On Wednesday, a Zone Ogden open house was held at Ogden Union Station to give residents an opportunity to wrap their heads around the city’s current zoning, initial changes proposed and to give feedback.

Ogden Planning Manager Barton Brierley said it’s been quite some time since Ogden’s ordinances received a major update.

“Our zoning ordinance was originally written in the 1950s,” he said. “It needs a lot of remodeling and rewriting. We’re rewriting the whole zoning ordinance and we’re introducing about the first third of it right now. We’ve prepared some drafts and we’re presenting some of the concepts we’re looking at for the public to give comment on.”

He said the ordinance changes that have occurred in the last half-century are akin to changes to an older house.

“There have been hundreds of small updates,” he said. “I kind of look at it like if you had a house that you built in the 1950s, and then you added on, remodeled the kitchen, then you added a bathroom and then you changed the roof and then you added a shed in back. There’s been a lot of little changes over the years — hundreds of them. They don’t really fit well together.”

Brierley said the Zone Ogden effort fits right in with Plan Ogden’s efforts to update the general plan.

“Plan Ogden is really the ‘why’ and this is the ‘how you get there,'” he said. “This is the details of how you build your buildings, what setbacks are, what the heights are, what the densities are, what uses are allowed in different areas, what parking requirements (are) — all of those details go in the zoning ordinance to implement the general plan.”

He said the goal is to make a more user-friendly code in order to ultimately progress on the general plans’s goals.

“We’re trying to kind of start over and create one code where all of the pieces fit, where it’s simplified, where it’s more user-friendly, where we’re getting what we want and it’s easier for the developers to use, it’s easier for citizens to use and understand,” he said.

Brierley said, currently, the city has redrafted about a third of the zoning ordinance.

“We’ve redone all of the zoning chapters so they’re a lot more consistent and easier to use,” he said. “Everything’s in a more uniform table where we just have different types of uses like a personal-service use. … A lot of better organization. A lot more modern uses.”

He said one of the biggest things the new zoning ordinance aims to emphasize is home ownership.

“We’ve been trying really hard to promote infill residential development,” he said. “That’s a big thing that we had from the general plan, wanting to promote more home ownership options through infill residential development. The residential code is really bringing some of those principles forward — things like allowing narrower lots, lesser setbacks, flag lots and things like that to allow that infill to occur.”

Brierley said the city continues to take input, even with Wednesday’s event concluded, and he believes the city will likely be able to present an updated zoning ordinance for Planning Commission and City Council consideration by the end of the year.

For more information and to give feedback, visit https://www.zone-ogden.com/.