Columbus, Ohio, is America’s 14th largest city and one of the fastest growing in the nation. As part of a team led by Lisa Wise Consulting and Opticos Design, Siegman & Associates is comprehensively updating the City’s 70-year-old zoning code. Phase One (ongoing) focuses on the City’s major corridors. Phase Two will address the remainder of the City. Siegman & Associates is preparing the code’s parking and loading standards, along with recommendations for managing curb parking.
Based on feedback from extensive community outreach, the team found that the existing code, which has not been comprehensively updated since 1959, is not aligned with what people and businesses want today. As a result, the City has relied heavily on project-by-project negotiations, variances, and rezonings. The result has been a cumbersome process that creates uncertainty, makes outcomes unpredictable, and deters investment.
To address these problems, the team’s Draft Code for the City’s corridors, released in spring 2024, is aligned with the City’s current priorities, including accommodating new housing and jobs, increasing equity, revitalizing neighborhoods, and providing affordable housing. The new code enables the transformation of these auto-oriented corridors, lined with aging strip malls, into walkable, mixed-use, and transit-supportive neighborhoods. The code is concise and user-friendly. It combines elements of both form-based and conventional codes.
Economic analyses prepared for the City conclude that the proposed code will make it feasible to build 88,000 homes along the corridors over the next 10 years (compared to just 6,000 today). To help achieve this transformation, the code removes minimum parking requirements, while retaining clear design standards for parking to ensure pedestrian-friendly results. Siegman & Associates also worked with City staff to prepare recommendations for managing on-street parking, using pricing and permits, to make sure it remains readily available.
Images courtesy of Opticos Design and the City of Columbus