Welcome back to Flashpoint.
This week, broad new zoning
regulations went into effect acs
Charlotte affects everything frm
building heights to neighborhoo,
and the process of building this massive
document has been years in the making.
Joining us now is Tony Lathrop.
He's a committee member of
the UDO Advisory Committee.
He's also previously chaired the committee
that helped guide the whole pro.
Tony, thanks for coming on.
We appreciate it.
Thanks man. Glad to.
So this whole thing started back in 2016.
You were sort of there at the ground level.
Take us behind the scenes of what it was
like to peace was a rather complicated
policy directive from the city of Charlotte.
Well it was it was a long time coming.
There had been discussions because the
prior or the existing zoning ordinance had
been in effect for several decades and.
Needed updating for a lot of
reasons that we can go into.
And so there was a lot of interl
discussions with the city staff
and people on the town council,
the City Council about how to come up
with a process to to basically update
that zoning ordinance enroll in the other
ordinances to unify it and and it took
a while to get the consensus rog
and to get the stakeholders together.
But the effort was started to
pull that process together,
as you said back in 2016,
to really form a solid process
to get to a good result.
And I said from the very beginn,
because I was chair of
the Planning Commission,
that you've got to have a proces
that's inclusive and transparent
and rigorous in order to get toa
good result that people have bot
into and accept and understand.
And it's good for Charlotte
and to the credit.
The city staff and the and the UDO committee,
they did that.
They had a great process.
It's really an example for the e
country on how to do this the right way.
And so you know,
I'll be glad to talk about that some more.
Help us understand what was wrog
with the way the city of Charloe
was doing things before this.
Well, I would, I don't know
that I would call it wrong.
I just think that because it had
been a long time since the ordie
had been updated, it had gotten.
Unwieldly and big and kind of disjointed
and just the zoning ordinance ws
hundreds and hundreds of pages.
I mean between 500 and 1000 pag.
I don't remember the exact numb,
but maybe say 800 ish,
something like that and it was t
of cobbled together and it it also was
that the city was evolving and
the ordinance had not evolved.
With the city either.
So it was a combination of being
unwieldly and difficult to use d
on the substance of it needing
to be updated anyway to match up
with how Charlotte was growing.
As you know, we've just had tremendous
growth and we continue to have .
And also it's a way to roll in
the other connected ordinances.
So it's all in one unified ordinance.
This is a living document with
room to change in the future.
What do you see is potential fl,
potential issues that might need
to be addressed in the future.
I don't really see any myself.
I'm going to leave that to the
staff and perhaps the City Coun.
You know that the City Council has the
authority to go back and and ch.
When they want to
talk us about the process,
you mentioned it earlier,
but the process of incorporating
public feedback in a plan that
really affects every corner
of the city of Charlotte.
You guys were very, I think,
vigilant about making sure you
tried to get as much as that
public feedback as possible.
And I'm so proud of that.
I mean the the process for gettg
that feedback and including
people being transparent.
She's one of the best I've ever seen.
And I think it's truly an example to the
whole world about how to do an ordinance,
how to prepare, how to draft,
how to be inclusive and build
consensus for an ordinance like this.
And the staff should, I mean,
they should get awards for that.
They did such a good job.
I mean, starting with the advisy
committee that I chaired.
It was.
Very, very broad based with
people from neighborhoods,
from the development community,
from the real estate community,
from the design community,
all all aspects of Charlotte,
all corners of Charlotte.
And then they had hundreds of
stakeholder meetings and focus groups
and community outreach sessionsd
just really did it the right wa.
And I'm I'm so proud of that and the.
You know, Allison Craig and before her,
Taiwo Jayova and the whole
planning department,
Laura Harmon,
Alan Goodwin just did a tremend,
tremendous job with that proces.
And that's why the ordinance
wouldn't have passed if they
hadn't hadn't done that.
All
right. Tony Lathrop. Tony, thans
for coming on. We appreciate it.
Thanks, guys. Glad to have a great day. All
right, take care. More flashpoint after this.