City planner previews broad changes in Westminster’s proposed Unified Development Code, including 40–50% reductions in parking minimums

Andrew Spurgeon, long‑range planner in the City of Westminster’s Community Services Department, presented an informational workshop on June 23, 2026, previewing a draft Unified Development Code (UDC) intended to consolidate existing technical regulations and implement the city’s comprehensive plan.

Spurgeon told the Planning Commission the UDC is “a consensus document” with input from staff, residents, the Planning Commission, City Council check‑ins and advisory boards, and that it is intended as a technical tool to implement policies adopted in the comprehensive plan and other master plans. He said staff and commissioners will have opportunities to propose amendments when the code returns for formal action.

Why it matters: staff described the UDC as a one‑stop reorganization of eight separate technical documents (including design guidelines and standalone landscape regulations) to reduce confusion and better align development standards with recent policy goals such as housing diversity, multimodal transportation and adaptive reuse.

Key proposals and examples

- Consolidation and chapter structure: Spurgeon walked commissioners through the chapter layout: chapter 1 (administration/legal provisions), chapter 2 (measurement and definitions), chapter 3 (zoning including PUDs and specific plan districts), chapters 4–5 (design standards for residential and mixed‑use forms), chapter 7 (landscape, parking and site standards), and chapter 8 (procedures and entitlements) among others.

- Parking minimums: Staff presented updated parking schedules and said the baseline approach would generally reduce minimum vehicle parking requirements by roughly 40–50% compared with current ratios. Spurgeon noted additional avenues for relief — including shared parking, reductions for transit proximity and a new parking‑study option that would let applicants document an appropriate parking ratio for a specific site. “We’re looking generally at 40 to 50% reductions on the minimum,” Spurgeon said.

- Administrative and project‑specific adjustments: The draft raises the administrative adjustment allowance (commonly approved by the planning manager) and adds project‑specific adjustments targeted to adaptive reuse and redevelopment. Staff proposed increasing administrator variability from 10% to 20% and allowing the approving body for a given entitlement to formally approve additional adjustments.

- PUDs and SKIP: Existing Planned Unit Development (PUD) procedures would be carried forward with clarifying guidance on how new zoning districts inform PUD standards. Staff also proposed a Substantial Conformance Improvement Plan (SKIP) to allow incremental improvements to nonconforming sites via staff approval without invoking larger variance or entitlement processes.

- Land availability and rationale for more flexible standards: Spurgeon said Westminster has a constrained land inventory for new development (about 4.1% of the city’s land area available for new development, and about 2.3% when excluding parcels with active applications), with fewer than 500 acres across ~192 parcels and a median site size under one acre. He said those constraints justify recalibrated standards to enable infill, adaptive reuse and redevelopment.

Commissioner discussion and concerns

Commissioners asked several clarifying questions. One commissioner asked when staff expects to send the UDC to City Council; Spurgeon estimated the last quarter of 2026.

Several commissioners raised parking concerns. Vice Chair Carpenter said the commission should retain some parking requirements, noting that transit service limits could make a no‑parking policy impractical; staff acknowledged upcoming RTD service reductions and said Westminster’s transportation system is not at a point to eliminate parking entirely. Carpenter said, “I think that we should have some parking requirements.” Commissioners discussed market‑driven behaviors (developers often still provide parking) and the lender/market incentives that lead developers to include parking even where minimums are reduced.

A commissioner also questioned why the city sometimes does not have to comply with the same code processes as private developers. Spurgeon acknowledged the code contains a longstanding exception for city projects but said an internal administrative memo (issued around 2001) has directed the city to generally follow its own rules in practice; staff are redrafting that memo to modernize internal procedures and said the question of codifying city compliance remains under internal review.

Other notes and clarifications

- Spurgeon said some lengthy sections (for example, recently updated oil and gas provisions) were not included in the public PDF packet to avoid overloading the circulated draft; those provisions will be carried forward in the UDC and placed in a later chapter.

- Spurgeon reported the Planning Commission had submitted about 60 comments on the draft while staff submitted over 1,400 comments; staff will sort and address those comments before issuing an updated draft and conducting a legal review.

Next steps and procedural timeline

Spurgeon said staff will incorporate commission and staff feedback, complete a legal analysis, and return to the Planning Commission for a recommendation. If the commission recommends adoption (or proposes amendments), the item would proceed to City Council for final action; Spurgeon estimated a Council hearing could occur in the last quarter of 2026.

The commission closed the workshop and adjourned at 7:42 p.m.