Good afternoon and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's Cablecast Public Hearing for Tuesday, October thirteenth, two thousand twenty-six, relative to Bill Eight Thirty Four.

Would a clerk please read the title of the bill?

Introduction and establishment, Chapter Nine oh one, General Provisions, Chapter Nine O two, Zoning Districts in General.

Article Two, Base Zoning District, Chapter Nine O Three, Residential Zoning Districts, Chapter Nine O Four Mixed Use Zoning Districts.

Chapter 920, Child Care Regulations.

Article 7, Nonconformities, Chapter 921, Nonconformities.

Article 8, Review and Enforcement, Chapter 922, Development Review Procedures.

Article 9, Measurements and Definitions, Chapter 925, Measure Measurements, Chapter 926, Definitions.

Thank

you very much.

For the record, we are joined by Councilman Mosley.

Our first order business will be brief introductions of the legislation by Carolyn Restal and Kate Ruckus from the Department of City Planning.

Good afternoon.

So we are here today to uh introduce to you the um uh council bill 2026 0834, uh which uh the Department of City Planning calls the Executive Order Phase 1 zoning amendments.

Um in our presentation, uh we will go over uh one second while we technical difficulties.

Um we are going to go over the background on the executive order, the timeline for this amendment package, uh details of what's in it, and then next steps.

Uh

the executive order uh was signed um uh by Mayor O'Connor um as executive order 202601 and calls for a variety of items um across multiple departments to um reform the permitting process.

Um for the zoning code, it specifically calls out that our code is outdated and it is um hard to build housing and bring economic opportunities to Pittsburgh because of the issues with our code.

Um however, zoning is able to be a tool that can encourage affordability growth and responsible equitable development in all parts of Pittsburgh.

And this um this amendment package is a first step towards the long overdue process of updating the entire zoning

code.

In uh the phase one of the mayor's executive order directive, there were five items uh specifically related to updating the zoning code.

Um the numbering system that you see on the slide was to help uh the departments keep track of all of the items that we had been tasked with in the executive order.

Um you'll notice they're slightly out of numerical order in this list as they are listed here sort of in um level of complex of impact of the change.

Uh

for the timeline, uh again the executive order um uh started with uh uh in January and the full list of the items to address were uh provided to the departments um by March, at which point uh DCP started working on developing the amendments for this package in June uh in our monthly briefings with the council offices, uh we provided an overview of what was in the draft uh amendments at that time.

Um that was followed by taking it through the planning commission process in July.

Uh first notice was on July 7th.

We had briefing on July 14th, and then Planning Commission took action after public hearing on the 28th of July.

Um it was then referred with a positive recommendation to city council.

Um also uh provided the 21-day notice in advance of today's public hearing through email, um, mailed and posted notices for the zone map change portion of the amendment and providing notices on the city planning hearing

notices page.

So

the first section uh that we're gonna go over for the amendment package is um the items relevant to the directive to remove uh obsolete sections and language of the zoning code to make it easier to use and understand.

Our code has a lot of um old or redundant or um other complicated text in it.

Um so this portion um touches on a variety of things.

The first item uh to talk about is the view protection overlay.

This was added to the code in the 1990s as a text amended amendment, but it needs a map in order to be functional, and a map was never adopted by the city council.

Based on information provided to me by planners at that time, a at least a first map was proposed, and I believe it did make it to City Council for adoption, but in the review and public comment period, it was determined that there wasn't the desire to actually implement

that.

So in the meantime, the text portion of it has remained in our code, taking up space, confusing people without us being able to use it.

And so we propose to remove that text as part of the amendment.

Another area in which we have obsolete language in our code is the Oakland public realm.

A couple of years ago,

the

city went through the process of adopting a neighborhood plan for Oakland that called for new mixed-use districts.

And those districts were adopted after the plan was adopted.

And those districts replaced the Oakland public realm, and they also replaced a special plan district in Oakland.

While those districts were removed from the map, the text associated with them has remained in the code, but there is no intention of those districts ever being mapped again.

And so we're proposing to remove that text.

Another specially planned district that still remains in the text but has been removed from the map is the Palisades Park specially plan district.

This was located in what we now call Hayes Woods.

There was a proposal early in the 2000s to develop a racetrack casino sort of development in that area of the city.

It's a very interesting plan to read through the text, but it's not text that we can actually use.

And so we are proposing to remove that from our code.

While we're on the topic of specially planned districts, at some point along the line, I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but the specially planned district 8 for the riverfront landing got put in the code twice.

And so we are removing the duplicate section.

Those the limited in the general are still in our code.

It still states what districts that can be allowed, but the parent definition explaining what multi-suite residential means is missing.