Woodland Park staff previews consolidated development code, parks, parking and extension changes

Staff presented a draft Unified Development Code to the Woodland Park City Council on a proposed wholesale reorganization of the city's zoning code, consolidating five titles into a single UDC and moving many scattered procedures and definitions into centralized chapters. Speaker 1 summarized the reorganization as aiming to make the code easier to administer by centralizing general provisions, nonconforming-use rules, enforcement language and application procedures.

The draft reorganizes chapter content: Chapter 2 would house zone district purpose statements and dimensional tables; Chapter 3 would contain development standards such as parking, lighting and landscaping; Chapter 4 would consolidate use standards and the use table; Chapter 5 would bring subdivision rules together and clarify parkland-dedication language; and Chapter 6 would collect application procedures and decision-authority tables. "We unwound all that, pulled everything that's already in the code, added this chapter, and then built upon that and created a structure that is much more succinct," Speaker 1 said.

Among substantive changes, the draft removes the ambiguous "permitted conditionally (PC)" label from the use table and instead uses a PUD general development plan designation (G) to indicate uses allocated by a PUD; clustered residential development remains conditional based on standards. Accessory dwelling unit registration would be simplified by eliminating an annual registration requirement. The draft also retitles an inconsistently used "land use intensity ratio" to "accessory building limits" and moves single-family lot-coverage metrics into Chapter 3.

Parking drew sustained questions. Staff noted some parking ratios were modestly updated to reflect best practices and combined-use relabeling. Council and attendees pressed whether secondary (secondary schools) parking reductions made sense given driving students; speakers noted historical standards (elementary = 2 parking spaces per classroom; secondary = 5 per classroom) and said the new standard applies only to new development and could be adjusted before the public hearing. "A lot of codes provide requirements that are honestly kind of overparked," Speaker 1 said, and staff flagged a separate, deeper review of parking metrics as out of scope for this draft.

Chapter 6 includes a public-notification table that extends some notice periods (for example, many signposting notices from 10–15 days to 20 days) so the public has more time to review applications. Staff said notices would be sent earlier in the process to avoid lengthening overall project timelines, though they acknowledged a risk of premature notice requiring hearing rescheduling.

The draft also establishes a tiered extension process for prior approvals: an initial approval would be valid two years; the first extension could be granted administratively (to year four); a subsequent extension could be granted by planning commission (to year six); and later extensions would require council review and a showing of "good cause" (up to year eight in the structure described). Staff said the change aims to reduce repetitive board appearances while providing clear criteria for extensions.

On definitions, the city consolidated scattered definitions into one chapter, modernized terms ("supermarket" to "grocery store, large"), removed standards from definitions, and added missing terms. The draft adopts the state-model tiny-house definition (permanently constructed on a vehicle chassis, under 400 square feet, and built to applicable Colorado standards) but does not explicitly list tiny homes in the use table; staff said further analysis is needed to determine where such units could be authorized (for example, PUDs or mobile home parks).

Speaker 4 emphasized the draft preserves the short-term rental regulations "exactly as adopted by the citizens of Woodland Park." The presentation closed with staff listing topics for future work (architectural guidelines, landscaping standards, mobile-home-park rewrite, overlay-map placement, and engineering-spec updates) and an invitation to contact staff ahead of the scheduled public hearing.

No formal motions or votes were taken during the workshop; staff said the packet and presentation are intended to prepare the council for a later public hearing on the draft UDC. The council recessed until 6:00 p.m.