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Waukegan committee approves broad Unified Development Ordinance amendments, caps tree-replacement fees
Summary
The Community Development Committee approved its first major revisions to the Unified Development Ordinance since adoption, changing use categories, variance routes, parking and landscaping rules and capping tree-replacement in-lieu fees at $7,500 for residential and $15,000 for nonresidential projects.
Waukegan — The Community Development Committee on Sept. 2 approved a package of amendments to the city’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), moving a variety of regulatory clarifications and new rules meant to simplify permitting and reflect a year of implementation experience. The committee voted to send the amendments on to the full city council for review in two weeks.
The changes include reclassifying some uses (for example, separating animal hospitals from shelters), creating a new “fleet management facility” use limited to passenger-transport businesses, shifting many accessory-structure setback variance reviews from council to the Development Review Board (DRB), and adding an explicit appeal path from the DRB to the Planning and Zoning Commission. Sam Green, planner with the planning and zoning department, told the committee the amendments grew from a year of user feedback and aimed to make the ordinance “easier to use” and to speed approval processes.
Why it matters: the UDO consolidates zoning, sign, subdivision, tree preservation and design rules; changes now will…
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