COLUMBUS, Ohio — The City of Columbus is getting closer to changing its zoning code. The code hasn’t been significantly changed in 70 years.
The goal of the new zoning code is to build higher density areas in the city and increase housing. Over the last two months, the city has had over 1,600 individual comments on the code and hosted 1,700 people at the downtown Zone-in gallery.
Some people have expressed their support for the new zoning, while others worry about the change it could bring to their neighborhoods.
On Monday afternoon, city council had its first reading of the proposed new zoning code.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther emphasized the need for new zoning to meet the rising population demands in the city.
“We are no longer able to build new housing fast enough to keep pace with this recent rapid rise in our local population,” said Ginther.
Anna Teye-Kasongo, a Columbus resident and new home buyer, shared her concerns about the housing market in the city.
“We spent weeks looking at homes with exorbitant prices, with outdated poor conditions that didn’t meet any of our needs,” said Teye-Kasongo. “With rising rent, low housing inventory, high interest rates, the dream of home ownership seems farther and farther out of reach,” she added.
City Council President Shannon Hardin said the zoning changes will increase the number of houses and their affordability.
“The entire reason we are bringing forward this once in 70 years zoning reform is so that we can have more housing in central Ohio -- which means we can have more affordability in our housing stock,” said Hardin.
Key issues expressed during the public comment period were addressed in the new amended code.
One of those concerns was parking. Now, there will be a parking study for developments that have less than a 1 to 1 ratio of parking space per unit.
“We are going to look at individual projects to see whether or not we believe they are having enough parking on a project-by-project basis. If not, we will look at other ways to mitigate that,” said Rob Dorans, president pro tem of Columbus City Council.
Another change would be guaranteeing historic preservation and design.
“Explicitly make clear that if an area of the city is subject to design review commission that those requirements stay in place,” said Dorans.
The changes will also include sustainability efforts like adding landscaping for certain areas and installation of street trees for large developments. Hardin said the city needs to build 200,000 new housing units in the next 15 years to keep up with the growth.
“With dense, mixed-use walkable neighborhoods that our residents want now, we can make sure our neighbors have somewhere to put down their roots. And make sure long-term residents don’t get priced out of their neighborhoods they love,” said Hardin.
Columbus leaders will hold a public hearing on the legislation July 24 at City Hall at 5:30 p.m.
City council members will officially vote on the code on July 29 at their meeting.
Read all of the amendments to the zoning code at https://zone-in-columbus.hub.arcgis.com/pages/code-proposal.