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County planner briefs Bridgeport council on zoning rewrite; council authorizes public advertisement
Summary
Montgomery County planner Matt Lubitz summarized a multi-year rewrite of Bridgeport's zoning code and map, citing changes to residential districts, neighborhood commercial expansion and reduced nonresidential parking standards. Council voted to advertise a text-and-map amendment and set a public hearing.
Montgomery County planning liaison Matt Lubitz presented the borough’s draft zoning code rewrite and a proposed map amendment at Thursday’s Bridgeport Borough Council meeting, then answered council questions before the body voted to advertise a public hearing.
Lubitz said the rewrite, developed since July 2022, implements elements of the borough’s 2021 comprehensive plan and aims to simplify and modernize the ordinance. Key proposals he highlighted included rezoning River Point and nearby neighborhoods to align with recent development, expanding the neighborhood commercial district up to Kalb Street in some places, tightening design standards (for example, limiting blank walls and requiring more ground-floor windows on main streets), and reorganizing use definitions for clarity.
A major substantive change would alter off-street parking rules for nonresidential uses on the Fourth Street/DeKalb corridor. The county study counted on-street spaces and nearby public lots and recommended shifting commercial parking requirements to a square-foot ratio (rather than table counts of seats and employees), allowing shared-parking agreements, permitting counting of proximate public parking toward required spaces, and enabling fee-in-lieu payments to the borough for some commercial parking deficits. Lubitz said the revisions also recommend adding electric-vehicle charging requirements for new or reconstructed parking areas.
Council members asked about protecting low-density residential neighborhoods from high-density apartment conversions; Lubitz said the draft preserves apartment-allowing R-3 areas only where appropriate and otherwise reassigns districts to reflect existing character. Council members also asked how the parking changes relate to ongoing private proposals on Fourth Street; staff said the amendments aim to reduce the need for variances where appropriate while preserving community parking access.
After the presentation, council voted to authorize advertisement of Ordinance 2025-2, a text-and-map amendment to Chapter 5.6 of the Borough Code, which will trigger a public hearing and subsequent adoption vote. The ordinance package and full draft code are available from borough staff on request.
