Lexington’s new planning process isn’t the problem. Our outdated zoning rules are.

Many people in Lexington have complained about development and often times they will blame Placebuilder, Lexington’s new guideline for zone changes. Placebuilder’s aim is to provide guidelines for new development in a way that is in context with its surroundings, but encouraging density and walkability, all things that make a place more livable. But Placebuilder is new, and like all new things it comes with a learning curve, but that does not make it bad. Instead of attacking it we should work on the real issues affecting development in Lexington, issues in our outdated zoning code.

First, to defend Placebuilder, it is a huge improvement from the future land use maps that used to be part of the Comprehensive Plan. It’s more flexible than a top down map put together by the city that ordained where and what development could happen for the next 5 years. Chevy Chase and Woodland Triangle are two examples of neighborhood commercial hubs that wouldn’t have been allowed under the previous map-based plan. So instead of the city saying what can go where, it provides a shared language through Place Types. The city does not say that one place is one type and another is something else, it is on the developer to argue that a certain place type applies to their project. But, just as well, neighborhoods can argue that their place type is different. Yes, there are a lot of development criteria, but that’s what came out of multiple public meetings, with people listing their concerns and, when it comes to development, people have a lot of concerns. Most of them are only a single sentence so they are fairly understandable.

But all the communication tools in the world don’t matter if the resulting compromise is illegal to build. The real issue is that Lexington doesn’t allow for incremental development. Through outdated rules like parking requirements, setbacks, and lot size minimums, our zoning ordinance prevents neighborhoods from being able to grow to their next step. What happens is that as housing demand goes up, so do property values and rents. Historically, before zoning, as this happened, some homes were redeveloped, as it made sense to get more value out of the land. Some were simply remodeled into duplexes, while some were replaced with small apartment buildings like fourplexes. Eventually, the added residents allowed the neighborhood to support local business and you had the beginnings of a neighborhood commercial hub. You can see how this played out in all of our older neighborhoods. They have a mix of single family and small multifamily buildings with the occasional commercial space and they are some of our most desired neighborhoods.

But today that is almost impossible if not outright illegal. You can see this in the parking requirements for a duplex compared to a single family home. If you build a single family home, no matter how large or small, you are legally required to have at least one off street parking space. But if you try to build a duplex, that requirement quadruples to at least four spots. That’s about 1150 sqft before you even take into account the driveway! If you have a small lot, say in our older and more walkable neighborhoods, there just isn’t the space for it. In some parts of the city you can go through a lengthy process to try and get half of the parking requirements waived, but that time and uncertainty costs money, making smaller projects with smaller profit margins untenable. We need to legalize the way we used to grow.

There will always be contention when it comes to development, the new-ness of Placebuilder has just become more ammunition in that fight. Instead of bashing the new style of guidelines and planning staff’s attempts at improving an always contentious process, we should instead focus on fixing the regulations that prevent small scale, incremental development from happening.

Blake Hall is a community activist that advocates for urbanism and better urban development in Lexington and blogs about it at buildabetterlex.com.