The Lafayette City Council held a workshop on January 27, 2026, to review the preliminary findings of the comprehensive Land Use Code update. The meeting featured presentations from consultant teams regarding form-based codes, affordable housing strategies, and impact fee analyses. Council members engaged in detailed deliberations on policy directions, specifically regarding missing middle housing, neighborhood-serving commercial uses, and height flexibility outside of Old Town. The session concluded with the Council directing staff to synthesize public feedback and present specific numerical options for inclusionary housing and impact fees before the final adoption phase.
There will be no study on any ideas. And we'll start with the first one. So our land use code update. I'll turn it over to that. Yeah, great. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So um short agenda, but long presentation. So we're really excited to be here as we are kind of approaching the finish line for our land use code update to give you updates around it. It's gonna be a three-part presentation. Um starting off with kind of kicking off with our um long-range planning manager, Phil Kleiser, who's been leading this project, and then we'll turn it over to Clarity and Associates, and then road policy, and then economic and planning systems. So each section will kind of have a pause for questions. Um, but as always, feel free to ask as you see fit. So I will turn it over to Phil Click. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. It's great to see you, and thank you for dedicating your first workshop in twenty twenty-six to our projects. We appreciate it. Um so we're here, we have our full consultant team with us today. Um Elizabeth Garvin from uh Claring Associates, Molly Fitzpatrick from Policy Research, uh, and uh Prosser from Economic and Planning Systems or EPS. Um, as um mentioned, we'll be having we'd like to split this up into first hour land use code, second hour um affordable housing, and with the code, we'll you'll hear from Elizabeth about the general updates that we've made over the past year and developed and released to the for the community to respond to. And then we'll get very specific into some code that's not yet um fully drafted and released, and that's specific to form-based codes. And so those will look at um how to create complete walkable new neighborhoods. Um, it'll look up how to preserve old towns of character, um, and how to guide mixed use development along our major corridors. And Molly and Matt will help us walk through a conversation about potential policy options for affordable housing, including potentially reinstating an inclusionary housing ordinance, development incentives, and updating our affordable housing impact fee. But first, just as a quick just a couple of notes policy context wise, you know, they have the Can I ask a logistical question? So I can't see behind me. Can we take Kyle off the screen so we could also have it up there? Or should I move or what would be the thing? I think they're planning to put the presentation on both once. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Does that sound okay? Perfect. As policy context, the legacy lafayette comprehensive plan sets that long-term vision for the community over the next 20 years. And it also guides a lot of different city decisions ranging from city budgeting, uh, department plans, strategic plans, capital investments, and specific to tonight development regulations. The comprehensive plan was adopted back in 2021, and you can't see these, but we've adopted several other plans since then, including the economic development and housing strategic plan, our multimodal transportation plan, the wildlife plan and the climate action plan, as well as others. And so one of the big components of this project is looking at those policies and implementing them through this land use code. We've developed the draft code in three parts what we called modules. We've released those to the community pretty much shortly after we've gotten them from the consultant. And so we've kind of taken a transparency first approach where we get it out there quickly. And we've and we've um briefed council three times each time we've released those modules over the past year. And to get us to that point where we are today, we would be remiss not to mention and think the land use code working group, two of the members of which are here on council this evening. Um they've been a big part of getting us to where we are. Just as a reminder, that group includes the planning commission, uh, reps from city boards and commissions, and five community members with different expertise and backgrounds. We've met a dozen times, um, and they've got given us some really helpful um advice and practical advice on specific code sections on just topics in general of looking at different options as well as advising on community engagement. Uh and speaking of community engagement, so we really focused on the working group on that first part of the project just to get something developed. And so with these projects, it's most helpful when the community has something to respond to. Uh, and so we've um kind of since then, more recently in the fall, we've turned more towards the community at large in terms of engagement. And so in the past month, you may have received a postcard mailing that we sent to addresses in the city. Um, we have a community-wide survey that's currently live.