New Chesterfield zoning ordinance endorsed by Planning Commission

The Planning Commission voted Tuesday to recommend approval of a new zoning ordinance. (BizSense file)

A years-in-the-making overhaul of Chesterfield’s zoning ordinance took an important step forward Tuesday evening.

The county Planning Commission unanimously voted last night to recommend the Board of Supervisors provide final approve of a new zoning ordinance for the county.

The project to overhaul the zoning ordinance, which specifies how and where certain land uses are permitted, is intended to make the document more aligned with modern development trends and more user friendly. Much of the ordinance dates to the 1970s, and the last notable update occurred in the late 1990s.

The update, known as the Zoning Ordinance Modernization Project, or ZOMod, is also designed to bring the ordinance in line with the comprehensive plan, which maps out the long-range growth of the county.

“(ZOMod) provides more modern tools for regulating development and provides more opportunities for good design,” Planning Director Andy Gillies told the commission on Tuesday. “This will be much more supportive of the modern business trends and residential trends that we’re seeing in the industry.”

Under the proposal, Chesterfield would go from the current 24 land-use designations in the ordinance to a total of 14 districts, which are a combination of brand-new designations and others that consolidate existing designations.

Among the new districts proposed is Mixed-Use Center (MU), which would be for developments that feature a mixture of residential, commercial and office uses. Chesterfield currently doesn’t have a dedicated land-use district for those projects. Existing mixed-use developments in Chesterfield have been approved through the conditional use planned development (CUPD) process.

The CUPD process, which would be called a zoning deviation moving forward, became popular in recent years as a means to work around Chesterfield’s aging zoning ordinance. However, they pose an administrative challenge for county staff because they are essentially customized zoning districts. With the new ordinance, county staff intend to see it used rarely in the future.

Mixed-use developments like Springline at District 60, shown in late 2024, would have a dedicated land-use district in the new zoning ordinance. Currently mixed-use projects are facilitated through the CUPD process. (BizSense file photo)

County officials have said that a primary goal of the ordinance update is to facilitate a range of housing options, and several residential districts are proposed. The new ordinance is intended to encourage the construction of less-expensive homes with reduced lot size minimums, which in Chesterfield is set at a minimum of 12,000 square feet unless altered with a CUPD.

The Semi-Urban Neighborhood (SU) district goes as low as 4,500-square-foot lots. The designation is intended for single-family homes and designed to “integrate affordable housing with market-rate development,” per the draft.

Other residential districts proposed in the new ordinance are the Alternative Residential (AR) district, which would accommodate “innovative and emerging residential housing concepts,” with minimum lot areas of 1,500 square feet, as well as the Urban Residential (UR) zone, which would allow for “vertically integrated” mixed-use buildings, according to the proposed ordinance.

The Suburban Community (SC) district, which the draft envisions for “quality single family neighborhoods” in developing or revitalizing areas, is currently proposed to have lots of at least 8,000 square feet.

Rural Community (RC) would allow subdivisions with lots of at least 5 acres in rural areas of Chesterfield served by new or existing public roads.

As part of the new ordinance’s adoption, there would be a conversion of every property’s current designations into the closest new district. For example, a property currently zoned as Residential (R-15) would switch to the proposed Suburban Community district.

County officials have said that effectively there would be minimal changes, because approved zoning conditions would be carried forward. Chesterfield has sent mail notifications to property owners about what their properties’ new zoning districts are slated to be, and landowners are able to appeal the county’s determinations.

In cases where existing structures on a property don’t fit the new district, they would continue to be allowed as legally nonconforming. Future development on the property would need to adhere to the new zoning designation or be rezoned.

All properties in Chesterfield would be converted to new zoning designations that are comparable to their existing zoning approvals as part of the adoption of the new ordinance.

Properties that are currently zoned for commercial and industrial uses under the existing C-5, I-1, I-2 and I-3 designations would still be able to get developed per those rules for a five year period following the date the zoning ordinance takes effect, which is anticipated to be in January.

The grace period will allow for the filing of site plans and building permits for projects that adhere to those properties’ existing land-use rules, though data centers in those districts wouldn’t be eligible, said Thomas Jenkins, the county’s zoning administrator.

The Agricultural (A) designation, which accounts for more than half of the county’s 424 square miles, would continue to exist in the new ordinance.

Following adoption of the new document, rezoning cases would still need to go through case-by-case reviews by the planning commission and board of supervisors.

A more recent addition to the new ordinance would place new restrictions on the development of data centers in Chesterfield, and would limit them as a conditional use in the Employment Center (EC) and Employment General (EG) zoning districts, which would be new districts.

Other notable changes included in the new ordinance would require adjacent developments to share responsibility for establishing buffers between brand-new projects that are built on vacant land. For example, when a residential project is planned for vacant land that borders vacant land envisioned for future commercial development under the comprehensive plan, the residential project would provide a portion of the buffer, and the when the commercial project comes in, it will provide the rest of the buffer.

Currently, new commercial developments provide the entire buffer from existing residential, and that would continue to be the case moving forward where commercial projects are proposed to be built on undeveloped land that borders existing residential developments.

The proposed new ordinance includes a new proffer adjustment process, which allows customization in exchange for commitments made by a developer to minimize a project’s effects, as well as a standardized amenities list, which would lay out a starting point for things like recreational features.

The commission’s vote on Tuesday comes as the latest step for ZOMod since it got underway in 2021. The review followed multiple staff presentations to the commission about the update since then, as well as community meetings to gather feedback from county residents on the project.

The board of supervisors is expected to render a final decision on adoption of the ordinance in September. Commissioner Gib Sloan said that he felt that the best possible ordinance had been created through the ZOMod process, and thought that supervisors would likely make further adjustments to the proposal.

“I feel like we have done the absolute best we can do to get the best document and the best tool to the board of supervisors,” Sloan said.

More than 30 people spoke during Tuesday’s public hearing that preceded the commission’s vote, most of them in opposition to the ordinance update. Common criticisms were fears the new ordinance would encourage a higher level of more intensive development in the county, and that the process didn’t have sufficient public input. Supporters commended the ordinance as a means to increase the county’s housing stock and lower the costs of homes.

Chesterfield published the fourth and latest draft of the ordinance update in early June, and since then further tweaked the ordinance proposal that commissioners recommended for approval this week.

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