Norman committee weighs smaller minimum lots to encourage denser housing

Planning staff and members of the Business and Community Affairs Committee spent Thursday debating whether to reduce or eliminate minimum lot-size rules to encourage smaller, denser housing in Norman.

Planning Director Miss Hudson opened the discussion by reviewing precedents in other cities and outlining staff’s draft standard for new developments: "we would like to start with the 35 feet at the street frontage," remove the existing 50-foot width requirement and reduce minimum lot depth toward a 75-foot standard, she said. Hudson also recommended a 15-foot front-yard setback for the main building while "bumping the garage setback to 25," and keeping current off-street parking standards and a 65% lot-coverage cap unless a rezoning is sought.

Council members and staff focused on practical issues the draft would create and ways to limit unintended consequences. Several speakers raised concerns about mail delivery, trash-collection truck access, and emergency-vehicle response if lots, driveways and alleys are narrowed. Staff presented sketches and examples showing that on a 35-foot-wide lot, a single-car driveway is likely and on-street parking could become constrained; one staff member warned that "there's not enough on-street parking even available when you get the lots too narrow."

Council members proposed different approaches. One member urged treating greenfield (new) developments and historic/infill lots differently so older deep lots could be subdivided while new neighborhoods meet a more practical minimum. Council discussion produced competing numeric ideas: a 30-by-50-foot lot (1,500 sq ft), staff references to existing figures, and a compromise proposal for a 2,000-square-foot minimum. A council member summarized the direction as an incremental step, saying an intermediate minimum "gives us the ability to work through what might come forward."

Members emphasized preserving pedestrian-friendly streetscapes: speakers repeatedly favored pushing garages farther from the street so porches and front doors, not garage faces, define the street. Planning staff also recommended retaining a 65% lot-coverage limit (with PUD or rezoning options to exceed it) and keeping two off-street parking spaces as the baseline for some housing types.

The committee did not adopt a formal ordinance at the meeting. Instead, members directed staff to prepare an application for planning-commission review: Miss Hudson said staff will submit the proposal for the January application and seek a February planning commission hearing with a fast-tracked first reading in late February and a council vote in the first March meeting. Hudson added staff will return if the proposal runs into problems during review.

The meeting closed with council members asking staff to engage builders and design stakeholders (including suggested pattern-book exercises) to test what developers would actually build under the proposed rules before any final code changes are adopted.