Ballston Spa ZAC reviews phase‑2 zoning draft; ADUs, PDD and public outreach debated

The Ballston Spa Zoning Advisory Committee reviewed a second draft of a proposed rewrite of the village zoning code on a Zoom meeting where consultant Chris Kushel of Fisher and Associates presented changes and invited detailed comment.

Kushel said the draft follows the village Comprehensive Plan’s land‑use map, splits the single existing R‑1 residential district into multiple residential districts, and reorganizes and simplifies definitions and the table of uses. “If you can have the comments by the end of this month, that gives us about two weeks before I head out of country,” Kushel told the committee, outlining a timeline to prepare material for a public workshop in March.

The draft makes modest changes to dimensional standards intended to reduce nonconformities by reflecting existing lot sizes, Kushel said, and renames the central business district to “downtown.” He said design standards in the draft apply to new development, not to properties in the village’s historic district, which remains a placeholder pending further input from the Historic District Commission.

Why this matters: the rewrite would recast where uses and development standards apply across the…