Narberth planning commissioners review draft reorganization of zoning code

Narberth Borough Planning Commission Chair Adam Crom convened the March 3 meeting to review a working draft that would reorganize the borough zoning code so zoning districts, definitions and measurement rules are easier for residents, property owners and applicants to find and use. Commissioner Todd (last name not specified) presented the outline and said “the idea is for it to be policy neutral,” while staff member Michael (last name not specified) described alternatives for charts and how users navigate the code.

The draft presented to the commission restructures the code so the zoning district page becomes the primary “portal” for a property owner, with cross-references to allowed land uses, permitted building types and applicable site standards. The outline would move definitions and measurement rules toward the front of the document, consolidate conditional-use and special-exception provisions into centralized sections, and group nonconforming-use rules that are now scattered across multiple chapters.

Why it matters: commissioners and staff said the current code can be hard to use because provisions are dispersed across chapters and because the…