Planning staff introduced a proposed amendment to Cache County’s development standards to increase maximum lot coverage in commercial zones. The purpose, staff said, is to align commercial lot-coverage limits with industrial zones and to address practical issues for commercial development such as surface surfacing and parking.

A commissioner noted that most cities allow substantially higher lot coverage (85–90 percent) and argued that the current 50 percent limit forces businesses to leave driveways and parking areas gravel to meet the landscaping/open-space requirement. An example cited during discussion was a commercial storage-unit project in which lower coverage made usable pavement and stormwater design more difficult.

Public-works/engineering staff cautioned that counting asphalt or other impervious surfaces is a stormwater design issue and recommended engineering review; one staff member said from an engineering perspective asphalt adds runoff similarly to buildings and should be treated as impervious surface. Commissioners suggested two approaches: (1) simply raise the maximum lot coverage for commercial and industrial to 80 percent; or (2) distinguish between building coverage and other impervious surfaces for code calculations. Several commissioners asked staff to pull recent commercial and industrial rezones from the last two to five years to test how an 80 percent limit would have changed approvals.

No formal amendment was adopted Thursday. Commissioners directed staff to prepare comparative examples, analyze parking and stormwater consequences, and return with a recommended text and a public-hearing schedule.