Elkhart City planning staff and a consulting team on Oct. 12 presented a near‑final draft of the city’s Unified Development Ordinance, an overhaul that collapses multiple zoning districts into a clearer 12‑district structure, adds building typologies to allow “missing‑middle” housing, and consolidates use, parking, landscaping and sign standards into a single, hyperlinked code. Eric Trotter, with the planning department, led the presentation and said the UDO is intended to align the ordinance with the comprehensive plan and recent sub‑area plans.

Why it matters: The UDO rewrite changes how residents, developers and staff find rules and seek approvals. Planners said the restructure is intended to reduce the number of nonconforming lots and to speed routine approvals by moving many conditions to consolidated chapters, while preserving review pathways for exceptions and variances.

The draft combines zoning and subdivision rules and aims to be more navigable. "The comprehensive plan serves as a policy foundation for the UDO," Trotter told council members and the Plan Commission. Consultant Cynthia Veil of Rundell Arnsberger Associates said the digital document will be hyperlinked with a table of contents and step‑by‑step guidance so users can find district rules, permitted uses and applicable design standards quickly. "We tried to make it easy to guide people through what they needed to do, as soon as they open the book," Veil said.

Major changes described
- District consolidation: The team reduced the base districts to 12 by collapsing several residential and business districts and removing unused districts (the consultant described the former business park and office park districts as unused). Examples given: R‑1 → Suburban Residential; R‑2 → Compact Residential; R‑3 → Urban Residential; combined districts renamed Mixed Residential, Neighborhood Business, Community Business, Regional Business, Research and Development, and Manufacturing.
- Building typologies: Rather than listing "single family" or "multi‑family," chapter 5 separates building types (detached narrow, detached standard, duplex, triplex, quadplex, cottage, townhome, accessory dwellings) and ties standards to those types so suitable forms can be allowed in appropriate districts.
- Uses and NAICS: The use table is centralized in one chapter and cross‑referenced to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to help staff place new or ambiguous uses without repeated legislative changes.
- Nonconformities: Planners used GIS analysis to set standards intended to reduce nonconforming lots. As one example presented, changing an R‑1 lot width standard from 65 feet to 60 feet reduced the count of nonconforming lots from about 557 (roughly 21%) to about 270 (about 10%), per the presentation slides.
- Parking, landscaping, signs, and general regs: The draft updates parking minimums (including bicycle parking), adds electric vehicle standards, consolidates all landscape and buffer standards, introduces irrigation requirements for commercial sites over one acre, and standardizes temporary signs to a 30‑day limit. Sign area for building signs is proposed to be calculated as a percentage of facade area; the consultants showed an example allowing up to three signs totaling 20% of a facade in the Community Business district.
- Overlays and special districts: New overlay districts and form‑based districts were proposed, including an Airport Overlay, Wetland Conservation District, Flood Hazard District, and form‑based districts for Downtown CBD and the Benham neighborhood. The draft also retains a Planned Unit Development (PUD) option and adds standards for RV parks, campgrounds and mobile home parks.
- Administrative changes: Chapter 14 consolidates procedures, adds an option for a hearing officer to handle some variances or conditional uses administratively, creates an "administrative subdivision" process for minor lot adjustments, and allows limited minor waivers so staff can grant small dimensional exceptions without a full variance.

Discussion and next steps
Council and plan commission members asked about public education, staff training, and how the UDO will affect appeals and variances. Councilmember Fish said public education will be critical because the new format will raise questions when first released; Trotter and consultants said they expect more initial inquiries and planned a user guide, community training sessions and staff training to produce consistent answers.

On the appeals question, staff reiterated that state law preserves a path to seek variances before the Board of Zoning Appeals, and that the UDO relies on clear staff reports and training to discourage approvals that would undercut neighborhood character. "You can say this in here, but they can and they could come and get a variance for that," a consultant summarized when describing statutory limits on removing variance remedies.

Timeline and direction
Trotter said staff will hold public meetings on the near‑final draft, prepare a user guide, and train staff and boards. He said the goal is to forward the draft to the Plan Commission in September and to the council for adoption following required steps; if additional edits or statutory repeal procedures are needed, adoption could slip into October. The project team asked the council and commission to watch for forthcoming edits from other departments and the legal review.

No formal action was taken at the work session; council members requested follow‑up briefings and emphasized outreach and training before adoption.

Ending
City planners and the consultant team said they will return with the edited draft, user guidance and a public meeting schedule before the Plan Commission hearing. The UDO draft remains a staff and consultant product until the Plan Commission and City Council complete public hearings and formal adoption steps.