P&Z commission to discuss new form-based codes

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By STEVEN NALLEY
citybeat@bellsouth.net [2]

The Starkville Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a work session today at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall to discuss Placemakers LLC’s latest draft of a set of form-based codes for the city.
Typically, the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission sets rules for how property can be used in certain areas, including commercial, industrial and residential use. Form-based codes set more focused architectural guidelines in certain areas to encourage certain types of land use, allowing developers to build better projects with fewer administrative steps.
At its meeting on Oct. 11, the commission reviewed a draft of a new chart of conditional and permitted land uses, for the purposes of both revising it into a draft for the Starkville Board of Aldermen to approve and then give to Placemakers as a basis for their form-based codes.
Commissioners suggested many revisions to the chart on Oct. 11, and City Planner Ben Griffith then said he planned to submit the revised chart to Placemakers. Griffith also said the commissioners could make further revisions to the chart at the Oct. 25 work session.
Assistant City Planner Pamela Daniel said discussion of the form-based codes and the land-use chart will be one and the same at the work session because each form-based code includes a list of land uses taken from the chart draft.
The codes have changed little compared with a draft Placemakers created in June, she said, except for changes resulting from the newly proposed land use chart.
The new draft of the form-based codes, titled “Downtown/MSU Corridors Code,” is available on the city’s website at http://cityofstarkville.org/detail.php?p=7&s=50 [3] as part of the commission’s e-packet.
“Something they wanted to do was to connect the downtown with Mississippi State,” Daniel said. “That’s why it’s the ‘MSU Corridor.’”