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Blythewood council approves first reading of updated land development ordinance
Summary
The Town of Blythewood moved forward with the first reading of a consolidated Land Development Ordinance (LDO) intended to replace an ordinance last comprehensively updated in 1981. Staff and a planning consultant reviewed the key changes and council voted to approve first reading unanimously.
The Town of Blythewood Council approved the first reading of a comprehensive update to the town’s Land Development Ordinance, a document staff said has not been fully updated since 1981.
Daniel Stines, town administrator, and Brian Mabry, the consultant who shepherded the rewrite, described the LDO as a consolidated, user-friendly regulatory code that aligns zoning text with the town’s updated comprehensive plan and modern planning practices.
Mabry said the new LDO reduces the number of zoning districts, reorganizes the code to put commonly used items near the front, and adds illustrated design standards and administrative review procedures. He described incentives such as an open-space/density tradeoff and a sustainability index that can grant modest bonuses for on-site green features such as solar panels or white roofs.
“The way this document is organized is sort of, so that the things that casual users would want to know up front — where they can put their shed, what the zoning districts are — the second half is more technical,” Brian Mabry said.
Stines reviewed the multi-year process: the rewrite began in 2023, went through workshops and joint planning commission hearings, returned to multiple advisory boards for review, and received a unanimous planning commission recommendation to council earlier this month. The draft LDO was posted online for public comment and staff said they incorporated input from boards, commissions and the community.
Council members who spoke praised the depth of the review and the involvement of the planning commission and design boards. After discussion, the council voted on first reading; the mayor called for the voice vote and the “ayes” carried the motion.
The first-reading approval does not adopt the ordinance into law. It moves the document to subsequent readings and formal adoption steps required by state law and local procedure. The ordinance was identified in meeting materials as “Ordinance 2025.001 — Land Development Ordinance (text and map amendments).”
