Centennial staff ask council for guidance to rewrite land development code approval criteria

Centennial — Planning staff presented an initial plan Tuesday to revise approval criteria across the city’s Land Development Code to reduce redundancy, make standards application-specific and align criteria with Centennial Next and the city’s strategic goals. Staff asked council for guidance; no formal vote or ordinance was taken.

Staff said the effort targets approval criteria for the most commonly used development orders — rezoning, site plans, conditional use permits, plats and variances — after a systematic review of all 37 development orders in the code. Brad McKinnon, planner for the City of Centennial, said the purpose “is to introduce potential land development code amendments” and that staff will return with formal recommendations after additional review and public hearings.

Why it matters: approval criteria are the standards staff and decision makers use to recommend and approve quasi‑judicial land‑use decisions. Staff told council that overlapping, irrelevant or vague criteria can slow reviews, confuse applicants and reduce transparency in decision making. The review aim is to make the criteria clearer and more measurable while retaining the city’s substantive protections.

What staff showed and the problems identified Staff displayed examples from current site plan and rezoning criteria and called out three principal problems: redundancy (nearly identical safety, infrastructure or compatibility criteria repeated across case types), irrelevant site‑development language embedded in rezoning criteria, and unclear or undefined terms (particularly in variance and conditional use permit criteria). McKinnon said some criteria “are redundant, overly broad, or unclear,” and that those elements can make it harder for applicants and reviewers to know what evidence is required.

Staff explained that rezoning approval criteria sometimes include language that presumes a specific site plan; that is a poor fit because a rezoning changes the zone district and does not by itself create a specific development plan. For variances, staff noted that the code currently requires proving both an extraordinary property condition and that the condition was not created by the applicant — two elements that are difficult for lay applicants to interpret. Staff also said conditional use criteria include undefined words such as “character” and “immediate area,” though the LDC now contains a definition for “compatible” that staff expects to use.

Proposed approach and next steps Staff outlined likely solutions: combine overlapping criteria, move site‑plan‑specific language out of rezoning criteria into the site‑plan criteria where appropriate, simplify or define vague terms, and add measurable standards where feasible (for example, using traffic, noise or visual‑impact metrics). Jenna Campbell, principal planner, summarized the intent: staff are “not trying to make it easier to do development… We want to make our approval criteria clearer and cleaner” so decisions are more predictable.

No decisions were made tonight. Staff said they will discuss the draft direction with the Planning and Zoning Commission, prepare text amendments, and return with formal draft ordinance language for public hearings before the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council. Staff noted that site plan administrative approval (codified by a 2024 ordinance) and other existing procedures will remain in force unless changed through the formal amendment process.

Council input and staff follow‑up Council members asked whether utility and service capacity (water, sewer, drainage, power) should be addressed at rezoning stage; staff replied that a comprehensive, site‑specific review of infrastructure capacity is generally only possible with a site plan submittal, and that rezoning language should be tailored to reflect that limitation. Councilmembers suggested staff test proposed language against prior approved cases to be confident the revised criteria would not inadvertently undermine past approvals. Staff agreed to do that testing.

Staff reiterated the schedule: internal drafting with legal review, a Planning and Zoning Commission discussion, and then public hearings on text amendments. The presentation materials and handouts were provided to council members and staff asked for council guidance before drafting begins.