Elkhart officials preview draft Unified Development Ordinance, plan public meetings and staff training

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 -…