While city officials struggle to get in tune for the work that’s needed to lift Langley’s long-standing moratorium against new subdivisions, developers won’t hear the same old song once the ban on new neighborhoods is lifted.
Since Langley extended its moratorium on Dec. 7, city officials have made it clear that the new regulations being written will go well beyond what was imagined when the moratorium was first adopted in June 2007, and further, as well, than the rewrite of rules that was proposed when the moratorium was previously extended six months ago.
Langley leaders say a major restructuring of the city’s regulatory approach to development is under consideration. It will include a remapping of primary and secondary zoning districts, as well as changes to how zoning is applied throughout the city.
City Planning Director Larry Cort said the new approach stems from the realization by some at city hall that simply rewriting rules for how land is subdivided in the city — which was the reason the first moratorium was adopted 30 months ago — wouldn’t result in the wholesale changes that were prompted by the last update to Langley’s comprehensive plan. The plan sets out how Langley is expected to grow in the next two decades.
“Our current subdivision standards don’t do a good job of steering the division and development of land that really sustains our comprehensive plan,” Cort said.
“It truly now is a recipe for sprawl.”
But the work under way will also include changing zoning in town. The city will adopt a “design district map,” where parts of Langley will carry new regulatory labels, such as “conservation design” and “rural village.”
“It is a remapping. The old zoning map is proposed to be gone,” Cort said.
“Everybody kind of agrees that they [current zoning designations] don’t serve our community well. The question is, what should those become.”
City Councilman Robert Gilman has promoted the idea of “sub-area plans” that will guide development on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
PAB review under way
Pieces of the new approach have been under review by the city’s Planning Advisory Board, which has also been working for months on new rules for subdivisions.
The new subdivision rules, currently in draft form, will add an extensive list of new requirements that developers must meet. Included in the new rules: Developers will need to design their housing projects to protect views of treelines and the night sky, install utilities underground, build homes so front doors and porches are visible from the street, clump houses together to save open space, remove invasive plants from their property and create monitoring programs to protect native plants and critical areas. In larger subdivisions, land would be set aside for parks, common areas and community agriculture.
Development rules will be more stringent depending on the design district.
In the historic neighborhood district, 10 percent of land in new subdivisions will be set aside for open space. In the rural village district, 45 percent of the land in each new neighborhood will be preserved as open space, and in the conservation district, 70 percent of the land for new subdivision will be set aside for open space.
How the work on rewriting subdivision rules will fit with sub-area planning — which will set limits on the number and size of homes in neighborhoods — plus new policies that would cover the transfer of development rights, has created a cloud of confusion at city hall. It was apparent at the city council meeting last week when the moratorium was extended until March 2010, and the fog had not lifted by the time the city’s Planning Advisory Board met later in the week.
Members of the Planning Advisory Board asked Cort and Gilman what would happen to the work the board had already done on the new subdivision rules. Gilman couldn’t provide a firm answer.
“I can’t tell you in detail at this point,” Gilman said, adding that he hadn’t yet met with the city’s planning director to sort it out.
Still, it was clear some “harmonization” was needed, Gilman said, between the work done by the Planning Advisory Board and the neighborhood-level approach the councilman is advocating.
“I think we’re actually going to get some quite good results out of this whole process, even if it does have its moments of [gasp] along the way,” Gilman told the Planning Advisory Board.
Some were unsatisfied with the vague description of the next steps forward.
“It’s almost like there is an issue, but there’s not an issue,” said G. Raymond McCullough of the Planning Advisory Board.
“I’m really confused. I literally am confused,” he said. “It’s like there is this issue that somebody thinks is important. It’s a conflict between the city council, and the PAB, and what people want. And it’s not being talked about.”
Cort indicated it was a question of what should happen when. Planners typically take a citywide approach on zoning, for example, but Langley’s preferred path is now one that lets the neighborhood “sub-area” plans guide housing density, development and zoning.
What, one PAB member asked, would happen to the work already done by the board on zoning?
“It’s impossible to answer that question right now,” Cort said.
In the end, Gilman asked the board to continue its work on the new subdivision rules.
Gilman takes lead role
Gilman said later that he expected that much of the work done by the board will still be used when new development rules are written. His expectations matter, of course, because it is Gilman who is going to write the basis of how the neighborhood-based approach can be melded with the work already done.
He’s expected to come up with a baseline for the council to consider within the next month.
“My sense at this point, from what I know of the existing draft, is that there’s a great deal that we all agree on,” he said. “Will there be someplace where what I will be suggesting will be different from what’s in the current draft? Well, that’s the way drafts are.”
“At the end of the day, we will find that the PAB’s good work is going to wind up in code,” he said.
Gilman said his view takes a cue from the current trends in progressive planning circles, an approach usually called “Smart Growth.” At its core is development that’s environmentally responsible and uses resources efficiently.
“This is not stuff that I am just pulling out of my hat,” Gilman said.
City officials say continuing to use the existing zoning could lead to suburban sprawl, a future Langley wants to avoid. Existing regulations aren’t designed to support the more charming aspects that exist in Langley, but instead are geared toward suburban development.
“We have seen what traditional planning approaches have delivered us,” Gilman said. “There’s a pretty strong sense in Langley that we don’t want to be Anywhere, USA.”
“The new system, one way or another, continues to supply the kind of land-use controls that people actually want. Or at least they want their neighbors to have,” he said.
Little time to dawdle
The city faces a daunting punch list to finish by the time the moratorium is scheduled to end in March, including the creating of a dozen or so sub-area plans for different neighborhoods in town. That’s not a lot of time, considering the effort to create a plan for the wharf district took two years.
Gilman, however, said he expects the work will be done in time.
“We can get the bare bones of a functioning system together, and then from there, with the moratorium lifted, we can take more time to refine and flesh things out.”
Gilman added that it wasn’t unusual for a council member to be taking on the work usually expected from professional planners.
“We are legislators,” he said of council members. “I’m doing what you see senators and people in the state Legislature do; they have policy ideas and they work on them.”
