Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Comprehensive Plan topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Planning commission endorses cleanup amendments to Westminster comprehensive plan, including senior‑housing clarifications
Summary
Commissioners voted unanimously to recommend City Council adopt non‑substantive cleanup changes to the city’s 02/1940 comprehensive plan, including updating maps to reflect 2023 annexations and adjusting senior‑housing bed accounting from 2.5 to 2 to better match current water‑use practice.
The Westminster Planning Commission on Jan. 14 voted unanimously to recommend City Council adopt a package of cleanup amendments to the city’s 02/1940 comprehensive plan. The amendments are narrowly scoped and meant to clarify definitions, correct cross‑references, update maps to reflect previously recorded annexations, and adjust several policy details identified by staff since the plan’s 2023 adoption.
Andrew Spurgeon, long‑range planner, said the changes are “minor in nature” and intended to keep the plan usable and consistent with the city’s business practices. The amendments update exhibit maps to reflect five open‑space annexations recorded in April 2023, clarify defined terms (for example, “community hospital”), and change how senior housing is counted for planning and utilities purposes. On senior housing, staff proposed lowering a beds‑per‑unit multiplier used for calculating density and utility impacts from 2.5 to 2 after consultation with utility staff; staff said newer assisted‑living and congregate models include full kitchens, washers and dryers and use more water than older models the multiplier originally assumed.
The amendments also restore a prior flexibility provision for mixed‑use neighborhoods: the plan language clarifies that projects may exceed an 18‑units‑per‑acre guideline where city council, through its normal review process, approves higher density — a procedural clarification that makes a route for project‑level density exceptions without a wholesale land‑use designation change.
Commissioners asked staff to confirm how the maps would be updated (staff said the April 2023 annexation date is the administrative trigger to change the city boundary on plan maps) and for more detail on the senior‑housing multiplier and whether the change would affect examples in the plan. Spurgeon said the changes are intended to improve accuracy, not to alter council policy on housing or annexation.
A motion recommending council approval carried unanimously; staff will forward the ordinance language and updated exhibits to City Council for consideration.
