released in May for a public comment period that ended
September 30. During that phase, the City heard from and responded
to 1,750 comments, of which about 500 requested changes to the
draft recommendations that staff put forward.
Where are we now? Since October, the Planning
Commission has been reviewing public comment change requests and
developing recommendations. The Planning Commission's review is
organized geographically by the City's Citizen Advisory Council
(CAC) areas. They have formed recommendations on change requests
focused on the North, Northeast, Forestville, Atlantic, Midtown,
Hillsborough, Five Points, and Mordecai CACs. If you are interested
in past review sessions, you can view videos of these meetings at
www.raleighnc.gov. You will find the "Planning Commission Work
Sessions" under "Planning Related Videos."
Where are we going? On January 6, the Planning
Commission will continue its review of the draft recommendations,
examining public comments related to the South, Southeast, East,
Central, South Central, and North Central CACs. Future meetings
will address requests in the following order: West and Southwest
CACs; and Wade, Glenwood and Northwest CACs. The Planning
Commission review is anticipated to continue through March. At the
end of the Planning Commission's review its recommendations
will be forwarded to City Council for final adoption. It is unknown
at this point how long the City Council will take to review these
recommendations. However, the review will include a
widely-advertised public hearing, with mailed notice going out to
all affected property owners.
Follow the process. The best place to find
information is www.RaleighUDO.us. From this website you can add
your email to the "UDO – Unified Development Ordinance
communications" topic in the MyRaleigh Subscriptions box at
the top right corner of the www.RaleighUDO.us page (this may appear
near the bottom on a mobile device) to receive email notification
when new agendas are published. If you still wish to comment on the
proposed zoning map each Planning Commission Work Session has time
set aside to allow anyone to bring forth concerns they may have.
These concerns can also be delivered by letter.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.