Ordinance Highlights:

* Limit stores to 100,000 square feet OF FOOTPRINT. The store can be of unlimited (or at least undetermined) size, as long as it goes up. After 100k s.f., it must go up into higher stories. Many communities have gone with size standards and this one is quite generous.

* Require that only 50% of the frontage of the lot be taken up by parking - that stores would be brought up to the street/sidewalk to create a more urban-friendly look to new developments. Less walking across acres of parking lot to get to the store. Further parking can be around back or between stores.

* Require that stores have an entrance on the main street. That means you can get to it from the sidewalk. Again, this is to create a more pedestrian-friendly feel.

* Set design standards for stores over 40,000 square feet. Essentially trying to get more attractive big boxes. Urban Design Commission often wants to turn something down for being ugly, but often feels it has no basis for doing so. This would strengthen their hand and at the same time give developers the guidelines they have requested in the past. About half on UDC disagrees with this though; they think it should be a blank slate that will encourage creativity. But from my experience on the UDC, the negotiations always go toward worse/bland rather than better/creative (witness the evolution of Ken Kopp's site on Monroe, now proposed to be sheathed in plasticky EIFS rather than the real brick originally proposed) . This at least sets a minimum.

* Set landscaping standards so we don't just see empty parking lots, and minimize the environmental impact of the pavement; e.g., increase bio-infiltration (raingardens, drainage swales, etc.).

*Exceptional quality always has an exception. Almost all the requirements can be overridden if a commission feels a design is "outstanding." This allows the flexibility that the development
community has requested. They want to be able to bring in something new and unseen in the past and still get it through the commissions. We allowed them to do this by allowing the requirements to be overridden by a supermajority of the commission.